Welcome to the Innovation Conversation, a podcast
about innovators, both in business and real life.
Hosted by myself, Ricardo Rescual and Harry McCona.
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Hi, and welcome to another episode of the Innovation
Conversation. Today we are joined by Lance Kajol.
Lance, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having
me. It's a real pleasure. Pleasure having you
here. Lance, would you like to introduce yourself
to the audience, please? Sure. Yeah, so I'm an
Exodus founder. I started my first company in
1995 when I dropped out of my PhD in astrophysics.
Created the world's first internet privacy company
after the dot com collapse. We managed to survive
that and pivoted into working for the government
and ended up building platforms for conducting
online undercover operations for the national
security community. After that, I became an angel
investor and got active in advising startups,
which is where I'm at. Okay. So you knew all
the government secrets. That's all right. That's
all compartmented, but I know my secrets. Interesting,
very interesting. So it's quite interesting because
your career spent many decades, but you've actually
been through the dot com bubble and now the latest
one. So, you know, what lessons and tips and
tricks can you actually give to the, you know,
the entrepreneur right now and just say, Hey,
you know what, I've done all these mistakes under
them. I think that one of the big things to watch
for is getting too hung up on the cyclical nature
of, you know, these boom bust cycles. Obviously
the big thing that it impacts for a founder is
fundraising. It's going to be much more difficult
to raise that next round as things are getting
difficult. Conversely, that tends to be when
the best companies get founded, right? It's in
hard times. Most people are, it's not a boom
where people are all chasing the hot flashy thing
of the day. That's the chance to make those really
strong lasting companies that are going to grow
through that. So I don't worry too much about
it, but you always want to be thinking in terms
of raising more money than you think, giving
yourself more runway. And really being cautious
about cash management because running out of
cash is what kills most startups. A serious one
thing, you know, from your perspective, because
you're also entrepreneur, but now an investor,
what's that one pet peeve you have against all
startups and you just, you look at them and say,
you know what? I'm not going to invest from the
get -go. The thing that drives me the most nuts
is over -focus on the product where people are
just super excited about their technology and
the feature set and what they're doing. And don't
spend nearly enough time looking at their customer
base and the benefits they're providing and whether
they can reach them and doing all those experiments
to see if they build this tool, do people actually
want it? Because building things is the technical
founders happy place, right? It is their comfort
zone. That's where they want to go by default.
And it's so important to pull back from that
and spend a lot more time talking to customers
and really testing out your hypothesis about
what they want. What do you think makes a startup
successful? I mean, I know there's many factors,
but what's that one thing you kind of saying,
you know what, this is going to work? I think
it's when you've tested and iterated and run
your experiments and you get to that spot where
you feel the change from the push to the pull.
When you go and talk to a customer, it's not
like, let me explain why this works and here's
why you should want it. And suddenly you're at
the spot where as soon as you start talking to
them about the way you solve their problems,
they say, shut up and take my money. Like, stop
telling me I want this, when can I have it? That's
when you know you're onto something that I think
can be really successful. I'm guessing you get
a lot of pitch decks, probably way too many to
even count them. How do you manage all that?
And you know, what makes a successful pitch deck?
What makes an unsuccessful pitch deck? And also
what's the best way to actually reach out to
an investor in your perspective? So a good pitch
deck really needs to give me a sense of what
kind of business you've got. I see a lot of people
who want to give me a teaser deck, which is just
going to give me a hint of what they're doing.
I'm not a fan of the teaser deck because I really
want to be able to make a decision right now
about whether it's worth having that follow on
conversation. Does it look like there's something
there that is going to be worth my time? Because
as you say, I get a lot. I'm going to guesstimate
I get well over a thousand pitch decks a year.
And I've got a lot of other items in the fire,
so it's not what I spend my time doing. So I
have to make some very quick triage decisions.
So one of the keys with the pitch deck is to
make sure that it can survive a one -minute scan,
so that I'm just going to look through it, flip
through the slides, look at the headlines, maybe
glance at some graphs, and I'm going to very
quickly say, is this worth spending five to 10
minutes on, or can I just round file this and
move on to the next pitch deck that I've got?
That's going to be one of those real keys. And
so you need to be showing me all those key aspects
and it really isn't slides of your user interface.
It's here's what we know about our customer base.
Here's how we've tested that we can reach them,
that we know what it costs to sell them. We understand
our tech or our sales process or timelines. We
validated all the things about the model because
as an investor, I don't want to fund science
experiments. I want to play T ball. I want you
to have everything lined up and you just need
money. to, you know, put your foot on the gas.
That's the kind of thing I want. And your deck
needs to show that. Now, how important is the
team force for this stuff? Team is critical because
I know you're going to pivot. I mean, look at
my scenario. I started off doing consumer privacy
and ended up doing undercover government spook
stuff. Clearly different. So what you're really
betting on is this group of people's ability
to execute on what they're doing and Typically,
it's usually the same broad area, right? Someone's
not going to go from medical devices to dating
websites or something like that. So they need
to have the core capabilities experienced in
this general space. But then I need to believe
that they understand how to run a business, how
to grow a business, what their strategic insight
is that makes them different from the other people
who are trying to solve the same problem. Cause
there's always going to be others that are out
there. And so, yeah, the team is the most important
thing because Who knows if what they're going
to end up doing will resemble that pitch deck
at all. Now, you mentioned something quite fascinating,
which is the ability to pivot. Now, we all know
that a lot of successful scientists actually
end up pivoting from their original idea, and
rightfully so. Does that scare investors off?
where actually that's reassuring. We need to
believe that you have the right kind of mindset
to do it because the odds are high that your
initial guess about the product you need to build
and exactly what your customers want is wrong.
Odds are very high that you're wrong about that.
Maybe a little bit wrong, maybe a lot wrong.
So I need to believe that you have the flexibility
of thought to recognize when you are off course
and make that course correction. So there's a
phrase I like to use. I describe it as strong
convictions, loosely held. You need to be extremely
focused on what you're doing. You need to be
passionate. You need to believe in it. And you
need to be willing to let go of that and walk
away as soon as the data shows you were wrong.
You know, in all your years in the market, what
was, I guess you could kind of pinpoint probably
the key things you always do in a successful
story. The key things you always see founders
do. What are they? What does that look like?
I think it comes down to experimentation because
every startup is unique. Every market is unique.
Every moment and opportunity is unlike every
single other one out there. So the two things
I think that really need to be happening is test,
test, test, test. Your intuition is usually terrible.
I can think of lots of examples where I was absolutely
convinced I knew the way to market my product,
the way to sell it. This was going to be a home
run direction to go. And it turned out I was
totally wrong. And then others that I had no
idea were going to be all that valuable, but
I tried them. They looked like they had potential
and those ended up being huge for me. So being
able to do those sort of continuous tests and,
you know, don't bet the farm. You know, you see
some area over there that looks like it may be
greener grass that might be a better opportunity
for you. You don't want to shut down the thing
that's keeping your lights on right now to go
chase that, but you don't want to ignore it either.
So how do you dribble enough resources? to make
a really lean and efficient test to understand,
is that where you want to go? And then start
pursuing it. I mean, when we started the government
space, it was a tiny corner of what we did, but
pretty rapidly we discovered that those were
big contracts, we could close them reliably,
and it accelerated to be 90 % of our revenue
in about three years. You know, in terms of the
mindset that it takes to actually build a successful
business, what do you think that actually requires?
Because a lot of people talk about, you know,
being super resilient, be having a lot of greed.
So from your experience, what does it actually
take? Pig headed stubbornness. It is a lot of
it because there's so many really, really difficult
times. You're going to run into challenges. You're
going to be facing obstacles that feel insurmountable
and you need to be willing to sort of do whatever
it takes to go over around through those obstacles
to get to the other side. Often those are creative
approaches. I actually find a mistake. A lot
of founders. make is early on, they'll start
to hire in corporate people with amazing backgrounds
and fantastic revenue resumes, but who haven't
done the startup thing before. And their default
approach to solving problems tends to be hiring
a really good team, bringing in some expensive
consultants and pouring money on it. Whereas
with startups, it's got to be, all right, there's
three of us in this room and we have what's in
this room with us today. How do we get there?
And it's scrappy, it's creative, it's sometimes
a little extreme in some cases, but that's the
sort of approach you need to be taking. In your
own journey, when you were dealing with obstacles,
what were you saying to yourself? Was that thing
in the back of your mind, was it like a quote
or a saying? What pushed you forward? So we often
called it the cockroach strategy. There's that
sort of joke that after the nuclear holocaust,
the only thing that will survive are the cockroaches
walking around. And so to some extent, especially
like during big downturns in the economy, we
thought about that a lot. Like, how do we just
survive this? Because at some level, you can't
win if you aren't alive, if you're not still
in the game and still playing. And there are
always new opportunities, new lucky happenstances
that come along. that you can't execute on if
the company has folded. So we spent a lot of
time just focused on how do we survive another
week, another month, another two months. So just
keep it rolling forward. During the dot -com
collapse, we probably spent 18 months with less
than 30 days of working capital in the bank.
We were right on that edge. And so you're squeezing
every penny. Every investment you make has to
have immediate payback. But it allowed us to
continue to grow the company. We grew our way
out of that pit that we were in. You know, we
weren't going to get any funding at that point
and discover this new opportunity, which then
allowed the company to hockey stick and explode.
How do you manage all that stress? Because it's
a lot of stress on you when you're at that stage.
So I think there's a couple of things having.
co -founders or other members on your management
team that you can be completely honest with is
critical. You need to have someone where you
can have these tough reality conversations while
you're trying to put on a brave face for your
team, for your investors, for your customers,
that you have to be able to have that kind of
real world outlet. And then personally, it was
physicality. I was taking Kung Fu at the time.
And so being able to a couple of nights a week,
go into our school and yell and hit things and
kick pads and whatever else. was hugely cathartic
and allowed you to then get back in the next
day. Meditation, a lot of that self -care stuff,
like don't drive yourself a hundred hours a week
every week for years on end. You have to have
that balance because it tends to be a marathon,
not a sprint, you know. During a crunch time,
you're trying to deliver a version of the product
you can sprint, but you have to then fall back
to a maintainable pace where you're getting a
good night's sleep, you're exercising, you're
eating well, you're taking care of all those
other systems that allow you to be working at
peak performance. Now there's a lot of controversy
around what actually founders and investors should
say to each other. Founders are always a bit
afraid of they're going to scare the investors
off. From your experience as both a founder and
an investor, do you think honesty is the best
policy or do you think people should just fake
it till they make it? I think you definitely
need to be cards face up with your investors
and the investors should be equally honest with
the founders they're working with about what
their intentions are and for ongoing support,
or follow -on investments, or all of those things.
On the founder's side, there is nothing worse
than having me find some skeleton in your closet
during due diligence. Because once I write the
check, assuming I'm a fairly minority investor,
I lose all my power. As soon as you cash that,
I can kibitz, I can sort of talk to you, I can
vote my shares, but that's not gonna move the
needle. I'm trusting you to act in my best interests.
Anything that suggests that there's something
swirly or hinky about what you're doing is going
to make me run for the hills. Which is not to
say you have to focus on your dirty laundry,
right? I expect you to be optimistic. We're looking
for best case outcomes. You should be bullish
about your total market opportunity, how big
this can be, you know, where you're trying to
go, the strategic vision you have for the company.
That should all be bold. And you need to be realistic
about how you can get there. And if you have
weaknesses or issues, You should be looking for
help in how to address them, right? If you've
got a hole in your team, don't try to pretend
you don't say, Hey, we need help from our investors
to fill this thing. Or, you know, we're looking
to line someone up. That's our next hire. As
soon as we get this funding, whatever that may
be trying to make it part of a partnership. My
investors and my board of directors were a thorn,
right? I mean, they asked a lot of hard questions.
They put us on the spot. They really put our
feet to the fire and whatever other analogies
we want to use. But they were always in our corner
when they were doing it and it was incredibly
helpful and it really helped us stay on target
because you can kind of You know start believing
your own height sometimes and having the investors
having that board That sort of makes sure that
no have you validated that can you prove that
that's right? How have you tested this idea?
super valuable to have and You know coming in
from Europe, and I know you're based in the US
There's always a massive comparison between the
two ecosystems. So what do you think makes the
US so successful for startups? Because there
are so many great businesses coming out of Silicon
Valley. It's impressive. So what do you think
makes that ecosystem so special? I think it is
more focused on the hope and less on the current
economics. I see When I work with a lot of European
startups, it seems like the angel investment
and early stage VC community is more focused
on the financials. Whereas in California, the
thought is generally, you're going to raise a
bunch of money. You're going to lose money for
quite a while. If you can get 10 million, a hundred
million active users on the service or five million
SaaS customers, we will work out how to make
money with that. The question is, are there enough
people who want the thing you're doing to allow
you to grow to that size to be able to execute
on it? And that tends to be more of the Silicon
Valley and writ large the US venture mindset
around this. So it's easier to raise. It's easier
to raise bigger. It tends to be more founder
friendly as well. I often see fairly founder
unfriendly terms being offered by European investors
and very concerned about downside. lost prevention,
whereas in America it tends to be, I know a lot
of my investments are going to zero. I'm fine
with that because I'm working really hard to
have a couple of companies that are going to
return a hundred actual. The next question is
always see how do you manage risk because there's
a lot of risk. Numbers. I mean, I think at some
level it is a statistical game. As an investor,
I'm looking to make a large enough number of
investments across a diversified number of companies
and spaces. So that I have a high probability
of having a couple of those big winners in there.
And then the process becomes more about trying
to avoid the losers, right? Looking at the company
to say, does it even have the potential to get
there? Looking at the team to say, do I believe
these are the people who can absolutely kill
it because a mediocre team is just not going
to cut it. The startup process is so incredibly
difficult. I'm looking for those few people who
I believe, even if there are five other companies
trying to do the same thing at the same time.
These are the guys who are going to win. And
so putting the thumb on the scale is critical,
but the assumption is this is an incredibly high
risk space. We're going to have a lot of losers
in there as well. And when, when do you call
it fits? When you say to start, you know, this
is it. This is the end of the road. So it is
incredibly important. Yeah, it's incredibly important
not to chase things down. So I think that the
sunk cost fallacy is the huge issue with this
kind of investing. So in each round. And it's
not easy to do, but at each round you really
need to take a step back and say, if I had never
put a single dime into this company, would I
invest in them now? And if the answer is no,
almost certainly shouldn't be doing a double
down on that company. You'd be far better off
taking that same number of dollars and putting
it as something with a chance to win. Because
it tends to be the case that you're not going
to save the company and turn it into a radical
success. You're just delaying. disaster and stretching
things out into a long, you know, death process.
Whereas it would be far better as soon as you
realize this isn't going to work. Either pivot
or shut it down and start another company, return
some capital. And how do you look at founders
who have been unsuccessful in the past? You know,
actually I want to look at why they were unsuccessful.
I think that's incredibly valuable because there's
a lot of ways that companies can fail. It could
be that their hypothesis just turned out to be
wrong or a major competitor that they didn't
expect arrived and things went the wrong way,
right? It usually happens that it doesn't work
out. As long as they didn't fail because they
were stupid, then it's a fantastic learning experience.
Most successful founders have been unsuccessful
founders. Having been through the process once
or twice before makes them so much more aware
and savvy about the things they didn't do the
first time. What are the priorities they need
to focus on? Because This is one of the fundamental
problems of being a first -time founder is suddenly
you're an expert on whatever it is you're an
expert in that's causing you to start this company.
Usually you have a high level of skill in something
and it isn't running startups in almost all cases.
And so you've then got this strange situation
where you've got to learn everything about everything
all at once. They're highly technical subjects
at with large implications for the success of
your company. That's a completely unrealistic
and unreasonable ask, but it's just the way the
world works. The second or third time founder
at least has been through that meat grinder a
few times and understands, okay, this I can ignore,
here's where I should focus, these are the priorities
I should be going after, here's the order in
which to execute on things to make maximum use
of the cash that I have available, right? All
of those things are far better in a multi -time
founder as long as they have been mindful each
time and are learning from their experiences.
Tell me one thing, what keeps you motivated?
What gets you out of bed every morning and just
say I want to do things? Yeah, I think when I
was actively in my company, it was really about
the mission that was the most important thing
to me. I cared about the work we were doing.
I really cared passionately about privacy. When
we were in the national security space, I had
insight into the kinds of things they were using
my solutions for and they were important. lives
that were saved because of the technology I was
deploying. That gets you up in the morning, right?
That really gets you going. And then of course
the team as well, the people you're working with,
the energy that you have wanting to build something
that supports them. And I can't tell you how
rewarding it was when we finally hit our exit.
And there was a substantial payout to everyone
who'd been working on the team, who got their
options, who was part of that process. And that
was really rewarding. And these days, what gets
me out of bed is working with founders. I love
doing advising and coaching around that early
stage process as they're really starting to coalesce
and build out that business to find what it is
they're going to go after. That's just a super
exciting time. So what advice would you give
to a founder that's just starting out, for example?
It's quite a broad question though. We see there's
a lot of... Yeah, absolutely. But it really comes
back to testing. Don't start by building. Start
by doing investigation and research, talking
to customers, doing surveys, putting out some
quick mock -ups. Really explore why your customers
need this, what they need. Why aren't there other
solutions that are out there? Is there a demand
to pay for it? Are you a priority? This is a
huge one. A lot of people will go and ask a customer,
would this be valuable? Could you use this? And
the answer is often yes, this would be a great
thing to have. It would save me some money. What
they don't ask is if this was sitting on the
shelf, would buying and implementing this be
the next thing on your list of priorities? Because
usually the answer is no, I've got like eight
things that are causing my house to burn down
right now. I'm going to deal with those. Yours
is a nice to have. I'd love to do it. You know,
and I'll get around to it in eight years when
I've got the rest of my priorities out of the
way. And so then They've gotten all of these
yeses from potential customers. And when they
build it, they go back to them and say, Hey,
do you want to buy it? It's like, not right now.
Right. They get happy ears with the responses
they hear. So really digging into what are going
to be the problems? Do they have budget for this
kind of thing? Can they take it on like ed tech?
I see so many ed tech projects and they're doing
important work that really needs to be done in
education and schools have no money. And they
have thousands of people trying to sell them
things. It's brutally hard to sell into school
systems. And they haven't really explored that
to understand, you know, how do they fit in?
Do the schools have budget for this? Is this
a priority for you? Do they know who in the schools
has the decision -making power? Because often
they'll go talk to teachers. The teachers are
all thumbs up. But it's the superintendent who
pays for it. The superintendent, that's not their
priority. So it's never going to get bought,
right? All of those secondary things need to
get nailed down before you even start the process
of actually building the solution. This can avoid
enormous amounts of waste and heartache and time
and lost money. Do that groundwork first. Do
you think it's hard selling to government, both
local and federal? Yeah, selling to government
has its own special flavors of brain damage.
It is really strange. Local government tends
to be radically underfunded. That's the problem
there is they often just don't have the money
that you'd like. Federal government, it's all
about the bureaucracy and procurement processes
and timelines. So, you know, you go in and start
talking to them today, and it may be 18 months
before you get something. Or the thing you want
to bid on came out in this huge request for proposals,
which is highly technical to respond to, requires
a lot of experience. You know, you're some small
company. You probably need to be partnering with
one of the big systems integrators, which you
don't even know how to do. You've never heard
of these people. It's a long time to get in there.
We were sort of lucky in that we were moving
into a greenfield space. The government had never
purchased anything like what we were doing before.
Our challenge was to convince them that legally
they could. They were allowed to outsource the
stuff we wanted to do. But from there, it was
all sole source contracts. So we were working
directly with the people who were going to implement
it. We're selling to the people who are owning
the mission at the tip of the spear, not the
IT department, not the backend. So we had sort
of the best case for selling to the government.
And it's still a nightmare. I can imagine. There's
a lot of talk nowadays about AI and blockchain.
And it feels that every startup I come across
is either doing something with AI or in the blockchain.
Now, is this an absolute necessity? Do people
actually need to start building something on
it with AI or in the blockchain? Or actually,
there's still plenty of room to grow in other
areas. So there's always a huge number of areas
out there that people can build into. And some
of my favorite businesses are the least sexy.
But you discover that there's some huge unmet
need in a big market that is at some level incredibly
boring. And that means that there aren't 20 other
startups trying to go after it. There's not every
VC looking for somewhere to dump money on to
launch this product. That can be a really big
advantage, giving you room to grow, room to learn,
some time to execute before the space gets filled
up. So I think always worth looking for the size
of that opportunity, not necessarily chasing
the latest shiny, because by the time you start
seeing it covered on the news or it's all over
Reddit or whatever, you're probably on the wrong
part of the hype cycle. You wanted to be in six
months to a year before that when this was just
starting to grow. Now, if you start, all those
companies that were early adopters have a year
headstart on you. You're going to start working
on your product and then see a dozen competitors
actually launch with theirs, right? So timing
is really critical. I want to touch on AI though
and blockchain real quick. I'm highly dubious
of most blockchain startups I see. because they
seem to be buzzword compliant. They are implementing
a blockchain for things where a simple database
would be far more effective, cheaper, and faster,
but they want to be able to say they're using
a blockchain. Blockchains are incredibly powerful
for certain applications, but I find they're
misused most of the time. AI! On the other hand,
in some ways, I think most companies that are
using AI shouldn't talk about it because it's
rapidly becoming table stakes. If you are a software
company or a SaaS company or a software service
provider and you're not using AI in some way,
what the hell's wrong with you? Right? Of course
you should be using AI. It's like saying, well,
we've got a website. Obviously, you've got a
website. Obviously, you're going to use AI. Obviously,
you're going to use, you know, programming tools
or if you need an app, you're going to have an
app. Those are aspects of how you're doing what
you're doing, but it's the business that is being
enabled by the AI that matters. This is with
the exception of some deep tech companies that
are doing really interesting things in AI or
the foundational models, but those are few and
far between. Most of them are actually just using
AI and what they're doing. They should back off
on how much they talk about AI. How do you find
opportunities? Or did it just come your way or
do you actually go actively looking for that?
So I'm not doing a huge amount of active hunting
right now. I am active in an angel group. So
we have applications coming in there all the
time. I actually run our selection committee.
So I get to see all of the companies that come
in very early. So that's a great source of deal
flow. Of course, I just listed I'm an angel investor
on LinkedIn. And so that generates something
like a thousand a year. I'm in a couple of early
stage funds. And those are the people who really
have time to do the prospecting, right? They're
going out and beating the bushes. They're looking
for all these opportunities. They're going to
the mixers and meeting people. And I live out
in the boonies and I'm too lazy. So I'm not great
about hunting down the opportunities, but that
really is the way it works. If you want to be
successful as an investor. Yeah. And I was just
thinking, you know, for a startup, what do you
think actually works better? Does it actually
go face to face or send a bunch of cold emails?
So if you can go face to face, that's always
great. It's always better to have sort of that
personal connection, you know, suggest doing
pitch events, you know, go in, go into the city
and get in front of potential investors. Even
if these are not, maybe especially if they're
not actually fundraising events, right? They're
more about visibility, practice, feedback, things
like that. You really want to hone that pitch.
So those are great ways of meeting people. I
also strongly encourage people to reach out to
potential investors for feedback and advice well
before their fundraising. It's never the best
look when the first time I hear from someone
is with their handout. It's not really what I
want. Whereas if they come to me and say, hey,
I'm in this space. What do you think about this
space? Or, you know, I'm looking at this from
this direction. What's your take on that? Or
even, you know, what are your criteria for investing?
I don't even want to bother you if I'm not in
the right spot or let me know when to get there.
Those can get the ball rolling, the simple question,
something that only takes a few seconds to respond
to. You're not asking for a half hour of my time
or anything like that. That can then establish
that connection. You get me on the update email
list, so I'm getting pinged on a regular basis,
reminded of what you're doing and that you're
accomplishing things. So then when you're ready
to fundraise, you can reach out much more likely
to get success. But certainly cold outreach is
going to be part of that. You're not always going
to be able to have a connection. It's just a
numbers game, right? You're going to be sending
probably thousands of cold outreaches and making
hundreds of pitches before you close your procedure.
And do you invest outside of the US or just focus
on the US? So personally, I am only in the US
because that's the market I understand for direct
investments. So some of the funds I'm into international
work and I've also invested internationally through
some syndicates. because I can then rely on someone
who has deep cultural and geographical knowledge
of the area in which they're investing. And I'm
basically piggybacking on them. I also tend to
write smaller checks there because I have a lower
level of confidence. So I'm taking a bit more
of a shotgun strategy, but largely I'm backing
the syndicate lead as the horse. There's a lot
of, you know, I know a lot of startups who raise
seed funding and then decided to go for series
A's in the US. Do you think that's the correct
approach or actually it's a complete mistake?
They should actually try and raise in their local
geography. By the time you're hitting sort of
series A, it definitely makes sense to be looking
at the US. I think as you're getting into those
larger, more institutional investors, they're
all global at that point. And so you want to
go with the investor who's most aligned with
your thesis, who can bring the most strategic
value to what you're doing. The fact that they're
located in your backyard and you can, you know,
have a meeting with them over a beer or coffee
and get some advice starts to matter less and
less than their ability to connect you to major
partners and hook you up with the big investors
you need then in your B round, C, D, E, and so
forth. Now, if we could go back in time and you
can go back to yourself in, I don't know, 1995
when you just got started, what would you tell
to yourself? What do you say? You know what?
Don't do this or do this. Yeah, I definitely,
I would have spent more time working, finding
advisors and trying to work with them. I mean,
the ecosystem of course was radically different
back then. It has improved so much for founders,
but I really didn't understand how much I didn't
know at that time. I was, I was an astrophysicist.
I was an astronomer before I started the company.
I had no background in this. And so I was just
trying to work it out all on my own. But yeah,
I think more testing and validation would be
what I'd tell myself is I made a lot of assumptions
about what would work. And we sort of went in
exactly what I tell everyone not to do. We doubled
down on developing things too early and not testing
enough. Those are the sort of things I go back
and tell myself that and surrounding myself with
the right people to really counterbalance the
weaknesses in my own. And, you know, having that
type of background, do you invest anything related
to space or you actually move away from that?
I've done a little space. I've done a little
cybersecurity, which is sort of what my company
ended up being. It's ironic. I think in some
ways it's harder to get an investment from me
in areas that I know really well because I can
see all the weaknesses and problems, even though
that's probably where I should be concentrating
all my investments. Space is a tricky one just
because it's got such a long time horizon to
pay off. These tend to be very speculative kinds
of companies, but with potentially gigantic payoffs.
Now I always like to ask you a little bit of
a personal question which is what's the last
book you read last book? I read a book you read
which is probably about so I think I just finally
finally It was late to the party, but I just
read nudge and I really enjoyed that. What was
the biggest insight from Mitch? so Just the level
of impact on choice architecture and how you
design forms or intakes or what kind of defaults
you use can have a huge impact, ideally for the
good, but you know, they're also manipulable
in many ways. But just really thinking about
that kind of removing what they also call sludge
from processes. We've all downloaded an app where
you start some new service and immediately there's
friction. in that experience or, you know, you're
having to fill out forms, you're having to do
things, you're having to provide and, you know,
answer emails and do all sorts of things. And
that tends to make you fall off. So I think one
of the insights there is how clean can you make
this? How much can you remove the obstacles to
moving in the direction you want people to move?
Definitely want to add to my list. Lance, if
people want to reach out to you, what's the best
way of doing so? Probably the best way is on
LinkedIn. I'm Lance Coffrel at LinkedIn. or through
my website. I've got a huge amount of free content
for founders on YouTube and on my website. They're
both feeltheboot, feeltheboot .com and feeltheboot
at YouTube. Thank you so much. It's been an absolute
pleasure having you on the podcast. Thank you
for your time. Thanks so much. It was a blast.
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