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Watch the video version of this show on YouTube »Alex Ross is the co-founder & CEO at Gregarious, Inc. Gregarious is the company behind Greg, an app dedicated to helping people grow healthier and happier plants. Greg's community has grown from 100 beta users in August 2020 to over 50,000 monthly active users today.Alex graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, and studied data science and statistics at MIT. Alex has worked for companies such as Cisco, The Daily Aztec, and Cannon Trading.Prior to founding Gregarious, Alex spent 4 years as Director of Engineering at Tinder. Alex also co-founded Enplug, a digital signage company that was acquired earlier this year.In this episode, you'll learn: The two critical steps in making a successful app An ingenious strategy for partnering your app with retail companies Why you should involve your customers in content creation Links & Resources Tinder Enplug fitbod app Y Combinator (YC) Alex Ross' Links Greg app Alex's Twitter: @AreteRoss Job opportunities at Gregarious Alex's LinkedIn Gregarious, Inc. on LinkedIn Follow Us:David Barnard: https://twitter.com/drbarnardJacob Eiting: https://twitter.com/jeitingRevenueCat: https://twitter.com/RevenueCatSub Club: https://twitter.com/SubClubHQEpisode TranscriptAlex: 00:00:00The two steps in making a successful app business are make something worth using, and then put it in front of the people who would use it.If you have a plant, and you don't know what to do with it, we solve that problem.So, what we did is we reached out to a bunch of plant retailers, “Hey, we will help your customers have a positive outcome with your product.”Can you put in our little QR code? And now when these retailers ship out a new plant, every single one of them has this little QR code in it.It led to our first 15,000 users, I'd say. David: 00:00:30Welcome to the Sub Club podcast. I'm your host, David Bernard. And with me as always, Jacob Eiting. Hello, Jacob.Jacob: 00:00:53Happy to be here. David: 00:00:55You sound incredibly happy.Jacob: 00:00:57It's great. It's a Friday, David. The sun is shining. They're grilling a bunch of chickens in my hometown. I got nothing to complain about. It's gonna be great.David: 00:01:05Our guest today is Alex Ross, founder and CEO at Gregarious, makers of Greg, an app to help you grow healthier and happier plants. Prior to founding Gregarious Alex spent four years as director of engineering at Tinder.Alex also co-founded Enplug, a digital signage company that was acquired earlier this year. Welcome to the podcast, Alex.Alex: 00:01:27Thank you guys. Good to see you. Thanks, David, Jacob.Jacob: 00:01:29Hi. David: 00:01:30So, I'm going to try really hard this whole podcast and not call you Greg, but I've made that mistake.Jacob: 00:01:36I was thinking like, I get like annoying company name questions. Sometimes. I'm like, I'm sure you get more worse than me.Alex: 00:01:43But I'm considering just legally adopting Greg as alias or something. Jacob: 00:01:48Yeah. You know, I mean, that's a news cycle right there. A little bit of earned PR. David: 00:01:55So I wanted to ask you, so obviously, you know, director of engineering at Tinder that's, I mean, what a rocket ship that must've been quite a wild ride. So, tell me a little bit about, about how you ended up at Tinder and then, you know, if you do have any fun, war stories from there, that'd be great to hear. Alex: 00:02:16Yeah, definitely. It was a rocket ship. Definitely some war stories, some wins, some losses. So, I came across Tinder and I was looking to get into like a consumer application. so I was interviewing with Uber and Twitter, and then I came across Tinder on an angel list. Actually the head of recruiting at the time reached out to me and I kind of took it on a whim.To be honest, I had not used the app before, before even interviewing or anything. that's kind of a challenge for Tinder is like, do you, how many of the teammates need to use Tinder? Because a lot of people are married and in relationships, and those are great people to have on the team. And so it makes it odd, and kind of difficult or complicated. But, basically I joined when it was around 70 people, if I recall. So, it was a pretty small team. There was already a global user base, so it was one of the scrappiest, global brands I think probably has ever existed. Because this was all right before Tinder or right around the time that Tinder launched its first monetization efforts.And so there wasn't really awareness as to like, great, there's this like large, global, many millions of people are using this thing, but is it going to make money? Right? That was still an open question at the time that I joined. So, yeah, basically I joined and it was very, it was definitely still a startup.And, so there was not a lot of structure and I think my manager changed on the first day, like the person I was talking about working with's desk changed, but I had a great time and basically I ended up creating the growth team. So I became very focused on, growing the international user base.One of the coolest things that that team did is we decoupled Tinder from Facebook. And this was from Facebook login because like Tinder came to, came to fame by having, you know, you tap one button, it imports your Facebook photos. It basically made online dating as easy as it possibly can be because like you push a button you're in and then you're dating.Right. And by making it that simple, it made it so you felt less than desperate by using it. I think it was like one of the important psychological dynamic, because if you feel like you have to work to start using that application, then maybe it means that like you aren't having as much success in dating in the real world.So, by making it simpler, it made it less stigmatized. More cool. Right? And so when we decided to then allow people to create accounts with a phone number that introduced all this complexity around like, well, are people going to want to do that? Then they have to add profile photos. They have to type in their name.You have to introduce an onboarding process. You have to worry about spam. So, in any case, my team led that decoupling of Facebook and Tinder, and this was like pre Cambridge Analytica, pre GDPR. So it was definitely pressure. And it was like, it was a lot of good foresight and it did lead. It was a very successful project.So, that was kind of what I cut my teeth on it Tinder. And then from there, I ended up creating the trust and safety team. So we then kind of took on anti-spam, which is a major problem for any global consumer or especially a brand that you're introducing people to each other. Like you're introducing strangers to each other.That is a spammer's dream.Jacob: 00:05:32There has got to be just so much abuse on Alex: 00:05:34So much, and it was all stuff. I agree. Yeah. 24 7. and so we ended up creating a team kind of bottoms up. This is a cool effort. Cause it wasn't like an executive side, like, oh, Tinder needs to needs to create this team. But rather. A collection of engineers that were very motivated to solve this problem.So, we created a trust and safety team again, before, before GDPR, like this was before the world was really focused on, privacy and data security and protect users. Very consciously.Jacob: 00:06:01It's it's interesting. Cause now, you know, even with like clubhouse recently have had issues here. I think now the expectation is you need trust and safety from day one, which even five or six years ago, wasn't really the case. It was kind of like, well, I'll just grow and then you'll solve it later.So, that was, I would say early days for even that concept of like a whole dedicated team to those, those, those aspects of, yeah. If you're meeting people in public mind, God, like you need good Alex: 00:06:28Real. Yeah. You really need to continuously try to protect people. Cause there are, there's a rare selection of people that are not great. Right. SoJacob: 00:06:36Yeah. David: 00:06:37So then, tell us a little bit about the transition from being a tender to founding a company, because you had founded companies before and plug, and been at, other large companies before Tinder, but Yeah. What, what led you to, to found Gregarious? Alex: 00:06:54Yeah. I actually saw Jacob and I shared an experience interning at Cisco systems. Is that right? Did you, yeah, Jacob: 00:07:01Wait, when were we at the same? Like onboarding. Alex: 00:07:04No, no. I was actually in the finance organization, so I was doing internal auditing. it was crazy. I was on a team that like investigated other people for like, you know, abusing their corporate cards and stuff like that. So there'd be likeJacob: 00:07:19Interesting. internally. Alex: 00:07:21Internally. yeah. it was a very, Jacob: 00:07:23We've had interns on that team. Alex: 00:07:27It was a unique, it was definitely the only inboard,Jacob: 00:07:29Yeah. Wow. I was testing, I was testing phones, so I'm actually not sure which one of those is more boring. I think actually you might've had me. So Alex: 00:07:38That's for sure. yeah, so I got exposure is Cisco is interesting for anybody who doesn't know cause you have to drive between meetings. Right? Cause the campus is so large. Jacob: 00:07:48Campus. Alex: 00:07:49Yeah, Yeah, Talk about, oh my gosh. Culture. Yeah, so the, the process leading up to, to starting Greg was very deliberate. because I had done a startup before and that company had gone to success a successful outcome, but it was a lot of hard work was honestly grueling.Definitely like, hardest challenge of my life. And so I knew that I wanted to be involved in starting a company and building a culture from the ground up again. but I knew that I wanted to do it differently. and so basically there was a lot of preparation thinking about really the main thing I was thinking about is what is the industry that I want to be working in, because I think that startups often don't go the way you expect.But you can learn so much. And so I was really thinking like, okay, what do I want to become an expert at? Right. Like what do I want, if it doesn't work out in the way we expect, what would I like to have learned four years, five years, seven years worth of information about.And, I really kept coming back to science. and I wanted to, to kind of use my engineering experience and pivot that into, more real world, like physical phenomenon. Right. And like learning how the universe works. David: 00:08:59That's amazing. Alex: 00:09:00And so that's really, a lot of the thesis of Greg is that we apply computer science and software engineering to this specific domain of how to plants work.Right. And, and basically the, the dots kind of connect looking backwards, but it was a process of discovery of like, what's an area that's emerging and like kind of changing, like where is there an opportunity, right. Because I think it's helpful to position yourself at a place where either you can cause change or this change already happened.And, right now, like a lot of people know there's climate change. and there's also a lot of, rapid things happening in plant science world, specifically around like CRISPR and plant genetics and stuff like that, really at the deep end of it, which we can get into, but it's like way deep. but, but basically, this was before the pandemic.So we were actually looking into plants before COVID and already there was like the rate of people bringing plants into their homes was growing by 50 to a hundred percent per year. And we wanted to validate like, Jacob: 00:10:03I really like, that seems like that seems like a thing that would be fairly stable, like, is it, is it, is it a, is it a generational trend, like millennials or younger folks being? I have a lot of people on Twitter. I follow that seem very interested in plants more than I've ever been. Alex: 00:10:20There's a couple converging trends. Yeah. I think that part of it it's associated to like the mental wellness movement. So it's kind of this trend line follows a one that's very similar to like meditation and yoga just five years later. So I think it's a very, it's a lot of adjacent interests there, but then there's also an aesthetic component to plants where like, people are kind of decorating their spaces and they're getting more like trendy in how they, you know, how they, even people who are eating, like you want to have like a space that you invite someone into and it's very nurturing.Right. so yeah, there was definitely a generational kind of tailwind already happening. And then COVID just like crammed that up. Right. Cause then everybody's on zoom and you look in the background, some people have plants and you're like, oh, that looks kind of nice. Like I'd like that.Jacob: 00:11:04I have this. I have, I still have this like barren white wall back here. That is embarrassing. Yeah, I need, that's why I was excited. I, I, I installed Greg today and I was disappointed. I couldn't buy the plants in the app yet. So we'll have to talk about that as we get a little Alex: 00:11:17That's something that is coming. That is the client segment. Yeah, definitely. yeah, so we kind of saw an opportunity and we did some due diligence, some interesting things I think, to identify like, is there a revenue opportunity in my favorite stat that I like to share that blew my mind when I learned it is home Depot, is a publicly traded company.So you can look up their, you know, annual statements and you can see how are they making money. And if you look up their statements, you'll see that they make more money on indoor garden than on any other product segment. Like home Depot sells lumber, paint appliances, all these other the Jacob: 00:11:54That's like, that's like actual revenues. Is that also margin con? Cause I would imagine these are high margin items as well, I would guess. Alex: 00:12:01Yeah. Depending on where you fall on them. But yeah, they're, they're, they're pretty hard margin. and no, we only looked at revenue, but they make like last night, like $11 billion per year in revenue. Which is, and, and they're like 10 or Jacob: 00:12:15Store, right? That's, one. Yeah. And there's like, every town has four of these. Alex: 00:12:19Exactly. Yeah. And home Depot is like 10 or 15% of the plant retail market. Probably. It's hard to estimate.Jacob: 00:12:26Okay. Yeah.So, it's like roughly like a hundred, a hundred billion dollar a year kind of thing in the US. Wow. That's it. That's the size of in-app subscriptions for anybody. Who's curious, like, roughly like in that ballpark.Alex: 00:12:39Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like Apple's app store, subscription Jacob: 00:12:42Oh yeah. Sorry, app store. It's not even subscriptions. I think that's the app store broadly. Yeah.Alex: 00:12:47So we combined the plant Tam with then the app store growth in subscription revenue. And there's our business model.Jacob: 00:12:56There you go. Did you, did you, I mean, yeah. You mentioned like wanting to get into something physical into something science related. Did you have like a passion for plants or was this something that is like deep in you or, or was it more like me and an app subscriptions, which is like, wow, this looks like a good thing I can work on and I actually care about it and know a little bit about it.Right. So how, how did it, how did you go? Like, Yeah.This is what I want to do. Alex: 00:13:17That's a great question. It was like 75% the ladder. So the same as you, where I was kind of, I got exposed to it cause I started getting plants and I realized I did like them, but there was no brand to guide me. And there was definitely no science to help me keep them alive. Right. but I, I grew up in the mountains and so like, I, I, my family, I lived in Mammoth Lakes, California for any of the listeners know where that is.And so I, you know, I, I went on like a solo backpacking trip, like shortly before starting all of this and kind of communed with like being in nature with no people around me. And maybe that put me in touch with the plans a little bit more. but it was mostly, kind of identifying, this is a realm of science I'd like to work in because plants are mostly.Physics-based, this is something a lot of people don't don't realize, but because they're stationary, you can almost view them as like, like a civil engineer would a bridge. so there's not, so you can kind of really think about like the water physics, the light physics. And so they're a really great vehicle for learning, just physics generally, and also how like the sun and earth orbit matters to that plant and that location.There's so much science there that we learned that there's a depth. That was, we were very interested in diving deeper intoJacob: 00:14:31Yeah. Not to mention, not to mentioned biology, right. Alex: 00:14:33There is, but Jacob: 00:14:34As an intersection, right? Yeah. Alex: 00:14:37Yeah. Biology is difficult though, right? Like if you're like an engineer, who's trying to approach it,Jacob: 00:14:41Right. Yeah. Alex: 00:14:42it's messy, you know, I Jacob: 00:14:44Yeah, exactly. Alex: 00:14:46Yeah, yeah,Jacob: 00:14:47But if you think about it, it was a closed system, right? Like yeah. You have it. It's potted, it's planted, you know, lumens in, you know, water in, you know, nutrients in, you can, yeah, you can, you can make some approximations, right. As we like. Alex: 00:15:02The closed system is really important. I can. so what Greg does is Greg predicts when a given plant is going to need to be watered. And that's like the super simple, like simplified functionality. It's one of the main things you need to know. And the way we figured that out talking about closed systems is kind of a fun fact. you can very accurately measure the amount of water that a plant loses by weighing it on one day and then weighing it the next day. And the change in weight is the water lost in grams. And it turns out, so what we did is we did that for like 700 plants for like six months. And we, we then graft what was the grams of water lost per plant per day?And you get this beautiful pattern. It's like it random, like this is a very clear, like almost a heartbeat of a plant, which is a great fit for like machine learning.Jacob: 00:15:56Yeah. So, so, so how did, how did you pull this off? Like practically, did you have like a big garage or warehouse or something like that? That's, that's more work than I usually do for software. So tell me what that process was. Alex: 00:16:09It definitely did. So at one point I had like 150 plants and they all had a plastic, little pots and I had like labels. I named them like a one through nine and then C one through whatever. Cause I had to keep track of it. Right. It's all in our progress database. And but that didn't scale. And so like me and my co-founders, we were all measuring every day, every single day, hundreds of plants, but that didn't scale.So then we went on Craigslist and we started saying like, Hey, we're looking for people to weigh their plants every day, twice per day for a couple of months. And we had hundreds of responses, like people, people care about their plants and they thought that it was cool to be doing like citizen science.Right. And so we ended up with people in Berlin and, and you know, Sydney.Jacob: 00:16:48All right. Cause it doesn't have to be local, right? Yeah. Alex: 00:16:51And actually it needs to be in like Southern hemisphere versus Northern hemisphere because the location of like the sun and solar radiation effects that. Yeah. So we needed a global distribution for sure.David: 00:17:01This is like way off topic for, for subscription apps. But, but if you, if you squint it's, there are a lot of similar problems in understanding user patterns and user life cycle. And like, there's so many hard to understand variables. Alex: 00:17:18Yeah, David: 00:17:18But one thing I'm curious about on the plant science, like how much does like humidity and other things play into that.So if you, if you have, you know, 40% humidity, one day and 60%, the next does that actually impact things. Alex: 00:17:31No humidity. We don't really need to model humidity very much. it's actually, there's a couple of things that are misconceptions. You don't really need to worry about missing or humidity and you don't need to worry about fertilizing. Like all of that is overdone. for the most part, like there's some cases where it, matters, but, I'd say for like 99 out of 100 plant types that you're likely to own doesn't matter.And even more people don't realize that the humidity reading that we see in the weather is what's called relative humidity. And it, it not actually like super scientific way to measure, like how the water in the air relates to a plant. You need to look at absolute humidity, the whole totally different calculation.There's basically relative humidity changes according to the temperature. And so I see as humidity, you can almost, and to be honest, like, ignore, except for a couple of plants, like really evolved to be in, like, you can picture it. you know, in England, like, United Kingdom, like BHAG, right. Where it's just so much water, like, okay, well does like some, some ferns like are from like the Pacific Northwest, like Washington area where it's like constant rain forest, those types of plans.Yeah. You're going to have a hard time if you're not, in a very human environment, but the vast majority of EBI don't have to worry about it.Jacob: 00:18:47I have, I have more questions on the plant physics, but I think, I think I will let, I will, I will have to like save my curiosity.David: 00:18:55Well, we'll have to do the, we'll have to jump on your podcast and talk, talk points. Jacob: 00:19:00Plant Club, just invite V2 to newbies on there. Just to ask questions. We'll be there. David: 00:19:05So from, from all of this, you, you started to alluded to it a bit, but one of the things I was really impressed talking to you a couple of months ago, was just how I'm vicious. Your plans are with Greg. So you're, you're kicking it off with a consumer subscription app. but tell me a little bit about like, where you want to go from there.Alex: 00:19:25Yeah, definitely. That's a part of like, going back to like how we started it, why we started it. I have seen, or like I've worked at companies and like not naming names that are very, very revenue focused. Like just purely prime directive is we just need to make coin and as much of it as possible. Right.And then the question is, well, if you get there, then what do you do? Because if you do accumulate a level of avenue and a lot of influence, you kind of inherit a social responsibility, right? Because like you're accumulating all these resources. If you're like a Facebook or an Instagram, I think there's like general consensus.Like you kind of need to think about the impact that you have. Cause you're too big to not think about it. Right. And so with Greg, like we really thought about if we manage to navigate this very challenging process of getting to scale. Well then what? Right. And our goal what's really interesting that people don't realize is that plants in our homes are just plants that were taken from various places in the world and put in our homes, right?Like there there's no such thing as a houseplant, it's actually just like a giant jungle tree that somebody took a cutting from and then transported it to England and then ended up the United States. Right. so the physical principles that govern, being able to predict how to keep those plants alive is, are the same as the physical principles required to predict how to keep like crops alive.Right. like plants that are grown for our food system of which there are like billions. Right. And those plants, like it turns out plants are really like an infrastructure piece of our planet, right? Like plants are our like big support system on spaceship earth. And it's kind of interesting. Jacob: 00:21:10It's, the, it's the first stage of catalyzing, the sun's resources, right? Like, Alex: 00:21:15That's exactly it. And a lot of people don't realize this, that basically all of life gets its energy from the sun. Like that is the input of all of energy into what we know as life, as you know, maybe there's more on other planets that works differently. But as far as we know, all of life depends on solar energy.Jacob: 00:21:31Yeah, Alex, you're leaving out some very, very, sensitive, bacteria that live by vents. Okay. That, that Alex: 00:21:40I love that you noticed.Jacob: 00:21:43I'm D I'm disappointed in myself that I can't think of what they're called. They're extremophiles some kind of, I Alex: 00:21:47Yeah. Jacob: 00:21:48All, it's all, it's all discovery documentaries, so Alex: 00:21:51There's a vanishingly small number of, like living things that, thrive on geothermal energy from the earth score. Right. But that's like less than like 1% as far as I know. What people don't realize as an example is that like plants. A lot of people think that plants are just taking things out of the ground that is sucking nutrients out, sucking water out. They're actually also putting things back into the ground at all times. And so plants, like, for example, they photosynthesize. So they take energy from the sun and they are the only thing on the planet that takes energy from the sun and then converts it into energy that all other life can use. And it's not only insects and birds and mammals like us, but plants are also depositing sugar into the soil.So it's a bi-directional flow and that sugar feeds the bacteria. Jacob: 00:22:38Is that an active process while they're alive? Is it, or is it during decomposition? Alex: 00:22:42No, that is an active process. Like plants are actively depositing sugar into the soil and that, that those sugars feed the bacteria and fungi and those bacteria and fungi are responsible for breaking down the, inorganic, nutrients like nitrogen into a format that plants can absorb because plants can't just like stop nitrogen.Now they depend on. Those organic, you know, facilitators. And so it's a very symbiotic relationship and there's growing awareness now that like having a quote unquote, living soil is crucial for our planet. And I'll tell you like an example of how, how much awareness there is around this. during my due diligence for Greg, I went to a plant genetics conference.This is like for any engineers in the call, like imagine like AWS reinvent, accepted the geneticists. Right. And so they're like presenting, like how they run their projects. And it's, it's a really cool parallel world, but half of this conference was dedicated to soil like microbiomes, because that's how important it is.It's like truly like a resource. It's an infrastructure for our spaceship earth. Right? David: 00:23:49That's amazing. So, so one of the things, yeah, you and I talked about was not just, you know, consumer subscription to then like funding science, which is kind of what you're talking about now, but then also the potential to take this from, from B2C to B2B. So like you have, nurturing these who have to manage the planets before the people buy ‘em.You have office buildings that have thousands of plants. You have, you know, commercial facilities like there's, you know, plants existed on so many different layers of are of, of, of use, So tell me a little bit about kind of the long and short term plans of potentially transitioning or not transitioning, but, but kind of building on top of what you've done for consumers to then expand into more B2B, use cases.Alex: 00:24:42Yeah, definitely. Some other examples. people don't realize that cities have to like municipalities have to maintain the plant inventories, right? Like there are people who manage the inventory of plants. Exists, you know, or there are small businesses. there are people in most towns, I grow food for their farmer's markets, for example.And so those are like smaller scale farmers and then there's large scale farmers, right? And there's a real dearth of like talented software teams, writing applications for any of those parties. And that's really the long-term opportunity to be spotted. If we can pull together a talented team to make products for those people, that's a longterm opportunity.And my, my thesis on this, which I think we're aligned on is that, like delightful, simple consumer user interfaces, like simple software is appreciated by everybody. Right? Jacob: 00:25:35Okay. Alex: 00:25:35like enterprises don't want to use complicated integrative Jacob: 00:25:40There's tastes now in software, right. And all levels of, employment. I think it's, it's a bit of like our gen my generation aging into the, the enterprise buying world. And, also just like people have enough software experiences in our lives. They've learned to discern like, oh, this is good.And, oh, this is bad. and I think there's, yeah, I think it's really, I mean, we I've, I've done it a ton in making revenue count. I came from the compute super subscription world. I learned a ton of lessons about onboarding and, and, and, and creating delightful experiences and like, you know, playing, playing against and into people's like, you know, habits and things like this that you carry into the enterprise world or B2B world, and it can really supercharge software.And it's probably what we're going to see. Yeah. I think. I think there's still, there's always this like technical leap or not technical in the sense of computers, but technical in the sense of processes and whatnot, when you leap from consumer to, to selling to businesses. But as you said, you bring those teams together, you, you build your data set, you learn more about Alex: 00:26:45Right, Jacob: 00:26:46Act of growing plants, then someday you, you, you can, you Alex: 00:26:49Right. And there are some, some famous examples of this. I definitely see it with RevenueCat. Cause like you compare the UI to a SAS that was created 10 years ago and it's just more of delightful. Right. It's like simple. And I know to use it. I'm not like getting a headache while I'm on it, but it's nice.Right?Jacob: 00:27:05It's very nice. Very nice of you to say Alex: 00:27:07Yeah. Bye-bye But, but like some examples like strike became famous, right? Because like they had a good Jacob: 00:27:14Same. Yeah, yeah. Say my mindset. Right. Just like, make it easy, make it simple, make the, make the shortest possible path to value. Right. Alex: 00:27:25Or, slack would be another example. Right. Whereas it was almost a consumer level application that just took off like wildfire because individuals liked it. Right. Jacob: 00:27:34And then they added enterprise grid, whatever they have now, or whatever to sell it to, to, to Alex: 00:27:39And then nothing is things, Jacob: 00:27:41Need that to begin with.Alex: 00:27:42Right? David: 00:27:43Yeah. So it's just, it's really cool that there's, there's just such a direct path from selling to consumers right now, and then selling to municipalities who are managing their plants in a few years, and then selling to, you know, the, the company should have to manage this at scale and then selling to farmers.That's really cool. One of the things that, again, that you're not talking about, you and I talked for like two hours a couple of months ago. And so there's, there's so much that I would, I would've loved to have recorded that and released it as a podcast. But, Jacob: 00:28:20Glad I can glad I can contribute. David: 00:28:23Yeah, one of the, one of the fascinating things that you talked about was kind of your view on marketing. And so I'd love for you to talk about that more broadly, but then specifically what you're doing with nurseries is just such incredibly smart marketing. Like, I mean, it, let me say tangent for a minute.So it's just so obvious talking to you that you're not the average like app founder, you know, like none of my apps have had even, even like when, when hundredth of the due diligence and market Jacob: 00:28:55Why I was gonna say, I've never, I've never bought some, like, I've never had a physical warehouse of plantsDavid: 00:29:02Yeah. and so it's just, it's just so clear that you, you think about things in a way that, that most, you know, at people don't most software people don't most even founders don't. and, and so I think, you know, we've talked about this on the podcast before, is it just so many apps are trapped in this?You know, we just, we have to advertise on Facebook to grow. We have to do this. And like that clay book, I've just, you know, dumping money, a bunch of money in ads, I think leave so much on the table. And so I just love that you're, you're going to do that. And that we've talked about that, you know, you've got to do paid marketing and, and maybe I've already started experimenting with it, but, but yeah.So tell me about what you're doing with nurseries and then just kind of, you know, some of your thoughts on, on marketing and virality and stuff. Alex: 00:29:51Yeah, definitely. I think broadly, like what I would, I think I'm definitely aligned with that where, your broader point is that like building an app is half technical and UI design and getting the product really, really, really right. Right. But the other half that people are often uncomfortable about is needing to get it in front of the right people.Right. And so in my mind, the way I break this down is the two steps. Like I have a theory that like the two steps in making a successful app business are make thumping worth using, and then put it in front of the people who would use it. Right. And it's like remarkably hard to do either one of those, but, Once we had, the beginning signs of retention.So we got our first, like, I don't know, 5,000 users by like posting on Facebook and on Reddit and like that kind of stuff. Then we started thinking about, what is like the most optimal time for people to be introduced to grade. And what we came up with is, well, we solved the problem of, if you have a plant and you don't know what to do with it, how to keep it alive, we solve that problem.And so the most natural moment would be when you get a new plant, right. Because it's like, that's a moment. And you're like, oh crap, I have this thing. What do I, how do I keep it alive? And, so what we did is we reached out to a bunch of, plant retailers, like online in-person brick and mortar all over the place.And we basically said like, Hey, we will help your customers have a positive outcome with your product. Right. And so let's do this trade where like, we will give them. at this point we had a subscription tier. And so we said, we'll give them free subscription tier for N number of months. At first it was six.And now it's three. and in return, can you put in our little QR code flyer, like nicely designed four inches by four inches recycled paper card that has a QR code and it takes you to download. Great. Right. And so we did that and now like when these retailers ship out a new plant, every single one of them has this little QR code in it.And it's almost like a digital companion to your unboxing experience. Right. And so that was definitely like a very natural fit and it, it led to our first, probably like 10 or 20,000, 15,000 users, I'd say.Jacob: 00:32:10So can I ask, like, did you do that yourself? Did you have somebody on your team? Cause like, yeah. I'm, I'm in the camp that that's outside of my experience. I don't like calling the pizza person. Like I, you know, I, I don't know how to do that. So how, how did you, how did you delegate that and, and Alex: 00:32:24Yeah. Jacob: 00:32:24The resources and a small team to pull that off. Alex: 00:32:27Definitely. so I I'd say I provided the, the oomph behind it. but then I have a good friend, who I've worked with in the past named Colin, who does like growth marketing stuff and that's his comfort zone. Right. And so I definitely did reach out to a bunch of the biggest partners in the beginning.Because the thing is that like with early stage stuff, founder led sales can be great, right? Like you don't always need it. It's better if you don't need it to be Frank. but, we were so early and we had no partners at all that I was like, I ha this is crucial for us. Like, we need to have a better source of user acquisition.That's like our next major challenge to solve. And so I did reach out to them and then call in kind of like took over and scaled that. Right. Cause like, I, I ultimately like I needed to be writing code and stuff. and so now he owns that relationship and he's been able to keep that going further.Jacob: 00:33:22Yeah, it's just one of these unique channels. you know, I don't know, you can, as a, B to C app founder, I think David's points exactly on, I think we've a lot of us have settled into this world where there's one or two channels to like get growth and that's paid, paid marketing.There's a lot of good, growth resources out there. oh yeah, there's a lot of good growth books. I've read, moving into the B2B world that say there's like seven channels or whatever. There's only like so many like ways to get and in and in, and in B to C we tend to be like, well, yeah, there's these two, essentially, but it's not really true.Like you can try seven, I guess the trick is finding stuff that two things, one is approachable. Like, that's why I asked about you. How did you make it happen? Well, you were able to start it off and then you had somebody to work with you to, to, to bring it to scale. But then the other thing is it has to move the needle. Right. And so, and so you have to figure out and like for a price that's reasonable, right? And, and that sometimes is hard to find as well. Because I think with this, you have this adjacent high velocity market of users. You have a place, your users are going every day, which isn't maybe always the case for all apps.Right. It's hard to find there's no meditation store that people are going to day. Right. Alex: 00:34:33Yeah. I thought about this. Jacob: 00:34:34That's your, that's your advantage? You know?Alex: 00:34:37I thought about parallels. Like I wonder if like fitness apps have tried partnering with gyms. I'm thinking like fit. Jacob: 00:34:44I'm sure the gyms wouldn't be as eager maybe. Right? Alex: 00:34:48Well, I mean, possibly I'm just thinking like, if, if like, Jacob: 00:34:51This also like there's also this like benefit right from the, for the Alex: 00:34:54There has to be. Yeah, yeah. But I would just, I just like theory, graph, like I'm thinking if there's an app That helps you track your workouts. Like I use football, I'm a user, it's a great app and, and it's a complete compliment or a gym. Like I can't do gym without, I can't do football about gym. I don't really do gym about that.So, I, there might be a thing there, or like with meditation, I'd be curious if, like yoga studios. Cause here's the thing is Jacob: 00:35:21Find the adjacencies right. Alex: 00:35:22Yeah. And so here's the thing about a mobile app business that I have found is that one of our strengths is that we're building an audience, right? Like mobile apps only really work with retention.And so you're like building up this audience of people that are committed to your app and your brand over time. And these smaller businesses are looking for ways to get audiences. Right? And so in the scale of a mobile app is such that you might actually be able to accumulate an audience that is valuable to those small businesses.That can be a part of that trade. And so we've actually talked about that with our partners where we basically say like, well, you're referring users to us. We can refer users back to you. And our scale is large enough that it could actually be a meaningful number. so I think you can kind of get, it's definitely a B2B strategy where it's like, I'm thinking of the strategic value I can provide to my partners in return for them providing value.Which might be why it's less common in the, in the B2C, like mobile app world, right.David: 00:36:16Yeah. Any other, experiments that you've done or kind of things that you're working on in the, in the marketing realm that you've seen fail or things that are being successful right now Alex: 00:36:27We really want to tap peer to peer referrals and that has not been easy. And so that, that is one Jacob: 00:36:33Have you seen, have you seen the new store kit to stuff? Alex: 00:36:36Not Jacob: 00:36:36Yeah, they did. This is, I don't know when this is going to go out, but they, they dropped in, in, in the dub DC, this, this, this week they announced there's a new API. That's going to make that kind of possible. Now you'll be able to, you'll be able to like extend somebody else's subscription, based on some sort of like action. I think I, I, I don't know if they made it as like, for extending, for like a customer support use case. So there might be a case maybe Apple's like, no, we didn't want you to use it for incentivized referrals, but it could Alex: 00:37:09Yeah, Jacob: 00:37:09Make incentivize referrals work and like a really smooth way. Sorry, I'll derail. But, Alex: 00:37:14I love it. Jacob: 00:37:15It's, kind of a change.Alex: 00:37:17Well, it's probably useful to listeners. we have definitely hacked around incentivizes invites using promotionals that will say RevenueCat has been helpful.Jacob: 00:37:26Oh, so, and so you guys are, you guys are pushing folks, but they have to go through like this, like a user-driven process, right? Alex: 00:37:33They do. Yeah.Jacob: 00:37:34Is friction.Alex: 00:37:35It's friction. It has been fine, but it's not quite as productive as we like. So that one. Jacob: 00:37:39Have a lot of users that get confused about the process. I would imagine. Alex: 00:37:42Yeah. And it's like a deep Linky thing. So it's like not super transparent. the thing that's worked better, the one that I'm most excited about is I love this one. we, created, user generated content loops. so, basically people, there are certain things you can do in our app that like publish web pages on the web.And so for us very specifically, People like Greg, we don't have a database of like every plant in the world yet. Right. There's like 400,000. It's really complicated. And like, that's actually, one of our core IP is, is developing that database. And the only way we can do it is if we allow users to contribute to it.Right. and we need to be like a crowd source, like model and we get really good at curation so people can create new species in Gregg. And then we curate that and then we publish that page on the web and then it starts showing up in Google search traffic for other people searching for information about that species.Right. And so I love the theory of this and like check back in, in a year to see how it turns out. But I love the thing. Because it's like, okay, a user publishes a web page, which then more users find our app through. So then they join the app and then they publish more webpages. And then so more users find the app and then they publish more web pages.Right. And so it's like a very like positive reinforcement loop. And I think those types of recursive positive reinforcing user growth loops can lead to very healthy, growth curves, right?Jacob: 00:39:08Yeah. I mean, that's the, the challenge of these apps. You said it with retention is the big thing. I think you, you you're you're you're you've got some tables. Keeping a plant alive plants live a long time. Therefore, hopefully your app gets used a long time, but then, finding these things that can take what is inherently like a decaying process, which is people leaving your app and turning it into something more stable, which is how you build this, like yeah.Long-term business. And then, you know, for, in your case, like use this as a platform to move into other segments and whatnot. but, but but moving away, from this, like get them in, monetize them, let them go. Right. Model, which like, it seems just like the whole world is pointing us against right. With, with the way that ad tracking is getting less easy to do and all this stuff.Alex: 00:39:54Yeah. Jacob: 00:39:54So I was gonna say SEO, that's one of the seven good channels. Right. So you've hit at least three, Alex: 00:40:01Do end up dependent on, on Google. AndJacob: 00:40:05It's something can change in Alex: 00:40:06Yeah, Jacob: 00:40:07Or. Alex: 00:40:07But like I've been wanting, I've been watching SEO for a while and I think that generally, as long as you're not doing shady things, you don't have to worry about much. Right, Jacob: 00:40:16Content that people click on and find useful it will work. Right? Like, but when I did our blogs for revenue cat, initially the ones that got really good traffic for us kind of got us off the ground. Like I didn't, I didn't think, like I thought a little bit like, oh, what are people going to Google?Whatever. But no, I was just like, I'll just make plus that people will read and spend time on and share. And like that's all it took. And you'll find the posts that some of the posts that I did that were intentionally like, I'm trying to be like, SEO smart. Didn't do that. Well, the ones where they were just really good posts and like contained a lot of really good content and get referenced a lot. Those are the ones that still generate traffic for us. So like, which is nice because you don't have to be like an SEO master anymore. You can kind of just make good stuff and do Alex: 00:40:56Yeah. Jacob: 00:40:56Things. Yeah, David: 00:40:57Yeah, I was going to ask, I think we talked about this, but have you, have you done some paid marketing and how's that gone for you? Alex: 00:41:05Yeah, definitely. We did use paid marketing to like, scale up, by like a two X factor. So did that add a little bit of extra? And, so we've been running on Instagram and Facebook, and it's been pretty productive to the point where it's almost NetSpend zero. it's like we spend a dollar in advertising and then we make a dollar in revenue.We're still very early. And so we haven't had enough months. Like the, the, the pain point is if you do a trial. It's actually a much longer, payback period or like what finance people would call a float. And then a lot of people expect, because let's say you have, we're generous. We have a 30 day trial, which is like a bit much for a mobile app, but we do it.And so 30 days, and then the user subscribes, and then you get paid and then apple will pay you a month later. Right. So you actually end up with like up to a 90 day float. and so that's not as tight as I would like hope for, but it's better than nothing. And I think that's the key is that like, because we're a revenue generating app we're able to do the ad spend in like a reasonable way.I think if that weren't the case, then it'd be very difficult.David: 00:42:12Yeah. And, and at some point, I mean, with, with your other strategies of referrals, of SEO, of building a base of users, that then you can get more and more partners, you know? So, so if you went to home Depot, 10 million active users, then that's a much more attractive proposition to them. so at some point, you know, spending at a loss might actually make sense, but it's amazing that the subscription, model enables you to even spend break even, but keep that flywheel going, which is it's.That's incredible.Alex: 00:42:52And I think the NetSpend break, even that creates an interesting exercise because then it's like, it becomes, we didn't get into like financing, but like if you fundraise That's then a good reason to fundraise because then if you have more capital, you can put that capital to work. Because if you know, you'll make, if you have a dollar, now you'll have a dollar again in 90 days, as long as you can carry that float.Well, then at the end of 90 days you have a dollar and a user Jacob: 00:43:17Yeah, which is like, has, has value, right? Like you've increased the value of your user base has adult, you know, dollar per user active value essentially in the venture market or revalue reevaluate. Right. So, it, it does make sense. So yeah, I w I want to ask, like, You guys, it seems like your apps pretty developed for how long you've been working on it a year and change.Right. and you mentioned, you mentioned this, like finding iterating to like a retention goal. Like how did that go? Did you start with just like the basic function, like the most basic thing and then add stuff until you got, and what, what I guess specifically, like what metric were you looking at to say like, okay, retention is good now. Alex: 00:43:58Hmm. Yeah, that's a great question. So we did start with the most basic core functionality, and I think one of the things that we did that I would do again, We just solved our own problem. So like I, so we, we started at the beginning of COVID, so like New York where I live, locked down basically the day, almost the day that I left Tinder.Right. And so and so I remember I'll never forget things were shutting down. So I ran to the nursery nearby plant nursery, and I bought like 30 plants. Cause I was like, I need to have the problem in order to be deeply motivated to solve it. Right. Cause like, if you actually have like over 10 plants, keeping track of them kind of socks a little bit, it's hard.And so I knew that I needed the problem and that motivated us and, and our whole team really, we basically just wrote like a prototype app to solve our own problem. and once it was working for us is when we started bringing like beta users in, we did like a test flight, version for a month brought in like maybe a thousand or I think it was 2000 beta users total and there in like August, 2020.And. Jacob: 00:44:59Did you, how did you get that list for the beta? Just Facebook and Alex: 00:45:04Facebook. It was, it was mostly Facebook like groups and stuff like that. Jacob: 00:45:07Mm. Alex: 00:45:08Yeah. and it posted on Reddit. Reddit is hard. but, we did a little bit Jacob: 00:45:15Rip off middlemen made easy. That's my favorite. We posted, I posted right. It was where we launched two and I have this, this favorite hater quote that I have like screenshot it on my desktop that I will hold on to until we IPO. Alex: 00:45:27The hater codes or something people should be prepared for, I think,Jacob: 00:45:30Yeah. Alex: 00:45:32But let's see. So we solved that. Here's the key is that we specifically, for our app, we wanted to solve the retention piece first. And so he chose the behavior in the app that would be associated with retention because the way that I personally think about retention is that right.What happens is you have a trigger. So a person needs an external trigger to think about opening your app. Right? So it could be a feeling that they have like Tinder, it's a feeling I'm bored or I'm lonely. And I want to see people, and that's an external trigger that causes a person to think about your app.Then you need value to them to actually open your app. Right? Like, okay, I have this trigger in this app can adjust that trip. Sure. So for us, we didn't have like an emotion, but we did have, the need for reminders. And so basically we, leveraged push indicator very heavily. Our whole app is like a water reminder app right now that's the core value.And so we built that specific functionality, water reminders before anything else, because we wanted to validate, is that a sticky behavior? Is that something that people will actually want to do and use over like six months? Right. And because we knew we wanted to get six months of data, we had to build it first.Right. Because you have to really think about how long it's going to take to get that validation. and we were bootstrapped. And so we knew that like, well, we can't bootstrap for forever. Right. And so we needed to front load the questions that we knew investors would be asking when we went out to fundraise.David: 00:46:57So speaking of which you just raised $5.4 million seed round, how, tell us about the process. It sounds like you were, you know, having been at Tinder and been in Silicon valley and in the industry, that was your goal that you didn't come into it thinking you were going to bootstrap this forever. and you were specifically kind of building up some of those retention numbers and other things that you knew investors would ask for.So, how did fundraising go having kind of iterated into that direction? Alex: 00:47:35It's definitely hard as hell. I don't know, like you don't ever say that it's not. but it wasn't, it wasn't like excruciating. I think recruiting is actually probably a little bit more difficult, especially right now. There's a lot of, a lot of movement in the, in the why people are working, how they wantJacob: 00:47:51It's easier. It's easier. to write a check than it is to take a job. I think, you know, like to give it to somebody to do, do Alex: 00:47:57You can write multiple checks. Right?Jacob: 00:47:58Yeah. It's not your, it's not your every day, you Alex: 00:48:02Exactly. Yeah. So, let's see. We actually, to go back to your first point, we weren't, completely, we hadn't decided that we were definitely going to raise VC capital. and so there was like, like we did work through that as a team and we ended up deciding, various specifically. Our mission is one that we believe would benefit from us being good at raising capital, because we think that if we can bring capital and talent to this industry and this problem domain, that's a good thing.And then even from a life perspective, like we wanted, we want to move quick, we want to be able to grow. You want to be able to like, build delightful things for lots of people. and so that was, that was the main motivation behind the VC capital. I think it's a big trade-off. so we, we definitely did not take it lightly and we did deeply evaluate Jacob: 00:48:49Closes, off a lot of paths, Alex: 00:48:51It does. Yeah, Jacob: 00:48:52You kind of really narrows what your future, I mean, Alex: 00:48:55Yeah, Jacob: 00:48:55You on a trajectory to something potentially much, much bigger, but it Alex: 00:48:58Yeah, Jacob: 00:48:59Of like brings down your, your options. Alex: 00:49:02It does. Yeah. And I think you just have to think about like, am I okay with needing to focus on eventually providing an exit to these people who trusted with their capital, right. Yeah. And I think maybe something that people don't think about is like the CEO, whoever is fundraising. Like you, you build a relationship with your, your, your VC partners, right?Like I consider them like life journey partners at this point. And so it's not that like, it's certainly not an adversarial relationship. It's more like I have a true responsibility to these people because we had a clear, like, this is the agreement is like capital and then they have obligation to their investors too.And so, you know, I'm aligned with that and I think you're right. You just have to think about like, is that, is that aligned with my vision for this, this journey, right. David: 00:49:45And then speaking of, of an exit, you shared with me, you have a very unique approach to employee equity. I'm actually curious to hear at, Jacob's take on this, having gone through the whole thing, himself, but Yeah. Tell us about your equity structure. Alex: 00:50:05Yeah. We, we definitely are, experimenting and trying something different and I think there's pros and cons.Jacob: 00:50:12Investors love that, by the way. I'm sure those were easy conversations. Alex: 00:50:17Surprisingly most investors were, were okay with it. I definitely had a couple that were concerned about, the implications in the medium term, but here I'll get to what it is. So, yeah. Okay. So basically, like we, wanted to distribute as much of the financial ownership of the company across as many of the early teammates as we could.And the reason for that is like the real thought that I had that whether or not other people think about this kind of thing, I would, I would encourage people to ask the best, which is, if I have an exit, how big of an exit would I really want to feel very fortunate about. Right. And like, really think about like how much money do I actually need.Right. Because I think that there's a lot of people who get caught up with like, I want a billion dollars, right. Or like, I want like a hundred million dollars. I've been fortunate enough. Like we pointed out earlier, my first company was acquired for like a fine amount and then Tinder totally exploded. I didn't own as much of it, but it is still a positive outcome.And I can say that like they didn't change anything. And I know it's a very cliche thing to say, but I think it's a productive exercise that if anybody was founding a company, I would recommend asking, at what point am I again, feeling fortunate about the outcome, right? And then what we really thought about is our ability to recruit a great team.And basically the decision that we made is that, there's really two aspects to equity. and I'd be curious again, Jacob's take on this there's there's compensation for risk. So early teammates take more risks, quote unquote. Right? And so that, that's a typical, like reason for, founders taking a large, large Jacob: 00:51:52Costs risk mostly. Right. But Alex: 00:51:54Opportunity cost and risk.And then the other dimension that I think about is. Where, early stage companies are hard for everybody who's involved. And my prior experience pointed towards like the first 20 people who joined the company, or at least definitely 10 or 15, all worked, pretty much as hard. And definitely at least not like 10, it's impossible to work 10 times harder. Right. And so, Jacob: 00:52:19And with less M with less glory, to be honest, Alex: 00:52:22With less boring. Yeah, Jacob: 00:52:23Don't, they don't get all the likes on follows on Twitter or whatever. Right. Alex: 00:52:27Exactly.Jacob: 00:52:28Try to distribute it, but yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's a grindy place to be for sure. Alex: 00:52:33Not getting the glory is like a, it's definitely a double edged sword because I think that that glory is also a responsibility. Right. But, yeah. And so basically we decided to try this approach where we wanted to do this exercise of distributing that equity as equally as possible. And so he set up a mathematical curve where whenever I make an offer, I just look at this math equation.What is the amount of equity that this next person gets. Right. and, and so, and we did that and basically projected out like, okay, each person gets to like, like if we reached a billion dollar company, each teammate should have an outcome of something like $10 million or more, right. Like something, something above that number.And it was really important to map that out because otherwise it can go forward. And, yeah, basically that, that was our exercise. I mean, basically they decided like, okay, can we, can we turn that around a little bit? And, the side effect that I like, so again, we're, we're early in this, like, we're, we're an eight person team we're in a 15 and it may turn out to be complicated.And again, we check in in a year, but what I like about it is it, did enable a completely transparent cap table. Right. And that's nice. Cause like, I don't think it's like maybe required, but I do like being able to show people like this is who owns this Jacob: 00:53:50Who owns with you? Right? Alex: 00:53:53Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so that's a positive side effect.But there's definitely it's complicated.Jacob: 00:54:00Yeah, I well, so David, my take is actually we do something very similar that's I like also like, so interestingly and, and inside, inside baseball, I think, it it's it's we, we did, something similar. No, we weren't as scientific with it for the first, like we had like a rough rule, but it was like the same, like X, each number, like the number like decreased, like, but this backoff curve, I've found it a very, it's a very hard problem to reason about, because you want, you want to think about this, you want the hundredth employee to have some skin in the game.Right. But you, you need to balance that with like, Hey, like come join this company that you've never heard of. And like probably has like worst benefits and you know, who knows it's going to be, it's going to be a mess. Right. And so like, finding that balance is really hard. and, and, you know, Looking at where we're at 30 people now, and the complexity definitely grows. And then I think also you start thinking about like recruiting leverage and like, what, you know, what, how much equity do I need to offer to be able to like, recruit these different types of roles and things like that. And your systems get more complex, but, but, but it's still, did you guys, did you do something special on special on founder equity to create like more, more room on the cap table?Or did you ha how many co-founders do you have?Alex: 00:55:11That's such a blurry line. I don't know if this is just me by name or no, like, well, is that the fourth person? Like, I mean,Jacob: 00:55:18I guess that's true. yeah. Alex: 00:55:20Yeah. Jacob: 00:55:21A, maybe that's a, it's a YC thing is where they're like very clear, like who are the co-founders and who are not But, but yeah, I, I agree. It's probably mostly a, a label.Alex: 00:55:32I feel like we have six co-founders. realistically there were, there were two of us that were like, thinking about this, you know, like that's not true. There were three of us that were thinking about this, like two years ago. so we, I, I called them co-founders and so we're all on this same plans.Like we have this graph where like, I am the first black. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, It's Jacob: 00:55:51Interesting. Alex: 00:55:53Like as much as possible. And so the hardest, this plan is definitely hardest on the first three people and it requires incredible cultural buy-in to that because it means that the outcome, like, I, I definitely worked on this for a lot longer than like the people who are joining today.Right. And like, it was stressful and hard, but here's, here's my, my, my personal take. And, is that I actually think the risk of doing startups and I feel like YC, you may agree with us. The risk of doing startups is like so much lower than most people realize for people who have the fortune of having a safety net.Right? Like if you're, if you, if you have a family and you don't have savings, then like, of course that is a, that is a risky proposition. for people who are relatively early or mid stage in their careers and they have savings and they're not actually gonna end up in a really dangerous spot, then I think that startups are almost always a net positive.If you really apply yourself, because the amount that you learn and grow by solving that many problems, only accelerates your career. Right. And so going back to the risk versus there's also opportunity costs, and then there's effort. I personally discount the risk for people who are fortunate enough to have that safe space.I discount that risk almost to zero, because I think that it's just such a, even this time around for me, my second startup, I have learned so much and it's been such a good life experience that even if it didn't work out tomorrow, net win. For sure. Sure.Jacob: 00:57:17Yeah. David: 00:57:18So part of the reason I brought it up was that I, when I joined and I've told Dick at this, when I joined revenue, this is way inside baseball. Goodness a open, an open enough on the podcast. But when I joined Romney, I thought more along the lines of you, Alex. Like I thought, well, why is Jacob getting so much more of the company and, and revenue Katz, like the first 10 employees and then the next 20 it's actually, it's very generous compared to the industry, like take a, did an incredible job and has been great with equity.So, but, but early on you, you're at a startup and you're like, wow, I'm working really hard. He's working really hard. Like why, why, why is the outcome going to be so different? But honestly, 18 months in and Jacob having raised a series B and like taking a lot of the hardship, like you as a founder are going to have to do things and be under amount of stress.And like, there, there really is. And I, I don't, it's probably somewhat true for maybe those, you know, those first early employees, how carry a little bit of that load, but the F but a founder just has to carry a different load. And so. Jacob: 00:58:29It's always going to fall on that first two, you know, whatever people on the cap table. Right. Whatever it's going to keep rolling until it hits you at some point. And, you know, as it gets bigger. yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I don't know. It's an, it's an interesting, this could very easily devolve into like the nature of capitalism and ownership.Right. Because it doesn't, it plays very much against this, like, you know, constant, like Marxists debate about like labor versus capital and like, what are the value and what is like value and like, cause you know, you like, you had this whatever period it was one month, one year or whatever. That's like such, you know, if you

Play poker at runitonce.eu & support online poker's future.Study poker at runitonce.com & support yours.Email suggestions to: TheRake@runitonce.comTimestamps:00:09Welcome Lynne Ji!00:59A bit of Lynne's poker backstory.03:32Fun times playing Vegas casinos at age 19 with a fake ID04:53More on playing tournaments whilst underage.05:55Jamie and Lynne just got back from hanging out together at a heads-up tournament in Cabo San Lucas.06:43Lynne talks about the event, getting busted by Jean Robert Bellande, and the epic drinking that followed.09:39Jamie shares her side of the story.  Rooting for Lynne, joining in on the drinking, and congratulating her for taking the loss in stride.11:36Lynne was feeling down on poker before heading into the Cabo event.  Did her experience there renew her passion for the game?15:18Jamie gives some love to Lynne's vlog.  What are her plans for content creation in that space?17:02The pain of trying to get people to agree to participate or collaborate in your poker content.18:34Is the transparency of having a poker vlog bad if you're trying to play in private games?21:25Jamie appreciates the lack of expressed entitlement in Lynne's approach to poker.23:26Lynne turns the table on Ben and asks about his background in poker, and how he met Jamie.26:47Lynne found it easier to find motivation to grind when she was living in a tiny apartment.  Does minimalist living make it easier to focus?29:36Lynne feels happiest when she's singularly focused on something fulfilling.  Ben feels similarly.32:09Does Lynne have a drinking problem?33:08Thoughts on being young and just saying “yes” to new opportunities.34:13Love to WPT for running a great event and allowing Lynne to use all of her footage from it.  Is the poker industry a bit backward in how restrictive it tends to be in its approach to event footage?37:16Now that Cabo has her feeling somewhat rejuvenated, what are Lynne's immediate poker plans?40:21Lynne chats about a mystery friend who helped her gain a mature perspective on money.42:57If she wasn't playing poker right now, what would she be doing?44:30Should Lynne replace Ben as cohost of The Rake?47:16Lynne flips the table again and asks Ben and Jamie what they would do if they couldn't be involved in poker.49:36Wrapping up.  Thanks Lynne!

Tim Ferriss wrote a great book called “The 4-Hour Workweek” and today we wanted to discuss how we have incorporated some of those principles in our own business. We talk about maximizing our time and getting the most out of what we are doing, streamlining any task to do what is most important and efficient. Rosie has spent a lot of time reaching out to other business women to research and find out the best ways for her to spend her time and we talk about many of the things we are doing to Maximize the difference we can make in our business.The hard part about business and what to focus on 2:16What makes a difference in Rosie's business 7:09A great thing about the podcast 15:02The importance of belief 17:10What every business owner should do now 21:38“What Rosie looked at was, ‘OK, what are the things that make a difference? And how can I then take those things that make a difference and make them simpler and more effective for more people in a shorter amount of time?' and that was basically the birthing of the 4 hour work week.” 7:44https://www.facebook.com/theirishmummy/https://www.instagram.com/the_irish_mummy/https://www.theirishmummy.com

Introduction00:00:04 – 00:05:14 Why Eric Weinstein?00:05:15 - 00:09:57The purpose of this conversation - Building our Portal00:09:58 - 00:15:33Zooming out - The parameters of our PortalWe’re living through cultural and economy decay00:15:33 - 00:23:18 Bitcoiners vs. Weinstein – What we agree on (Or: We’re living through cultural and economic decay00:23:19 - 00:27:40 WTF happened in 1971? – Systemic Rot00:27:41 - 00:31:42 Skin in the Game – The limits of the Keynesian perspective00:31:44 - 00:33:41A stall in innovation in physics - Weinstein’s perspectiveWhy mainstream explanations come up short00:33:42 - 00:38:02The money is the root, not theoretical physics00:38:03 - 00:44:09Keynesian’s are too zoomed in00:44:06 - 00:47:07Gen X vs. Millennial perspectives00:47:08 - 00:53:46Millennial disillusionment in art and popular culture00:53:46 - 01:03:54The monetary system is the unseen cause01:03:58 - 01:14:23Meme wars - Why Bitcoin winsThe history of money01:14:24 - 01:19:08The function of money01:19:08 - 01:21:16Why gold emerged as money01:21:17 - 01:22:33How gold empowered civilisations to become great01:22:34 - 01:26:56Why we moved beyond gold01:26:58 - 01:32:29Money, standards and social scalabilityFiat money is the root of the problem01:32:37 - 01:42:21Money is the base layer of civilisation01:38:39 - 01:42:20Fiat money is decivilizing01:42:21 - 01:52:20Corrupting the money is the cause of decay01:52:20 - 01:56:57The problems with Weinstein’s perspectiveHow problems with the money are causing societal decay01:57:02 - 02:03:10Fiat money robs society of its course-correction mechanism02:03:12 - 02:06:42Fiat money insulates society from the consequences of its actions02:06:43 - 02:09:34Fiat money gives power to Wall Street02:09:35 - 02:14:41Good money creates great civilizations 02:14:42 - 02:20:55Fiat money embeds dishonesty into the systemBitcoin is the solution, Bitcoin is the future02:30:44 - 02:30:43Bitcoin is the bedrock for a new society, economy and morality02:33:22 - 02:33:21To understand Bitcoin’s implications is to understand the future02:38:57 - 02:38:56Bitcoin accelerates the transition to the digital age02:58:20 - 03:05:51A Bitcoin future is a hopeful future-- See My Work: https://linktr.ee/breedlove22 Contribute Bitcoin: 3D1gfxKZKMtfWaD1bkwiR6JsDzu6e9bZQ7 Stack sats: https://www.swanbitcoin.com/breedlove/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/Breedlove22

Is my child dyslexic? And if so, what should I do about it? It's one of the things we're asked about most here at Read-Aloud Revival, and no wonder. When our kids struggle to learn to read, we worry. Dyslexia is extremely common, and is very often misunderstood. Today, we're going to talk about the signs of dyslexia, and what to do if you think your child may be dyslexic. If you've ever wondered whether your child is a "late bloomer" or might be struggling with a learning difference, you're in the right place. Marianne Sunderland from Homeschooling with Dyslexia is here to give us the lowdown. In this episode, you'll hear: Does my child have dyslexia? Here's how to know...What we get wrong about dyslexia Which reading curriculum is best for dyslexic learners CLICK THE PLAY BUTTON TO START LISTENING: TIME STAMPS: 3:16What dyslexia is 5:49Is my child dyslexic?14:10Do kids grow out of dyslexia?17:02The gift of audiobooks20:23Internal motivation22:32Will dyslexic kids ever learn to love reading?27:17Let's talk Orton-Gillingham29:00What a dyslexic learner needs30:06Remediation for older children with dyslexia36:28The first steps37:23Let the Kids Speak40:47Sarah's final thought "Read aloud a lot, use a good systematic reading program, and then give it time. You can't sidestep this. Your dyslexic student needs time."Sarah Mackenzie LINKS FROM THIS EPISODE: Marianne Sunderland's websiteSarah's top recommendation: Dyslexia 101 RECOMMENDED READING PROGRAMS All About ReadingLogic of English Barton BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE: (All links are Amazon affiliate links.) Nothing Found More free resources and booklists Get the best episodes and reources from the Read-Aloud Revival Keep an eye on your inbox! We'll keep you posted whenever we have a new podcast episode or a great free booklist or resource for you. There was an error submitting your subscription. Please try again. Email Address I'd like to receive the free email course. Yes! Powered by ConvertKit /* Layout */ .ck_form.ck_minimal { /* divider image */ background: #f9f9f9; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 1.5em; overflow: hidden; color: #666; font-size: 16px; border: solid 1px #d1d1d1; -webkit-box-shadow: none; -moz-box-shadow: none; box-shadow: none; clear: both; margin: 20px 0px; text-align: center; } .ck_form.ck_minimal h3.ck_form_title { text-align: center; margin: 0px 0px 10px; font-size: 28px; } .ck_form.ck_minimal h4 { text-align: center; font-family: 'Open Sans', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; text-transform: uppercase; font-size: 18px; font-weight: normal; padding-top: 0px; margin-top: 0px; } .ck_form.ck_minimal p { padding: 0px; } .ck_form, .ck_form * { -webkit-box-sizing: border-box; -moz-box-sizing: border-box; box-sizing: border-box; } .ck_form.ck_minimal .ck_form_fields { width: 100%; float: left; padding: 5%; } /* Form fields */ .ck_errorArea { display: none; /* temporary */ } #ck_success_msg { padding: 10px 10px 0px; border: solid 1px #ddd; background: #eee; } .ck_form.ck_minimal input[type="text"], .ck_form.ck_minimal input[type="email"] { font-size: 18px; padding: 10px 8px; width: 68%; border: 1px solid #d6d6d6; /* stroke */ -moz-border-radius: 3px; -webkit-border-radius: 3px; border-radius: 3px; /* border radius */ background-color: #fff; /* layer fill content */ margin-bottom: 5px; height: auto; float: left; margin: 0px; margin-right: 2%; height: 42px; } .ck_form input[type="text"]:focus, .ck_form input[type="email"]:focus { outline: none; border-color: #aaa; } .ck_form.

Today we talk about tools in technology for making the life of customers easier with the head of customer experience and employee engagement for the global company called Schindler Elevator Corporation, Stacy Sherman. She tells and updates us on the current situation with customer experience tech, and then what we should be using still and how we should be adapting/changing to meet current standards. She emphasizes the importance of establishing employee and company culture to maintain a high performing work environment.Stacy’s background 1:14Current environment of technology 2:53Can you use the standard methodology? Or should you change? 8:02The importance of culture 10:23“How do leaders be able to really aggregate the voice of the customer and be able to have a pulse of what is going on from structured data, like surveys, and unstructured, social media, rating and reviews, and so much more. That’s where it wins. That’s where the game changes when companies are using tools to be able to listen, respond, close the loop easily.” 5:36doingcxright.comhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/stacysherman/

Today’s guitar villain is Misha Mansoor, a key founder of the beguiling genre of Djent and an overall machine of a guitar player. Misha is the mastermind behind the wall of sound that is the band Periphery, a signature artist of Jackson guitars and BareKnuckle pickups, the founder of the excellent Get Good Drums software, and an avid sports car enthusiast. Misha is also the founder of Horizon Devices, a company featuring some truly spectacular guitar pedals like the Apex PreAmp and Flux Echo, and now, most recently, they’re making guitar strings. With that resume, you better prepare yourself, because it’s time for this episode of Guitar Villains.Intro and Misha’s supervillain alter-ego: 0:00Burning Questions: 6:14Misha’s backward sense of harmony: 11:10Problem-solving in songwriting: 15:10Name Those Notes: 16:44The re-release and return of Bulb: 27:35Guitar playing from the producer perspective: 30:14The hardest and easiest thing about playing guitar: 32:22The most important skill guitar players ignore: 34:34Writing music starting with a drum groove: 37:02The problem with drum loops: 40:29The difference between delay and echo: 42:00Misha’s dream band: 45:59Misha’s favorite airplane album: 48:56Misha’s supervillain advice: 49:39Check out Horizon DevicesCheck out GetGood DrumsFollow Periphery on YouTube Sign up for Guitar Super System, the most popular independent guitar learning platform on the internet: https://bit.ly/GVMM006

This week's podcast episode features Michael Demora. Michael has been a long-time innovator in the health and fitness industry, helping athletes from the NBA, NHL, PGA, MLB, and NFL, as well as fitness clients, get the most from their bodies.Mike had been the Director of Education for the prestigious Spectrum Health Clubs for over 6 years in Southern California, before founding the National College of Exercise Professionals (NCEP). He holds two Masters Degrees in Education and Sports Science and currently serves as President and Director of Education for NCEP. In this episode we discuss:Steps and procedures to create your own organization (NCEP)… @2:02What is Exercise Therapy?… @ 5:37What separates NCEP from other governing bodies (e.g. ACE, NASM)…@6:19Unifying the fitness industry... @13:02The #1 thing a personal trainer should know…@21:43The difference between a trainer and a coach… @ 23:23Coaches and continuing education… @32:44Running (general populace bio-mechanics and mental effects)…@48:26Frank Shamrocks - / = / + philosophy …@1:00:48NCEP and its adaptations in the current environment…1:06:48Teaching trainers how to run a business… @1:14:21Can everyone be a business owner?.. @1:20:55How to get Into the NCEP course…@1:37:25 More from Mike:https://www.instagram.com/ncepfitness2/https://ncepfitness.com  

Cowboys Beat with Ari Temkin and Patrick Conn 099 Unexpected Top Cowboys Story  Guest: Eric Chiofalo of 105.3 The Fan Ari Temkin and Patrick Conn on the unexpected major Cowboys storyline with Dak Prescott and Skip Bayless. Plus, BOLD predictions heading into the 2020 season for the Dallas Cowboys and a preview of the Cowboys season opening game against the LA Rams. Powered by: Miller Lite, the ONLY beer of the Dallas Cowboys! Also, brought to you by BetOnline.AG Sign up for account today and use promo code: CLNS50 to get a 100% bonus!   Tweet us your Dallas Cowboys! @TheCowboysBeat @arisports and @patsportsguy Subscribe to Ari Temkin's YouTube Page Ari Temkin (@arisports) and Patrick Conn (@patsportsguy)    1:02The biggest story in Cowboys Nation on Thursday, was definitely not something any Cowboys fan expected. 5:14What a crazy last 6 months for Dak Prescott: including the passing of his brother, the contract negotiations, etc. 5:34What you have to understand about Skip Bayless and Stephen A. Smith and the types of shows that they have and the types of responses they illicit. 8:20Miller Lite, the ONLY beer of America’s Team, the Dallas Cowboys. 9:50BOLD PREDICTIONS for the Dallas Cowboys season in 2020: -- Zeke Elliott will go over 2,000 all purpose yards 12:33One of the more interesting subplots to the Cowboys offense in 2020. 13:28BOLD PREDICTIONS for the Dallas Cowboys season in 2020: -- Cee Dee Lamb will take 2 punts to the house during the 2020 Dallas Cowboys season 14:50BOLD PREDICTIONS for the Dallas Cowboys season in 2020: -- Trevon Diggs will lead the Cowboys with 4 interceptions on the season.   18:10BOLD PREDICTIONS for the Dallas Cowboys season in 2020: -- Blake Jarwin will lead the Cowboys in touchdowns in 2020. 19:31What do we make of the Rams as we gear up for Cowboys and Rams on Sunday Night Football in the debut at Sofi Stadium. 22:15Check out the latest NFL futures bets for the Dallas Cowboys at BetOnline.AG 23:55Eric Chiofalo from 105.3 The Fan Listen and Subscribe to the Cowboys Beat with Ari Temkin and Patrick Conn on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and the CLNS Media Network mobile app.

Our guest for this week is Charles Eisenstein, American public speaker and author. Book available here: https://inspiredevolution.com/recommends/charles-eisenstein-sacred-economics/About Charles EisensteinCharles Eisenstein is an amazing public speaker and author of an essay called “The Conspiracy Myth”. His works cover a wide range of topics from human history and spirituality, to anti-consumerism and interdependence. He is also known for the books, The More Beautiful World our Hearts Know is Possible, Sacred Economics, and The Ascent of Humanity. Connect with Charles EisensteinWebsite: https://charleseisenstein.org/Tune In: What is a conspiracy myth? 26:02The attention received by “The Conspiracy Myth” essay became the beacon towards the realization of being a right-wing conspiracy theorist. But beyond that, conspiracy myth is actually a part of the phenomenon of downgrading and dehumanizing other people. A lot of the data points that the conspiracy theorists draw from are totally valid. Conspiracy myth is a perception of a vast conspiracy that pulls all of the strings and controls all of the puppets on the theory of how the world works. There’s a larger reality that we're not fully aware of and that is hidden from us. “Myths whether or not they are literally true, they carry truth. They’re different from a fantasy or delusion. But a myth is a vehicle for truth.”Science, Religion and Biases 33:41Rituals are the foundational myths of our civilization. There is something outside ourselves that we can prove and gain certainty and control. Religion is a vehicle of a sacred principle embodied by science. The fundamental core of Science is “I do not know so I shall ask”. That’s the sacred essence of science’s humility enacted by scientists at their best and at their worst. When science and religion is institutionalized, they lose touch with their sacred essence and serve the opposite. A lot of the abuses and dysfunction of science today is an expression of arrogance. “Science is “I do not know so I shall ask.”Leading into the conspiracy and pulling these strings 37:43Order can emerge spontaneously out of chaos. Beauty and intelligence could be a property of the universe because the world itself is alive and conscious. We’re programmed that we have all the answers to know what’s real and what isn’t. When that is violated, we go to a phase of bewilderment. This is to open up and appreciate multiple paradoxical viewpoints. The willingness to entertain paradox is a profound path of self development. “The ability to hold paradoxes is necessary to uncover the deeper reality that resolves the paradox.”Conspiratorial Rabbit-Holes 44:55, 56:05, 01:05:50Diving down to those conspiratorial rabbit holes is very much like an addiction and there’s some kind of elitism that is leading into events. Our society is built on the manipulation of symbols. The more you investigate any conspiracy theory, the more truer it becomes. That’s the danger when you philosophize everything. However, it’s also not an excuse to not do anything and be an aloof to everything. There’s always something to do that makes sense regardless of the actual accuracy of the theory. Conspiracy theories invite us to look beyond the spectacle.“All of these beliefs correspond to a state of being.”Making stories, intuition and conscious decisions 01:12:56Our next stage as a species is not to be finally free of stories and belief systems. What is mostly uniquely human about human beings, is that we create stories. These stories create roles for us to occupy. In the near time, stories order things and our creativity. If you haven’t experienced a miracle in your life, that doesn’t mean you are less evolved. We need people to develop the inner strength and the muscle of faith that doesn’t receive much nourishment. “It’s not about total liberation. For me, it’s about what’s next.”Perspective on Inspired Evolution 01:34:53Inspired Evolution is about witnessing people who are more evolved than you are. It stirs inspiration and awakens a part of the self that is ready for that evolution. It shows the possibilities of what you are about to become. Everybody you meet can offer that to you because everybody in the world has a fully realized Buddha except yourself. “The whole world is set up for your enlightenment. “Join the Inspired Evolution Community:Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/InspiredEvolution/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/InspiredEvo/YouTube: https://bit.ly/inspiredevoWebsite: https://inspiredevolution.com/ See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Transcription:Ken Paulus 0:03Caregivers will be put back in a position to drive these big complicated specialty treatments instead of throwing these patients over the wall to us. And I think pharma will move from a sales model to a knowledge model where their job is to put information in the hands of caregivers, health plans, and members to make the right decisions at the right time in the right placeGary Bisbee 0:28That was Ken Paulus, President and CEO Prime Therapeutics, discussing the fragmented nature of today's healthcare system. I'm Gary Bisbee and this is fireside chat. Ken has been a health plan and large IDN CEO and now leads a pharmacy benefit manager with 30 million lives. He's in a unique position to comment on integration between pharma health plans and providers. Let's listen to Ken express the need for an air traffic controller to manage care for the patientKen Paulus 0:57I'm most concerned about fact that today, for any given American, there's really no captain of the ship. There's really no clear advocate or some person, entity-relationship that is air traffic control for a patient in need.Gary Bisbee 1:17Our conversation includes Ken describing the role of the PBM. And its value equation, barriers to quality and outcomes confronting caregivers, the need for physicians to be in charge complicated care paradigms, how Prime Therapeutics work with the federal government to ensure specialized drugs remain available during the COVID crisis, and the importance of developing a long term relationship with the patient. Let's listenKen Paulus 1:42COVID has shown us that we need somebody to focus on that long term relationship and it's just not happening today. Again, with great challenges come great opportunities now that's a big one. And if I was running a health plan business or an IDN right now I’d be running like heck, to solve that problem and fill that void. Our nation needs it now.Gary Bisbee 2:05I'm delighted to welcome Ken Paulus to the microphone. Well, good afternoon, Ken, and welcome.Ken Paulus 2:16Gary, Thanks for the invite. And I really look forward to talking to you today.Gary Bisbee 2:20I've interviewed you in person a couple of times with live audiences. So we're delighted to have you at the microphone. Let's get right into your background if we could. I know you grew up in the Chicago area. What was it like growing up? You had five siblings, six of you in the family? What was it like growing up with that group?Ken Paulus 2:38It was a very special upbringing, in a way. I'm from a middle-class family. My dad was a grocery store manager. My mom ultimately was a homemaker became a teacher, but neither one of them finished college. Kind of a classic Catholic family where they started having a family early both of them had to quit and basically raised the family. It was kind of a values-based upbringing. In even though we didn't have a lot, it was rich and full and positive and supportive and ended up being what gave me a lot of my resilience and in a lot of ways, feeling supported regardless of the circumstances. It's all good. I mean, I say I had a very good upbringing and nothing I look back on in a negative sense, other than maybe I was a little bit of a rebel and got myself into a little bit of trouble as a teenager.Gary Bisbee 3:25Well, there's learning there as well.Ken Paulus 3:28Yes, there is. I have some scar tissue from those days. But I was blessed in so many ways.Gary Bisbee 3:32Right. We were talking before and you indicated you basically worked your way right from the very early days right through school, that that turned out to be a good experience, any lessons learned there?Ken Paulus 3:43It was interesting. My parents didn't finish college. So it was very clear with them that we were all going to college and there is an expectation you go to college and you go to grad school or medical school or law school, so you're not stopping at a four-year degree and I'm thinking, well, who's paying for that? And the answer was you are. And the only way to pay for it was to work basically every free moment. So I had a paper route until I was 13 or 14 and then I became a busboy at an Italian restaurant and believe it or not, was owned by the mafia, and worked there for two or three years. And then when I was old enough to get a real job, I became various jobs within the grocery business because my dad had friends that could give me jobs. And I did everything. I was literally a night crew worker. I was an apprentice meat cutter a couple of summers, I did it all. And I learned a ton the learnings from how and when you saw good management was fairly readily observed if you were willing to observe us and I have to say I learned a lot about management from all of those crazy jobs. It's a good experience.Gary Bisbee 4:52Six siblings in the family. You're all in healthcare. How did that work out?Ken Paulus 4:57Well, it was interesting. My mom in particular had three things that she expected of us and I'll never forget it. And it really rang true for all of us. One was going to college, as I mentioned, the second one was critical. And she said, and both of them actually did this. They said, You really have to do something where you're making a difference. And then the third one was just an oddball thing. They're both smokers. They both quit in their middle-age years. And the third thing was don't smoke, please. And if you don't smoke by the time you hit 21, you get $100. So, I'm like wow, okay, well, that's worth it. And I never got my hundred dollars, but I never smoked so that was good. So this making a difference. Standard and expectation are what I think led us all into the helping profession of healthcare and it's been exceedingly rewarding and I'm so happy I'm in this business. I really love it.Gary Bisbee 5:46Well, after college at Augustana in Illinois, off to the University of Minnesota, the MHA program was the leading MHA program at that time, what got you to the Minnesota MHA program?Ken Paulus 6:01Gary, it was mostly that it was that they were the best in the nation at the time. I think they're still probably top five or so. And I was a science major. I was a human physiology major. But I have an entrepreneurial business streak in me. And I was literally trying to find an industry that married science with business. And healthcare is really the perfect combination away for me. Once I figured out that that's what I wanted to do, and I wanted to work in the nonprofit side of things. Then I just went on the search for the best program and this program in Minnesota was the best program and I have to say, it was an eye-opener and a critical event in my life to open my eyes to a much bigger opportunity set. It really was very possible.Gary Bisbee 6:47What was your first job then out of the MHA program?Ken Paulus 6:50So this 21 or 22-year-old kid, having never stepped foot in a hospital before this point in time has only worked in grocery stores and restaurants. I literally stepped foot into this hospital as a fellow post-graduate school and became an assistant vice president of a hospital that's part of Catholic healthcare West in Los Angeles. And it was quite the experience. I literally remember the first day on the job, the CEO said, Well, Ken all of your direct reports are waiting for you up in the conference room on the seventh floor. Introduce yourself. I said, Okay. I walked into the meeting. There were 10 folks around the table all roughly in the 40s and 50s. mostly women, as it turns out, running departments like occupational therapy and PT and nursing leaders. And I sat down at the head table and they looked at me and the first woman said, well, who are you? And I said, Well, I think I might be in charge of all these departments and they laughed out loud. No, like They laughed and they said, Are you kidding me? They all had 20 years on me. But I will say, Gary, I made one critical move that was probably saved my career. I just said, Hey, listen, I don't know anything about management and leadership. I've really never done it before. So if you all are willing to teach me, I'm willing to learn and I will try not to annoy. And they became just stunningly good leadership group. And they taught me management and leadership, these middle-aged men and women, mostly women and healthcare, taught me how to lead and forever I will be thankful and in gratitude for that experience, it was really special.Gary Bisbee 8:40What took you from that start to Partners Community Healthcare in Boston.Ken Paulus 8:44I had worked in California for the better part of probably a decade or more. And actually, my boss, the CEO, was pinged by a recruiter to come out to Partners Healthcare System, which is a brand new system that was just been formed. And they wanted him to lead the creating the risk-bearing entity partners called Partners Community Healthcare, Inc. and he declined. And he's a California guy, he's not leaving the state. And in an incredible show of support of me, he said, Ken, I hate to even bring this up to you because you are like, my number two, go-to guy. But I actually think this might be a really great job for you. And I don't want you to go I don't want you to take this wrong. I just want you to know that I'm a mentor, and I'm your friend. I think you should at least have a conversation if you can work for the mass general of Brigham in Harvard Medical School and have that on your CV it's probably gonna change your life. I said, Really? You're telling me you think it's a good idea? He said I don't want you to leave. But I think I owe it to you to take a look at it. So I did and next thing you know, I was In my car driving cross country and working at Partners. As probably the fourth or fifth employee hired post-merger, the Brigham in general.Gary Bisbee 10:07Wow, that was a terrific opportunity. What did you learn about managing risk there?Ken Paulus 10:12Oh, gosh, scary. I have so much scar tissue from those days. We built this risk network, this group of physicians and acquired a number of primary care practices, married them in our network to all the specialists of the Brigham and the general and then took full risk, full capitation risk, but with Blue Cross of Massachusetts. And we proceeded to get our hats handed to us. We just got crushed. We lost so much money so fast that we literally had to go to Blue Cross, we said that we just have to tear up this contract. We can't, we can't do it. And we did. They agreed, thankfully, to tear up the contract and start over. And what I learned was we were ill-equipped to take full risk. We've had no data. I had no systems to manage risk. No way to track patients and patient care. The incentives are completely wrong. Our teaching hospitals nationally Brigham wanted to bring everybody into a tertiary center. And that's just doesn't work with a risk insurance business. So we were just upside down in terms of our ability to take on risk and we lost a lot of money. It was quite a learning experience. I never want to repeat it. But again, that scar tissue is invaluable. And there's so much to be learned from the process.Gary Bisbee 11:28Great foundation, though, ultimately, you made your way to become the CEO at Allina in Minneapolis, what caused you to want to tackle a leading health system?Ken Paulus 11:38It had been on my mind Gary for a while that I was looking for a place where the physicians, the hospitals, and all the ancillary services of pharmacy and lab and home care and hospice and all that could all reside under the same roof. And if I had a chance to run a company that had all those pieces in one place, could I do something different and special to really put a dent in what I think are many intractable problems in healthcare. So that's what attracted me. And I think secondly, I'm from the Midwest, I had always wanted to come back to the Midwest at some point. But it was mostly this engaging opportunity of having all the pieces in one place. And it was quite a good ride. It was there for just under a decade, and I really, really liked it. It was good fun. And I think we made a ton of progress.Gary Bisbee 12:26If you could identify one main lesson that you learn to lead a large health system, what would it be Ken?Ken Paulus 12:32It was plus-minus Gary, On the plus side. I think having the physicians as part of the health system was crucial. I can't imagine a day where we'd ever go back or the caregivers, not just doctors, but doctors and nurse practitioners and all the people that take care of patients every day, day in and day out. Having them on the team was critical and crucial. And I think that allowed us to do some things that we wouldn't have been able to do otherwise, I think the negative or the downside of at least our idea was we were still so acute care centric, that limited our ability to innovate. And we were hooked on the drug of fee for service medicine. And because of that, all of our profits came from our hospitals. And the more acute, the more complex, the more of a specialty nature of treatment. The more we did, the more we made. And we could not get off that treadmill. And I gotta tell you, I'm a fairly transformative thinker. And I like to find ways to disrupt healthcare. I put my shoulder to that wheel, and I made some progress, but not a lot. And it's just part of how healthcare is delivered that acute care was the center of the universe. That's where all the money was. And it was hard to ever leave that and we didn't really make much progress against that. Unfortunately, you know, for that I'll forever have some regrets.Gary Bisbee 13:59You've got an interesting background and just regionally, Los Angeles, Boston, Minneapolis Midwest, and you had some unrest there in Minneapolis. How do you kind of think about the balance between management outcomes, maybe unions, how would you factor all that in with what happened there in Minneapolis?Ken Paulus 14:20Well, it's interesting in all of the markets have worked in, they've all been very high concentrations of union activity. And I'm very neutral on unions. I think they play an important role in some ways. And I'm not anti-union. I'm not pro-union. I think it's part of the system and it can work. It has worked, and most of the places I've worked, it's been a really good outcome. What's really stunning to me in terms of what's happened here with the racial unrest in Minnesota, and particularly this behavioral issue with the police, is that we're finding as we dig deeper into it, that much of the problem lies with management's inability to To act and to deal with poor performance, and the union's ability, or at least creation of a structure that would keep management from moving out poor performers. And unfortunately, the lead actor in this most recent event was a poor performer with multiple examples of performance issues, and he could not be removed. And I think what it tells me is there has to be a new day with how management and labor work together. And we have to have more of a collaborative partnership model. And both parties need to be held accountable for performance. And we're lacking that today. It's more of an advocacy model today. And I think we have to move to a performance model and it's a real opportunity. And it's also one of the root causes of probably ended up where we are, at least in Minnesota, and how policing takes place here. And it's unfortunate but from every bad circumstance comes an opportunity. progress. I think that's what this is going to prove to be.Gary Bisbee 16:02Well, on a happier note, let's talk about Prime Therapeutics. You recently celebrated your one year anniversary with Prime. Will you describe Prime Therapeutics for us?Ken Paulus 16:13It's a very interesting industry and company, we're in the pharmacy benefit management space. And I've always been in the IDN side of things. I spent some time in the health plan business at Harvard Pilgrim Health Care when I was running the physician side of the staff model. So I know the health plan side, I know a lot about risk and capitation. Having done that, in many places across the country, we sit squarely in the middle between pharma, providers, caregivers, IDNs, if you will, and health plans and we are a construct of a broken system in some ways. The fact that the interest of pharma the interests of providers and caregivers and the interests of health plans are not aligned. And as such, the PBM industry came before and we're in the middle trying to get pharma care to reduce prices, through rebates and other management formularies, passing those savings on to health plans and then working with providers to manage utilization. And it is purely a construct of a system that doesn't work. And in the ideal world, if the United States healthcare system really was efficient, there's no need for us. Unfortunately, we aren't efficient, we're not aligned, the incentives don't really work, and we actually are critical right now to make sure that the cost of medicines does not spiral out of control. So we're a reflection of a broken system that's still compartmentalized and still has incentives that don't deliver the outcomes that our nation needs, which is a stunning thing for me to say as a CEO of a PBM. But that's quite frankly where we are.Gary Bisbee 17:48So why the transition to pharmacy benefits manager to Prime, why did you do that Ken?Ken Paulus 17:54Gary, I had run my course of working in the IDN side of things. And I have mostly worked with physicians and caregivers throughout my whole life. And I've loved it. I've absolutely loved it. But I really needed to see a different side of healthcare, I needed to get out from under the IDN space, and see how others view it. And mostly I'm seeing health care from the payer, and PBM pharmacy management space now. And I'll have to say some of the things I'm seeing I wish I would have known as an IDN leader. The fact of the matter is, we're missing some very important issues on the provider side that you don't see when you're in the middle of it. And now that I'm not in it, it's like, wow, it's very apparent that there's an opportunity. So I absolutely love it. I never thought I would. But it's a great learning experience. I've learned a ton about how this system works. And it's very interesting to see how insurance organizations and health plans view the health care world. It's quite different and quite important.Gary Bisbee 18:56So how does Prime work with the patient? How do you work with blue plans?Ken Paulus 19:02The plans really come to us to work with pharma to stand between them and pharma to make sure that they're getting a reasonable deal. That's basically in a nutshell what we do. So they at Prime we represent 30 million Americans across 23 states 23 blues plans, and our job is to make sure we represent with pharma with pharmaceutical industry, that block of business and we buy and procure and source all of the medications and treatments that pharma represents. we acquire those treatments on behalf of our health plan partners and try to do so to create efficiencies, and it's very effective. I have to say, I know there's a lot of unusual perceptions around the PBM space because it is so opaque. The fact of the matter is in at least in our case, we're transparent PBM we pass through everything to our health plans, which you see is what you get. We don't have a lot of these arcane structures to move money around within the system. And we do play a critical role I can tell you, there are billions of dollars of savings that come through to health plans, and then to employers and then ultimately to patients and members. That wouldn't be there, at least in today's healthcare industry, if we weren't doing our jobs. So very interesting. And it's a critical role that said here, I have to say there's some aspects of this business that are incredibly inappropriate and broken, that create undue friction, and actually, harm quality in some ways. Those are some of the things that I'm very excited about working on.Gary Bisbee 20:37How do you work with the IDNs then?Ken Paulus 20:40That's where I do think that we're creating barriers to the very best quality for patient care. And there are two ways I can see with the IDNs that we should be integrated and working with them. One is what I call the friction model. Our model today is built on creating, you know, I hate to say this but barriers and gates for providers and caregivers to get through to make sure that they follow a formulary so that we can then use that formulary to lever pharma to get a better price. And it's a crazy way to do business. But it's the only way we have right now. So we have a very high friction model that we use with caregivers and patients to put them through these barriers and gates if you will hurdles. And that forces the system to drive to an outcome that again, we can use then to save money. That's one big problem. I'm not a fan of using friction for caregivers and patients. And having worked on that side for 30 plus years, the friction is untenable. We are putting caregivers through so many hoops and barriers that they can barely get their jobs done now. So that's one major problem. I think the other major problem or maybe opportunity, is that what's happening and pharma is the science is stunningly good. I mean, if there's one industry in this world that we actually lead-in, it's this bioscience, this creation of new solutions to pithy, complicated healthcare problems through incredible advances in science. And I think we're gonna look back and say this is the golden era of development. It's like when antibiotics were created back 50 years ago, this whole business of using the genome to unlock opportunities to treat patients in very different ways. It's really stunningly good. What's remarkable about that is that while we're breaking through on a daily basis with science and finding these new solutions, they're very complicated. They're very expensive, and there's no integration between pharma what we do and what caregivers do. I think the second big opportunity is for the health plan and the PBM leaders organizations to work very closely with pharma and the provider side to create partnerships in ways that we don't have today. We're basically buying cooperatives now that's interesting. It's a short term solution to a big puffy, complicated, expensive problem. But I just don't think it's going to deliver us to Nirvana, I think we're going to need a very close relationship with providers. And once we have that, and we bring pharma into the equation, I think two really important things will happen. One is caregivers will be put back in a position to drive these big complicated specialty treatments instead of throwing these patients over the wall to us. And I think pharma will move from a sales model to a knowledge model where their job is to put information in the hands of caregivers, health plans, members, to make the right decisions at the right time in the right place. And boy, if those two things happen, we will advance quality lower costs substantially in our healthcare system. So that's what I'm really excited about those two things, taking unnecessary friction out of the system, and bringing in a partnership level perspective for pharma and providers and what we represent so that we can create a breakthrough. And that's what's exciting about this job.Gary Bisbee 24:20Very exciting. What's your guess, I mean, we talking three years, five years, 10 years for this change to unfold?Ken Paulus 24:26Unfortunately, Gary, I'm 61. And I can't do this forever. I am in a hurry. We have got to show improvement and progress on this in the next three, four years, we have got to put a down payment on this. So for lots of different reasons. One is it's what the healthcare system needs. Two, it will save substantial money. Three, it will vastly improve quality. And I think probably most important, if we don't do it, I just can't imagine how this fragmented healthcare system will survive. I just I'm not seeing it. I just don't think it's working today and we have so much to improve. This is probably my last chance to run a big healthcare organization that could make a difference. I have got to go out in good form, I have got to be able to look back and say I was part of the solution not part of the problem?Gary Bisbee 25:16Well, we're looking forward to that. We have some confidence you will make a difference can let's move on to the COVID crisis. What observations from your current vantage point? What observations have you made about trends that might have already been in occurrence but that the COVID crisis accelerated?Ken Paulus 25:34There really is one big one that has me quite concerned. And you can worry about our inability to track infectious disease and our lack of preparedness and all those things. They're all things that we need to improve. But I have to say I'm most concerned about the fact that there's today for any given American there's really no captain of the ship, there's really no clear advocate or some person, entity-relationship that is air traffic control for a patient in need. And this crisis brought that to bear. I mean, if you are sick during this COVID crisis, you couldn't reach a primary care doctor's office, it wasn't clear who you'd go to for advice on well, do I do this test or not? Do I go into urgent care now or not? It is a fragmented combination of solutions and you had to do the best you could. Do I call telehealth? Do I go drive into my office? Do I go to the ER, it just wasn't clear. And we are in this position where COVID put a light on this incredibly broken system of no coordination. And there's really nobody in charge. So the patient's left to his or her own devices. And man that is just not a way to run a healthcare system. And that's what we've got today. And I think What you're seeing across the nation is any number of approaches to how to manage this crazy thing. And we're, of course, we're not getting much leadership from the government, not that that would have made much difference, but there certainly isn't much leadership from healthcare either. The industry hasn't done a great job and we are very fragmented and we're paying the price the fragmentation right now.Gary Bisbee 27:20Did COVID affect Prime's business model at all or Prime's economics at all?Ken Paulus 27:26Not really, because I think we acted relatively quickly. One of our first worries was the run on the bank for medications and there was one early on. And people were so nervous about getting their medications, chronically ill patients that needed their medications that they were stockpiling. And we had to immediately lay in rules that would manage the supply so that they were 30-day supplies or shorter supplies so that we didn't have patients with years of supply and not having other patients that needed medications and they couldn't get them. So we immediately worked with the government to put in rules and structures to manage the stockpile run on the bank kind of circumstance, and we avoided that, thankfully. So we didn't really run into shortages. It was close. There were some shortages around the hydroxychloroquine run that took place after the President made his comments. But they were short-lived. And I think we've managed through them pretty well. So I think, for the most part, we got through it, and we avoided any really significant problems. Thank God.Gary Bisbee 28:26It's evident that public health is now part of national security. We just never thought about it that way. How do you think about that, Ken?Ken Paulus 28:34I think public health has never gotten it's appropriate do in our system? It harkens back to our earlier comments, scary when you ask question around well, how IDNs work, you know, whatever. Public Health just isn't rewarded. Our nation doesn't really prioritize it. Now, I think we're realizing a pandemic. It's critical. And countries around this globe that are really good at public health has have done a great job of managing and pandemic in an incredibly difficult circumstance. We have no public health assets really, in terms of the scale or the integration or the coordination of public health in this country, we don't have it. So we ended up with our fragmented system which we already know isn't really well-coordinated doesn't communicate, put through the wringer. We have no public health system really to rely on and we ended up with the mess we've got and you get what you pay for. We got what we paid for. We've never prioritized public health. So I think we're gonna have to find a balance in the future between acute care, public healthcare, centricity of a patient, where is the place where cares delivered, acute care can be the center of the universe any longer. It's not even urgent care. It's not even home or maybe I think it might actually be virtual that there's a virtual system and public health has to be tied into that virtual system. So we're all coordinating and gosh, it's going to be so hard for us. Our political parties and our constant bickering back and forth, somehow we're gonna have to break down these barriers. And I'm not sure exactly how that's gonna play out.Gary Bisbee 30:08It is hard to see. But I totally agree with you. We need to get there. Well, let's turn to leadership, you've ideally positioned in the sense that you've led a variety of different kinds of companies. All in healthcare, of course, but when you first became aware of the COVID crisis, what was your first thought?Ken Paulus 30:28I really think my first thought was two concerns, one, protect my employees, and to make sure patients get their medication so we don't cause havoc. And I think those two things I thought oh my gosh, we have got to make sure that those two things are intact. And it's a scary time and critical time.Gary Bisbee 30:51So moving from that to what are the most important characteristics of a leader during a crisis, Ken?Ken Paulus 30:57There's much to be written about this. But for me, the first thing was calm in a storm. I mean, we're in a frightening circumstance, we still are, we don't understand it. And I think leaders must stay calm. We can't panic. I think the second thing for me was very regular, transparent, and high levels of communication. At a time of uncertainty. People need to know what's going on. Even if you don't have the answers. It's okay to say that you don't. I think third, it requires action. I mean, you really have to have a propensity to act. Assuming you're calm. Assuming you're highly communicative. I think you have to have some courage to make some tough calls and move. And I think that's critical. So I think for me, those three things really are like the three legs of a stool to get through a crisis. There's that great line from Rahm Emanuel during the financial crisis that I ascribed to and they were going Through with Obama and Rahm Emanuel going through this process of the Great Recession, and he said, You never want to, I'm paraphrasing, but you never want to let a good crisis go to waste. It's your opportunity to do great things. And that's really what we have here is an opportunity to great things. And the question is, do we have the courage to do it? That's really what's gonna come down to and I hope our leadership does and I hope I do. That's really what we need to accomplish today.Gary Bisbee 32:28Well, it's all about leaders at a time like this. No question about that. Has the COVID experience change you as a leader in any way or as a family member?Ken Paulus 32:37For sure it points to the importance of relationships and in health care, we're in the relationship business. It's critical. You can't optimize health for somebody that that's one of your charges, somebody you're responsible for without a really good trusting relationship. And I think we all now are looking at our relationships differently and realizing how important they are to us. I think that's probably the key takeaway for me, Gary is social distancing has put a spotlight on either the ability to maintain or the importance of those relationships and also the some of the challenges of not having a social connection that is a critical part of the human beings needs. So I do think it's all about relationships and social connection. And if I had to say on health care, the patient relationship or not even before they become patients and individual relationships, that trusting relationship is up for grabs. It will be very interesting to see who owns that for a lifetime. Will it be IDNs? Will it be primary care doctors? Will it be some health care, air traffic controller? Will it be a health plan? I don't know. But somebody is going to play that role. And I'll tell you, there's a lot of disruption in healthcare because nobody has stepped in to fill that void. COVID has shown us that we need somebody to focus on that long term relationship and it's just not happening today. Again, with great challenges come great opportunities. Now that's a big one. And if I was running a healthcare business or an IDN right now, I'd be thinking, we have got to be running like heck, to solve that problem and fill that void. Our nation needs it now.Gary Bisbee 34:23That's a terrific finding. This has been an excellent interview. Ken, thanks so much. I have one last question. If I could. You're a board member. Of course, you sit on the board of Teladoc, but you've been experienced boards throughout your career. What are the key questions a board members should be asking in a crisis like this?Ken Paulus 34:41I think it's really a couple things. One is definitely getting through the acute phase of crisis. We're in that now. And it takes all of those leadership skills that we talked about. I think those are really important and staying steady at the helm, communicating the heck out of it and acting and moving, and having the courage to make some really critical, tough decisions. I think that's really important. actually think the bigger opportunity is envisioning what your organization will look like when this thing's all said and done. And this is one of those unique opportunities to take a completely fresh look. blank sheet of paper, we're going to come out of a crisis, a very changed nation in a lot of ways. And could you do something substantially different, that would really advance your organization, your service, your connection to consumers, whatever. I think this is one of those rare moments in all of our careers where you can basically be bold, and go for it. The second thing I suggest to all leaders of the boards I sit on is to get through the crisis phase. But while you're doing that, put equal time in the recovery phase. And in that recovery phase, it's a chance for just incredible transformation. Take advantage of it, run with it. That's where the action is going to be with this.Gary Bisbee 36:00Well said, thanks, Ken, terrific interview much appreciated Good luck to you and Prime as we move forward.Ken Paulus 36:07Thank you so much, Gary. It's been a pleasure talking to you.Gary Bisbee 36:09This episode of Fireside Chat is produced by Strafire. Please subscribe to Fireside Chat on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening right now. Be sure to rate and review fireside chat so we can continue to explore key issues with innovative and dynamic healthcare leaders. In addition to subscribing and rating, we have found that podcasts are known through word of mouth. We appreciate your spreading the word to friends or those who might be interested. Fireside Chat is brought to you from our nation's capital in Washington DC, where we explore the intersection of healthcare politics, financing, and delivery. For additional perspectives on health policy and leadership. Read my weekly blog Bisbee's Brief. For questions and suggestions about Fireside Chat, contact me through our website, firesidechatpodcast.com, or gary@hmacademy.com. Thanks for listening.

In this week's show, we talk to Cologne based artist and Youtuber Felix, the man behind 'The Tuesday Night Machines' Youtube channel. We start off with giving him a little grief about selling his Ciat Lonbarde equipment :-) Then we get down to a great conversation of what equipment speaks to Felix and His creative process with different gear. We then chat about and journey through a raft of synth formats and find time to talk Gotharman's Little deFormer, and his old school MPC 500! Grab a cuppa, sit down and press that play button. Show TimingsIntro what we have been up to: 0.00Guest intro: 5.20Felix of 'The Tuesday Night Machines': 6.23 Feedback loops with effects peddle: 7.02The selling of Ciat Lonbarde: 9.44Equipment that speaks to Felix: 13.14Musical experiences 16.44The creative process with gear: 20.54An investigation into Ciat Lonbarde: 24.13What gear has connected with Felix over the years: 26.08Circuit bending and building: 29.40Synth formats: 31.11Hordijk modular systems: 33.30Gotharman's Little deFormer: 37.35MPC500: 44.10Round-up: 47.00Show Notes'The Tuesday Night Machines' Links:https://nightmachines.tvhttps://www.instagram.com/tuesdaynightmachines/https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtXBWHrQvC19PehB-Yu2-Vwhttps://nightmachines.bandcamp.comHordijk Modularhttps://thehordijkmodular.blogspot.comRob Hordijk Presentation & Synth Tutorial:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzW6pTzATG4&feature=youtu.beGotharman's Little deFormer 3http://www.gotharman.dk/LD3.htmHostsEd Ball Website:https://www.edwardball.co.ukEd Ball on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/EdwardballBen Wilson aka DivKid: https://www.youtube.com/user/DivKidVideoWant to start your own podcast? We use Buzzsprout, they are a great service that will hold your hand and get you up and running with hosting and linking to all podcast platforms. Get a $20 Amazon Gift Card (sent after 2nd paid invoice) by following this link https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=303803

The show is cut short by about an hour due to the Astros game. The first hour we take calls and discuss what happened with the Astros loss against the Pirates..The second and final hour we take more interesting calls and Brian T. Smith calls in - 45:02The show ends with Chris Gordy and Michael Connor joining us live from the George Springer charity event - 1:07:19

主题：Ashwini Anburajan: How cryptocurrency can help startups get investment capital（点击收听演讲录音）内容简介：We&`&re living in a golden era of innovation, says entrepreneur Ashwini Anburajan -- but venture capital hasn&`&t evolved to keep up, and startups aren&`&t getting the funding they need to grow. In this quick talk, she shares the story of how her company became part of an entirely new way to raise capital, using the powers of cooperation and cryptocurrency.讲者简介:Ashwini Anburajan · Entrepreneur, writerAshwini Anburajan using blockchain to democratize access to capital.-----以下演讲英文稿-----00:01When I was raising investment for my startup, a venture capitalist said to me, "Ashwini, I think you&`&re going to raise a few million dollars. And your company -- it&`&s going to sell for 50 to 70 million. You&`&re going to be really excited. Your early investors are going to be really excited. And I&`&m going to be really upset. So I&`&m not going to invest in this deal."00:26I remember just being dumbstruck. Who would be unhappy with putting four or five million dollars into a company and having it sell for 50 to 70 million?00:41I was a first-time founder. I didn&`&t have a wealthy network of individuals to turn to for investment, so I went to venture capitalists the most common form of investor in a technology company. But I&`&d never taken the time to understand what was motivating that VC to invest.01:00I believe we&`&re living in a golden era of entrepreneurship. There is more opportunity to build companies than ever before. But the financial systems designed to fund that innovation, venture capital, they haven&`&t evolved in the past 20 to 30 years. Venture capital was designed to pour large sums of money into a small number of companies that can sell for over a billion dollars. It was not designed to sprinkle capital across many companies that have the potential to succeed but for less, like my own. That limits the number of ideas that get funded, the number of companies that are created and who can actually receive that funding to grow.01:49And I think it inspires a tough question: What&`&s our goal with entrepreneurship? If our goal is to create a tiny number of billion-dollar companies, let&`&s stick with venture capital, it&`&s working. But if our goal is to inspire innovation and empower more people to build companies of all sizes, we need a new way to fund those ideas. We need a more flexible system that doesn&`&t squeeze entrepreneurs and investors into one rigid financial outcome. We need to democratize access to capital.02:28In the summer of 2017, I went out to San Francisco, to join a tech accelerator with 30 other companies. The accelerator was supposed to teach us how to raise venture capital. But when I got out there, the startup community was buzzing about ICOs, or Initial Coin Offerings. For the first time, ICOs had raised more money for young startups than venture capital had.02:55It was the first week of the program. Tequila Friday. And the founders couldn&`&t stop talking. "I&`&m going to raise an ICO." "I&`&m going to raise an ICO." Until one guy goes, "How cool if we did this all together? We should do an ICO that combines the value of all of our companies and raise money as a group." At that point, I had to ask the obvious question, "Guys, what&`&s an ICO?"03:19ICOs were a way for young companies to raise money by issuing a digital currency tied to the value and services that the company provides. The currency acts similar to shares in a company, like on the public stock market, increasing in value as it&`&s traded online. Most important, ICOs expanded the investor pool, from a few hundred venture capital firms to millions of everyday people, excited to invest. This market represented more money. It represented more investors. Which meant a greater likelihood to get funded. I was sold.04:02The idea, though, of doing it together still seemed a little crazy. Startups compete with each other for investment, it takes hundreds of meetings to get a check. That I would spend my precious 15 minutes in front of an investor talking not just about my own company, but all the companies in the batch, was unprecedented. But the idea caught on. And we decided to cooperate, rather than compete. Every company put 10 percent of their equity into a communal pool that we then split into tradable cryptocurrency that investors could buy and sell. Six months and four law firms later --04:46(Laughter)04:47in January 2018, we launched the very first ICO that represented the value of nearly 30 companies and an entirely new way to raise capital. We got a lot of press. My favorite headline about us read, "VCs, read this and weep."05:05(Laughter)05:08Our fund was naturally more diverse. Twenty percent of the founders were women. Fifty percent were international. The investors were more excited, too. They had a chance to get better returns, because we took out the middleman fees of venture capital. And they could take their money and reinvest it, potentially funding more new ideas faster.05:30I believe this creates a virtuous cycle of capital that allows many more entrepreneurs to succeed. Because access to capital is access to opportunity. And we have only just begun to imagine what democratizing access to capital will do. I would have never thought that my own search for funding would lead me to this stage, having helped nearly 30 companies get investment.05:59Imagine if other entrepreneurs tried to invent new ways to access capital rather than following the traditional route. It would change what gets built, who builds it and the long-term impact on the economy. And I believe that&`&s way more exciting than just trying to invest in the next billion-dollar startup.06:20Thank you.06:21(Applause)