Latest / High Five Energy Founders / Beyond MoviePass: Building a Future Worth Living In | Hamet Watt

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Beyond MoviePass: Building a Future Worth Living In | Hamet Watt · High Five Energy Founders

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_05: What's up, guys?
• 0:00
  SPEAKER_05: I'm Jeff.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_05: I'm a serial entrepreneur and an investor.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_05: And on this podcast, I sit down with the world's top founders to unpack how they actually build, scale, and think to help entrepreneurs get the tools and inspiration they need to succeed.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_05: I always like to start out these interviews with where you started.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_05: You know, you're an entrepreneur at heart, you're also an investor, you've had a wild ride, multiple companies, multiple venture positions.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_05: Where did it begin for you?
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_05: Your first major company that you started where really was a roller coaster for you, and how'd you get into it?
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_03: Well, they're all roller coasters.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_03: Probably like everyone in here, we started companies very young in our lives.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_03: So I was a kid that had the you know lawn cutting business.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_03: I had a couple of businesses in college when it wasn't uh popular.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_03: Uh my first venture-backed company was a company called Next Medium, which is actually what brought me to LA.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, I cold called the highest ranking person at Nielsen and I said, you know, TiVo is about to skip$11 billion in commercials.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_03: What if we figure out how to monetize the product placement in a more thoughtful way?
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_03: And that's actually my first venture-backed company.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_03: Brought me to LA because we had partnerships with networks and studios and the like.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_03: Let's pause for a second.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_03: You cold called the I love cold calling.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_03: I'm old school.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_03: This was a long time ago.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_03: I still try to do it now just to keep the muscle fresh.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, my hit rate is actually getting better now.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_03: As you get older, that it helps.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but yeah, I I uh I realized that the uh the currency for media at that time was uh was Nielsen, and that their business was reliant on making money from ads and counting the eyeballs that saw the ads.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_03: And if people were skipping ads, then I thought that was a potential vulnerability.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_03: And so I just literally went to the top of the list.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_03: The CEO, he didn't respond.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_03: I went to the CFO, he didn't respond.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_03: Then the head of strategy responded, and he's a mentor of mine to this day.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_05: This is an email or is a phone call?
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_05: How do you how do you get the number?
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_03: It was a phone call back then.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_03: Back then, yeah, you just find the number.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_03: This was in the 60s.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_03: I'm just using it.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_03: It wasn't that far ago.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_03: Uh it was it was a long time ago.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_03: So email wasn't well e email was part of it, but phone was still a viable channel.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_05: So when you're older with a track record, cold calling is a little bit easier because you have you could say who you are, what you've done.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_05: Back then in the beginning, how are you able, like what in you allowed you to pick up the phone?
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_05: Were you were you in sports?
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_05: What is there something in your mindset that's different than others?
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_05: Because I I agree cold calling is the key to I mean, all sales, if you could do it.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I think sometimes it just comes from from confidence.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_03: And I wouldn't say like my default state is ultra confident, but once I've done enough work on something, I feel really confident that this is something that I'm doing, I'm helping the person that I'm reaching out to.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_03: If I really feel like that, it's in my in my bones, then I have no concerns with that.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_03: And even people that are poking holes, and I think this is an you know important thing that I remember every time I'm doing a new company, if you've done enough work and you really are have conviction, uh, even the baker scholar, who inevitably is going to say something negative to you about the business or might say something that is uh designed to be constructed, if you've done enough work, you can still overcome that.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and so I think that was a mindset I had back then.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_03: If I was convinced that these commercials are going to be skipped and that would have an impact on that business, then I felt like I needed to do it.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_03: And actually the head of strategy came back to me and said, at first I didn't really understand or listen, but we actually paid McKenzie six million bucks and they told us the exact same thing.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_03: So let's go into business together.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_05: That's amazing.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_05: So you essentially had enough value to offer where you were doing a favor to this person by taking time out of your busy day to give this person a call and giving them this advice.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, and of course it was entirely selfishly motivated in that I wanted to start a business with their partnership, but it it aligned with with uh with I think something that mattered to them.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_05: So that brought you out to Los Angeles, the home of Hollywood and software entrepreneurs.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_05: Where do you go from there?
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_03: You know, LA, I I I fell in love with LA.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I had even thought about going to school out here uh for college, and that was always a sort of this allure.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I think the freedom that it represented was something that was was just cool.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_03: Plus, it's a sexy town, and I like that vibe.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_03: Um and you know, once I uh I exited that company, uh, I actually had met a lot of venture firms in that journey through the raises that we did for the company, one of whom was was upfront ventures.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and I was also backed by um another firm, a gentleman by the name of John Callahan, who went on to start True Ventures.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_03: True Ventures was the first money in Fitbit, the first money in Peloton, very successful venture firm in the Bay Area.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_03: So I initially joined True as an entrepreneur in residence.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and they were just getting started.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_03: They had written the check in Peloton, they had done some other very successful deals, and they just said, come here, hang out as if you had, you know, a billion dollars in the bank and think about what you want to do next.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_03: And for any entrepreneur, of course, that's like the dream scenario.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and so I worked with them on a number of investments and companies, and it was at that time that I was starting basically two new companies at the same time a company called Bee Life, which is focused on health and behavior change, and then another company called MoviePass.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and so we started, I started both of those companies at this kind of at the same time, which is kind of crazy.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and uh, you know, that was the start of the next chapter of the entrepreneurial journey.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_05: Has anyone ever heard of the company Movie Pass?
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_05: And did anyone have a Movie Pass card?
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_05: Generational question.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_05: So let's talk about Movie Pass because I watched the documentary last night and I knew of Movie Pass, but I had no idea about Movie Pass.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_05: Let's talk a little bit about that journey.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_05: First off, you meet Stacy, the founder.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_05: He pitched you.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_05: Let's talk about the beginning and what it was before all that, just like what the vision was and what you were trying to do with this company.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so I'm I'm at True Ventures at the time.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_03: Um ideating around a lot of different companies, one of which was looking at the inevitable collapse of the windowing in movie going.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and I was looking at all the a bunch of businesses around that phenomena.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_03: And a friend of mine, um, who was actually uh Will Smith's head of investments at the time, uh, was ideating with me and he said, you know what, you you and uh Stacy are kind of ideating around the same problem.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_03: You guys should connect.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_03: And so we met and we locked ourselves in a room and we whiteboarded and we came out with Movie Pass.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and so we were it was you know you talk about entrepreneurial flow states.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_03: Um, my previous business, because it touched the entertainment business, I was kind of tired of the entertainment world a little bit.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_03: I was kind of like, you know what?
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_03: I want to try to use superpowers to help people.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_03: And not that the entertainment industry doesn't help people, but it especially on the advertising side, it kind of felt like a little bit of um, you know, you're you're you learn a lot about consumer psychology to get people to buy stuff, right?
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_03: And that's kind of the point in that business.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_03: And I wanted to redirect some of that energy towards health.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and so I was sort of like, I don't know if I want to go into this movie business.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_03: I talk about um, you know, anytime you're going into an industry, you better like going to the picnics or the barbecues that people in that industry throw because that's the community that you become part of.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_03: And so I was a little bit hesitant, but it felt like I was I had enough muscle memory from navigating those worlds that I was in a flow state quickly in that.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_03: Like I knew exactly who to call at the studios, I knew exactly who to call at the agencies, I knew exactly which investors I knew I was gonna call, and it just sort of happened quickly.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_03: And so Stacy and I ended up raising some capital.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_03: We announced uh the company um with some fanfare, and then two weeks later, we got a cease and desist from AMC that said, you can't do this.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_05: What was the original model?
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_05: Like when you launched, what was the value prop to use it?
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_03: Same value prop.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_03: We were looking at what was happening in the other uh, you know, media types like uh video with Netflix.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_03: We were watching what was happening in in music with Spotify, and we said, let's do subscription model for movie going, right?
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_03: Let's have a one price, all you can eat model for going to the movies.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, it solves one of the biggest issues, which is like, oh gosh, do I want to go pay for this movie or do I just want to wait until it comes out on video?
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_03: Taking that friction away, our our hypothesis was movie going would increase, concessions would increase.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_03: And the big true north was always, and I think to this day, because Stacy is now uh making another go of it, is to get people together in person.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_03: And it just so happens that going to the movies is a great catalyst for that.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_05: I just want to take a moment to talk about something that's really important to me and something I've been working on for years.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_05: If you like these conversations with founders, the mindset shifts, and the real questions behind building companies, I go much deeper on all that in my book, High Five Energy.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_05: I wrote it for people who are thinking about starting something or who already have, but want to lead with more clarity and purpose.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_05: The book gives you practical tools to get into high five energy flow state, attract the right people, and build in a way that actually feels aligned.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_05: High Five Energy includes interviews with 18 legendary founders who've had over 200 billion in exits and IPOs.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_05: If you're new to entrepreneurship or even just considering taking the leap, this book is for you.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_05: High Five Energy is available now wherever books are sold, or hit the link below.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_03: And so that was always our mission.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_03: And that was always our business.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_03: Um, it went through a lot of ups and downs, as you probably saw in the movie, but that was the mission and it remained the mission.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_05: So you launch it.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_05: What's the time frame from first meeting with Stacey to actually launching MoviePass the first time?
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_03: Um, we it took us probably uh four months to build our super fast very first product um in a limited release, and it was beautiful, it was very elegant, you know, didn't involve a lot of manual things.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_03: We had a QR code before that was even in style.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and that was part of the problem.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_03: The the the um exhibitors were like frustrated that was gonna put strain on their supply chain, and they were worried about oh gosh, if there's a one price all-you-can-eat model, it's gonna destroy our individual model.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_03: And we were like, don't worry about us, worry about Instagram, worry about all these other distractions on a human's time besides going to the movie.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_03: And so that was that was but anyway, that was the first obstacle that we had to overcome, but ultimately uh there were many.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_05: Well, you launch and you get a cease and desist.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_05: How many days later?
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, a day and a half late, like very like very almost immediately.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_03: Can you imagine?
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_03: You ever seen that UPS commercial back in the day where the orders start coming in and then they they're excited, and then they go the orders start getting too high, and then you're nervous?
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_03: It's kind of like that.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_03: Like we had this feeling of really being excited, and then it was like, oh shit, like the biggest player in the industry wants to shut us down.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, AMC.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_05: Do you quit in that moment?
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_05: Do you second guess what's going on?
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_05: Like, how do you persevere through that?
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_05: Well, what's your journey riding that roller coaster, which is startup life?
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it is startup life, and in hindsight, like the number of roller coaster ups and downs we had with MoviePass were probably more than than average.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, but it's always like that, as you know.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I I think it was a great uh indicator when the team rallied, when the team rebuilt uh the platform.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_03: We basically rebuilt the platform and went through another channel and figured out a way to do it anyway.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_03: And we were up and running in less than a month after that initial season desist.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_03: We had to do some clever ways to partner with other people to get ticket inventory, but we were able to do it.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, and that that was the born of the credit card, right?
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, exactly.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_05: So movie pass, you go to the movies originally, you can just it would be a partnership.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_03: Well, that was that the original model, but yeah, it was a debit card with Discover that was preloaded and geographically um uh fenced so that your card would activate when you were in the geofence of the theater only for use at the theater.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_03: And so we were effectively paying full price for those tickets with the belief that, and ultimately was partially possible, that the there would be a wholesale rate we would get on those tickets, and that was the business model.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_05: Do you think that cease and desist uh created the smartest pivot you could have done with the credit card model?
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_03: It was a workaround, and it ended up being uh somewhat valuable to our subs are our financing that happened after the fact because we got some patents around that stuff.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_03: I think the the more important part with that big challenge, as it is with any business, is just determining what the identity of the company is and what the identity of the team is.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_03: And if the identity of the team is we will overcome all odds, it then that's a great thing to get embedded and that will take you far.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_03: As opposed to, oh fuck, we got to think of another business, or we got, you know, we're you know, which is can be an honest answer too, right?
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_03: But the identity of like, no, we will overcome this is an important one.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_05: And you think that came not just from the top two guys, but the whole company as a team.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_03: The whole team um took it personal, and there was nobody in that early team that was like, oh no, I'm gonna start looking for a job.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_03: And they that and that could have, again, that could have happened, and it's not always the wrong thing to happen, but it's a great feeling, especially as a founder, when you see folks when they're seeing some horrible news, how they react.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_03: And do they put energy into the mission or do they put energy into their own, maybe their own mission, which is not related to adding value to the company?
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_05: So now you're up and running, you've pivoted, you're getting users.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_05: I think you reached like around 20,000 members at that point.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_05: What happens around this point?
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean, we were going for a long time with ups and downs and financings and and and nearing nearing running out of cash and then raising cash and then having some things work.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_03: And uh we were at a place where one of our early investors, our primary early investor, a guy named Chris Kelly, who was the chief privacy officer at Facebook and had a fairly large family office, um, he was like, I'm tired.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_03: I need some other players in here, some other financiers in here, in addition to the guys that we had.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_03: And so we kind of held our nose and did a financing with the guys you saw in the movie.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_03: And they were I I actually didn't think they had the money.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_03: It's one of those who here has been an entrepreneur raising and not sure that the person on the other side of the table had money or not.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_03: It's not uh, you know, it's it's a it's a common thing.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_03: And um, it was one of those scenarios, and then it was like, oh, the money showed up.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but they were just different types of characters.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_03: Um, they're uh not you know what you would they didn't let's just say they didn't wreak uh sophistication or credibility, and so it turned out that that was true, and that we had some challenging situations.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_03: They ultimately bought the majority of the company, and um that's what led to it being worthy of a movie because it was crazy.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_05: How many users did they get to on the model of 995 as many movies as you could have per month?
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, I mean, we had a few million, I mean the company was worth a billion dollars at one point.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_03: We had a few million um members, um, and it was always intended to be because Stacey and I were involved when we first did it, was always intended to be like a promotional price.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_03: And I think the stock was moving because it was ultimate, it was public.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_03: The stock was moving so much, I think folks got greedy and excited that oh, well, don't worry about the unit economics.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_03: Uber hadn't figured their unit economics out yet either, so we don't have to, and let's just keep this promotional price in favor of growth.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_03: And that obviously caught up with the company.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, the company ended up going bankrupt less than a year after you handed the keys over.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_05: And you didn't hand the keys over, right?
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_03: Well, no, they ended up buying, they ended up essentially buying and taking control.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_03: So at one point we had a nice ownership stake and a nice value, but we were locked up, and of course, we were paranoid that it wasn't going to be something that would be able to sustain.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_03: And so that was what made it, you know, a a big challenging situation for us personally.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_05: How did that feel when something like your it was a it was your baby gets sort of taken over by other people that are doing things that you wouldn't necessarily agree with that look great on paper?
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_05: These guys, the the new leaders of the company were on TV every day.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_05: They built this huge company, think the stock price was skyrocketing.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_05: You're watching this.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_05: How is your psychology sitting in the stands for all this?
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_05: And how do you sort of manage to get through it all?
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_03: Eventually I got to some level of detachment.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I think the hard it was like I describe it like you're on a in the um, what do you call the in the pepperdine area?
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_03: Those, what are those roads back there?
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_03: The hills?
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_03: You know what I'm talking about?
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_03: In Malibu.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_03: You're driving around the co you know, off the cliffs, right?
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_03: It felt like you were uh there was a guy in a rickety school bus and he was drunk as hell, and he's driving carelessly, and you're in the back, like, oh shit.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_03: That's what it felt like.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_03: Like, oh shit, I I want to get to the destination, but this doesn't feel like a really safe way to do it.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_03: Um and so um, and so yeah, that that's how it felt.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_03: But I mean, at that point, I had also joined upfront as a venture partner.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_03: So I was executive chairman, and then when we sold, I got off the board, they kicked us off the board, which Stacy was not happy about, but I was kind of relieved by because I didn't want to be, you know, caught in any of the shenanigans.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but you know, thankfully, I had enough distraction from making investments and and and doing the investor thing.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_03: And I think just like anything else, it's always a game, right?
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_03: This this entrepreneurial thing is is just a game.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_03: Um funny, when Mark Wahlberg bought the rights to the story, they sent a producer to my office and to film us like to get a little teaser.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_03: And I had really blocked it out.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_03: I had blocked it out in my own mind, but he was so good at asking these questions, and I got emotional, and I got emotional on camera, and I was like, oh, I was one of those ugly things like take that camera out of my face, and I was like, don't use that footage, and they're like, sure.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_03: Uh but and thankfully I wasn't, they didn't get me blubbering in the actual movie.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_03: You did not blubber, you did not cry.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_03: No, they tried to, and I was like, bro, I've already got it out of my system, I'm good.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but uh, but yeah, they sold it like that.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_03: They sold it in a week to HBO, probably because of that damn blubbering.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_05: You said two things that I just want to hit on for a second.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_05: You said detached, which means you know, where I talk about this in the book around when you start identifying with the thing that you're working on as yourself versus it's something that you're working on, detach, and also entrepreneurship and startup is a game.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_05: And I know a lot how many entrepreneurs are in this room?
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_05: It's like 70, 80 percent.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_03: What are the other folks?
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_03: Like corporate?
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_03: Any corporates?
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_03: One or two corporates, recovering entrepreneurs, recovering entrepreneurs, everyone else is recovering entrepreneurs.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_03: Any service providers, lawyers, accountants, okay, two bankers, yeah.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_03: What was your question?
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_03: Sorry.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_05: Detachment and and the startup experience being a game.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_05: And for especially entrepreneurs in their earlier stages, it's really I've I've experienced it.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_05: Like when my my company almost ran out of money, the conversation that I had to have with an investor when I actually thought it was gonna go under, it didn't.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_05: But the what I it was it took so much in me to tell my investor I think this is gonna end.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_05: And it was the hardest conversation for me to bring up, and he was like, it's fine.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_05: Like this is this is their this is their game.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_05: And once I got through that, then at future times it was easier to have those conversations, but you know, you persevere, you never let things die, you keep pivoting.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_05: But you know, what is your advice to the entrepreneurs in this room who may feel as though it is part of their identity, it's their baby, and they are riding that roller coaster, the ups and downs.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_03: It is the question I think is a really good one.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_03: Um I I have chosen to only focus on um mission-driven companies, and I don't want that to sound cliche, and it can sound cliche, I understand that.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_03: Um, when I say mission-driven, I don't necessarily mean it always has to be altruistic, but it does have to be a mission that I am on, and people that I want to work with are also on.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_03: And that gives me a level of um peace and detachment from you know, some of the processes, if you will, but not detachment from the mission.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_03: And so um it's not, I don't say that I don't think this is a common philosophy.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_03: I'm I'm kind of one of those believers, you know, there there some folks ask, like, when is it time to quit?
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_03: When is it time to just fold, right?
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_03: And my answer is never.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_03: And I know that's not common.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_03: I know that's not thank you.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_03: I'll take that applause.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe one or two people will agree with that.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but I I really believe in that because I believe we're on this planet to have a mission and to really fucking go after it.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_03: And if the modality for uh for going after that mission changes, that's okay.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe you do go after it in a way, but only work on something that you really Care about.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that's the only way that you can get the team that you can convince the team.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_03: You can look at them in their fucking eyes and say, You're making 1.2 at Google, but I need you to come make 125 with me.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_03: I don't think you could say that without really feeling it in your bones.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_03: And so, yeah, so I think that's, you know, I I don't know if that answers the question, but that's my philosophy.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_05: And then that evolution in you from really operational entrepreneur to board uh board partner and uh partner at upfront to share ventures.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_05: What is share ventures and how is that evolution played out?
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, share is um, you know, I after you know, we exited Movie Pass and I was spending a lot of time at upfront.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_03: I was really, I'm sure everyone has been in that place where you're like, okay, what am I want to put everything into?
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_03: What do I want to focus on?
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_03: What is my mission?
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_03: What would be fun?
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_03: What would be impactful?
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_03: What would help make money?
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_03: What would what would all those things be?
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_03: And I really came back to this concept of a lab, and that was always something that was intriguing to me.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_03: Um, Bill Gross from Idea Lab, who's right out here in Pasadena, is a good friend and mentor.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_03: Um, there were many others that had gone in this lab space before, a lot of criticism against it.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, you can't do more than one company at the same time.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_03: And all the there's some great reasons and some big risks in doing a lab, just as there are big risks in doing a startup, by the way, or being a venture investor or any fucking other thing.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_03: But I got conviction that it was the model that I was most excited for and most um able to do in terms of what my skill sets and interests were.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_03: And so I was lucky enough.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_03: I had spent some time at BCG.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_03: I was a senior advisor there.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_03: They were doing um innovation as a service with BCG and very big companies.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_03: And um, so I was considering starting something with them, and I was just going through the motions and helping them in their incubation effort with corporates.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_03: And one morning, my partner at upfront, um uh Mark Seuster, uh said, Hey, we want to anchor you in what you want to do next.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_03: And I was like, Oh, I thought you guys hated venture studios and labs.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't even ask them.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I thought you had, they were like, we think you're gonna do well on it.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_03: So we're we're in.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_03: And so thankfully, um he committed, and then the folks at True, who I'd worked with for many years, also committed, and that snowballed into raising a pool of capital in a holding company to start what is now Sheriff Ingers.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_03: And it was it's we have a lab, and then we ultimately raise a fund that's kind of a companion vehicle to that lab that Google and Amazon anchored.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_03: And the mission for the whole uh platform is to start companies uh in the human performance space at the intersection of human performance and frontier technologies, most of which is AI these days.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_03: So human performance means longevity, it means the future of work, it means any technology that unlocks the human in some material way.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_03: Give me one example of a company that you're super excited about that's spinning out of this thing.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_03: One company, um, and I'll pick on my buddy Stanley, who's who's one of my homies uh here at the Ken and other and others, uh, he's actually one of our customers.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, we start a company called Fino.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and we think about uh I'm sure there are how many AI startups are in the room here?
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, just a couple.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_03: Everyone should be an AI startup.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_03: So uh, you know, we think about uh vertical superintelligences in the in the in the lab.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_03: And so what verticals can we build a super intelligent model around?
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_03: Um and oral health was one that we chose because there was a really interesting study that highlighted the relationship between oral health and brain health.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_03: And that just fascinated me.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_03: And as we started peeling back the onion, we realized how tightly correlated and in many respects causal poor oral health is to systemic health.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_03: And so it's our it's our attack vector on health, but it's through the mouth.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_03: And so that company's called Pheno.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_03: If you go to pheno.co fen o.co, you can see it.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_03: But it's the world's first connected smart brush.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_03: It's a toothbrush that's a whole mouth and it has a scanner.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_03: It scans your teeth, your gums, your tongue, and your oral tissue.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_03: And we use our model to get in to give insights on oral health that will also um give you signal on overall health.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_05: That's a new idea.
• 26:42
  unknown: It literally works like 30 seconds.
• 26:45
  unknown: It's like we work for two and a half minutes.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_03: It's fun because it started, you know, with you know, we we have a pretty like a scientific method for how we start companies.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_03: And uh it started with you know, some sketches and something very rough things, and now it's in the market, it's selling, we're growing very fast.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_03: Um, someone said, it's like the Japanese smart toilet, but for your mouth.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_03: The Toto.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, maybe like water ring for your mouth.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_05: That's a pretty good marketing tagline.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_05: Toto, but for your mouth.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_05: And is it challenging at this point, or does it feel easier at this point in your career to do these things?
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_03: Um it it it's it's the same because it's it's it's always challenging, uh, but you swing harder and harder as you have more and more um uh capacity, right?
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_03: Whether that's capital or network or what have you, you swing harder and harder.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_03: So it just becomes the same.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_03: I heard um Jim Cameron giving a talk about how hard it was.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_03: I was like, damn, this is Jim Cameron.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_03: This is the number one movie maker.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_03: He was just talking about how hard it was to get something like Avatar made or to get something.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, bro, you made Titanic.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_03: You should just be able to walk in butt naked and be like, give me all the money I need.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_03: But is it no, it's very difficult because he's swinging higher and higher.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_03: And there's always some suits that say, oh, I'm not so sure this is something that's worthwhile.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_03: And so I think it's the same thing.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_05: I think it's contextual.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_05: And it doesn't matter if you're 22, 22 years old, right out of school with your first company.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_05: Contextually, everything that that person's going through is just as intense, just as wild as someone who's got a billion-dollar company, they're gonna hit the wall next week, they're running out of money, they need to enroll that amazing engineers at Facebook to get overts.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_05: We're all sort of operating in the same scope, just at different theoretical levels, but they're all the same level.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_03: It's so true.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_03: It really is true.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_03: And so it's almost like, you know, get used to it at some level, like learn to love it at some level, because even on success, you're still gonna have that same friction.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_03: It's just gonna be a at a at a hopefully at a much bigger scale.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_03: But for you, it's gonna feel the same.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_03: It's gonna feel the same kind of anxiety or pressure.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_03: So getting comfortable with that feeling, I know that sucks in some ways, but like getting to a place of like enjoying that a little bit in a sadistic way.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_03: You have to be a little sadistic if you're an entrepreneur anyway, is part of the game.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_05: Did you ever have an aha where that hit you really hard when you think about like way back when, or even not way back when, and it's still happening, but uh an instance where it happened and you it hit you like, I'm just gonna get used to this because this is this is a daily operation.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_03: It I think that energy, and this you're probably you probably talk about this in your entrepreneurial flow state, it is just like anything else, just like working out, like you can't stop.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_03: It's always easy to revert, no matter what you've what epiphany you've come to.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_03: The epiphany is like it's always part of the maintenance.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_03: And um, at least that's what I've come to.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_03: It's just part of the maintenance.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_03: Like you can't work out strong and then have an epiphany that you work and then stop.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_03: You won't.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_03: And so, you know, it gets into you know, your ability to understand yourself and to love yourself and then to be able to be yourself consistently, and that's not something that just happens without effort.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_05: What about the folks here that have a I'm gonna put this in air quotes job?
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_05: I once had a job.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_05: Lehman Brothers, many years ago, my last job.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_05: Sitting on an idea, thinking about it.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, they've been thinking about this idea for a long time.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_05: Asking this question today is a lot asked, uh, a lot different than asking this question four years ago, because now you could build a website on Lovable in 10 minutes.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_05: You have AI to sort of work with, ideate with.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_05: For those that do have jobs that have been thinking about either quitting or going for it, what's your advice to those people today in this environment, especially with what's going on with AI?
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_03: You mean the whole, you know, should I leave my job and start this company big deal?
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_05: Do it on the side, quit my job fully and just go for it.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_05: That feeling of I talk about in the book is you know, when I had my job, it was everyone would would always say the grass is always greener.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_05: The grass is always greener.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_05: And then one day I remember journaling, I want to see the fucking grass and to see it for myself.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_05: And I quit my job and I never looked back, and it was crazy roller coaster since then.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_05: It's like 20 years later.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_05: So more around that.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I think it's a it's a another great question.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_03: I think um I have this conversation a lot.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_03: A lot of times I'm trying to get someone to get out of a Borg into a cool new company.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and I do it carefully because not everyone should be in the entrepreneurial world.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_03: It's not for everyone.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and a lot of the reasons people have for wanting to be uh wanting to go into entrepreneurship or wanting to start a company, in some ways are not the best reasons from my perspective, in terms of whether that will actually fulfill the things.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_03: Like some someone was saying, I just I don't want to work for anyone anymore.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, oh, good luck with that.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_03: You know, you're gonna have a customer one day, you're gonna have a uh an employee one day who you'll be working for, you're gonna have a board uh at some stage you're gonna be working for.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_03: So there are a lot of people you you know you're you're gonna be working for at some level.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you can maybe working for your spouse or or your, you know, so there's always something that that energy, I think I try to diagnose that and make sure, okay, are you really looking for more freedom and more agency?
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_03: Because that's different than just not wanting to work for someone.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_03: Um and I I encourage people to do a lot of work so that they have deep conviction to the point I was making earlier.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_03: In making that jump, if you can do enough work to get conviction that the math will work, then I think you should you should do it.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_03: But I think this blind jump thing is a big mistake.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_03: And uh I think people should be very, very cautious, especially in this climate around that.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_03: They should have those conversations that with people that encourage them.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_03: I have a whole process now.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_03: When I'm thinking about a new company, it's like a baby.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_03: I don't want to show some people the baby because it might not be that cute, right?
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_03: In reality, you think it's cute, but I like to talk to people that also see cuteness at first.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_03: I know that's contrarian.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_03: I know people say, Oh, I want to get people to poke holes right away.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_03: I don't believe in that.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_03: I don't want people to call my baby ugly when I know it's probably a little ugly.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_03: I want to make it cuter, I want to let it mature a little bit.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_03: And then when I say, oh, this baby is cute, then I want to show it to people that are gonna call it ugly.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_03: And I want them to, I want them to poke holes into it.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_03: And I want to be able to, because sometimes, okay, this is actually a decent point.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_03: Let me let me dig in deeper here.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_03: Or I get to a place where, yeah, I hear that point.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_03: It's not valid.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_03: You haven't done the work that I've done, and I'm okay with it.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_03: It's cute.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_03: And uh, and so I think that that's an important process for someone to figure out on their own.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_03: Like the mistake that I see more people make is they take something that's really nascent and they ask for feedback to people that have everyone, devil's advocate is everywhere.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_03: It's the easiest thing in the world to poke a hole in a business.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_03: It's the easiest thing in the world to poke a hole in the business.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_03: That's easy.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_03: What's hard is finding out how it might work.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_03: That's significantly orders of magnitude more difficult.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_03: And so, again, I like to start in that place where the energy is flowing in a positive way to figure out and have the creativity to figure out what makes it work first.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_03: And then I get to a place where I'm able to invite criticism and able to use that to, you know, have iron sharpen iron.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I've met a ton of entrepreneurs in in my days of just not wanting to share the idea at all.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_05: Because it's their secret.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_05: And they don't want other people copying it.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_05: For people to copy your idea, they will have to take the next five to ten years of their life and dedicate their life to making that idea happen.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_05: So the feedback I'm hearing is it's so important to get feedback, but just not too soon.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I think it's the type of feedback that you invite in various phases.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_03: That's my perspective.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_03: So I do think it's important to get feedback.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_03: By the way, there are some uh ideas where it absolutely makes sense because you're filing some patents or doing something like that to keep it confidential.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_03: The majority of people that don't want to share their ideas, though, they have consumer-facing products.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, bro, what do you think is gonna happen when you launch?
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_03: Like, you're gonna have to tell somebody to buy the product of quit.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_03: That's flawed logic from the very beginning.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you're not gonna go from zero to 10 million users.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_03: So if you're gonna get copied, which you will, then you know, why not get it early before you're, you know, so you can, you know, have a growth trajectory that's more interesting because you figured out the problems.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_05: On the same topic, how important for your career is having advisors and mentors?
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_03: It it is very important, but I do uh hold to that rule around um when certain advisors and mentors are brought into the uh into the inner sanctum as it relates to a particular venture.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_03: Um, some people are they could be your loved ones or the maybe the most well-meaning in the world.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_03: But if you expose them to something that you're working on and ask for critique too early in the game, it can sap your energy.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_03: And that you need that energy to create.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_03: And so I do think in the early part of the funnel, and I recognize this is contrarian, most people say, hey, try to get feedback, try to get beat up right out of the gates.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_03: I think you need to have there is a stage where you need to get beat up, but I don't think it's right out of the gates.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and so that so the mentors, I think I have some mentors that are ultra creative and ultra used to the journey and will not call the baby ugly even when it is.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_03: They will focus on those other things.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_03: And those are the mentors and people that I like to surround myself with in the earliest phases.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_03: And then I have some mentors that are extremely critical.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_03: Nothing looks good, nothing is interesting.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_03: And you bring them in at some stage as well.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_05: How did you find like who would you say would be one of your greatest mentors throughout your career?
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_03: I've been lucky.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_03: Um, it it does get harder and harder, I will say, as you get older, um, to find mentors that feel like um they have a holistic ability to mentor you.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that's now it's become more verticalized, if that makes sense.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_03: I have a mentor that is a great, you know, Mark is, I would consider Mark one of my mentors.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_03: He is a fantastic investor and and and understands the venture business.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_03: So when I'm talking to him about that, I'm getting extremely good feedback on that.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_03: And and and I think it's coming from a good place, even though he's one of my investors, we're also friends.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_03: And so that's an important thing to understand is uh if you have an objective mentor or not.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and then I have uh, for example, um John Thompson is a chairman of Microsoft, went to Florida AM.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_03: He's a OG.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_03: I used to watch his analyst calls.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_03: He ran a company called Semantic, one of the uh you know uh more prolific uh graduates of Florida AM, um that uh which is an uh HBCU uh and was a chairman of Microsoft for 12 years.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_03: He's hired Satya Nadella.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_03: So he's a fantastic corporate and strategic mentor.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_03: Um he's run huge companies, he's chaired boards, obviously the biggest boards in the world, and um just has a um uh a gravitas that that kind of hopefully wears off on you.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_03: Um and so he's kind of uh served as a mentor in that respect.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_03: Um my father was not an entrepreneur, um, but a scientist and deeply curious about a lot of things related to health.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_03: And so, of course, my dad is is a mentor of mine as well.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_05: Well, for a lot of people, I know sometimes it's hard to ask for advice to people and they say, Well, why would that person give me time?
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_05: They're the CEO of this company.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_05: You know, I they'll have one meeting.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_05: The encouragements will give that person updates so they get more invested in your career.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_05: What advice do you have for people that might have a meeting with the most ideal mentor of their life to then turn that one meeting into more of a relationship where that person feels a little bit more invested in in the other?
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I think you said the exact right word.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_03: It's it's relationship.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_03: And what is the relationship?
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_03: How does that build?
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_03: It usually builds through some sort of mutual value exchange.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_03: It's not just, it's kind of like if you're if you're in the dating stage, you can't just meet an attractive woman and say, hey, I want to date you.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_03: Like, okay, great, but you know, how do we how do we get there?
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_03: And I think it's the same thing in the mentorship world.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_03: I have folks that I I mentor now, but I didn't, I it did it doesn't happen right out of the gates.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_03: It happens because we jam on something and I like the way they think, and I feel like they can apply advice in a in a healthy way, and I feel like they have the right heart in terms of what they want to do.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and that usually is what starts the relationship, and then that evolves into some sort of mentorship.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_05: I do want to cover one important topic.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_05: Usually, when I go into an investment committee or a venture or look at the board of a PE firm, it's just a bunch of old white men.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_05: And you've had a very interesting career over the span of many years, including Movie Pass, where you had a black founder and then two white men.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_05: I saw this in documentary, really took took the company.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_05: Optics, your own experience.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_05: What can you take away from that to tell others in uh different backgrounds, different communities, different socioeconomic uh levels to help others sort of persevere through a world that might look different?
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_03: Um my advice is to not focus on it.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_03: And I know that might not be the common thing, but I I just think it it is I don't want to sound like too woo-woo, even though we're in Venice.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_03: I could talk woo-woo if I wanted to.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_03: Here, you can go as well in this place.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but no, I I just think that um energetically, it um you need to be thinking on things that are giving you more energy to keep going because it's fucking hard, as everyone knows.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and so anything that um distracts you from that positive energy to move forward to build something great, to recruit incredibly talented people, to raise capital, to build a great product.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, all those things, all the energy should be focused on that.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_03: Not one IOTA should be focused on, oh, this partnership was racist or whatever.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, um, there are tons of racist partnerships, there are tons of biases that exist.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_03: It that people might have a bad day, they might have a bad uh argument with their wife before they may.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_03: There's so many variables.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_03: Don't do that, don't waste the energy on that calculus um and focus on um you know working with people that show up for you and that are good people that you have a good connection with, um, no matter what color they are.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_03: Um, it may be that people that have your shared experience are likely to connect with you faster, and that's great, and lean into that.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but I do see people spending a disproportionate amount of their energy on the difficulties associated with being different than mainstream.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_03: And I just don't think that's a good use of time.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_05: A huge theme I'm hearing about today, and it came up in this, came up in the beginning, is focusing on the positive energy and focusing on what you want to be aligned with in the world, mission-driven, critical futures that you are putting yourself fully behind.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_05: And through that, it sounds like in your career there's a theme of just things happening in the next person and the next venture, and you're just moving through it sort of with fluidity, not getting attached.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_05: And that's how you're entering flow state.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I love your work on flow, by the way.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_03: I think that's it's a beautiful thing to focus on.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I I think when a When I say human performance, I think we are in in many ways trying to embody that in our firm in terms of our team and our lab and making sure that uh everything from our office space to the way that we structure our meetings to the projects and the ventures that we choose to go after are aligned and help unlock flow for us as individuals and us as a team.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_03: Uh we have a company called Instill that we started um fairly early.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_03: Um if you go to instill.ai, you can see it.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_03: But it is focusing on and pioneering collective superintelligence, which is really about group flow states.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_03: So we've dug deeply into that.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_03: The guy who uh coined the term flow is a guy named Mihai Chiksei Mihai at the Claremont Colleges.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_03: I'm sure you've tracked him.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_03: And we brought on one of his PhDs into the company early to help us understand that.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_03: But it's a fascinating uh thing.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_03: We've all had times where we felt like we were in a flow state, and um, figuring out how to get into group flow states to build incredible things is the name of the game for entrepreneurship.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_05: Awesome concept.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_05: Group flow state.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, we I call it high-five energy.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_05: It's like that momentary alignment of sync and vibration that then can result in anything.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_05: Anything's possible.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_03: There's some beautiful studies that I'm gonna send you, and I'm happy to send anyone else.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_03: We did a study with Stanford called The Nature and Nurture of Exceptional Teams and Cultures.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_03: And we were looking at the interplay, the dynamics of team composition around psychometrics, values, and then what are those interventions that led to fantastic outcomes.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_03: There's some other studies around collective and superintelligence or collective intelligence that are really interesting too.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_03: The the concept, and I don't know if you guys have heard of collective intelligence, but the idea is that you and I might have say we both have an uh an IQ of 120.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_03: Um and um Thank you.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yours is probably way higher than that.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_03: I'm I'm um yeah.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_03: But uh the idea is that the right interventions or curation between us as a group, and I think it has to be more than two people, but just for example, uh, would make our our collective IQ like 140, right?
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_03: And they're randomized control trials on this phenomena.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_03: So this is not like woo-woo stuff.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_03: This is randomized control trials looking at the nature of how we connect, how we are facilitated, and what that leads to in terms of outcomes.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_03: And so that's super inspiring.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_03: And we all kind of know it, right?
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_03: If we're talking, we're brainstorming, we kind of make each other smarter.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_03: But being able to quantify that and what unlocks that is a really interesting thing for us all to think about.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_05: Super odd.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_05: So, my last question, and then I want to go to QA so people could ask you questions.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_05: Sometimes a hit, sometimes it's a miss with different founders, but here especially there's a lot of talk about conscious entrepreneurship.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_05: And everyone has their own definition.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_05: Curious, do you have any relationship with that idea of conscious entrepreneurship?
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_05: What is it?
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_05: And how does it relate to your career right now?
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_03: And you're talking about what uh Mackie talks about in terms of uh talking about whatever you want to get to mean.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_03: Um I guess when I hear conscious entrepreneurship, I think of um mission-driven, but also uh uh altruistic and purpose-driven um to make the world a better place.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_03: Um I also think about um the way that uh teams are constructed, the way that the value systems for the companies might align with healthy work environments and healthy collaboration and healthy outcomes.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_03: That's what I think about when I hear the word conscious entrepreneurship.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_03: I also think about um, you know, the leaders in the companies being mindful and being just thoughtful humans and individuals that have you know values that might reflect that.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_03: Um with and still as an example, we we study value systems for companies and we don't put judgment on them.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_03: Like Elon Musk might have a value system that absolutely works for the outcomes that he wants.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_03: But if you applied those same value systems to a place like Patagonia, it wouldn't work, right, for those outcomes that they're trying to uh to get to.
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_03: So I think conscious uh entrepreneurship is is is really that with a more altruistic aim.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_03: Is that how you think about it?
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_05: I think building a future that we want to live in and not just whether it be a product or a service, but the team that you're building, yes, and building it in a right, the not the right way, but a conscious way where you're thinking about are people spending time with their kids?
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_05: Are they commuting for three hours a day each way?
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_05: And if you could take that into account as you're building your company, that to me is conscious entrepreneurship.
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, I think so.
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you know, I I think just to make one comment.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_03: I know we're gonna wrap in a second, and I'm sure there are a lot of AI folks in here, but just as it relates to the point you're making around conscious entrepreneurship and then your broader work around entrepreneurial flow, I think that AI is the single biggest unlock for entrepreneurial flow we have ever seen.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_03: So I think um I just get very excited about um the future of mission-driven companies and uh, you know, more flow states within them for those kind of outcomes.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_05: Why?
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_05: Why is AI an unlock for that piece?
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_03: I think AI is an unlock uniquely for entrepreneurs in that piece because it takes uh the fundamental execution challenges and reduces those execution challenges immensely.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_03: And in most cases, the nature of that entrepreneur, I'm sure I uh probably similar for many in this room, is about that quest for freedom, that movement towards uh a mission.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_03: And any friction that gets in the way of that mission reduces the flow state.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_03: So the ability to reduce the friction in that process so that you can be laser focused on your mission and laser focused on all the things that make it special for you to achieve that mission is a wonderful thing.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_05: Amen.
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_04: On that note, uh there's going to be a microphone.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_04: My name is Pai.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_04: I'm founder of an Insured Tech called NERV.
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_04: I'm just curious uh how do you feel that a venture builder or venture studio per se can fiscally engineer or innovate a path away from kind of traditional power law laden, must have certain metrics by this syllabus within a certain time, so that uh futuristically promising startups or innovations can have life rather than just sink.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_04: I say that in light of the fact that Quibi has been the butt of jokes for several years.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_04: On the drive up here this morning, NPR is talking about how it's coming back, perhaps as a response within the media space to the verticals out of China or whatnot.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_04: So it was ahead of its time, but uh not it it sank because of a uh mandated syllabus.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_04: And how much can a studio per se versus the long-in-the-tooth VC model uh assist in innovating so that fiscally there's more cushion or slack uh and uh founders can uh divorce from fear even further and trying to realize their vision?
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_03: That's a great question.
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_03: Um I I think that uh things are changing so fast as it relates to um what it takes to achieve those metrics.
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_03: And I think uh the way we tackle, I think the challenge that you're speaking to is through aggressive uh use of automation and technologies that um we're we're we're I would say you could talk to Stanley about this, but I would say in our case, we are going as far as we possibly can uh to leverage technologies to automate what we call the innovation workflow.
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_03: And so that allows us to do more with less.
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_03: Um I don't think that you get away from the realities.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_03: I think some of this stuff is cyclical.
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_03: Um investors want to see some metric.
• 52:31
  SPEAKER_03: They want to see some evidence of progress.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_03: But early in a cycle, like we're still reasonably early in the AI cycle, just the glimmer um is enough sometimes to get the capital.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_03: Um so but I think from it to answer your question specifically around our studio, I think it's just coming into the actual process, the scientific, the entrepreneurial scientific method, and how that's changing up in the front?
• 52:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um so we touched a bit about cold calling early um in the beginning of the talk.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_02: And in some ways, today it's easier to reach out to people you don't know than ever.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_02: Um what advice do you have for people to conduct a successful cold call and what are the characteristics of cold call that um would work the best with you?
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_03: Great question.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean I like I use LinkedIn aggressively, and I think it's LinkedIn helps because it's like, okay, I don't have to guess who you are, you can see who you are.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_03: Um and then I like I I usually try to it goes back to my first cold call.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_03: Like I think I have truly have something that's relevant for you.
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_03: So I've read about you and I understand the problems that you're thinking about or may be thinking about or should be thinking about, and I am addressing one or multiple of those.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_03: And I in my in my bones feel like I can be helpful on those things.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and so that's that's usually the formula.
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_03: Um, the formula that does not work is, oh, we both know a lot of the same people, let's connect.
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_03: That doesn't work.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_03: Um, the another formula that does not work is I have something to sell you, and you I have no idea whether you want it or not, but I have something to sell you.
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_03: That doesn't work.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_03: So I think what works is starting with that person and doing the just a little bit of research to know that you have some insight or solution to a specific problem that they have.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_05: Right here.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for this.
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_01: This has been incredible.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I would just love to hear a little bit more about uh if you could contrast group flow state.
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_01: I cannot wait for this research.
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_01: I'm really excited about this concept.
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_01: But what's the difference between group flow or more so the risk of eventual group like group thinking, you know, where we're all thinking the same.
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um I appreciate uh what you offered in terms of like if we come together 120 each, col collectively one with 140, but that's because we are adding a little bit of like our own unique perspectives.
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_01: So eventually will we start to lose that unique perspective if we're all kind of thinking, collaborating.
• 54:56
  SPEAKER_01: I'm curious about the future of work and in 10, 15, 20 years, what it looks like if we're all a bit conformed.
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_03: Ooh, I love that question.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for that.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_05: The questions here by the audience are always better than mine.
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_05: Always.
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_05: No, you have great questions.
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_03: All of them are good.
• 55:11
  SPEAKER_03: All of them are good.
• 55:11
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I I would say that in 15 years, you have a very different and unique uh team composition that includes AI agents, humans.
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_03: Um, even now in our workflow, we have identified tasks that humans need to do and tasks that AI agents need to do.
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_03: The collaboration and and collective intelligence is not about groupthink.
• 55:35
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, you that would uh groupthink you might might ultimately reduce that collective intelligence.
• 55:41
  SPEAKER_03: So it's about the right kind of you know psychological safety, but also the right kind of debate and the right kind of challenge.
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_03: And it's very dependent also on what the group outcomes need to be.
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_03: If the group outcome is an innovation outcome, that might be different than an impact outcome, as an example, or a sales outcome.
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_03: And so I we see a world, and this is what we're doing with in still, where we understand what those outcomes are, we understand what the composition of the team is, individual value and personalities of those members, and we then understand what the uh interventions or the actions for that team need to look like that will increase the probability of getting to those outcomes.
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_03: But 15 years from now, it's very scary in terms of the number of humans on the team.
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_03: It might not be that many humans on the team.
• 56:31
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and I'm sure we've all heard about what you know, Sam Altman, the running joke he has on, you know, when the first company that has one employee gets to a billion dollar valuation.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_03: Like that's part of what we are, it's part of our mission at Share is to figure out how those technologies support that kind of uh scale and that kind of outcome.
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_03: Um I do think it's I'm an optimist, so I do think that the reason why it's so important for us to do so much work um in a positive direction is because there's a lot of forces that could pull us in a very negative direction.
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_03: And I think to counter that, we have to play lots of offense.
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_03: And I believe that um thinking about the way that teams uh, you know, one plus one equals three, um, and and figuring out what those frameworks are is is critically important today.
• 57:20
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
• 57:21
  SPEAKER_05: All right, one more question.
• 57:23
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, thank you so much.
• 57:24
  SPEAKER_00: This has been very inspiring.
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um you have mentioned mentors and people in your circle that were in your inner circle, and then of course the different layers of that that supported you throughout your career.
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_00: And uh there was a recent HBR thing that came out.
• 57:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's like number one use of Chat GPT is therapy, right?
• 57:46
  SPEAKER_00: I see a fearful future for me where all of the leaders that are trying to become better humans to better lead humans are doing so by talking to Chat GPT and not other humans.
• 57:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm just curious if you think and reflect on your journey, which has been pretty cool.
• 58:04
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think you could have done that talking to Chat GPT, or are those human connections super?
• 58:09
  SPEAKER_03: That's another good question.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_03: Great questions.
• 58:11
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I'm saying.
• 58:27
  SPEAKER_03: I have my firm has a partnership with the Army Research Lab as well.
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_03: And so, in particular, the use of AI agents or AI therapists have led to very positive outcomes for soldiers that might be suffering from uh PTSD.
• 58:42
  SPEAKER_03: Um, part of the intervention, as you probably know, is sharing and sometimes the fear of judgment and the psychological safety sharing with another human is is too high to share.
• 58:51
  SPEAKER_03: And so you don't get the therapeutic benefit if you don't get it out.
• 58:54
  SPEAKER_03: And so I'm I'm kind of a believer in this opportunity around um getting help and support by AI because such a small percentage of people that need the help ever get it.
• 59:08
  SPEAKER_03: Even if they first it's an access problem, then it's a stigma problem, and all these things are in the way.
• 59:14
  SPEAKER_03: So, in general, I would say I'm positive.
• 59:16
  SPEAKER_03: Your point is well taken, though, which is there is some downside around um the uh use of AI in place of human interaction.
• 59:27
  SPEAKER_03: Uh that scares me.
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_03: I still think that there needs to be some significant facilitation of human interaction.
• 59:33
  SPEAKER_03: But chances are you weren't having those sub many humans weren't having those therapeutic conversations with other humans at all.
• 59:40
  SPEAKER_03: So better than nothing.
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and may actually increase in some ways the conversations that I can have with another human because I've started to process a little bit with an AI agent.
• 59:54
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 59:55
  SPEAKER_05: Hey, nice, nice plug.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_05: All right, awesome.
• 59:59
  SPEAKER_05: Well, Jamey Wat, unbelievable.
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_05: Thank you so much for your time today.
• 1:00:05
  SPEAKER_05: If you got value from this conversation, make sure to subscribe so you don't miss future episodes.
• 1:00:09
  SPEAKER_05: This podcast is about sitting down with people who've actually built things and unpacking the mindset, decisions, and moments that make the difference.
• 1:00:18
  SPEAKER_05: Thanks for being here.
• 1:00:19
  SPEAKER_05: Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time.