00:00:00 [Music] moving the needle on founder failure one conversation at a time I'm your host Lukas polls and welcome to startup 2.0 by spark XYZ join us each week as we give you access to some of the top investors and entrepreneurs around the country to help you think through and overcome some of the top challenges it started I think there's no better place in the country to be investing then Los Angeles what is the problem that you're solving and for who like what is that specific pain point sometimes when a company is not

00:00:31 listening to its customers and just thinks it knows better than their customers has a really really hard time finding product market fit I want to see somebody that that isn't gonna stop you know this person you just feel like they're gonna they're gonna they're gonna make it work today on the show we welcome Matt's daughter former director of startup boost here in Los Angeles Matt brings decades of experience from starting his career at Yahoo to moving to Apple Matt welcome to the welcome to the show

00:01:06 thanks I'm happy to be here awesome not as they appreciate appreciate you coming on typically where we like to start is just finding out a little bit more about you your background and then diving into some of the more nuanced stuff sure absolutely so my career has been a little bit sort of circuitous I guess you could say I've turned lots of things I have been politics at her editor of LA Times calm yes I worked at Yahoo for seven years in actually originally with launch media which became Yahoo music we were

00:01:42 acquired by Yahoo and from there I worked on advertising marketing promotions for Yahoo and music properties and also then I became head of a Solutions for Yahoo entertainment that led me to do my own consulting on all of those things that I ended up working at Apple for a couple of years doing similar things around Apple music but I always I think from my consulting time I really was very interested in started in the startup community I think that I had done I think all told nine years in corporate life I guess I

00:02:20 could say different and it's a different world to get stuff done to you know do the things you want to do I mean in many ways it's great because we've got so much power behind you I mean the power of the Apple brand and you know once upon a time the Yahoo brand was great to get things done but also but you know it also would take 22 meetings to get anything done inside the company so anyway I mean I enjoyed all of that all of the the stuff that I did there and it was great and awesome and you know Apple

00:02:55 was a great company Yahoo's a great company but I always thought that the entrepreneurial side of things was something that kind of driven me my dad was always involved with smaller companies helping provide mergers between them and negotiate so I was like grew up in this ambience of talking about companies of what they were doing and all the diversity of the different companies and and what their missions were and all those things and so I think I always felt that startups were sort of going to be where I would go after I

00:03:27 learned all this stuff from the corporate life and so that's what I did I ended up leaving Apple to work on a start-up that was a co-working startup I was just looking for an opportunity to do something different and then so I helped them raise money and go automated into the whole startup scene and also working at a co-working business allowed me access to a bunch of startups that were working there so I ended up mentoring them and working with them and all that and then that ended up leading me to work on a project called

00:04:03 startup boost and I got invited by Blake Caldwell the founder of it to be director in LA so I started that whole stint and start a boost was you know a great for a into the LA start B ecosystem that way yeah I mean I've always been a fan of start boost and kind of what you especially what you did there there aren't a lot of programs that are geared the way that you guys geared it towards entrepreneurs I'm not taking equity not not charging anything and so to me it's a very very large boost to helping ecosystems like la that

00:04:44 are developing or starting to get more developed yeah so walk us through some of your time at startup that was like what was the kind of focus like what were you trying to accomplish with the entrepreneurs while they were there well really it was to create a safe space for early-stage startups I mean that the whole impetus was is that we wanted to capture startups that were not you know ready quite yet for seed but yet we're beyond just kind of the idea stage I mean typically it's they've done the MVP

00:05:15 they've gotten their ideas together they may have even raised in friends and family money but they needed that support to get to the next level they didn't really know what to do they didn't really have access to the funding community and you know when I started doing it - a couple of years ago the LA funding community still was kind of forming it still is I mean it's not Silicon Valley but I mean in then that's a good thing it's great because it's so dynamic and flexible and interesting diverse and all

00:05:45 those good things but these companies need a you know kind of a structure to kind of get to that next level so startup boost kind of jumped in to fill that void and and we wanted to create it on a basis where the companies didn't have to pay because they didn't have money to pay there was no stage companies the other thing is that they we didn't want to create like an edge to it where it's like you will take like 5% of your company and you know see you later you know we don't want to have that happen and and the other thing too

00:06:20 is that we wanted them to kind of trust what we're doing for them I mean is there a very formative stage and so you start with that and then you build a mentor community from the LA ecosystem and that is not just investors but it's also people who know marketing people who know accounting people who know other kinds of finance and then also how to position yourself to a funder or to an accelerator or to the next stage what you wanted to do so the whole purpose was to make them come through a process

00:06:56 where they get you know I I'll say this it was the stated purpose was to take them through a process I would get them ready for the next stage I don't accelerator to receive money what really happened was is that it it forces them into a process of maturation about their business what they want to do why they're doing it and then helping them understand how to talk about it and it you know and I'll talk a little bit about the work that I'm doing on coaching later but it really is about sort of getting them to a level where

00:07:30 they felt comfortable and confident enough in their own shoes to actually be able to talk about what they did and to do it really and to really believe in what they do I mean we have we have companies at the very beginning come in and you know sort of like completely sort of chaotic and I'm not really understanding what they're doing or how they're presenting it and it's a mess and then by the time they step on the stage of Google which is where we have our demo day they're like transformed yes it's

00:07:59 awesome to see no that's very exciting yeah so let's dive into some of the stuff that you're working on now so you've transitioned into doing a lot of coaching and consulting for your new venture so taken through technically yeah so I'm partner in the executive coaching firm evolution so evolution has been around for five or six years and it was started by two guys Matt laurenandjack Raber Jeff I knew from Yahoo actually as we've been friends for the over the years and he was actually headed Yahoo

00:08:34 games for a while while I was you know trying to figure out how to monetize Yahoo games so it kind of created a good partnership there but Jeff had been exposed to coaching and thought it was great and so he formed this firm great firm and it's basically about 35 different professionals who are have coaching backgrounds but the most most of them have business backgrounds and experience so that they can apply those those kinds of experiences to the people that did coach so evolution has been around and they've coached companies

00:09:09 like slack and Amazon and snap and many others in the leadership teams and within the management teams we come from a perspective of sort of conscious business you know all of the practices of integration of not only coaching businesses for business sake but also coaching the individuals and trying to connect you know who they are individually and make their goals match who they are individually who they are professionally and how that's all represented in the companies and also in their management and how

00:09:49 they treat employees and things like that so we're called in to kind of help those processes what we call I we in its of individuals and then also how the communication processes are going and the it being the company itself because we have the business background to help these companies so I came on a couple of years ago actually you know I am transitioning more to becoming more full-time in this um and I come at it from the startup community and also the corporate backgrounds so I've been doing

00:10:21 a lot of work with with actually early-stage founders similar to the startup boost work but maybe you know some founders who are a little bit more advanced and some that are less advanced and helping them not only with their business part of the business part of what they're doing but also like how are they showing up for this task a lot of founders and co-founders come to businesses just not kind of knowing what they're getting into they put their lives and their passions and often like their entire savings into these things

00:10:52 and they don't then they arrive there and it's like you know it's you know whatever the old adages of the dog catching the car what everything looks like here they are you know and they have to grow teams they have to keep it together they have to figure out how to be a leader all these things that don't don't come with the idea of like oh this is a great idea we're going to build it you know like how do we actually do that and so you know you encounter issues you know we're a founder is just absolutely

00:11:23 burned out and not you know trying to figure out what they're doing - co-founder issues those like as we always say it's like a marriage you know it's like basically when you get suddenly you know into a business with somebody else you may be it just is not the right thing and how do you map the two realities once the pressure is on yeah so there's a lot of issues like that where we feel like if my work is really is like if they don't solve those issues early it's just going to lead like a ticking time bomb when the series

00:11:54 a comes or the series becomes or the series c comes the whole thing splinter apart you know is it just they they haven't addressed a lot of those issues and so that's that's really where you know the bulk of a lot of my work is and just as a side note we we just announced last week partnership with crosscut ventures honest so we're going to be helping a lot of their companies that are coming through their portfolio they've actually pledged put 1% of their portfolio money towards helping the founders not only with the issues that

00:12:28 I've just discussed but also like mental health issues and there's like that so we're gonna we're happy to be partnering on that initiative and I think we're going to be working with more and people from the investment community to help address these issues I mean part of it is it's a good thing to do you know and it's necessary to do it and there's so much going on with regard to you know founder burnout all those things but it also makes you know kind of good investment sense in the sense of trying

00:12:57 to shore up a lot of these issues before those companies get to be bigger and potentially you know succeed or fail ya know super exciting we actually just had Rick on the show not too long ago oh cool yeah that's great to have you guys yeah working together so as a coach are you coming in like so or you're coming in more at this stage to be able to coach them really like what's kind of the ideal place for people to start kind of having a coach there to challenge them to have these types of conversations so I think the seed stage

00:13:32 makes a lot of sense I mean it's like basically Maps to where the company is I mean the seed stage is great because you kind of address some of the issues before they happen and frankly most of our business has come from the Series C and B on stage to this point because those issues were not addressed early on so that you have company managers and leaders trying to figure out you know how do you build a company culture and how do you build a leadership team and how do you create better communication

00:14:02 systems how do you map as an executive or a CEO you know all those dreams and aspirations that I wanted for this company to what's actually happening so those things you know a lot of our work the bulk of our work is in that leader stage yeah but I think our new initiatives and I'm a lot part of this is how do we get address those things at the seed stage and beyond because I think that we feel that it will forestall those or will prevent those issues from showing up later so we kind of we we man the whole spectrum of

00:14:39 things but I think that we're you know putting new effort you know to to those earlier stages you know which is very exciting yeah I'm definitely a proponent of having those tough conversations early because if you put them off the more explosive to your point they're going to be yeah what maybe we got some free coaching advice right now mm-hmm what what are some of the tough conversations that founders should be having early on maybe at that seed stage with may be either co-founders or other employees or just in the general around

00:15:14 well first I think that you know a lot of it actually sort of dips into some of the psychological issues so I mean we talk a lot about such things as shadows and you know it sounds kind of academic and esoteric but really what we're talking about is when you get into a highly pressured situation like running a business and most of those most founders you know go through hell and high water to kind of get through things it's just exposed you know things that triggers and things that you know from

00:15:48 your personal background that you know you might take up in the therapists office but maybe you don't and maybe it starts to expose itself in the business itself and the way that you treat your employees or the way that you but how you work in all that so I think that the first tough conversation you know a founder has to have is with him or herself in terms of you know what are those things that are holding them back what are those things that show up when when something is not done perfectly for

00:16:18 them do they have what's what's their next action do they end up taking over the whole project from somebody else or do they start you know yelling at them do they you know or how do they how are they managing themselves managing others and how is that aligning with you know their goals if they if they expose those sort of like gaps in terms of like how they want to be and how they actually are why is there a gap you know do we go back and it's like what were those things you know in your background that

00:16:47 kind of sort of propelled you in that direction and why and sort of you know doing this excavation as to why certain behaviors are happening inside the business and how does that connect with who you are and and then you can see how that you know when when you then extrapolate that out to other members of the team and how you know how how is that manifesting itself and we do 360s where it's like we we ask other members of the team how is this executive doing and how does this executive so you get you basically is an

00:17:25 excavation process of of asking others around the founder asking the founder themselves and kind of going through a real deep and examination but what's happening here egg heartfelt thank you to Breck's who without their support this show would not be possible we've seen firsthand the difficulties accessing basic corporate credit without providing a security deposit or personal guarantee early on as companies grow managing expenses has become more difficult and time-consuming which is why we've partnered with Breck's to

00:17:55 offer a corporate credit card that is not personally guaranteed offers higher credit limits provides auto reconciliation and integrates with ERPs using receipt capture Breck's is the credit card let's start ecosystem and we highly encourage you to check a lot of culture and emotional intelligence within the organization especially starting at the seed stage resident is very important because it's very difficult to go back and do this stuff later you might already have a culture established that you might not even be

00:18:27 well aware of if you're later down the line at agency but let's let's dive into some of the other possible mistakes that founders will make early on and you had a lot of success what started boosting coaching a lot of these yesterday prior so let's dive into some of the stuff that I know they they might not be aware of they're making mistakes on yeah well I think a lot of you know you you know as much of more than I do with regard to this topic but I think that there's there's a couple of things one is is you

00:19:09 know driving towards raising money right away I think that's that's one of the biggest things and I think that they are a lot of founders believe that you know raising money from outside investors is the most important thing you know and which is why you get 1500 presentation decks on a daily basis but I think that you know what we started boost and you know my own consulting is steered them away from that as a be the be-all end-all it really ultimately ends up being about you know who are the customers and mining all that and

00:19:54 understanding their customers first you know and and not jumping the gun I think that you know start founders are in a hurry I mean and and it's it's understandable I mean they're putting so much on the line to kind of get to that place where they feel like they can actually build a business and then they think you know a lot of them think you know you you go out of the gate you know raise money you know get get a lot of attention do a lot of marketing and then you're gonna be fine but I think from my point of view and also start a

00:20:30 boost in part of the impetus for starting boost was just simply you've got to sort of take care of the building blocks first who are your customers how are you addressing their customer needs and you know don't boil the ocean you know it's like take take a little bit at a time you know and prove it and then grow it and then grow it and then grow it and then and also don't be afraid to pivot I think the other the other thing that often happens is the refusal to pivot you know I know what's right and

00:21:02 this is this is exactly what the idea should be those successful founders are the ones that understand the customers and and can can pivot to those changes and I would think from an investor point of view and I've heard it for many of them that they value that kind of approach to their startups more than you know this is an amazing idea this is going to take on facebook or this is going to do something that's going to change the world and here we go I'm many investors you know it's like they read

00:21:33 through that right away and so they send them back to the drawing boards so I think that the most important thing is to understand their customer know the business know what they're trying to do and then take it to the next level yeah and I think that obviously like we've just been talking about then also understanding you know what is your stake in this as a founder what it is what is it what kind of impact do you want to make what is your why you know and and what are you trying to do with it and are you really connected to it is

00:22:04 this something that is a true personal goal or do you think it's just kind of a cool idea yeah because if you think is just like a cool idea and you're not personally connected to it you're also going to fail because at some point you're going to realize you're hemorrhaging money and for something that is is you know the other thing is you may have a competitor that is that is more committed and more connected to this idea than you yeah and you're gonna fail yeah the other thing too is that I think that's founders need to understand

00:22:35 the the pivot is so important because it it creates this sense that they are flexible in the business because the first pivot is not going to be the last pivot there's going to be many pivots to come and so I think that if if the founder is committed to the overall idea of serving the customer in the way that the customer needs then those pivots will just be like you know happening all the time no and if they don't do that then then they're gonna be sort of left on the shore yeah yeah I'm very much

00:23:06 agree with the especially the pivots definitely I don't know why it for some reason it's taken is like a negative connotation like oh I had evidence like no you were flexible enough to understand that the you weren't a hundred percent correct about what the customer actually wanted and so you're adjusting to what the customer actually does want and that's how you grow a successful business and impact your point about the raising capital first some reason raising capital is seen as like this is the milestone like if I

00:23:37 raise around like that is something I celebrate it's like when you raise around that's been at work like actually kind of begins right to get to that place like you need to show like BC capital is rocket fuel and a lot of the time like if you don't have a fire built to pour rocket fuel on to it's not gonna do anything and so you're very much right that I'll see a lot of entrepreneurs I'm like yo dude you're not ready you if you - even if you had the opportunity to take these capital right now it would destroy you because

00:24:12 you weren't ready to you putting those building blocks to your point to be able to actually accelerate to the next to that absolutely and I think you know this is where again the kind of the two things that I've been working on kind of Connect which is the the coaching and the startup world in the sense that a lot of startup founders feel like it's a failure to pivot and you know you have to examine why why why do you think you know by taking a business that you feel like is a good idea then you get customer feedback or

00:24:44 even invest your feedback and you decided okay well actually we need to go in this direction why do you think that's a failure yeah you know and then of course you know then the coaching comes in is like where did that start you know why why do you hold yourself into such a high standard that every decision you have to make that you've made has to be perfect because it doesn't you know and business and startups and everything actually everything is not perfect and you have to be ready to make those changes the

00:25:16 other thing is that you know it's kind of interesting there's so much pressure around the development of startup you know and this is gonna sound weird but I think it's true that it's like the fun of it all gets completely except yeah aside you know it's like what an incredible creative endeavor start founders is embarking on and then suddenly all of that sort of the creative aspects of it the fun aspects of it the you know the connected and you feeling like you're part of something and all that starts to go away and you

00:25:50 start to feel this pressure you stay on course to not change to you know I told my uncle who gave me $20,000 that I was going to do this and I was like if I don't do this I'm letting him down yeah when actually the the uncle would probably be really happy to hear that oh you know what I've learned something on this and this is now better and I'm gonna start going off in this direction he's not going to become the cofounders not going to be condemned for making that choice so I think that you know the pressure

00:26:21 and it's not you know of course exclusive to startup world I mean I've seen it in corporate world where people make colossal mistakes about projects that you know I'm gonna go in this direction and you know and then of course the corporate role it becomes all political anybody in my way is gonna get get in you know I'm gonna get them out of my way but you know you know it's it's it's all lessons of life that you have to be flexible and and commit to overall goals you know and not to the you know specifics of everything it's

00:26:56 like you you you commit to what it is that you want to do in life in business in how you want to make an impact the details can change at any point yeah sure yeah so when when you were bringing in startups into into startup boost or when you're evaluating startups even now for clients like what are what are some of the red flags that you end up seeing where you're like like this is not this is a mistake that is avoidable that if you've changed could make this significantly better so what are what

00:27:30 are some of those yeah the biggest one and we get a start a boost our applications have grown significantly over time a couple years ago it was like 50 now we're up to almost 200 applications on eight slots no each each code work and really the the quick you know the the quick road to the rejection pile really has was you know have you talked to customers yet what kind of customer traction what kind of feedback have you gotten on this idea who are your competitors and what they're doing and how they're doing it and and then

00:28:10 who is your team you know all of those things are the thing is that if they if they don't have the expertise on the team if they don't haven't shown you know customer traction and and also even just simply talking to custom then that that's the biggest red flag there can be and then on top of that if you see that they've been doing the same thing for two years that they have gotten no nowhere by just simply staying on course then I think those are red flags and then you look at other things like have they lost co-founders have

00:28:49 they what's happened to their technology so I get they've outsourced all this time why haven't they you know gotten somebody to help dildo that's committed to it all of those things I think are red flags I mean at the end of the day when we talk to them and we when we narrow down the field of companies that can be accepted into the program we do talk to them and I think that some of the founders and a lot of them actually don't really understand how to express all of the things that have happened in

00:29:23 their companies and so when you start to dig into and you interview them and you talk about all of these things you know it turns out that maybe there's actually more there than meets the eye that they actually have the right idea about talking to customers but they don't really know how to do it that they you know have this you know keen sense of who their competition is and where their niche is and but they haven't really expressed that yet so to me I always feel like you know if there's at least a thread showing that

00:29:53 they get it or they're potentially coachable then they potentially could could be turned around you know yeah super interesting what are some of your favorite areas of the startup landscape right now any particular industries that you're kind of excited about or I mean I you know for a while I was really interested in AI and you know sort of machine learning things I you know after having been exposed to a lot of it I it does and a lot of it is indeed exciting about what's happening with with that I do think that sometimes it's

00:30:36 used as kind of a buzzword in terms of like expressing an idea you know and I think then I've learned you know you've got to kind of come back down to like what does that mean and what is it actually helping and all those things I do you think that that whole area if it's used the right way is truly you know revolutionary and amazing I also think that I continue to think we've had a couple of startups come through startup loose that the energy sector is something that is really exciting to me still and I think that renewable energy

00:31:07 we had a company come through our cohort a couple cohorts ago that focused on the batteries that actually are inside cars for electric cars to actually help better monitor and manage the battery's life and which could be a revolutionary thing with regard to hybrid cars and eventually driverless cars too and they've got National Science Foundation grants and things like that since so I think that there's a lot a lot of things that are happening that in that field and then I think payments to is interesting not only in in this country

00:31:52 but I think really in the developing world I think is something that is a huge opportunity we had a company called al golpe come through our one of our cohorts and Anna who is the founder of that is she went on to go through TechStars cohort and now she's getting a lot of attention for what she's doing it's really to solve kind of the electronics payments systems in in the Middle East of all places and I think that you know if if she gets it right there it could really dramatic explode in terms of what what the

00:32:33 possibilities are very seven yeah very exciting so we talked about we've talked a lot about the VC entrepreneurship side like them actually making investments let's flip the table a little bit what should entrepreneur be looking for in a VC we know that this is very much like a marriage and you actually surely like it's a short term but what are some of the questions that maybe aren't renewer should be asking the VCS like what should they look for in the VC space like how do they even start thinking about it so yeah I think that

00:33:16 and I know that there's like lots of differences of opinion about this but I think that I really think that if you're out there trying to find an investor you need to find one that really isn't best invested in the subject matter of what you're doing and or at least really understands it understands I mean in a strategic way I think that's it you know makes a lot of sense to connect with an investor who really understands your vertical your industry vertical who could then can provide help contacts in

00:33:49 addition to money and guidance you know that I think that's that is the best ask you know that best relationship that a not return can have an investor is one that is is providing resources and money connections and then also guidance so I think that you know short of that I think going and getting random investment from VCS or institutional investors and all that it can help you I think in later stages when you've got your your your whole act together but I think in the early stages it's particularly important that you have an

00:34:28 investor that sort of signed on and understands exactly what you're trying to do and actually isn't somewhat involved if not wholly involved in that industry okay very insightful the I guess the last piece is what what final words of advice would you have for for entrepreneurs that are out there well I think that entrepreneurship is a really exciting thing and I think that you know for me personally I've been I've been through all of it I mean I in terms of like I've worked for for the first part of my career I worked at a

00:35:05 non-profit I worked for you know as I said the LA Times then I worked went to corporate world and and then I've worked in startups I think in all of those experiences I think that the idea of becoming a start-up founder and an entrepreneur is the most exciting and most you know potentially satisfying thing you can do in your in your life to create a new idea and see it through and be in control of that it's exciting but I think at the at the end of the day you really have to do a self check as to

00:35:44 whether you're ready to go on that on that journey yeah and I think that you have to be ready that in a way that you know that you would have to get ready for like a mission to moon yeah I mean you have all the supplies and oxygen necessary do you have you know the right course mapped out on your your math do you are you ready for the fact that you know you may your engine may shut off in the middle of the mission for moon are you ready for all these things that could happen and are you ready to you know float off into the

00:36:24 ether if that happens you know I mean I don't want to take this too far but I'm really good but you have to be ready for all of these things and if you are I actually think that you can mitigate all of those things if you in in your core you understand what it is that you're trying to do you have some capability about an understanding about what you're trying to do invite others into this picture invite others to go along on this journey whether it's people who can advise you your customers everything

00:36:56 else because at the end of the day I think most people would be rooting for you if you lead them in that direction I think that alone will get you to where you need to go so I think that be ready but then also rely upon others and support to help get you there and then clearly bring them bring people along in that in that golden on mission and then you know you'll get there you'll get there awesome yeah great final words I'm not how do people reach you they can reach me at on my evolution email it just simply mapped

00:37:32 out starter at evolution up team or they can reach me through twitter my handle is at Matt's daughter ma TTS Tod ter direct message me there or find me on LinkedIn pretty easy to find awesome appreciate you taking the time to come on the show happy they come again yeah