The Most Undervalued Skill in Deep Tech - Management! | Chris Perkins PhD | Deep Tech Entrepreneur

that's one of the core lessons that I think I've learned over the years is how important um you know good management is not just Senior Management middle management as well and I think that's something that when you look going lab Market a lot of technical people really undervalue how important people are who are really good at hearing people and at organizing people but aren't necessarily going to be people that are your you know math itical or you have physical Superstars you know the and we tend to undervalue people who are just metal managers but in in reality that skill set and it is a skill set that has to be trained of understanding you know how to communicate with you know people you know how how to get them to set goals and understand how those goals link to the larger goals of the organization how to make sure they have what they need and speak up for what they need and to take ownership of what they're doing man finding good strong you know management early on uh is the is really a key to success in scaling a company from your first five people to 40 or 50 people welcome to the lab tomarket leadership podcast too many Advanced science and engineering companies fail to deliver their Innovations from the lab to the market we are on a mission to change that my name is Chris reichhelm and I'm the founder and CEO of deep Tech leaders each week we speak with some of the world's leading entrepreneurs investors corporates and policy makers about what it takes to succeed on the labto market Journey join us most entrepreneurs dream of getting their exit today's guest has had two and what's more they've been in completely different sectors how's that for unusual his first was in energy his second was in digital PCR and Diagnostics Medical diag nostics today I'm talking to Chris Perkins an American entrepreneur who has a chemical engineering background and was able to build his first Energy company capern energy that he later sold to Sundrop fuels again out of Colorado and his second as founder and CEO of drop Works a digital PCR medical Diagnostics business that he sold to biorad for $125 million how does become a founder and CEO of a biofuels company and then a medical diagnostic company and have success not be considered completely crazy but actually had success and delivered real value either he is the luckiest guy in the world or he has figured out a system of building these companies of figuring out the right kinds of problems to solve uh of guiding his development and Engineering teams of getting to a certain level of product Market fit becoming interesting enough where the market takes notice and has to acquire what he's got this is what I want to figure out today hope you enjoy it let's get into it Chris Perkins thank you so much for joining me oh it's great to be here Chris thanks for having me on you've had two exits one in energy and the other in medical Diagnostics and you've made very good money from each of these transactions and that represents the goal for so many entrepreneurs in one way it's not the whole goal but it represents a goal for many and you're still relatively young and so as you reflect on your on your success and it is success how much do you attribute to luck and how much do you attribute to something that you've figured out already that the rest of us just are still grappling with obviously do you have to attribute a lot to to luck yeah again being in the right place at the right time U meeting the right people you know um having you're the right conversation at at uh a conference whether it be jpn or any the other Finance conferences all those things matter you know um but you know to get to the other side of the question is there something that I've figured out that you know that most other people are struggling with I I I don't think so I think um it it's more comes down to you know is there something that I've been willing to accept which is that I don't know the answer going in that my idea of what my company is you know when I'm trying to start a company is it the idea I'm going to end up with and that's something that we all kind of have a feeling around but I think a lot of Founders get wetted to I've got to have the best idea and that's the idea I got to come up with that's going to you know disrupt this Market or save the world or have this huge impact and instead say wait I'm in this have an impact I'm in this to solve somebody else's problem you know and the only way to get there is to go talk to those people and and really instead of talking to those people listen to those people and be really curious about what are they dealing with every day what are the problems they wake up and think about every day and oftentimes those problems you don't have anything to do with what the technology you have in your land is and what it could solve and then you know you think about well is there something we could change that would help solve this problem or do I need to move on and find a different set of customers that might have something that's that there there's an overlap between problems they have and problems I can solve and I think you know this is not you know some Revelation coming down from the Mountaintop I mean Steve blank has been talking about this Lean Startup process for years um but I think it's tough to do uh because it really requires you know something that people who are really ambitious into starting startup companies you know struggle with which is they've always been the people who have had be answers you know and now you have to let go of your ego a little bit and be really jous because the answers aren't you know in your head they belong to their people whose problems you're trying to solve and and when you get to that then it gets to the you know the whole underlying idea of why you're trying to start start you know if you're trying to do it because you want to make a lot of money there are easier ways to do that you know go get into Finance or something you know you're really into it because you want to have an impact and and then you start to think about well who am I survey and you know what kind of impact am I trying to have and then you start to put the focus on other people and on listening and that's where you uncover you know what the you know the the the problem is that you might be able to develop a solution tour is that a challenge that's a great answer by the way is that challenge greater for academics or for researchers or technology innovators where the love of the technology and also in you know the birth of the company revolves around their development of an initial idea or a platform which then often they try to back into a as a solution to a problem yeah Chris I think it's that's two there's that the answer that it's twofold uh yes for for these two reasons um the first is that the kind of questions that academics you know ask you know that that are important to answer at Academia questions around how the world works from a basic level you know are very different than the kind of questions you have to ask when you're trying to bring a product to Market and find product Market fit you're less interested about fundamentally how a certain material works or you know you know what's going on you know in a biological system you have to be interested in well why does this tool not work well for somebody in the Life Sciences and what would change their day you know what would change their lives uh on a day-to-day basis um if if it were different and oftentimes that doesn't take a huge technological solution it takes a little bit of additional technology integration of a lot of existing Technologies and you know often times it's not as interesting for academics because of the way as academics were trained to think you know and that doesn't mean that the questions that academics ask are any less valuable that's why you know we really want the government to pay for lots of research into drug listings because those basic science Innovations form the foundations for what will eventually become technology companies but uh that those technology companies in the startup phase need to ask different kinds of questions um you know questions around you know what are Market need what what what is good enough I think that is a really difficult question for academics to ask because you know often times they want understand things at a much deeper level or a much more you know interesting you know uh scientific level than what is required to actually solve the problem um the the second piece of this and the reason why I think some academics struggle making that transition is often times there people who have who have always been really strong individual contributors and so they've always been the people whom everybody you know from the moment they were in in school they were always the one leading the groups and and solving the problems and coming up with the answers and then now that has continued they have developed a technology you know with you in t capital letters and uh it's difficult then when you get to the market the market says well we don't need 90 9% of your technology you know but there might be one thing that works it's difficult for folks to let go of that idea and say okay well I'm willing to put the rest of that on the shelf and go bring the piece to the market that is actually valuable to the the people out there doing that a good example of this was a drop works like a drop Works um we had a technology um that I that came out of Arizona State University and the entire idea of this technology um when was developed it was a digital PCR technology that was fully automated like you know to get a sample to purify the sample to then analyze the sample um and deliver an answer you know required no human input because it was designed to go on this miniature submm and test you know the the bacteria out in the ocean you know and you know when we started to look into the market for Oceano bacterial uh analysis and assaying Subs it was a small Market um but it turned out that like there was a market for digital PCR tools where people were really frustrated with the work flow of what existed you know there were some really groundbreaking technologies that come into the market and establish that market but now people wanted things to be as simple as what they were used to using with you know the real-time PCR that preceded that and so when we started to ask it was like well we started to pull off pieces of the machine that had been developed you know to the point where it was like 10% of what it was and had we not been able to do that we wouldn't have been able to really pivot into the direction that the company ended up being your required for which was to solve a problem that most life science researchers would have you know versus this problem that there was very small slice and required a very complicated technical solution that was very creative um but didn't bring a lot of value you know all of those automation steps only matter matter to a small number of chks um and and so being able to step away from that um is something that I think a lot of academics struggle with because you know they they have imagined in their mind how valuable everything can be uh to to the world and they're very good at convincing not just other people but themselves of of how valuable that can be how much of a challenge was that for you with capern energy oh uh so certican energy was you know it's a good example of not knowing what you're getting into you know I was uh I I went to graduate school because I wanted to work on you know the the energy problem in Joe renewable energy it was you know 2001 when I was applying for grad school started in 2002 and so I worked at hydrogen and you know concentrating solar energy and biomass and and a variety of things we started that company uh because we thought we were going to change the world we're going to make gasoline for everybody from solar energy and from biomass and um and there was a lot of I think optimism behind that um what I would say you know we did wrong there is first of all we didn't talk to a single customer we just you know looked up you know what the price of gasoline was uh and um and it was a time of a lot of excitement if you think back to like 2008 when we got acquired you know oil was at $140 a barrel you know natural gas was four or five times as expensive as it is now and so there was a whole lot of enthusiasm for things moving into the space I think one of the things it was not hard for us to say well we should you know do exactly this technology or versus this technology but I think um it it was really hard for me transitioning from there into Sundrop fuels to let go of you know some of the core pieces of the tech and that transition for me as a as a going from a scientist to uh you know because it prodes very small company like I was CTO but it was I was really the only person doing technical work for a while um it was tough to then be managing people and and realize I didn't have to be the one to come up with the solutions you know I had to be the one to hire the people and empower the people to do that and and it didn't have to be the the thing we had promised to the Venture capitalists at the beginning you know that we're going to use this kind of technology in that case it was like this concentrating solar system at very high temperatures that we could have pivoted into other spaces using pieces of our technology to get wher we needed to be and uh at some point you know the the image of the vision of what we were trying to do and the amount of money we had raised made it very difficult for us to that ship at all you know it was like we are either going to become the Exon of real lergy or or we were going to you know really struggle to get where you know we were going and in the end that's kind of what happened but um less out of a technical failure even though we trying to solve huge number of technical challenges all at once uh and and and more out of you know we had gotten you know wetted to a really huge vision and those are difficult places for start startup companies to be I mean yeah when you're trying to invent new materials of construction at the same time that you're trying to solve how you get a huge amount of biomass into one space at one time where you're trying to solve how how you're going to get the market to accept this and where policy considerations all at once that's a very tough place for a small company of 20 40 people uh to be successful you know and we a lot of really smart talented people working really really hard um but one of the things I took from that that was like startup companies you know really need to be focused on a problem that's that's achievable right in front of their faces so that they can grow to get to a point that they can start to tackle those Big R problems yeah yeah I get that you um this switch in mindset that you talk about between Academia and the love of that initial platform development that focus on that because of the desire to understand the way the world works the way particular materials work the way you know the way a particular platform behaves and the mindset required to go into a company where you may be required to pick that apart to to strip it down and to rebuild it are we talking about two different people I think um yes is is the answer to that question it can be a person but that person's got to change over over time to get to there and oftentimes you see you know uh a model where a postdoc or graduate student of a pi in a lab is is the person that goes on and takes that that uh challenge forward because the Pi's got a lot of responsibilities and they're still interested in doing your university job I think that model can work um provided that uh the person moving into the business side of things understands what they're getting into um I think a lot of times it is somebody commercializing their graduate research that they did under that pi and then they they still Envision their job as being the core technical person but then they also imagin themselves running this company and I think we do there's a popular image of the startup founder as sort of this Tony Stark type person who's you know who's not just you know really capable and really successful but like the technical genius who's going to solve problem uh in the world and that is not how it works you know and a lot of times when I Mentor startup shouters and and yeah they want to be the CEO but they also want to drive all the technology evolved you know one of the questions I asked was like imagine you're climbing a mountain you know are you the person on the summit day reading that Summit team and getting to the top of the mountain are you the person in base camp you know organizing all the supplies and you know radioing up there and making sure you know and and oftentimes you hear they they really they they know the answer that that you they think you want which is like base camp person uh but they really they really want to be the person on the top of the mountain which is okay you know because they need to then realize that's who they are if they don't want to let go of that technical piece then let's go find somebody who understands how to do you know I I actually hate the words the business side of things it's actually who understands how to run the search you know how do you go and find out the idea because the the real trick is the CEO isn't the base camp manager either they're the person back in the Home Country who figured out which mountain you were supposed to climb and recruited the team and got all the supplies together and yeah you're really talking about CTO when you're talking about the person in Bas Camp because they're not doing those day-to-day technical discoveries either and you know I had to remind myself of you know every time that you know at drop works we were a couple of people to start and so yeah I mean there were days of CEO that I was writing you know microcontroller code and I was you know soldering electrical boards and I was putting together tuting and uh things like that because that's what you have to do sometimes for a short period of time when you're small and you don't have any mic um but you know when we were 40 people I had to remind myself when there was an interesting technical discussion going on in a room that they didn't need me they need me to do that they needed me to go find them more people to help you know Drive their technical you know progress forward and uh it's really hard when you're a scientist yeah to to to do that so um you know I think it's it's a the core problem is asking having somebody who's coming out of acem ask themselves what do they see themselves doing at the company that they enig start you and if it is I am going to develop the technology that's great but you need the rest of the team yeah uh and and you need somebody in particular who's skilled at figuring out what problem you're going to solve and that really just needs dropping your ego uh and going and listening to people and being really curious about what their problems are said in the back of your mind you understand what the technology can do and you're connecting the dots but uh being able to do that is the most important skill uh and figuring in in getting a startup off the ground everything else raising money um you know recruiting a team you know getting Market traction and and then eventually getting to exit flows from that piece how did you guys handle that how did you figure out that early phase because you're absolutely right if you want to get on the right trajectory you've got to you've got to solve for this early on how did you guys figure it out what were the lessons you learned through that process uh at kernic I did you know and and we got really lucky what I did you know after that is I called um you know 40 50 different customers within the first you know three or four weeks in a space I knew really nothing about you know it was like I didn't I knew what DNA was and that was about as far as as anything I knew in the life scientist I I had always been on the physical side um you know and people would ask W yo how did you get to know people so quickly and I I really think it was I had I had some friends who were in that space and so they made some introductions but I I just asked really naive questions and when I would email people I would take steep blanks advice you know and make sure they know you're not selling them anything you really want to understand their problem I'm here to listen to you and people really like to talk about their problems and so it didn't take all that long you know to start to get to know a few of the people you know in the space that this could apply to and I talked to environmental sampling people first and that didn't that that was sort of a dead end and then I talked to folks in that um food safety business and you know understood that they had had you know their problem was solved by a different you know method and the into industrial biotechnology and finally into life science tools you know with an initial idea that we're going to do diagnostics and then we realized how challenging it would be to get out off the ground really just focused on Research first and as we talked to people there okay well we found not just research at large but a couple of spaces that there was a core problem you know um you know that we could really focus on and solve a workflow problem you know for G therapy and uh a cost problem for um uh for assembl the highr applications there and so uh the way we did that is I just cold emailed folks and then after I you know got a couple of conversations I always always would ask two questions at the end you know the first is what haven't I asked you that you think I should know um and then the second is who should I talk to next and on average every touch point would yield to two touch points you know and so you can think of that branching out pretty quickly um you know and before we knew it you know we knew a whole lot of people um that had uh experience in the space or that were working in the space we were working in and I think that approach Works no matter what no matter what field you're in I'm on the board of a company right now that's working in the um uh uh pharmaceutical tools space and they're doing the same thing they have a bunch of customers but they're reaching out they asking questions yeah we don't have anything to sell you but right now we want to understand what your problem is and then they can you know pivoted into understanding do they have something there that they can that they can Sol dis people converting that Insight that you're that you're Gathering from these calls and then converting that into activity within the business can you kind of walk us through what that meant at drop Works how did that impact what people were doing and I guess the second question on top of that what was the way of you know what was the development methodology were you guys operating lean and agile can you do that in such an environment where it's so multidisciplinary it's so multidisciplinary it's so precise I mean these sorts of tools are very very precise it's not you know it's not software so so can you walk us through a little little bit about the conversion of insight into activity and then the way you went about building out what I'm guessing were prototypes and maybe early Pilots yeah I mean your first step you know when you when you start to hear what customer you're telling you you're getting all this relatively unstructured information right and you're trying to see where it overlaps to a specific need you know that's got to translate into you know a requirements a set of requir to what you know what is you know it's some The Lean Startup parlance the minimally viable product but that really just means is like you know this thing only needs these two things to be better you know and you know these two features you know it's like if uh uh for us at drop works it was you know the everything had to be same the same as the existing realtime PCR machines um and the workflow had to be same which was different than in a in a Digital P machine which had like three or four more steps you know so we had to get rid of those three or four steps if we could do that then we had a machine that were and obviously there are technical specifications that come out of that and all that so it's you developing okay what are the requirements of this thing because that's going to develop your effort and then from there you have to say well what are all the things we don't know right now that we need to know like why can't we build it today you know why why can't we just put a machine together right well there's a whole bunch of stuff we do and um the process of then solving those questions is is really the process of of development of product and you to say well did we use a lean or an agile type uh development process yes for parts of it um for parts of it we wandered around at the dark a little bit and had to realize we didn't we didn't know enough about the boundaries of where the system worked and didn't work uh to to move forward and we had to go back and do a little bit of that work I think there's a big tendency for people who are trying to start Ser companies and I fall into this bucket of of saying like good it works let's get forward you know and and not really taking a step back to say okay but where does it not work and and for us you know we were generating these little droplets and it was working great and then all of a sudden it wasn't working on any of machines were working on and uh it it we we were too willing to have a prototype that worked and you know not willing enough to do a more structured Engineering Process around that early on to figure out okay well you know where doesn't it work what do the sizes of these specific things need to be what are the materials we can can use and you want to be careful that that doesn't extend into an academic project where you're you know you know over classifying or over you doing more science than you need to it really comes down to defining those first questions really well you know what do we need to know before we're able to move this product out into the market you know and the effort then uh that you do stems around that now what I would say is for anybody one of the key first hires then is is the know is somebody who's going to lead your organization's uh project management effort and and lead your organization technology development you know and those can be separate roles or the same role depending on the kind of person that you get but you need somebody who's used to building a structured Pro you know a structured environment in which you know people have clear deliverables and you know they're held to those deliverables and people work a lot better in those environments they feel it it sounds crazy but given more constraints people feel safer you know they given more guidance people feel like they what they're supposed to do that's the more positive way of saying that but I think um it's really tough for even really really smart people to to try to figure out what you want them to do or what they should do without you know strong organizational management uh you know and Chris that's one of the core lessons that I think I've learned over the years is how important um you know good management is not just Senior Management middle management as well and I think that's something when you look going lab to Market a lot of technical people really undervalue how important people are who are really good at hearing people and at organizing people but aren't necessarily going to be people that are your you know mathematical or you have physical Superstars you know the and we tend to undervalue people who are just metal managers but in in reality that skill set and it is a skill set that has to be trained of understanding you know how to communicate with you know people you know how how to get them to set goals and understand how those goals link to the larger goals of the organization how to make sure they have what they need and speak up for what they need and to take ownership of what they're doing man finding good strong you know management early on uh is the is really the key to success in scaling a company from your first five people to 40 or 50 people um and and you know it amazed me because our strategy at the beginning of drop Works was we are going to find the smartest people and we're gonna you know let them you know guide us where it needs to go on each of the areas that they're in and and what we ended up with was a lot of unhappy unproductive smart people you know and we had to learn okay okay some of these people can be empowered to be managers but they have to then give up they can be trained in that direction but they have to up some of the technical leadership that they want to do so if that's a Direction they want to move in and we had you know some people really successful in that space and some of the other places we have to hire in people who are all be strong technical managers um and that's a hard job to hire for but really important and we are really um uh on the road to to to continuing to transform our culture in a way that people felt you know more like they understood where they were going and more like they knew what they to do day-to- day which made them feel safer in the environment and thus overall more product and we forget that when you're five people or six people you can talk to everybody in the company multiple times every day when you're 20 30 40 people all of a sudden that doesn't happen anymore and uh yeah that the importance of those middle management layers uh becomes you have strawber and strawber and strawber you grow were those hires you made were they experienced domain experienced hires um yes uh but the the ones that where we had the most successes in two places and I'm thinking both at drop works and and at some drop tools uh the places where we had the most success would be you know first of all yes hiring somebody with some domain experience but so that they could talk to the technical people and understand what they're going to but who also had you know a successful track riter being yeah one of these middle managers the other place we had some mind me interrupting there if you don't mind me interrupting there real quick so they had domain experience did they have previous startup experience or was it largely corporate experience orme experience um for the people who had I think the most success it was in mediumsized companies you know and uh you know where I I startups are tough places for corporate trucks uh out of large large corporations just because you don't have the support systems uh a lot and and you don't often times have processes in place yet you expect people to put those in place but a lot of times you have only been in small startups it's really a role of the dice as to whether they've had a leader that really valued that early State the uh value that middle management or that management Trend management as a skill uh we uh had a lot of success at drop Works uh particularly in the second half of the company's existence in identifying some of our younger subject area experts who had um you know an aptitude for leadership and putting them in those roles and then working to support those and I I could think it was you know multiple people uh who ended up becoming really strong in that leadership space and have moved on to other things now where they continue to do that and so you can do it a couple ways the most important piece is that management as a skill has to be valued by the company you know you have to invest in it you have to support those people so you either have to look to hire it or you have to look to train it it's going to cost money it's going to slow you down in the end it's going to make you faster yeah yeah you're going to have a better culture when that happs we have this very negative association with management and I and uh my hypothesis is it's one of the reasons why we don't have enough of these businesses actually scaling because we don't have the systems and processes and people in place uh around which you can build uh a company capable of supporting the marketplace and whatever solution you're in so to hear you talk about the the importance of it and you know and the importance of that as a lesson uh you know that you've picked up is uh is actually really heartening yeah I mean Chris I I think we have such I have a hypothesis that we have such a bad association with management is because is is a symptom of the way that that a lot of those companies approach management you know it's because we have a lot of bad managers because you promoted people into positions of management without supporting them you when you have companies that don't value management the people that become managers don't have the you know the the support or the the the training or the um uh the focus to end up becoming good managers and then thus the techical people in those organizations to send up thinkable management it's really really stupid you know and and that's a common uh that happens in lots of human organizations where you know the people at the top hold the responsibility up to them the people at the bottom push the resp responsibility up and both are participating in that you know exchange you know and a startup company requires you to be really flexible in how you see yourself you know what kind of role that you're filling and um I think most people you know draw artificial walls around themselves and I have myself at times you know where it's like well I can't do that I'm not a BL or I'm you know I can't look at computer code I'm a biologist you it's like well we don't have any biology tasks today but today I need somebody to do this you know or I need somebody to learn how to go talk to customers and I know you're not a salesperson we don't have any salespeople yet what I need somebody to do is go out there and go find out this piece of information for me and the people who are really successful I think in starup companies particularly early in the first 40 people or so are people who aren't just willing to wear a lot of hats but are anxious to learn new things all the time yeah and and again that makes sense too because you hope that out of the first 40 people you have you have a lot a lot of the leaders that you want to carry on to the first 200 people you right you're looking for people who are going to lead groups if not going into senior management positions because you're not going to hire your SE Suite that you're going to have through IPO yeah in the first you know three weeks after your series a round you know that's not how that works so you are looking to hope that that the people that you have in that first 34 People Are People you develop into positions but you know they've got to change to get there yeah yeah you are my last question for you Chris and I've thoroughly enjoyed this this afternoon you're advising a lot of young startups now and uh and you're sitting on boards and so on what are are the key pieces of advice you're giving to entrepreneurs as they set out on this journey I I think you know one of the things the most common thing I get asked is how do you raise money I need to raise money you know look at my deck tell me what's going on you know tell me you know how I or introduce me to these VCS you know and um that's the wrong Focus you know and often times to see it right away when I look at the starup deck you know because yeah it's 20 Pages 30 pages of dense we're going to tell you everything about everything we have imagine this you know the thing that I really try to align folks to is is you need to understand your customer and their problem you know so well that you can express it in a sentence or two and I think a thing a lot of folks really struggle with I struggle with as a drop Works was how do I every customer is different and how do I fit all the different applications I um see in into one slide to be able to let the this VC or this you know potential customer know like how amazing this is going to be so that they understand they should invest in me you know and if you can't express it and a few you know one to two sentences maybe three at the most uh short sentences then you you don't really understand it you don't have a problem that's clear enough and if that's not a problem that people are thinking about every day it's going to be tough to to drive traction because um they're not really going out of their way to solve it right now you know it's got to be um something that you know the difference between what you should call an aspirin problem and antibiotic problem you know if you have a headache you could use some aspirin but if you don't get the aspirin you're going to be okay if you if you have an infection you you need you need that antibiotic and and those are the kind of problems that startup companies should be looking to solve you know um which are immediate uh things that are going to see rapid up to you know and there has to be overlap with the area you want to impact personally you know you know it's got to be in the field you know like I'm sure there are really important you know or really big problems in you know some sort of accounting software you know out there but that's not a problem I have passion about that's a problem somebody else might have passion about um and then the problem's got to be big enough that you know in your initial Beach head application it's going to be interesting to investors and then you you see the pathways to it so I think a lot of Founders come to me and and and they'll say well you know we want to be introduced to XY or Z I'm like okay let me see your deck or they want help with their their their pitch deck and they haven't figured out that first piece yet and the funny thing about that is once you know what that product is what what the what the problem is and who the customer is everything else flows out of that really you have like a nine slide pitch deck and it's like who's your customer and what's their problem is your first slide you know what's the impact of solving the problem is your second slide your third slide is you know um how is it being solved now and why doesn't that work your fourth slide is here's how we solve the problem your fifth slid you the one where you get to talk a little bit about your technology but not in detail just sort of at high level you know uh the the next slide is you know what's your business model uh the slide after that is is you what do the your perform of financials look like which nobody believes right but you have to have it there see that so that you can at least show you've thought about this you you've showed what the market is in on slide two and you you now you're showing this and then you want to talk about your team and uh and what the exits look like you know that that's a deck nine slides you know give or take and um you want to work on how can I put as few words as possible onto each one of those slides you know thinking bullet points uh but you can't do any of that effectively until you understand that customers's problem really affected once you do man it gets so easy and talk about exits you know m&a particularly to you to a strategic it's the same problem what's the problem that strategic is trying to solve and how do you fit into you know so when you go through your management presentation you know when when when you get inbound interest to to be to be sold it's the same kind of pitch you know well here's this problem you know that we're trying to solve and you're thinking about it in terms of those customers are also the customers who the Strategic and you're just pitching the same why you know a lot of times Founders try to get married on the first contact with the BC and you're just really you're trying to get to the second date you know um yeah so I think that's you know if I were to give advice you know to sung things up you know it's it's like at at the top you have to go talk to customers you have to be you know drop your ego realize they have the answers go be really really curious follow where you know you know you have your own hypothesis but be willing to to to to cross those off so that's number one number two then as you scale your company really invest in culture and and and management you know think about you're running an organization you're no longer one person doing a PhD project now you are and so an organization needs people to help organize uh and then the last piece is you know don't try to solve all the world problems with one startup you know solve a problem that's immediate right in front of you doing that makes a startup successful and enables you to solve the next problem and the next problem and the next problem uh and eventually get bigger uh you know all of the big startup companies that we think of taing really really challenging problems today uh massive skill problems they did not start that way they started solving small problems that made the money um that still overlapped with the impact they were trying to have but um and enabled them to move into bigger spaces so that they became large companies they didn't have the resources to tackle yeah tackle things that were much larger scale amazing amazing that is valuable advice Chris thank you so much well it was a hard learned and I continue to make mistakes and learn from those mistakes but you know an environment in which there are no mistakes made as an environment in which there isn't any learning happening and so you hopefully absolutely uh uh so I hope to continue to make mistakes in the future and uh and learn from those and and keep getting better at this and hopefully uh uh you know I can be of some help to the the people that I'm I'm working with right now I'm sure you are I'm sure you are Chris thank you so much for joining me on the program it's been a pleasure having you sitting here Chris thanks for having me you've been listening to the labto market leadership podcast brought to you by Deep Tech leaders this podcast has been produced by Boh house you can find out more about us on LinkedIn Spotify apple or wherever you get your podcasts

2024-11-09 21:13

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