The Founders Sandbox
The Founder’s Sandbox is an exciting podcast produced and sponsored by Next Act Advisors. Our host and founder of NAA, Brenda McCabe, will be interviewing players in the ecosystem of startups. Discussion centers on the nuts and bolts of resilient companies, shared experiences creating (and keeping) revenue, while making companies playful AND well governed! We tackle common issues faced by the founders of startups, and talk about how to create a fun environment where, under great corporate governance, founders can sit back and watch their employees build and play. Show intro music written and recorded by Daphne Willis, artwork and graphics by Whitney Otte. All shows hosted by Brenda McCabe. You can find out more about NAA and Brenda McCabe at https://nextactadvisors.com
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Purpose: Pivoting Careers
12/12/2024
Purpose: Pivoting Careers
On this episode of The Founder's Sandbox, Brenda speaks with Tammy Alvarez, founder and CEO of . Tammy is also an author, professional keynote speaker, inspirational coach, trainer, and epic storyteller. After experiencing firsthand burn out in a corporate career she struck out and intentionally created a work /life balance that resulted in creating Career Winners Circle, a company offering career coaching, helping individuals figure out what you do that you love and organizations that want to ignite their employees. They speak about Tammy leaving corporate life in New York, and how to “weather through” seasonality in your business and your career to come back to your "Why?" You can find out more about Tammy and her writing at: and the book Tammy mentions in this episode: You can subscribe to Next Act Advisors at and be sure to use the special discount code "sandbox25" for friends of The Founder's Sandbox for 25% off your subscription. transcript: 00:04 Hi, I'm pleased to announce something very special to me, a new subscription-based service through Next Act Advisors that allows members exclusive access to personal industry insights and bespoke 00:32 corporate governance knowledge. This comes in the form of blogs, personal book recommendations, and early access to the founder's sandbox podcast episodes before they released to the public. If you want more white glove information on building your startup with information like what was in today's episode, sign up with the link in the show notes to enjoy being a special member of Next Act Advisors. 01:01 As a thank you to Founders Sandbox listeners, you can use code SANDBOX25 at checkout to enjoy 25% off your membership costs. Thank you. 01:20 Welcome back to the Founder's Sandbox. I am Brenda McCabe, your host in this monthly podcast. We're now into our third season. The monthly podcast reaches entrepreneurs and business owners who learn about building resilient, purpose-driven and sustainable businesses with great corporate governance. I want to assist entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs in building those scalable, well-governed and resilient businesses. And guests to my podcast are founders, business owners, 01:49 themselves who want to use the power of the private enterprise, be it small, medium, or large, to create change for a better world. Through storytelling with each of my guests that are going to touch upon resilience, purpose-driven enterprise, and sustainable growth, my goal is to provide in a fun environment where we can equip one startup founder at a time the skills to build a better world through great corporate governance. 02:20 Today, my guest is Tammy Alvarez. Tammy is joining the podcast as founder and CEO of Career Winners Circle. She also is an author, professional keynote speaker, inspirational coach, trainer, and epic storyteller. So welcome, Tammy, to the Founder's Sandbox. Thank you, Brenda. It is such a pleasure to be here today. I do feel a bit intimidated. You know, you're an epic storyteller, and I thought... 02:49 So we have two storytellers in the sandbox today. Should be good. Excellent. So in prior conversations with you, Tammy, and I did take some time to listen to some other podcasts where you've been featured. You, like me, share a mission. And you're very mission-driven. And you've experienced firsthand burnout in the corporate world. And you intentionally created. 03:18 a work life balance, which we're going to learn about more today that resulted in creating career winners circle. And it's a company that's offering coaching, career coaching, helping individuals figure out what you do that you love. Every guest and I we choose a title for the podcast, our title for this podcast with Tammy Alvarez, CEO of career 03:46 is purpose pivoting careers. So Tammy, you are joining us from Mexico City. I am. But your journey actually started years ago in New York and Wall Street. And then you took a little jaunt over to Belize. And I found some commonalities, my own work. 04:13 is informed by a major life change that I made back over 20, actually 15 years now, I moved back to the US after 25 years in Europe. And I work with companies, not necessarily individuals, to be fit for purpose, poised for growth, and made for resilience. What made you leave the Manhattan, Wall Street life and go offshore before it became fashionable? 04:41 in the post-COVID world? It was an interesting culmination of activities, if you will. I grew up in and around Wall Street. So my whole career was really around financial services and I loved the corporate career. Throughout my corporate career, I made 11 different changes in terms of the jobs that I had, everything from sales to audit and everything in between. 05:09 in five different industries and around Wall Street, because I had this mindset that if you don't like it, change it. And that's kind of how I navigated through my career. And I remember this one day, here I am, top of my career, managing director, the height of my career is managing like over 2000 people in 35 countries, like all these big girl things that are going on. And I remember sitting in a boardroom, we had missed earnings again. 05:39 And we were just waiting for the bloodletting to begin, right? So our boss comes in and every quarter it would turn into a game of hot potato. Of whose fault was it? Like, it's not my fault. It's sales fault. It's operations. It's this, it's that. And it just was actually, you know, became comical. And then we'd all go out for a few beers after the meeting was over. And so this time was particularly brutal in terms of how difficult the analyst call was. And I remember having this. 06:07 out of body experience it felt like in the movies. You know, when you're floating over the table and you're associated to it, but you're not really there. And I didn't realize it at the time, but my career had received its death sentence because I developed this disease that I call I don't give a shititis. And so, you know, six months later, I had found myself, I had cashed out of Wall Street. 06:32 I had moved to a tropical island off the coast of Belize in Central America and started this business, which was by far the most terrifying thing I've ever done. And I just really needed that reset because I had stopped learning. And it felt like I had just seen everything and to go to another company would have been the same, you know, the same thing with a different shade of lipstick. And I needed to reignite my desire to actually learn. 07:00 fail successfully and move my business forward. Say that again, you wanted to reignite. I needed to reignite my desire, my ability to learn, but also how to fail successfully. Okay. And continue to start a new chapter. Right, right. And we did speak about some of your intentional choices. All right, you leave, you had it. 07:28 What would you call that? You had a disease? Oh, yeah. I don't give a shititis, right? So yes. I think a lot of us have that disease, and we just don't realize it's, you know. Right. Well, by speaking your truth, which is what I'm hearing, and my listeners will as well. I was struck, though, Tammy, because you landed in that tropical island, but you really didn't yet know what you were about to do, right? I had no idea. 07:58 you age out of Wall Street, you just do. And so part of my plan, soft plan, the extent of my business plan, Brenda, was I'm gonna coach someday and sit on a few boards and do some academic work. That was the extent of my business plan. So when I pulled the plug, I think I've made every mistake an entrepreneur could possibly make, probably twice, because I'm a slow learner. And so I just fumbled my way through in the dark and just. 08:24 kept trying things and kept failing at things until I finally figured out the secret sauce, but it took several years for me to get to that point. And it was terrifying, right? In terms of feeling like I had lost the skill to learn, I'm like, oh, this is taking a lot longer than it used to because I purposefully stayed at a corporate. I did not wanna have a business to business company because I knew I was still addicted to the work. Yep. 08:51 And if I'd gone right back in, I'd just be in the same rat race under my own flag. And so I purposely sent myself to serve consumers and I didn't know anything about mailing lists or drip campaigns or marketing funnels. I knew none of this stuff. And so that, that journey was absolutely one of the most frustrating and rewarding journeys I think I've had. And, and you know, did you, um, you're six years into 09:17 this almost seven now. Yeah, exactly. auspicious number. Do you really believe that you've removed the golden handcuffs of a corporate life or and you are the best operator to actually be working with people that are leaving corporate life in Wall Street? Yes. And yes. Excellent. You know, since the day I started the firm, I've never worked more than 30 hours a week. 09:45 Right. We would go scuba diving a couple of days a week before work. Just as a way to start our day. What better way than to go play with the fish and get salty. And it was interesting. So I had how to coach when I, when I finally realized that I can't do this on my own. And I probably should actually get some help with somebody who's done this before. I was not looking at the finances in my business the way I was supposed to. And she kept asking me, you know, every time we met, where are we with the numbers? Where are we with the forecast? 10:15 And I would just, I didn't do what I didn't do it. And so she finally asked me, she goes, what are you afraid of? And of course I bristled, cause I'm like, I'm not afraid of anything. And she let it go because she knew she hit a nerve. And so I let that marinate for a little bit. And after a session or two, what it turned out Brenda, is that I was afraid of success. Okay. 10:38 I didn't know it at the time consciously, but I was afraid that I was gonna end up tethered to my desk just like I was in corporate. And so I was abandoning all the good practices and the things that I had learned in corporate because when I cut the cord, I cut everything. I didn't keep the good stuff. And so once I started to realize that some of these routines will actually help me scale without compromising my lifestyle, then that's when things really started to turn around for me. 11:05 Now we've got six coaches. We're serving individuals and businesses worldwide. And I'm still, I don't work on Fridays. And those boundaries are so important to me because I just gave up on those for my entire adult life. You said a few things here, too, that really caught my attention. So you intentionally did set out to want to make a difference in other people's lives. So you started with your own. 11:35 You work no more than 30 hours a week. You've built your work life, your work around the work-life balance. Yes. And you kept the good stuff that matter from that corporate life. I'm curious, is this a type of consulting that you do with the individuals that you coach? Yes, we do. Because a lot of the mid-assessors 12:04 mid to senior level leaders that we coach, start their own businesses. And so we helped them on that journey. And so the business found me initially, because one of the biggest mistakes I made is that I created a bunch of amazing programs that no one would buy. So I was like, okay, this is a terrible idea. Because I was a transformation expert on Wall Street. So we, every time the building was burning, my team and I were running in while everyone else was running out. I loved it. 12:31 But when I was in corporate, I realized that most people suck at this. Okay. And so I'm like, let me teach people how to be really strong transformational leaders, which was a great idea, but that didn't work with a business to consumer model because they wouldn't pay for it because they didn't see that as a gating factor to their success. That's right. And as I was talking to potential clients, it's like, yeah, yeah, I don't care about that, but I want to know how you did what you did. I was like, Oh, you do. And like, you know, cause they. 13:00 Most of our clients when we started were mid to senior level leaders, single career, multiple companies usually, but single career, and now they're miserable and they feel stuck and they know they don't like this, but they don't know what they did like. And there's a lot of shame that comes with that. And so I deconstructed the things that I did naturally over the past 20 years in terms of making all these moves. I'm like, how do I help others do this? And so the business actually found me. 13:29 And that's really how we started. But then as our customers' journeys evolved and they started to go into smaller companies and become C-suite executives for mid-size organizations or start their own firms or begin their own nonprofits, then we continue to serve them on that journey because those are new challenges and new opportunities for them to need a wingman or a win-win-win for. And so now we really work with 13:57 business leaders and individual executives within companies, if you don't wake up and love Monday every Monday, you're doing it wrong. Exactly. It's not a pipe dream. And that's really where we step in and add that value and make that difference. That's a great segue to the title of your book that you recently authored, The First Quarter of 2024. How did you? 14:26 Make the time Tammy, while running your business, attending to your clients, working with building your own team. So for my listeners, Tammy is author of Escaping the Career Trap, Transform Your Apathy into Ambition and Never Hate Mondays Again. So applause. Thank you. So you are an author. How did you find the time? 14:53 um, to write this and how, who was your target audience? Um, and how has that influenced the type of work you're doing today? Yeah, the book, um, has been in the making since I started the company. And I had a really good mentor because that was the first thing I wanted to do was write a book. And so he sat me down. He lived in Belize as well. And so he and I were, you know, having a cocktail on the terrace, looking over the ocean. He's like, Tammy, you don't need a book. 15:23 you need customers. And he's like, without customers, you don't have a business. And so this idea of a book kept going on my vision board year after year after year. And so the timing turned out to be perfect because we were moving from Belize to Mexico City. I had no friends in Mexico City yet, and I didn't speak the language very well. And so this was a really good time for me just to hunker in. 15:52 and really finally get this passion project of mine over the finish line. And obviously it takes a village, right? So I had a great coach and even better editor. You know, I'm a thought leader, I'm not an author by trade. And so there was a lot of heavy lifting in terms of making this readable for our audience. And the book surprised me actually, because originally it was written for the disenfranchised worker. Like if you hate Mondays, you need to read the book. And it's a coaching book. 16:21 where you absolutely know step by step exactly what you need to do. But then what surprised me is that organizations started to pay me to come in and deliver this message to their teens. Oh my gosh. I was like, you do realize I talk in the first two chapters about how messed up everything is. And they're like, yes, but this is the message. Cause in the message, the so what to this is that I think everyone needs to become that CEO. 16:50 of you incorporated. And when you start to treat your career like a business, whether you are a corporate person or whether you actually have your own business, because a lot of us haven't promoted ourselves into that CEO spot yet. But when you start to think about things in terms of running a business and apply those to how you manage your career, everything changes. And it's good for the individual, it's good for the business, it's good for everyone. 17:16 And so, you know, with the book now, we are working with companies who are really struggling with the majority of their employees who also have, I don't give a shit, itis. Okay. And like, how do you wake them up? Because there's this, especially in the middle market space, there's this concept of this, you know, global talent shortage crisis is what they're calling it. And so I'm here with all the layoffs, how can there be a talent shortage crisis anywhere? 17:43 But what I strongly believe, and what we're starting to prove out with our clients now, is that businesses have everything they need right under their nose. They just don't know how to activate it. Right, right. And so we've created a, you know, literally a three month like adrenaline rush process to reactivate the ambition and get people to start to lean in and care about what they do again. And it's made amazing results and differences for our clients. 18:12 So at the end of the day, we're all about loving Mondays in every way possible. And whether that's helping organizations or individuals find their path, there's a way forward for everyone. Right, I love the comment you made around the first three chapters when you were surprised that corporates were asking you to come in and speak is that everyone needs to become a CEO within their business, right? The business line, right? 18:40 Did I quote you correctly? Because I mean, you know, so when you treat your career like a business, yeah, and you become the CEO of you incorporated, then that's when the magic starts to happen. 18:55 I can't wait to read it because I will be honest, I have not read your book, but I loved the catchy title, Escaping the Career Trap. Transform your apathy into ambition and never hate Mondays again. And those golden handcuffs are there, right? Right on the cover. And I think for entrepreneurs and solopreneurs and new business owners, we feel trapped too sometimes and we become a victim of the monster we've created, either a victim of our own success. 19:24 or we're not seeing the growth that we expected and things are harder than we planned for. And so much of what's in the book and also what we coach on really helps you break through that and find your way to the other side. Because I think all of our careers have what I call seasonality, right? And we all know success isn't linear. And so when you start to embrace that seasonality in your business, 19:50 and in your career and realize, okay, how can I show up better for me first? Because when I do that, then the downstream impacts are gonna show up in my business. 20:04 seasonality and how can I show up better? All right. Let's switch gears. Tammy, we've talked about how you from created your business over the last seven years, walk my listeners through a typical is the, is the word engagement. Is it one-on-one? Um, do you consult as well for the executive team of the midsize companies? Walk my listeners through that experience. 20:29 Yeah, absolutely. And so we do work privately and we have group, you know, we have group programs that we use. And then we also do business advisory work. And so a typical engagement in any of those scenarios is really not only getting clear on what good looks like, but why? Oh, because so many times we were like, I want to do this, you know, a business is like we want to expand, you know, an individual is like, I want to get promoted or, you know. 20:57 in group settings, we do a lot of women in leadership type work. You know, it's like, I want whatever. And then the next question is why? Why? And if those answers ring hollow, then it's time to go back and take a look at that to figure out what you really do want. Because so often we're on autopilot, we do something because it's what's expected next. 21:23 We do something because well, that's what...
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Resilience: Why Starting a Company Today is Awesome
11/27/2024
Resilience: Why Starting a Company Today is Awesome
On this episode of The Founder's Sandbox, Brenda speaks with Martin Tobias. Managing Partner of Incisive Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm focused on investing in the first institutional round of technology companies that reduce friction at scale. Martin is a 3X venture-funded CEO raising over $500M as CEO with two IPOs who has also invested in hundreds of companies and is a limited partner in over a dozen VC funds. They speak about Resilience: Why starting a company today is awesome. You can find out more about Martin at:
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Resilience: Team and the Company
10/22/2024
Resilience: Team and the Company
On this episode of The Founder's Sandbox, Brenda speaks with Eli Farhood, Chief Executive Officer at Katsh Digital ID. Hailing from Greece, Eli is a prior financial services executive and, with Katsh, a second time Founder. After experiencing fraud first hand, he pivoted a business in the making to create Katsh; separating one’s device from the need for authentication. Katsh aspires to democratize identify protection. For the month of October, they speak about cybersecurity and how to structure resilience into your company. You can find out more about Eli at: You can subscribe to Next Act Advisors at and be sure to use the special discount code "sandbox25" for friends of The Founder's Sandbox for 25% off your subscription. Transcription: 00:04 Hi, I'm pleased to announce something very special to me, a new subscription-based service through Next Act Advisors that allows members exclusive access to personal industry insights and bespoke 00:32 corporate governance knowledge. This comes in the form of blogs, personal book recommendations, and early access to the founder's sandbox podcast episodes before they released to the public. If you want more white glove information on building your startup with information like what was in today's episode, sign up with the link in the show notes to enjoy being a special member of Next Act Advisors. 01:01 As a thank you to Founders Sandbox listeners, you can use code SANDBOX25 at checkout to enjoy 25% off your membership costs. Thank you. 01:22 Welcome back to the Founder's Sandbox. I am your host, Brenda McCabe. We're now into our third season and over 38 episodes. This monthly podcast, it reaches entrepreneurs and business owners who like building and learning about resilient, purpose-driven and sustainable businesses with great corporate governance undergirding them. At the Founder's Sandbox and in my work, 01:52 I have a very simple mission, and I want to help build the scalable, well-governed and resilient businesses. The guests that come to the podcast are founders, business owners, corporate board directors, investors and professional service providers who, like me, want to use the power of the enterprise, small, medium or large, to effect change for a better world. 02:17 Through storytelling with each of my guests, we're gonna touch on topics on their own journey that includes resilience, purpose-driven enterprises and sustainable growth. And my goal is to provide a fun environment in a sandbox where we can equip one founder at a time to build a better world through great corporate governance. Today, I'm absolutely delighted to have as my guest, Eli Farhoud. Eli is joining the podcast today. 02:47 in many roles, but primarily he is chief executive officer of Catch Digital ID. This is his second company that he's founded. And he also is an immigrant. So we're gonna touch on several of his stories while we go into this podcast. So thank you, Eli, for joining me today. Hi, Brenda, thank you for having me. I'm really glad to be here. Excellent. 03:13 So again, to my guest, you know, you can find this podcast on any major platform. And I do like to choose jointly with my guest a title. And Eli and I settled upon resilience. And it's gonna be about his team, the company, and the resiliency that's necessary when you're building a company. And we're specifically gonna go into what Catch Digital ID does, cybersecurity. 03:42 and democratizing. So I want to go back to my own journey before I get to your tagline, Eli. My work at Next Act Advisors, which is my consulting arm, and the Founder Sandbox is yet another channel to get to my guest and my clients, I was undeniably influenced by a major life change and moving back to the United States after living 25 years or more in Europe. 04:12 And I talk about being really purpose-driven, scalable, and resiliency in my own journey. So what would your tagline, Eli, be? I share that tagline with you. Resilience is everything. If we don't have resilience, we give up quickly. We don't keep pushing. We don't stay on foot. We don't build the foundation that will help us get there. Resilience is, in my view, I put it under, 04:42 know, being tenacious, having that tenacious and being tenacious and not giving up. And yeah, resilience is very, very important, not just in business. I think on a personal level, resilience brings success to your life. And with respect to the current company that you are leading, Catch Digital ID, does it also have a tagline? 05:10 Yeah, I would say resilience also matches. We're purpose-driven, but resilience definitely matches because most of our team members have had fraud in some shape or form in their life. And that was giving us the energy to keep pushing. For example, our marketing manager had her social accounts hacked multiple times. I was a victim for fraud twice, financial fraud. So... 05:36 My team members also, you know, they're coming from multinationals like IBM and the Raytheon and Symantec. And, you know, they've dealt with, you know, all the identity security, and they know the market very well. So they also understand how to be secure, you have to be very careful about yourself, about your information. And they've seen it over and over in those businesses, you know. 06:03 I mean, IBM sells identity products, semantic cells, and a virus, right? And Raytheon also does great weapons and other stuff, but basically they were working on the security, they've seen it all. And so resilience definitely, you know, is, it has to be, every one of us is an entrepreneur, let's put it this way, and you have to be resilient. That really is a great segue to, you touched on the resiliency of the teammates that, you 06:33 come with very large logos where they've served. They've also been as yourself victims of fraud. So what was your mission when you actually established the company Catch? So we want to really democratize access for everyone. This is basically the goal. We want to have Catch IT in the hands of most people for free. Okay. 07:02 the end user, the consumer. And the reason why is, well, A, we're able to do that. And B, that's how you provide or democratize access. If everyone has a digital ID that can protect their sensitive information from abuse, then you're onto a thriving digital economy. And you're able to unlock a lot of value there where people can exchange goods. 07:31 services, send money to each other, share payments, they can do a lot of things. And some of the things that today we have to do in person, because we're concerned that it's not secure to do that online. So how about if we're able to bring that security to the online world, you would think, like we once tried to imagine how people can use our product and it was so many like venues there. 08:01 You know, we're going to get to how you're raising funds right now. And I can't ask you, you want to not only democratize, but actually provide this for free. So we're going to get into this a little bit later. But there are a lot of cybersecurity products out there. Why is your solution different? And is it enterprise grade, or is it really for individuals, right, citizens? And that's that. 08:30 that leads to how you're raising money. Talk to me about how your solution is different. That's a great question. When we first built Catch, it wasn't Catch. Catch became Catch after I fell victim for fraud. But it was an identity solution to the military. So we wanted to build something military-grade, that the military community can use, can rely on, a reliable product. 09:01 And when we looked at biometrics out there today, all the biometric systems that are available, we noticed that the most reliable ones are dependent on a device, like clear at the airport, for example, your face ID on your iPhone, perhaps Amazon one at the Whole Foods and maybe other brands that I maybe don't know of. And that was the handicap, if you want, of biometric technologies. 09:29 is that requirement that hardware need, right? Yes. If you need a special hardware to operate a biometric system, then it's only convenient where the hardware is available. Got it. And not just that, you would still need to have to use passwords. And when I fell victim to fraud, the big lesson I learned is that fraudsters today can leverage data breaches. 09:59 use that information to their advantage, they can hack our devices, they can hack our identities and hack our accounts. So, and history also has shown, you know, when you see the likes of Microsoft being compromised, you know, hundreds of millions of accounts, AT&T just a few weeks ago, 70 million accounts, 3 billion social security numbers. We were talking about large numbers here. It's not a joke. 10:27 when you see those data breaches and cannot be stopped even by Microsoft, then what can the average Joe do here to protect themselves, right? These are 20 dollar companies who keep pockets, they have teams of engineers, I mean, they have all the resources they want and they're still getting compromised. So we came to that conclusion, like it's really hard. Once information is available on the public domain, it cannot be protected. 10:54 one way or another one day, it's going to be compromised. And so our solution was to eliminate credentials from the security equation. Can you say that again? So it's you're eliminating credentials? We are eliminating credentials from the security of our identities so that hackers have nothing to compromise or to steal anymore. Is that the same as in HIPAA where it is sanitized or it's 11:22 that the private data is disassociated from the health record? No, it's not. Because you're eliminating a credential that existed, and now it no longer exists. We're placing that credential with a hand biometric, but a strong security hand biometric. I can't emphasize enough on strong security, because if you ask people to replace their passwords 11:52 it has to provide a better security than password. You know, the beauty about password is that if it's compromised, I can change it. But can you change your biometric? No. You cannot. And accordingly, it has to be really strong security so that people can trust that technology or that product and use it. And this is really the genesis of cache is that we wanna provide that convenience on any device 12:21 using your hand or we call it palm, right? And it's a strong technology because it involves a lot of technicalities, we can discuss that later, but basically it's a very strong technology that even if a copy of your hand, a picture of your hand, or even a video of your hand has been compromised, that won't affect you or affect your identity security. And this is our promise to our consumers. And it's probably your secret sauce. 12:50 It is a process, but we can go over that quickly. Yeah. Yes, we can get into that. I like that it's independent of device, right? So device agnostic, right? And you eliminate the credentials. So it's fascinating. Fascinating. Got lots of ideas to explore. Because we know credentials are a pain. Absolutely. Right? Who doesn't manage hundreds of passwords? Yeah. That's on an individual level. Let's see in the enterprise world. 13:19 they even have a stronger pain there. As an employee, you have to keep changing those credentials, take care of this, they keep them in a secure place. Enterprise are spending hundreds of millions of dollars just to store that credentials and keep it away from the hackers. So this is a strong pain and it's not efficient. They go back to the sustainability, it's not sustainable. So if we were to go back up a little bit. 13:48 What have been the shortfalls or continue to be the shortfalls of cybersecurity? That's a great question. Yeah. Yeah. It's a big one, right? We know that 80% of fraud globally stems from stolen ID credentials. That's a whopping big number. I've been a victim. That's a big number. Right. And then they send you, you know, 14:16 crawl or experience and for a year it's free, but then you get another hack like that of Microsoft or Blue Shield, all right? So what have been the shortfalls of cybersecurity and perhaps we'll continue to have shortfalls that that catch can eliminate? Yeah, the shortfall like this big headline is that 80% of fraud globally stems from stolen credentials and. 14:42 That's how we came about this approach. Like, how do you solve this? Okay, we need to eliminate credentials. This is not sustainable. It can just keep rolling like this. The biggest shortfall is that we're aren't able to protect our data. I remember maybe eight, nine years ago, I hear of a data breach maybe once a year. Right. Maybe every other year. Now every other week, I hear of a data breach. 15:12 And this is not a surprise to, it's not surprising to us because we know that back in the days also fraudsters and scammers didn't have the technology on hand to conduct those preaches. Now they have access to the latest technologies as we do as well. And so they have access to AI, they have access to that automation that can make their job really efficient. You know, scamming or being a fraudster is a business. It is. 15:42 it is a business. And so they actually study, they do an economic study, like, how much are we going to spend to hack that database and how much we're going to make money out of the database. And the moment you make it extremely expensive for them to hack a database, this is where you're starting, you know, your, your, your, your goal to reach your goal of getting some security. The problem is that history shows, like I said earlier, 16:12 we couldn't just stop these data breaches. And now they're becoming more often, more often than ever. I can give you something a little scary. Like sometimes you can input ideas in a chat bot and it can give you a solution on how you hack a network. Think of just like a fraudster that has a lot of experience. He's asking AI how to hack a network. And I know AI will sometimes respond, I don't do this, like this is not ethical. But there's a way to actually rephrase the question. 16:42 and get the answer. And so now they have that artificial brain that is helping them, automating things for them. And now we can see it, you know, it's around us. And this is really the shortfall. We're not able to stop data breaches and they're providing access to fraudsters to our account. And that's why we need to do something. So can you walk us through 17:12 How you, I wanna download CatchID. How do I do this? Is it available in the market today? Where are you? Because it sounds like it can potentially be ubiquitous or is it you need to do the crowdfunding first? Walk me through some of the features and some of the data that you have already because I'm certain you have beta testing done, please. 17:40 Yeah, so we're made a testing right now with some clients. It is not available to the public, unfortunately. We're trying to get that availability in 2025. At this point, we're trying to validate also if there's any psychological barrier from an end user point of view. You know, sometimes users can be paranoid of biometric technologies. That's right. And that could be a barrier for market entry. So... 18:08 The reason why we launched the crowdfunding is that we wanted to validate. Do people want to choose convenience over passwords, which is already not providing the security that it's aimed for, the stuff they're trying to. Because the fact, the matter of fact is that in cybersecurity, if you ask anyone in the community, they will tell you that if your device is compromised, nothing can save you. Face ID can be bypassed. 18:38 One-time codes can be caught there. Google Authenticator can be accessed. So basically, if your device is compromised, which is a very common thing, by the way, a lot of people do not realize that their device is already compromised and someone has a back door and is able to track every move they do on those devices. I'm not trying to freak people out, but this is a fact. And I have to say things as they are. And so... 19:04 Once that scammer gathers enough information about you, or they need a piece of the puzzle, they can also visit the dark web and get the complete set of data from your social security to your email, to your phone number, and then what? They have that puzzle available now, and they have a fully-fledged identity that they can use to create an account. So I also get this question a lot, and I'm happy to share that with your audience. 19:34 Some people tell me, well, I'm not Elon Musk or like I have $0 in my bank account. I don't care if someone takes my private information. Guess what? Most fraudsters don't want to steal money from you. In fact, they want to use your name to create a fake account and funnel illicit activities using your name. That's the big goal. Some of them obviously they want to steal money but others... 20:03 They want to just use your name. And the thing is when they fall, you're falling, not them. You're basically, they're piggy-bagging on your identity. Identity, right? Right. So that's in the financial world, in the medical world, I mean, our healthcare system, sometimes you can just know that someone conducted a surgery using your account. When you get the co-payment, you didn't know about it, but you learned then. 20:32 Taxi then also. Oh yeah absolutely. Absolutely. And so that brings you back to the core reasons on like why we approached finding a solution. Today you're using password, you think you can't change it, but then hey you're at risk, you're vulnerable. We recommend you try something else. If you're not convinced with our concept, that's perfectly fine. But try something else. Maybe you want to use two-factor authentication or three-factor authentication. 21:02 It can be really complicated at this point, right? You just hear stuff, but it's something you should do. Just don't rely on passwords. That's our advice. All right, so you are currently crowdfunding, as well you're testing also, beta testing with different user groups for a 2025 launch. How is the crowdfunding going? Are you doing on Kickstarter? Where are you doing the crowdfunding? 21:32 Another question is how has that fundraising journey been? Because today there is no longer a stigma associated to crowdfunding. Whereas 10 years back, I was like, ah, didn't want it to go that way. But more and more, there are more and more crowdfunding platforms that are truly enabling, particularly in the past two years, it's been incredibly hard to raise early stage money. 21:58 Can you, I know that's a loaded question. That's two questions. So what is your experience with crowdfunding and how soon will that get catched to the market to have it in our hands? No pun intended. Yeah, I mean crowdfunding, yeah, it did transform over several years in the past. So it had this bad connotation, but no, actually I've seen great products, growing and starting with crowdfunding. 22:28 And we've taken that course because we were interested in that aspect, validating that consumers want that. Um, we, we didn't, we didn't find problems selling this to businesses, to be honest, because there's a strong pain for them there, especially on an employee level, right? Because employees are our first market, to be honest with the enterprise, not the end user. But when they come to sell it to their end users, we wanted to make sure that 22:57 and users also want that, right? At the end of the day, I was offered voice verification at my bank. I refused it, right? Like many, the reason why, we've heard it before, right? How AI can synthesize your voice and someone can maybe use my synthetic voice to access my account, so I wouldn't do it. And so again, banks cannot force you to use one technology, they can offer it for you. 23:23 And if you're not convinced, you're not going to use it. So we wanted to validate both ends of the market....
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Purpose: Equitable Capital Access
10/10/2024
Purpose: Equitable Capital Access
On this episode, Brenda speaks about purpose with Allison Byers, founder of , a tech company driving innovation to equitable capital access by removing barriers to partnership among diverse founders, investors, and service providers. Scroobious is a platform that is working toward equitable capital access: In Allison’s words “ fair representation of all segments with the exclusion of none” - now into its fourth year – having served over 900 founders. “Finding the funding and the people are critical to early stage success of a company.“ Listen to Allison’s personal story of Scroobius and how her relationships that go back 20 years ago and an introduction to the newly appointed President and COO of Scroobiuos. You can find out more about Allison, Scroobious, and other resources mentioned in this podcast at: For founders working on a pitch: is dedicated to empowering founders for successful fundraising. including online learning modules featuring investor-vetted content, personalized pitch feedback, tailored pitch practice sessions, access to a vibrant community of hundreds of diverse founders, and connections with investors. . You can also to access our community, events, and curated resources immediately. For early-stage investors: connects you to a network of brilliant and diverse founders solving important problems. These founders have worked with us to clarify their story, showcasing comprehensive pitch material and coachability. for a quick platform demo. , register, and then use promo code EARLYINV for a free 6-month trial at the Stripe checkout page. After the trial, it's $10 per month (cancel anytime). Complete brief onboarding questions to enter the portal and start messaging founders! additional content here : Transcript: 00:04 Hi, I'm pleased to announce something very special to me, a new subscription-based service through Next Act Advisors that allows members exclusive access to personal industry insights and bespoke 00:32 corporate governance knowledge. This comes in the form of blogs, personal book recommendations, and early access to the founder's sandbox podcast episodes before they released to the public. If you want more white glove information on building your startup with information like what was in today's episode, sign up with the link in the show notes to enjoy being a special member of Next Act Advisors. 01:01 As a thank you to Founders Sandbox listeners, you can use code SANDBOX25 at checkout to enjoy 25% off your membership costs. Thank you. 01:19 Welcome back to the Founder's Sandbox. I am Brenda McCabe, your host. I'm delighted that we're now into the third season of this monthly podcast that reaches entrepreneurs, business owners, and corporate board directors, and VCs. All interested in building resilient, scalable, purpose-driven businesses with an undergirding aspect of great corporate governance. 01:45 I admission, my mission at NextAct Advisors, which is my consulting firm, is really simple. It's just building the scalable, well-governed and resilient businesses. My guests to the podcast are themselves founders, business owners, corporate directors, professional service providers who like me want to use the power of the private enterprise, small, medium or large to make change for a better world. With each of my guests, we go through some storytelling. 02:13 about their origin stories. And we will touch on topics around resiliency, purpose-driven enterprises and sustainable growth. And again, my goal is to provide a fun environment in this sandbox where we can equip one startup founder at a time to build a better world through great corporate governance. Today, my guest is Alison Byers. I'm absolutely delighted that she's joining me all the way from Boston. 02:41 Allison is joining and she wears many hats, but she is going to talk a lot today about her founder journey of Scroobius. And it is a very unique platform that unlike other platforms in the ecosystem used by startups, this is one that has a purpose to improve equitable capital access by providing pitch education for founders while making connections with investors. 03:11 to put unused capital to work. And we're gonna hear more as we get into the podcast. I like to have guests that are also very mission-driven as mission-driven as I. And you are, Alison, unequivocally mission-driven in your purpose after you yourself encountered gender bias firsthand while you were fundraising. So I think it'd be appropriate 03:40 story to start telling now. So thank you for joining me, Allison. Yeah, well, thank you so much for having me, Brenda. And absolutely love being so aligned in our missions and being able to talk about how we can use business elements to accomplish the mission-driven motives that we have. So. 04:02 Yeah, I'm happy to share my origin story for Scroobious. And we're a four-year-old company, so I incorporated in January of 2020, which maybe we'll hit on later what it means to incorporate right before a global pandemic. The initiative started after I, as you said, experienced pretty extreme gender bias myself. 04:26 So before Scroobious, I joined scientific co-founders and launched a medical device company out of MIT in a hospital system here in Boston. And I was the business one on the team and did all the things from incorporation through our fundraising. And we did raise almost $10 million at that company going through a series A prime. And then I really struggled to raise our series B. So we ended up going to early acquisition. And 04:52 I didn't know any of the things that I know now. I was not in this space before then. And Medical device is a pretty specific industry with pretty specific investors. So you're kind of in that world. But we were acquired in an asset sale. The people that acquired us were men. And not too long after, raised $55 million. And not. Yes. 05:21 Every time I share that, there's eyes open. A multiple of what? 10? Yeah. And it was very clear to me that the one thing I could point to that was different was my gender. And I was co-running the company with another woman. So we were two women out there doing this, and one more woman involved in the company. But it's. 05:48 it set me on a path of trying to understand what happened. And so that's when I researched the field of capital allocation and investing in pitching first just to understand how I could have failed so badly. That's the internalization that many founders have when they're unable to raise the capital your company needs. And very quickly found all the data that I know you're very familiar with. But for those who are listening who maybe aren't, 06:17 Nationally, 1.8% of venture dollars go to women-founded companies. And in my state of Massachusetts, that number is 0.9%. We're also ranked one of the worst states, 47th, for supporting women-owned businesses. And once you learn that, as devastating as it is, it also releases that internalization of failure. Because you say, oh, I didn't actually fail. I just did not know. 06:45 that I was operating in a system that's designed to keep me marginalized. I was not likely to raise that money regardless of how well we were operating the company or how strong our fundraising pitch was. Okay. So that's my origin story for wanting to dedicate my professional career to working toward more equitable access to business capital. And it's not solely focused on women owned companies, is it? Exactly. 07:15 Yeah. So tell us a bit more about Scroobious and starting a company. And right when the pandemic, you know, set in here in the United States and we locked it went into lockdown. So, right. Yes. So I did at least a year of research before deciding. 07:33 what I wanted to do was meant to be a for-profit company structure. I didn't rush into it. That's not my nature. Did my full market analysis and primary and secondary research, thought about our own capitalization plan, then decided to incorporate in January of 2020. So, impeccable timing. But I know we'll talk about that a little later too in terms of how do you handle what 08:02 startups throw at you and building without the ability to predict how your business might fluctuate or how the macro economy might fluctuate around you. But no, we don't focus only on women. That's of course my lived experience. But when I researched it, pretty much any segment where founders identify as underrepresented in some way, receives incredibly inequitable distribution of. 08:31 business and growth capital. If you look at it by gender or race, that's true. If you look at it by geography or by sexual orientation or military veteran status, neurodiversity, there's a lot of different ways that people can identify as underrepresented. And we don't define that for somebody. Nor do we exclude anyone from our platform because we're really working toward equitable distribution which means 09:00 true representation of all segments to the exclusion of none. So, yeah. I love it. Can you say that again? That's a great tagline. So you're working towards? So we're working toward equitable distribution, which means fair representation of all segments to the exclusion of none. Fantastic. Yeah. So we've got white dudes in there too, right? Like we're not turning people away. 09:27 But our own go to market strategy was to and is still to partner with organizations that are diversity first as well, so that we're building the community that represents what should be equitably represented based on our population. 09:45 So let's go into the actual platform itself. It is a platform, right? Yeah. You've got founders on one side receiving pitch education and you have more, and you have investors on the other side. So how does a founder experience Scroobius? Yes, great question. And we are definitely a platform and we actually have three key stakeholders. So there's some marketplace elements with the founders and investors on two sides, 10:15 What we've come to discover, and this is part of the building and pivoting and resiliency of a startup, is that true understanding of how important relationships are in accessing resources and capital. This is not a transactional industry. And so the third key stakeholder here are service providers and program partners. They are very underutilized. 10:44 in this space and they are key connection nodes. And so we are a true platform with all three at the center there. But for founders, to answer your question, yes, we're a scalable platform. We were designed intentionally to scale because with all three of those stakeholder groups, they number in the millions. This is a huge market. And so 11:08 Founders enter our platform and immediately they can access our flagship program called the Pitch It Plan, which is full of micro lessons online, asynchronous access, about everything to do with fundraising strategy and pitching and building those relationships with investors because that type of quality education written from an authentic perspective of understanding that it is different. 11:37 for underrepresented groups and making it accessible and understandable for everyone is not easy to access. It's not freely out there. So your labor of love, for lack of another word, you've curated that and probably through your professional service providers, how did you curate that specifically for underrepresented? So it's all... 12:03 created by us. This is proprietary education, and we do work with providers. In addition to our custom material that we add to all the time based on the needs of our community, we also host workshops twice a month with industry experts on all kinds of topics related to early startup building. Apologies, I do have a cold today, so I'm going to lose my voice every so often. Yes, just. 12:31 But it's based on hundreds of interviews with investors, hundreds of interviews with founders, and personal experience of myself and others on the team to really create different material that speaks to the heart of what founders want to know. So for an example, we have a lesson on how do you give a 10-minute pitch? How do you give a five-minute pitch? How do you give a three-minute 12:57 What if you have a one minute pitch? What exactly goes in there? And we provide the insight into why it is important to an investor. So they get both the lesson and the understanding of why does this matter to do it this way. So they have access to that. And alongside it, they can upload draft material and get personalized feedback from our trained reviewers. So it's a combination of online learning 13:27 Again, that asynchronous scalable human delivered feedback that founders really do need to feel comfortable and confident. Once they have worked through our program, they have the ability to share their pitch and their profile with the investors, right? So that they can get in front of our network of... 13:50 vetted and active angel investors who are specifically looking to diversify how they find opportunities so they can put their capital toward the founders they're looking for, even if they are not in their geography or not in their known network or affinity groups. Is it national? United States actually? We're actually international now. We have founders all over the place. Yes, our community has grown. We've worked with over 900 founders now in basically four years. 14:19 Yeah. Wow. Excellent. And how does the investor then experience it? So are they actually contacted by the founder? Or can they just peruse Scroobius platform, identify opportunities that fit within their investment thesis? How does that work? Yeah. So it's a great question. And again, we've built a differentiated platform by listening to what. 14:48 investors want and we focus on angel investors. We're pretty specifically finding those who are more likely to write checks to our founder base to underrepresented founders and angel investors represent an enormous untapped opportunity. So when they join our platform they do give us some information when they on board about their thesis and what they're looking for and then. 15:11 They can see all of the founders who have uploaded their material, which includes both a comprehensive deck, because we QA what goes up there, and a short video introduction. So they can see the human behind the deck. And that is really core to how we curate for investors what they see. We are measuring variables both about the business and about the founder. 15:36 and constantly learning from the investors as they engage with different pitches, what are they actually drawn to? So that's the AI behind this is building an engine that's a little bit like Netflix, where it's constantly learning based on what you watch and suggesting other things you might like, right? Based on your behaviors, we're incorporating that based on your behaviors. Here are other founders that you might like. 16:05 And so you can log in and get a very customized experience. We also heard pretty loud and clear from angel investors that there's a variety of reasons why they might like to keep their anonymity and not be on a list or have founders reaching out to them constantly. And so they do. They make the first outreach to the founder and they can make that outreach anonymously if they want. 16:29 So they can open a founder's pitch material and ask questions within it, either with their name attached or anonymously, the founder still needs that feedback, still needs that connection. And then they can choose to reveal their name later on. If this seems like someone you want to get to know better. So that's in the investors control. Yeah, totally in the investors control. Interesting, interesting. And it's asynchronous. So if the investor were to ask any questions, then the 16:57 founder does see those and can answer. Yep. Everyone gets an email. They can answer in the platform. They can answer via email. You can have a whole conversation about a slide in a pitch deck in that slide to, again, make efficient use of everybody's time and decide, is this worth a 45-minute call after you can get through some of that conversation? Excellent. So you did share. I wanted to get into some of the metrics that there have been. 17:26 900 founders already experiencing Scroobiouss. What about investors? Because I had an interview just some time back. It dropped this month with Marsha Dawood. Oh, yeah. And she has her podcast, The Angel Next Door, and her new book has just released. I asked her, how many angel investors are actually in presently United States? There's only 300,000. I mean, if you think about that, we are a small group of. 17:55 angels and her mission with the book is to increase the number of people that become angel investors. So like back to you and there are funds of course. Yeah. Yeah. I know I was just with Marsha the past two days contributing to the Angel Capital Association Women Investors Forum and I got her book yesterday. I'm very excited to read it. So yes, and that I will 18:24 representative of the potential for angels that could be actively investing. And it's also very difficult to measure. There is not a good comprehensive set of data on angel investing activity because it does not have to be reported. So you can't scrape it. So personally, I believe that number to be much higher in reality. 18:52 And there also is, I think it's $32 billion in unallocated capital based on inactivity of angel group members. Wow. There are members who are part of that group, but not investing through the group. And that was pretty key in my research as well. To put this capital to work, it means they're not finding the people they want to put their money behind. So 32 billion in dry powder would be the word, right? Yeah, basically. Yeah, that we know of. 19:21 That's of angel group members and not every angel is a member of a group. Right. Right. So, yeah. So in terms of our own investor platform, we launched it last year in twenty twenty three and we've been working on a somewhat invitation basis. Although we do make it open to anybody to join. But we're really looking to have people who actively write checks to those who identify as underrepresented as part of our platform or those who are. 19:49 active investors in looking to start establishing those relationships. Again, we're not transactional. We don't affect the investment through our platform, but we are looking to make more of those connections. We're the infrastructure that allows investors and founders to find each other. I think it's around 40 or 45 active angels in there. We have... 20:15 multiple financings that have happened by discovery on our platform. And it really hasn't been that long a period of time. I know. And in a tough market, very tough market. Yeah, in a tough market. Although again, an angel is an entirely different investor than a fund manager. And where fund managers might go stagnant, angels don't necessarily do that. Excellent. And in the show notes, there will be links, Alison, to Scroobius. 20:45 as well as some other materials you've provided. In addition to your day job, right? You're now into your fourth year of running Scroobius. You also have been a catalyst for change and you have co-authored the California Senate Bill 54 that was signed into law in October, 2023. What's this bill about, Allison? 21:13 I got excited last year when I saw this and I got a lot of phone calls from VCs saying I need women. I need underrepresented found companies. Well, I'm very glad it already catalyzed calls to you and awareness of this. But no, I'm extremely proud to have participated in this and Scroobius is my company and we're making demonstrable change and growing quickly. But yes, I do also a number of other advocacy efforts. 21:42 Again, it's dedicating myself toward working to equitable access. And policy is something my own...
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Purpose: Doing Good While Doing Well
09/05/2024
Purpose: Doing Good While Doing Well
On todays episode, Brenda speaks with Marcia Dawood. Marcia is a passionate advocate for positive change in empowering and educating everyone on how to invest. Her book "Do Good While Doing Well – Invest For Change, Reap Financial Rewards and Increase Your Happiness", is due out in September 2024 and this episode provides previews to our listeners. Brenda and Marcia speak about Purpose: Doing Good While Doing Well. How Marcia lives her purpose is as an author, host of the podcast The Angel Next Door, Chair Emeritus of (ACA)Angel Capital Association, the global professional society for angel investors, and on the board of Stella, a non-profit that supports female entrepreneurs. She is also a Venture partner at Mindshift Capital, and she currently serves on the SEC Securities and Exchange Commission’s Small Business Capital Formation Advisory Committee. You can find out more about Marcia at: Watch her Tedx Talk Order her Book You can subscribe to Next Act Advisors at and be sure to use the special discount code "sandbox25" for friends of The Founder's Sandbox for 25% off your subscription. Transcript: 00:04 We're standing on the edge of something big. We're going to make some changes. Hi, I'm pleased to announce something very special to me, a new subscription-based service through Next Act Advisors that allows members exclusive access to personal industry insights and bespoke 00:32 corporate governance knowledge. This comes in the form of blogs, personal book recommendations, and early access to the founder's sandbox podcast episodes before they released to the public. If you want more white glove information on building your startup with information like what was in today's episode, sign up with the link in the show notes to enjoy being a special member of Next Act Advisors. 01:01 As a thank you to Founders Sandbox listeners, you can use code SANDBOX25 at checkout to enjoy 25% off your membership costs. Thank you. 01:18 So welcome back to the Founder's Sandbox. I am Brenda McCabe, host of this monthly podcast now in its third season. This monthly podcast that reaches entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs and business owners who learn about building resilience, scalable and sustainable businesses with great corporate governance. I want to assist entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs in building those scalable, well-governed and resilient businesses. And by way of 01:47 inviting guests to the podcast who are themselves founders, business owners, corporate directors, investors, and professional service providers who also share my mission, which is using the power of the private enterprise, be that small meeting at large to create change for a better world. Through storytelling with my guests on topics that are going to include resilience, purpose-driven, and sustainable growth, 02:16 My goal through this podcast is to provide a fun sandbox environment where we can equip one startup founder at a time to build a better world through great corporate governance. I'm absolutely delighted today. My guest is Marsha Dalwood. She's joining the podcast. She checks a lot of boxes, but she's today joining as a passionate advocate for positive change by empowering and educating 02:45 everyone on how to invest. So when I met Marcia back in February through one of our events with Ty So Kow, she had launched or was speaking about launching her book that's coming out on September 10th, Do Good While Doing Well, Invest for Change, Reap Financial Rewards, and Increase Your Happiness. I couldn't help but ask her to be a guest because she also has 03:14 passion or a mission, and that is for positive change. And one of many things she's done is authoring this book, which we'll get into a sneak preview of the contents of this book before its launch on September 10th, 2024. I like to choose a title with my guests that are around purpose or sustainability or resilience. And we chose a title for this episode 03:43 which is purpose, do good while doing well. So thank you today for joining me, Marcia. So happy to have you here in the Founder Sandbox. Oh, I'm so happy to be here. Excellent. So, you know, our paths crossed, I mentioned it earlier at the Thai SoCal chapter, the Indus Entrepreneurs SoCal chapter, where you spoke recently on some of the data coming out 04:13 the Angel Capital Association, as well as your role with the SEC. Before I get into my first question, I did want to give my listeners your entire background, your biography. It's very impressive and very extensive. You live your purpose as a multifaceted professional, your author of the book that I just mentioned, Do Good While Doing Well. 04:43 You are also a host of a podcast, The Angel Next Door. You are chair emeritus of Angel Capital Association, ACA. It's a global professional society for angel investors. And you're on the board of Stella, a nonprofit that supports female entrepreneurs. You're also a venture partner at MindShift Capital, and you currently serve on the SEC. 05:10 Securities and Exchange Commission's Small Business Capital Formation Advisory Committee. So thank you for bringing your expertise here into this podcast today. Well, thank you for having me. So can you share for my listeners some of the highlights you walked us through in February while distinguishing the role of an angel investor, a range of fund groups versus VC? 05:37 I mean, some of the trends you're seeing in the markets. Sure. Well, to put it very basically, an angel investor is somebody who writes checks out of their own checkbook. A venture capitalist will pool funds from other people, so they're using other people's money. And therefore, they're held to certain standards, and they're held to certain financial returns that their investors are expecting. 06:06 So angels, while we also of course would love and expect a financial return, we invest in the things that we really care about and are very passionate about. And we don't necessarily have the same time horizons and the same guidelines that venture capitalists do, which makes us a little bit more plausible for being immutable for being able to do certain things and invest in the way that we want to. So, 06:34 Over the last two years, especially maybe even going on two and a half now, the market has been very challenging for entrepreneurs to fundraise at any stage. The market has been very challenging for exits and liquidity. So angel investing or investing in early stage private companies means that you're investing in a company that is not. 07:01 publicly traded on the stock market, like you would see a stock like Apple or something like that. Got it. In order for the investor to have any type of liquidity, there has to be an event. Either the company is sold, or in rare instances, the company would go onto a public stock market, or an IPO, as we call it. So in those particular instances, when there is liquidity, then that money can in a way 07:30 can oftentimes be put back into the startup scene, the entrepreneurial ecosystem, as we call it. And a lot of times, investors will take any money that they do get as a gain from a previous investment and put it into other startup companies so that that capital can keep flowing. That's kind of the whole idea behind as people are getting returns. So that's really the biggest difference between an angel investor and a venture capitalist. 08:00 But right now it's been challenging for everyone because of this lack of liquidity that we've been seeing in the marketplace for the last two and a half years. Now we do think that there's been some talk that that market is gonna start to open up a little bit more. We will see more M&A activity. And if that's the case, then hopefully we will start to see more liquidity and then there will be more capital for investing. And 08:26 as an asset class, right? Angel investing. And with your role as chair emeritus and while you were also chair of ACA, what spurred you to write about angel investing, right? Is this the culmination of your years of experience? Walk my listeners through what made you take the time to actually write a book, do good while doing well. 08:52 Yeah, I think it was out of frustration more than anything. I would talk to people, even neighbors, friends, people I would meet at an event. And I would say, yeah, I'm an angel investor. I help early stage companies. And they were like, wow, that seems really interesting. And I would say, well, you could be an angel investor too. And they would be like, me? I could be an angel investor? I thought that was only for the rich and well-connected. 09:22 that isn't something I could do. I don't know anything about that. I don't have a degree in finance. I don't really think that's for me. So it wasn't that they didn't want to do it. They really just didn't believe that it was something that they were able to do in a way, either from a wealth or income standpoint or from a knowledge standpoint. So I thought, wait a minute, I think there's an awareness problem here because we have all these amazing entrepreneurs. They're building incredible innovations that the world needs. 09:52 But they're really struggling. I mean, struggling with fundraising. And it's one of the hardest things that they end up doing. And it's like a full-time job on top of the full-time job of them trying to build this company. So wait a minute, how can we fix this problem? Well, we could fix the problem if more people got involved and became investors, but that seems daunting. 10:17 So I thought, well, how can I help people realize that that doesn't really have to be quite so daunting? And you can kind of nowadays because of a lot of the regulatory changes that have happened in the last eight to 10 years, you can maybe step your way into it and really start to learn with basically putting less money at risk and you're gaining knowledge at the same time. You can also be a mentor to startup companies. That's become very popular and needed in the last several years. 10:46 All of these things that people don't really know about, that was what I was trying to do, demystify it. Right. And if you had to provide a sneak preview on the gut of your book, what would that be? Set takeaway. And who should be your target audience? Is it just the, is it actually entrepreneurs or is it those people that are just kind of wanting to become more informed around the asset class? Yeah, great question. 11:16 So I wrote the book for people who want to make a difference, but they just don't know how one person alone can do that. Okay. I think you feel that charity is a great way to give back, which of course it is, but they have no idea that this asset class also exists in a way that you can give back and potentially get a financial return at the same time. So that's really who I wrote the book for. As far as a sneak peek as to what's in the book, it is a Y2 book. 11:45 about angel investing. So I saw that there were several books out there and some of them are really amazing on how to angel invest. And most, if not all of them, have the words angel investing in the title. I thought to myself, wait a minute, if somebody really wants to learn about this, but they don't even know that it exists or that it's accessible to them, why would they ever pick up a book on how to be an angel investor? Because this has never even crossed their radar. So how can I attract them? 12:14 to think about things in a different way, to think about how they might use some of their capital in a different way. And when I say capital, I don't just mean money. It can be their human capital, their time. They could be helping an entrepreneur through mentorship. How can they start to look at the resources that they have in order to help grow innovative companies? How can they think about that differently so that they will want to then go and help either people in their local community and in their local area? 12:44 or maybe even startups nationwide or globally. I did watch your TEDx talk and I really do like how you have positioned the asset class or why is angel investing important if you want to make a difference versus charitable giving. And in your TEDx talk that will be in the show notes, you illustrated that extremely well. 13:13 That's very unique. Yes, thank you. And I really want people to donate to charity, help charities, that's fantastic. But we've put such a burden on them and they don't have the resources. They don't have the ability to actually take some of these innovations forward. We need those for-profit companies too. And when you look at the amount of charitable giving that happens in the U.S. annually, it's about 475. 13:41 billion, which is a lot of money. And that's wonderful. But that is equivalent to only about 1% of the value of the US stock market. So when we put things into perspective, it's really not doing any of these nonprofits of good service to say that we're going to put the burden all on you. And what is the size currently of the asset class as angel investing per ACA? Well, pretty much, if you look at the SEC data, 14:10 The most recent data has around $30 billion is where the angel asset class kind of lands. And then from there, we can look at that as far as there's angel groups, there's angel funds, and then there are individual angels. I tend to be a pretty big proponent and fan of angel funds. It allows somebody to put in a certain amount of money and nowadays it does not have to be 14:39 a quarter of a million dollars or any crazy big amount, they could put in a couple thousand dollars and get access to a diversified portfolio, which would allow them to spread their risk and not necessarily put all their eggs in one basket, as you would say. Right, right. Let's kind of switch gears here. While not entirely leaving your experience behind from ACA, you're currently, so you, 15:09 are you've had many women leadership roles, right? Now, whether you got there as a woman, I don't believe so, but what you've had many women leadership roles, most recent, well, maybe the most, I think, relevant for this podcast is you are currently an advisor to the SEC's... 15:34 Small Business Capital Formation Advisory Committee. Now getting there, and it really ties in well with corporate governance and how to do things, well informed with data so as to provide our regulatory structures or financial or legal with guidance and you're representing the small business world. Are you the only woman on the advisory committee? Talk to me through some of the women leadership roles you have had and 16:04 how you've obtained them and how you are opening opportunities for other women leaders. Yeah. So I have been on the investment committee of several funds. Okay. We were specifically focused on helping to get capital to female founders. If you look at the data over the last several years, although in angel world, it is improving in the venture capital world. And when you for the bigger dollars that companies really need to scale. 16:34 The statistics show it's been, you know, two to 3% of the funding goes to women and the rest goes to male led companies. So I've really been trying to help change that. And one of the ways to change that is to get the check writers or the people making the decisions about where the money goes to be more diverse. So to me, it was important to serve on some of these different investment committees for various funds, help with angel groups. 17:03 member of Golden Seeds, which invests only in women-led companies. I'm also a venture partner for MindShift Capital, where we invest in women-led companies globally. So those were things that were important to me. At the Angel Capital Association, I also started with a couple of my peers. We started a group called Growing Women's Capital. It's a peer group within the Angel Capital Association, where we help bring focus and attention to the female founders who are fundraising at the time. 17:33 And so those were all things that were important to me. As far as getting to be able to participate on the SEC's advisory committee, that's been great. And it is an extremely diverse committee, which I absolutely love. There's really representation there from men, women, racial disabilities, I mean, everything so that every group, I feel has a voice at the table because we're trying to represent 18:03 small businesses across the country. And that doesn't necessarily always mean startups, startups are scale businesses that people would want to invest in. But we also have people on the committee who are representing your Main Street businesses as well, coffee shops, things like that. Excellent. And the, can you talk a little bit about Stella? It's also. 18:30 a nonprofit group in which you've been involved, I think, since its inception. I have definitely been a champion and a supporter for Stella since its inception. I've only been on the board for a very short period of time. But the organization is really wonderful. They have done a lot as far as entrepreneurial education for women. They have an archive on their website of different. 18:58 different educational materials. They have an accelerator. They're always promoting ways that more female founders can get in front of investors. So they're doing some really good work over there. Can you get into a bit what is your role on the Small Business Capital Formation Advisory Committee? How often do you guys meet? What is the agenda? And what is the term? Because this is just one of many. 19:28 advisory committees under the auspices of the SEC? I'm just fascinated on what is the actual governance around that. Sure. So it's a four-year term, and I'm one year in as of now. We meet quarterly, usually in person at the offices in Washington, DC. Sometimes we meet virtually. It just kind of depends on the situation, but usually we meet in person. Meetings are all recorded. 19:56 and broadcast live over the SEC's website. So anyone who wanted to go back and watch any of the meetings, or if you wanted to watch any of the future meetings live, that is absolutely doable. They're always listed on sec.gov, the website. So the role is really for us to be able to help the commission get a better sense of what's happening, kind of boots on the ground. 20:26 So each of us has a little bit of a different angle for how we represent small businesses. I of course come with the angel investing lens. There's another person on the committee who has a debt crowdfunding platform that he founded. And that's a very interesting perspective since that's something that's kind of newer to the state of how entrepreneurs can fundraise. So we're all. 20:54 trying to have basically a conversation about some of the challenges that entrepreneurs face when it comes to fundraising. And one of the things that we tackled quite heavily, at least for the first few meetings that I was involved in was the accredited investor definition. Got it. As it stands right now, to be an accredited investor means you have to have a certain level of wealth or income, $200,000 by yourself, 300,000 with a partner. 21:23 or a million dollars in net worth minus your home. And there was talk or has been talk that that could be indexed or changed or raised. And we did some rough calculations at the Angel Capital Association. There were also calculations done, then I don't remember the exact numbers, but you could go even go back and watch our meeting on sec.gov and you'd be able to see that, but it would eliminate. 21:47 a lot of the people who were already angel investors. And we only have about 300,000 angel investors in the country. And remember, there's about 330 million of us here that live in the US. So, there's a lot of opportunity, let's just say that. And if we started to eliminate the ability for people to participate based on an income or wealth level, that would be challenging. And it...
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Purpose: Designing for a Next act
08/22/2024
Purpose: Designing for a Next act
On this episode of The Founder's Sandbox, our host Brenda McCabe speaks with Khalid Machchate; accomplished 3 x exit startup founder, operator of a startup studio, board of director positions and now in his “NEXT ACT,“ Khalid is a member of Morocco’s Royal Advisory Committee by nomination from His Majesty King Mohammed 6th, for the development of the Kingdom. According to Brenda, "Khalid checks many boxes as a guest to the Founders Sandbox. The topic we settled upon is Purpose, when we met for the first time his remark to me about after he found the podcast and later on the website of Next Act Advisors, my consulting business, “It strikes me that not many people are thinking about their Next Act in life.“ They walk through Khalid’s origin story: growing up in a fishing village in Morrocco in a humble family; developing and selling his first software at the age of 11 years, and most recently; Khalid joined as the youngest member of Morocco’s Royal Advisory Committee for the Special Commission on the Development Model by nomination from His Majesty King Mohammed 6th, leading strategically the national development agenda through inclusive and sustainable public policies, technology and innovation. In conversations they share on how they intentionally and proactively work to provide a roadmap through digital transformation and human capital skill-up with clients. You can find out more about Khalid at: Linked IN And view more of his content here : Read an article by brenda on this topic at: You can read the article in full by subscribing to Next Act Advisors at and be sure to use the special discount code "sandbox25" for friends of The Founder's Sandbox for 25% off your subscription. transcript: 00:04 Hi, I'm pleased to announce something very special to me, a new subscription-based service through Next Act Advisors that allows members exclusive access to personal industry insights and bespoke corporate governance knowledge. 00:33 This comes in the form of blogs, personal book recommendations, and early access to the Founder's Sandbox podcast episodes before they released to the public. If you want more white glove information on building your startup with information like what was in today's episode, sign up with the link in the show notes to enjoy being a special member of Next Act Advisors. As a thank you to Founder's Sandbox listeners. 01:03 you can use code sandbox25 at checkout to enjoy 25% off your membership costs. Thank you. 01:17 Welcome back to the Founder's Sandbox. The Founder's Sandbox podcast is now in its second season. I am Brenda McCabe, the host. This monthly podcast reaches entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs and business owners who learn about building resilient, purpose-driven and sustainable businesses with great corporate governance. My mission is really simple. 01:44 I bring guests to the podcast who themselves are founders, business owners, corporate directors, investors, and professional service providers, who like me want to use the power of the private enterprise, be it small, medium or large, to create change for a better world. Through storytelling with each of my guests, including topics around resilience, purpose-driven organizations, and sustainable growth, 02:11 My goal is to provide a fun sandbox environment where we can equip one startup founder at a time to build a better world through great corporate governance. Today, I'm absolutely delighted to have as my guest, Khalid Machateh. He's joining the podcast today as an accomplished three-time exit startup founder, operator of a startup studio, board of director positions, and now in his next act. 02:41 He is a member of Morocco's Royal Advisory Committee by nomination from His Majesty King Mohammed VI for the development of the kingdom. So thank you Khalid for joining me in the Founder's Sandbox today. Thank you for having me, Brenda. Great. Well, you check mini boxes as a guest to the Founder's Sandbox. And I talked about business owners, corporate board directors, professional service. But this topic we settled. 03:09 upon his purpose. You know, we met for the first time and you'd actually spent some time on some podcasts as well as Next Act Advisors consulting website. And you remarked to me, you know, I don't think there are a lot of people that are thinking about their next act, right? And so we're gonna talk about throughout the podcast today purpose, Kelly's purpose and designing for his next act. 03:38 Maybe for my listeners, we'll get a glimpse of some ideas of how one's journey, professional and personal, really informs what your next act might be. So through Khalid's origin story, he grew up in a small fishing village in Morocco in a humble family. He developed and sold his first software at the age of 11. 04:05 And most recently, after many, many years, he joined as the youngest member of Morocco's Royal Advisory Committee for the Special Commission on the Development Model by nomination from His Majesty King Mohammed VI, leading strategically the national development agenda through inclusive and sustainable public policies, technology, and innovation. We're going to hear a little bit more about a state visit that Khalid just had. 04:34 in the United States of America. No, in our conversations Khalid, we shared how we both in our businesses, we intentionally and proactively work to provide a roadmap through digital transformation and human capital skill up with our clients. There is more to discover with you today. You know, my journey of moving back to the United States after over 25 years in Europe really 05:03 became my why, became purpose-driven, scalable, and very resilient. And I took that into my business. What would be your tagline, Khalid, if you were to describe your journey? 05:19 My tagline would be probably the out of the box since we're talking about, you know, so we're in the Fambur sandbox. So it would probably be the most out of the box Moroccan. 05:49 has been, basically that is what I hear from everybody, from my family to people that I studied with back when I was in school, to people that know me now. It's the, you don't fit into any box that our kind of corporate world or business world has. And so, yeah, that would be my tagline. I love it. 06:18 out of the box. And again, on your journey, it was fascinating just to research not only your LinkedIn page, the many accolades that you've received over the years. But more importantly, you have your own website, Khalid Machate. And there I we hadn't touched upon it, but you are an active public speaker. And you have speak around different themes, technology, 06:46 business and entrepreneurship, policy and governance, and you also share your own story on the stage. So I'm gonna cut to the chase. I am most interested for my listeners at the Founder's Sandbox on your story. Of course. So my story can resonate with anybody that grew up in a very small town. So I grew up in a... 07:16 in a small fishing village in the south of Morocco. The reason why that is is that my father was a public school teacher. And within our schooling system, once you get a job as a public school teacher for the government, you get assigned to where you're gonna start your career. And so you don't get a say into where you're going. 07:42 And so while we were living in McNaas, which is the city I was born in, after a year of me being born, my father had his assignment and we got assigned about 2000 kilometers south. So in the village, everything is late. The event of internet is late. 08:11 News are late, opportunities are scarce, you don't get access to much. There are no associations for education or for children's activities. And so basically we always had to make up things ourselves. How to get entertained, how to find access to music, et cetera. 08:39 And so one thing that I kind of stumbled upon, because my father was interested in, was programming. So software programming. So my dad, again, public school teacher salary for to give you an idea is around $250 a month for, you know, when you're starting out your career. 09:07 And so he was trying to round up his end of months. And so he self-learned how to fix computers. And a few years into fixing computers, he started thinking, how can I add more to that service? And then started to learn how to program as he kind of fixed himself a makeshift computer at home from the pieces that he would get from each of the fixing jobs. 09:33 And so, and all of this, I mean, he had his job, he had his salary. So the self-starting and the initiative taking kind of came from there for me. It was definitely, you know, a C to learn in my case. My dad never told me to do anything, never taught me to code. 10:00 He was very clear on, you know, I do what I want with my time and I go and I enjoy myself how I want it. But the books would be left around the house, the coding books, and I got just curious and I started taking those books and using the software on my dad's computer and learning how to code. 10:26 And that was how I got to creating my first kind of accomplished software. Started around the age of nine and finished it at around 11, where I started sharing it with school buddies and then my teacher. And at first it was just a, you know, here you can burn the CD. 10:53 if you want to learn, it was a biology course, but made in an interactive gamified way. Because I got bored at biology classes. And so what happened was, I started giving it around, and a teacher of mine actually, not my father, told me, why aren't you like making any money out of this? And I was like, well, I just thought I could help out. 11:20 And I was like, yes, but that is a lot of value. You spend a lot of time working on that. And so, yeah. And so that's how I started selling the software. And then I ended up selling it to school to distribute to their students. And that's how my first- At 11 years of age. Our story. Yeah. Amazing. Yeah. Yeah. And also, you know, you're a- 11:49 a product of the public school system, humble origins, and in your public speaking, you are probably very influential in Moroccan youth today and other Middle Eastern environments, I would imagine. So- I hope though. That's your goal. So thank you. You then went on to- 12:20 create two other businesses, can you speak to them? And were they for profit or nonprofit? So to continue on the story, then around the end of middle school, that's where my dad was able to get reassigned to my my birth city, which was McNeist. And so I started high school there. Now, 12:46 going from where I was, again, where internet had only been introduced at that point, maybe a couple of years, three, four years before that. And so I started finding out that, oh, in the big city, there are a lot more opportunities. So there are associations for students that you can find internships and, you know, different opportunities to 13:14 learn more or to do kind of side jobs or to find also just potential clients because I was always still coding and still making little websites, little management software, etc. And so it just kind of made me aware that the world was a lot bigger than where I started. And at the same time 13:43 hanging out with my family and a cousin of mine introduced me to the culture of manga, which is the Japanese cartoons. Yeah, I was I think 14 at the time. And yeah, I loved it. And I started watching quite a lot of it while being fascinated by the culture. And so 14:10 At some point I started feeling that I was getting fluid and understanding what was happening on screen without having to read the subtitles. And I was like, oh, that would be interesting. You know, I already understand. Maybe let's try to learn also the grammatical aspects of the language so that I can, you know, say that I speak another language, which is Japanese. 14:35 And so yeah, I looked online, I found quite a few websites and quite a few forums where you could learn how to write, you could learn the grammar, etc. of Japanese language. And by the time I was in the end of high school, so the year of graduation from high school, I was fairly fluent and I could write well. 15:01 And so what I did was I got myself into an NGO, a nonprofit that was catering towards university students to have access to internships. And those, you know, you have local internships, but also international internships. This was an international NGO. And so I went to the NGO. I... 15:30 And please, guys, do not hold me up to this. I was 16 at the time. I lied my way through to tell them that I was a student at university while I was still in high school, just because I thought that it wasn't fair that I had the knowledge and I had the possibility of accessing this experience. But just because of my age, I wasn't able to. 15:58 to access it. And so that's what I did. I learned about a particular university and I started saying that I was from that university. Happily enough, they did not check any, you know, credentials and then didn't ask for my ID. I didn't have an ID at the time. Again, I was 16. 16:18 And so, yeah, I had my first interview in the space of like a few weeks after I was enrolled into the internship support program. I met with the CEO of the small company in shipping in Japan that were looking to hire an intern for to help them with their IT management system. 16:43 And five minutes from the beginning of the interview, the guy was trying to speak in English, and it was very hard for him. And so I said, you know what, we can switch to Japanese. Two hours later, the obviously I was hired. But not only that, the guy was saying, you know what, I cannot just hold you for myself. So I'm going to share your resume with all of my CEO friends. So basically, I became the 17:11 this monkey savant that's coming from the Orient, you know, speaking the language and having looking nothing like what they're used to. He shared my resume with I believe 20 of his friends and I ended up having I think five projects at the same time in the space of six months to do for all these folks. 17:39 in Japan. So that was my first international contract. But that's also that was the trigger for me to start hiring other people because well, I was overwhelmed by the amount of things that I had to do. And so I just tried to look for my friends that were you know, coders and hackers of time and people that could that could help me out and started paying them, you know, from from out of pocket. 18:07 And then thought, oh, you know what? This is not very comfortable. Maybe I can, you know, I need a structure to be able to do more, better invoicing or get paid better. And so that's how I created my first company, which ended up becoming my family office now, which is KNW technology group. And so just for reference, KNW technology group, now it's a, now it's a group. It's. 18:36 in five countries. I mean, we have offices in five countries, we have clients in almost 80 countries, we're present in Africa, Europe, Middle East, and APAC, Asia, and the US and covering the Americas. And so, you know, we have quite a large footprint. 19:00 But it started this way. It started by me. At the age of 16, although you fibbed your way through it, right? And learning a language. Amazing. Wow. So you've clearly owned businesses, scaled them not only nationally, but internationally, and at a very, very tender age. Fast forward. OK, we won't talk about your age here. 19:30 People can read them in the show notes. There's some articles for you to feature. So you can do the math and discover Khalid's age. You then struck out pretty recently and decided to obtain credentials as ESG leader with a certification that you pursued both with HSBC and KPMG. Can you? 19:59 What made you pivot to really going deep into ESG, which today it's like, at least in the United States, very front and center. You were a pioneer. So what made you pursue those credentials, Khalid? Thank you. 20:25 In my case, and this was part of the initial conversation, which was preparing my next act. So around, I believe 2018, 2019, particularly 2019, I started feeling that I was kind of ready to move on from managing the group. And so throughout... 20:51 kind of the 15 or something years that I was at the head of the group and developing it, you know, developing various startups under the startup studio within the group. And all of that was exciting and, you know, we were starting projects, but still the underlying structure that is that you're running a large company that answers to clients that, you know, does kind of major projects. 21:20 They all kind of start looking the same after a while. We've worked with over 20 industries. So we've done the rounds. And so now it became more repetitive and there's nothing new under the sun. They started feeling that disconnect. And I really wanted to, basically I had a succession plan in place and I was always thinking that 21:50 I needed to move on from this. This is now is a management play and I'm a creative person, not the best manager or I'm not just not as excited about managing an existing structure as I was starting things and building new things and tinkering with things. 22:16 And so even throughout the 15 years, I've had the great luck of having great COO. And so every now and then I would run away from my duties as a group manager. And I would go do something else. So I was the innovation director for the Abu Dhabi government for a while. I was the, you know, an expert with the G20 in Argentina. I was. 22:45 part of the World Economic Forum panel of experts in Davos. I did quite a few things here and there that mainly had to do with policy at the highest level, strategy and innovation and technology. And so that's kind of what put me on the track of thinking at the time. 23:13 in the early 2010s is the governance and the sustainability aspect is not as commonly talked about compared to profits and margins, top lines. 23:37 And that kind of made me think, oh, so people, when they think about, you know, companies and managing them, they're not thinking as much about the environments within which the companies are evolving, as much as they think about, you know, the ins and the outs of the company itself. So there. And that made me, you know, realize that, oh, I 24:06 do want to create impact here and how can I create impact here is by trying to integrate technology in a way that improves the relationship of a company to their environment and their impact on their environment. And so 24:27 in my next act planning was, okay, I'll transition out of managing the group and I will seek to understand better how to incorporate ESG principles into the board governance. And so the program, which was a full year program, 24:56 was a big kind of micro masters that was very heavily focused on use cases of actual businesses and that's kind of the specialty of KPMG and more on the financial integration from HSBC to 25:25 understands and become a well-qualified board director for publicly traded companies, foundations, family offices, but with a large emphasis on the ESG and on kind of changing the mindsets in boards. So our role as graduates of this program is not to be a regular board seat, 25:54 but to be the kind of change and impact board seat and to kind of negotiate our way into changing the strategy of the company or the foundation or the family office that we are in the board of towards more impactful environment. Excellent. So it started in the 2010s, you said, right? When you kind of cut out 26:23 left the business in charge of your COO, had the opportunity to influence policy, but technology related in the MENA region, and then got formal credentialing 2018, 2019. Still you were head of the wave, right? So you do think out of the box, right? So today you do sit on a few corporate boards. 26:51 for profit and not for...
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Data, Data, Everywhere: A NAA Blog Reading
08/08/2024
Data, Data, Everywhere: A NAA Blog Reading
's personal experience has contributed to the work at Next Act Advisors. The Growth Strategies of NAA clients are always informed by current regulations and the understanding of why things have evolved to where they are because of the regulations and how they might change in the future. Enjoy this special Founder's Sandbox Podcast episode of Brenda reading one of her published blogs, "Data, Data, Everywhere" ; Now that all our data – private and enterprise, is out there, how can enterprises uphold trust? You can read along to this blog with your NAA subscription at : https://nextactadvisors.com/data-data-everywhere/
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Purpose: Freedom to Support Lifestyles
07/25/2024
Purpose: Freedom to Support Lifestyles
On this Episode of The Founder's Sandbox, Brenda speaks with Matt Clark-Chief Rainmaker of The Virtual Edge and, in his own words, "Chief Igniter" for business owners. They discuss Purpose in the context of Freedom as Matt shares his background as a rainmaker first as a waiter, where he discovered his gift in connecting people. Soon he evolved to selling door to door telecoms services, and co founder of a business that reached $6mn in two (2) years only to find himself with “golden handcuffs;” he had a wage and began selling his shares in the company after the thrill of building a company was no longer. From virtualedge his goal is to empower business owners to achieve growth without sacrificing their freedom. To learn more about how Matt’s journey into helping businesses wasn't just a career choice; it was a calling to fill gaps he saw in the market and to change lives. Matt discovered his purpose and while traveling the world, he has served 1,800 clients in 26 countries representing over $100mn in sales. You can find out more about Matt at: Transcription: 00:04 Welcome back to the Founders Sandbox. I am Brenda McCabe, your host. This Founders Sandbox podcast, it's now into its second season. 00:27 The monthly podcast reaches entrepreneurs and business owners who learn about building resilient, scalable and sustainable business with great corporate governance underlying it. My mission is very simple. I want to assist entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs in building those scalable, well-governed and resilient businesses. The guests to the podcast are business owners themselves, corporate directors, investment funds, professional service providers who like me 00:57 want to use the power of the private enterprise, be that small, medium or large, to create change for a better world. Through storytelling with my guests on topics that will include resilience, purpose-driven enterprises and sustainable growth, my goal is to provide a fun sandbox environment where we can equip one startup founder at a time to build. 01:26 a better world through great corporate governance. Today, I'm absolutely delighted to have as my guest, Matt Clark, who's joining us all the way from across the world in Thailand. He's joining in his capacity as chief rainmaker of the virtual edge. And in his own words, his role is one of chief igniter for business owners to enable them to be happy and richer. That's right. 01:55 Thank you, Matt, for joining us today. Thanks for having me on. After our initial introductory call the other day, it got me really excited to join in today and just have a conversation, ask some deep questions, and say what's on the mind. You speak about what's on the mind of many people today. Absolutely. And my listeners are business owners themselves, but also 02:21 corporate governance, corporate board directors, and professional service providers who really are affecting change through the companies they advise. And I'm really excited that you reached out as the CEO of the Virtual Edge, because I think what you're doing to provide freedom to business owners to live a very fulfilled lifestyle is quite unique. And I'm eager to get into the questions. 02:51 We chose my listeners, again, the podcast is available on most podcasts streaming platforms. And I always like to work with my guests on a catchy title that really goes back to either purpose, resilience, or sustainability. And Matt and I chose purpose, freedom to support lifestyles. So catchy title, but you'll hear more as we progress in the interview today. 03:21 Matt and I do have some commonalities in the type of services we provide. We both work with B2B companies and we are absolute connectors. How his ability to connect people is key to being a rainmaker and his choosing to create freedom for business owners to live a fulfilled life is what this podcast is going to be about today. Woohoo. 03:50 Woohoo. So you have a serial background as a rainmaker. You first started out, I believe in South Africa as a waiter. You discovered early on your gift in connecting people. You then were selling door to door sales and then co-founded with two partners, a business that in only two years you got to $6 million in revenue. And at that stage you 04:18 told me in your own words, you know, I felt like I had golden handcuffs and I really didn't feel fulfilled anymore. And so you set out to travel the world and nine years later, Virtual Edge is still going and you discovered your purpose while traveling in the world. And at this stage, nine years in, you've served 1,800 clients in over 26 countries. 04:47 representing over about a hundred million dollars in sales. So absolutely delighted for you to really walk us through your journey, what it is in terms of secret sauce at the virtual edge and as Chief Igniter, you bring to your clients. Can you share your origin story, Matt? Thank you. Yeah, a hundred percent. And you kind of touched on some of their, I was never one of those people who knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. 05:17 You know, when you meet those people and they're just like, it's gonna be a doctor. I wanted to be a doctor, became a doctor. And in some ways I envy them, where it's like they know what they wanna do and they can just go and do it. And in some ways I don't because there's just one path. And so I didn't know what I wanted to do when I left school. And my dad was like, you're gonna be the first Clark to go and get a degree. I was like, well, I think you barking up the wrong tree there. 05:47 I hated school. Yeah. And, you know, I actually went and my first job was as a waiter and I figured out that I really loved talking to people and I was good at it. And so, you know, I went over to the UK, started doing door to door sales there. And it's a really tough industry. All right. I've actually had one other guest, um, to the podcast who also did door to door sales while she was. 06:15 pursuing her undergraduate degree. It is truly a test of true resilience. I love when I get to talk to other business owners who are doing really well and they say, yeah, I also started in door-to-door sales. And then we go down and have a bit of a laugh about some of the stories that we've got along the way and doors that have been slammed and things that have been said to you. And it definitely does build resilience. And I think 06:44 For me personally, it was the foundation for everything that I've done in my life going forward. I mean, there's not much anyone can say to me that I'm gonna take offense to or get upset by and into days, day and age where people are getting offended by everything. You know, it's, people are more sensitive, let me put it that way. Where people are more sensitive, you know, when you come from a stage where 07:14 You've just been drilled every single day. There's not much that can bother you. And if it bothers you, it actually kind of clears the way for you to go out and do what you want, um, because you're doing it on your terms. And so, you know, when I came back from the UK, uh, I started a, I started working for a company in South Africa, doing door to door sales, we were selling telephone systems on a five year lease agreement to businesses. Okay. And that's where you started with B2B, right? 07:43 It was kind of less harsh, maybe. Yeah, I wouldn't go that far. I heard that. We'll talk about B2B, right? Yeah, let's say they're different. I don't know if they're less harsh and you know, you've got more, more obstacles to go through because you got to get through the gatekeeper or the receptionist or whoever that person is. So it's a different relationship. Right. And so. 08:12 You know, what we learned and what I really uncovered there that made sense to me was that there is a process for everything. And it's a system, right? We were doing things manually, but it was still a process, still a system. And I landed up, you know, starting a business where, I mean, in that business alone, we were selling 200, 400 systems a month. We had offices all over the country. It grew like wildfire. Nice. 08:39 And then two buddies and I started a business and within four years, we'd taken that business up to $6 million a year, just doing door to door sales. And that thing of systems kept coming back to me because we could literally take somebody that had never sold before in their life. You could find them, we could hire them, we could train them. And within two weeks, they're up and running selling, making money. 09:08 That is truly remarkable. A repeatable system. Right. We had a system for how do we find them? We had a system for how do we qualify them? How do we hire them? How do we train them? How do we keep them going? How do we fix them when they're broken? We even had a time when, um, one of our competitors poached all of our sales people, we were left waiting from. 09:35 We went from 18 salespeople down to four overnight. And it was myself, my two business partners and two sales guys in Johannesburg, two sales guys in Cape Town. And what we did was we still went out and we went and sold and you know, we, as owners stepped up and we went crazy. I would say is a good word. In fact, we had one of the best months we've ever had. 10:05 Wow. While that was happening, we were able to replace our entire sales team. So we actually decided to have a smaller sales team with better quality people. Okay. But within a month, we'd replace the entire sales team and back at the same revenue that we were at. Okay. That's truly remarkable and a sign of resilience, right? And you know, having skin in the game as a business owner. 10:28 Exactly. You've got to because you know, what are the options? It's like, do I let this whole thing fall over and then everything that we've built goes to waste? Or do we get stuck in and go and fix it? And so the good thing is, is that we built the systems to be able to do it and to do it quickly. Right. And so I've taken that thinking into what we do now. Okay, because 10:53 For me, you know, my wife and I have been traveling the world for the past two and a half years. Our business has been growing on average, we work with about 50 clients at any given time. And in order to do that, you need to have systems in place. 11:09 So let's go into exploring specifically the use of social media platforms to reach B2B. All right. It's kind of at the core of what you do. And you're going to explain more. But Gina, you and I work in the B2B space. And I was really shocked. You have clients that are from the energy, telecoms, high-tech companies. 11:38 You use LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, perhaps others. I would not have thought that the buyers of these products and services would be on these platforms, maybe LinkedIn. I mean, what's the use of, so the secret sauce, using social media platforms and what is the typical buyer decision profile? That's kind of a loaded question. It may be a great question. 12:08 You've already served 1,800 clients. I want to learn some more. Thank you. Yeah, a hundred percent. Uh, it's actually a really good question and not something that I've been asked before, so I love that. We use LinkedIn as the primary channel for generating leads on the B2B platform. And the reason that we do that is because I don't see LinkedIn as a social network, a social media network. LinkedIn is a networking platform. Right. 12:37 And for me, the reason that we got onto LinkedIn was when I sold my shares in the previous business, I wanted to create something online. I wanted to break free from those golden handcuffs. Okay. And I couldn't figure out Facebook, uh, the kind of clients I was looking for. I couldn't find them. I couldn't figure out Google. I couldn't figure out YouTube. I couldn't figure out these things to actually make it work for me. All right. One of my friends said to me is like, you've got to go check out LinkedIn because it's like, I'm doing amazing on it. 13:06 And I did, and you know what I realized? Is that it's like virtually knocking doors. Except I can skip the red tape, I can skip the gatekeeper, I can go and speak directly to the exact person. I can find them, I can connect with them, and I can start a conversation with the exact person that I'm looking for. Wow. And that blew my mind. Okay. So we started doing it. 13:35 started signing up some clients. Then I went to some of the people that I was working with, some of the clients I was working with, I was like, hey guys, you've got to check this out. This is what we're doing. Would it be valuable to you if you could book an extra five to 10 calls a week with the exact person that you're looking for? And they're like, hell yes, of course, it's a no brainer. So we started helping some clients and they loved it. And then we started running events, teaching people how to do it at scale. Okay. 14:02 we, you know, live events, we'd have like 300 people in a room, teaching them how to do it at scale. And it just kind of grew from there. And now we've kind of gone full circle back to the more personalized, um, working with more specific clients, uh, helping them going deeper and helping them get bigger results. So the buyer decision profile that you then, um, use your system and 14:31 is developed jointly with your client, right? Correct. And we've got a strategic advisory part there. That's interesting. Okay, I get it. Yeah, so we do that. Each client is individual, right? I mean, we work with a lot of our clients are B2B service providers. And who they're looking for is they're looking to sell to other businesses. So typically it's a small to medium organizations or some of them are looking for corporates as well. Okay. 15:01 Um, we've worked with energy companies, we've worked with accountants. Um, we've worked with a company that does, that's an auction house, right? They buy and sell heavy earth moving equipment, you know, where a minimum sale is $200,000. I mean, they did $25 million in six months with six salespeople that they send me publishing houses, right? So it's high ticket services. And it's 15:26 for people that are looking for a very specific kind of client, they know who their buyer is, they know who the decision maker is, they're trying to get in front of them and they're trying to walk them down the journey. Now how we look at it and how we look at our process and what we take our clients through is that we've got about 11 different ways in which you can reach out to them, connect with them, get them on calls, walk them down the journey. Right. And we've created like pre-built processes and campaigns systems. 15:55 that can be plugged in. And when we work with the client, we will identify who is that ideal client that they're looking for. What are the trigger points that are gonna get them moving down, that are gonna get them to connect, to open up a conversation and then move down the buying cycle. And then what's the conversion event that needs to happen? Do we need to be getting them to a call? Do we need to be getting them to an event? Do we send them to a sales letter? What's that conversion event based on? 16:23 their process. Do you want to get them to one of your salespeople, whatever it is? Okay. And we help them structure that. All right. Now, the journey between getting from connection to paying client is where the magic happens. And how we look at it is that if we look at like golf, right? Everyone knows what golf is and how golf works. You stand at one side, goal is hit the ball into the hole. Right. 16:53 oversimplification. If there's any golfers listening to me, I have, I do play and have played golf. So I know I'm oversimplifying. You won't share handicaps on this. My handicap is that I haven't played in a hell of a long time. So I don't even know. Cause you're running a business. I'm traveling the world, right? I tell you one thing that doesn't fit in a 20 kilogram suitcase is golf clubs. So how we look at it is, is if we look at golf, right? So, 17:23 If you are the, you're the person who's swinging the golf club, the ball is the prospect, right? The person that you're trying to convert and the whole is the goal to get them to become a client. Now, what most people are trying to do in their sales process is they're trying to hit a hole in one every single time. They're trying to go from hello to buy my stuff. Right. And if you look at in golf, not even the professionals do it every single time. 17:52 Yes, they get that it does happen from time to time, but it's not, especially if it's like a par four or a par five, you have to have a couple of hits because you just don't have the power or the strength to get there. So we look at it a little bit different. And instead of trying to hit a hole in one of every single ball, we can have multiple balls on the field, right? On the fairway. And we now have somebody that doesn't have to be a professional that can just tap the 18:22 towards the whole. So when they get in, it's an easy tap to get in the hole and become a client. So the approach, right? Exactly. So the best part is because how we've built that is you can have a team member run it that doesn't have to be a marketing expert or a sales expert. It's about building the right assets, the right communication structure and the right journey to walk the client down that it becomes an easy tap in the hole. Excellent. 18:53 instead of trying to hit hole in ones all the time and just being frustrated and disappointed. Actually, another guest that has joined me here in the founder sandboxes, Gaurav Kumar, CEO of Beyond Code, and it's a lead generation and appointment scheduling company, headquarters. 19:19 in the United States, but operations in three continents. He wrote and authored a book and it's inspired. I'm looking for it on my shelf right now. I think it's covered up on the golf game and the similarities of what you're sharing here, the approach and the different tactics that are analogous to a good golf game. So I will introduce you, all right? Amazing. Because it's, yeah. 19:49 there on the other side of the world. Thank you for sharing that. I get it now. And the energy telecoms, high-tech companies. Let's switch gears a little bit. Part of my mission with this podcast as well as my consulting next act advisors is I work with founders, particularly on investor readiness. 20:17 to take in external capital, right? And just take in the amount of money that they need in exchange for a percentage of the company, but not too much, right? So that they can scale with the money they bring in to then increase the valuation of the company and do second and third rounds of investment with outside stakeholders that sometimes operationally help you, but ultimately they want to have a return on their investment. 20:46 I do not work when I do my intake business. I do not work for lifestyle businesses. So I had some dissonance, cognitive dissonance when I'm talking to you, Matt, about, you know, providing business owners the freedom to follow their lifestyle. So walk me through how founders 21:13 maybe have different definitions of success without going for external capital and you at the virtual edge are helping them. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, we kind of look at business a little bit different. And I had my mindset completely shifted when I spoke to a buddy of mine. And, you know, he's started 40 companies. He's taken 10 of them to eight figures. 21:43 Um, he consults with some of the biggest well-known companies in the world right now. Um, you know, he's just came back from a weekend with Richard Branson, like that's the kind of level that he's playing at. And he said something to me one day and he was like, you know, so obviously there's someone you want to listen to, right? He kind of knows his stuff. Yeah. Uh, he said to me, he's like, you know, Matt, I think about things very differently. He's like, I...
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Unleashing Creativity for Business Excellence
06/27/2024
Unleashing Creativity for Business Excellence
On this episode of The Founder's Sandbox, Brenda McCabe speaks with Sue Tinnish- an executive coach working with CEO's and Presidents of middle-market companies. They discuss "unleashing creativity for business excellence" , ranging from Sue's experience while in hospitality to make events interactive and engaging, to using playfulness with very complex issues in analogies and stories to lead good alignment of the organization. Sue is a seasoned professional who has worked in a variety of settings. She has a diverse background in business with specific skills in leadership, formulating strategy, managing change, building teams, and delivering on strategic and tactical projects. She is currently an executive coach working with CEOs and Presidents of middle-market companies. She supports executives as they deal with their own leadership issues (delegation, time management, prioritization, decision making & mindset) as well as supporting their organization’s growth addressing issues like talent optimization, sales, finance and risk. Sue earned her PhD from Benedictine University in Lisle, Illinois. She holds an M.B.A. with a concentration in finance and marketing from University of Chicago’s Booth School and a B.S. in communication studies from Northwestern University. And she likes to have fun! You can find out more about Sue Tinnish at: Linked IN or Contact her at: Resources: Transcript 00:04 Welcome back to the Founder's Sandbox. I am Brenda McCabe, your host. This monthly podcast is now in its second season and it reaches entrepreneurs and business owners who learn about building resilient, scalable, and sustainable. 00:32 and sustainable businesses, all with great corporate governance. I wanna assist entrepreneurs and business owners in building these scalable, well-governed and resilient businesses. And I bring guests to the podcast that are themselves, founders, business owners, corporate board directors, investors and professional service providers, like Sue Tinnish, who's with us today. We all share a common... 01:01 interest in this using the power of the private enterprise, be that small, medium, and large, to create change for a better world. Through storytelling with each of my guests on topics that are gonna include their own experience with resilience, purpose-driven enterprises, and sustainable growth, my goal with the Founder Sandbox is to provide a fun sandbox environment where we can equip one startup founder at a time to build a better world through great corporate governance. 01:30 So today my guest again is Sue Tinnish. Thank you so much for joining me here, Sue. So happy to join you, Brenda, in this context. Excellent. Sue's joined in the podcast today in her capacity as a Vistage leader. For those who are actually seeing the video, I love your back screen, leading a life of a climb with Vistage. 01:57 She also has, as a member of Vistage, shares oftentimes in LinkedIn a newsletter called Making a Difference. I encourage everyone to follow Sue in LinkedIn because the messages that come across in this newsletter do resonate with business owners on making a difference. Today, we chose a topic, again, I'm all about resilience, sustainability, and purpose-driven 02:26 businesses. And when speaking with Sue on and off, we both share University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, Abu School is our background, right? That's we didn't meet there. But we did meet the alumni network is really quite active. And we discovered that we both use innovation and creativity with the work we do with our with our clients and 02:54 As I learned more of Sue's background, which I'll get to in a minute, I was just fascinated on specific tools, techniques, writing that she's used over the last 20 years at least. I'm gonna give you a brief introduction to Sue. She has a diverse background in business with specific skills in leadership, formulating strategy. 03:22 managing change, building teams and delivering a strategic and tactical projects. She is currently executive coach, working with CEOs and presidents of middle market companies. Prior to this activity, she's had experiences in academia, corporate banking, consulting and being an entrepreneur herself. So you check a lot of boxes, Sue. I thank you. I thank you again. 03:51 Also, the other aspect that we want to explore today is kind of you're a co-chair of the Chicago based Vistage Chief Executive Group and it's co-led by a male and a female. And I believe it's one of the unique or only chapters that is co-led and you're bringing in the diversity to the actual classroom itself. So I'd love to learn a little bit more later. All right. 04:19 So Sue and I have been in contact through our affiliation to the Chicago Women's Alliance. And I'm absolutely delighted that Sue's gonna tell us a little bit about some of the tools and techniques she explores as leader of Vistage. So can you share what has been a common denominator through your professional journey that has released or discovered, which you've discovered creativity? 04:49 Such an interesting question. So I guess I would say that as a leader, I've always had a real strong focus on people and teams. And so I really have encompassed playfulness, humor, and really creativity to help foster organizational growth. But it's really through people that that has happened. So that's been a very common denominator. And 05:18 I grew up in an era where what I was taught and learned about management was a little more like straight-laced and forward. And just my own personal growth, I really discovered, you know, through the process of learning and growing, I've discovered that that's not necessarily the way that you have to be. And I also think that, you know, interestingly, being a female, we bring different skill sets to the environment. 05:47 being more authentic has been meant that I've relied both on my own sense of humor, curiosity and playfulness to be effective. And you bring that into those monthly meetings with CEOs, I'm certain. Yes. You know, you, one of the articles that will later be in the show notes, is you brought in or explored kind of the entertainment. 06:16 element as a platform that unleashes creativity when you were working in the hospitality sector. Can you walk us through that specific kind of experience? It was, again, when you helped me prepare this, I was reading with awe. I was like, wow, I hadn't ever, you know, it goes back quite a while to 06:39 Yes. So when I worked in hospitality, I specifically worked in sort of the meetings and events and conference space. Okay. And my focus was really on how to create more innovative learning environments in that space. So it wasn't really focused on the logistics or the hotel arrangements or even the food and beverage. And really, earlier in my career, I spent a lot of time focusing on training and 07:09 And so I really thought a lot about how can you make these events, meetings, really more interactive and engaging in a way that's also going to create more knowledge, that's going to make what's happening in those meetings really stick. And so entertainment was one of those fields that I explored to talk about why entertainment can both be entertaining, but also. 07:38 or valuable in helping messaging stick. So like one example would be, think about like the topic of sexual harassment in Illinois, in many places most organizations. It's a requirement. It's a requirement, exactly. So no one's gonna raise their hand and say, oh yes, in a public environment, I've been sexually harassed or I'm a harasser. But when you use actors or entertainment or some kind of role playing, 08:08 a delicate subject out there in a way that people can maybe see themselves or see themselves in that situation and allow themselves to really go internally, aha, I understand now what has happened because of what I've seen on the stage. So I think entertainment can be used in a more strategic way beyond just being entertaining. 08:33 That is fascinating. And thank you for specifically providing an example. I'm just actually visually imagining a setup whereby a hairy topic is addressed in kind of an entertaining way with actors. Amazing. And I liked what you said about it allows maybe some of the learning that is happening within the meeting to stick. 09:01 because one is more relaxed, laughing, right? I actually had written a blog about two years ago on why playfulness matters in startup to scale up. And I discovered kind of five fundamental elements that I have seen or I've observed, I've introduced to my clients, there's no rules, right? 09:27 to generate more ideas, have a problem statement, allow people from all different levels of the organization compete in generating those ideas. But more importantly, when you were talking about the sexual harassment or using entertainment with professional actors, one founder I worked with actually brought in a surprise question at the end of the all hands on deck meeting. 09:56 And then there was a prize. So it really got people to pay attention to what the monthly message was about as the corporation grew. So I'm very happy to know that I'm doing something right and you're basing it on many years of experience in Vistage as well as the entertainment, the hospitality industry. So thank you. I'd like you to, I pride myself on lots of 10:26 really practical nuts and bolts in this podcast that listeners can take away and bring into their own companies. And so you provided some insight on Harry Gardner's similar work on people's concept of multiple intelligences. And there's seven ways people are intelligent. And then you bring that in actually to some of the tools and techniques you use in your session. So can you provide that background on? 10:54 Yeah, sure. What about intelligence? So, you know, Rhonda, you and I, we think we're fairly intelligent. We went to a fabulous business school. And yet, if we were in, you know, the outback of Australia trying to survive, we would not be as smart or as intelligent as an Aboriginal woman. And so there are different ways that we think. And obviously there's been a huge interest in EQ, you know, emotional intelligence, 11:24 IQ, but really, when you start to think about the skills that a surgeon might have, or an architect, they have kinesthetic skills that maybe other people don't. And so kinesthetic is another form of intelligence. Naturalism. There are people that have natural affinity to mathematics. And so you can think about your group, and some groups are more 11:53 homogenous, like an industry group, like an association. So you can think about what kind of natural intelligence that group might have, and then you can target some of the learning and the sessions in a way that's gonna harness the way that those people think. And it may not be humor or playfulness, but you're really leaning into their strengths. And I think that's so important in this topic of adult learning. That is fascinating. Again, I am... 12:24 the seven, you know, one was musical. Again, back to some of the writing I did, and I just saw it reinforced when listening to you is, you know, Mozart was a learner, but he would, he would have to write the music, but then he would never, but to keep it in his memory, and then he would never use it again. But it's really fascinating how I imagine in your Vistage meetings, you have a 12:54 cohort of, I don't know, 10 or 12. You create a safe space where CEOs are sharing current business challenges. Ultimately, they leave the monthly meetings though, and are gonna communicate decisions made to the companies that they lead, right? Yes. How do you share with them how to bring in humor if it's required, right? For the leaders communication, what have you seen to be more effective? 13:24 in some cases. Well, first of all, I'd say that, humor does not mean that you're a standup comedian. Really, when I think about humor, I think about it as more as like levity. And so my first tip always is not to be caustic or sarcastic, cause that's not gonna fly. But leaders can bring in this levity to their communication. I say in several ways. One would be just being able to laugh at yourself. Okay. 13:53 much more approachable, it helps build rapport and trust, and it makes you more authentic and human. So that's the first way, just being able to laugh at yourself. The second way is I think you can use a joke, a little levity to just capture people's attention. You know, we've all been in meetings, blah, blah, blah. Yes. Non-drona. So humor's an opportunity to catch people's attention and really get them to sit up. 14:21 Kind of like the example you were saying before about the leader that had something at the price. I also think maybe it's not exactly humor, but certainly playfulness. It allows you to take complex ideas and make them more simple. Not saying that you're trying to dumb down the conversation, but the kind of strategic issues that leaders are facing these days can be difficult to communicate. And so a little bit of humor or playfulness 14:51 really allows people to make things understandable. Like specifically, I would think about metaphors or analogies, those are great ways, or good stories can help communicate these more complex ideas to people so that people can remember them, and then you have good alignment in the organization. So those are just three tips. Right, and what about storytelling? You just... 15:19 touched it at the end of your comments there, but I've observed primarily because of the working from home and having distributed teams. And there are more and more CEOs that are stepping up and actually using storytelling to become, or appear more authentic. Are you observing that? And can you talk about storytelling and authenticity, please? 15:49 Yes, happy to do so. So storytelling can be personal. I think those are great stories to tell. And so in doing that, you bring your whole self, that whole authentic self to the table. Okay. I just made a post yesterday on LinkedIn where I was talking about my goal around losing weight. And I was like, walking around thinking I had been more successful than I had because I didn't really, I didn't really 16:19 I didn't write my goal down. I didn't write my stating weight down. And then all of a sudden I had the realization, I'm like, oh my gosh, I really actually went up by two pounds, not down by more. And so people commented on how refreshing it was. So those kinds of stories can, and then really to drive the point home, the post was really about goal setting and also how you can do a reset. 16:47 change your mindset to make sure that you do achieve your goals. Because we still have half of the year left. So I could do this. The importance of, of, you know, self belief. And so it was a story that poked a little bit of fun at myself, but really add a message. And so many people responded to that post just by talking about, oh, my gosh, it was refreshing, so honest, so authentic, they use those kinds of words. And so I think those 17:15 That's an example of how you can use a story to resonate with the population. Because again, almost like we were talking about entertainment, people grab onto stories. That's why we go to films. That's why we read books is because for that storyline, that plot. And so finding the hero and how you can get to employees that you could be the hero or you are my hero or you are part of the hero team. 17:44 in the story can, I think can be quite effective. Wow. What about the, the leading from creativity and the use of humor to actually promote creativity? Have you seen that? Do you use those techniques in your Vistage groups or elsewhere? 18:13 So, you know, one thing is humor, right? To enhance maybe leaders communication and the other is actually creativity to generate new business ideas or to think about a problem statement. What have you seen in your work? So. Yeah, I think there's great opportunity to be playful and to unleash creativity. And I know that this is something that you and I both believe strongly in. So I think there's, you know, there's a lot of things you can do. 18:42 Metaphors, I kind of alluded to this before. When you say one thing is like another, and so you can say, you know, I feel like our organization is like a twisted pretzel right now, and why is that true? Like, how is our organization like a twisted pretzel? And so that just encourages people to think more broadly about the concept. So I think metaphors are a good way. Even choosing a random word, 19:12 picking up a book, pointing at a word like, what does bananas have to do with the strategic issue that we're facing right now? And it just causes people to be like, oh, I gotta think about this differently. And it kind of breaks the ice. Yeah, exactly. Yes, and so it just gets people to say, I don't have to think about this in the same exact way. I'm also a big fan of field trips. And so one of my efforts when I was 19:40 uh, leading a training and development effort for an association was that we, um, took field trips around Chicago. Actually related in the hospitality industry. We went to various places unrelated to hospitality and we just said, what can you learn by just going on site to a chocolate place, Garrett's popcorn, a museum, what can you learn about the way that the. 20:09 those organizations greet people, the entering experience, the engaging experience, the exiting experience. What can you learn from that that would cause you to rethink how you do it in your own organization? So I think by taking field trips like when we were kids, I think that's another other way to foster creativity. I like mind mapping. I think that's a real 20:33 good way causing people to start to write things down visually or even using props or toys to try and encompass a concept. I think those can be very effective. I love, you know, I love the improv technique of yes and, which of course is useful in brainstorming, but also useful in saying we have a product design, and it's good. 21:01 And yes, and what can we add on or what else do we need to do? So I think those are some techniques that I think promote playfulness, but also cause us to open our minds to being more creative. These are very actionable. Have they been, is it necessary to, in your experience, have these in person? Can you do this virtually? And how do you get CEOs to allocate time on their busy schedule? 21:32 Well, it's, who doesn't, I mean, what CEO doesn't want innovation and creativity in their organism? So having said that, the question is, how do you really foster it? And you don't just say, okay, let's sit down and we're going to be creative, because that's not gonna work. We all have our own cognitive biases. We have our frameworks, our assumptions, our biases for how we think. 21:58 What you wanna do is break through some of those. And in order to do that, I think you really need to think intentionally about how to do it. And to me, some of the techniques I described are not wasting time at all, but rather an intentional way to allow people to be more creative. Excellent. And so. 22:24 Can you speak to it's actually not in the script, but what is a typical Vistage meeting and cohort look like in your world in Chicago? You co-lead with a male. You have two groups that you're leading now. So what is the typical format, duration, size of group? What are the things that you're finding? Are they Illinois based companies? Do you have any? 22:51 people participate virtually. This is your opportunity to share your craft as a leader of Vistage. Okay. Well, I guess I'll first talk about the group and then I can talk a little bit about what happens in the group. So the peer group is part of the Vistage experience. There's other things, research, virtual events, the one-on-one time with me as an executive coach. But in the...
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Purposeful Culture Driven Sales
05/02/2024
Purposeful Culture Driven Sales
On this episode of The Founder's Sandbox, Brenda McCabe speaks with , Founder & CEO of Culture Driven Sales. They discuss resilience and purpose related to the Culture Driven Sales methodology where Kelly Breslin Wright operates as a C-level executive, board director, advisor, and adjunct university professor. Kelly Breslin Wright is an experienced executive and corporate board director for both public and private companies, with over 30 years of experience in leadership, sales, operations, and strategy roles. She has served as an Independent Director and Advisor for multiple and has helped companies navigate multiple stages of growth. These include IPOs, enterprise expansion, CEO and leadership transitions, globalization, M&A, financings, business model changes, and global crises. She has a unique mastery of sales, go-to-market, leadership, transformation, strategy, growth and scaling, data and analytics, and culture. As an operator, Kelly Breslin Wright served as President and COO of , an artificial intelligence platform that serves revenue organizations to deliver insights at scale. There, she managed all go-to-market functions, including Sales, Customer Success, and Marketing. For nearly 12 years prior to Gong, Kelly Breslin Wright was Executive Vice President of Sales (Chief Revenue Officer) at (formerly NYSE: DATA). She joined as the company's first salesperson, where she grew Tableau’s worldwide sales and field operations from zero to $850M in revenue and managed over half of the company’s 3,400 global employees. Tableau was purchased by Salesforce in 2019 for $15.7B. Before Tableau, Kelly Breslin Wright spent time at Bain & Company, McKinsey & Company, Bank of America, Dale Carnegie Training, AtHoc, and Southwestern Advantage. You can find out more about Kelly Breslin Wright at: Culture Driven Sales Website: University of Washington Foster School of Business Website: Show transcription: 00:04 Welcome back to the Founder's Sandbox. The Founder's Sandbox is a podcast now in its second season. It's a monthly podcast in which I reach entrepreneurs and business owners that want to learn 00:33 about building resilient, scalable, and sustainable businesses with great corporate governance. I am Brenda McCabe, your host on the Founder's Sandbox, and my mission is really simple. By interviewing guests through their stories, I want to assist entrepreneurs in building those scalable, well-governed, and resilient businesses. Guests to my podcast are founders, business owners, corporate directors, and professional service providers 01:01 who like me want to use the power of the private enterprise, be it small, medium, or large, to create change for a better world. Through storytelling with a guest that will touch on topics that include resilience, purpose-driven enterprise, and sustainable growth, my goal is to recreate a fun sandbox environment where we can equip one startup founder at a time to build a better world through great corporate governance. Today, my guest is Kelly Breslin Wright. Thank you, Kelly, for joining me today. 01:31 Thank you for having me. I'm excited for the conversation. I've been pursuing Kelly for a number of years. And finally, we're making it happen today. So Kelly and I are going to talk about purposeful, culture driven sales. I'm going to give you a little background on Kelly. She is founder and CEO of Culture Driven Sales. She has promoted and led the Culture Driven Sales methodology as a C level executive, 02:01 public and private company board director, advisor, and adjunct university professor. She is an experienced executive and corporate board director for both public and private with over 30 years of experience in leadership, sales, operations, and strategy roles. We actually share a common past. We both originated from McKinsey and Company, where are paths crossed there. She has served as an independent director and advisor for multiple boards. 02:30 She's helped companies navigate multiple stages of growth, including IPOs, enterprise expansion, CEO and leaderships transitions, globalization, M&A, financing, business model changes, and global crisis. So we're in for a treat today. I asked Kelly to come because she really has a unique way of bringing in culture 02:58 behind sales. I think sales often times is a hidden or unwanted child. And I was amazed that none of my guests up until now has the expertise nor did they speak about sales. So it's the first time, Kelly, that you're gonna be talking to my listeners around your 30 years experience in sales. As an operator, Kelly served as president and COO at Gong, an artificial intelligence platform. 03:28 And we're going to talk a little bit about AI today. And prior to Gong, Kelly was Executive Vice President, Sales Chief Revenue Officer at Tableau Software. And it is formerly was on the stock exchange with the sticker symbol DATA. She was there for nearly 12 years. And she joined that company as the 10th employee. And we're going to listen to her story and what brought her to them. 03:57 So thank you again for joining me on the Founder's Sandbox, Kelly. Thank you for having me. You know, when we were just prepping for today's podcast, Kelly said, what actually made you wanna reach out to me? And it goes back quite a few years. Our first encounter was through a common passion serving on corporate boards. And you reached out to me to thank me for sharing my experiences that is in a book. 04:26 published and written by Betsy Berkhemer-Credaire, winning the board game, how women corporate directors make the difference. So I'm always thankful to people that do reach out unexpectedly and just thank you. And I finally, two years later, I've achieved what I wanted to get you on my podcast. So I am honored that you agreed to share 04:56 quite a few real world experiences that started while in undergraduate days and informed your career choices that led you to be the first sales person to join Tableau and number 10 employee. And while you were the CRO, the company went public. The learnings you continue to share as advisor, educator, board director, and executive to private and public companies are centered around your passion for culture-driven sales. 05:26 In preparation, I listened to a recent podcast interview on operators, building and scaling companies and your recruitment to Tableau. It had something to do with educational books. It also had something to do with grit and resiliency. And I work on resilience with the founders I serve as the foundational piece. And I wrote an article myself on empowering resilience 05:54 by unlocking your personal and enterprise value. I touch on three things, Kelly. I'm knowing oneself as a leader, having options and making choices, and finally being thankful. So can you share why Tableau asked you to join as employee number 10? That's going way, way, way back to the beginning of the career. Well, so, 06:20 it's interesting, you mentioned about selling books door to door. When I was in college, I knew I wanted to do something entrepreneurial and I wanted to be independent. And I came across this opportunity to run my own business selling educational books door to door. And that's what I did for my four summers when I was in college. And I think there are a lot of things, Brenda, that you had touched base on. One was sales. And we'll talk about that a lot today. 06:49 The second was resiliency. And I appreciate that you're always talking about resiliency because it's so critical, not only in business, but in life. And selling educational books door to door, when you show up at someone's house, you're not the most welcome person that they want to see that day. So there's a lot of doors that are slammed in your face and a lot of adversity that I dealt with in my 18 to 21 year old formative years. 07:20 taught a lot about resiliency of how to get yourself back up, keep on going, being able to learn to control what you can control and not worrying as much about the rest, a whole bunch of things. So we could talk about resiliency. Anyway, going back to how I started at Tableau, because when I was in college, I was known as this person that while everyone else was doing these cool internships or 07:48 They were lifeguarding at their home pool. I was talking to thousands of families, working 80 plus hours a week, running my own business. And people thought I was crazy, but I ended up making quite a bit of money. I paid for my undergrad, it paid for my first car, paid for my first house, paid for most of business school. And so later on in my career, when people were starting their first, 08:17 their startup or starting their own entrepreneurial venture. Oftentimes people would call me and say, hey, Kelly, you did that crazy job in college. They'd say, you sold all those books. Maybe you can help us. And that's exactly what happened at Tableau. So what happened at Tableau was the CEO of Tableau had gone to Stanford Business School and was classmates with a friend of mine from undergrad. 08:45 And so I had met him multiple times as Tableau was an incubation idea. And we had met actually at an Oscar party. And so when it came time to, to hire the first salesperson, there was this conversation of, Hey, maybe you should go talk to Kelly. And I remember thinking about resiliency and just raising your hand. When I first had that conversation and I looked at the job requirement. 09:14 Brenda, I literally didn't match anything on there. It was understand a lot about data, has taken multiple companies public, has been at companies that have grown to sizable amounts of revenue. And I had done none of that. So I think I'd had sales and hopefully the, smart and can think on your feet, hopefully that matched, but I didn't match any of the other things. And it really came down to, 09:41 having a passion about what the company's mission was and alignment of the values and how we wanted to work, which is how I ended up joining as the first salesperson. And then the story goes on from there. Wow. And you did just touch briefly on mission and we're gonna get to that in the next question. Okay. Yeah. So, so Tableau, 12 years, amazing. I admire that company. 10:08 A piece you wrote back in 2021, it's on your website and it will be in the show notes. It's called creating winning company culture by perfecting these two elements. You touch on mission. Often founders wait for later in creating a mission statement. And that they're either focused on for a client, a customer, their product or service, hiring a few of their team members 10:39 When does it make sense in your experience, Kelly, to create a mission statement? And what are those two elements you believe that create a winning company culture? That's a loaded question, but you've written about it. We're gonna hear it here on the founder's sandbox. Well, Brenda, I think that it's really important to have a mission from really early days. 11:04 And I think you're right in that companies often feel like they need to have, they need to figure out their product, they figure out the service, they figure out their operational cadence, they go get the first customers. But it can be very confusing if you don't understand where you're going. The way I like to describe it is building a business as you hire employees and as you get investors and 11:32 as you find your first customers and partners, it's building with these building blocks, similar to having a map. Okay. You have a map, you have to have a destination, you have to know where you're headed, because otherwise you can get very lost. And so although companies might not have their exact wording of a mission statement from very early days, it's important, I mean, I think it's important to have a mission right from the beginning. When I talk about Tableau, 12:02 Tableau from the time I started, the mission was help people see and understand data. And that was something that I really was drawn to, which is how I ended up joining as the first salesperson and employee 10 before we even launched version one. Because everyone then that we were hiring, our customers, the whole team was aligned on what it is that we were doing. What was the company's purpose? What was our why? 12:31 And what ends up happening is when companies are not clear on what that is, you might hire different people that all know you're building something in this space, but they may have very different ideas of the reason and the purpose of the company, the why of the company. And so it's really imperative to not only drive the alignment, but to also... 12:57 be able to make sure that the people that you're hiring to go on this journey with you are passionate and committed to what it is that you're trying to build. And if you don't have a stated mission, then everyone will come up with their own definition and reason for why you exist. And it's not always the same. And one thing, Brenda, that I really liked, like for instance, when you started off and kicked off this podcast, the first thing you said is at the Founder's Sandbox, our mission is this, and you explained it. 13:28 So everyone knows what it is that your, what your purpose is and why they're listening. And it's really important for companies to do that. But the mission isn't the only important part. So the two things is there's a mission and then also core values. Okay. Any companies that I meet with, they'll say, we're not gonna spend that much time on mission and core values, because then they're just words on the wall. You throw it up and it doesn't mean anything. Well. 13:54 If you're going to have mission and core values and they're just going to be words on the wall, yeah, then they're not going to work. They're not going to work and it's not going to mean anything. But it is actually really important to have them and help them guide and advise how you build your business, how you hire, how you engage with your customers, and then holding yourself and your teams accountable. 14:22 to make sure that you're behaving in a way that's in accordance with your core values or your operating principles. And I'm sure we can talk about that more as we go through. But each company that I have joined is very intentional about their mission and core values. And that helps them to be very intentional about how they build their culture and how they're guardians of that culture. Yes, and you actually, for your... 14:52 the course you're teaching in the Culture-Driven Sales Institute. You did a lot of surveys and interviews. Can you shed some light on some of the background? I think you talked about the 85 companies at different stages of growth. Tell us a little bit about what you found, those aha moments of particularly back to mission and core values. Yeah, well, so at Tableau, just to go back a little bit. 15:19 So at Tableau, the management team at Tableau had not built a business of that scale before. We were all doing it for the first time. And so we were in a space that was very disruptive and transformative. We were in business intelligence, we were doing data analytics in a different way. We had a different go-to-market approach of how we were actually handling sales. And there weren't companies to go look at to how to do it. So the way we were doing it as, 15:49 first time executives in a first time team is we were very clear, I mentioned on our mission, to help people see and understand data. And we had very specific core values that helped to drive the way that we were behaving. We were on a mission, we used our products, we kept things simple, and we could go through and talk about a lot of these other core values. Well, that is really what helped us to go build this 16:19 really transformative company. When I finished at Tableau and decided that in this next stage, I wanted to be able to help other companies to grow and scale and do work both in teaching as well as an advisor or board director. I wanted to figure out, well, how can I be the most helpful? What is it that companies actually need? And so I ended up meeting with the whole slew 16:47 of founders, go-to-market leaders and CEOs. So in that first year, I did, I sat down with about 85 founders and CEOs over the course of the next few years. I've met with maybe 135, 140. And I asked these companies some very specific questions. One of the first questions that I've always asked, because I'm so passionate about mission, and I just assumed that companies were doing it in the same way we did at Tableau. And I found out, 17:16 that that actually is not the case. So when I was meeting with companies, one of the first things I would ask these CEOs is, well, tell me about your mission. Tell me about your company why. What I learned was actually quite eye-opening. Some of these founders would say, our mission is to get 30% market share. Our mission is to get to profitability in X number of years. 17:45 or very operational KPIs. And so I'd say to them, that's not a mission statement. That doesn't rally around the purpose of what you're doing. And sometimes these CEOs would say, no, that is our mission statement. That's how we're rallying our team. And so that I kind of was scratching my head. That's not a mission statement. Even more interesting to this though, is often times these CEOs or founders would say, hey, Kelly, you're an expert in go to market. 18:13 we're having some lack of alignment and we need help of why we have our salespeople don't want to sell what it is our product team is building or our sales team is trying to sell something that's different than how the marketing team is marketing it. Got it. And so then I would say, well, let me talk to some of those other leaders. And I would ask everyone that I talked to, first question is, what's your mission statement? And this was what was so... 18:42 crazy. I would ask the CEO, I would ask the co-founder, I would ask the chief revenue officer, I'd ask the chief marketing officer, the head of product, what is your mission statement? And guess what? Almost all of the time, each executive that I would ask would have a different answer to what their mission statement was. Wow, at the same company. So crazy, even if they had a published mission statement. And that's when I realized, oh, 19:12 People are just using these as words on a wall. And then you wanna know, well, why is a company not aligned? Well, if you have a product leader who is driving the engineers according to one mission statement, and you have a sales leader that's going and trying to engage your customers with a different mission statement, well, duh, you're not aligned if you're actually training your teams and advising your customers that you do something different. 19:42 And that was a huge aha. And the same thing was true for the core values. And so it is actually, here's just a main takeaway. Okay. Companies need to realize that the corporate strategy is very intertwined with the go-to-market strategy. Got it. Many companies think of their corporate strategy is often very aligned with the... 20:12 product strategy, but it all trickles down to how are you hiring? How are you engaging with customers? How are you making sure those customers are successful? How are you telling your story on your website and how you engage with your investors and in the world? And that go to market strategy goes all the way back up to the corporate strategy and all starts from mission, vision. 20:41 What is your company's story? What is your company's why? And we need to roll that...
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Resilience: Journalist to Venture Capitalist
04/04/2024
Resilience: Journalist to Venture Capitalist
On this episode of The Founder's Sandbox, Brenda speaks with Genevieve LeMarchal about Resilience: Journalist to Venture Capitalist. They speak about Genevieve's "Phoenix Manifesto", and what journalism and venture capitalism have in common. Genevieve LeMarchal is the Managing Partner of Suncoast Ventures, an early stage venture capital fund specializing in healthcare impact and equity funding opportunities in medical AI, digital health, health tech, medtech and select therapeutics. She launched and ran Expert Dojo’s healthcare program and ran 3 full cohorts of health tech and medtech companies, becoming one of the most prolific early stage vc investors in Southern California (Crunchbase, 2022) and winner of the 2022 Biocom Lifescience Catalyst Award. She loves to innovate financial models and find better ways to structure and fund companies and deals. She previously served as Partner at a science focused advisory and fund in formation, was a General Partner at Oregon-based FoundersPad VC Fund II and she is co-founder of the XXcelerate Fund. She is the host of the AdVentureous Podcast. Genevieve writes and delivers talks, keynotes and training programs to groups all over the world about venture capital and entrepreneurship, impact and equity investing and more. You can find out more about Genevieve and Suncoast Ventures at: Transcript: 00:04 Welcome back to the Founder's Sandbox. The Founder's Sandbox is a podcast now in its second season. It's a monthly podcast that reaches entrepreneurs, business owners, and business owners. 00:30 who learn about building resilient, scalable, and sustainable businesses with great corporate governance. I am Brenda McCabe, your host on the Founder's Sandbox. And here my mission is very simple. I want to assist those entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs in building those scalable, well-governed, and resilient businesses. Guests to this podcast are either founders, business owners, players in the VC, 00:59 private equity, ecosystem, professional service providers who like me want to use the power of the enterprise be that small, medium or large to create change for a better world. Through storytelling with each of my guests, we're gonna touch upon their own personal and professional journeys. And I always tease out topics around resilience, purpose-driven businesses and sustainable growth. My goal with this podcast is to really 01:29 create a fun sandbox environment where we can equip one founder at a time to build a better world through great corporate governance. Today my guest is Genevieve LeMarchal. It's an honor to have Genevieve today with me. Thank you Genevieve. Thank you. I'm excited to be here. You know Genevieve is the managing partner of Suncoast Ventures. 01:56 an early stage venture capital fund specializing in healthcare impact and equity funding opportunities. I'll go a bit more into your background in a moment. Genevieve and I go back probably two years when you were at Expert Dojo and their healthcare fund. And recently we met again at an investor summit and got to have dinner with Genevieve. 02:25 and discover kind of her journey to what she does today as managing partner of a venture fund. And in that dinner discussion, I discovered actually the theme of that. So very near and dear to my heart, which is around resilience and her own personal and professional journey is all about resilience. And the title for the episode today is resilience on journalist. 02:54 to venture capitalist. So thank you again Genevieve for joining me today in the Founder Sandbox. I'm gonna give a bit more color to your very deep expertise in healthcare. You're fun today, invest in digital health, health tech, med tech and select therapeutics. You also launched and ran 03:22 at Expert Dojo, a healthcare program running three cohorts of health tech and med tech companies. Shout out, quite a few of those companies are women owned. You become one of the most prolific early stage VC investors in Southern California as per Crunchbase 2022. You also were the winner of the 2022 Biocom Life-Size Catalyst. 03:50 Life Science Catalyst Award. You have a strength in developing innovative financial models, and you find better ways to structure and fund companies and deals. We all know that life sciences has a really long time to market. A lot of patient money has to sit behind that. You also previously served as partner at a science-focused advisory and fund information. You were a general partner at an Oregon-based 04:19 Founders Pad VC Fund 2, and you are co-founder of the Accelerate Fund. And you also have your own podcast. So this is not new to you. She is the host of Adventurous Podcast, and she writes and delivers talks, keynotes, and training programs to groups all over the world. You're a Pacific Northwest native, and you now reside in San Francisco Bay Area. 04:49 Genevieve, thank you. Thank you. After the dinner, where I had the honor to sit beside you, I came back and took a look at Suncoast Ventures website. And digging through it, I landed upon the Phoenix Manifesto, which is on your landing page. 05:15 And I want to read it here because I think it so encapsulates before you tell us what does journalism and BC investment have in common. I'm going to read this. Again, this is on the website of Suncoast Ventures. I am a phoenix. I am shakeable, not because I have never had setbacks. I am intimate with pain and failure. I stand tall. 05:43 and look it in the face and I have always pushed through. I always show up and I never give up. I believe anything is possible no matter the odds. I have faced the odds my entire life, fighting for my place in this world, for my right to walk the pathways to achieve greatness. What makes me resilient has nothing to do with what you see on my surface and everything to do with what lies. 06:13 within. Science and technology for betterment of society is how I choose to contribute to the world. I have dedicated my life. This is how I live and love. I'm willing to bend, but I'll never break. And the darkness can't get me because I burn on my very own. This is how I create my own light. 06:43 I have risen from the ashes many times. I am forged and fired full of grace. I am unshakable. So with that, tell us your story Genevieve. What does journalism and VC investment have in common? Yeah, well, so I started out my career for a short period of time as a journalist. Straight out of college, I went to school for journalism, all of that. 07:11 And journalism school is actually very difficult. You have to be very, they teach you to be very precise and they teach you to have extremely high standards for your work because if you mess up or if you have an incorrect fact or something that's inaccurate or whatever that might be, it can't run on paper. It does, you're gonna make the paper look really bad and you're probably gonna get fired. So. 07:40 So that's really ingrained. But then the next thing that's really ingrained into journalism students and eventual journalists is just this insatiable ability to tell a story and the desire to find one, to seek the truth, find out what's really going on. And so even though I had to report as the youngest and new reporter in the newsroom on the really boring story is things that no one could do. 08:08 talks about, no one wants to read. I had to write about the squirrel that was going rabid on somebody's roof and they called the police, just turned out it was a squirrel. It was a small town. News was limited, but things like that. And then, but I was always, I had this dream, I wanted to break a story, and I really idolized the great journalists like Edward R. Murrow. 08:35 of course, Anderson Cooper. I really thought that he was like a really revolutionary journalist of our time and all these different things. And so I was always looking to dig past what I was being told on the surface and get down to the truth. And that is something that you have to do every single day as a venture capital investor, because unlike investing in... 09:02 later stage deals or even like public markets or things like that, the information is not readily available. So you have to dig for it and you have to look for it. And you're also making bets on really nascent things that don't really exist yet. So you're always looking for information to piece together to try to determine whether or not an area of investment is viable. 09:31 Is it a gap we should be focusing on? Is it not a gap we shouldn't be focusing on? And that doesn't just come from one person's single observation of what they see on the surface. It comes from lots of information gathered and aggregated over time to create a story. And then we hope, as investors, that the story is true. So I would say those are the parallels. And that's a great segue to the next question. 10:00 around you hope as investors that the story that you've been able to weave together jointly with the company your funding does come true. There are parallels with running a fund, setting up a fund VC fund to that of being a founder, right? Yeah, not not all of them. Right. And so you know, what has you you? 10:30 have been through a couple funds. And the most recent is, is you are the fund manager. You know, what does staying true to your purpose, right? And your fun mean, you know, we've we've coming up for you raise this fund in June of 2022. Yeah, you bring in some of the companies from the cohorts coming up about expert dojo, you're really centered on the thesis of 10:59 of health care. You know, what is it that allows you to stay true to purpose? 11:06 That's such a big question. Like you can write a whole book about that. I need to talk about that. I think that the thing that allows me to stay true to purpose is the fact that I've been burnt out so many times and a lot of it has to do, had to do with the fact that I wasn't being true to myself. I wasn't being just, you know, I was hiding something. I was lying to myself. I was, you know, trying to be something that I really wasn't. 11:35 And it's not to say that you won't get tired and burnt out by being true to yourself. In fact, I feel very burnt out right now at this moment. But it's different because I think now I have the skills, the ability to be resilient. That whereas past I hadn't, but also because I'm still being true to myself, I just have a lot of my plate. But I think that when you kind of look at your 12:02 tendencies and it you know, one of the things we'd get as adults is the ability to look back at patterns of our own selves and patterns of our own life and say I always tend to do this and then I end up in these situations and It now it doesn't have anything to do with anyone aside from myself. I'm the common denominator How do I fix this, you know and and you start to call and you start to edit? And you over time you kind of realize like really? 12:32 The area that I always come back to is this core. And this might have been trendy at the time, and maybe I wanted to do it. Or this might have sounded interesting, and I was influenced by someone. Or this seemed opportunistic, and I went after it for a while. But at the end of the day, this is where I'm always ending up. And you have that kind of feedback as an adult if you're willing to listen and learn from it. You know, on your own. Yeah, that's very authentic. 13:01 Thank you for that. You also are a big follower, Warren Buffett. I think one of your, going back to your being true to yourself, your financial acumen and how you look at companies. Can you speak a little bit to the fundamentals that have informed your fund? Yeah. 13:26 Yeah, well, so the Warren Buffett thing is interesting because it's like Warren Buffett's investing mindset and his fundamentals. He would probably never be a venture capital investor. You know what I mean? But at the end of the day, Warren Buffett is who Warren Buffett is. And he has been very successful because he has stayed very true to his core principles. He has always made the main thing the main thing. 13:53 And I think in venture capital, we tend to get so pulled into all these different areas that are hot or new or that people seem to be doing or whatever. And you don't see a lot of steadfastness in venture capital like you might see in funds like what Warren Buffett has. And we can benefit from that because the legendary fund managers, the Warren Buffetts of the world, the Ray Dalios of the world. 14:22 They all focus very, very strongly on just core fundamentals of investing. And in venture capital, like you mentioned earlier about the time and patient capital, that's one of the things that people get so swept away in is trying to make venture capital all things. And it's like, oh yeah, we're going to get these quicker returns. They're going to be high in this unicorn. 14:46 And then you watch these things fall apart. You watch the bottom fall out. And you're like, it was never real. It was always alive. And maybe some people made money. They got lucky. They got out or whatever at the right time. I don't know. But the point being, we're always trying to manufacture some sort of crazy situation when in reality, and one of the ways we manufacture it is by doing round upon round upon round of. 15:13 higher and higher valuations that are getting crazier and crazier. And then it all comes crashing down, and we wonder what happened. And we say, venture capital is massive class is bad. It's like, well, not really. The mindset that we might be approaching it as managers is sometimes not right, because we need to remember venture capital is patient capital. It's slow. Our investors and LPs, while they are my bosses, they know that this is not going to, you know, 15:41 turnover overnight and start to create returns. The pressure that I feel to produce returns is healthy to an extent, but we need to remember that we're investing the gaps. We're looking for opportunities to invest in underpriced assets. Yes. And that's the bet we're making is this asset is underpriced and it will be, and that doesn't mean this asset is underpriced per what the public market might say. That means this asset is underpriced 16:11 like now, you know? And I think that if I invest in this, it will generate a positive markup and eventually a positive return because it's creating real economic value and not just paper returns on paper returns. And so those, I mean, I could go on and on about what the fundamentals are, but I think it comes down to, we then vilify the asset class. 16:39 when the asset class is actually not the problem. The problem is the way that we try to finagle it to get to get it to be what we want it to be. And it's not like that. That's so elegant. And I also am a true believer in the patience that is required in life sciences, biotech, that anything that is any startup 17:06 it's any startup a particular life sciences or right that those there's no hockey stick, right? It is you, you have to introduce largely against the standard of care, right? That is incumbent within treating a certain therapeutic area. Let's let's kind of change the messages for my listeners here on the pad cat podcast. So at 17:36 the founder sandbox, I often end up being a mentor to CEOs and digging in when when times get tough, we know we are coming off particularly difficult two years with head winds, you know, we have high interest rates, there is a lot of dry powder out there. Yeah, but what and I and how I work with founders oftentimes is hey, have you written? 18:05 And will you show me a thank you letter that you've been, that you've sent out either to somebody within your personal or your professional network. I did this really early on with founders because to build resilience, I think being grateful and just recognizing those people because you are riding on the shoulder. Sometimes your team might not be following you along. The market's timing isn't the greatest. So you've had a recent change in your family. 18:34 and new addition. You're running a VC fund. You have you're raising money as well. How have you built resilience and how you do you continue to build resilience to naive within the new arrival to your family? Yeah, that's a really good question. And I don't know the answer to it. Oh, 100% yet. But last year, I'm decided to make my kind of word of the year. 19:04 Perfectly imperfect. Perfectly what? Perfectly imperfect. I love, okay. And the reason I chose that word was because, you know, I've always been a very high achieving person. And ultimately, I was always, as a high achiever, also very controlling. Okay. Not of other people, but of, of like, what was happening. 19:30 you know, I have very specific goals, very specific outcomes. And I would say, oh, I was being goal oriented, but no, I was being controlling. And I wanted things to go a very specific way. And when it didn't go like that, I would be, I would work harder, fight harder, try harder to get a certain outcome to occur. And then when things were going differently in my life, I made myself wrong for that. 19:54 And so it was like this perfectionism thing and trying to control the outcomes of my life so that it could look the way I thought it should look. And it was not healthy. And then when I realized that I'm not in control no matter how hard I try, I'm not in control no matter how much I might stress myself out and try to make myself in control. And if I let go a little bit and do more steering and allow, 20:22 things to occur, it's hard because it's going to require me to have faith. It's going to require me to face a lot of the fears I have about not achieving the thing I'm trying to get to of, you know, and all the things associated with that. But oftentimes the outcome that ends up occurring for me is better than what I wanted, had I... Figured that. You know, yeah. So I was like, well, this is interesting because I'm not in control anyway. 20:50 And this could very easily become very much a spiritual discussion. It could keep it not that, but like, you know, if I want to create this life of purpose and life of impact, I've got to just stay core to the values and core to that and move, but allow things to happen. And so with having a child recently, you're even more not in control. 21:19 this child is in control. So the word of the year continues to be perfectly imperfect because accepting that things may not necessarily look the way you want them to. I used to have these idyllic mornings where I'd wake up and rested, you know, and have my coffee and, you know, catch up on my email. And like, you know, everything in my life was very easy. 21:44 and very prescripted almost in a way. And this morning I got barfed on, you know? Yeah, that happened. Yeah, and so I was like, well, you know, but how, but it's different, but the only thing that makes it bad is that it's not my idea of what things should be. You know, things should be this way, should be that way. So when I let go of the shoulds, it's perfectly imperfect just the way it is. 22:10 I got you've heard it here on the founders sandbox with Genevieve LaMarchelle perfectly imperfect. I great I love that. I love it. Okay, up until now, you've shared and I've shared your background, many, many success stories, many awards. We all know that the road to success is often fraught with some stories of failure. Can you share some of these stories with my listeners here? 22:39 I have a lot of failures. In fact, it's interesting because I just think a lot of those successes were actually like kind of a failure but...
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Anna Jacob: Maximizing Purpose while Achieving Profits
03/28/2024
Anna Jacob: Maximizing Purpose while Achieving Profits
On this episode of The Founder's Sandbox, Brenda speaks with Anna Jacob about "Maximing Purpose while Achieving Profits". They speak about her broad experience coming full circle from her experiences growing up that informed her future career purpose- and in assisting women business owners to think strategically on exit strategies. Anna Halloran Jacob specializes in selling privately owned companies and maximizing their after-tax proceeds. She has also served as Adjunct Finance Professor, Loyola Marymount University, 25 years in investment banking, private equity, and corporate operations. Anna was also COO of a full service advertising company with over 150 employees. Anna is passionate about educating business owners on how to maximize the value of their company for a successful exit. She has significant experience in representing companies in the sale of their business, capital raising and valuations. You can find out more about Anna Jacob at : Linked IN Show Transcript: 00:04 Welcome back to the Founder's Sandbox. The Founder's Sandbox is a podcast now in its second season. The monthly podcast reaches an audience of entrepreneurs and business owners who learn about building resilient, 00:32 scalable and sustainable businesses with great corporate governance. I'm Brenda McCabe, your host here on the Founder's Sandbox and my mission is simple. I want to assist both entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs in building their scalable, well-governed and resilient businesses. The guests to my podcast are founders, business owners, corporate directors and professional service providers who, like me, want to use the power of the private enterprise. 01:01 small, medium, and large to create change for a better world. Through storytelling with a guest on topics that we touch on, including resilience, purpose-driven enterprises, and sustainable growth, my goal is to create a fun sandbox environment where we can equip one business owner at a time to build a better world through great corporate governance. Today, I'm absolutely thrilled to have as my guest Anna Jacob. 01:30 Welcome, Anna, to the Founder's Sandbox. Thank you. It's great to be here, Brenda. Thank you. You are a managing director at a Los Angeles-based firm, Diamond Capital Advisors Investment Partners. It is a mid-market firm focusing on investment banking, M&A advisory, and capital markets. And Anna and I are going to talk about 01:55 something very near and dear to your heart as well as mine, is maximizing purpose while achieving profits. And if you allow me, Anna, I'm gonna give a brief background on yourself. Anna Halloran Jacob specializes in selling privately owned companies and maximizing their after-tax proceeds. She also has served as adjunct finance professor at Loyola Marymount University. 02:22 25 years in investment banking, private equity, and corporate operations. Anna was also COO of a full service advertising company with over 150 employees. Anna is very passionate about educating business owners on how to maximize the value of the company for successful exit. She has significant experience in representing companies in the sale of their business. 02:51 capital raising and valuations. It's truly a delight to have you here. You have such a broad experience. It was difficult to choose the topic. And I think your broad experience and having known you now for a couple of years while we work with women owned businesses is a testament that you're coming full circle to the episode's title, maximizing purpose while achieving profits. 03:18 I've known you for a few years and it wasn't until recently that I went, aha, I want to invite Anna to my podcast. I learned that you had an early formative or growing up experience that informed your purpose, Anna Jacob, in assisting business owners to maximize profits and alignment to your purpose. Can you share with my listeners, you know, what was that experience that was so formative and what you do today? 03:48 Yes, absolutely. So I'm one of 10 children. And my father was an entrepreneur. And he had a very innovative orthopedic device company. And it was for the betterment of patients. And we were too young at the time to know this was going on. But what had happened was he had received a couple of offers. 04:19 And unfortunately, he did not have advisors that helped him. And the technology was literally shelved. One of the offers was with the largest global medical device distributor in the world. And that would have changed not only patient outcomes significantly throughout the world, but it would also have, you know, 04:47 the technology wouldn't have been shelved and it would have provided retirement for, you know, my parents and so forth and security. We found this out when I was older and it really impacted all of us. And so I wanted to learn everything that I could about how to help entrepreneurs like my dad get the full value of their company to realize their hard work. 05:16 and to better, you know, people's lives. So after business school, I went to work for Lehman Brothers in New York, and investment banking, and did M&A and capital raising for Fortune 500 companies and learned everything I could. Yes, and I applied that I moved back to Southern California where I'm originally from, and focus and dedicated my career on 05:46 helping privately owned companies, entrepreneurs, to achieve maximum value on exit. And part of that process for me is that I like to get involved early on, as Brenda knows, with the entrepreneurs, and whether you're selling a year from now or five years from now, do you have the right advisors in place? Tax attorneys or wealth advisors? 06:16 in order to prepare for an exit. And also just counseling people that received unsolicited offers, you know, what to do. I'm very, very passionate about helping entrepreneurs in that regard. Thank you. It's always extremely enlightening to know what purpose has driven us into our current businesses. And, you know, I think it's 06:43 timely that you agreed to join as a guest in the podcast, because it's an election year in the US, and it just so happens that there are over 66 elections going on across the world today. Actually, not today, but over this in 2024. Interest rates remain high. Inflation is persistent, not only in the US, but in other countries. 07:13 Two wars continue their course. It appears that the US has made a soft landing, and we're going to avoid a recession. What are you observing in the merger and acquisition markets that there may be risks and opportunities with this backdrop during this month of March? Yeah, so last year, the M&A market definitely was down. 07:43 significantly globally. And a lot of that was driven by a very fast increase in interest rates. Yep. Very unprecedented. And that just causes uncertainty. It also causes financing costs to go up. And private equity is the big driver of the M&A market. And costing them more money, it's 08:12 you know, multiples that are paid for companies, which then puts these sellers on, you know, on a holding pattern. But what has happened and it started happening, you know, last fall is with interest rates starting to stabilize and now people are looking to in the future that hopefully to decline if the market is stabilizing. 08:42 both on a volume basis and also the multiples that are being paid. Okay. This is just very recent data, but we're seeing it's positive. We're seeing the stabilization. And, you know, in terms of, you know, what I would say in terms of risks to sellers, it's, we're still looking at instead of 100% cash deals that were, you know, being done. 09:10 Now we're seeing a lot more earnouts. Okay. And with earnouts, there's uncertainty. So, you know, our advice to clients is take as much cash upfront as you can. And, and just to talk about earnouts, you know, that's basically compensation that you will or consideration is a better way to say that for your company based on future. 09:39 either revenue or typically EBITDA milestones that the buyer is going to set to make part of that consideration. And there's just a lot of uncertainty with that. So what what the good news is, is that there's still a lot of money out there. There is 2.6 trillion just in private equity money. 10:05 And because interest rates, you know, borrowing costs are stabilizing, we are seeing, as I mentioned, the multiples starting to stabilize. And, you know, there's so what I would say to a CEO or an owner is know your cash number. Okay. Know what you want, because the earnout may or may not happen. And what we have actually done in certain transactions is negotiated a lower 10:34 total transaction value, but a higher cash component. Because the seller, their objective was to make sure that they absolutely had that cash number in their mind. So I would encourage people to help find that number is to talk to your financial planner and find out what it is that you would, when you do sell, what do you need? Because that will help you 11:03 well before you get into any negotiation or, you know, help representation in that negotiation in terms of what you actually need. So thank you. I like how you've taken us through both the risk side and the opportunities. And I had a little sigh of relief that we- there is a bit more stabilization, despite the headwinds that we've had over the last, I guess, two years, right, coming out of the pandemic. 11:33 On the Founder's Sandbox podcast, I really pride myself on the content my guests bring on real nuts and bolts for company owners. And what I'd like you to talk about is, all right, I listened to this podcast, met Anna Jacob. Yeah, I'm going to look at what my cash, my desirable cash exit value would be. Can you walk? 12:00 us through what is a real M&A timeline and when does it make sense to really line up those advisors? Yes, absolutely. So deals are taking longer in this market. 12:18 The expectation if you're doing an auction, which is what I would recommend to get the highest price, is typically it's about nine months. Some deals are taking longer. But, you know, typically you're, you're going to, and this is if you're well prepared. And by prepared, I mean that you have your financials and you know, it's readily available. 12:48 Um, if you have the due diligence process is pretty intense. So you want to make sure that when people ask you for financials, that you have them readily available. Um, and that increases your credibility, which increases your value. Um, and you know, to your point, Brenda, um, really you don't want, you don't need to get every advisor involved, involved at the beginning. 13:16 I think the first advisor you definitely want to get involved well before you receive an unsolicited offer and offer is what is that cash number? So that would be a wealth manager. Now in terms of my role as an investment banker, I would want to start talking to somebody a year before they're looking to get together so that I can help them. 13:45 figure out what are those two diligence items that you need so that when you go to market, it's very efficient because the longer a deal goes on, the more things that can happen. So you the process is critical. You want to make sure that you hit the market running that you can negotiate. You don't want to keep buyers on hold. You want to create this very, very efficient process. Okay, highest price. So typically, I would get involved 14:15 about a year before just consulting and then getting retained when you are ready to go. I also, in terms of another key advisor, I would bring in a tax expert, and that could be a CPA or a attorney, whatever makes the most sense, when we're getting ready to consider an offer. 14:45 The minute you hit into what's called a letter of intent, that is when you want to make sure that you have already talked to your tax advisor about what does this mean? So for example, just very specifically, it's not about getting the highest value. Okay, my job is to get a seller the highest after-tax proceeds. Got it. So we need to negotiate, know exactly what your cash number is. 15:14 And then also, depending on the form of consideration, buyers are going to have different types of consideration. Maybe someone's going to pay 100% cash, or maybe someone's going to say, I want to do an earn out, or maybe someone says, I want to do milestone payments. And it's very important that if you're going to do something like that, like a milestone payment, that it's not considered. 15:40 compensation where your tax on an ordinary income tax basis instead of capital gains. So all of these things before anybody gets to that letter of intent and they're giving us bids and we say, what is your form of consideration? We're gonna review all those and we're gonna pick the best one that has the best after-tax proceeds for the company and the highest certainty that it's gonna close. And so that's when we get somebody involved. Right, and you bring it back to the cash value, right? That's- 16:09 business owner has dreamed about. Exactly. In order to go on and build another business. Right. And then the M&A attorney comes in to help with the reps and warranties and any kind of exposure. And that's critical at that point. But that's not until you know that this is, what we're doing is we're vetting the buyer so that the seller is running their company. This is how it should be done. They shouldn't be distracted. 16:39 time-consuming process, they're running their company, they're making their numbers, they're running. And we're doing interference with the buyers and negotiating everything and weeding out the people that aren't gonna be the ones doing the highest bidding. And I should note one thing too about this process, Brenda, that's interesting is that we sold a company last year in the consumer sector and they didn't wanna go to auction. 17:08 They were approached by a competitor. Okay. And what we recommended to them was, we know that you think this is the most logical buyer, but we're going to negotiate a higher price from what they offered you. They offered 54 million, which was a good value. We said, we're going to get you a much higher price. And part of that was by us representing them, we were able to negotiate 17:39 what the company would look like on a pro forma basis to the buyer. How much money was the buyer going to save by buying this company? Because the seller had significant technology that was going to reduce their cost significantly. And so we basically did a pro forma showing this is what you're getting. Right. And, you know, we want you to pay for part of this because you're getting this value and you need this. 18:07 Because if you don't buy this company, you're going to have a lot of problems going forward. That was a negotiation while the CEO was running the company. The buyer also knew that we, at any time, could go out to market. 18:23 And we had a whole buyer's list. We had a book put together. We had all the due diligence done. We negotiated that $54 million to $68 million. Wow. So $14 million. So even if a company says, you know, I don't want to go to auction. I don't want to do that. I know who the buyer is. There's a lot of validity in a very efficient type process. You know, I like. 18:51 of this specific example, because it kind of comes back to the work I do with founders pretty early on. They're just starting to scale. It's like, who was the CEO or which was the company in which you inspired your business? Because you want to look and we create a table of peers or comparables that are largely listed companies. And I want to work with the founder to make them look like that. 19:21 And we always ask, what is your exit strategy? And oftentimes, some of the founders I work with want to sell to a potential competitor. So I think this is a real life example of selling to a competitor. The other thing that I wanted to comment based on the process you've walked us through is the due diligence process is very onerous. 19:51 Get your ducks lined up early. I had another guest on the podcast, Lisa Greer-Quateman, an attorney, and she used the word fluff and fold. She recommends on an annual basis, even if you're not considering selling your company, to really go through those corporate governance documents, your tax filing. So the house is in order in that unexpected, unsolicited offer to buy your company. 20:21 So thank you. 20:25 You know, bring it back also to the sandbox. 20:31 If you were on a board, I work a lot in setting up first advisory boards as the company grows, they're going to bring in another series A, they're setting up their board of directors. 20:49 If you were on a board today in the current market context that you introduced us to, what would be some of the topics that you think should be front and center in those boards, Anna? Yeah, I think today it's we're hoping that things seem to have stabilized, right? But I think one of the most critical things 21:19 And I learned this more so as a CEO, a company with 150 employees. So there's a lot of personnel challenges and so forth is really getting together a strategic plan is whether it's three years, you know, at least at a minimum to look at and make sure that all of management is on board. 21:48 It can't just be the founder saying, OK, this is my strategy, is to get input from the key employees, is to make sure that that is one put together and has projections in there. And that it's revisited at least on every six months, if not earlier, where you have real actionable items. 22:16 It's especially if you're in a very competitive market in terms of what are you gonna do to deliver on those projections on those numbers and how is everybody in the team going to contribute to that? So you have to have people that have responsibilities in order to execute on that plan. I think that's critical. I know that 22:44 Operationally, when I was COO, there were certain things that we could do to increase profitability and to increase market share. But without a strategic plan, I think that is one of the most critical things that a board, being on a board that you need to make sure that that is being implemented in supporting the management team to, you know, give your input on 23:14 you know, does this make sense? Are you really looking at the competition correctly? You know, are these, is this realistic in terms of your projections? Just being that sounding board, I think is really critical. You know, as an investment banker, I would, you know, I am qualified to sit on audit committees as an SEC expert. I would definitely think that you would want somebody who was really looking at those numbers and the cashflow. 23:44 especially for capital intensive businesses in this environment to make sure that you have funding that you're not going to run out of cash. Looking at that is very critical. So I think, you know, those are just the two things that come to mind to me, it's the strategic plan, and then also just making sure somebody's really looking at your cash flow. 24:14 And what would happen if something in a down market to run that case, I think is really critical, which is part of the strategic plan. And I would add, based on your experience of 25 years and in different environments, investment bank and private equity and actually as an operator, I think the power of a good corporate board 24:44 is beyond the strategic plan is really pushing the management team CEO to think about options. Right. So it's...
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Shashi Triphati: Design Driven Life
02/08/2024
Shashi Triphati: Design Driven Life
On this episode of The Founder's Sandbox, Brenda speaks with Shashi Triphati. They speak about the purposeful "design driven life", Shashi's personal struggles as an immigrant to the US, the growth and recognition as CIO and as entrepreneur. Learn more about his fund nurture.ventures and their work at TIE SoCal. Shashi is a serial entrepreneur, investor, board member and advisor to several companies. His focus areas have been in technology, and healthcare. He has deep experience in healthcare working across hospital, clinics, health plans and life-sciences. He has been awarded CIO 100 by CIO Magazine, Best Patient Engagement Strategy and Medical Design Excellence awards. He is a founder of nuture.ventures an early stage venture fund which focuses on a broad range of areas including health technology, cyber security, applied artificial intelligence & customer experience. You can find out more about Shashi at: Linked IN Other resources on this episode include: TiE SoCal Show transcription 00:04 Welcome back to the Founders Sandbox. I am Brenda McCabe, your host. The Founders Sandbox is now in its second season. It's a monthly podcast that reaches entrepreneurs and business owners who learn about 00:31 building resilient, scalable, and sustainable businesses with great corporate governance. My mission with the Founder Sandbox is to assist entrepreneurs and some entrepreneurs in building those scalable, well-governed, and resilient businesses. And guests that come to the podcast are either founders, business owners, corporate directors, VCs, professional service providers, who like me want to use the power of the enterprise. 01:01 be it small, medium or large, to create change for a better world. Through storytelling with each one of my guests on topics that while discovering their own journey, we're gonna touch upon resilience, on purpose driven enterprises and sustainable growth. My goal is to provide a fun sandbox environment where we can equip one startup founder at a time to build that better world through great corporate governance. 01:30 Today I'm absolutely delighted to have as my guest, Shashi Tripathi. Thank you Shashi for joining me today. Thank you, Brenda. Good morning. We were just saying that we're not morning people, but we'll do anything to help founders. Yes. Yes, so Shashi's joining the podcast today as founder of Nurture Ventures and board member of the chapter of the TIE SoCal organization. 01:59 He could speak to many, many things, but today we're going to hone in on actually purpose-driven design of life. Sashi has an incredible background. He's a serial entrepreneur. He's an investor, board member, and advisor to several companies. His focus areas have been in technology, healthcare. He has deep experience in healthcare. 02:27 working across the entire spectrum just blew me away, starting with actually med tech, then to move to hospitals, health plans. And he has been awarded CIO 100 by CIO magazine, best patient engagement strategy, and medical design excellence awards. So it's truly an honor 02:56 and incredible breadth as well as depth within the healthcare industry. So again, thank you. Thank you, Brenda. I appreciate it. You know, our paths crossed recently, we joined the SoCal, the TiE SoCals board, and we're in for a fun two years. You possess again, a unique broad and 03:22 deep understanding of the healthcare system in the United States. You worked primarily at, or when you first came to the United States in supply chain management, really addressing the large waste issue in the medical sector. You then went on to the hospital side, the payer side, and finally you ventured out and became an entrepreneur and founder where you built and sold 03:51 Follow My Health, which was a mobile enterprise patient engagement platform that connects millions of patients to their doctor in a whole new way. I think you said at one time you're touching over 20 million lives. Wow. Well, it's challenging to do you justice in this 40 minute podcast. Let me begin by thanking you again. And then again, I was blown away by your breadth and depth. And I am an avid reader. I Love 04:19 Ralph Waldo Emerson. And I thought of this quote that to describe your background, and you're going to share here with my guests today. "To laugh often and much, to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children, to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends, to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others, to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, 04:49 or a redeemed social condition, (I get all teared up) to know even when life has breathed easier because you live, this is to have succeeded. " So thank you again for joining me. How would you like, would you like to share your arrival to the US in 1999? As an immigrant, how did that inform your entrepreneurship journey? So first of all, Brenda, thank you. What an honor to be here with you, Brenda. You yourself. 05:19 are amazingly talented. And I was getting goosebumps by the way, when you were sharing that poem from Ralph, making the world or society a bit better. What a world that is, a bit better. So, coming back to your question, I grew up in India. I did my masters from IIT Bombay. 05:48 Immediately after that, I got a job through a company called I2 Technologies and I got to headquarters in Dallas. And I always had dreamed to come to US by the way. Here I am, my dream is getting fulfilled. I get a flight, land in Dallas Fort Worth airport and my manager then was supposed to pick me up and he forgot. 06:16 And I'm a 23 year old boy, afraid, nervous, excited internally, but now I'm nervous. What do I do? I had no choice, but just to wait at the airport. And after two and a half hours, he came and he took me to the apartment. Dallas, as we all know, is a big city and it's hard to walk. 06:46 I didn't have car, didn't have credit card. Many nights, Brenda, I had only bread and milk as my dinner. And so my company gave a month for this apartment and then after I have to find an apartment, no one will give me apartment. Because I have no credit history. So I went to a bank. 07:15 I gave the bank $500 as a restricted deposit, meaning I cannot spend more than $500 to build my history. Right. Slowly, I built my history. I didn't have cell phone. And I did not even know the proper English in the US. So I took a course on accent reduction. 07:42 I remember sitting in front of CNN and Fox. And in those days, we didn't have all this gadgets we have today. So I had a thick accent and I will pause and see the word. Wow. So to learn in a hard way about adjusting in US culture and US society. But in some ways, I'm glad it happened to me. Because that made me resilient. 08:12 and a strong person. And where I am today, I'm not afraid. And because I've seen the low, what is the lowest I can go, I didn't have a home. I didn't have food. And so it always has instilled in me to fight for it. And things are only going to look upwards. And I think you use the word perseverance and resilience, just one. 08:42 step at a time and in a very intentional way, Shashi. I mean, just going in, you know, when I came back, there was, I didn't have credit history. I was living in Europe. So it is the way, it's a difficult market to crack. And so that was 25 years ago. So what made you, what you have a huge passion for healthcare as I've shared with my listeners, starting with life science/med tech and 09:10 going into the hospitals and actually into the payers. It's quite extraordinary. What underlies this passion for healthcare? Thank you, Brenda. I mean, if I look back my childhood, my mom, my dad, and even at the childhood, Brenda, I always had passion to create things. Okay. And I would get immense pleasure if what I have created is used by someone. 09:40 And that someone can be a small group, it doesn't need to be big. So that at the childhood level. So when I came here to do my supply chain projects, I got into a company called Medtronic, it's a large medical device company. And then I got a really big exposure to healthcare, learned a lot, found that in US, we spend $2.3 trillion total per year. Out of that, 10:10 approximately $800 billion is waste. B. B, not M, is B. And this is per year, this is not one time. And in a very small way, I felt the products or solutions we are creating or designing, if we can make even a small difference in reducing that waste while making an impact to the human life. 10:40 why not? And that really solidified my career, my passion to remain in healthcare. And if I wanted to be in healthcare, I wanted to know the details of it and all the angles of healthcare. Right. So while working for Medtronic, I got a lot of exposure to hospitals and clinics. 11:04 So I felt if we are selling our product and services to hospital and clinic, I wanna work inside the hospital and clinic. And how did that go? So it went really well. So I joined a group called Facey Medical, which is part of Providence Health and Services and learned a lot by the way, how a patient operates, what's really important to the patient, what is really important to hospital. And 11:33 That gave me a lot of exposure and also the appreciation for patient care, by the way. Okay. Because at the end of day, anything we do in healthcare is really important to how it's impacting to the patient's care. Absolutely. Healthcare is the only industry Brenda, where if you improve the quality, you reduce the cost, that's the only industry. If you go in that again, say that again. That's very important. 12:01 If you go in hotel, for example, if you buy a five star, you pay more. Am I right? That's right. But in healthcare, you improve the quality. The cost goes down. That's the only industry by the way. It's very fascinating. So learn a lot about the wider side, which is the hospital clinic. And then I said, for all this, that someone is paying and yes, patients pay the portion in The US. 12:28 but the health plans are the one which are paying majority of our US healthcare cost. So I said, I need to go to the work for the health plan. And crack the code for CPT codes and all that. Exactly, ICD and CPT and claims. So I went to work for a company called New Century Health and there I learned a lot about risk contracts and how we manage the provider, what is really important to the claims. 12:58 how we do the utilization management. So I learned a lot about how the payment system in US healthcare works. So, and then of course the company Follow My Health, I got a lot of exposure about patient side. Right. Because at the end, whatever we are doing, either from life sciences or hospital clinic or health plan. 13:28 It's really impacting the patient in the end. So I feel privileged and somewhat lucky, to work in all the facets of health care systems. Affecting patients' lives one by one. Perhaps the most far removed is that of payers. And that was your last venture. And by creating Follow My Health, you create a new life. 13:55 removed a bit of that friction, I imagine, for patients and their providers. Right. Yep. Excellent. So when did you have time to do Follow My Health? If you're busy working in these large companies, cracking the code, what changed in your life, if anything, to abandon the helm? 14:21 of, you know, working in enterprises to create companies to then become a founder of a venture fund. So walk us through those purposeful decisions that help you design your life. Yeah. So as we look, as I shared with you that I love creating product. Okay. And I love 14:47 the product which we are creating is making a difference in human lives. So when I was the CIO at Springfield Clinic, working with Jim Hewitt, we created this platform back in 2011. And the idea was to make it simple to every stakeholder, to the physicians who are using it, to the patients who are going to be using it. 15:17 and if you make it simple and useful to the stakeholder, money will come. Um, and I remember a story, uh, when I was CIO at a Springfield clinic, uh, I used to walk around and, um, I would sometimes talk to the patient and I talked to a patient who was elderly, probably early seventies or maybe even late eighties, uh, uh, late seventies. Um, 15:46 And I asked him, what do you like about us? And he said, oh, I love this new product you guys have launched, Patient Portal. I said, what do you like about it? And he said, when I didn't have this, I go home and my wife will ask me what happened to you at the doctor's office. And I didn't remember all that and she would get mad. Now I've given my user ID and password to her and she knows everything about what happened. So I don't have to memorize it. So that probably gave you goosebumps as well. 16:15 Right. So these are the stories which give me extra energy to move forward. Same concept in merlin.net and the patient who has pacemaker or ICD is implanted. Okay. In those days they had to go see their cardiologist every quarter. Okay. So we felt was why don't we create external device. 16:44 which can communicate to the implanted device, takes the data, and then over the internet has that data and we build the whole web application for cardiologists and electrophysiologists to monitor the patient. So now patient can be anywhere in the world and they can be monitored. My sister-in-law, by the way, has that product and she often appreciate how beneficial 17:13 Merlin.net is because she can go travel anywhere in the world, not worry about her appointment with cardiologists and she is being followed. So these are the moments which makes me propel, gives me extra energy to keep pursuing and creating the products and services which makes a difference in human lives. And what was the, I guess, 17:41 point in which you decided to abandon those 16 and 17 hour days and, and you'd exited a few companies. You know, what led you to create nurture ventures and can you walk us through the thesis and does it go back to your passion? Right? Yep. So it always goes back to my passion, which is creating product and helping society and balancing life. 18:10 in the process. So I got married. I have two kids, my daughter is 13. My son,, he just turned seven actually on the weekend. We had a party. And we all know, by the way, entrepreneurship life is very hard. Yes. People see the success, they don't see what has happened behind the scene. Yes. 18:39 And for any entrepreneur, I mean, yes, there are some exceptions, but I would say majority of the entrepreneur, they work very hard. Um, I would say 16, 17 hours, um, per day is this hard. And so I have kids now and I have to balance my life. Um, but yet I still wanted to achieve my dreams and be associated with the entrepreneurs. 19:06 why don't I start investing? And I started very small by the way Brenda. My goal was not to go big really. But again, it goes back to simplicity and not with the goal of making money. So I designed my investment very, very LP friendly. LP is a partner who are investing with me into the companies. And because of that simplicity, 19:35 And also just happened to be, I would call it luck. Okay. I got lucky and we got an exit, um, carbon card, which gave us, uh, seven times return in 11 months, but it did happen to us and, uh, some of my LP got money back in their bank, um, so it put our name on pitch book and crunch base and 20:04 So we started growing. So we have now 45 limited partners. We have invested in total 31 companies now. We have a fund, we have an SPV. So it has been grown more than I expected. And I'm really happy because now again, I go back, I follow my passion about creating products and services. 20:34 which are helping society grow. And I'm doing not directly but indirectly because when we are supporting the founders and they are growing and their product and services are being used in society to make a difference, I feel privileged. Many of our portfolio companies, by the way, started small, $40,000 ARR per year. Now, they are six million ARR just in two years. 21:03 Wow. Happiness that we were a small part in making a difference in growing that company and in return, they are making a difference into the society. So that's how I got into this world. I love it, actually. And is the thesis only around healthcare technology companies or is it broader than healthcare? Your passion. So we started healthcare. But in order to make a difference. 21:31 You have to also see what is other things which are impacting and growing. And part of our early thesis was artificial intelligence, software as a service, and financial technologies in addition to healthcare are growing very rapidly and much needed into society and making a difference in human lives. So those are part of our thesis to invest in those four areas. 22:01 artificial intelligence, software as a service, healthcare, and fintech. Excellent. Now, you are also a member of the Angel Capital Association, ACA, and we recruited you from TIE SoCal to join our chapter in SoCal. You also have become a board member for the 2024-2025. 22:29 period, we both have joined the board after the effusive leadership of Gaurav Kumar. 22:38 What would you, I'm going to describe a little bit, TIE, as a nonprofit organization for my listeners. And then I'll get to the question of what your contributions are going to be and how it goes back to your passion. So the Indus Entrepreneurs, TIE T-I-E, was founded in 1992 in Silicon Valley by a group of successful entrepreneurs with roots in the Indus region with a mission to foster entrepreneurship. 23:07 globally through funding, mentoring, networking, and education. Today, the TIE ecosystem comprises over 25,000 startups and 15,000 members across 58 chapters in 12 countries. Within TIE, there is an angels organization for profit. It started in 2010, also in Silicon Valley, and has moved into another eight to 10 chapters. 23:36 representing groups of angel investors. And they're in actually 12 cities with over 3,000 accredited investors. Last year in PitchBook, actually TIE SoCal was among the top 10 in the number of companies that we had invested in. So what's it gonna be like with your presence on the board? And what have you been tasked to do, Shashi? 24:05 My God, what an incredible honor to join this group as you described how powerful the TIE is, but more than power, the impact it continues to make in society across those 50 chapters. As you pointed out, Gaurav Kumar, such a strong leader, and I'm beyond privileged to work with you and others 24:35 to take TIE SoCal to the new heights. Part of TIE SoCal, I have been tasked to lead what we call it TIE Angel Program. Okay. And it basically has three areas within the Angel side. Bring the companies to our members. Okay. 25:06 So they can choose to invest into those companies. The second vertical is we do events very focused on investment, venture capital, or angel investing. And third is having a fund which relates to the first one and take the fund and go invest into the companies. 25:35 catering the entrepreneurship journey and entrepreneurship society. Part of this, by the way, Brenda, we are hosting an event on February 12th, which is Monday, Hyatt at Long Beach, from 3.30 to 8.30. And it's a wonderful group of speakers which are coming and talking about venture capital 26:05 strategies and tactics. And then we have our flagship event, which is scheduled on Friday,...
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A sustainable business model in a sustainable market
02/01/2024
A sustainable business model in a sustainable market
On this episode of The Founder's Sandbox, Brenda speaks with Oscar Neyra, CEO and founder of Lisus Energy, about building a sustainable business model. Lisus is focused on identifying better sites to source materials for batteries. Oscar holds a Doctorate in Environmental Science and Engineering from UCLA, as well as a Master studies in Homeland Security from USC and Global Security from John Hopkins. Before starting LISUS, Oscar was a Research Associate at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He also founded an environmentalist group called GR, which has over 5,000 members. Here is a sample of what you will hear in this episode: types of teams in deep tech, challenges of entrepreneurship in the current enviroment and as an immigrant founder, and product market fit. To contact this week's guest, Oscar Neyra, or for more information follow the links below: Resources listed in this episode: Gene Pool Engineering for Entrepreneurs Show transcript: 00:04 Welcome back to the Founders Sandbox. The Founders Sandbox is a monthly podcast. I'm Brenda McCabe, your host. This was launched in September 2022. We're into our second season. And as I said, it's a monthly podcast. 00:33 that features entrepreneurs and business owners who learn and share about building resilient, scalable and sustainable businesses, all with great corporate governance. I have a very simple mission with this podcast. I want to assist the entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs to build scalable well governing resilient businesses. The podcast, the Founder Sandbox, is just an additional channel to 01:02 materials on my website, NextAct Advisors, and originally authored blog posts that you can find on LinkedIn. My guests are founders, business owners, corporate directors, and professional service firms who, like me, want to use the power of the enterprise, be it small, medium, or large, to create change for a better world. Through storytelling, each of my guests touches topics around resilience, purpose-driven enterprises, and sustainable growth. And my goal with this 01:31 monthly podcast is actually to equip one startup founder at a time to build a better world through great corporate governance. So today my guest is Oscar Neyra. Oscar is the CEO of Lisus, a venture-backed startup that is focusing on identifying better sites to source materials for batteries. And when I spoke with Oscar, we came up with the episode title 02:00 a sustainable business model and a sustainable market. So Oscar, thank you for joining me here in the Founder's Sandbox. Thank you so much, Brenda. It's my pleasure to be here. Let me give you some intro. Oskar holds a doctorate in environmental science and engineering from UCLA, as well as a master's studies in homeland security from USC and global security from Johns Hopkins. Before starting Lisus, Oskar was a research associate 02:28 at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. And he also founded an environmental group called GR, which has over 5,000 members. Oscar, my past that crossed at USC Viterbi Engineering Schools, Massey Entrepreneurship Prize Competition. About three years back, I was one of the judges on the panel in the pitch session. About a year later, Oscar asked me to join his advisor. 02:58 in corporate governance in lisus. And I'm sharing that here in my podcast as a full disclosure. And we have, we see each other frequently. And I thought as a first time founder with really deep technical and scientific knowledge and into your third year, you have a lot of stories that you could share here on the podcast. And I'm going to ask you, you know, I'm delighted you joined, but I'm going to ask you to start. 03:27 Just, you know, share how your life up till now, Oscar, has shaped your journey in entrepreneurship. Thank you so much, Brenda. Yeah, I think definitely entrepreneurship is a really interesting endeavor. You know, I don't come from a wealthy background. I come from a small town in Mexico. And all my life, I've been used to navigating against the current. 03:56 probably being the first member of my family to come to the US to study or to go to grad school. So I think entrepreneurship and this adventure resonates a lot with the path I've had in my life because it's a lot about being persistent and definitely going against the current and against 04:23 all the challenges that entrepreneurs like me face on a daily basis. Wow, thank you. It's always good to know the background of my guests. When you accepted to join me in the Founder Sandbox, I couldn't help. And you're technical scientists, right? PhD. Yeah, it took me back to an article I wrote some time back. It's called, When Spending Time in the Sandbox Isn't Fun Anymore. 04:52 and yet you can still play. So what I wrote is really about the teams. There are three types that I have discovered when working with technical founders. And we're gonna cut to the chase. I'm gonna ask Oscar in a minute what his perfect team is like. But in that blog post, I talk about technical scientific founding teams. Typically they come from a large enterprise. They excel at their craft as engineers, inventors. They have written patents, have worked at the bench for years. 05:22 And while their secret sauce has become a business, they don't have the skills and competencies in a technical or scientific founding team. They're insufficient to scale the business and they need time away from the sandbox and really working on the commercialization. And the second type of team is they've been there and done it. Founding teams, maybe it's their first or second exit. They've been there and done that. They may have the skills and competencies acquired at a large enterprise. 05:52 or a family-owned business, maybe they've been part of a startup, or they are bringing to life the idea of a patented product. Again, we're talking about scientific founders. And time in the sandbox, we're always gonna go back to the sandbox, was never an issue because they had access to abundant resources. Finally, a third type of team that I've been exposed to is the adult supervision. 06:16 And they are founders that have never worked for a large or medium sized enterprise with the processes, systems and operations that enable scaling a company. They've never hired or fired and they're many first. And they look around, say, isn't there an adult around that can help, can take the time to do those unnecessary things. So Oscar, of those three teams, you know, where would you place the licensed teams? And more importantly, you know, what does a perfect team? 06:47 mean to you and how have you, what makes a perfect team? Perfect, yeah. To the first question, I would say we're probably in the first definition, which is we come right from the lab. And before founding a startup, we definitely didn't know what was going to be. And of course, what are some of the things that you need to do? 07:15 in order to build a startup. I think something that has been really interesting to me is that in the lab, you are allowed to not know anything. And especially it's important kind of like to challenge every assumption that you make. Whereas when you're a founder and when you are building a startup, you are expected to have all the questions. So that is... 07:43 kind of one of the major differences that I've seen from the lab and from the startup world. So the ability to ask questions outside of the scientific realm, right? Exactly, yeah. Wow. Another thing that I think is very important is that, in my opinion, not knowing has a lot of value. And in a startup, unlike in a lab, it's better to not know. 08:12 because that is what opens many doors and what pushes the boundaries of what's possible. Wow. So the open sky. Exactly. That's my personal opinion. But yeah, I would say we are in the first box. Thank you. So what has been a major challenge in entrepreneurship? While building licensure into third year, what would you share as a major challenge? Perfect. Yeah. I can tell you 08:41 about the challenge and of course, coming back to your question about the Perfect Team. Yes, sorry. Yeah, I would say to the first question of the major challenge, definitely the landscape, when we started actually scaling with the company, it was when Silicon Valley Bank started to fall. So I remember we were in a meeting, we were in Menlo Park and then suddenly everybody starts texting and then we say, what is going on? 09:10 So we drive in front of the Silicon Valley Bank headquarters in Silicon Valley, and then we start seeing the people there. So I would say we were born out of a time of crisis, and that's what has made us stronger. But the major challenge is definitely the landscape right now. And most importantly, I would say the... 09:40 higher kind of a the higher kind of bar that you are subject to as an entrepreneur because in these times only the best ones thrive. So it's definitely a really fun time to be in and really exciting but also challenging. Thank you. Yeah. So let's go back. Do you have the perfect team to address and thrive in this and these challenging times? I yeah. 10:09 I like to think kind of like out of the box. Yes. As a technical founder and leading a deep tech startup, I see many companies that try to put together teams that are mostly PhDs with a lot of experience, post-docs, former professors, that kind of profiles. But in my view, the biggest challenge of those kinds of teams is that you get, as you advance in life, you get a little bit more 10:39 skeptical of what can be done. So to me the ideal team is similar to what we put together in license which is a combination of a lot of experience with a lot of innovation and a lot of youth. And this goes to a story that I really like from an article that is really 11:09 When one investor funds a company, a really big deep tech company, and the investor as the company, how was the team integrated? And the founder says, okay, like we have the best from this part, the best from this part, the best scientists in the world. And he asked the founder 11:39 And how many of those are under 35? And he says, wait, none. Yeah. And I think that's really interesting because the investor ends up saying, okay, to me, a diverse gen pool needs to have a combination of this kind of experience and also the value of, understanding the value of bringing, you know, people in their 20s that are right side of school that have all the energy in the world. And that don't necessarily know what they are getting into. 12:08 To me, that is the perfect thing. And I can think of a couple of examples of these kinds of things. Actually, you did have some interns during a period of time, right? Postdocs, are they working on the docs from USC or UCLA? Exactly, yeah. Right? Yeah, correct. We had some teammates. That's what I realized, because we have, as teammates, very experienced people. 12:37 And then you see the energy that the interns bring, the perspectives, the desire to push these boundaries. So that's what I love about it. And if you see one company that I really like, that right now is really famous in Los Angeles and that is like thriving, is Rabbit. Before Rabbit started to get hot as it is getting right now once they presented. 13:07 one of their hardware. I was looking at this company in their crunch base profile, and I look at the team and it was really interesting to me that when I saw the team, I saw that their CTO is like 20 years. I think he was part of Carnegie Mellon. He graduated from Carnegie Mellon and he right after became the CTO of this company. And when I saw that, I thought to myself, okay, this is the perfect CTO for this kind of company. 13:37 Yes. So pushing the boundaries, right? Digital natives and representing that generation. That's fascinating. Exactly. And of course, having adult supervision. Right. So a combination. Exactly. Yeah. Right. So you're into the third year. Market wins, they changed in March of last year, as you alluded to with the... 14:06 SVB and First Republic Bank debacle, right? With that background, have you continued to evolve the product market fit because of the market downwinds or what have you done with the product market fit? Yeah, that's a great question. Has it evolved? Yeah. I would say, you know, we need to think in terms of our customers, but also we need to think in terms of our times. Yeah. 14:36 2021, I would say there was a big focus on having the best technology at any cost and more in delaying, for example, revenue, profit, good unit economics. Now that the market has shifted, not only on the investment side, but also on the customer side, the focus is more on... 15:05 the focus of our products is more in generating revenue faster and in building a business that is more real and that can thrive regardless of the market conditions. So yeah, I would say that has been the major change. And in this search for the product market fit, we've realized that it's also important to focus to be super cash efficient. 15:34 to build instead of experimenting with three, four products, it's better to experiment with one product and to testing, but testing with a margin of safety rather than just testing every single perspective. Can you, for the benefit of my listeners that are not deep tech founders, walk us through actually the product in its current state 16:04 how are you creating the ability to identify sites that have better resources, more efficient? So what's the actual tech stack and how are you able to then think about monetizing that? Okay. That is a great question. So we have a product called Alchemist. It's a mineral exploration tool where we integrate remote sensing capabilities and state of the art artificial intelligence algorithms. 16:34 in order to prospect the areas that have potential for critical minerals. So we use remote sensing in a non-invasive way so we can explore for these minerals. So the way we've integrated a platform is in two components. One of them is the platform itself, which is what the customer interacts with. And the other thing, the other component is... 17:02 the what we call the license labs, which is essentially a very sophisticated platform that in the backend allows for the exploration and integration of AI capabilities. So that's the way we've structured it. I think with this advance that has been going on with AI and remote sensing capabilities, I think it's gonna get very exciting in the next few years. 17:32 So we love it. In terms of monetization, definitely. We've thought of some interesting approaches to it. Excellent. So Oscar, in continuation of my question around challenges of an entrepreneur, would you add any challenges as being an immigrant founder? Yeah, Brenda, that's a great question. I do think. 17:59 as an immigrant founder, you get a different perspective and probably you also lived it when you were in Spain. Yes. But one of the major things is figuring out how to build actually a business from scratch in a completely different legal system in a completely different landscape and building a network out of scratch too. Because you come from, in my case, I come from a university that like... 18:28 where I don't have any connections here. And then it's important to learn how to knock doors and how to search for opportunities out of zero. That is one of the major challenges. The other one is culturally, and I've seen it not only as myself, but also from friends that come from Australia, that come from India, that come from Japan. 18:55 that you see that there are some things that you need to be familiar with so that you can make sure to do the things in a diplomatic way. Okay. So I think that's also important. And that's those are the things that people don't tell you about. And the third one is definitely the immigration system, which is, you know, when you're trying to start a company here, you don't even know 19:24 like whether you're going to be able to do it, if you're like allowed, if you can sell something because it can be defined as work. So early in the beginnings of Lisus, that was our major concern. It took us a while to figure it out, to do the green card application, things like that. And once like you solve it, you are like in an even field. But yes, an immigrant, those are things 19:54 a long time and that we have in the back of our mind all the time. I've seen it with many, many founders and it's always a funny to see that we share the same challenges. Thank you for sharing. So, you know, the founders podcast is not solely around deep tech. So I have a lot of listeners that are business owners or founders in non deep tech. So could you describe 20:24 the business model of lysis. You talk about full stack, right? Business model. And I really would like you to get into the weeds to provide some more context of what is the product and how is it scaled and how do you monetize it? Definitely. Yeah, we're product Alchemist. It's a mineral exploration product that we use to search for critical minerals 20:54 And our business model is a full stack play. And essentially this means that we are not using our software and selling it by providing services. Rather we are using it as a tool or as leverage so that we can generate revenue in a faster way. To give you kind of like a better explanation or like a more in depth perspective on the full stack business model. 21:24 I would say when there is a transition or a big opportunity such as the one we are living now, it could be the energy transition where you are living this shift to the electric vehicle. So it could be a long time ago when we transitioned to the World Wide Web or when we started using the cell phone. All of these changes. 21:54 are defined by two waves. You have the first wave where there is a companies that try to solve and to actually serve a market. And there are companies that serve the companies that are trying to serve that market. So full stack means that you are, instead of being a service provider in a market, you're actually the solution provider. In the case, for example, of... 22:23 vehicle electrification should be the most common. There are companies that at the beginning, they started to focus on actually selling vehicles and electrifying. And there were after that, the second wave, a lot of companies that were trying to serve the market of electric vehicles through battery analytics, through efficiency, through different materials, but the big opportunity 22:51 in our view was actually in being the one providing the product. So what we're doing at Lysus is being full stack and becoming a materials company since the beginning. Yes, we have an amazing platform, Alchemist, and we use it to partner strategically with the miners, but we see a lot more value and as a company in being the actual solver of the problem and being the actual supplier of 23:20 the materials rather than just serving miners and serving companies that are focused on providing materials for batteries. That's why we think it's really an interesting business model and most importantly because full-stack businesses have proven in history to provide much better opportunities for revenue. Let's say 23:48 Some examples are Flexport, for example, SpaceX, companies that since the beginning, they tried to solve the problem rather than just being a service provider. Excellent. I also am thinking of Atlassian. They created quite a bit of work tools for developers of code. 24:17 Jira is one of their products, but they built, right? So Last scene is one of the companies, it's out of Australia,...
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Matthew Lopez: General Counsel Solutions to Scaling Startups
01/04/2024
Matthew Lopez: General Counsel Solutions to Scaling Startups
Listen to the latest episode of "The Founder's Sandbox", where Brenda tackles the topic of starting discussions with your clients on setting up the board. Brenda speaks with Matthew Lopez, managing director of Wolf and Snow, about board creation. Matthew Lopez is the Managing Director of Wolf and Snow, the first national firm providing fractional General Counsel services to founders. After years as in house counsel, Matthew wanted to serve more than one client at a time. He started the firm over 3 years ago and began with 3 clients and now serves from the practice of Wolf and Snow 30-40 clients spanning the US and international with a full-service legal services including paralegal and services that include connections to potential clients, partners, investors and talent. Wolf and Snow works with companies with a minimum of $1 mn in recurring revenue. Other Resources mentioned in this podcast: Learn more about Matthew Lopez, and Wolf and Snow: Linkedin: Episode Transcription 00:04 Welcome back to the Founder's Sandbox. The Founder's Sandbox is a podcast now in its second season. The monthly podcast reaches entrepreneurs and business owners. 00:33 professional service providers who learn and share about building resilient, scalable, and sustainable businesses with great corporate governance. I'm Brenda McCabe, your host on the Founder's Sandbox. My mission when working with founders is very simple. I want to assist the entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs in building scalable, well-governed, and resilient businesses. On the Founder's Sandbox podcast. 01:02 I invite guests who are also founders, business owners, and corporate directors and professional service providers who like me want to use the power of the small, medium, or even large enterprise to create change for a better world. Each of my guests tells a story that include topics around resilience, purpose-driven, enterprises, and sustainable growth. 01:30 And my goal with the Founder Sandbox is to provide a fun sandbox environment where we can equip one startup founder at a time to build a better world through great corporate governance. Today, my guest is Matthew Lopez. He's Managing Director at Wolf & Snow. And Matthew and I are going to talk about creative and innovative 01:58 General Counsel Solutions to Scaling Startups. Thank you, Matthew, for joining me today. I'm happy to be here. Thank you for having me, Brenda. And I'm gonna call you Matthew because we've always called each other. I don't like short names. I like Matthews. So Matthew Lopez is creative to the extent that not only is he an entrepreneur, but he provides fractional general counsel services. 02:28 and connections to potential clients, partners, investors, and talent to founders with over $1 million in recurring revenue. You know, when I first started working, we find each other in many events where there are startup companies, we found that we both like to work on scaling companies. 02:57 And we'll talk a bit more in this podcast today. We know also, Matthew, that there's not one recipe to scale a company, is there? No, there's, in fact, I think that you actually have to find your unique answer to how you're gonna scale your company, because if you're taking a playbook from someone else, it's not gonna fit you perfectly. It doesn't mean that you can't look at other people's playbooks. 03:24 to be able to kind of be like, hey, I want to take a little bit from over here, some of this and take inspiration from stuff. But if you're just copying other people's playbooks, it's probably not going to end as well as you think it's going to. Super. And you know, you've been an in-house counsel for most of your career. And it was about three years ago that you struck out on your own and you founded your firm. 03:53 which is very creative, right? Offering fractional general counsel services to, again, startups that are over $1 million in recurring revenues. So at any one time, you have 30 to 40 customers, US-based and international. So without, you know, taking, dismeriting your go-to-market strategy, I'd like you to share. 04:22 with my listeners how you also became creative and created your own company. Yeah. So it kind of started off with, I kind of got burnt out doing one company. And so I decided, Hey, I wanted to work with like three to five companies, uh, three to five quickly turned into like 10 and I had to hire someone to help me with it. And I realized that I really liked. 04:47 the fractional work. I really enjoyed being able to help companies at that earlier stage and be able to help scale them. And eventually it started to turn into more. And now we're at 30 to 40 and we've scaled up to being the first fractional legal department in the United States. So we actually plug into these companies from GC all the way down to paralegals, clerical staff. And we just added on HR services. 05:15 as something that we're handling because it's one of those things, it's a progression. You listen to your clients and you start, like they told me what they wanted and we started building the things that they wanted. And yeah, we've come up, it's not like I planned on trading this firm when I first started, it just naturally evolved. And I think that's what a lot of startups need to do is they need to listen to their customers and build what their customers want. 05:45 and be able to service them properly. Excellent. So I'm very happy that you're going to talk about how Wolf & Snow works in the boardroom, right? Of some of your clients. And you know, we are coming to the end of 2023. Many of us are taking stock of our year and preparing for 2024. And you offered to kind of share your best practices and what you're finding. 06:14 in terms of setting up a fiduciary board. But before I get there, I did want to share with the listeners that on my website, Next Act Advisors, I do publish quite a bit of the blogs that I've written over the years and the work that I do. While I'm not general counsel, I am a corporate board member. And I wrote a piece called the Strategic Board Formation. 06:44 key steps for startup growth. And I was so pleased when Matthew agreed to be a guest to actually get into the nuts and bolts of starting a corporate board, a fiduciary board. So when do you, Matthew, start a discussion with one of your clients on, hey, it's about time to set up a fiduciary corporate board? So every company actually has a fiduciary board. 07:13 The minute you form a company, you actually, whoever's the owner of the company is the fiduciary board member. So we always set up the board to begin with. It's usually the CEO of the company or whoever that is as the original board member. The question is, when do you add to that board? When do you actually do something that is expanding it to bring in people? And I like to try and talk to my startups as early as possible. 07:43 about this. And it's about identifying and building relationships with people they might want to put on that board. Because the worst thing you can do as a founder is bring someone on that you don't have a relationship with, you don't have that trust with. Because what's going to end up happening is when you reach your series A, 08:10 the lead investor is going to want a board seat. And so you're hitting up, that's your time. You have until your series A just form your board. And you don't generally want to do it too soon because it's too young. It doesn't make sense at that stage besides like the founders being on the board. And it's between... 08:36 Like your seed and your series A, that that's really the time you got to start figuring that out. And you need to start identifying people you trust, people that are strategic, that can help you make introductions that are going to be valuable on your board, that are going to bring gravitas to your board. Like, so it's thinking about like, there's multiple factors, there's multiple reasons to have someone on your board. And that comes down to trust, it comes down to 09:06 the ability, the helping ability and bringing a huge name onto your board is also a great reason. But again, I like to really emphasize it's that trust piece. If you don't have trust with that person, because the whole point of this is to create your board to kind of stack it. So that way when you start bringing on investors, your investors don't overrun your board. And so generally I try and tell my startups, 09:34 before you get to your series A, you want to have a board of four people. Okay. Because you always want an odd number. And so you're going to want to get to four because when you do your series A, you're only going to want to give up one board seat. So that way you get to your five. So that's how I try and, I try and advise them is you prep for the odd number, like you prep for that odd number. 10:04 because then it makes sense, like you can then, because your investors might want two seats, but if you have an even board, you're gonna be like, no, we really want an odd number. So if they want two, well, then it gives you leverage to add a fifth person onto it. And I would highly recommend pushing back against any investor that wants to have two board seats. 10:34 at that early stage. Unless you have two VCs leading your round, then it might make sense. But again, if you're at your Series A and you're at seven board seats, your board is going to get out of hand by the time you get to your C or your D round. Right. Because all of a sudden... 11:01 it gets you're gonna have a huge board. And that's a lot of people to personalities that you got to maintain and be able to do these things. And it also comes like, as you've probably talked about before is your VCs that you're picking to be on your board, you have to be very careful about them as well. So how would you suggest my own experiences, advisory boards, right? They're not fiduciary. Is that a good in your experience? Is that a good 11:31 hunting ground for potentially those trusted relationships. Or are there, I'm certain there are other avenues, but share a bit how the advisory board, how it's composed, how it's remunerated as well, all right? Kind of as a preface before the fiduciary board. I completely agree with you that your advisory board is where you probably are gonna be looking for 11:58 your board seats and moving people from a advisory position to a fiduciary position. It also might be people in your industry that you might want to go after, people that are CEOs in other companies, other like name people that you might not, that you've maybe you're going to the same events and you're seeing them there and you're developing that relationship and they'll help you out. They'll make introductions for you. But 12:27 They're not necessarily, you don't have a formal advisory relationship with them. That's the other place I generally tell my startups to look. But those are two of the best places that you're gonna wanna look for someone to move up. When you're talking about advisory boards, I like to tell my founders that you can never have too big of an advisory board. 12:56 when it comes to this, but it depends on there's two different types of advisors that are generally that you have. One are the people that you want to have a relationship with, that you're doing regular meetings with, that you are, that you're giving equity based on just those meetings, not based on performance. So 13:24 Non-performance based advisors are very trusted people that you know are going to, that have a bunch of knowledge that you want to be able to pick their brain about. You want to be like, Hey, like I'm thinking about doing X. What do you like, can you let, let's talk through this. Exactly. So that is one type of advisor. It's non-performance based in my opinion. It's 13:53 you've already, they have so much knowledge that you're just doing meetings with. And the second type of board advisor or the advisory group that you have is performance based. It's, Hey, you're going to make X. If you do this introduction, I will give you some shares. If you like help me find clients, or if you help me raise money, if you, there's so many different things that you need access to in this world. 14:23 as a founder. And so I generally say that second group, you can never have too many people in there because you never know who's going to be able to open a door for you. And it, there's really key ways that you want to draft those agreements to cap your, how much equity someone's going to be able to earn in those, unless it's like, 14:49 customers or it leads to a direct customer or it's referral like a referral agreement that you're giving them where it's like Hey, if you introduce me to a customer, I'm happy to give you like 5% of those sales for that first year those are the type of advisory roles that I Tell my clients sign as many of those as you can like give them out like they're candy Because guess what? It's all performance-based if they don't bring it if they don't bring something in 15:20 didn't cost you anything besides signing the agreement. Yeah. So back to the agreements themselves. So in my experience with advisory of the performance type, I have found. Helpful to have a term limit. Yes. You should hear they need to show up. They need to be delivering and then it can be renegotiated, but which is that I'd like you to speak a little bit to term limits and how. 15:47 Because it's, and the actual agreement itself, have a cap. So I've generally done, there's a couple of things. One, I completely agree with you on the cap on the term limit. Two years is the general basis for an advisor. It's the standard kind of procedure that is in the industry. So I highly recommend that you have a term limit in there. That's point none. The other unique clause that I put in my advisor agreements 16:16 If you don't perform for a certain period of months, the agreement auto terminates. Wow. Okay. Because this is where we get in, especially in the first category, where there's not like, hey, like it's more of, I'm gonna rely on you to have conversations and do X, Y, and Z services for us. 16:42 And so we put into, I put into my agreements that if we don't use your services or you don't perform the services within like a two month or three month chunk, we auto terminate because I've just, I've had so many founders come to me and be like, Oh, I signed this agreement a while ago. I was hoping that they would be a good advisor and then they never did anything. And now I have to go deal with that advisor and be like, Hey, like 17:10 trying to fall back that equity. And so this was just a way for me, like, because I don't talk to my founders like, hey, have you talked to this one? Have you talked to this one? I'm not, I'm not your mom. I'm not going to follow up. But if you tell me, hey, they're not performing, I'll terminate. But most founders don't do that until it's too late, until it's six months, a year down the line. And they've vested a bunch of equity at that point. And so this is just one of those things 17:40 it's a safeguard that I put in place for my founders to make sure that if I don't hear anything bad, well, guess what, there's a way we can terminate and it auto terminated and I can then go back and send the termination letter for a previous date in existence. Okay, this is really timely because we are coming up to the end of the year, right? So from your firm, do is this a 18:08 busy time a year and kind of doing a fluff and fold of corporate governance agreements of your startups or do you, I don't know how active you are or some of your staff. I mean, do you do a kind of check in on those agreements? So usually end of the year, no one's doing business. Everyone's focused like from pretty 18:37 to like the first week of January is probably my slowest time of the year. Got it. And it's because everyone's either folk, like unless you're trying to meet quarter end goals where like we're doing, we're trying to push like an agreement or a sales contract through the door. I'm pretty dead for the most part. This year is a completely different story. I think this year I've been swamped all year and it's just, 19:07 I've hit a crescendo in December. Like everyone and their mother has come to me in December. But I think it's an anomaly, a nominally this year. And I really think that most people come to me in early January with what you're talking about. Okay, that's helpful. Like they're usually thinking, okay, how do I start the year clean? How do I move forward nicely? And so that's where I'm getting a lot of those 19:37 I like the call fluff and fold. Yeah. It's the fluff and fold at that point. Like, Hey, we need to think about these things. And that's where I'm usually getting those, those questions that, because they probably did think about it at the end of the year, but they're too busy with everything else that it gets pushed to January. Wow. There are a lot of gyms in this interview and thank you for taking time with me at this busy time. All right. It's an anomaly, but it's busy. Yeah. 20:08 You know, so I'm a founder. I've got my advisory board. I've got probably two, I have three directors on my board. It's typically in the bylaws there. How many meetings should I have a year? How do I run that meeting? Walk me through the mechanics. My question has an altering 20:38 This is very important. It's not gonna be a time sync if you listen to the words of Matthew, right? So it really depends. If you don't have any VCs, then I highly recommend you do one a year because it's required by Delaware law. All right. I think it's personally a waste of time. Because before you get a VC on your team, you can do... 21:07 The people that are on your board are probably the people you're doing day-to-day operations with. That you're having conversations with already about these things. You don't need a formal board meeting to do a lot of these things. You might need to do like board consents for stuff. And you can, there's two ways to do them. It's by having a meeting or by written consent. Got it. And so you can get a lot of your... 21:35 daily or your monthly like corporate governance things out of the way pretty quickly with written consents and doing one board meeting a year. And we generally recommend that you do it February, March. Got it. Because January, February, you kind of do your planning, you figure out where you're going to go, you do your board meeting, you get it out of the way, and you kind of set the tone for where you want to go for the year. Now, I'm going to push back a little bit. 22:04 Um, in my experience, and particularly in some enterprise SaaS companies preparing for SOC 2, right? You, it is required, our best practice quarterly board meetings, right? They could be written good sense, but there's, they SOC 2 certification in my recent experiences last year and it's, they're upping the ante. 22:31 is really looking at how many board meetings did you have? What was the meeting agenda? Right, what was that? Right, did the invite get sent out? So again, maybe I'm a bit more cautious, but I have seen that in my experience this year. So at least my experience is most companies are getting their SOC 2 compliance, either pretty close to their Series A or after their Series A. Because SOC 2 compliance is 23:01 a fairly costly process to do and requires enough people in your organization or hiring an outside person to help you through that process. So generally it's one of those things. I think that if there's a reason for you to have meetings like a SOC 2 compliance, let's say you're a fintech company and this is something that you did early on, then yes, make sure you're doing your board meetings. 23:29 What I guess my advice is if you don't have a reason, one meeting a year is all you need. There's always outlier cases of why you might need...
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Back to School with Brenda McCabe: Servant Leadership
09/12/2023
Back to School with Brenda McCabe: Servant Leadership
/episode/index/show/99e2d44c-dfe8-433f-8679-fe45e1d8a68d/id/28007490
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Resilience: Co-Creation, the Music Supporting the Storyline
08/31/2023
Resilience: Co-Creation, the Music Supporting the Storyline
Check out this month’s timely podcast with film composer and creator, Carlo Siliotto. We talk about co-creation; the music supporting the storyline. The of America that began on May 2, 2023 continues as of the date of the release of this podcast. You can listen into Carlo’s soundbites on AI in the creative process, the economics of residuals and governance as a committee member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. Carlo Siliotto is a Golden Globe nominated Film composer. Since 1984 he has written music for over a hundred projects, ranging from theatrical features to documentaries and television series. Carlo is a prolific composer of concert music.. Carlo currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California. See you in the Founders Sandbox! Transcription: 00:04 Welcome back to the Founder's Sandbox. I am Brenda McCabe. I own and operate a consulting firm, NextAct Advisors, where I have a simple mission. I like to assist entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs. 00:33 in building scalable, resilient, and well-governed businesses. The Founders Sandbox podcast is just an additional channel to feature founders, business owners, creators, corporate directors, and professional service firms who, like me, want to use the power of the private enterprise, small, medium, and large to create change for a better world. 01:02 Through storytelling with a guest on topics that include resilience, sustainable growth, and purpose-driven corporations or enterprises, my goal is to provide a fun environment to help each founder, one founder at a time, to build a better world through great corporate governance and creativity. Today, my guest is Carlos Idioto. 01:33 Carla and I are going to talk about resilience, the creator economy, co-creation with music supporting the storyline. So thank you, Carlo, for joining me in the Founder's Sandbox today. Thank you. So Carlo, among many things, is a Golden Globe nominated film composer. Since 1984, he has written music for over 100 projects. 02:02 ranging from theatrical features to documentaries and television series. Carlo is a prolific composer of concert music as well. Carlo currently lives and resides in Los Angeles where we met years ago. And he is a proud member of the Academy of Motion Pictures, Arts and Sciences. So thank you again for joining me in the Founder's Sandbox today. You're very welcome. Thank you for having me. 02:32 Harlow, you and I met during the pandemic and the peak. Your score and the documentary, Kassak produced by Oliver Stone, were both nominated for several awards, including the Asian Film Festival. I think it's really timely that you've agreed to be a guest on the Founder's Sandbox podcast, because we are living currently a writer's stride. 03:02 Right? The AMPTPs share of the residuals. There's a lot of discussion about the chat GBT, how it's affecting the creator economy. I think it's really timely that you agreed to speak to me here in the founder sandbox. So I would like you to start going back many, many years. Where did it all begin? You know, you and I've talked about your childhood in Italy. 03:32 and how I think it was at the age of six, you picked up your first violin. So how did it start? No, it started, I guess between six, seven and 10, something in that area. When my mother took me to a big art festival in the central Italy, in Spoleto, Umbria, 03:59 called the Two Worlds Festival, the Festival di Duemondi. This was a few hours from Rome. My mother would drive a little compact car and the concert she took me to was the Black Nativity performed by a band, a group of singers called the Voices of East Harlem. And it was the first time in my life 04:29 when I saw black people. I'd never seen black people in Italy at that time, you know, never ever. We arrived there, the main tenor, the principal voice of the group was a blind man, a big man, wearing a white robe, and they would perform the black nativity. So... 04:57 Oh, and I still remember some of the melodies because I got to get a record in that time. So I still remember some. So by the way, the concert, the end of the concert was like this. All the people on top of their own seats in this Baroque theater, clapping hands on time or rhythm with them. And it was kind of an epiphany to me, you know? 05:26 And on my way back to Rome in the car of my mother, she asked me, what you want for Christmas? You want a guitar or a bike? And I said, I want a guitar, I want a guitar. And this is how it started really. And so gospel music really dragged me to the music in general, you know, and still there. Yeah. And this is the very beginning, the unction. 05:54 You know, like, yeah. And it's interesting, it was actually a performance, right? With music as well as acting, right? And the Black nativity, correct? Yeah, but it was no acting. It was just music, but they were so beautiful to see while performing. And everything took place in a big baroque theater. 06:21 Marvelous Baroque theater, the theater Caio Melissa in Spoleto. And so it was all a big trip, actually. It was, yeah. And I know later on in your early, I guess, 20s, you formed a band and you would tour through Europe. And actually you had a specific tour in Africa. Yes. 06:50 We formed this band in the early 70s, which band was supposed to create new kind of sound by using the roots of the Italian South and Fork music, and create by studying it and by reproducing it a new sound, which we did actually. 07:18 We were one of the first bands in Europe of what they today would call world music. As far as I know, we were only two bands in Europe. One was our band and the other one was Alain Stivell in France, in Brittany. 07:46 In the late 70s, we have been invited to tour five countries of recent independency, Somalia, Tanzania, Mozambique, Zambia and Kenya. And before the tour started, I asked to our foreign ministry, because we were kind of a tribute to them, to the new democracy of these countries. I asked them to be able to have a twin 08:16 band in each country. So to perform together with and to rehearse together. So for us to learn about African music and for them to learn a little bit about our music and then perform together. And this was, and after the tour, actually I had the chance to be invited to teach music in Somalia. So I spent 08:44 many, many months in Somalia teaching composition because they needed Italian speaking teachers. Somalia used to be a colony of Italy and they had only North Korean teachers and they would teach music just saying ta ta ta and they know it's ta ta ta, know it's ta ta ta because they had no common language, no common way to speak. 09:13 except music. But so the musicians, when we first toured Somalia, they asked me to come back and to do something in Italian for them to progress a little bit. And I did it. And I was very, very young at that time. And that was a big, big experience. Because I was coming 09:43 fading out, disappearing with the old history of the rural Italy. And so I was familiar already with dealing with different cultures, you know, and that is what happened. What was the name of your band, Carlo? You didn't mention the name of your band. What would you mean? Sorry? The name of your band. The name of my band was Cansoniere del Lazio. 10:12 And there is some... Cansoniere means kind of a songbook, and Lazio is the region of Rome. So it's Cansoniere de Lazio, because we started by searching for local music in our region, as others had done in different regions. Actually, 10:39 The beginning of all this is also American, as my gospel choir was, because the very first guy searching music was Alan Lomax, and he did it in America. And he's the one who discovered Sonaterio Brown-McGee, Pete Seeger, and all the others. And he befriended with Diego Carpitella in Italy. 11:08 I was also an ethnomusicologist, and they started searching music in Sicily, producing different albums of their recordings. And so a group was created, and an institution, a istituto Ernesto de Martino, where all these materials landed eventually. And we became part of this big... 11:37 bigger body, you know, of searchers and lovers of Italian traditional music. Yes. And is there some similarity with the folk music that you so love and Central Asia and why you did the score for the series Nomads as well as Oliver Stone called you to do the composition, the score for Kazakh? 12:05 Yeah, of course, of course, it's the same path is the same pattern. Because when I came to Los Angeles, I was living still in Italy. And I arrived to Los Angeles to meet my new agency. And the first the very first meeting with my agency was, oh, you are going to meet all the people in the music departments of the studios. 12:32 Oh, but there is a movie cut for you and did this is its name is Nomad. I didn't even understand. I understood Nomad. And my English was very bad, worse than today. But at that time, so I, I have been looking on the web, but I didn't find any evidence of Nomad instead was Nomad. 13:00 I have the poster here. And so I was in competition with many others, but I do think that the thing that made them hire me was the fact that I had a different attitude towards the local music. So I said, if you guys want to hire me, you have to fly me to Kazakhstan, because I want to study the local music. 13:29 in order for me to include the local music in the concept, in the general concept of my score. Because this was an epic movie about the birth of a nation, basically. It was a period movie, 1710, when these wise men or us put together the children of all the different tribes of that area of Central Asia. 13:56 in order for them to grow together and to be connected one to another. You know, and this was the very beginning of the modern Kazakhstan, actually, today's Kazakhstan. So definitely it was fantastic because I went there first time and they sought for me everything. I had a collaborator. She... 14:25 they organized all the meetings for me to get aware of, I mean, knowledge about different instruments and stuff. So, but afterwards, actually I produced, I produced a documentary after scoring Nomad, I produced a documentary about the Kazakh music, which is called The Wolf on the Drum, because yeah. 14:55 Because after recording the old score for Nomad, my collaborator gave me, as a present, an eptagon frame drum, and once I hung this drum in my apartment here in Los Angeles, the image of a wolf formed. And this was two years later. 15:24 that I had back this drum in my apartment because it was before in my son's apartment in Los Angeles. And so I took it as a sign and I decided, because the wolf is the most shamanic among the animals. Take the she-wolf of Rome, feeding Romulus and Remus, but also in the Central Asia shamanic tradition, the wolf appears often. 15:54 And so I decided to put together a co-production between Italy and Kazakhstan. And we went back to Kazakhstan and we met with the Shaman people, shamans and musicians. And we put together this documentary that you can find on Arcoiris TV, which is an Italian kind of streaming TV. And now is there. It's called The Wolf on the Drum. 16:24 Yes, yes. You know, I'd like you to share with my listeners, most of my listeners are business owners, they're in technology that's driven by the digital, right? The web, the digital disruption. And they're creating enterprises that are scaling and bringing in investor money. And I consider it a privilege to have a true creator. 16:52 in the art space, right? The music space with me today. So I was struck, you know, we met when, when Kasak had been nominated for some awards and you had actually gifted me the original score, a CD, right? So I was listening and prior to going to some of the, the award ceremonies and at the film and listening to the final CD that was produced, 17:20 the titles of the songs were different to what you had originally. Yes. You're right when you composed these. So for business owners, and what is it like to co-create and have a give and take? I mean, what does it feel like for you as an artist to create, but also knowing that the ultimate consumer, buyer of your product, the producer, right? 17:49 may change some of the elements of your artwork? He did it, but it wasn't truly a conflict. It was a surprise for me to see that he wanted to change the name of the cues on the CD. But I guess he did it because he wanted to relate more to the images rather than just the feeling of the music. So he wanted to. 18:18 to have a more compact package. So I think he did it because of it. And actually at the end of the day, eventually I agreed with him. Because I remember I didn't even give proper names 18:48 before recording the cues. I had kind of codes, A1, A2, B1, B2, for this were my working titles for the cues, you know? Or then when I had to make up some titles for the CD, I create some titles, but actually I have to recognize that the titles 19:17 Igor, the director, gave to the music, were better than mine. And then we changed after he giving some titles, we shared some opinions and we changed some of them. You know, because- I imagine it's not only this film, but it probably happens in the industry itself, right? A movie producer will select- 19:42 Yeah, it depends who is producing the CD. In this case, the director and producer of the movie was also the producer of the music. I mean, he had the last say and there was no conflict. Actually, I asked him to change two or three of them and we changed them in perfect harmony. 20:11 If I take it back to the sandbox or the founder sandbox, I chose the name sandbox for this podcast because I work with a lot of technology founders with code. They have a sandbox, which is where they have their, like you said, you would name your scores A1, A2. They have code names as well. So it's again, a concept in the technology, the software space or digital health, the 20:41 or I'm trying to bring in the analogy to the creation of music for films. So thank you, it's fascinating, it's fascinating. What about, let's switch gears. I like to talk about resiliency, right? Again, a lot of the listeners of the podcast have very scarce resources and they're trying to create a large company, right? And it's all about resilience, is wearing the multiple hats. 21:11 As an artist and making money in the music business, can you explain the concept of residuals for my listeners and how perhaps the digital economy has enabled you artists with more ways to capture your residuals and actually have different revenue streams through the digitalization of the same? So two questions. 21:41 and how artists... So residuals are... And authorize is what the music you wrote is earning by being broadcasted, by being sold in CDs or in DVDs, by being performed. 22:10 and by being distributed and used by different people. So there is a second life for the music itself also out of the movies themselves. So the music I write for a certain movie earns authorized and residuals while the movie 22:39 every single time the movie is broadcasted, performed, screened, whatever, you know, but also the music can have its own life, you know, being broadcasted by itself or performed in a radio or by being sold in the form of CDs or albums, etc. This is basically 23:07 And this is the source of our earnings, I guess. I am the worst person to deal with money and with stuff, because I have a very bad relationship with money. And I consider music something sacred. 23:37 sacred that has been given to me as a gift from the universe. You know, and so I really don't like all these people who are thinking... 23:54 who are targeting, they are, those who want to make music in order to make money. I don't like them. I understand this market, I understand that we need people taking care of this aspect, but they have to be different people from the creators, you know, because, and definitely, I mean the number of the ones who don't want to deal at all with money. 24:24 You know, I'm so embarrassed when I have collaborators, for instance, right? And I don't want to know how much they've been paid by the production. If it's not me to pay them because I'm dealing with a package deal or something, you know, so it's for me to know, I have to know, you know, but I hate that. 24:52 I hate everything which is connected with money because I think that creation, and even if you take an example when you have a small budget for a movie, right? So you know already that you have to deal with, that you cannot afford the large orchestra even if needed and stuff. Okay, I pretend that the budget is the no budget. 25:20 So I, because I don't want the economic part of it, the money part of it to affect my creation and my freedom to imagine the universe, to imagine the never-ending space, you know? I have to feel that I'm free to create whatever I want to create with no limits. And then I would deal. 25:49 with the production, with the money part. So I am the worst of all. I cannot advise anyone. The only advice I can give to people is find the right partner for that. Find the right, thank God we have... 26:16 We have these societies representing us like ASCAP. I'm represented for North America by ASCAP, while I'm represented for Italy and the rest of the world by CIA in Europe. And they collect our money, you know, all around. And they are societies, groups, collecting our money. 26:42 the for perform for performing rights. You know, like I conduct my music. I am a performer. So there is some residuals coming from me performing. And also there is a secondary market, which is when, when a movie is, and this is true residuals, when, when, when a movie is a, after having his own life, but he has a second life on TV and here and there, blah, blah, blah. 27:12 It collects money, still keeps collecting money. And so, but thank God I'm well represented by ASCAP here, by CIA in Italy. And I also have in Italy kind of a manager slash advisor slash 27:38 accountant taking care of my economic situation in Italy, because I'm here, you know, and he is on the field. So he helps me a lot with this part of it. But really, I don't think music has been meant to, you know, the authorize, so the fact that, and then I have to say also that there is a different culture. 28:06 in America or in Europe. America is more copyright culture. In Europe and rest of the world is more authorized culture, which is meaning that if I write a cue, it is not, you can never ever sell. 28:34 to anybody this cue, because it's a product of my talent and is mine forever. It's not that I can sell to someone else and say, okay, put your name, give me the money, and the cue is yours. This is in the culture, but it's not in the European culture. It's not in the culture I grew up with. 29:02 which is different. So sometimes it's difficult to deal with both size of the medal. But I think that we are going to have a final result, including both cultures at the very end. Eventually we will have something like that. I love how you... 29:31 find the creative process as a composer is separate from the production. Yes, absolutely. And there should be professional managers that handle the money side. I think that is a very, it's a learning moment here in the podcast for founders. So your secret sauce may be the creation of code and maybe. 29:57 the new drug you're developing, but the production, so scaling things to get out to distribution is done by another entity or another person on your team or your co collaborators, right? I love it. Thank you. And without limitation of budget, the sky's the limit. I'm going to switch gears to another topic that's very near and dear to my heart and 30:25 part of the themes that I cover in the founders sandbox. And that's one of governance. I like to work with founders that early on work with proper governance structures to run the company, to create...
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Resilience: Creating a new Category
06/08/2023
Resilience: Creating a new Category
On this episode of The Founder's Sandbox, our host, Brenda McCabe speaks with Rushabh Mehta- CEO and Founder of MatchbookAI. They speak about Resilience: creating a new category by filling unmet needs with a new Data category. Rushabh shares his point of view on the primary challenges faced today in large enterprises, including latency, high costs associated with how data is used across enterprises and the control of the data. You can find out more about MatchbookAI or contact Rushabh Transcript: 00:04 We're standing on the edge of something big. We're gonna make some changes. Welcome back to the Founders Sandbox. I am Brenda McCabe. I own and operate a consulting firm, NextAct Advisors, where I have a simple mission. I want to assist entrepreneurs 00:32 and entrepreneurs in building scalable, well-governed and resilient businesses. The Founders Sandbox, the podcast you're listening today, is an additional channel to feature founders, business owners, corporate directors, and professional service providers who like me, want to use the power of the private enterprise, small, medium, and large to create a change for a better world. 01:01 through storytelling with my guests that include topics around how they built their companies. We're gonna touch on topics like resilience, purpose-driven enterprises, and sustainable growth. And my goal with my guests is to provide a fun sandbox environment where we can equip one startup founder at a time to build a better world through great corporate governance. Today, I'm absolutely delighted. My guest is 01:29 CEO and founder of Matchbook, Rishabh Mehta. Thank you Rishabh for joining me today. Thank you, Brenda, for having me on this podcast today. I'm really excited to talk to you. We're gonna talk about data and truth, right? Yes. So Rishabh and I, we're gonna talk about resilience. The company that he founded back in, wow, 2018, and even before that out of his garage. 01:59 is truly creating a new category. And it's a great story, I think, to support the resilience theme that I often work with founders on. Roshabh is passionate about data quality and the power of data. So passionate that he started over five years ago, Matchbook AI, as a solo founder. Along the journey, and as I actually got to work with him, the pain of bad data 02:28 was actually a journey that he started over 20, 25 years ago and working at Raymond James, as well as with some government entities on really identifying the provenance of data, where it's coming from, and the truth and accuracy. So I wrote in a blog, some time ago, it's one of my evergreen posts around purpose-driven organizations and 02:57 John McKay, who at the time was whole field CEO, had written a piece on the trust-based organization. And he called out four types of business models that are today pretty prevalent as entities. He called out the models of the good business models, the true business models, the beautiful business models, the heroic and the true are 03:25 business models that are discovery and furthering human knowledge. In these sites, examples like Google, Intel, Genentech, and Wikipedia that express this higher aspiration as a trust-based organization. So they're true. So I think today, what we're going to talk about, Rishabh, is how matchbook AI and you bring truth to the space of data. So how did I begin? 03:55 So I have a long history with data as you well mentioned. I have been a passionate data guy since in the 90s and data has always interested me, attracted me and it's attracted me because of the potential that data has for organizations and through my journey over the last 04:24 25 plus years in working with data and in working with various organizations how I've seen how data can transform businesses and transform lives of others as well. Whether it's increasing efficiency in businesses, whether it's affording better decisions or whether it's lowering risk as well. So there is a lot of potential to data and that is what really attracted me to 04:54 to data and everything that I have been doing along this journey. So this to me, matchbook AI is really this natural progression of all the challenges that I have seen in that 25 year career with data and the challenges people have with data and how do we make that better? And so matchbook AI really started with the seed of we need to solve certain problems 05:23 in access to data, in access to the right data, the right information that can solve these business challenges and solve it more effectively and faster. So this is really the seed of Matchbook AI. It started as you mentioned in my garage. It was something that I was passionate about, wanted to learn more, wanted to see how we could solve and provide a solution to the space. 05:52 where there was nothing and solution was greatly lacking. And so that seed of providing access to data and the right data started back in your garage. The market you're addressing is actually quite larger than that of access. I think you're bringing me the 06:20 the data access to a different level. Can you speak to us about, you know, what is the market? And specifically, what are those pain points that you've identified on that journey, right? There was a seed, but then you've evolved it. Absolutely. So it's definitely any journey is about evolution. It's about looking at what is the future, right? And how do you impact the future? So it's not only looking at 06:48 what problems can I solve today that's in the marketplace but how do I solve a problem that's sustainable in the future that makes future life easier as well. So in terms of the problems we are solving, it's as I mentioned, the primary problem is access to data, access to the right information for decision making and this 07:16 just that problem comes with a number of challenges along the way. It's about the latency of access to data because latency can have a fairly adverse impact on business decisions on this data. So it's about solving for that latency. It's about solving for that very high cost that companies incur when it comes to bringing in the right set of information and getting it actionable. 07:45 and useful for business decisions. It's about taking decisions away from a few within the organization and into the hands of many. So these are all of the challenges that we are looking to solve with Matchbook AI. Wow. So you've talked about latency and the high cost of bringing in the data. And what I like the most is kind of the democratization, right? 08:15 Absolutely. It's about democratization and it's about giving people that have the ownership of this data, the power to make the decisions and the power to work with that data. And how you do that, how the platform at Matchbook.ai does that? Can you walk my listeners through instead of a top down, MDM traditional, bottom ups and the 08:44 different use cases across large enterprises. Absolutely. So if you think about a large enterprise, there are so many decisions at so many levels within an enterprise that need to happen on data. Each of these decisions have different inputs to them, have different data needs. So... 09:07 What I've seen in the industry today is when it comes to a lot of data being brought into the enterprise for decision making, there is almost this one size fits all model of here's the data and do what you may and as a result today what happens is when you need to make a certain level of decision you are going out and finding other ways to access data and you're really not only increasing the cost of data 09:35 within the organization, you're also increasing the cost of access to that data. And after that, a lot of this data is coming in and staying siloed within business decisions and not used across the enterprise. So if I, if I think about a simple use case of sales and marketing, and, and I just talk about the various types of data you may need at different points within that cycle of sales and marketing. 10:05 If you look at prospecting, you are wanting to bring in some basic information so you can figure out which accounts you want to go after. If you think about once you figure out which accounts you want to go after, you want to do market segmentation of those accounts so that you can either give it to the right salesperson within the enterprise to go after that account or you can classify it in a way. 10:33 that you have the right sales motion against that enterprise. Now those classifications could be based on the size of this account. It could be based on the revenues. It could be based on the industry that a particular account is in. And there's just this multitude of factors that go into that particular decision of market segmentation on who and how we are going to target that particular account. 11:00 Then as you go further down into the sales cycle, you start having to make other decisions like maybe we are ready to contract and sell to this organization. So now it becomes a question of, if you are an organization that needs to give certain credits, how much do you give? And now this takes a complete different set of inputs because this could be based on 11:28 simple thing like a credit score. It could be based on a multitude of things of not only the credit score but also having a deeper understanding of payment histories and other things about this organization that you're about to work with or the customer and being able to take that into account into that decision-making process of what can we sell them and how much credit can we give them and 11:58 And then as you get even further into your legal and contracting, legal and contracting may have its own set of needs for data. And these again are very different from everything else that you've brought in about these entities. They may need to know, for example, can we do business with this enterprise? Is this a verified company? And so they may need a completely different set of information that they need to bring in into this decision-making process. So if you think about just sales and marketing, 12:28 There's so many different decision points that happen within sales and marketing. And each of these decision points require different inputs and different data. So imagine today's world when all of this data is so completely siloed access to this data siloed, each division is taking its own unique path of deciding what data they need, where they source it from and how they get it. And the incremental cost of the human. 12:58 capital or the human cost of thinking in the right information so that they can make decisions. And then if you take into consideration latency, by the time you make these decisions, by the time you have all the data you need and you make these decisions, the data that you made that decision on could already have been outdated. So latency can play a major factor into that. 13:28 say give a certain credit limit to a company and you've used that credit score from two months back and suddenly the company started having financial stress or something happened, there's a bankruptcy warning or something like that on the company, you don't have that information to rectify your decision in real time and so there's a lot of cost to the organization and so this is just one example. 13:57 of where there's so much data need and there's so many inefficient processes today to get this data. And then lastly, even with all these processes, you still have to contend with the latency of the information you're using for your decision-making. And this is precisely what we're trying to solve. Yeah, so how is it that this new data category, what have you architected that addresses latency? 14:27 the high cost of ingesting data of multiple sources into an enterprise and decision-making across multiple organizations. How are you doing it differently and creating truly what you say is a new category? Right, absolutely. So, an interesting thing, I've been mulling over this for a while. Okay. 14:54 when we've been talking about the fact that we are creating a new category. Yep. To me, a new category is really about solving an age old problem and legacy processes in a completely different manner, rethinking something from the ground up in a way that it can not only impact the status quo, but it can, it can change how these things are done in the future. 15:24 So to me, that is what is creating a new category. It's, you rarely ever create a new category where you're doing something so completely different that it's never been done before. There are absolutely examples of that. If you look at Amazon and what they did to just the whole idea of being able to buy and sell products online. That is a completely new category. 15:52 where you've defined a completely new market. In our case, it's about taking age-old processes, it's taking legacy, it's looking at all the problems in that legacy pipeline, and then coming up with a solution on how we fix that. So to me, that's a new category. So the way we've looked at designing this is we've really looked at the problem head on. We've looked at the mechanics of the problem. We've looked at... 16:22 what is it underneath the scenes that is happening that is not only causing these issues with the latency and all that but it's also about what are the components that are required to solve this problem in a meaningful way and we actually started with looking at the people on the front lines. We are looking at the solutions, the business processes on the front lines to look at 16:52 how do we solve for that? And through that, how do we solve for this across the enterprise? And so by focusing on that, by focusing on not only looking at this sequentially, okay, these are the challenges that accessing your data, accessing the right data that you need for decision-making to looking at how do you then... 17:19 taking the next set of challenges within the enterprise and how do you solve for that and the next set of challenges and at the end of the day, it's all about how do you make this information more actionable. So we've gone through these stages even within our own platform to look at the most fundamental challenges, solve for that and then start solving for what are the next steps that an enterprise needs to take. 17:48 in order to get to that utopian point, which is an informed decision. And that's essentially how we architected Matchbook from the ground up to then solve for these problems. So we've really looked closely at what our customers do, what are not only their initial pain points, but what are the next steps in their journey and the next steps in their journey and keep addressing those. 18:18 till we get to that point of actionable data, actionable decision, and how do we solve all of that? And then of course, looking at, you know, if it was an ideal world, if the customer had everything they needed to make those informed decisions, what else would they need? What else would they be asking for? And really looking into that future, trying to look at that hourglass and say, 18:47 Okay, if you had everything you needed to make an informed decision today, you obviously need to then be able to have predictive capabilities of these decisions. You need to have good insights into the decisions you made and make sure that you have that constant refinement on how you can keep making better decisions into the future. And this is really what drives us and what drives Matchbook as a solution to solve for these. 19:17 very cold needs of enterprises. You know, it's a great, first of all, thank you. The predictive capabilities in the era we live now with Shadjibiti and the AI and matchbook AI. It's very exciting what we can do with data. The segue, I think you said it very well, by addressing an age old legacy album with the new solution from ground up, but you went to 19:47 the frontline workers when building this. You've also, who are your customers? You're very customer-centered company. Can you talk about some of the biggest lessons that you have learned from current customers that actually surprised you and maybe informed the future architecture of Matchbook AI? Can you tell us a story? 20:15 Let's see, that's an interesting question. So. 20:21 I remember the first customer we went to. We had essentially built the code plumbing of solving this basic challenge that we really thought because at that point, that was the challenge we had looked at, at the fundamental level of connecting for the system and access to external data. And we had built that out. And when we went to the customer, 20:51 They said that this is great. This is very useful for what we need and what we are doing today. But here's some other things we need to be able to do. And the one thing that stood out to me through all that was we don't just have one system integrating with third party data. We actually have multiple systems that need multiple data sets. And so when I initially started this, 21:20 I hadn't given it as much thought because I was really at that most fundamental level, that most fundamental building block of this platform. And so that really opened my eyes to the fact that we need to account for the fact that an enterprise is very unique. And even within the enterprise, there are so many colors. It is not 21:48 simple, it is not the same. Every system, every access point within the enterprise has different needs, has different types of data, has different data quality. And that really opened my eyes to the fact that a good solution cannot just address a single channel of integration, it needs to address an enterprise need. 22:17 which is very different, which can have many colors to it. And then how do we make this accessible? How do we make it easy for them? So that was a big learning for me. It was a big eye-opener for me to realize this is really what enterprises was all about and working with enterprises. And so that allowed me to go back, look at the solution. 22:47 look at how do we make something that we had initially built with a purpose in mind and build it for that higher purpose, how do we morph that? Some of the other learnings we've had from customers is again just within the same vein, there is so many differing needs within the enterprise that you cannot just assume that it's a one size fits all. So you just cannot 23:17 go into a platform or go into an enterprise with a one size fits all solution, that does not work. Also importantly, when you think about trust in data, and at the end of the day, this is what we are trying to do is we are trying to achieve trust in data. And trust also means transparency and it means control. So the fact that 23:46 people want to know where the data is coming from, how that data is coming in, and what sort of controls they have in place on that data was very important. I have seen other solutions fail because of lack of transparency, because they're simply black box solutions. And businesses, even though they use it because it solves a need, they're always uncomfortable because it does not allow them to have that trust. 24:16 And so for us, building trust into our solution was just as important as building a solution that met enterprise needs. Fantastic. 24:30 You're now into the fifth, sixth year of a company and you scaled from what five employees up to how many today? We have between I think full-time, part-time contractors and everything we have close to 82. 82. Now. Always been a distributed company. You've survived through the pandemic. You've been growing at a hundred percent. 25:00 year. Can you speak to the resiliency and bootstrapping this company as you've built? You know, 82 person strong, 32 customers, fortune 1000 customers. So how has bootstrapping and the resiliency? What is in your toolkit? So resiliency is interesting. Resiliency is 25:30 Going through a hundred no's before you get to a yes. Resiliency is about the trust...
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Min-Yi Shih: Intrapreneurship Through the Lens of a Scientist Solving Nonlinear Equations
05/16/2023
Min-Yi Shih: Intrapreneurship Through the Lens of a Scientist Solving Nonlinear Equations
On today's episode of The Founder's Sandbox, our host Brenda McCabe speaks with Min-Yi Shih. Min- Yi has a background in Physics and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering, (quantum optoelectronics field aka laser, etc), got his MBA from UCLA, prior CTO, COO and GM in the R&D, defense, medical and communication equipment industries, angel investor and more recently advisor to early-stage founders and academics in the deep tech space. Brenda and Min-Yi speak about “intrapreneurship through the lens of a scientist solving nonlinear equations”; How his journey started as a Research scientist at GE Global Research – where he considered himself an individual contributor; soon evolved to an individual enabler as a program manager, and eventually as an organizational “sherpa “guide for startups and academic institutions. You can find out more or connect with Min-Yi on his linkedin page at: Transcription 00:04 We're standing on the edge of something big. We're gonna make some changes. Welcome back to the Founder's Sandbox. I'm Brenda McCabe. I own and operate NextAct Advisors, a consulting firm. Where I have a very simple mission. I want to assist entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs in building scalable, 00:33 well-governed and resilient businesses. The Founders Sandbox podcast that you're listening to today is an additional channel that features founders, business owners, corporate directors and professional service providers who like me want to use the power of the private enterprise, be that small, medium or large to create change for a better world. Through storytelling with each of my guests, we'll touch on topics. 01:03 like resilience, purpose-driven enterprises, and sustainable growth. And my goal is to provide a fun sandbox environment where we can equip one startup founder at a time to build a better world. Today, I'm absolutely delighted. I'm joined here with my guest Min Yi Shi. Min Yi has a background in physics, and he has a PhD in electrical engineering. 01:32 actually in quantum optoelectronics field, I got lasers. We're gonna talk about lasers today. He got his MBA from UCLA after prior operating roles as chief technology officer, COO, and general manager in the R&D, defense, medical, and communication equipment industries. He's also an angel investor, and more recently advisor to early stage 02:01 founders and academics in the deep tech space. Min Yi and I are going to talk about entrepreneurship through the lens of a scientist solving non-linear equations. So welcome Min Yi to the Founder's Sandbox. Hi, glad to be here. Thank you. How his journey started first as a research scientist at GE Global Research, where he considered himself 02:30 an individual contributor. It soon evolved to an individual enabler, in his own words, as a program manager. And eventually as an organizational sherpa, or guide for startups and academic institutions, is what today's podcast is about. So thank you again for joining me in the founder's sandbox. You know, you and I, we've... 02:56 found each other in many pitching events, largely in deep tech, you're with Tech Coast Angels, Los Angeles Adventure Association, and a lot of the universities here in Los Angeles, UCLA, USC. So we've run into each other, but more frequently, more recently, you posted in LinkedIn an interesting post about how you work with deep tech scientists 03:26 to identify pricing strategies using nonlinear equations. And I thought it was interesting how you work with these scientists and it struck an interest in me because I work with the Deep Tech founders and I work with them on pricing issues around supply and demand. So I come at it from an economist point of view. So can you share a little bit about that post that you provided in LinkedIn and that cut? 03:54 caught my eye and I asked you to be a guest and you delighted me and agreed. So thank you. Sure. Well, thank you very much for the very kind introduction. The post, the reason I wrote the post is that after talking to a few startups, specifically those are startup with a co, with a founder that have a very deep technical background. 04:21 Right. They all start up with, you know, CEO is in a financial background or any other background, sales background. But because I work in my field, I talk to a lot of founder in the deep tech area or med tech area, medical. Oftentimes they are approached things in based on their training. 04:47 And what I try to do is actually speak the same language, the language we share as a scientist or engineer that be able to convey the message and then we can move forward and be able to ask you what we discuss and then come and find the answer or the answer is close enough to what we try to achieve by the sensor. So... 05:16 During the conversation, and I used many example of how we were solving equations, those equations don't have exact analytical answers, but there's an approach to find a range or getting too close to the true answer, for say. So that's how we started. I love it. So let's talk about nonlinear equations, bringing it into the mix and entrepreneurship. I love it. 05:45 So you agreed to join me here in the sandbox. And I'd love to go back to your origins. You were born in Taiwan. Yes. And always wanted to be a scientist from get go. And you have a huge fixation with physics and specifically lasers. Was it Star Wars time? Or can you give us some background on where did it all begin? 06:12 So if I say Star Wars time, is that review my age? It does. It is. When I grow up, I want to be a scientist from the early age for sure. And, you know, watch TV, reading books. 06:36 The fascinating thing is there are things that make sound like a pew pew pew. And it's visible, it's a colorful. And I was fascinated by those things. And then naturally getting to start my early interest in the physics, particularly in the optic area. And then that's how I get my things going, we'll say. 07:03 And what was going on in Taiwan about that time when you were in high school? There were four Asian dragons that were largely growing really rapidly. Today Taiwan is a lion or a huge dragon in terms of semiconductors, which is front and center due to the supply chain constraints. 07:33 do in your spare time that led you to continue to follow a science education. You picked up parts, you made a laser. What was that you did? Yeah, lots of people that are close to me probably heard that story more than one times. Yes, in the high school time, it's a doom in the booming of the economic in Taiwan and 08:02 or Little Dragon. And everything's just booming and lots of material. You'll be surprised at a time the reason Taiwan grow really fast because a good tie with the U.S. And in fact there are specific industry that import lots of scrape parts from U.S. high-tech industry. They have a 08:32 you know, there are huge market in Taipei at the time. And then that's what I spend most of my weekend just going through the scrap yard and just see if there's anything interesting and useful. And then sometime I even get to ask the questions of what is that? And then there are people be able to answer me and help me to understand. So early on, that's my... 08:58 my own adventure to expose myself to the technology. And then I come across a few parts and then I was able to make the connection, actually acquire a laser tube and the amplifier and a few other components and go back home and put the trigger and turn it on. And that was my first laser. Amazing. And it's still operating today, right? If you go back. Yes, it's still operating today. And last time I checked, yes. 09:28 So after completing your undergraduate degree, you did military service and continued to be in the physics field and came to the United States to get your master's degree, right? And on to get your PhD in electrical engineering, always in the optoelectronics field? Yeah, yeah, optoelectronics. Yeah. 09:56 you know, continue with a journey that, like I said, early on, interesting in physics and the specificity in optics, naturally, I'm getting to those areas surrounding by lasers or quantum optoelectronics. I also, because from Taiwan at the time, we have a very good solid training on the solid state physics, which is a fundamental for the semiconductor. 10:25 So combined with the optics and the semiconductor that allow me to continue my own pursue or being a scientist for say, and then the focus on those area on the content side. All right. So after graduate school, your first employment was with GE Global Research. And I loved how you shared with me 10:54 that you considered yourself, you're a scientist, right? An individual contributor. You were gonna let him, right? And while still at GE Global Research, you then moved kind of up the food chain to a program manager, right? Acquiring. Yeah, I was fortunate enough. And throughout my journey, even in my school, and I go to GE, 11:20 I consider a lot of people that being important and critical that helped me to grow. And the very fortunate I was given a certain opportunity and be able to get into play a bigger role and making more impact. And I feel like I'm extremely blessed. And what I found interesting too, when speaking with you. 11:50 preparation for this podcast is you after GE, you then moved into a for-profit company. And you were managing first office CTO, then COO, an entire program of different grants that eventually would be... 12:16 commercialized, right? So products that had received grants and then were commercialized. So you were managed an entire set of programs. And again, moving up the food chain. And that I found was interesting, because you decided at one stage to go to the dark side, you went off and got your MBA at UCLA. Yes, I think I'm a PhD, you know, did you were you missing a degree? What made you do that? 12:45 Well, I cannot get enough of school. So I decide to go back to school, spend more time in school. Now it's this, it's throughout the journey. And like I said, I was giving and I was super blessed and giving a lot of opportunity after GE war for defense industry. And then lots of those government grants, non-diluted funding, be able to translate innovations. 13:15 good ideas into commercial. That whole journey is just to keep me going. And of course, during the time that I was giving many opportunity become a top executive for the company. However, I always feel like I'm learning things from quote unquote street, from my supervisor, from my colleagues. 13:41 and then slowly acquire a different skill and along the growth of my own career. So at a certain point, I decided to go back to school and to see what exactly is being done. And I'll try to get more from the street smart for say that gets a little bit more book smart. Right. And you know, as a physicist, right? 14:09 Yeah. And fast forward to what you do today, advising startup companies or even academic programs. You continue to think like a physicist in solving equations, right? Nonlinear equations. But what is that? What are those elements that you found while doing your MBA? So time, money, resources. And what does a physicist bring to solving 14:38 business problems with great technology. What's in that equation, Min Yi? Okay. First of all, let me clear that. Yes, I want to be a physicist. And then some of my friends even always call me and say, you are the one to be a physicist. Because I get my degree, they teach me because I eventually get my degree in the electrical engineer. 15:03 I think that train me well in a sense that we can streamline a complicated problem and be able to hopefully and see what the essence about any complicated issue or challenge and be able to address that. So by training, we solving equations, we solving complicated equations that involve with the time. 15:32 and of course apply to a business that is money. And if you want to extend the equation with a different parameter that I for say, there will be things like an infrastructure, like IT, like a location, like resource, the tool, the hardware tool, the software tool you use for the enterprise. And then eventually, 16:00 that all include the most, I find out the most important factor and which is a super, super nonlinear in those very competent equation is the human. Business around the human. So just in addition to those factors, human become a, human factor become a big of my own thesis for say, or the equation for say, and try to solve in the daily. 16:30 basis for the business. Yeah, so managing personnel, right? Managing the talent is one of those critical elements in the equation. I think you were still at GE Global Research. You were working largely in, I think, fiber optics. 9-11 happens, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I believe it was the first week I worked at GE. 17:00 Oh my god. 9-11 happened and everybody running around and don't know what's going on. Internet literally down, CNN only have one page and they say, we will be right back. There's a jet hit the World Trade Center. At the GE, someone in engineer was be able to salvage a 17:25 black and white TV with antenna and the plug-in and turn on and see a live broadcast from TV. So that changed me a lot. And then that's also triggered me later on that want to get involved on the homeland security and defense side because I think that is a point a lot of people triggered and start to pivot their thinking. 17:55 what they really want to grow into and get back to the society or community. Yeah, that's a very critical point in my life, yeah. And so you started working more in defense, as you said, and also the US government's budget, right? Yes. Through lots of money. I mean, there was a major shift and the largest seed fund in the United States of America 18:24 for my listeners, a lot of people don't know this is SBIR, right? Small business. Yeah, and STTR. And can you talk about, first of all, some of the defense programs, or R&D programs that had dual purpose technologies, and explain that to my listeners, right? Because there's a commercial component. And likewise, you know, speak to 18:53 What is SBIR? What is STTR and how you are today collaborating with a lot of companies and academic institutions, right? At LARTA. So, it's a loaded question. Thank you. Yeah, it is. And I will say that I have a lot of experience with SBIR, STTR, and they are many, many experts out there. And I'm going to provide my own point of view. 19:22 It is a big industry and it is the biggest, largest seed funding for innovations. The US government different agency, not just in the Department of Defense, is that also the Department of Energy, NASA, NIH, and Health, and Homeland Security, and Department of Transportation. Everybody have SBIR program. 19:52 is to encourage that the small business that specifically defined it for small business. It's not for the large corporate to grab the money for the encourage a small business, especially startup to be creative and to generate a new idea to, and then throughout this funding, allow those founders and the small business and be able to get help from the federal government, execute their plan and then... 20:21 eventually commercialize it or transition their technology or solution into the market. The dual use is mentioned a lot in those programs. Basically, the government, different agencies like NASA, Defense, Homeland Security, NIH, they may have a different point of view of certain applications for certain technologies. 20:48 So they use the funding to encourage small business to be creative and then establish their business because all the startup in the early stage, they all need a certain cash injection. That's capital injection, that's for sure. Right. And for- Yeah. And by that, it's not only, I think the return 21:15 to the US government is not just help the small business for say, but it's also promoted the entire entrepreneur spirit for say, I mean, in the entire US. I do think that is a cornerstone for the US economy. And then, in fact, if you want to call that a be part of the American dream, that is what is a program actually leading to. 21:42 Yeah. Right. And SBIR is Small Business Innovation Research and STTR is? The STTR is similar to the SBIR, but that require a collaboration for the small business with nonprofit institute. Oftentimes it's academia. So the STTR will be a vehicle that for example, you can help a group of researcher or professor or students. 22:11 they have a great idea of a certain technology or solution and be able to through the similar channel and bring the solution to the commercial market. Yeah, so dual use and dual purpose technologies are goods and software and technology that both have a civilian as well as a military application. Right? Military and can be at home and security. Right, home and security, exactly. 22:40 You know, the... 22:47 You started at GE Global Research. We jumped ahead today in the podcast to talk about what you do today as an angel investor and advising early stage companies. There was a middle. I'm going to bring us back to the episode title of the podcast, which is intrapreneurship through the lens of a scientist solving nonlinear equations. And when I was reading your bio, 23:17 Minyi, it just jumped out at me because you truly moved to the private enterprise as CTO for IntelliSense systems. And you were responsible for a wide range of standard and customized integrated electronic systems. Some of these were at early stage and you were eventually selling these, spinning these off, right? And, you know, so I'd love you to talk about 23:47 What was it like being an entrepreneur, right? Within a corporation, what was that like? Yeah, that's maybe that's what I try to explain that is everyday gimmick going. 24:10 Because as a scientist, if you, not just myself, even when I interview my fellow employee throughout my journey of my career, is always ask and I interview a lot of PhDs. And I always ask them, what's your vision? What's your dream? And everybody is more or less, I will say more than 90% of people are saying that I want to working on a unique solution, innovative solution. 24:39 and I will make it work and I will bring into the market so other people can benefit from it, from my innovation, from my good ideas. And I think that was a fundamental driving force for a lot of scientists and engineer to continue to improve their own skill and continue to working on a solution and eventually be able to solve problem. 25:08 to overcome any limitations and to face a challenge, a different challenge every day. And that is a truly a driving force for a lot of scientists and engineers outside, out there. Amazing. So while this podcast is being released in the month of May, 2023, the first week of May, 25:36 from April 30th to May 6th is National Small Business Week. Every year since 1963, the President of the United States has issued a proclamation announcing National Small Business Week, which recognizes the critical contributions of America's entrepreneurs and small business owners. You currently are serving as a principal advisor at LARTA Institute. Yeah. 26:06 where you contribute to programs both in the Department of Energy and National Institutes of Health, SBIR and TABA program. Yes. So what are you seeing as a principal advisor? What's coming through the pipeline in terms of interesting small business ideas? Oh, there are plenty. And that's, that's why we are in the United States. There's a plenty of good idea and 26:33 I love it. And yeah, this is the spirit of the entire country, I will say even, and that is to be innovative and to continue to progress, making progress, face challenge, overcome challenges. There are plenty of new ideas in different areas. I think the medical area specifically is booming. 27:02 because the aging population, and as well as a lot of new technologies, such as AI that we heard morning, one time per day now,...
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Enhancing Resilience and Supporting Good Governance by Tapping Legal Expertise
04/10/2023
Enhancing Resilience and Supporting Good Governance by Tapping Legal Expertise
On today's episode of The Founder's Sandbox, our host Brenda McCabe speaks with Lisa Greer Quateman – Corporate Board member, recently retired Attorney, and advocate of a greater presence for legal expertise on Boards of Directors. They speak about “Enhancing resilience and supporting good governance by tapping legal expertise“- how to incorporate legal practices into your startup to enhance the governing principles of your company. You can contact Lisa or find out more about her at: 00:04 Welcome back to the Founder's Sandbox. I am Brenda McCabe. I own and operate a consulting firm, Next Act Advisors. At Next Act Advisors, I have a very simple mission. I want to assist. 00:33 entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs in building scalable, well-governed and resilient businesses. The Founders Sandbox is an additional channel to feature founders, business owners, corporate directors and professional service providers who like me want to use the power of the private enterprise, be it small, medium or large, to create change for a better world. 01:03 Through storytelling with a guest on topics around resilience, a purpose-driven company and sustainable growth, my goal is to provide a really fun sandbox environment where we can equip one startup founder at a time to build a better world through great corporate governance. So today my guest, I'm absolutely delighted, is Lisa Greer-Quaitman, a corporate board member. 01:32 recently retired attorney and advocate of a greater presence for legal expertise on boards of directors. Lisa and I are going to talk about enhancing the resilience and supporting good governance by tapping legal expertise. Thank you, Lisa, for joining me today in the Founder Sandbox. Brenda, thank you. It's a pleasure to be with you. 01:58 You know, I've known you ever since I landed in Los Angeles. We both were members of Women Corporate Directors. At that time, you were the LA managing partner of Pulsinelli and also a member, I'm working on getting your corporate board skills kind of honed at the National Association of Corporate Directors and the Pacific Southwest Chapter. Today, 02:27 You're a board member of the National Association of Corporate Directors, and you have chaired the marketing and communications committee, of which I was a member. And we learned a lot about social marketing and social media. Didn't we, Lisa? We did. We really did, especially during the pandemic. Oh my goodness. So kudos to you. And as a consequence of some of the work we did there, I got my 02:53 I guess the goal to actually go ahead and launch a podcast. So thank you for inspiring me. You know, eight years later, I've been in LA. I am also thankful for you. I am certain that my listeners who are many founders and business owners use legal expertise, but I think you're gonna shed some more light on why it's important from a corporate board expertise. I want you today, 03:22 to really demystify what it is that a board of directors does, right? And now that you're a full board member on several companies in the public sector, as well as private and nonprofit, how you do that in terms of bringing in legal expertise is what this podcast is about today. So thank you for coming in here and demystifying what a corporate board is. Oh, great. I'll do my best. 03:51 Thank you. So tell me, I always like to start with a story. Where did it all begin? You know, you chose to go to law school, although you were considering doing an MBA. So why did you choose pursuing illegal background? Well, I was I was a little confused at the time, because I thought that if I went to law school, I would not have to sell myself. That if I went to MBA school, I would have to sell myself. So I also had 04:20 a grandfather who had acquired some real estate in his lifetime and I was his first grandchild. And he told me in no uncertain terms that I would eventually need to be responsible for taking care of this real estate. And I did not want to be taken advantage of in the market. I wanted to learn my way around. So for those reasons, I went to law school. I then discovered that you have to sell yourself if you want to have a law practice. So that was where I got that wrong. 04:49 I guess I did graduate to running marketing and communications for the NACD chapter. So somewhere along the way, I figured out how to make rain as they say. Fantastic. So in addition to running the family real estate business and lawyering, you often describe your own entrepreneurial experience, right? So you, after law school, worked for a large law firm. You were on the East coast and eventually came here to the West coast. And at one point, 05:19 stage you decided to go out on your own. Tell us about your entrepreneurial experience. You know, it was fantastic. I really, I can relate to these founders and founders were among my most favorite clients along the way. I was in a big law firm and I've been, I was practicing for long enough that back when I was getting started, it was still quote unquote 05:48 women attorneys. And at the time it was okay for a client to tell a senior partner in a law firm he didn't want a woman working on his case or working on his account or something like that. So for me, I decided to sort of jump off the diving board out of the large firm environment and practice on my own for a little while and see how that would go. And it was eye opening because the clients that came with me did not discriminate against women. They wanted me for my 06:16 experience and expertise. So I ended up practicing on my own and building a boutique law firm over a long period of time before eventually merging back into a large national firm for a new entrepreneurial opportunity to open a Los Angeles, California office for a national law firm that had no presence there and to become the managing partner there. So the entrepreneurial bug can be in you whether you're in a small environment or a big environment. I guess that's what you call 06:45 And I know that you talked about when making that decision to actually go to a larger national firm and bring it to the West Coast because it didn't have a presence, you did that also to create opportunities for partners, right? So it was building a structure for those members of the practice to have a career path, which is, I think, a sign of purpose-driven organization. 07:15 back to Oh, that's well put. Yes, amazing. Amazing what you did. Well, while you were lawyering and the managing partner for personnel here in Los Angeles, you got the urge and the interest to develop your own path for board positions, starting with nonprofits. And then you 07:43 joined and participated in the National Association of Corporate Directors opportunities for education as well as giving back. Today you're sitting on the board of the National Association of Corporate Directors, Pacific Southwest. How did you share yourself or share, how did you position yourself? Because oftentimes general counsels or lawyers just aren't present as full board members, right? 08:09 Oftentimes you're the general counsel, you are the secretary of the board, but how did you position yourself for full board membership? 08:21 There's a preconception in some quarters about lawyers on boards. Okay, don't put a lawyer on the board, the lawyer on the board is going to interfere with the work of the corporate counselor, the general counselor, second guess, the general counsel. Okay, or another another myth is the lawyer on the board is going to poo poo every good idea, won't take any risks at all has no entrepreneurial spirit. So in my case, 08:49 And I learned this through one of your other podcast guests. In fact, be sure to highlight your business experience and your business acumen and demonstrate that you can build a business. So in my case, I had run the law firms. I had been running the real estate business. And so I attempted to highlight that experience as an example of the business building expertise that I could bring into the boardroom. 09:19 layered with the acumen that you get from being a lawyer. And guess what? On all the boards where I serve, they're thrilled to have a lawyer in the boardroom now. And they obviously are not the ones who said we can't have one. And you see more and more people with legal expertise in boardrooms now because they understand not eliminating risk, but managing risk. 09:45 You know, many of my listeners are founders, right? So I love that shout out you made that you actually some of your favorite clients are founders and business owners. They have an early stage advisory boards, right? And they use professional service firms, legal firms. I published a post in LinkedIn and on my website, www. 10:15 Why good governance starts early. And I provide there five crucial steps to board formation. How can you make that a bit, I guess I provide a real case scenario of some of your activity in the boardroom, right? To show not only the legal expertise, but looking for strategic opportunities, with some of the regulation and the like. 10:43 You're highlighting a very important issue. And I just want to reinforce what you said about the post that you did on LinkedIn. I read it and I thought it's really a must read for founders because you're covering so many important issues. And in my case, because as you mentioned, I retired out of law practice. I particularly liked... 11:05 your statement that silver haired people can be founders silver bullets. So let's, let's keep that as a tagline for as long as we can, even though my hair, I don't know, you can look here. It's a podcast, but it's not that silver yet, but we're trying. So in my LinkedIn article, among the five crucial steps, I talk about legal documents, can you embellish beyond the legal documents for a founder? 11:33 other areas of expertise that founders need to look at? Well, you highlighted some legal documents that founders wouldn't necessarily think about, and lawyers might not necessarily think about. So I really do commend your listeners to listen to your sandbox all the time and to read that particular LinkedIn post. The expertise that you wanna bring into your boardroom, I think should be varied. 12:03 fantastic because of what we talked about in terms of a knowledge of a regulatory landscape and so forth. But the entrepreneurial side, the finance side, the business side, the marketing side, try to populate that early boardroom with all of that expertise. And I think you can then build a strong foundation for growth. Thank you. You know, what else? So what other guidance? 12:33 Could you provide when a company has moved from early stage to growth stage and they're into a potential eventual transaction? I loved your term. I think you called it legal fluff and fold. Can you provide some examples of the holistic view of corporate governance when you're working towards an eventual transaction? What have you seen in boardrooms? And what have you seen actually with clients of your own? 13:05 I saw loyalty to the, for example, the attorneys who helped incorporate a business and may not have grown with the business so that when the company came to a transaction stage, some big funding or M&A merger and acquisition activity, those attorneys weren't necessarily 13:34 attorneys who practice in that arena all the time. So be loyal to your advisors, but also be open-minded to what the business really needs and see if you can get folks to work well together. I used to really enjoy, especially once I was a big firm partner again, working with the smaller law firms, collaborating for the best result for these founders. 14:03 but also bringing in the specialized expertise that becomes necessary. You need ERISA people, you need labor people, you need all kinds of specialty help sometimes, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, if you're selling overseas, all kinds of things like that, that the smaller professional advisors might not provide. So I think that is an important component for the strong foundation that you need before these transactions. The other is to anticipate 14:32 the due diligence requirements of your investors or of the company across the table. Be ready for that. The legal fluff and fold that I referenced is really just a matter of, it's not a complete, you know, strip all the sheets off and start over and buy new bedding. It's really just make sure that things are in order. Take a look with the eye of the investor. What are they going to want? Ask your advisors. 15:02 What is the due diligence checklist? What will I need to be ready for? How do I prepare my staff? How best to communicate with the staff about what these people are gonna want? And you'll be shocked to find that, oops, somebody forgot to do a filing with the secretary of state. Let's get that cleaned up. Let's talk through this lawsuit. What is our real exposure? How do we communicate effectively about this so that we're not concealing information, et cetera. So, 15:32 anticipating and being ready and having dry runs. I love it. Those are a lot of nuggets, nuts and bolts on good legal expertise, right? Even in a small and growing company. You know, I like to give an opportunity to my guests to let my listeners know how to contact you or follow you. You're very active in LinkedIn. 16:00 And you had a recent interview that I actually enjoyed reading. And the directors and boards.com, they had a, the board journey of lease agree equipment. So it's another resource for my listeners to get to know lease agree equipment and what you're doing to bring legal expertise into the corporate boardroom. So how do my listeners contact you? 16:28 your LinkedIn? What is your LinkedIn profile? Oh, it's it's just my name. So that's the hard part is spelling the name, right? Or they can get to me on Gmail. It's Lisa Quateman, L Quateman, Q, U, A, T, E, M, A, N. Excellent. So before we go, Lisa, I do like to bring my guests back to what I do at NextAct Advisors. I work with 16:57 founders and company owners on topics around resilience, on purpose driven enterprises and sustainable growth. And it always is delightful for me because I ask my guests, like I'm gonna ask you, what does resilience mean to you? Because nobody has the same perception. It's amazing because there's nuggets to, for the founders on what is resilience for you as a lawyer. I think. 17:24 I think resilience is building long term staying power, by being flexible and by being willing to be a lifelong learner. Thank you. And what does purpose driven enterprise mean to you? 17:40 I think a purpose driven enterprise has developed its mission and identified its goals and tactics for achieving those goals. And it's defined its mission by evaluating the needs, honestly, of its stakeholders, since a company's purpose is to meet those needs. What about sustainable growth? What does that mean to you? Well, I'm a back to basics person on sustainable growth. And for me, that means disciplined cash management. 18:10 and the avoidance of over leveraging or fancy accounting or revenue recognition tricks. Okay, last and final question, Lisa, did you have fun in the sandbox today? Well, I did pretty much but I see sand in my toes and I think it's kind of wrecking my pedicure. I love it because I think through having fun. 18:36 one becomes very creative and in the founder story and the founder journey, you do need to have your creativity. And I want to thank you for joining me today and bringing in your legal expertise and why it's important to have legal expertise in the boardroom at any stage in a founder's journey. Thank you and have a wonderful rest of your day. Thank you for those. 19:05 nuggets today. I want to also do a shout out this month of March is actually Women History Month. Lisa and three other women are featured in the founders sandbox as well as on my website, there are blogs around women leadership. And today, the day we're recording is actually Women's International Day. So thank you for joining me. 19:33 And I encourage my listeners to read this article in LinkedIn on Lisa Greer Quatman's single board journey. The podcast, Enhancing Resilience and Supporting Good Governance by Tapping Legal Expertise will be available on wherever you listen to your podcast. Thank you and signing off for today.
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A Woman in Transition: How I Found my Purpose
03/26/2023
A Woman in Transition: How I Found my Purpose
For our third Women's History Month special podcast, Brenda McCabe speaks with Martha Gamboa; CEO and Founder of Martha shares how a personal journey of health and wellness led to building Frendii- a technology startup developing a solution for women over 50 to build community and facilitate frequent social and human connections. You can find out more about Martha and Frendii at: Transcript: 00:04 Welcome back to the Founder's Sandbox. I am Brenda McCabe. I own and operate a consulting firm, Next Act Advisors, where I have a very simple mission. 00:32 I want to assist entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs in building scalable, well-governed, and resilient businesses. The Founder's Sandbox podcast, which you're listening to today, is an additional channel to feature founders, business owners, corporate directors, and professional service providers who like me want to use the power of the private enterprise, be it small, 01:02 medium or large to create change for a better world. Through storytelling with a guest on topics that cover resilience, purpose-driven enterprises and sustainable growth, my goal is to provide a fun sandbox environment where we can equip one startup founder at a time to build a better world through great corporate governance. 01:28 Today, I'm absolutely delighted to have as my guest, Martha Gamboa. Welcome, Martha. 01:37 Hi, Brenda. Thank you so much for having me. I was delighted that you wanted to join me in the sandbox this month of March. March is an important month as it's Women History Month, and I'm featuring quite a few women leaders in the founder sandbox. So thank you for joining me. You're founder and CEO of Frendi. You're a second time founder and first generation Latina entrepreneur. 02:08 You spent over 20 plus years in corporate America working for Fortune 500 companies like Allstate and AIG. You're passionate and very driven and you care deeply about real, in-person, social and human connection. And with your company, Frendi, you are on a path to make that possible. In the community of women over 50, in... 02:37 and around our country. So Martha and I today are going to talk about her personal story that led her to found Friendi during the pandemic. A woman in transition, how I found purpose and community. So again, thank you for joining me. You founded Friendi during the pandemic, but it wasn't your first entrepreneurial experience. Your story is one of resilience. 03:07 And I think because I have among my listeners, many, many entrepreneurs, they're gonna appreciate your own story of building a solution around a pain point of our modern society, loneliness in women over 50 years of age. Many founders are lonely too. So stay tuned for this up and coming podcast in which Martha speaks about Frendi. So. 03:36 You and I met through the business association of the Thai SoCal, which is the Indus Entrepreneurs SoCal chapter. And it was in an event in which an angel fund, the Thai SoCal Women's Fund for Women-owned Companies was being launched. And you came to that event because you are starting your journey on raising, seeking outside investment for friendly. 04:06 that it's timely to actually talk about one of the social ills that you're trying to address, and that is loneliness. And you often in our early conversations, Martha, talked about frequent social connection. And I got curious, and I thought, what is friendly about, right? You know, what is the social club? What is this? What is Martha working on? And you often quoted a Harvard study. 04:36 that scientists began tracking the health of 268 Harvard sophomores starting back in 1938. You and I weren't even around then. So this is during the depression. And they started a longitudinal study that would reveal clues to leading healthy and happy lives. And your business, Frendi, has kind of, through the technology platform, addressed 05:06 one of the illnesses of our society is a society and working for better health outcomes, how to facilitate social connections. So how did you come up with the idea of a prescription free, affordable way to make friends and with your business, Frendi? Where did it all begin, Martha? Well, the idea for Frendi, 05:35 goes back to my experience working as a personal trainer. After leaving corporate America, I decided to pursue a new career in health and wellness. And I wanted to be a health coach. In order to be a health coach, I needed to become a personal trainer or a group instructor. And I said, okay, so I started to become a personal trainer. 06:04 And my, you know, I, first I did some research, you know, is the fitness industry growing? Is it something that, where I can make a living? And my research showed that women over 40 and baby boomers were investing in their health. So I decided to work the target market that I was going to work with as a personal trainer was going to be women. 06:34 And my research also showed that we impose barriers. You know, we don't want to go to the gym because we're gonna sweat or perhaps because we don't know how to use equipment. So there's a lot of barriers that we impose on ourselves. So therefore we don't exercise and as much as we know we should. So I decided to make my personal training journey. 07:01 which I call my business Yaya Fitness. Yaya means woman or grandma in Greek. And even though I'm Hispanic, I chose that as the name, but I decided to make it mobile and go to women to remove that barrier. So during my journey as a trainer, someone hired me to walk with them. A female hired me to walk with her. And because the doctor, 07:30 did not clear her for exercise for various reasons that we won't go into. But she asked me, if I pay you, will you walk with me? And I was very surprised. And it turns out that I was already in the area. I was already working with a client twice a week in that area. She was only five minutes away. So I said, sure, if you can meet me during this time, on these two days, I can stop by and walk for 30 minutes. 07:59 Well, that led to three days a week. But then pretty soon we were walking four days a week and for an hour. And we did that for about six months. It was during my interaction with her, because my approach with the clients that I work with is very client centered. It's all about you. I'm not gonna go in there and tell you about my dog and my problems. It's about you. And I listened. 08:25 And she shared with me her life story, her career as a teacher, her divorce, her battle with cancer, the life of her two grown children. And I realized that we have a need to connect, that we have a need to share, that we want to feel like we matter, and we do, and we do. But life gets in the way. And so. 08:52 That is, you know, it was that experience with this client that inspired the idea for friendly. I went back and started to read and research about, you know, are we not spending enough time with others, you know, and why are we not spending enough time with others as friends or family and, and he just, I decided that this was a solution. 09:16 or this is something that I wanted to go ahead and work on. And so the idea for Friendly came about. At first I called it Go Do Social, Go Do Social, because it's about being out and being social. And then that name, I received a lot of feedback. It was not resonating well. So I went back to the drawing board and rebranded it as Friendly. And you know, the, 09:44 Frequent and regular walks with that client is something that you've also brought into the business model of Friendly. There are regular events that people look forward to. We're going to get into that a bit later in this podcast. But I wanted to go back to your initial research ideas. How have you addressed Friendly at scale? 10:14 And how is the business replicable? We're gonna talk a little bit about the actual, the app itself and the events that you have curated. So how have you addressed that? How's Friendly gonna be scalable? Walk us through that. That's a great question, Brenda, because as it is, I have attended, I am at every event that we schedule right now, because I wanna make sure that 10:42 every member who becomes a friendly member, that they feel welcome, that they feel that this is a safe space for them, a safe group where they can come in, remove their anxiety, because women share with me that they feel anxious when they're going to one of the meetings for the first time, what if I'm not accepted or what if I don't get along with other women? So I wanna make sure that they feel safe, I wanna make sure that they feel welcome and that this is a space for them. 11:12 And so obviously I'm only one person. And so I thought, okay, what, how can I make sure that I replicate this experience in different local communities? And I've come up with the idea of having community coordinators so that we can go ahead and have the same events, for example, in Irvine or in Long Beach, just as events that we have here in the San Diego Valley. 11:43 By having a community coordinator who welcomes the members, who is the face of Frendi at every event, that is my vision for scaling Frendi. And some of the core events that happen every month and are available on the scheduling, on the app itself are around food. Yes, yes. We have a monthly breakfast and it's always the same Wednesday at the same time. 12:13 And we have a dinner and it's always the same Friday at the same time. And I chose that to be the main events. Each month. And obviously we schedule a lot of events like museum outings and walks and, um, but those two events are very, very important because we are social beings and we bond, you know, and we use as, you know, as a society, we use food. 12:42 to build community. And matter of fact, there's another story that we haven't talked about and it was actually done by Oxford University that talks specifically about that, about the fact that food builds community and research shows that when we spend time eating with others, when we share meals with others, we feel happier about ourselves and more confident. And we, so. 13:10 the and it's obviously in a study from the UK right so it just makes sense you know to have those two main events be the core events at each chapter the breakfast and the dinner. You know Martha thanks I always like to bring my guest's experience back to the Founder Sandbox and 13:35 inevitably while raising money and while building your business, you've clearly looked at how large is the addressable market. Can you walk my listeners through the addressable market for Frendi? Well, you know, one of the first studies that I came across was the Cigna study from 2018. It's the loneliness study. And it talks about the fact that 14:04 one in three women, age 45 and older, report feeling lonely and isolated. So obviously friendlies for women over 50. So that inspired me to go in and look at the census data and just see, okay, so one in three women, age 45 and older, feel lonely. How many, what is the size of this group that report feeling lonely and isolated? So I decided to just focus specifically on women over 50. 14:33 And it turns out that there are 59 million women aged 50 and older living in the United States. So that gives you a sense as to the fact that this is a real issue that needs to be addressed because loneliness and isolation was deemed the health crisis of our time before COVID. And obviously COVID brought it to the forefront. 15:03 we realized that we are not spending enough time face to face interacting with others. So I decided to build friendlies specifically for women over 50 because I am of that age and I know other women in that age group that because you know as they're going through different transitions in life our social networks change you know you go from work to retirement 15:33 and you may be retired but your friends may still be working. So now you may not have someone to go out there and do the, they may not have the freedom that you have to go out there and enjoy things. Or you may be married and you are now divorced. Sometimes you lose friends, you know, as a result of that. So I wanted to go ahead and create a solution of a... 16:02 social club for women over 50 where they can feel you know what it's okay to say I need friends it's okay to join this group because I need friends because there's a stigma around that I think that many of us don't talk about the fact that we want to connect or we don't have the friends that we would like to have in our circle or the friends that we need but we don't want to we don't talk about that we don't say it out loud 16:32 And I wanted Frendi to be that one safe space where you can go and feel completely comfortable because you're there, because you want to make friends. And how do people find Frendi when they're doing a search? Well, many of the women that I've sat down and talked to, they found us on Facebook. 17:01 I actually decided to run ads on Facebook to promote friendly, because a lot of our demographic are heavy Facebook users. And, and I make sure that I sat down with the women who reached out and asked them, you know, how did you find us? You know, what was it that you were looking for? And they're very, very nice. And they're like, well, I was just typing in, you know, women, social groups, women, friends, and you came up. 17:32 I was very happy that Frendi came up. Either very effective SEO or you had the key to the one of the solutions for loneliness in today's society. And I want to bring it back to the study by the Harvard study of adult development. The punchline is, you know, the number of social connections is the single most relevant. 18:00 factor influencing one's quality of life. And friend is poised to be that one of those social connection that multiplies the number of friendships, right? Of women over 50. So what's the typical size of your of your groups, your clubs and and how many do you want to be opening in the next 18 to 24 months? 18:25 We would like to open at least nine chapters in the Los Angeles area Los Angeles county area and. 18:34 An ideal size would be maybe 20 to 30 members. However, even though a chapter can have 20 to 30 members, keep in mind that not all the members attend every single event because with friendly you pick and choose an event. You may have the availability to go to the breakfast or you may have the availability to go to dinner. So what I've seen is that having small groups, you know, 10 or 11 at a dinner 19:02 It really facilitates for conversation and really engaging. I'm not to say that we cannot have a dinner with 25 people or 25 women, but it definitely lends itself for a more intimate setting where you can actually have a conversation with a lady to your right or in front of you or to the left. And I feel like you're missing out way down at the end of the table over there. Right, right. So. And what are some of the most popular events? 19:30 because you've been at this for over a year now. So what actually the breakfast, the breakfast and the dinners. And again, we go back to sharing meals. Right. So those are the events that are the most well attended. And in the ladies also tell me that they enjoy that that they look forward to the breakfast or the dinners. Excellent. So March is women history month, as I mentioned, kicking off the podcast. 20:00 For those women who are listening in from the audience, would you like to share with them your aha moments in finding your purpose in founding Frendi way back when? That's a very, very deep question because I found my purpose when I didn't realize that I was looking for purpose. 20:29 I, when I realized that when I was still an employee at corporate, I was still working in corporate America, I was doing a health assessment. Okay. You know, a lot of corporations when you're doing your open enrollment and you're selecting your benefits, like your medical insurance and dental, they do health assessments. They ask you a bunch of questions, you know, about your lifestyle. Do you smoke? Do you eat vegetables? Do you exercise? Do you have a lot of stress in your life? 20:59 And after I answer all those questions, my results were all red. I was a walking, I referred to it as a walking time bomb. Because of my age, because of my gender, because of my ethnicity and my lifestyle, at that time I was in sales, highly stressful. And obviously I was not exercising or eating enough greens. I was predisposed to heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure and premature death. So talk about a not. 21:28 Oh, we shouldn't laugh. No, no, you know, no. And for me, it was it was a very. 21:37 It was a moment for me to pause and I'm thinking, wow, there's only two things that I can do here that are within my control. Eating better and exercising. So I joined a running club. It just so happened that here in my community, right here, down this two miles from me, they were opening a running shoe store and they had a running academy. And I 22:05 I mean, Googled up the, Googled the name of the store and found that they had a director for the Running Academy, reached out to Bob and he said, come and join us. We get together three days a week and we run and we train for a race. And you don't have to join, but just come and check it out. So I went and you know, they would meet Mondays at 6 p.m., Wednesdays at 6 p.m. and Saturdays at 7.30. Now mine, now I used to run in high school. 22:34 But that was a long time ago. And I was afraid. I was like, oh my goodness, I'm gonna go run. And I showed up at 6 p.m. and it was a group of men and women, different ages, and very welcoming. And we just started running. Yeah, of course, it was interval. You were doing intervals to train for a race, right? So you run for a minute. 23:03 You walk for two minutes, you run for a minute. And, uh, I decided I would go ahead and stick with the club. I joined the club. So I trained to run my first 5k in South Pasadena. And after that, Bob said, okay, Martha, are you going to join us? We're going to train for a 10 K. I'm like, that's double the mileage. And I decided to sign up and I trained for my first 10 K. 23:34 And after that we completed that, trained for my first half marathon. 23:42 After I completed that, I transferred my first Los Angeles Marathon. Now, that was the moment that I realized that I was changing. I love the feel of the community. I love showing up to run with the group because, but again, just like we do when you go to these friendly events and you see the members over and over again, you build bond, you trust, and you become friends. 24:12 that happens when you're running or I'm sure I'm sure with any other activity that you you partake on a regular basis. And I love how I was feeling I love how strong I was feeling I love how happy I was feeling. And that was my moment I decided, I want to help women, you know, I just women feel like I do. 24:42 I wanted to share that feeling with other women and community and it goes back to community. And social connection. Wow. And you do have a love of books, right? And you've mentioned quite a few during the podcast today and they will be available in the podcast show notes. So I'll be getting those authors and names of books. 25:11 But I particularly like one that had a little girl. You found it in a bookstore down in San Clemente. And again, you find the things that speak to you when you need them most, but you don't know that you're looking for them. So I was in San Clemente, in what I think is this little shop, and there was a book. It's a small little book with illustrations that looks like a child would have created them. 25:41 It is a little girl with a pink dress, black hair. 25:48 And the title of the book is You Went Out on a Limb, The Limb Broke, and You Learned You Could Fly. Beautiful. So that also inspired me because many times we're afraid of failing and that keeps us from trying new ventures, going...
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Veronica Parmar- In Movement: Resilience through Pilates
03/13/2023
Veronica Parmar- In Movement: Resilience through Pilates
On this episode of The Founder's Sandbox, Brenda speaks with Veronica Parmar. Veronica manages and teaches at a Pilates studio in the greater Los Angeles area, where her diverse client list includes professional athletes, entertainment personalities, seniors, and those recovering from injuries. With her deep understanding and passion of the Pilates work, she is able to inspire her clients to gain flexibility, strength and body awareness. Veronica wants to expand her instruction to other aspects including guest teaching, workshops and Pilates retreats. You can find out more about Veronica or contact her at: transcript: 00:04 Welcome back to the Founder's Sandbox. I'm Brenda McCabe. I own and operate a consulting firm, NextAct Advisors. I have a simple mission. I want to assist entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs in building scalable 00:33 well-governed and resilient businesses. The Founder's Sandbox podcast that you're listening in today is just an additional channel in which I feature founders, business owners, corporate directors and professional service providers who like me want to use the power of the private enterprise, small, medium and large to create change for a better world. 01:01 Through storytelling with a guest on topics that include resilience, purpose-driven growth, and sustainable growth, my goal is to provide a fun environment and a sandbox where we can equip one startup founder at a time to build a better world through great corporate governance. Today, my guest is Veronica Parmar, Pilates instructor and owner of Pilates with Veronica. 01:30 Veronica and I are going to talk about in movement, resilience through pilates. I've been a practitioner and a student of Veronica for too many years. Now I love going back. She's really built resilience in my body. And I was thrilled when Veronica agreed to join me in the founder sandbox today. So thank you, Veronica. 01:57 Well, Brenda, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate you considering me for your show. So thank you so much. Right. Well, I'm going to give a little bit of background on you. Okay. And your business. So Veronica is owner of Pilates with Veronica. She has been an instructor at Yoga Works after studying under Jill Cassidy, a second generation instructor to Joseph Pilates, the original Joseph Pilates. 02:24 She grew up as a dancer and performed for more than three decades. Veronica's diverse client list includes professional athletes, entertainment personalities, seniors, and those recovering from injuries. Veronica, like many professionals in the fitness world during the peak of the COVID pandemic, had to pivot professionally. The story of her newly found professional identity. 02:53 is one of managing oneself. And if you've listened to my podcast before, or work with me in Next Act Advisors, I often go back to Peter Drucker's seminal piece on managing oneself. And when I asked Veronica to join me, it just was a really incredible aha moment for me, because 03:16 She used the words or words managing oneself several times in a spontaneous way. So we're gonna hear a bit more of Veronica's pivoting and creating a new professional identity. And she's done this through movement, resilient through Pilates. So Veronica, where did it all begin? You were a dancer for most of your life and now you're- Yes, so I was a dancer, very serious dancer. 03:46 competition dancer as a younger child and young adult and then was a dance major in college. When I got to college, I had also come, let me rephrase it, I had come from a small town as well as, you know, a small dance studio. So I had some dance technique issues that I didn't really realize that I had, some alignment issues, some... 04:13 body issues in terms of structural things and things of that nature. So I was basically instructed, we were very lucky in the dance department that I was in, I went to Cal State Long Beach, that we had a physical therapy department and we also had a, we had Pilates equipment. So I started, I took the first class and once we took the first semester, we were able to then use the equipment on our own. 04:42 And I noticed how drastically it changed my dance technique. Wow. It changed it incredibly. And I loved it. And it was something that was very, for me, there was a movement quality to it. I enjoyed that. I was getting stronger. And as I had mentioned, my dance technique changed immensely. And from there, I was working after I finished 05:13 I was in the dance, LA dance scene, working, doing all of that. There was no way with the two jobs that I had and auditioning that I wasn't ever going to be able to do any Pilates at that time. But I always kept it in my mind. I mean, I would take a class here and there, but really didn't have the means to do that as well. So. 05:37 I just, you know, that was something that I had kind of kept with me and wanted to sort of engage in that again, at some point, if I, the opportunity sort of arose. And then through your dance career, you did sustain injuries and you made a choice to not undergo surgery. Yeah, I had a herniated disc in my back sciatica three times. 06:07 and was encouraged or told basically at 26 years old that I should have low back surgery. And I still wanted to dance and I kind of rehabbed. I went through PT and I rehabbed myself and got back into taking class and back into that whole scene, which the more you're out of it and the more you're not practicing the skills that you need to audition, the longer it takes for you to get back. 06:36 to where you were prior to injuring yourself. But I, yes, so I sustained, I have a lot of injuries, unfortunately, and it just sort of is what it is when you are constantly pushing your body to limits that are not normal. And you do movement that's not normal, and it happens. There's a lot of injured ex-dancers out there. Right, but you chose not to abandon. 07:04 entirely. You did another first pivot in your career, right? You were with the Mobile Dance Company? Yes. So I was while I was still auditioning, I worked for a mobile dance company as office manager for a franchisee. It was a franchised company and basically stayed working with them for about 10 years. 07:32 I worked for the franchisee and then eventually worked for the owner. There was some absorbing of different franchises from other owners. Owners. And so I was doing that. I was still teaching dance. I was teaching also at a dance studio a couple nights a week and doing competition choreography with that. And then as working for the mobile dance company, 08:03 And I enjoyed what I did. I was involved in putting up 350 children's shows and dealing with parents and making sure letters are out and emails are out and we were receiving all the costumes and the costume orders correct. And how does this dance look? Do I need to go and intervene and see what's happening with the teacher? Right. So it kind of was a lot of different stuff that I did. I mean, it was all across the board from teaching myself. 08:32 to managing these teachers, managing just the whole thing. So I got really good at what I was doing and I enjoyed what I was doing, but I felt like I needed, I wanted to do something else. There was nothing wrong with what I was doing, but I felt like I think I could have easily just been doing that forever, unless I bought one of the franchises myself. And I didn't really particularly at that point. 09:02 have interest in doing so. So I decided to do my Pilates certification, as I said, with Jill Cassidy. Right. And I did that while I worked full-time. It was, you know, looking into different programs. It was one that I thought was very, I'll use the word serious. 09:28 there's a lot of bad programs out there. And I think it's hard to find something that is really well done. And she is an amazing instructor. She actually did not train under Joseph. She trained with Romana who trained with Joseph. So my error, she was third generation, but an amazing person. And I'm so happy that I learned the way that I did. It was a very classical based program. Okay. 09:57 So we were basically learning all of the exercises, the order of the exercises, all the equipment set up. And it was a rigorous program. It was something that I wanted, but I wanted to do it. And I liked that rigor because it reminded me of the dance world. We're used to that, at least in my time of dancing, might be a little different now. You know, part of it was that 10:26 little bit of scare tactic. And I was used to that. And I kind of liked it. Right. And it was very regimented, the safety measures from get go. Right. Because you are teaching on on equipment with lots of springs and weights. And it is quite, I would say, a complex system that benefits as you 10:55 professional athletes that have sustained injuries, the elderly, et cetera. So from there, so you finish your certification, you soon were off working at Yoga Works and moved into different positions as you build out the entire Pilates program at one particular Yoga Works store, our store fitness center. 11:25 And you brought in your program management, even back from the mobile dance time, you brought in your management skills as well as teaching. And at the time you were kind of what into your third or fourth year at Yoga Works, you were considering getting out of teaching. We opened, I opened, so I was part of the staff that opened the studio was March of 2016. 11:53 Wow. Ironically, it was March when we have 2020 when everything went askew. However, yeah, it was March of 2016. And yes, I had had sort of different roles at the time I started off as Pilates manager, then there were some shifts in regards to the company. But I was always teaching as well. 12:21 So I became the assistant manager and that was in December of 2019. So at that time I had just started as assistant manager. I was teaching, now I was teaching quite a bit group classes at the studio as well as all my private clients. Now I'd been there since 2016 so. 12:46 you know, with anybody that does what I do, it takes a long time to build a serious client base. And you get the people that come in and try, or maybe stick with it for a little bit, or maybe you don't really vibe with them, and they kind of filter out on their own. But at that point in time, I felt like I was at my best place ever work-wise. I had all the clients, the private clients, 13:16 They were all people that I loved working with. I loved them as people. I loved working with them. I had so much fun. The classes I had, I still liked, but I was starting to kind of phase those out a little bit and wanted to kind of get off of some of those. And then I was spending the rest of the time dealing with our front desk staff. So I was selling studio memberships. I was still selling Pilates packages. I was still 13:43 getting new Pilates clients now for other instructors that I had hired. And I was really enjoying doing a lot of different things for me. That's something that's I enjoy. I like to be able to have sort of different aspects of my job that I do. Right. And the pandemic sets in March 2020. Sure does. So 14:11 Talk us through the timeline and this is yet another pivot and back to Pilates with Veronica. Yeah, so I hadn't been in that position very long and it was going really well and then it started getting weird that week before everything shut down and I remember that last week at the studio was the strangest week. 14:42 It was just getting stranger and stranger with like, now we can't use props. Now we can't touch anybody. Now we have to make sure that, you know, all our members that come in see us frantically cleaning. And I remember my last day at work, that Saturday before the world shut down on Monday. And I was with my last client in the afternoon on Saturday and we both were like, this is so weird. 15:10 And I said to him, it's kind of like the last day of school or something. That's what it feels like. It's just like, there's some energy to it. That's weird, creepy and not right. And he's like, yeah, I just like, it seems like we're not going to. And we both kind of said, I feel like we're not going to be back here for a while. And that was what happened. And we shut down and like the rest of the world, which we thought was going 15:39 months and it turned out to be two years. And throughout this time, there's nothing like hindsight and thank you for your grace and sharing your personal experience. You managed yourself. You said, you know what, the only thing I have is I manage myself. So there was a furlough, right? And you 16:09 set out to create what you called very legitimate business, right? Walk us through, you know, what you wanted professionally in a world where you couldn't practice in a studio and how you recreated that into your current business. 16:37 you know, prior, you know, the few months leading up to that, it was we were going to close down some studios, you know, kind of consolidate studios. And then they just decided in that September, 2020 that they were going to lay everybody off. And then they decided then they filed chapter 11 bankruptcy and closed all studios completely. So I had to figure out what to do. 17:07 I didn't know, because I felt like I was sort of, the carrot was still being dangled, that we were going back to work and not maybe knowing how it would look. It probably wasn't gonna be like how it was, but going back to my beautiful Pilati studio that I worked in, which was, Brenda, I'm sure you could say, was a very lovely space. It was. So... 17:36 Strangely enough, about a month prior to that happening, a friend of mine reached out to me and said, hey, the gal that owns my duplex is looking to convert one of her garages into a little Pilate studio where can you, do you know where she could get her reformer? No. So I gave her all the information for this. There's a... 18:05 a guy called the Pilates guy that sells used equipment. So she ended up getting a reformer. She had other pieces already and was really looking for this space to be a place where she could do Pilates. She had done a certification of her own as well. Okay. I met with them. Again, this was before the full layoff and you know, they... 18:34 Adriana is her name and that's the wonderful person that I was connected with who is the owner of this home and little converted garage. And they basically said, Hey, you know, you could start teaching clients in here if you'd like. And I was like, Oh, okay, well, thank you. I don't you know, I'm still like, thinking it's like, you know, the ex boyfriend, you're gonna get back to 19:00 I think I have one more chance. And so, you know, once we were completely laid off, you know, like the studios are being cleared out, it's done. The breakup is official. I reached back out to Adriana and I said, you know, I would really like to start to use a space for my, I'm going to have, I'm starting my own business. Basically. 19:32 I just did it right away. I knew somebody who was able to do my website. We started that right away. I reached out to Adriana to see and Bobette to see if I could actually use that space. And we came across a rental sort of agreement. And that's what it was. I had to get this website up. I had to figure out a booking platform. 20:02 Right. Because I didn't want it to be, you know, I knew people, other people, teachers, it just kind of fly by night stuff or, you know, like it's a joke. And I didn't want that to be, I wanted to still function like I did when I was at Yoga Works. Like I had a schedule in the computer and I, you know, have packages that I was selling and things of that nature. So, you know, I had to find software that 20:31 was agreeable for me with the price point that I could. And pairing that with the website and making sure everything kind of works together. And then it was just kind of all hands on deck and trying to get emails out and reaching out to people and hoping that they would want to feel comfortable teaching or still being taught privately. But now, I mean, luckily the space 21:01 was the best space for Corona. It was the three walls space that was so important at that time. Right. And your own resilience and agility, I think you'd actually before being, when you were furloughed, Yoga Works did provide a lot of online classes and you were an instructor at time. So you had that kind of nailed down, right? Yeah. And then you rounded out. 21:31 Yeah, I started figuring out how to teach online, which was a different, different thing. And then I even, you know, I started teaching. They wanted us to try to see if our clients would basically use the rest of their packages through, you know, sessions online. So I got pretty good at teaching online and dialing that in. And so yes, I was doing that with them for, for a while. 21:59 And today you continue to offer some online, right? Yes. I was teaching for a while, really kind of in the heart of COVID was math classes online, but I sort of have kind of stepped away from that. It wasn't really didn't turn into what I was anticipating. So I just have a few private clients I still teach. And that's basically it. Duet online, not too much. 22:28 So two and a half years later, almost in half, you're operating Pilates with Veronica. If you look back, we've gone through two of your professional pivots, right? Long dance career, injuries, certifying with Pilates, and with a mobile dance company. At that moment, prior to the furlough, you were considering to move to management and less teaching. 22:54 What is it that you do today? And this is for those listeners to the founder sandbox, right? We're all business owners, founders, small, medium and large companies. What is it that you do today that mimics the assistant manager? I mean, you're not only the instructor, but you manage the whole gamut. So what, take a, you know, a hindsight look and what would you say that you continue to embody in the future? 23:23 your business. Pilates with Veronica. 23:28 I continue to kind of embody the way that I would conduct my day. So I would teach in the morning. Usually I'd have kind of this afternoon, lull time where I would do my work. So there's my managing of myself. So I continue to do my work. I do whatever reports I need to run, booking sessions, emails. 23:58 Um. 24:02 you know, charging credit cards. Yeah, good thing. But important things like that. You know, client relations basically, because sometimes, you know, the week might look one certain way. I mean, this happens often in the industry that I'm in, it's, then it turns into something else. And we're rebooking this person into this time slot. Now this person doesn't want to come here. So 24:31 I'm still kind of doing what I did. It's just on a very smaller scale. And I've been practicing with you for, I think, probably eight years off and on. I mean, during the pandemic, there was a lull there and I was unable to go. But one of I have had other instructors. 24:57 of the Pilates tradition, Miguelangelo in Spain, the original method. We speak about him often. He and Joseph. In reverence. That's right. But unlike Miguelangelo, truly your dance background, you bring it to the individual classes. And I would say that this is a distinctive way that you have found to 25:27 You know, by through movement, you find resilience. So speak to, you know, the creative element that you bring into our classes, because I never know what to expect when I get there. Which is what I want. I don't want... I learned the method in a very classical manner, which I think was very important, maybe not for every instructor, but for me. 25:55 It was the rote, it was the order, it was the things that were very parallel to dance. So yeah, I know you go to a ballet class, you go, please, Tandu's taking it. You know how it's gonna go. So you always know the sort of rote to it. And there is a...
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Betsy Berkhemer Credaire “How to get on Corporate Boards: Resilience and Intentionality”
02/25/2023
Betsy Berkhemer Credaire “How to get on Corporate Boards: Resilience and Intentionality”
Today our host, Brenda McCabe, speaks with Betsy Berkhemer Credaire. Betsy is an advocate, author, and search professional, CEO and President. Her retained executive seach firm, Berkhemer Clayton Inc., has celebrated 28 years in business. The retained executive search firm specializes in senior-level national and regional searches with diversity focus for Corporate Boards, Communications & Marketing, Finance & Investor Relations, for client corporations, universities and large nonprofit organizations. Additionally, 50/50 Women on Boards is the only national campaign to educate and enable more women to serve on corporate boards of directors, and encourage companies to seek and select women. She's also author of two books, "" and "The Board Game--How Smart Women Become Corporate Directors" You can find out more about betsy at and her book "" or find her on linkedin transcript: 00:04 Welcome back to the Founder's Sandbox. I'm Brenda McCabe. I own and operate a consulting firm, Nextac Advisors, where I have a simple mission. I want to assist entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs in building scalable, well-governed 00:34 and resilient businesses. The Founder Sandbox is a recent podcast. It's an additional channel to feature founders, company owners, corporate directors that are current and aspiring and professional service providers who like me want to use the power of the private enterprise, small, medium and large, to create change for a better world. Through storytelling with my guests. 01:01 on topics that include resilience, purpose-driven enterprises, and sustainable growth. My goal is to provide a fun sandbox environment where we can equip one startup founder at a time to build a better world through great corporate governance. Today, my guest is Betsy Berkimer-Crader. She's CEO and co-founder of Berkimer Clayton, a retained executive search firm 01:31 and CEO of 50 50 Women On Boards. Betsy and I are going to talk about how to get on corporate boards, resilience and intentionality. Thank you, Betsy and welcome to the Founder's Sandbox. I'm delighted to be here, Brenda. Thank you for asking me. And your consulting firm is called Next Act Advisors? Yes, ma'am. It's my next act rather than my last act. Right, it's an excellent title. And 02:00 Just wanted to emphasize that for your listeners, Next Act Advisors has a breadth of meaning that your audience certainly could take advantage of. Thank you. So you and I go back to about the time I landed in Los Angeles. I was making LA my new home. And at that time we coincided, you were president of the Los Angeles Orange County Chapter of Women Corporate Directors. And I actually got my first offer. 02:29 to join a corporate board of a US company. And I never negotiated a contract with a board in the US. And I sought out your help and you helped me negotiate my first board opportunity for a US company. And we became fast friends since, it was eight years ago. So I wanted to share with my listeners 02:56 that you not only are a trailblazer, but you're an advocate for diversity. You are a business owner. And the podcast today is about your story, about where you started. You had an advertising firm, a public relations firm. And you sold that many years ago and started a new career. And I wanted 03:26 start an executive search firm with diverse candidates. Can you tell us your story and how that began? Well, it's a long story. I'll try to make short Brenda, but it's such a pleasure to talk with you and with your listeners and to talk about entrepreneurship. Sometimes... 03:47 My favorite term is accidental entrepreneur, because oftentimes, especially women business owners start out not really thinking that they are going to own and build a business. Sometimes that sounds just too daunting, but start out with their job and then starting their job as an independent consultant and then growing it and building it. And that's sort of what happened with me with when I first started my public relations agency. 04:17 And because frankly, I couldn't find a job that I wanted. So I just started doing PR for companies and as a consultant. And suddenly it turned into many projects. And then I hired individual to work with me and therefore, well, a business. And I took on partners and we grew it to be the largest PR firm on the West Coast in a matter of 10 years. And then sold it to Golan, which is a global. 04:44 communications firm based in Chicago. I begin that I'm just a normal person who just, I didn't have any money to start a business, but I started the PR firm with a goal in mind that I wanted to do good work for companies and help companies really improve their brand and their visibility and their reputation management, which is what PR firms do. 05:13 And it just worked. And an overarching theme is always be optimistic like you are and just have confidence that things will work out. And if it doesn't work out, you can always go back and get a job somewhere. So that's how I grew the PR firm. And then when I sold it, I was able to stay on for five years. And then I launched the executive search firm, Berkhamer Clayton. 05:41 which does emphasize diversity and started it back in 1994, when diversity and focus on DE&I wasn't even heard of in those days. But what prompted me to start it was that I was involved in the marketing task force for Rebuild LA, which happened right after the riots, the civil unrest in Los Angeles back in 1992. That's right. 06:08 right, the king beating and what that led to in terms of civil unrest. And I realized that most of my corporate client companies did not have diversity in their senior ranks. And so I thought this was an opportunity perhaps to launch a retained executive search firm, a boutique, although providing the same services, corn ferry or hydrogen struggle, some of the big search firm names that your audience will have heard of. 06:35 They probably have never heard of Berkham or Clayton. We started as a boutique, we're still a boutique. But we've been able to over these last almost now 30 years, next year will be our 30th anniversary. We've been able to play senior executives at corporations and 62% of them have been women and people of color. And I'm very proud of that. It's a better statistic than any other search firm. And that's looking at hundreds of executive searches 07:05 we've handled. So pretty proud, Brenda. Thank you. I particularly like the story of getting involved with the task force and rebuilding LA. And there's currently a lot of preparations along LA for the Olympics that are just around the corner. So there's going to be additional opportunities to continue to build Los Angeles. Well, if I could add to that, that I've always been involved like you have with nonprofit organizations, I was on the board of March of Dimes when I was in my early 30s. 07:35 And building contacts, I didn't even know the value of being on nonprofit boards, but the primary value of besides being committed to a mission and helping with executing that mission. It's a great way to make business contacts other individuals who serve on the board with you. So I always recommend that for women and men. 08:00 in their mid-careers, even their early careers, to be on nonprofit boards, get to know business people, get to know the community really well. And to your point, the Olympics are coming up, but also there's a brand new mayor, Karen Bass here in Los Angeles and in other cities and states, new office holders, where your listeners can become involved as commissioners or as involved on the... 08:29 efforts, the agencies that those new legislators appoint people to. So there are several ways to become known, become visible and learn along the way, ultimately then years later leading to corporate board positions, which we'll talk about. Yeah, it's a great segue to your being an author. So a lot of the teachings you have provided to largely women, 08:58 on how to get on your first corporate board. You published your first book, Women on Board, Insider Secrets, which this book will be available in the show notes. The second book you authored, The Board Game, and actually I will do a little publicity. I was featured in one of the chapters here on my international, The Board Game, How Smart Women Become Corporate Directors. 09:23 Right. And then if I could add the third, Winning the Board Game, which is the name of the website where you can find these books, winn And the reason I did the books, the first was in 2012 and then Winning the Board Game was 2019, very recent. And the reason that I did the books was because there were very few women on corporate boards back in 2012. 09:52 In fact, the statistic was of all Russell 3000 public company boards in the US, the statistic was about 10%. 10% meaning of the board seats of those companies held by women. That's of thousands and thousands of board seats, 10% was not very many. So the books feature 10:17 the total of them, 110 women who serve on corporate boards and how they got their first board seat. As you know, since you serve on boards, it is hard to get the first board seat, but then subsequent board seats might happen because people know you in the board world, if you will. And so that story, these stories of the women and how they got their first board seats are really helpful. And it's a very quick read. 10:47 So for those of you in your audience who are looking to be on corporate boards someday, even then these stories will help you figure out how to do it. Bottom line is it's all strategic networking with the people you already know, people you've met through your nonprofit boards or through your business career, people you already know who serve on boards or they know people who serve on boards. And then they recommend you because they know you and they've seen you in action in business. So. 11:17 It's good to know how the system really works. It is. And if it hadn't been for your leadership and really gathering those stories together, it's very readable. But it's by the sectors where these women came from. I actually read your first book when I was between Europe and the United States. 11:43 the United States. And I actually reached out to quite a few of the women that were featured in your book and they've become friends and part of my network. And certainly my name has been cast come up for nomination committees as a result of some of the women you featured in those books. So thank you. In addition to being an author, you're not on Capitol Hill, but you get up to Sacramento quite a bit. You've been an advocate for a lot of the legislation in the state of 12:12 to increase the diversity in corporate boards. What's going on with initiative SB826? Well, that's the name of the law, Brenda, standing for Senate Bill 826. And we named it for August 26th, interestingly enough, International Women's Equality Day, August 26th, the 100th anniversary of when women got the right to vote in the United States. 12:41 and that was in the year 1920. Now that's the 102nd anniversary, 103rd anniversary will be this August, but that's the significance of SB 826. And the law was the first in the nation and the first one to stand up to require companies in the state of California publicly held companies, those are 13:11 stock exchanges to require that there would be at least one the first year and then two and then three women on their corporate boards no matter how many women or how many board members they have on the board and requiring just three even if your board is 15, 15 members requiring just three is not requiring a quota it is requiring enough women to have a voice because research says 13:40 whenever you have a group of three among a larger group, at least that minority group has a voice. So that's what the law says. And how it came about, I have never done a law before, never even approached Sacramento on a law. I only had made some contacts in Sacramento because I also in the nonprofit effort and became... 14:07 president of the National Association of Women Business Owners for California, because I had been the president of the Los Angeles chapter, there are 11 chapters of the Mabo. And so I became statewide president. As a result, I would visit Sacramento once a year and get to know some of the legislators. So I thought, well, why don't we try a law? This is back in 2012, a law that nobody else has saying that 14:36 We want to require three women on every corporate board. And what an adventure that turned out to be because whenever you get involved in politics, it's all your own expense traveling up to Sacramento and bringing in other friends who will travel up there with you and testify to the need for such a law. But I really learned a great deal. I had no idea how long it was gonna take or how difficult. It took seven years to get the law passed. 15:04 but it went into effect in January of 2019. Yes. And as a result, that year alone, 1200 women got on boards in California, 1200 women. And since then, I don't know the total number of individuals, but I do know that we have gone from 16% of board seats in California held by women to 34%, over a third of the board seats in California held by women. 15:33 More than any other state. And the national level is 28% of all public company board seats are held by women. So California is way ahead. I'm very proud of that. But it's an example for your listeners of just having an idea that may have legs. I had no idea, neither did my other Nobbel member friends, no idea if it would work or not, but we just proposed it. And then it's upon a life, a slow life. 16:01 but a life of its own. And then we finally got it, finally got it passed thanks to Senator Hannah Beth Jackson who was really the champion behind it. And she's from Santa Barbara and she's now retired but it's the proudest accomplishment of my life. It truly is. And it's a true testament of one of the parts of the title of your episode which is around resilience and intentionality. And it brings us back to 16:30 one of your current professional activities. I don't know how you do it all, quite frankly. In 2018, you were asked to become CEO of 50 50 Women on Boards. And five years later, you have taken this organization to over six continents with major activities in 19 cities. And because of the pandemic, a lot of this went on to a virtual environment. 17:00 your footprint is actually larger. Can you tell my audience or share with my audience, you know, what that journey has been like? I think it's largely around the metrics of just putting limelight on the number of women that are sitting on boards. And what's the program for 2023 looking like for 5050? 17:28 Other organizations also taking up the torch and saying, hey, it's not a matter of equal rights by any means, but it's a business issue to have more women on boards. And research, McKinsey research and many other independent reports say that when women are on the corporate board, the companies do better. They're more profitable by significant numbers and more productive. 17:58 and the workforce is better engaged, just because, as we know, women tend to focus on the details. That's a very general statement, but women get things done. Yes. So shining the light on the issue that more women were needed is for business purposes. That's what really propelled this 18:26 the role of CEO of 50 50 women on boards, which I'd like everybody to look up 5050wob.com in order to track the research. 50 50 women on boards tracks the research following how many women are on boards and how many are added every year and what it took to get them there. So it's a great service that 50 50 women on boards provides plus 18:55 educational workshops and events in those 19 cities you mentioned. So it's an example of helping to propel the momentum of something that was really needed, but nobody was paying any attention to 20 years ago. And it's a little anecdote. Back when I first started the PR agency, women could not get loans. 19:25 from a bank in their own name. I know. And I had to have a male, didn't have to be a husband, it could, in fact, it was a boyfriend off the street. No relation, had to co-sign a loan for a tiny little amount of 2,500 bucks to get started with some expenses for equipment that I needed. And it was just appalling. And it was the National Association of Women Business Owners way back in 75. 19:53 that took on that issue federally and got the women's credit bill passed in order to have women have their own checking accounts and women to be able to get loans. So I only point out that example that in 2020, I mean, in the year, the millennium, the year 20, 2000, yes, very few women were on corporate boards and starting to notice the issue, starting to notice that this needed attention. 20:22 and then gathering steam behind it with books, with the law, with other support systems and other organizations saying, yeah, that is a problem. That's how we've been able to build this incredible issue to what it is today. And just last month, it is a global issue. Just last month, the FCA, which is like the SEC in the US, but the FCA in London, 20:52 in the UK require that 40% of all board members be women in the UK. And so, you know, we're on to something big, women. It's a sea change. It is a sea change. It is. And you asked me what the program is for this year. It is continuing the city events for educating women where directors, corporate directors, men and women, 21:20 do one-on-one coaching with the women in, who attend the events and the same with our workshops. So we're continuing what is really working, educating women about how to use their own networks in a very strategic way to get themselves onto corporate boards. And with the goal of 50% By 2050? Or more. 21:45 So look at what happened with the, some of you may know that the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors now all five seats are held by women. And just in Arizona, which previously was a very conservative state, they've got now a woman governor and all of their top officers are women, same in Michigan. So we- And the new mayor of Los Angeles. And the mayor of Los Angeles, thank you. 22:11 You know, Betsy, I always like to give an opportunity to my guests to provide some information about how to get contact you and your firm. And these the information you provide here will also be in the show notes. So it's over to you. Well, thanks so much, Brenda, our, our executive search firm, which I also still own and run in parallel with 5050 is Berkamer Clayton. That's B-E-R-K-H like my name. 22:38 Clayton, my business partner's name, Fred Clayton, Brenda's knows well, and we're at berkamerclayton.com. And then I mentioned 5050 women on boards 5050 w OB.com. And I think you'll enjoy traveling around those those websites. On the 5050 women on boards website, we have the research you may filter by city. 23:06 not by city, sorry, by state or by industry to find out and, and overall, of course, nationwide to find out how many women are on the boards and what specific companies have how many women on their boards. And it's just eye opening. And great, great, great fun, but also a little bit, you know, disturbing to look at some of the statistics and say, well, why don't some of these companies have more women on their boards? 23:36 The needle's going in the right direction. Yes, it is going in the right direction. So I always like to bring us back to finalize to the founder sandbox. Next Act Advisors, my consulting firm, is all about working with founders and business owners on resilience, sustainable growth, and purpose for organizations or purpose for corporations. 24:06 What does the meaning to you in your own words of resilience? Well, I think about it occasionally because I like to remind myself to be resilient. And I just think through all my years of being an entrepreneur...
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Brian MacMahon: Bold Growth in the Founder's Journey
01/26/2023
Brian MacMahon: Bold Growth in the Founder's Journey
On this episode of The Founder's Sandbox, Brenda McCabe speaks to Brian MacMahon of Expert DOJO. Brian specializes in helping entrepreneurs become more successful in their business by using all the tools available as owner of the largest peer to peer peak performance academy in the world. Expert DOJO improves the success rate of early-stage entrepreneurs with investment, foundation, showcasing, influence, and community. You can reach Brian at : Transcription: 00:15 All right. Welcome back to the Founder's Sandbox. I am Brenda McCabe. I own and operate the consulting firm NextAct Advisors. I have a really simple mission. 00:44 I want to assist entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs in building scalable, well-governed, and resilient businesses. The Founders Sandbox, which you're visiting today, is an additional channel to feature founders, business owners, corporate directors, and professional service providers who, like me, want to use the power of private enterprises, be they... 01:13 small, medium, or large to create change for a better world. Through storytelling with a guest on topics that will include resilience for purpose-driven enterprises and sustainable growth, my goal is to provide a really fun sandbox environment where we can equip one startup founder at a time to build a better world through great corporate governance. 01:42 Today, my guest is Brian McNeha, who has an alias of the head honcho of Expert Dojo. And I want to thank you for joining me today. My pleasure. Can't think of anywhere I'd rather be than hanging out with my buddy, Brenda. You know, we did some practice for this. I've known for you for about seven years now. Because I'm so passionate about sustainable growth and I've seen the work you've done. 02:09 with a couple of my clients that have gone through the Expert Dojo Accelerator Program. I think the topic that we're going to kind of kick around here in the sandbox is bold growth in the founder's journey. I've observed the Expert Dojo, and particularly Brian, at the Santa Monica-based Accelerator Program that is now celebrating its seventh anniversary. Congratulations, Brian. Did you ever think you'd make seven years? 02:39 Gosh, I didn't even know. Listen, you know me. What were the chances, right? What were the chances? Never good, but we're here. We're still alive. We're still going. Yeah. So in addition to my brief introduction, let me tell you a little bit about Expert Dojo. So Brian within Expert Dojo specializes unlike other accelerators in not only a four-week 03:09 become more successful in their business by using all the tools available as owner of the largest peer-to-peer peak performance academy in the world. Expert Dojo improves the success rate of early stage entrepreneurs with investment foundation showcasing, influencing, and community building. It truly is quite unique. And we're not going to... 03:38 um, hide that I've known you at first. I met you about the time you were founding expert dojo seven years ago. I was then in the angel community. I was more in orange County and you would often be a panelist Brian. And there was this undeniable Irish accent. So my last name, the cave is that all right. I like Irishman, but also your son Liam was always in tow. And I thought. 04:08 your insights as well in the panel panels in which you participated were very unconventional to what I had been exposed to. And I, um, I still think so today and wanted you to be a guest on the founder sandbox because of your unconventional approach to helping entrepreneurs in their bold 04:37 broader audience. So I want you to kick off with where did it all begin Brian seven years ago. Oh my gosh, you're asking an Irish man to tell a story. How long is your podcast? I think we need some extra time. We can always we can go forever and then I'll have cut it out. All right. Yeah, you can cut me down. That's fine. So so look, I'm a lover of life. 05:04 I just love life. Life is great and the world is great and there's so many fabulous places to go and live. And I've been really fortunate in that I have made sure that I did as much of that as I possibly could and spent many, many years traveling around with different businesses just enjoying the world. Right. And so my conclusion is everybody's awesome. We all pretty much have the same wants and needs and desires. And if we really search for good things, then amazing things can happen. 05:33 while most people never really go on that journey. And that's what's so nice about early stage startup. They go on that journey, like they grab that journey by the short and curlies and they just stay with it all the way through. So it's incredibly brave and it's a beautiful thing to watch. And if you're really lucky, you get to be like the Linda McCartney, right? You get to be around while the Rolling Stones are there and you gotta be around while you've got the Beatles and you got the whole thing and you get a photograph at all and be immersed in it all. 06:02 And I think that's the real joy that you and I have, is that we're in the most creative place in the world, in Southern California, with people who have the largest dreams and aspirations, being very, very close to what tomorrow is gonna look like every single day. So who else can get that, right? So I found myself here about eight years ago. I had been in New York beforehand. I love New York, it's just a fantastic place, and just very aligned with my personality. Got down here. 06:32 realized there was a ton of incredible, creative, phenomenal folk in the early stage space, but also noticed that there was a tremendous amount of failure. And that's okay, you know, from success, success should come from failure in some ways, if that needs to happen. But I noticed that the failure was all happening with a very specific group of people who are all the really good entrepreneurs who are not connected, and the success was all happening with a very specific group of people. 06:57 who are all generally young boys who went to high schools who mommy and daddy gave them a unicorn for their birthday. And I just, and so I'm fine with a bit of unfairness. I think it's okay. When you know, if I work harder than the guy or gal next door, then, you know, my kid and family and me and stuff we should be get a little bit more unfairness because we work hard, right? But it should just be a small amount. And if it's not, if it's a huge amount what happens is people just become useless. And so 07:24 I looked and sometimes these things are easier to see from the outside, but I looked at what was happening within venture capital in the United States. And I genuinely was worried. I felt that in many ways it's turning into a cancer, which is spreading. And the early stage startups, the really wonderful creators were not being given an opportunity to do so. So we took this wonderful location here in Santa Monica, which if anybody looked from the outside would say, why are they in a refurbished restaurant? 07:52 which hasn't even really been refurbished. It's still kind of the same restaurant it was eight years ago. And I can tell you because it was the only thing that was offered to us. And we set up our incubator stroke, accelerator stroke. We just want to get involved in the community. And then we just set about learning and, and, you know, that learning turned into learning and focusing on growth as the main thing that can compete with the bias and overcome it. 08:19 And because growth ties into greed and greed and aligned greed will always be out bias of which there's a tremendous amount. And then our learning and learning and then learning and growth turned into learning and growth and investment. And that took us to where we are today. Now we have like 220 investments in early stage companies. We invest in companies all over the world from Africa to India to South America to the US. We love the early stage space. And we use growth as our. 08:48 absolute weapon and all of the people around us who are experts at growth to be able to help those founders get to places they would genuinely find it difficult to get to themselves. You know, that was eloquent. It was also fun. I was accompanying you along that journey. I didn't realize you started out in New York. I also spent a lot of my time years ago in New York and when I found LA, I decided to settle here. 09:16 to your point, very creative economy. A lot of things are happening, particularly down in SoCal now. So why did you choose a four week program that's really turns into a three year program? I think that's truly unique among accelerators that I've been exposed to. Talk us through that. You know, one of the advantages, one of the advantages I think we have in venture is that we started out not having a clue what we were doing. 09:46 And we embrace that because the moment you feel you know what you're doing, you're doomed, right? That's the day you sit back, you send out manuals, you put processes out and you tell people that you got this and you don't because the world keeps on evolving and it keeps on changing. So we knew at the beginning, we knew there was something terribly wrong in venture and we knew that 10:11 We didn't have the answers, but there were thousands of entrepreneurs every single day in Santa Monica starting out on the journey. And within their journey would be the answers. So we spent all of our time studying, watching, learning, adapting, executing based on what we saw, learning from what we executed, and then just getting better and better and better. And I genuinely don't feel a single bit different today than I felt eight years ago. I still feel we haven't got a clue. 10:41 I feel that most other folks, I think it's a real pleasure and it's a gift to move from unconscious incompetent to conscious incompetent. It's a really beautiful place to be because then you can really strive to move forward to the conscious competent, right? Which is when you're on your bike and you're cycling, but you know you could fall off to unconsciously competent, right? But you have to make it through that journey. And most people never make it away from unconsciously incompetent. They just think they're awesome. 11:10 and everything is great and it's working. So we started off with the four week, we started off actually with a eight week program. We started off actually with a physical eight week program. And we would say to like some random person in Africa, hey, you should jump on a plane, take this money that we're gonna give you, invest in you, jump on a plane, travel over to Santa Monica, find the most expensive hotels on the planet, which is what we have in Santa Monica. 11:36 eat in the most expensive places. Like even ramen is going to take most of the investment that we're going to be given to you. And then you're going to come through a program and you're going to be so wowed by just the mesmerizing fact of being in the same room as us, that you're going to think this is a great idea, right? And so we thought that was awesome until the pandemic came. And then we're like, no, that was stupid. Like, why are we doing this? It makes no sense. And then we thought, oh, we should do something for a 12 week program until we realized 12:03 We're just wasting entrepreneurs times for 12 weeks and they have way better things to do than sitting classes with us. So then we started to bring it down to like five weeks, four weeks, and then we started to do longer demo days with investors. And then people would come through the programs and we have amazing trainers, like folks that you know really well, like John McDonald and Ryan Fowland. And we've got Ryan and Francis from Camino5 who train on branding. It's all focused on growth. 12:31 So people would come into the training and they would say, wow, that was incredible. I feel great. I feel fabulous. The world is gonna be different. And then it would be Monday and they would go back to what they were doing before. So we realized it wasn't good enough just to move away from the standard accelerator model of passing on mentors who are next to useless because they don't know enough about the company and investors who are no more than a commodity. So again, next to useless because 12:58 they're just looking at every deal that's out there anyway. It wasn't enough to just move to growth. We actually have to become the growth resource. And I would say in those early days, maybe our product market fit was 5% in that we knew that there needed to be one and that we started with the growth. And I'd say today it's probably 12%. 13:22 So you have some numbers on that. What I was struck by also is from get go, because there are Friday pitch events. So you pitch until you're blue in the face, right? As a founder. And that truly is unique. And it starts building from week one through the two or three years, right? And money comes along the way. So. Yeah. 13:50 You have to, Brenda. I'll just say on that. I think what's totally wrong with how venture is done is that the emphasis is 80% on being an incredible picture to investors. And look, having a great relationship with money is something that does need to be learned. And the better founders are the ones that have better relationships with money. And what I mean by better relationships are they're not afraid of money. Too many people are afraid of what money will do to them. And what we try and encourage is that you think of money as a tool. However. 14:20 It still shouldn't be 80% of the job of building a business. It should be 30%, right? And the other 70% should be, I am gonna build the biggest badass business the world has ever seen. I'm gonna kick the heck out of all of my competitors. And then as I'm doing that, then I get lots of investment, get more fuel, I get more people around me, then more people kick the Badoobies out of our competitors and so on and so on, the cycle goes on. 14:49 So really, I actually think when we look at kind of what we achieve most, it really is focusing the founders on that necessity to grow on a really strong foundation and then build this process that allows them to continue to execute, learn, optimize and scale. Yeah, and also one thing that I'd add again, two of my clients have gone through the Accelerator program. I was so impressed. I actually did hire. 15:18 one of your collaborators, Ryan Follin, to help me work on my podcast, quite frankly. But you work with a lot of, you have different cohorts. You also are invested in quite a few women-led companies, but you have a lot of technical founders. And I was struck, you know, you start out with, it's about the story, it's not about the features. And by week two, or by week... 15:45 three, those technical founders, I've seen them in med tech, I've seen them in enterprise SaaS, I've seen them across the board. They stopped talking about the features and they start talking about story. And again, that's thanks to you and the mentors that you bring to train and really go through those arduous weeks. And look, Brenda, on that point, look, all of us. 16:13 are led by stories. We love stories. We did stories by the campfire. Like before there was any, can you imagine a world before there was like HBO and CNN and Fox News and stuff? And that's why we have a sandbox. It existed back then. And back then there's little old fire going on. Even before they'd worked out the whole fire thing, which was a startup, by the way, before that they're like sitting around a cold something and they're like, hey, you know what? It's so damn cold. 16:41 And I'm sitting in this place and nobody's invented clothes yet. Nobody's invented a fire. Why don't we tell a story? Cause that's all we got. Right. So we, since the very beginning of time, the only thing that has stayed consistent is the greatest storytellers are the ones that always win. Always. So Nike killer storytellers, they don't sell sneakers. They sell the feeling of victory and participation. Right. Patagonia. 17:07 You want to compete with Patagonia if you're American Apparel? I don't think so. They don't sell t-shirts in Patagonia. They sell a better human being. Apple. Forget about it. They get to sell their computers for three times more. I have an Apple computer. You think I need an Apple computer? Seriously, I could work with a Dell computer, no problem. Save a thousand bucks, go to Cancun and have a very nice holiday. But why don't I do it? 17:32 Because genuinely I am convinced I'm not only more successful with an Apple computer, but I'm better looking. Right? I'm convinced of it. So they don't sell computers. They sell how these things make us feel. So we have to move people off features. We have to move them to a place where their consumers really understand what the enemy is that they're facing and they understand how to overcome that enemy and that this product 18:00 is seen as the enabler of doing that. Wow. If you haven't heard about Expert Dojo until my podcast, you've got to look it up. In the show notes, you'll get the URL. This is the last question before we get into some fun questions. Although these are fun questions up until now. So, you know, I sat in on an interview process that you kicked off with one of my clients who was considering an investment by Expert Dojo. 18:31 And something about how you discover talent, right? Your cohorts are relatively small, right? In size. Can you talk to me about what is it that you look for? Right? Spoiler alert. What is it that you look for in those founders in their intake interviews that really clinches the deal to make that investment? Ooh. So that's hard because 19:00 It's not really one thing. Now, if I take your clients, your founder, and by the way, I look at the companies we invest in as our clients, right? I don't look at them as investing companies. I look at what I'm bringing them in. We are a sales organization, right? And when we have them in there, we are a service organization, which means we're working for them. And I think that's also a very big difference with venture capitalists. Too many people get carried away with the fact that they think the money is valuable and it's not. 19:29 It's just a commodity to get into a place. But I do realize that to go on this journey that we go on, you have to be, it's not just crazy. Crazy is just too basic. You have to be selfish, right? You have to be so selfish. Like to the extent that you believe that what you're doing is so incredibly important, that there is literally nothing else in the world that compares to it. 19:53 that different people believe this to varying facts. I'm kind of far down on this scale, but like you don't need to be like as far as me, you can be in the middle, but you have to be at a place where you are going to be questioned and you are going to be tested. And when you are, then you are worthy, right? And most folks are not. Most folks, they look at a decent Netflix documentary and they're like, oh, you know, I had that idea. I had that idea like so long ago, I know that. 20:22 are somebody else like, oh, I've got this great idea. We're going to do it. It's not the idea. And it's not even the implementation. And it's not even the execution of the implementation. All those things are table stakes. Right. It is the character that remains when things go, go, go, go left field. And they will, everything will happen. You'll have your partner will suddenly do bad things to you. 20:48 The partner won't see it that way. Your partner will see it that you did bad things to that person, but it will go wrong. Your process, your perfect, wonderful process, whether you're an accelerator or whether you're selling something else will go wrong. It won't be as perfect as you thought it was. A competitor will come in. They'll hit you at lower prices, better service. People will steal your people. Unfair things will happen like the...
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Enrique Serrano: Deep Tech- the Combination of Organic Active Materials and Machines
02/01/2023
Enrique Serrano: Deep Tech- the Combination of Organic Active Materials and Machines
On this episode of The Founder's Sandbox, Brenda McCabe speaks with Enrique Serrano, founder of B5Tec, about how his company combines organic chemistry coupled with manufacturing at scale. You can find out more about B5Tec and Enrique at Transcript: 00:03 We're standing, we're standing on the edge of something big. We're gonna make some changes. Good morning. Welcome back to the Founder's Sandbox. I'm Brenda McCabe and I own and operate a consulting firm, Next Act Advisors, where I have a simple mission. 00:30 I want to assist entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs in building scalable, well-governed and resilient businesses. The Founders Sandbox podcast of which you're listening to today is an additional channel to feature founders, business owners, corporate directors, and professional service providers who like me want to use the power of the private enterprise, small, medium, and large to create change for a better world. 01:00 Through storytelling with a guest on topics, including resilience, purpose-driven enterprises, and sustainable growth, my goal is to provide a fun sandbox environment where we can equip one startup founder at a time to build a better world through great corporate governance. Today, I'm absolutely thrilled. My guest is Enrique Serrano. Enrique and I go back. 01:28 Over a decade when I lived in Spain and worked in Spain and Enrique and I were both in the renewable energy space. He's still around with a new company and today we're going to talk about B5 Tech and specifically Deep Tech, the combination of organic active materials and machines. 01:52 Thank you, Enrique, for joining me in the Founder's Sandbox today. Thank you. Thank you. A long time. A long time. I know. I know. Although we see each other on these screens too much. But anyway, you know, we're almost at the first anniversary of a very sad event, the incursion of Ukraine by Russia, provoking not only a humanitarian and geopolitical crisis, but also an energy crisis in Europe. 02:22 Just last week at the World Economic Forum, the president of the European Commission, Van der Leyen announced to the attendees, we have a plan, a Green Deal Industrial Plan. Our plan to make Europe the home of clean tech and industrial innovation on the road to net zero. Our Green Deal Industrial Plan will be covering four key pillars, the regulatory, the environmental, financing skills, 02:53 and trade. And she concluded with the story of the clean tech economy is still being written. Enrique is going to be talking about how he's writing his novel, and with the business and the clean tech economy. You know, over the years, she continued, she's been coming to Davos, and she's heard many times that we are on the cusp of a period of creative 03:22 spoke of his idea that innovation and tech replaces the old, leaving the old industry and jobs behind. In many ways, this dynamic applies to the clean tech revolution of tomorrow. But I believe she says, if Europe gets it right, the story of the clean tech economy can be one of creative construction with the right support and incentives for companies to innovate with the right focus on skills and people. 03:51 with the right environments to make the most of our world-leading innovation capacity. Europe already has everything it takes, talent, researchers, industrial capacity, and Europe has a plan for the future. And she finalizes. And this is why I believe the story of the clean tech economy will be written in Europe. So I'm absolutely delighted, Enrique, that you are part of the clean tech economy in 04:21 And as an introduction for my listeners, you know, I've known you for over a decade. And we were both working. I was in the concentrated solar power. You were in PV at that time in Spain. And, you know, 10 over a decade is a long time, but it's not a long time in deep tech, is it? The road to commercialization in deep tech companies. 04:50 is long and arduous. Yes, yes. I leave one second to introduce one idea. One of my favorite song of ACDC is a long way to top if you wanna rock and roll. That's right, ACDC. You heard it here on the founders' band. It's a long way to the top if you wanna rock and roll. So if you are working with this tech, 05:18 know, is a long way. I love it. So before we get into the B5 Tech, the company that you founded and our CEO, you developed, this has been started the company in 2017, you developed being a disruptive technology, as opposed to technologies, right? Disruptive technology to create energy storage 05:49 Can you walk me through, you know, you're bringing, you're combining organic chemistry with manufacturing at scale. And that's what the podcast is going to be about today. So how you've merged the two worlds and you're scaling, you're actually going to be manufacturing in the next couple of weeks with a full manufacturing plant. So where did it all begin? 06:15 Yes, well, is this when you talk about these two different technology, people say, okay, this is and they are two really, really, really different technology. But it depends. 10 years ago, I personally worked with a really famous national lab in the US, the PNNL, and we know that a really, really, really brilliant around the center as 06:44 PNNL, also in Europe, mainly in Germany, people is working with organic active materials that has the same performance that metals in batteries. And this is really, really, really great. Why? Because it's the same, the pharma industry, they are using the same. They develop molecules that has the performance that you need. 07:15 we live in the, I think in the metal age. I know. Batteries, we know the lithium battery, we know the lead battery, we know the cobalt battery. But so what's happened? What's happened? And at the same time, different also around the public and private center, they are working with microfluidics. 07:45 100% of the market is medical technology, lab-on-a-chip technology. But you can use this technology to provide an energy storage solution. Why? Because a fuel cell is a flow battery. It's a fuel cell, sorry. So you can use microfluidics to develop these kind of devices. So we start to work with these two different technologies and mix. 08:13 You know, that's the way you described that really coincides with one of the points I or one of the characteristics that I described in a blog post on deep tech. I said there's five characteristics and one of deep tech is actually combining from multiple domains, right, to create a product or service. So you're saying that 08:40 the use of you've identified from the pharmaceutical and research for many, many years ago, the use of natural organic chemicals or chemistry, pardon me, can be applied in the energy sector. And it has not what we've been doing is mining for lithium and zinc and copper and destroying our and the second. And the second aspect you for saying you've you've 09:10 of not copied, but you've brought in from the also the pharmaceutical lab on a chip, right? Microfluidics. So you're bringing in two different domains from different industries to the energy sector. Wow. Yes, that was the idea. And this was, you know, in 2018. And maybe people say that we are a little bit crazy. Because 09:39 because there were obviously there were other times, the situation around the world, the geopolitical crisis, the rising of China was really, really, really different. But I think everybody knows the problem that we had 10 years ago and five years ago and today. And now, obviously our situation changed a lot because people believe 10:07 It's funny because you know after the 70s crisis, you know the oil crisis, a lot of new technology were developing. Cracking technology, lithium-ion technology, fuel cell, a lot of energy technology that we are using now were developing after this crisis. And now it's very sad, but I don't know, maybe the human civilization only works. 10:37 after a crisis. But now we are into a new crisis and people understand that we need to change a lot of things. Well, let's move into you've combined two domains. There's a geopolitical energy crisis that has accelerated but you've been at this since 2017 and actually before. Why have you chosen storage? All right, you can have productive assets. 11:06 But why are energy storage devices needed today and what is B5 Tech about? Thank you. Yeah, the founders, myself, we came from the, well, I personally work in the energy sector, all of my professional career. I started to work for an oil and gas company. A lot of different point of view, financial, operational, a lot of things. 11:35 after the big tsunami of PV plus wind, it's clear that the next wave is storage. Okay. Explain for my listeners who are not engineers, what is storage? Solar PV and wind is an amazing energy, it's the most cheapest energy in the world, but 12:05 is energy is not dispatchable. You can use when you want. Got it. If you have solar PV panels at night, doesn't work. If you have a wind farm, maybe now works or maybe not. So you need to storage and to manage. It's quite important. It's not only storage these energies, the right word is dispatch. Yes. 12:35 world that everybody in the industry use. Right. So, and people start to invest and have a look with all this technology that came from, for example, the 70s is the rise of a flow batteries. For example, I, as I said before, we had an agreement with the PNNL to develop a Vanadium flow batteries. Vanadium flow batteries was discovered in Australia, but where the best technology was 13:05 performance in the US. And now what's happening? Now, China are installing gigabit of these kind of batteries. The gigabit factories of Vanadium, right? Yes, yes, they have a plan. A really big plan to install a lot of capacity of these batteries. We are talking about gigabits, gigabits and gigabits and gigabits. 13:35 So in the Western economies, I usually say, let me to introduce another joke. I usually say, for example, project finance is a weapon of massive destruction for young industry in the Western economies. Say that again. So it's quite difficult to scale up an industrial business. All right. 14:05 really, really hard, really, really hard in the Western economies to rise an industrial business because people only have looking for to decrease the risk from the lawyer and financial point of view. Got it, got it. So it's more short-term, right? They don't have the longevity of the Chinese five-year industrial plan or? Yes. 14:33 So energy storage is the area that will be the next, I guess, wave of innovation, right? There are things out there, but there's scarcity of rare earth metals like lithium. Like lithium. I hope also, and I believe, but I hope there will be a new wave of innovation, but we need a step. 15:02 As I said before, we are using technology that came from a long time ago. We made in the last two years a proof of concept for the European Space Agency. This is to install using microfluidics to install a micro-fuel cell for small satellites. This looks so cool. 15:31 The head of the technology, the fuel cell, was used for the Apollo mission. So maybe we need more. We need more and more and more. Because, okay, it's good. We are using, we have enhanced technology that came from the system, but in my personal opinion, we need more, more and more. So let's go to, 16:01 concept that is technology readiness levels. I think for my listeners, it might be helpful because they don't all come from the deep tech industries that I cover. You're using some concepts and technologies that have been, let's say an R&D for the last 10, maybe 20 years, right? They're now coming out in the limelight because 16:31 geopolitical and energy crisis. And there's a race, right? Between countries to develop different solutions. How do countries, how do companies and how do private equity and VC look at technologies with respect to the technology readiness levels? And then the second question, Enrique, is where would you place the three products that you have currently? 17:01 at B5 Tech. Yeah, I think obviously the concept of TRL is quite important to understand. Yes. All of the industries has their knowledge, their skill, their metrics. And when you are talking, right, that came from IT, everyone knows that Minimal MVP, Minimal Bible Producer. Okay, in technology is really well known. 17:31 This is scale from zero to nine. This is the TRL, technology readiness level. Zero, an idea. Nine, you know everything. Your car, a oil car is a TRL nine. Nobody has any problem using this technology. Your laptop, TRL nine. So from zero to nine, we have different levels. 17:57 This concept was developed by NASA and all of the industry, all of the academia are using this. And I think it's critical to understand mainly when we are talking about industrial technology, finally energy storage solution or also medical is an industrial economy. The scale up is different. 18:25 It's different. It's impossible to move from an MVP to have 500 millions of clients. It's impossible. It's impossible when you are working in the industrial economy. So it's quite important to understand the DRL, the difference level of the DRL from zero to nine. It's the same. I really like it. It's like a school of thought as a philosophy. 18:55 the works that was made in the University of Cambridge. They say, we have three different ledgers. The first layer is technology. The second one is the product. And finally, above all is the market. To do innovation, we have technology push or market pull. In the seventies, the eighties, nineties, only works techno... 19:24 technology push. You know, Motorola, the R&D department, they decide the new device that you will use. And now the situation changed. We work only with a market pool. The guys that are below of all, they don't say nothing. And in my opinion, it's quite important to have a mix. We need the 19:53 market pool, but we also need the technology push, both. So it's quite important for, you know, PCs, for also for politicians, for the government to understand a simple, a really simple, simple concept. The TRLs, the technology push, but for example, in lab on a cheap technology, the problem that we have is clear that the problem is a market pool. 20:21 technology is ready. The technology can do amazing, amazing things. So you started the company in 2017 B5 Tech. You're located outside of Madrid, Spain. You will be soon installing a manufacturing line to scale to 500,000 cells that will enable you to get to TRL level seven, eight? Yes. 20:51 Right. Yes. You're also raising money and our B5 Tech is a finalist for the Bloomberg New Energy Pioneers Award. Yes. You know, what is the customer demand currently for B5 Tech for either the fuel cells, the hype, the supercapacitator or the battery? 21:19 Yes, your flagship. The hybrid supercapacitor. Got it. Fairly. It's because the DRL is high, the demand is great. Also, the Western economy and also around the world. We are electrification everything. We need supercapacitor and hybrid supercapacitor. OK. And people invest a lot in the standard batteries. OK. You know, the lithium ion batteries. 21:48 Other technologies are at the second level and we need a lot. There are successful companies around the world. For example, Maxwell, Eton in the US, Skeleton in Europe, and they are growing a lot. They are growing a lot. Why? Because the demand is massive. It's massive. Yeah. Massive. So for us it's great. 22:18 And finally, we are a company. We try to do great things, but finally we are a company. We need money. We need revenues. We need the VITA. We need, you know, all the financial metrics have to be the right. So the first goal is to develop the hybrid supercapacitor. Yep. Our second step is the fuel cell. 22:48 Why? Because again, the demand is growing a lot. And we started, it's funny because we started with the organic flow battery. Yes. But now to be honest, is in the third level, the last level of priority. Why? Because to install a battery in your home for residential, a customer, or whoever, it's quite difficult. 23:16 The electrical markets are in a crazy situation. In Spain is different, in England is different. Well, maybe in Europe it's quite similar, but in the U.S. are different. And we are moving from the oldest electrical markets that all of the industry use turbines, the frequency regulation came from these strange. 23:44 topics that use the electrical engineers and to have a right market. So this product is quite difficult. Okay. It's quite difficult at this moment. So finally we are a startup and we have to be focused. Yes. So our first goal is the hybrid supercapacitor. Excellent. Now people say a hybrid supercapacitor are super batteries. Okay. Good. Is that cool? 24:13 It's a cool word for this product, but this is the situation now for us. And for this reason, we are raising money. Why? For example, for the next step of the fuel cell, we need a new facilities. This you need a facility to use, you know, hydrogen gases, a different devices and also to grow, to start up the factory. 24:43 the to say, okay, we start with a manufacturing facility is a major endeavor. I love it. It's out. It's it's scaling. Right? I had when we when we think, okay, we will start a factory, we say, okay, please come on. Oh, my God. What's your overall investment in the factory? 25:12 What is the overall investment in the factory? Of millions. So for a company like us is huge. Right. Is a good opportunity to build and this is the final you take the decision to do that, but is a big change for us. So take me to where the customer demand is by vertical, by use case. The customer, for example, we have a lot 25:41 that came from the electrical industry, the renewables, it's so easy for us because we have a lot of network in these areas. But the most, the market that are more expensive, more successful for this kind of application are others. For example, electrical mobility, for example, drones, for example. 26:07 micro robots for logistic warehouses. Okay. And it's great. Or again, security and defense or a lot of different things. And it's great. So our, our intention, our goal, our challenge is to try to have a pilot project. Everything everywhere. Why? Because it's so easy. For example, 26:36 to sell a project for a wind farm, one wind turbine, only one is 18 megawatts. Wow. A lot of sales, 18 megawatts. This is for offshore wind plant. Yeah. For offshore farm, only one wind turbine, 18 megawatts. Amazing. 18 megawatts means hundreds of drones. Hundreds. 27:06 For maintenance, right. Yes. But the impact is higher for the drone industry, for the electromobility industry, also the price, also the revenues, everything. So the idea is to try to find also not only the customer, not only the markets, also the regions. 27:34 have projects in the US, have projects in Europe, have projects in different locations for different applications. This is a great segue to the next part of the podcast, Enrique. How can my listeners find out more information about you and B5Tech? This will be in the show notes. Oh, I think we are a really open company. So... 28:03 Using LinkedIn, using our page. Our web page is really, really poor. We are trying to open a new web page in the coming weeks. I think we'll be ready. But keeping contact works. We have a lot of contact with universities, suppliers, research centers. 28:32 entities in Europe, in Spain, in the US. One of the colleagues that managed the fuel cell business for us, they were in America six months. They traveled, I think in May, and they spent the next six months there, working with other guys in a university and with other companies to develop 29:02 technology together. So we are a really, really, really open company. It's so easy. Excellent. So that's a great, I want to talk about the company and the culture. And I want to wrap it around the three themes...
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Christopher Locher: Harness Nature at Scale for Good
12/29/2022
Christopher Locher: Harness Nature at Scale for Good
On this episode of Founder's Sandbox, Brenda McCabe speaks to Christopher Locher, PhD; Co-founder and CEO of Versatope Therapeutics. He previously led drug discovery projects for infectious diseases at Vertex Pharmaceuticals in Boston, inflammatory diseases at Opsona Therapeutics in Ireland and malaria and alphaviruses vaccine development programs at Maxygen in California. Their conversation centers on harnessing the power of nature at scale for good: how and why did Versatope begin, what is deep tech, and how can we build a resilient culture in a pandemic world where the work could not be done “from home?" You can find out more about Christopher and Versatope at: https://www.versatope.com/ Transcript: 00:03 We're standing on the edge of something big. We're gonna make some changes. Welcome back to the Founder Sandbox. I am Brenda McCabe. I own and operate a consulting firm, NextAct Advisors, where I have a simple mission. I want to assist entrepreneurs 00:33 and entrepreneurs in building scalable, well-governed, and resilient businesses. The Founder Sandbox podcast is just an additional channel where I like to feature founders, business owners, corporate directors, and professional service providers who like me want to use the power of the private enterprise, small, medium, and large to create change for a better world. 01:03 Through storytelling with a guest on topics that will cover resilience, purpose-driven enterprises and sustainable growth, my goal is to provide a very fun sandbox environment where we can equip one startup founder at a time to build a better world through great corporate governance. Today my guest is Dr. Christopher Loeker. 01:33 harnessing the power of nature at scale for good. 01:39 Christopher is PhD, he's CEO and co-founder of Versatope Therapeutics, and after a long career leading drug discovery projects for infectious diseases at Vertex Pharmaceuticals, and at other companies, he pursued drug discovery projects in inflammatory diseases, malaria, and alpha viruses. He chose 02:08 in 2017 to become a CEO and he co-founded Versatope. How he did this is the topic of our podcast today. So welcome Christopher. Thank you very much for the invitation. I'm happy to be here, Brenda. I love it. So, you know, you contributed some time back. I wrote a blog. 02:36 published, I think it was in April, on Deep Tech. And I tried to describe with examples on what Deep Tech is. And the title was, Think Differently, a Deep Dive into Revenue Possibilities Through Deep Tech. You also asked me to serve on the board of directors of Versatope Therapeutics, where I've been serving since 2019. And when I interviewed with you, Christopher, you shared your vision with me. 03:06 that you're on a mission to harness biotechnology with efficient production cost and a safe means to develop a vaccine for multiple strains of pandemic and seasonal influenza. And four years later, I'm absolutely thrilled to have you as a guest to share how you progressed and how Versatopes progressed as a biotech company is also a deep tech company you where you harness nature. 03:35 machines, humans to address large unmet needs of the immune system while continuing to deliver on the launch program that I joined when I joined the board of the influenza vaccine. So can you tell us through your own story why you chose to become CEO? And like many deep tech or biotech companies, VersusDope started with 04:04 a technology transfer. Over to you. Hey, thanks Brenda. Ironically, at the time that I launched Versatope, I happened to be reading a book by Henry David Thoreau on Walden. And in that book, you know, I was kind of going back to the basics, if you will. There was a passage that really stuck with me and Thoreau writes, I went into the woods because I wished to live my life deliberately. 04:34 And I thought about that, you know, if you consciously live your life and if you build your life the way you want to with an ideal vision, what would you do? What would I do? So I was in between jobs at the time. I was doing a bit of soul searching. I knew what I didn't want to do but I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do. I had a passion to launch a company. 05:00 um, years ago, and I went through a series of courses when I was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California in San Francisco. And there we went through the course work was over, I think, six or eight weeks. It was called from an idea to an IPO. And we had many guest speakers and panel discussions on what makes a successful business out of biotechnology. So I picked up that 05:28 binder, if you will, of handouts and Harvard business reviews, and was going through it. And I was thinking, you know, maybe now is the time to do this, to live my life deliberately, not necessarily to go into the woods, but to strike out on my own and launch a company. So I started talking to different university professors about technologies and the gaps that we have in RNA delivery. RNA therapeutics are very nascent, if you will. 05:56 I don't think they've realized their full potential yet. Many people have worked on them and overcome several of the obstacles, primarily stability and delivery. Those are the two fundamental hurdles that have overcome with the current technology. For example, the COVID vaccine, a messenger RNA-based vaccine is delivered with lipid nanoparticles. And unfortunately, even with all those improvements in RNA vaccines. 06:26 only 2% gets expressed of the messenger RNA vaccine when a person is immunized. That means that 98% is degraded. And as you know, you can't ship the vaccine around the world without cryo preservation at severe low temperatures, such as minus 80 degrees centigrade. There are some, like the Moderna vaccine, you can ship it at a little warmer temperature, but it's still frozen. 06:54 and there are limits with thermo stability. And I happened to be talking to one professor, Dave Putnam that I knew for many years ago when I worked at UCSF, working on nucleic acid delivery. And at the time we were delivering DNA, and DNA is a lot more stable than RNA. So I just asked him, what are some of the gaps that you have and what are people doing nowadays? Because I was kind of out of touch with that field for almost 20 years. And 07:23 He says, well, I have a great technology. I have unpublished data and I think we can start a company with it. Why don't you start a company with me and launch it in the Boston area? And I said, well, what do you got? And so we went through a slide deck. It was interesting. I got it, needed some improvement and some polishing. And so I went up to Cornell and I met with the other co-founder of Versatope Therapeutics, Matt DeLisa. 07:51 who happened to be a microbiologist. They launched this company or the technology, if you will, from two different scientific disciplines coming together. So Dave happens to be a chemist by training and worked at MIT for a number of years and launched a successful biotechnology company of his own called Transform Therapeutics. And Matt DeLisa is a very well-known microbiologist. 08:19 who writes a textbook for students on microbiology and genetic engineering. And he's also director of the Innovation Center for Biotechnology at Cornell. And they happened to be walking down the hallway one day and bumped into each other. And man asked Dave, if you had these little microbial vesicles, what could you do with them? And he just said, well, I'd make a vaccine with them. And so they kicked the idea around a little bit. They wrote a few research grants. 08:48 The one grant that did get funded, and this was based on feedback from the National Institutes of Health, they said, why don't you focus on Matrix II protein? It's an important vaccine candidate. We know that we need to improve it. And why don't you just try that? So they've scoured the literature. They came up with their own vaccine design. They tested it and it worked extremely well. Works against any strain of flu that they've tested it against so far. 09:17 works better than the commercial flu vaccine. And with that, in the studies that they had done in a ferret animal model with a biosafety level three, highly pathogenic influenza H1N1, they found it worked better than the commercial flu vaccine. So I knew the program had legs and we licensed the technology from Cornell University. And I started off at MassBio. 09:44 where they put together a small project team of diverse disciplines, commercial, business, intellectual property, legal, and we built a pitch deck for Versito. And that's how the company got started. Wow. And you know, we're four years in. I think it was in September 2020 when the company did receive 10:12 from the National Institutes of Allergies and Infectious Diseases an award for up to $18 million to deliver on the platform. And we are on track for trials, clinical trials in 2024. So an amazing story and there's still more to come. Yes, it's an impressive story that we were able to do all this in a small laboratory affiliated with the University of Massachusetts in Lowell. 10:41 which is a up and coming post-industrial gateway city in Massachusetts. So we don't have the high costs and the overhead, and we had a lot of support from the university, which enabled us to make this happen. So we will deliver a clinical trial material very shortly, and we will start our clinical trial, yes, and probably realistically 2024, about a year from now. Can't wait to continue on the journey. You know, 11:11 I have listeners that come from all types of deep tech and perhaps coming out of the pandemic, fatigue, there's been a lot of lashback to science. And so I did want to, without offending you, kind of go back to the blog I wrote on deep tech. I explored five characteristics that I discovered. I've worked in clean tech myself. I sat on the board of biotech. I've been in pharma. 11:39 but I found kind of five characteristics. And I'd like to, through illustrations of what you at Versatope have done, make this more tangible for my listeners, right? So deep tech. One of the characteristics is the product of the solution is often invisible to the human eye. So can you talk about what are recombinant extracellular transport vesicles? Sure. So, 12:08 They aren't visible to the eye, indeed. They are so small, one can only visualize them with a 10,000x or 100,000 times objective lens on an electron microscope. They're about 100 nanometers in diameter, and that imparts unique properties for these vesicles to penetrate tissues and to get taken up by cells. 12:37 They're just the right size for that. They are about the size of a small virus. And they're not traditionally virus-like particles the way we think of them. They're actually an independent biological unit that nature uses to evolve. You may remember the idea of primordial soup and some of the theories behind it. Before life, there was nucleic acids 13:07 peptides and RNA came on the scene before DNA. But before even RNA came on the scene, there's some of the theorists believe that what came first was the vesicle. And these lipids, these carbon-like vesicles self-assemble. And in that way, they're like a small nanobot. They just self-assemble, they form these little blebs or blobs, if you will. And then they can package things such as RNA. 13:35 And nature has been doing this for billions of years. And they believe that that was the origin of life. How cells actually first got started. First as bacterial cells, and then later on as, you know, eukaryotic cells or having a true nucleus and acquiring other bacteria such as mitochondrial that's a little powerhouse in the cell that gives us the energy and keeps us warm in the winter. But nature does this naturally. 14:04 In our own bodies, we have vesicles floating around in our gut, and some people have them in their bloodstream. And you can measure this now because new methods have developed very sensitive analytical methods to detect these. They can be present in people with, for lack of a better word, leaky gut or inflammatory bowel disease, because the microbial environment in your gut produces a lot of these vesicles where 14:33 gram-negative bacteria live. And these vesicles can get into your tissues, they can cause problems, but in a healthy gut, when people have a healthy microbiome, they actually promote communication and enable the bacteria to thrive by communicating not only with the other bacteria in their microenvironment and their environmental niche, but also with the host cells. So these vesicles will 15:02 penetrate the epithelial layer, they will get inside cells, and for some bizarre reason, they get to the nucleus of the cell, and they can actually deliver their contents of DNA to the nucleus of the host cell. So we're walking around with bacterial DNA and RNA in our own nucleus of our cells, and it's modulating our behavior, and or, you know, cell function, if you will, cell behavior at that level, and we don't even know it. And all of this is just 15:32 coming on to light, um, in the scientific literature, it's impressive what some of the academic groups are doing. And you're harnessing this. Yes. And so our take on it is recombinant DNA. So if nature has been doing this for billions of years, and if people have been on earth for hundreds of thousands of years, and if our own microbiome is actually changing our, their environment in our gut and perhaps changing our own environment. 16:02 Can we use this for good? And hence your title, Harnessing Nature for Good, because it does make sense. So with genetic programming and synthetic biology and DNA, we can actually make these vesicles deliver pretty much what we'd want to within certain constraints. Delivering RNA, for example, can we make an improvement over lipid nanoparticles? Delivering vaccines, can we deliver... 16:30 genetic codes against multiple strains of influenza, for example. Can we deliver small molecules? It's known now that these vesicles, you can actually give these by the oral route. You can swallow them and they will, yeah, you can swallow them just like a pill and they pass through the stomach gut and they will start floating around in your body, in your bloodstream. They can be genetically engineered to target specific cells. 16:59 where you have like an antibody-like molecule on the surface that will encode for a specific sequence that will attach and stick to a specific cell type. And all of this has been proven and published in the scientific literature. So there's a few hurdles to this. One is scale. That's what we focused on at Versatope for the last few years. How can we scale this? The second thing is safety. We've spent a lot of time on making these vesicles safe. 17:28 because you can't just inject bacterial vesicles into your body because some people get a nasty reaction to them and you'll be limited by the dose you can use. So we've spent a lot of time taking out the toxins of these, ensuring that they're safe and administering a product that is still effective but won't have the nasty reaction that the wild type vesicles do. So these are semi-synthetic and all this is done with genetic engineering. 17:58 So that takes us to the second characteristic that I described in Deep Tech. The product of the solution combines knowledge from multiple domains of science and technology like organic chemistry, synthetic. Can you share the subject matter expertise and the talent required as you scaled the company? Again, it talks to the nature of Deep Tech, right? 18:28 Yeah, so like I said, the foundational work was done at Cornell University. Matt DeLisa, being a microbiologist, did a lot of the genetic engineering to improve the number of vesicles that are being made to make it scalable. Typically, when you grow these up, you don't get enough material, but he found ways that you can actually genetically engineer these. So these 18:58 And with our current process, I think we're approaching several thousand fold higher than you would with a wild type. Secondly, is in terms of chemistry, there are formulations that Dave worked on that you can actually give these in a single immunization. So you can actually coat these vesicles and other particles that enable like a time release capsule that will improve their efficacy. So these are just a couple of the foundational work that was done for us. 19:26 We've had to do some microbiology and improving the cell line. So at first we hired several bona fide bacteriologists that were gene jockeys, if you will, and that's what they do. They clone and express genes. That's kind of what we needed initially. And then you move on to process and scale. How can you make these bigger? So those of you who are competent protein purification people, generally biochemists by training. 19:54 And then we have analytics on top of that. So once you scale it up, how do you know you're making it consistently and what's the batch variability from batch to batch? And how many vesicles do you have? How many molecules are on your vesicle? What's the standard deviation between the batches and can you make a quality product? All of these require different expertises. So we've put together a team, if you will, that have domain expertise in each of these areas. 20:24 For consultancies, we focus on regulatory, quality, clinical, some of the other things that we can add on that we really don't need a full-time staff at this time because we still are an early stage R&D company. But those are pretty much the basics for now. 20:42 So a third characteristic, the process of discovery is chaotic, out of control, contained at a bench, right? Or even in a sandbox, but we're going to talk about a bench today because we're here with biotech, right? And the journey really begins, the rubber hits the road, and it's about the time you actually created a larger board of directors when you need to scale to a repeatable manufacturing process. 21:12 What I'd like you to do is describe why is it more difficult to scale in the biotech world versus pharma, right? And speak to payloads. It's, again, I've been in the world for not as long as you, but I've been, and it's fascinating because the biotech space has really only been around 30 years, which is nothing. That's true. You're right. So I think it's a difference between chemistry and biology. So biology has a lot of factors. When you're producing 21:41 a product in a cell, there's a lot of things that can go wrong. There's just a lot more variables. Cells are finicky. They're finicky to their environment. You can get contamination. You can get a failed batch. You can get poison in your water if your water isn't pure enough. There are batch media components that can go sideways, and if it's not measured properly or pHed properly, you can get a really squirrely result. 22:10 and you'll have an inferior product. Those are just a few of the examples of how a biological system, a biological system is affected by many different things. Really, I think that's what it is. There's a lot of components to it. In contrast with the chemical system, it's much more of a controlled process. You have a limited number of raw materials. You have a limited number of reagents. You can control the process much better in a vat than you can with a... 22:37 in a petri dish or a biological system. It's just the way it is. But the best we can do is just keep repeating it to the point of where we have a consistent process that shows batch consistency, as well as a quality product in the end that's safe and effective. Great. But yeah, there's a lot of variabilities there. Right, right. And I think it's just the nature of biology. As they say, science happens. And it's harnessing nature. 23:06 The last characteristic, and then we'll jump into JP Morgan and the like, is market size is not a risk in my discovery of deep tech, right?...
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Why Good Governance Starts Early
12/20/2022
Why Good Governance Starts Early
Our host, Brenda McCabe, reads outloud from her blog about the crucial steps to forming a corporate board and the meaning of starting off with good governance.
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Gaurav Kumar: Resilience and Gratitude with Metrics
11/26/2022
Gaurav Kumar: Resilience and Gratitude with Metrics
On this Episode of The Founder's Sandbox, Brenda McCabe speaks with Gaurav Kumar. Gaurav is an entrepreneur, author, speaker, angel investor, and an avid golfer, based in Southern California.
He is the Founder and CEO of BeyondCodes Inc.—a global leader in Sales and Lead Generation for IT Services, Product Engineering and SaaS-based product companies. Gaurav Kumar is also an author of "Sales Lessons from Golf 18 insights for Sales Professionals from the Great Game of Golf". Brenda and Gaurav discuss how Gaurav's book first started as a project to give back; to leave a legacy behind that shares insights from the practice of golf translated to the practice of sales. "Set up a Driving Range" when having to practice your swing before playing and practicing your sales pitch before the sales call. Learn more about Gaurav Kumar, and his recently release book by: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gauravkumar1977/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/gauravkumar1977/) https://authorgauravkumar.com/ www.beyondcodes.com transcript: 00:14 We're standing, we're standing on the edge of something big. We're gonna make some changes. Hello, this is Brenda McCabe. I'm CEO and founder of NextAct Advisors. At NextAct Advisors, my consulting firm, I have a very simple mission. 00:39 I want to assist entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs in building scalable, well-governed and very resilient businesses. You're joining a monthly podcast. I just recently launched this podcast, the Founders Sandbox. It's the newest channel. And what I'm trying to do is bring guests in corporate board directors, founders, business owners of small, medium and large public and private companies to create change. 01:08 for a better world. And through storytelling with my guests, we will discover topics around resilience, purpose-built businesses and sustainable growth in a fun environment, which is the sandbox. So we can equip one startup founder at a time to build a better world through great corporate governance and great practices. So today my guest is Gaurav Kumar. 01:38 I want to thank you for joining me. My pleasure. So you're not only, you know, I don't know whether to call you an entrepreneur, like, cause you've been at this for over 20 years. You, I mean, you're a business owner, right? So, um, his, on his business card, he says he's an entrepreneur. He is an author. He is an angel investor and an avid golfer and based here in Southern California. 02:06 I got to know him as the founder and the CEO of Beyond Codes. It's a global leader in sales and lead generation for IT services, product engineering and SaaS based product companies. It's in clients include the top 1000 companies in the world. A lot of those are in top fortune 500 companies and Beyond Codes delivers its services globally across all verticals and offerings. 02:36 And recently they are expanding their global footprint to beyond technology fields into legal healthcare and insurance. So I wanna again, welcome you. And did you know that I found you as a potential, you know, I knew you, I'll tell that story in a minute, but I found you as a potential guest while at a golf tournament. Did you know that I was kind of screening you at that time? No, not at that time. 03:05 But it's so nice to be with you and talking to you. Fantastic. So, you know, we actually our first encounter was I was retained by one of my customers at NextAct divisors to actually negotiate a master's service agreement with you as an owner of Bianco's. And I was struck by the passion and the deep know-how that you as the founder, you know, you're going on almost what almost 20 years of business. 03:34 on the KPIs associated to qualifying leads. While I tried to negotiate money back guarantee, Gaurav, remember, you wouldn't give that to me. But I was struck by that. And I thought that having you as a guest here on the Founder Sandbox, you could deliver some of those, those war stories and the pain point that you were addressing. 04:02 while you were creating Bianco. So we chose a title. Early on, we chatted and because I'm so passionate about resilience, I think the story that Gaurav is going to share with my listeners is around resilience and building beyond codes, a lot of gratitude and boy, is he metric driven. 04:27 Tell me the story that you told me while you didn't know that I was screening you to be a guest. Yeah. Let me tell you, by the way, before I start, you negotiated very well. Even though you are giving me the credit, I think it was you who got most of it and congratulations for that. We negotiated and we got a happy customer. And I think that is most important. So. 04:56 What do you want to know the story of Beyond Quotes or how that started? How you build it from scratch. And, you know, again, this was over 15 years ago. And, you know, what were you doing when you had the aha moment? Because cold calls, which is a great part of lead generation, are grueling. And so what did you do to fix that? So the story goes back 22 years. 05:24 I was in India doing a regular sales job, just finished my MBA. And after maybe one or two years, I got an opportunity to come to the US to attend a conference. There was some insurance conference. What I realized was my boss wanted me to just stand on the booth and call everybody to the booth, collect their business cards. 05:54 and as many as I can. And then that was my role. And I was given a target to collect a hundred business cards every day. It was a three-day conference. And first time to US, I was very enthusiastic. So instead of standing behind the table, I went ahead of the table and anybody who was passing by, I would shake hand, give my card, collect their card. And a lot of people were looking at me 06:23 from my own company and other booths, that this is not how it is done. But instead of 100 cards, I collected more than 200 cards on the first day. And when we went out for dinner, my boss was really happy, but he was also pulling my leg, that this is not how you do here. You have to give the space. And I thought the more card I will get, the more Brownie Pints. That was a starting point where I realized 06:54 Once you're in a job and you have done it for many years, you become complacent, you take it for granted and you expect the customer to come to your booth, give the card and then you will collect the card. And it was in subconscious mind. And when we went back from the conference, he expected me to call each of them and fix a time where my boss can go and talk to them. And I realized 07:22 You know, you got me from India to US first to collect cards and then to make an Excel sheet and then to make cold calls to them and set up time for you. But the lesson I learned here was that this is something that salespeople don't like to do. They don't like to go to conferences, collect cards, and then make them calls and fix appointments. And that was the first spark, the opportunity there for the next six years. I'm just trying to cut the story and move forward. 07:51 Once I got my green card and this is 2008, I'm talking now 14 years back, I wanted to do something on my own. And you know, when you're trying to do something in being an immigrant, you are a risk taker, but not crazy risk taker. So I said, let me see what I can do in sales. That's all I understand. And what are the pain areas of a salesman? And I went back six years and I realized. 08:18 They don't like to go to conferences, collect the card. They want to go to a conference, be a speaker or go to other booths. They don't like to make reports, MIS after the conference. They don't like to cold call and set up times for the call. And I said, you know what? We are going to do it for everybody. So that was a problem statement. Got it. That is how it started with one person. But I also thought maybe I can help 08:46 them even close the deal or bring the lead to the next level, whatever qualification. Again, long story short, in the first year, we have few customers and then I was the only one. Being a sales guy, I didn't know how to say no. So my workstation, which was my home office in Denver at that time, I had moved from New York. I had three, four laptops on the table. I love it. Each laptop had a mobile phone and those times we had BlackBerrys and all. 09:15 So I would keep that Blackberry or whatever phone on the laptop and then started making calls for each of them. And if there was a call back, so let's say I would say, hey, this is Kumar calling from company ABC. And I started talking about that company. And the very next call I would make for company B or I would get a call for company C. That's how we started. And in last 14 years, we started 09:44 building on this core competence. And we became disruptive and innovative and we knew how this will work. Things changed, technology came in the picture, AI and machine learning and data-driven, lot of softwares and platforms. And we adopted everything, everything. Today as a company, we make over 80,000 calls a day in Fortune 10,000 companies. Wow. We have mapped 10:13 Every single company, CIO and CFO and procurement and technology and marketing and so on and so forth, all offices, minus one and minus two, we exactly know their name, phone number, email, their titles, their roles in the company. We know who do they report to in a company and who reports to them. We know what time they come to office, what time they go. 10:41 We know what will make them a hero in their company. And that's how we started pitching. And that's the story. We didn't give up. And till date, we do the same thing, but now we are perfect at what we do. Wow. 80,000 calls a day. And you do this from three continents and over 300 employees. And with dedicated account management teams. Absolutely. Delivering on this. So, you know, thanks for sharing that and the journey. And 11:10 spark. So my listeners are founders, business owners like you, as well as corporate board directors. How would you describe the philosophy of your pricing at Beyond Codes? You know, there's a hyper competitive space of lead generation. I didn't see any pricing on your website. And we negotiate a sweet deal, but tell me what has informed you as a business owner on 11:39 philosophy of pricing and who influenced you perhaps in that? That's a very interesting question. I didn't know you will do that much of research for this podcast. See, there are two strategies in pricing. One is based on data and history and your customers and we call it ICP and you know, all those persona and who are you talking to? What is their business? And the other is demand and supply. 12:09 And when we were young, you were kids, my father was in a small manufacturing business unit and we would see him talking to his customers. And every time he would give a different price, you know, to the same product, sometimes 20 cents to the other guy, he would give 25 cents and third guy, he would give 18 cents. So and we have seen it throughout our childhood. So we asked, I asked him one time. 12:39 that it's the same product. How do you price it? Like to some people you say 20 and then 25 or 22 or 18. How does that work? And his, I can never forget his response. And he said, it depends. What is our situation at home? How much are our expenses? What is the gap? How much is pending? What do I need to do this month? I have to pay the fees, the bread on the table. 13:06 There are other expenses. So I look at my expenses. I know why my production capacity, how many units can we produce? And that's how I price. And then in those times in 1980s, the layer of what we call AI now, that time it was guts and demand and supply. So he said, I know that this customer wants these whatever we were making urgently. And I could 13:36 command 5%, 10% extra. And then on the other call, I knew that I can negotiate for a larger quantity of order if I reduce the price by five cents. I started learning from there that business is not about, you know, publishing your rate card and, you know, being stubborn on it or rigid on it. And this is what we are, you take it or leave it, my way, highway. We were not raised like that. We were raised like, 14:06 What is it that we need to run our house? What we can do? And I adopted bits and pieces, not exactly everything in our business. So today when we talk to our customers, I look at it, who are we talking to? What is their need? What is the quantity they want? What is the definition of a meeting for them? What is the lead for them? It may differ from customer to customer. And let me make a confession. Sometimes it's demand and supply and if you know they really need it. 14:35 jack over price by 10%. But sometimes you have to give discount of 20% when they are on the upper edge. So that's the funny part of pricing. When you've gotten to know your customer base very well, they repeat customers and very sticky with you. So again, back to your KPIs, you're very metric driven, which struck me from day one. 15:03 I know a lot of automation has been brought into beyond codes. So your cost of goods are largely your full-time equivalent hours spent to generate qualified leads. What else is behind your cogs? I mean, how do you, how have you built these KPIs and automation? Is that your secret sauce? Partially, yes. Okay. But most of it is very common sense. I have a sales background. So logically. 15:33 I've always worked with results. And it is good when I look back, my previous bosses, my professors in my college, or the way we were raised, nobody appreciated input. They always appreciated output. What's the result? What's the ROI? What's this? So I kept on telling, this is what I did. They kept on asking me, I don't care. Tell me what's the result. So 16:03 You know, in the first 15, 20 years of my life, 15 years of my work life, I have seen being a sales guy, we were always asked what is the return on investment? What is the final sale you have done? Have you met your quota? And what we would get in return was incentives and what is this increase in salary? So we would always live by the numbers. Every day I would come and write on my notepad. We didn't have Excel initially days. 16:33 What did I do today? How much sales? How, you know, what's it vis-a-vis my quota? How am I lacking? But when we started Beyond Codes and I started getting mentoring from my, you know, mentor, he also emphasized the role of, you know, input, the process. And he always, you know, taught me the journey is as important as the destination. The process is as important or more important as 17:02 the end result. But being a number guy, I was trying to do both because there's always a cost pressure, profit, revenue and all that. And we mixed both. So today we have over 85 APIs and metrics that we track on a daily basis. We do input, we do output. So let's say input, we track, how many customers do we need to get X number of meetings for a... 17:31 a specific customer, how many calls we have to make, how many, and these are all input driven if you see how many people will pick the call. If we make a hundred calls, you know, 95 will go on voice message. What is the conversion of people who pick the call and we are able to convert it to a meeting. How many meetings get rescheduled, canceled, no shows. What is the end result of meeting? You know, how many are there? Then we started measuring how many of these meetings actually convert into customers for 18:01 our customers, what's the revenue they are bringing? So there are so many things that we started tracking. What time other people start calling? What is the best time to call? What is the best day to call? What is the slowest time of the day to call? We have no break policy in the first two hours and last 90 minutes, no break. No smoke break, no coffee break, nothing, because the increase in the throughput, the connectivity is highest there. We have also mapped each city 18:30 New York, the maximum number of time people will pick the phone is between 730 to 815. LA will be 930 to 1035. West coast is a little late back, but they will stay back till late in the evening. So every city has a different behavior, different style. You know, people come at what time go. So there are so many things we started tracking and data that now, if you ask me, I can tell you the CIO of Best Buy will give you a meeting. 18:59 every third Thursday between 3.30 and 4.30 based on the trend. And if I call him at 3.35, he will pick the phone. His EL leaves at 3 o'clock, 3.30, and we know he stops taking the call after 4 o'clock. And we can go up to that level of accuracy now. So this all was a process. And yes, you're right. We do track a lot of KPIs. But the good thing is we track inbound, outbound. 19:29 output, both. So that's how we are a number guy. I hope you're keeping under lock and key those secret hours when to call the CEO. Of course. Yes, that part is a secret sauce. Exactly. So let's move into something kind of soft, but I do like to talk about gratitude. 19:59 they do have to show gratitude. And I want to learn from you, what do you, you know, you have employees that are doing each employee to, you know, grinding 250, 300 calls per day. Can you practice gratitude with these employees? And if so, how do you do that? So first of all, thank you for asking this question. Most of the companies, when they start growing bigger, I think it is inversely proportionate. They become less thankful. 20:28 The gratitude question goes down. We all came from a very humble background. Everybody's story is same as we discussed last time. We really believe in gratitude and thanking, not only our customers, our bankers, our partners, but most importantly, our colleagues. If you will ask, ever meet my team, they will tell you a couple of things. One is I never call them employees, never. I call them colleagues. 20:56 There is no word as employees in Beyond Code. To me it's very, you know, employer, employee. It's like a master and a slave kind of a thing in my mind. I do my job as a CEO, somebody's doing his job as HR, third person is making calls. All are equally important. We are the four tires of the same car and the car will not run. Even if I'm the steering, being a captain of the ship, the car will not run if there are no tires. 21:23 The car will not run if there are no brakes or gear or clutch or whatever. So we, first of all is we treat everybody equally. There is no hierarchy. There is for admin purpose and customer, but internally we all are equal. The other thing is, no, we do a lot of things where we thank our colleagues. We write cards to them. There is whenever anybody joins and they are able to fix the first meeting. It can be day one, week one, month one. 21:52 their manager sends a long email appreciating and recognizing their effort. And that's the only time, only time when their email is copied to me, to the entire management team, to the entire executive team, and we all then start sending them congratulation notes. Wow. At the annual party, we do thank all these colleagues. We call them on the stage. 22:18 And in fact, we stopped the practice of calling them on the stage. Now we go to their desk and we go to the tables where they eat or they're having fun in the annual parties. And we tell them that we want to come to you and we want to thank you. So there are greeting cards, their awards, their rewards, their recognitions. So there's a lot of things that started coming. We do annual, we do monthly, we do quarterly. It's not only incentive. We have seen to keep people motivated and happy. 22:47 It is appreciating and acknowledging their contribution in the company. So gratitude at all levels, whether it is our colleagues, we have no return loan policies. And I can tell you there are so many colleagues of us who come and they say, my father is not well or my child needs education and there are admission fees in India,...
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Larry Taylor: Tone at the Bottom
10/26/2022
Larry Taylor: Tone at the Bottom
On this episode of The Founder's Sandbox, our host, Brenda McCabe interviews Dr. Larry Taylor on Corporate Governance! Dr. Taylor is a seasoned independent corporate director, having served on 24+ corporate boards, including family-owned, publicly traded, private-equity owned, closely held privately-owned, advisory, and non-profit boards. He has been recognized as a “Financial Expert” by the SEC while serving as board member and CFO of a publicly traded company. He has extensive environmental, social and governance experiences from around the world. You can find him on linked in at And find a copy of his book, "Tone at the Bottom" transcript: 00:14 Hello, this is Brenda McCabe. I'm CEO and founder of Next Act Advisors. At Next Act Advisors, my consulting firm, I have a very simple mission. 00:39 I want to assist entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs in building scalable, well-governed and very resilient businesses. You're joining a monthly podcast. I just recently launched this podcast, the Founders Sandbox. It's the newest channel. And what I'm trying to do is bring guests in corporate board directors, founders, business owners of small, medium and large public and private companies to create change. 01:08 for a better world. And through storytelling with my guests, we will discover topics around resilience, purpose-built businesses and sustainable growth in a fun environment, which is the sandbox. So we can equip one startup founder at a time to build a better world through great corporate governance and great practices. So today my guest is Gaurav Kumar. 01:38 I want to thank you for joining me. My pleasure. So you're not only, you know, I don't know whether to call you an entrepreneur, like, cause you've been at this for over 20 years. You, I mean, you're a business owner, right? So, um, his, on his business card, he says he's an entrepreneur. He is an author. He is an angel investor and an avid golfer and based here in Southern California. 02:06 I got to know him as the founder and the CEO of Beyond Codes. It's a global leader in sales and lead generation for IT services, product engineering and SaaS based product companies. It's in clients include the top 1000 companies in the world. A lot of those are in top fortune 500 companies and Beyond Codes delivers its services globally across all verticals and offerings. 02:36 And recently they are expanding their global footprint to beyond technology fields into legal healthcare and insurance. So I wanna again, welcome you. And did you know that I found you as a potential, you know, I knew you, I'll tell that story in a minute, but I found you as a potential guest while at a golf tournament. Did you know that I was kind of screening you at that time? No, not at that time. 03:05 But it's so nice to be with you and talking to you. Fantastic. So, you know, we actually our first encounter was I was retained by one of my customers at NextAct divisors to actually negotiate a master's service agreement with you as an owner of Bianco's. And I was struck by the passion and the deep know-how that you as the founder, you know, you're going on almost what almost 20 years of business. 03:34 on the KPIs associated to qualifying leads. While I tried to negotiate money back guarantee, Gaurav, remember, you wouldn't give that to me. But I was struck by that. And I thought that having you as a guest here on the Founder Sandbox, you could deliver some of those, those war stories and the pain point that you were addressing. 04:02 while you were creating Bianco. So we chose a title. Early on, we chatted and because I'm so passionate about resilience, I think the story that Gaurav is going to share with my listeners is around resilience and building beyond codes, a lot of gratitude and boy, is he metric driven. 04:27 Tell me the story that you told me while you didn't know that I was screening you to be a guest. Yeah. Let me tell you, by the way, before I start, you negotiated very well. Even though you are giving me the credit, I think it was you who got most of it and congratulations for that. We negotiated and we got a happy customer. And I think that is most important. So. 04:56 What do you want to know the story of Beyond Quotes or how that started? How you build it from scratch. And, you know, again, this was over 15 years ago. And, you know, what were you doing when you had the aha moment? Because cold calls, which is a great part of lead generation, are grueling. And so what did you do to fix that? So the story goes back 22 years. 05:24 I was in India doing a regular sales job, just finished my MBA. And after maybe one or two years, I got an opportunity to come to the US to attend a conference. There was some insurance conference. What I realized was my boss wanted me to just stand on the booth and call everybody to the booth, collect their business cards. 05:54 and as many as I can. And then that was my role. And I was given a target to collect a hundred business cards every day. It was a three-day conference. And first time to US, I was very enthusiastic. So instead of standing behind the table, I went ahead of the table and anybody who was passing by, I would shake hand, give my card, collect their card. And a lot of people were looking at me 06:23 from my own company and other booths, that this is not how it is done. But instead of 100 cards, I collected more than 200 cards on the first day. And when we went out for dinner, my boss was really happy, but he was also pulling my leg, that this is not how you do here. You have to give the space. And I thought the more card I will get, the more Brownie Pints. That was a starting point where I realized 06:54 Once you're in a job and you have done it for many years, you become complacent, you take it for granted and you expect the customer to come to your booth, give the card and then you will collect the card. And it was in subconscious mind. And when we went back from the conference, he expected me to call each of them and fix a time where my boss can go and talk to them. And I realized 07:22 You know, you got me from India to US first to collect cards and then to make an Excel sheet and then to make cold calls to them and set up time for you. But the lesson I learned here was that this is something that salespeople don't like to do. They don't like to go to conferences, collect cards, and then make them calls and fix appointments. And that was the first spark, the opportunity there for the next six years. I'm just trying to cut the story and move forward. 07:51 Once I got my green card and this is 2008, I'm talking now 14 years back, I wanted to do something on my own. And you know, when you're trying to do something in being an immigrant, you are a risk taker, but not crazy risk taker. So I said, let me see what I can do in sales. That's all I understand. And what are the pain areas of a salesman? And I went back six years and I realized. 08:18 They don't like to go to conferences, collect the card. They want to go to a conference, be a speaker or go to other booths. They don't like to make reports, MIS after the conference. They don't like to cold call and set up times for the call. And I said, you know what? We are going to do it for everybody. So that was a problem statement. Got it. That is how it started with one person. But I also thought maybe I can help 08:46 them even close the deal or bring the lead to the next level, whatever qualification. Again, long story short, in the first year, we have few customers and then I was the only one. Being a sales guy, I didn't know how to say no. So my workstation, which was my home office in Denver at that time, I had moved from New York. I had three, four laptops on the table. I love it. Each laptop had a mobile phone and those times we had BlackBerrys and all. 09:15 So I would keep that Blackberry or whatever phone on the laptop and then started making calls for each of them. And if there was a call back, so let's say I would say, hey, this is Kumar calling from company ABC. And I started talking about that company. And the very next call I would make for company B or I would get a call for company C. That's how we started. And in last 14 years, we started 09:44 building on this core competence. And we became disruptive and innovative and we knew how this will work. Things changed, technology came in the picture, AI and machine learning and data-driven, lot of softwares and platforms. And we adopted everything, everything. Today as a company, we make over 80,000 calls a day in Fortune 10,000 companies. Wow. We have mapped 10:13 Every single company, CIO and CFO and procurement and technology and marketing and so on and so forth, all offices, minus one and minus two, we exactly know their name, phone number, email, their titles, their roles in the company. We know who do they report to in a company and who reports to them. We know what time they come to office, what time they go. 10:41 We know what will make them a hero in their company. And that's how we started pitching. And that's the story. We didn't give up. And till date, we do the same thing, but now we are perfect at what we do. Wow. 80,000 calls a day. And you do this from three continents and over 300 employees. And with dedicated account management teams. Absolutely. Delivering on this. So, you know, thanks for sharing that and the journey. And 11:10 spark. So my listeners are founders, business owners like you, as well as corporate board directors. How would you describe the philosophy of your pricing at Beyond Codes? You know, there's a hyper competitive space of lead generation. I didn't see any pricing on your website. And we negotiate a sweet deal, but tell me what has informed you as a business owner on 11:39 philosophy of pricing and who influenced you perhaps in that? That's a very interesting question. I didn't know you will do that much of research for this podcast. See, there are two strategies in pricing. One is based on data and history and your customers and we call it ICP and you know, all those persona and who are you talking to? What is their business? And the other is demand and supply. 12:09 And when we were young, you were kids, my father was in a small manufacturing business unit and we would see him talking to his customers. And every time he would give a different price, you know, to the same product, sometimes 20 cents to the other guy, he would give 25 cents and third guy, he would give 18 cents. So and we have seen it throughout our childhood. So we asked, I asked him one time. 12:39 that it's the same product. How do you price it? Like to some people you say 20 and then 25 or 22 or 18. How does that work? And his, I can never forget his response. And he said, it depends. What is our situation at home? How much are our expenses? What is the gap? How much is pending? What do I need to do this month? I have to pay the fees, the bread on the table. 13:06 There are other expenses. So I look at my expenses. I know why my production capacity, how many units can we produce? And that's how I price. And then in those times in 1980s, the layer of what we call AI now, that time it was guts and demand and supply. So he said, I know that this customer wants these whatever we were making urgently. And I could 13:36 command 5%, 10% extra. And then on the other call, I knew that I can negotiate for a larger quantity of order if I reduce the price by five cents. I started learning from there that business is not about, you know, publishing your rate card and, you know, being stubborn on it or rigid on it. And this is what we are, you take it or leave it, my way, highway. We were not raised like that. We were raised like, 14:06 What is it that we need to run our house? What we can do? And I adopted bits and pieces, not exactly everything in our business. So today when we talk to our customers, I look at it, who are we talking to? What is their need? What is the quantity they want? What is the definition of a meeting for them? What is the lead for them? It may differ from customer to customer. And let me make a confession. Sometimes it's demand and supply and if you know they really need it. 14:35 jack over price by 10%. But sometimes you have to give discount of 20% when they are on the upper edge. So that's the funny part of pricing. When you've gotten to know your customer base very well, they repeat customers and very sticky with you. So again, back to your KPIs, you're very metric driven, which struck me from day one. 15:03 I know a lot of automation has been brought into beyond codes. So your cost of goods are largely your full-time equivalent hours spent to generate qualified leads. What else is behind your cogs? I mean, how do you, how have you built these KPIs and automation? Is that your secret sauce? Partially, yes. Okay. But most of it is very common sense. I have a sales background. So logically. 15:33 I've always worked with results. And it is good when I look back, my previous bosses, my professors in my college, or the way we were raised, nobody appreciated input. They always appreciated output. What's the result? What's the ROI? What's this? So I kept on telling, this is what I did. They kept on asking me, I don't care. Tell me what's the result. So 16:03 You know, in the first 15, 20 years of my life, 15 years of my work life, I have seen being a sales guy, we were always asked what is the return on investment? What is the final sale you have done? Have you met your quota? And what we would get in return was incentives and what is this increase in salary? So we would always live by the numbers. Every day I would come and write on my notepad. We didn't have Excel initially days. 16:33 What did I do today? How much sales? How, you know, what's it vis-a-vis my quota? How am I lacking? But when we started Beyond Codes and I started getting mentoring from my, you know, mentor, he also emphasized the role of, you know, input, the process. And he always, you know, taught me the journey is as important as the destination. The process is as important or more important as 17:02 the end result. But being a number guy, I was trying to do both because there's always a cost pressure, profit, revenue and all that. And we mixed both. So today we have over 85 APIs and metrics that we track on a daily basis. We do input, we do output. So let's say input, we track, how many customers do we need to get X number of meetings for a... 17:31 a specific customer, how many calls we have to make, how many, and these are all input driven if you see how many people will pick the call. If we make a hundred calls, you know, 95 will go on voice message. What is the conversion of people who pick the call and we are able to convert it to a meeting. How many meetings get rescheduled, canceled, no shows. What is the end result of meeting? You know, how many are there? Then we started measuring how many of these meetings actually convert into customers for 18:01 our customers, what's the revenue they are bringing? So there are so many things that we started tracking. What time other people start calling? What is the best time to call? What is the best day to call? What is the slowest time of the day to call? We have no break policy in the first two hours and last 90 minutes, no break. No smoke break, no coffee break, nothing, because the increase in the throughput, the connectivity is highest there. We have also mapped each city 18:30 New York, the maximum number of time people will pick the phone is between 730 to 815. LA will be 930 to 1035. West coast is a little late back, but they will stay back till late in the evening. So every city has a different behavior, different style. You know, people come at what time go. So there are so many things we started tracking and data that now, if you ask me, I can tell you the CIO of Best Buy will give you a meeting. 18:59 every third Thursday between 3.30 and 4.30 based on the trend. And if I call him at 3.35, he will pick the phone. His EL leaves at 3 o'clock, 3.30, and we know he stops taking the call after 4 o'clock. And we can go up to that level of accuracy now. So this all was a process. And yes, you're right. We do track a lot of KPIs. But the good thing is we track inbound, outbound. 19:29 output, both. So that's how we are a number guy. I hope you're keeping under lock and key those secret hours when to call the CEO. Of course. Yes, that part is a secret sauce. Exactly. So let's move into something kind of soft, but I do like to talk about gratitude. 19:59 they do have to show gratitude. And I want to learn from you, what do you, you know, you have employees that are doing each employee to, you know, grinding 250, 300 calls per day. Can you practice gratitude with these employees? And if so, how do you do that? So first of all, thank you for asking this question. Most of the companies, when they start growing bigger, I think it is inversely proportionate. They become less thankful. 20:28 The gratitude question goes down. We all came from a very humble background. Everybody's story is same as we discussed last time. We really believe in gratitude and thanking, not only our customers, our bankers, our partners, but most importantly, our colleagues. If you will ask, ever meet my team, they will tell you a couple of things. One is I never call them employees, never. I call them colleagues. 20:56 There is no word as employees in Beyond Code. To me it's very, you know, employer, employee. It's like a master and a slave kind of a thing in my mind. I do my job as a CEO, somebody's doing his job as HR, third person is making calls. All are equally important. We are the four tires of the same car and the car will not run. Even if I'm the steering, being a captain of the ship, the car will not run if there are no tires. 21:23 The car will not run if there are no brakes or gear or clutch or whatever. So we, first of all is we treat everybody equally. There is no hierarchy. There is for admin purpose and customer, but internally we all are equal. The other thing is, no, we do a lot of things where we thank our colleagues. We write cards to them. There is whenever anybody joins and they are able to fix the first meeting. It can be day one, week one, month one. 21:52 their manager sends a long email appreciating and recognizing their effort. And that's the only time, only time when their email is copied to me, to the entire management team, to the entire executive team, and we all then start sending them congratulation notes. Wow. At the annual party, we do thank all these colleagues. We call them on the stage. 22:18 And in fact, we stopped the practice of calling them on the stage. Now we go to their desk and we go to the tables where they eat or they're having fun in the annual parties. And we tell them that we want to come to you and we want to thank you. So there are greeting cards, their awards, their rewards, their recognitions. So there's a lot of things that started coming. We do annual, we do monthly, we do quarterly. It's not only incentive. We have seen to keep people motivated and happy. 22:47 It is appreciating and acknowledging their contribution in the company. So gratitude at all levels, whether it is our colleagues, we have no return loan policies. And I can tell you there are so many colleagues of us who come and they say, my father is not well or my child needs education and there are admission fees in India, education is not free, so I need some money there or my wife has to go to the hospital for delivery. 23:15 and there was some unexpected medical situation. We do give loans and we don't expect them back. If they give back, great. If they don't, there's no expectation. But Vrinda, let me tell you, there has not been a single instance in 14 years where people have not come back and returned the loan. Not even one instance. See, that...
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Pete Lee: No One Ever Gets to be Wrong
10/03/2022
Pete Lee: No One Ever Gets to be Wrong
On this episode, our host, Brenda McCabe speaks with Pete Lee; a writer, teacher and coach. Pete has been supporting the spiritual growth and transformation of many life purpose and truth-seekers for over 16 years through one-on-one and group coaching sessions, gentle and restorative yoga and meditation classes and workshops, healing energy work and gong sound frequencies. Pete is also a certified and registered instructor of Sacred Energy Arts, Kundalini and Restorative Yoga, having trained with Matthew Cohen, Rachel Sat Siri Dougherty, and Jillian Pransky. He has taught at many renowned yoga studios throughout Los Angeles including Yogaworks, Equinox, and Golden Bridge Yoga. Pete’s website is transcript: 00:19 Hi, this is Brenda McCabe. I'm the founder and owner of Next Act Advisors, and I'm here today with the latest addition to my channel. It's a podcast called The Founder's Sandbox. From Next Act Advisors, I'm an advisor, I'm a board director and an angel investor. And I started Next Act Advisors with a simple mission. 00:47 I want to assist entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs in building scalable, well-governed, and resilient businesses. The Founder Sandbox is just a natural extension of my mission to reach a broader audience. Building from the start of a business and educating through real life examples and playfulness and creativity, it is my vision to equip one startup founder at a time on building 01:16 a better world through great corporate governance. In this episode today, I'm joined by Pete Lee. He is a writer, a coach, and a yoga instructor. I've known him for many years. And he's gonna be sharing his purpose and how he has built a professional platform to change for a better world. Thank you, Pete, for joining me today on the Founder Sandbox. 01:45 So honored. Thank you, Brenda, for having me. I'd like to tell a little story about how I've known you for upwards of eight years and how I reached out to you initially for this podcast. And I've been with Pete as a yoga instructor. I'm a student, of course. 02:11 for over eight years. And one of the practices that he does is while you're grounding to identify and the knots that you have in your body and to really just breathe through those knots. And when I was thinking of bringing this practice into the work I do with founders, I couldn't help but ask Pete to kind of join me because I think founders oftentimes find knots when they're running up some of the 02:41 running up against some of their obstacles. So during today's interview, we're gonna talk about how he has discovered his passion, his gift in helping us people get through our knots. So thank you, Pete, again, for wanting to join me in the sandbox today. Let me give a little background on yourself, your credentials. Again, I've been working or practicing yoga with a... 03:09 Pete for over eight years. He is a writer, teacher and a coach. He has been supporting the spiritual growth and transformation of many life purpose and truth seekers for over 16 years through one on one and group coaching sessions through gentle and restorative yoga and meditation classes and workshops. He is a certified professional. 03:39 of Coaching Program. He's also a certified and registered instructor of sacred energy arts, Kundalini and restorative yoga, having trained with Matthew Cohen, Rachel Sat Sri 04:09 been under worked with many renowned yoga studios through Los Angeles, including yoga works, Echonauts and Golden Bridge yoga. Also, he has a huge he's a massive food fan and has written. He's a critic in the LA Times as well as other food magazines. So Pete, thank you again for joining me on next activizers and the founder sandbox. 04:39 Right. Thanks for having me. It's so exciting. Oh, right. So, uh, I always like to start with a story, right. And, you know, we, we've known each other for years and you've been instructing and practicing healing yoga practices. And I emphasize healing, uh, for over 10 years, um, after. I know he started as a journalist. 05:09 right, for a large newspaper. And now you've come full circle combining the practice of yoga with writing. Can you share with my listeners your story of the origin and how you've come back full circle? Yeah. So when I was in college, I let... 05:36 I found I got a part-time job as an editorial assistant. And so even then I was proofreading, light editing. I didn't do a lot of writing back then, but what was fantastic was that basically after college I was offered a junior writing position. So, and this is, and at that time, 06:04 You know, so going from transitioning from this part-time world to, and from us being a student in college to first full-time job out of college. And it's a different world, even though I feel like I didn't, my desk didn't move like that far. I was like 30 feet away from my old desk to the new desk. Like everything changed, just like the work and just everything. But. 06:32 Um, it's also when I also discovered yoga at the same time, um, uh, cause a colleague of mine, um, was teaching at the basement of the building, like once a week. And we would, uh, she said, Oh, you want to do yoga together? And, and it was really life-changing because I didn't, I didn't know what it was. And it was like, Oh, moving, we're breathing. And next thing you know, I was crying. Kundalini does that to us. 07:01 Oh, yeah. And I was like, wow, I mean, I thought it was absolutely like so profound, you know, how that whole experience was. And it brought me in touch with really like really like at the heart of like, wow, what am I holding? Like I'm in my early 20s at the time. So it was it was it was it was 07:29 an incredible experience in so many ways and growth experience. I realized that when you start a position as an editorial assistant, or any kind of junior position, especially as a part-timer in college, and then when you move over to a full-time position four years later, I think people related to me as I was still a college student. Because I've known everyone since I was 19, basically. And at this point, I was 23. 07:58 And I think people still saw me as this college student. So I think that was hard being in the same environment around the same people. But all of a sudden any idea I had was like seen as, oh, that's cute. And I think it really needed, I think, but again, everything worked exactly how it's supposed to be because it was those experiences that had me look into 08:29 healing myself because a lot of stuff was coming up. I was feeling really like, you know, self-esteem was low, confidence was at an all time low over those four years of working as a full-time writer. I didn't think I could write because it was really, really challenging. But that's also what led me into deepening the yoga practice, deepening, looking for ways to work on myself, my own purpose. 08:59 went to the basement to practice this initial introduction into yoga, you had knots, right? Perhaps as a result of the working conditions, right? From that transition from a 19-year-old to a 23-year-old, right? Plenty of knots. Plenty of knots that accumulated and 09:28 continued over time. So you went on a journey to heal yourself, right? And that's when you discovered the coaching. That's when I discovered coaching. I thought about going back to school to become a therapist. At the time, I think coaching was very new and it wasn't something that was... 09:58 so readily available and it wasn't really kind of in the zeitgeist of our, you know, of our culture. And I remember watching a show on TV. You might remember it was called Nip Tuck. But you know, I was gone. I was missing from the United States. Yes. So there was a show called Nip Tuck and there was a character who was a life coach. And for some reason, I think 10:28 I just, I looked into that. Like, what is a life coach? A friend, and then a friend of mine told me, I was mentioning that as well at the same time, saying, you know, I know you don't wanna, I know you're considering therapy. Maybe therapy is not your route, but you know, you should look into this life coaching thing. I'm like, what is this? And then so I start looking online at the time and I noticed a lot of life coaching schools. And then, 10:57 a lot of them were graduates of the coaches training institute. So and so founded this school, but this, this person graduated from the coaches training institute. Like what is this coaches training institute? So I went on their site and they were the first, basically, but really the, the first program, the, you know, that started a lot of this coaching work. And, and I started reading about their principles and 11:23 And then one of the first things in their cornerstones was no one ever gets to be wrong. I love it. And it was amazing. Cause I felt like there was so much permission and such a permission to play, permission to make mistakes, permission to see what works. Something that they would say a lot was throwing spaghetti. To see what sticks. At the wall. 11:53 Yeah. And then especially coming from, I remember, I still remember seeing the coaches training Institute website when I was at my desk at work. And I think I want, I think I, I may have like teared up at my desk because it was, I think at that time, I think few years I've gone by of just feeling that everything I did was wrong, right? To read something that while no one could ever be wrong. 12:23 that everything is for the sake of learning and growing and expanding. I wanna do that. I wanna support other people in doing that. So that began my journey. Yeah. So I hear you saying that you perhaps had a cathartic moment, right? The sitting in front of your desk at work where... 12:50 Your work is not appreciated. You're treated like a 19 year old. Um, you believe you have the gift of writing, but you also discover coaching. Right. 13:03 What do you enjoy? I think you shared that, you know, you talk about a safe space when we practice yoga with you, what is the safe space and how do you recreate that? I think, safety, I feel like is at the heart of it's so important. I think it's a lot of it is because to everyone to some degree has experienced some degree of trauma in our lives. 13:30 And trauma can also be a positive thing, not necessarily a negative thing, but it could be something so huge that it could be overwhelming. Even how we receive joy, how we receive something happy, depending on, we may feel a sense of shame about being happy because of something that happened in our past. So safety is, I feel like, is creating an environment where it's okay for us to be wrong. 13:59 creating an environment where we can just be without an agenda, right? And then so in practice, I feel like when we can arrive at a safe place, when there is the space where we can just land and without feeling that I need to do something to prove how good I am or to prove anything really, that I could just show up and be. 14:29 and really be held in the space where everyone could be themselves. And also because of our past traumas and our past stuff, it's so easy for each of us to be in the space of fight or flight. So as long as we're in the state of fight or flight, 14:55 nervous systems are constantly like, like, like it's like that space of gripping, right? So when there is a space to land and know that we, there is no wrong, we can just, ah, we can exhale. Yeah. We can just land. I think that the, the, the, that, that word landing is really huge, that we can just, ah, feel safe. You know, I, I can't, 15:25 help but bring it back to the founders journey, right? Entrepreneurs, I started off with using the the analogy of knots, right? And how we work through our yoga practice, I'm releasing those knots. But also, I found in practicing yoga, with you and others is the the what you become is what you kind of 15:54 communicate to the world, right? And so everything is a mirror, right? How we treat ourselves, right? In a business environment, as a founder of a company, in our own yoga practice, is how we can impact the world, right? Yes, absolutely. And so how would you, can you share some specific kind of practices 16:22 for founders when they're running up against, I mean, what are those triggers in their own bodies that would suggest taking some time out and landing? Yeah, I think especially when you're having meetings or the thought of having a meeting with somebody, a new client, and it could happen in the midst of a meeting or before. 16:50 Right. And that's an example. That could be an example where you're like, oh, I hope this works out. But it's like all the anticipation can trigger a lot already for somebody. And so I guess it's really like looking into where we grip, where we start to feel tight in the body. Something I share a lot is the idea of scanning, like a mental scan from head to toe and just even just breathing 17:20 without kind of like, it just in kind of an effortless breathing. And then, but it's really noticing where we all of a sudden, like if we're, if we're scanning from head to toe mentally from the top of our head and you're making your way down and you're just checking, you may notice like, all of a sudden you're, you're, you're inhale that might be this natural easy inhale and you get to your throat or something. For example, all of a sudden there's like this little, there's like, you could barely inhale. 17:50 So that's a good example of all of a sudden something is held here where the ease of breathing becomes it's like a very shallow breath. So that's a good sign of something is gripping, something is held here, some stress or tension is there. So what I would say is when we scan, the really great way just to pause and like, okay, I'm gonna hang out here. I'm gonna like... 18:15 use my mind as a laser beam and keep my focus right at my throat, because that's where the shallow breath is. And I'm just going to, and the first few breaths might still be shallow, but as I keep my attention here and really allow the breath to come back to ease again. And once breath comes back to ease, I'll continue to scan down. So that attention piece is, is really huge. When we scan, it's almost like, 18:44 an opportunity to hang out with our nerves and cells. And awareness. It is, and that awareness piece, that piece too, in a way, if you bring that out into something physical in the outer world, if you think about, if you have a younger sibling, or if you're around a child and the child is crying. And I think a lot of 19:14 I think a lot of us who grew up in an environment where, you know, our parents or older siblings or elders thought that, oh, if I stop this child from crying, I'm stopping this child from hurting. Like, and because I think also adults just was like, I don't want to, I don't know how to deal with this crying. But really, when you just kind of be there with the child, and the child can 19:43 an older person, an elder here, giving me space to cry, not telling me to shut up, not telling me to stop. The child can really have this cathartic moment of just release and feel safe while being witnessed in a sense and held. And the child would cry and the child would organically stop crying, right? Just by your presence of, and without an agenda of saying, I need you to shut up now. 20:11 No, so when we basically when we scan, it is basically that when we're the act of doing that is how that how we are becoming that elder for ourselves. Right. So it's like, when we when we pause and hang out at our throats. It's like every cell and nerve there. It's like say, it's okay, I'm here. I'm going to hang out with you and breathe with you until until ease returns. 20:40 until the crying stops organically. And then I'm gonna continue looking for another spot where there's gripping. Amazing. I love that you chose an example of a child crying with an elder being beside them because it takes us right back to the founder's sandbox. And one of your life moments was the sudden passing of your mother. Oh yeah. 21:10 And your mother was, I believe, a huge influence as you were pivoting in your professional journey. And I think she had a saying that she would tell you. What was that saying, Pete? Her saying was ride cow, find horse. And for my listeners, can you explain that? Because I think it's super applicable to founders who sometimes have to pivot. 21:39 But you can't get to that endpoint immediately. So what was your mother saying about? So I was telling her at the time how stressed I was and that I was just feeling really disheartened about writing, right? Feeling and being in that job. And I'm like, I wanna do something different. I wanna do something different. I can't take this anymore. And she kept saying, ride cow, find horse. 22:08 And in Cantonese, it's called kei ngawad ma. And it translates exactly that ride cow find horse. So the idea is that ride your cow until you find your horse. Like don't leave your job until you find something else. It's very practical, right? At the same time, it really gives you a space to assess. What is that horse? I'm not just jumping onto the next cow. 22:37 Or, you know, or even then it could, the cow could become a horse. But the thing is, it's like, really take time to, to really look at like, what, what is it do I want to move into? Right? Well, you have this kind of, when you have this cow that is supporting you in some way, right? That, that there is this, there is a support system there for you right now. And instead of just jumping off and like, 23:05 I'm going to abandon everything to because in that in that state too, then we lose our, you know, our financial support. We lose so much support in this moment of I'm sort of jump off. Right. So it's like having support while I while I expand to really become what's more true for me. And the wisdom of elders, right? Your mother. 23:33 And so you discovered the coaching, got your certification, and been practicing for over 16 years. Pandemic hits, it impacted clearly the practice of yoga instruction. And I'd like you to share how just the retooling, the scuffing coaching has come to full circle because you're back writing. 24:02 as well as you found kind of this happy place in your professional platform that I'd like to share you to share with the listeners. So what was so fascinating was I think after I left the job and went really dove into coaching which then opened to what was interesting too was diving into yoga. 24:29 Right? Because at first it was just for me, my own practice. And then my nephew is autistic. And then I realized how much the yoga practice and the Kundalini meditations and such helped me land, helped me feel more grounded. So, so much more for myself. I thought, um, wow, maybe if this helped me so much, maybe my nephew would enjoy it. And at the time Golden Bridge yoga in, in Hollywood had a kids class. 24:59 and an adult class on Saturdays at the same time. So I thought, I asked my brother and my sister-in-law, can I bring him to yoga and see if he likes it? Cause it helped me so much. And they said, sure. So it was during that time that we would go every Saturday that they announced that a teacher training was coming up. And I had really no thought of becoming a yoga teacher. I was already coaching at the time, but then I... 25:28 that I thought, well, I could learn tools because they helped me so much, maybe you could help my clients. And then, and at the same time, I wanted to start to teach workshops, like coaching workshops. But at the same time, I realized that I was afraid of public speaking. And then so I thought, well, if I could be in front of a room teaching a yoga class, if I could teach a yoga class, I could teach a workshop. So it was in a sense like it, 25:58 It was a way to learn public speaking. It was a way to learn tools to support clients and support my nephew. So I thought it was just this way...
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