00:00:01 moving the nito on founder failure of one conversation at a time I'm your host Justin Gordon and welcome to startup 2.0 by spark XYZ Duras each week as we give you access to some of the top investors and entrepreneurs in the country to help you think through and overcome the top challenges that startups face I think there's no better place in the country to be investing than 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

00:00:29 listening to his customers and just thinks it knows better than it customers has a really really hard time finding product market fit I want to see somebody that that isn't you know this person you just feel like they're gonna they're gonna they're gonna make it work today's guest Santa Barbara who is the managing director of tech stars LA where she's in a great job helping grow the tech ecosystem in Los Angeles she's also a coach and advisor to founders and her background includes being a corporate

00:01:02 lawyer as well as a McKinsey consultant and entrepreneur and now welcome to the show thanks Justin great to be here yeah happy to have you on the show and obviously we're gonna go in-depth into all things tech stars to start with though what is like an overview of what tech stars is and what your role is with the company tech stars is the global network that helps entrepreneurs succeed and it's been around since 2007 it was started in Boulder Colorado by two founders who had exited their company and they wanted to

00:01:29 find a better way of helping other founders than just writing them a check so they decided to do it as an experiment and they teamed up with Brad Feld for that first accelerator and it worked really well and so they did it again and now flash forward to today we have 51 programs around the world and a bunch of other services including Startup Weekend startup week so we really think about supporting entrepreneurs from inspiration to I pee ow and the main way we do that is through the accelerator vehicle yep and so with

00:02:00 the Los Angeles base accelerator then like what are you looking for and companies that are applying or companies actually end up getting accepted into that accelerator program yeah so we actually have three programs in LA which is pretty exciting we've tech stars music we have tech stars space which are vertically focused and then the one I run is techstars la which is focused on the ecosystem you know so we think more about stage and kind of readiness to get to get the value out of the accelerator

00:02:23 than any particular vertical or investment thesis and what we're looking for is a proceed company that has an MVP or a product that's ready to commercialize and get in front of customers maybe a little bit of revenue but still some questions and work to do around defining a go to market strategy so where we really focus in the program is surrounding the company with mentors with network with other founders and with a process to learn quickly and kind of define that go to market strategy so then they can use that as a basis for

00:02:55 growth yeah which is obviously a huge value add for going through the program in the first place and with techstars LA they're like how many companies are you seeing I mean how many applications are you seeing through this process and so we've run the program for three years we've just opened up applications you know applications are open now and closed on April 5th 2020 okay for the for the 2020 program so 30 companies have gone through the program so far we'll do another ten this year you know

00:03:22 I mean I don't know I've never counted I've met with thousands and entrepreneurs most of them here in LA you know one-on-one meetings with hundreds so it's in the it's in the thousands and honey you know the hundreds and the thousands that were that we're talking to yeah and then for the program to I mean obviously so many different people you're meeting with to find the right people for this what does that process look like the due diligence process for you as you're accepting companies into tech stars yeah it's a

00:03:48 really interesting process because it's it's hyper hyper fast right we have to we essentially if you think about it as in it as an investment process we're making ten investments all at the same time on one day in May and the entire decision process is compressed so I haven't met you know I'm meeting with companies over an eight to twelve week period getting to know hundreds of companies and then you know inviting ten to be part of this program so what that means from a process perspective is that

00:04:17 we have to get really good at making quick decisions and those quick decisions generally are about the team as if to anything else we're not doing a whole lot of deep due diligence on market sector or working a really disciplined thesis about where we think growth is the way I look at it is I'm looking to back amazing teams and I know they're gonna figure out a great business you know as long as it's technology and able and has some potential to scale when I'm really looking for is are you coachable

00:04:49 are you humble do you have what it takes to really stick it out I want someone that has so much passion and conviction for what they're doing that when it gets hard in three years or four years or five years they're still going to have the power to kind of get it out and make it happen and in a comment what I favor kind of founder is a combination of experienced and humble so done something before knows how hard it is and therefore understands the value of having a lot of mentorship and help and

00:05:18 support so second and third time founders are actually they like I've had a lot of people have an amazing experience at second time and third time founders go through this program because they appreciate the value of it more than someone maybe who doesn't know what's ahead of them yet so a first-time founder and there's a huge benefit to you know ignorance is bliss or or you know not knowing how hard it is that can give you an optimism that is also like a really important quality for a founder so you know both of those things are

00:05:47 cheering us yeah and then going deep around like the founders in evaluating them and what are some of those questions you're asking I'm just looking to see how they started some before so their second time or third time founder but are there any particular questions you're asking them to figure this out orders to decide like is this the right team like I just want to get deeper into that side yeah so one things I ask is what's the vision for your customers that you see that they don't see for themselves and that really puts them in

00:06:09 the position of like defining what the future is that they're trying to create and I want to see that it's really big and also that they have a real insight about their customers that's kind of driving their business another question I would ask is what would be the reasons that you and your co-founders would break up you know what would you because that's gonna get to what your values are and I'm trying to really get underneath what they're saying to understand what motivates them yeah it makes no sense

00:06:35 and with that to these teams like are you looking for is it all like to three or four people is every ever solo founders that go through text I was like tell me more about that side of things so that's a great question because we always say Oh solo founders have a hard time and we don't like to take solo founders and I always take solo founders so I mean last year I think I had five solo founders in the program so so I think it's one of those things where there's there's a rule and then there's

00:06:58 always an exception to the rule so and it's about it's about finding phenomenal people that I believe will be able to attract and retain the right and motivate the right talent yeah so the solo founders I had last year all kind of fit that bill and they were all able to build great teams around them and bring people into TechStars with them who weren't cofounders but were just as dedicated as they were to the company and that's really what it's about it's not about having co-founders it's about

00:07:24 having people to share the journey with you whether or not they're actually a co-founder yeah one of the things you mentioned earlier too is the the mentors and the mentorship they get in the actual program so with the tech stars like survivor when they're in the program how does that mentorship thing play a part of it like how is that organized curious about that too so we fine-tune this a lot over the years we have run now over 200 techstars programs so if you think about it now we've done the

00:07:48 same thing you know and we've tweaked it a little bit every time so the way it works now and the way we're running it in TechStars LA is a you know we have something called Mentor office hours which everybody calls mentor madness even though we're not really supposed to call it that but it's it's a couple weeks of back-to-back 20-minute meetings with our core mentor pool who's trained and done this before he does this every year and the value of having a bunch of meetings all at once is really that you

00:08:15 get tremendous amount of feedback on your idea in your company and how you're communicating it right and on where where you might look for for growth or the questions that you're asking so you get a lot of feedback all at once and then from that pool you pick five people that you're really connected with or you think can really help you and that becomes your kind of core advisory board during the program and some of those people end up being actual advisors to the company being investors in the

00:08:42 company some of them go and join the company so those relationships can get really deep and those people kind of stick with you and support your journey through the program so it's kind of like a speed-dating process that also has a lot of strategic value yeah and one things too I know you've written about like EQ and leadership like how do you kind of either coach them on that or help founders through like that side of things cuz I'm sure a lot of it all this stuff like building your business and

00:09:06 everything but what about working on themselves like how do you help them through that yeah so so if you think about techstars as having sort of different lines of curriculum through it so there's kind of finding product market fit right as one kind of working on the business and then there's kind of the funding strategy so that's another one which is communicating your vision and then figuring out who the right investors are and then like the third strand of is is working on you and the team and that is you know so we do these

00:09:35 kind of micro courses around things like presents and mindfulness and communication and you know how to give feedback like how to be a coach and I think we're introducing a lot of these topics and it's a short time period so there's some things that people choose to dig into and other ones that maybe it kind of doesn't land for them at that moment and they're not ready to kind of work on that issue right then and then maybe they go back to it afterwards but we're doing a little bit of that every

00:10:03 week yeah tailored it's tailored towards that too depending on what they yeah and you know one thing I'm really big on and it's kind of a hallmark of the program and when we say like personal growth drives company growth or we believe in EQ or something is vulnerability this is something brené Brown talks about a lot and I'm a big proponent of kind of vulnerability as being the key to strength and courage and kind of modeling that for people so one thing we do in tech stars is we start the program

00:10:33 with we do these founders stories which are kind of unvarnished stories of what it's really like on the front lines and having people who've had a huge success come in and talk about what it was really like because it always looks great from the outside and then the real story is never that great and so I start the program by giving my own life story which you know isn't necessarily a founder story it's just my life's although I was a founder but it's really my life story you know and talking about

00:10:59 how what actually I've been through might look different from what you might read about on LinkedIn or you might see when you see me doing one of these right and that kind of creates an atmosphere where other people feel open to being vulnerable themselves right and it's really important for me that we create that kind of community because that's what makes the community strong yeah and even how does that working on afterwards after they'd gone to the text arts program what is available to them you

00:11:24 mentioned the community side like what is available for them after they go through the program even yeah so lots lots of kind of ongoing engagement with the network we have an annual founder conference that we do which is really fun up in the Bay Area we you know the relationships continue we're doing monthly calls with all the all the classes Wow sort of and those groups are sort of staying together like class reunions we've got a pretty active slack community that everyone's involved with that's here in LA we do live meetups

00:11:54 every month every other month and you know we have a private global text our social network called techstars connects where people are posting and asking for questions we've got a private Talent Network for hiring so we have a ton of kind of different both digital and in-person ways of engaging with the community and we're actually rolling out more and more we've got over 2000 companies in the TechStars network now around the world so you know one of the big initiatives that we're continually working on is how do we provide more

00:12:24 scaffolding and value for our whole portfolio yeah and then with that too I mean how do you how do you leverage like what the insights they have within like the next class coming through how do you take those and teach them as you're you're always they're always learning things from these companies have gone how do you do that yeah so when you think about it's both in person and then kind of online right so there's digital ways of doing this so the digital way would be TechStars connect we have an

00:12:47 investor sort of guidebook where if you're about to speak with an investor you can look up and see who else has worked with that investor and what's their review of that investor and can I call them to talk about that investor yeah right so so that's kind of the digital version of that the in-person version is peer mentorship so we have all these alums in LA now we've got 80 companies in LA that have been through a techstars program you know there's 500 employees working for a company that went

00:13:14 Texters / and that's a big community so we're doing one-on-one matching we're a new company comes in and they get matched with a peer mentor to kind of introduce them and Shepherd them into that community so there's both in-person and then there's digital awesome and then with that - then looking at like the challenges that Stars face you've had so many people go through the program already what are some of those top challenges you see and we have to ask everyone this but if one has a different answer so I'm

00:13:36 curious as to what you think some of those main challenges of startups face what do I think the challenges are for the startups okay so I think about this in terms of different founder personas I would say so I think I think there's the founder persona where the founders in love with their own idea right and they made their problem might be that they're not actually getting feedback from the market because they're too in love with our own idea so what that founder has to really work on is you know being more

00:14:04 disciplined about customer discovery and really accepting the data as opposed to trying to make the data fit their theory so that might be be one issue another one might be a founder who you know has such a level of customer empathy that they have trouble figuring out how they're gonna make money you know because they really want to help people and that's great that can be incredibly motivating to build a huge business but you also have to have a business model on top of that so another one might be a

00:14:34 founder who's really driven by the product and falling in love with the product you know a lot of engineering founders tend to be like this so they're looking at their business from the perspective of launching a great product but maybe it doesn't maybe they haven't really thought about whether there's a real market or they're actually solving a problem that is that anyone cares about they're just they're just in love with what they're building so those are some of the I think problems that may

00:15:02 create blind spots for people in seeing how to grow their business and then of course there's the other sort of standard problems of you know runway and you know matching fundraising to to revenue and you know being able to hire and find people to build you know build your thing but those are sort of more I would say everyday pedestrian problems that are that you know everyone faces whereas I think the kind of founder archetype problems tend to be more specific yeah and then and then with textures - are there any particular

00:15:32 companies either stand out for a good reason stand out have done well and you if you want to highlight now and why they think they've done so well I mean a couple of examples that are you know more visible companies here in LA that have been through techstars there's a company called slingshot aerospace which is a satellite data analytics company founded by a really interesting team brother and sister-in-law one with an entrepreneurial background and another and his sister-in-law Melanie Strickland

00:16:02 who had a 20-year career in the Air Force so that's a really interesting team because they brought together founders with different perspectives so three founders Auld with wildly different backgrounds and they're solving a really deep technical problem and they have both a government user base as well as an industry user base and they're also running a distributed team so half their teams in Austin and half their teams here in LA so so so really interesting and it was interesting when they came to tech stars

00:16:34 because they came in with a lot of experience but never having worked together full-time and they wanted to use tech stars as the laboratory to kind of get their company kicked off and figure out the rules of engagement of how they were gonna run the company and how they were gonna work with each other and also for the two founders coming from the Air Force how they were going to transition from the Air Force into you know the startup world which is just a different beast with different rules so that's one one interesting one

00:17:03 another one is furnish you know furniture subscribe Furniture subscription service really interesting strong team really complicated problem and you know high level of execution that they're you know they're going through and so they were really using text stars to sort of fine tune their business model and think through some things at the time this is now two years ago you know what about how they thought about direct-to-consumer versus you know channel sales and they've continued to grow and do really well in both those

00:17:37 companies like in LA it's just been really exciting to watch them progress yeah and with tears too you mentioned just like 10 companies to come in like it's not that many I just saying they come in so like all those companies you see how are you organizing the ones that don't get in or you say oh yeah apply next year like how does that process work then because you see so many companies like how do you manage that side of things with like so many companies coming in you can't take all of them yeah and I mean I first of all I

00:18:02 tried to if I'm talking to companies about TechStars my first goal is to figure out how I can help those founders and what it is that they need right now and if it's not techstars to help them find another program so there's some earlier stage programs and in town that are great they're startup boost there's grid 110 so helping them make connections to a program like that their textures programs all over the world so I also do a lot of referring out in particular because we have some really strong vertical programs you know

00:18:32 so so a space company our cup you know is going to be do much better in the space program you know we have a prop tech program with Collier's you know in Toronto you know we have an AI program we've got insure tech program so we've got these kind of vertical programs when in some cases founders I meet might be a better fit for one of those so I'd refer them out yeah I mean it's Tech's are just huge there's so many programs I know people I think someone la mentioned they had done like either the boulder

00:18:59 one or something and moving the company but there are different programs those different options at least for them and like I said there's there's early-stage options too in grade one time we've had Mickey from yeah as well yeah that's great oh and she's great and they do an amazing job and we've had three companies I've gone from grid one ten into tech stars LA so yeah I just saw her yesterday actually and I was like who do you have Mickey who should I meet yeah and then with with what the company

00:19:25 as well so with tech stars so there's not some reasons why company succeed and they do amazing but there's many reasons what companies fail as well I mean what have you seen why companies fail I know there's different challenges they face but ultimately why do they actually fail when companies fail there's a thousand reasons there's didn't find product market fit you know and it just wasn't there and and weren't able to pivot enough I mean not finding product market fit is not a death knell right it just

00:19:52 me you need to try something different so the reason you die is if you don't find product market fit and you run out of money before you can write but I have seen a lot of companies go through didn't find product market fit ran out of money decided to bootstrap until they figured it out struggled figured something out shifted directions and then started to get momentum and then were able to raise money so so I think I think it has to do you know do you find something that works and that you're excited to build

00:20:26 right before you either get tired or run out of money and now we'll take a quick break and hear from our sponsor Breck's a big 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 offer a corporate credit card

00:20:56 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 of a start ecosystem and we highly encourage you to check them out and back to the show so what industries of you kind of startup landscape are you most excited about right now Anna so right now I'm really excited about the consumer a tient consumerization of things like education and health care and also the kind of transition to the

00:21:31 consumerization of work really so I'll just talk about what I mean I mean I'm interested in health care generally but mostly the side that I'm interested in is the consumer side of health care so how we diagnose you know how we how we take care of care of ourselves and kind of wellness platforms at the consumer level I think it's just there's a lot of amazing companies in this area and I think we're gonna see a lot more there's on the education side I think you know we're undergoing a massive transformation about what education even

00:22:00 is right I think part of that is people taking more individual control over their own education whatever that means to them and there's a ton of interesting stuff both at the k-12 level and you know the university level and then kind of ongoing lifelong education and then the consumerization of work is really around the idea that the old model of getting hired by a company having a nine-to-five job where you would stay five plus years you know that comes along with benefits and you know an advancement plan doesn't really exist

00:22:31 anymore and what we're moving towards is more the portfolio model of work and this is happening at all levels of the economy including knowledge workers you know including what would have been considered blue color you know in white color you know and gig economy workers and so I think platforms to serve those workers how they communicate with each other how they find work how they you know arrange things around benefits you know how they get paid how they show their credentials which then crosses

00:23:02 over with the education thing I think all of that stuff is really fascinating and then you know here in LA you know I think we were just in a really interesting time thinking about mobility the the mayor's office just you know they just launched this urban mobility lab right which is really designed to think about how do we move around this city LA is now the third largest economy after Tokyo and New York and it's growing rapidly so when you layer on top of that the idea that we have the Olympics coming

00:23:35 and we have you know the traffic in the city is just gonna get more intense I think we're going to see a lot of mobility innovation in the next decade yeah and I and I hope a lot of that will be driven by local startups yeah on that point to him how are you kind of looking at these things are evaluating what's coming out they're keeping tabs on what's maybe next or what trends may be coming up are you in particularly no publication you're looking at how how do you personally do that I keep keep up to

00:24:01 date so I I read I would say all the sort of typical tech publications Axios the information TechCrunch etc but I'm really excited about the launch of da la so and and the idea that we're gonna have a media outlet dedicated to tech and industry in Los Angeles and doing deep analysis as well as news coverage on all those things for this market is incredibly as exciting so that is just launched but I'm hoping that will become I kind of go to publication yeah and I'm sure every like a VC every acceleration

00:24:37 in LA is like yes like thank you you're helping my job is make it easier as well to find at least different options and like makes us more in depth on how they focus well we're all really excited about it because they think you know if you think about Ellie's geography as kind of a metaphor for LA's industry and that it's really spread out it's really disparate a lot of the pieces that make up LA don't necessarily touch each other here and that's also true for the tech industry there's this incredible stuff

00:25:03 happening you know out in Pasadena and JPL and you know down in El Segundo and then and then silicon beach and there's not really good connectivity between all those things so the idea so that's the thesis of tottaly and the idea that there will be this kind of media platform to bring it all together and knowledge share and then also provide a you know a a megaphone to to share that story those stories you know with the greater global community to shine a light on what's happening here in LA I mean I think I

00:25:35 think you know I think it's gonna be really valuable yeah especially with more and more companies coming out they're doing huge things like honey you know what I mean oh wait what's that lady doing what's happening because these big companies are coming out which is interesting yeah as well you know and I do want to say I think we get a little smug about our you know hashtag la la I mean I think I think it's important for us to recognize and accept like we've we've we have issues you know we have we

00:26:01 have a homeless problem here in LA we have a big transportation issue we do not have you know we can say we're doing relatively better on diversity and inclusion you know than other markets but the fact is we have a long way to go and all those things so I am long LA I will get out my pom-poms and be a cheerleader for this community but I also think that we we have to at the same breath acknowledge that you know we have a lot of problems that we need to continue to work right and that and that working to build as we

00:26:35 grow to not exacerbate or worsen those problems but to actually use growth to improve the quality of life for all Angelenos and also kind of improve the diversity inclusion of the tech ecosystem like we have got to keep those things front and center yeah and have you seen many companies kind of addressing these issues or these problems or trying to even look like homelessness or any things you've seen so many companies over the you know I'm just curious if you've seen any I mean helping or trying to I worked with a

00:27:06 company in a Startup Weekend that over the course of a weekend they developed an app or a text message service that would tell people looking for a place to sleep where there wasn't available bad that night right so this is just a team of people that hooked up over weekend to do this and then I was having a conversation with someone in the mayor's office who said does anybody know someone who's working on this and I said you know what yeah I know a team because they worked on this in this startup

00:27:35 weekend and so you know we were able to put them together and connect them and you know maybe that will now go somewhere so I think that's just a great example of how the tech community can kind of support you know and actually use technology to solve real problems you know in terms of companies who are who are doing great things in this area there's a number of companies that are helping companies identify and hire diverse candidates right people come to me all the time saying okay well I would

00:28:06 like my company to be more diverse you know but I can't find candidates right there are you know there are six great companies who are who are helping solve that problem right by providing a marketplace and a platform to connect people with talent so that kind of thing you know these aren't easy problems to solve but they're problems worth solving yeah and then with the textures being accelerator and just look at the ecosystem of accelerators and venture capital firms I mean how have you seen that change or

00:28:36 evolve in the last couple years where do you see that going being more of them less of more specially I'm just curious on what your thoughts are on I mean wow it's it's unbelievable to me how many new entrants there are in the early stage investing market in LA just in the last four years and I know you'll talk to people who've been kind of leaders in this market much longer than I have you know who will talk about the massive change since 2010 the massive state changed since 2000 but even just in the

00:29:05 past four years I think we've seen an explosion of new you know new accelerators new incubators you know new early-stage funders which from my perspective is great I think you know there was a stat 280,000 companies started in LA in the last five years that's not really a fair stat because that's essentially anybody who's registered a business name so it doesn't really mean tech startups or you know actual companies it could just be someone's DBA for their for their side gig but there certainly are a you know

00:29:40 is a lot of innovation happening and we need that infrastructure you know in one model I think is really interesting that's coming a lot more in splays the studio model there's a lot of new studios launching you know and they can be more intentional about looking for opportunities and kind of spinning up new companies around those opportunities as opposed to what I do which is really working with people that have already started something yeah and with that see what they're being so many different options I mean what do

00:30:06 you suggest people do or founders and trying to choose which program to enter which ones right for them because now they have so many choices at different levels they have different everything's different in terms of what they could do like how should they think through I have this company or I should go do this accelerator apply this accelerator like what should I do in that circumstance so I think every decision about how to fund your company or what program you go through should be wrapped around the

00:30:32 idea of what are you trying to learn or solve for right so so there's one approach which is to think about it from the perspective of kind of collecting funding accolades or rounds like okay I'm gonna go do tech stars and then I'm going to do my seed round with XYZ investor and then I'm going do my series day with this investor great that may all happen but that's not about the business that you're building so the reason to do any program is because you think it's gonna help you solve problems in the business and

00:31:03 really build a stronger business so when someone says to me oh I think it's a good idea to go to tech stars because I'll be able to raise a seed round I'm like no that's not why you come do techstars you come do TechStars because you know we're facing a really big question we've got consumers interested but we really think we're b2b and we need to figure this out because we don't want to go off in one direction and then realize the business is actually in the other direction that's a great thing to

00:31:29 problem-solve an accelerator so so I guess in terms of different programs I mean it's hard for me to comment because I'm I don't know the insides those other programs so I would just say think about what you're trying to get out of it what you're trying to learn what network you're trying to build where you want to be at the end yeah you know and then talk to the team that's running in about whether the program is actually designed to help you get there yeah and to a point I mean who who is techstars like

00:31:53 perfect for in theory yeah let's go talk about that then yeah I would say a team small team able to you know rapidly iterate which usually means technical town on the team because if you're gonna test and learn quickly you gotta be able to build stuff yeah and get it out the door has a product maybe had some early customers raised a little bit of money probably to pull the team together and has already Illustrated that they can make progress I'm really big on seeing people that can actually tell me you're

00:32:25 gonna do something in six weeks come back to me six weeks later or say it was done because I know those teams are gonna get a lot out of the program because they're gonna be able to execute right we're looking for execution but still have some big questions about how they should go to market or you know maybe we don't know what how to price we don't know how our customer really is like we're not really sure which features that we should go for something like that where they have like big questions that they want to work yeah

00:32:52 because what we do is we do kind of like weekly learning sprints so it's a good opportunity to just just kind of test and learn a bunch of stuff all at once yeah and when you do that and it works you can you can show some really interesting data and growth from your time there that then you know that what we work on in last part of the program is around storytelling I mean all startups are about storytelling right whether you're talking to customers where they were talking to potential partners whether

00:33:19 you're talking to investors where they're trying to get someone to come join your company you've got to be a storyteller like the great founders I call them Pied Pipers like not because of this show but because they're able to get people to follow them you know the story of the Pied Piper is that you know the rats all followed the Pied Piper and jumped off the cliff so but but to help people become those powerful storytellers yeah I mean how do you do that then how do you help them through that type of process so I mean we help

00:33:48 them find the story that's organic to them so I I you know I and this is like my absolute favorite thing to do I love to workshop stories that is like where I'm most happy you know have them it's it's sometimes it's about pulling out from the founder like a combination or the team like a combination of why they're doing this and how that maps on to why they care about their customers right the thing about these stories is there's always an emotional element to it right yeah even if it's you know you

00:34:19 know even if even if it doesn't seem like something that would that you would necessarily feel emotional about there's there's some customer pain somewhere in there you know you know I mean we had a team catalog that had developed a developed a a service for small businesses to help them get product photography you know it's a really big pain point if you're trying to compete as a small beauty company and competing against you know a large cosmetics company you need to have a lot of content and so that story was all built

00:34:55 around that pain of that you know entrepreneur trying to launch a new beauty brand into a crowded space you know if you come from a perspective of empathy that's where you're gonna get a great story yeah and with that too I mean you love what else about it do you love like the storytelling aspect of it is so important I mean for you personally like why for you are you so interested so I come from a publishing background my dad was a book editor my mom was a literary agent I spent my childhood writing stories and I have the

00:35:26 collection of all the stories I wrote as a kid so so that's just kind of my roots I think and putting together a narrative you know just to me is the most interesting and important work and it goes with something else that I also love which is which is kind of designing designing a framework so I think I think business models are also narratives so my other favorite thing to do is to kind of ingest a lot of data with a founder of what they're seeing yeah and then interpret it and say okay what this is

00:35:57 telling me about what you should do what your strategy should be you know is is X Y Z so all that to me fun you know it's basically the process of making sense of the world and then communicating it out to other people and that's what I really enjoy yeah and how did you end up at text errors in the first place really roundabout way I mean I've had it I've had a super weird career you know and it doesn't make any sense and I just at the time every individual thing I did made sense but you know I

00:36:28 started as a corporate lawyer I went to McKinsey and then in 1999 everyone was leaving McKinsey to go work as startups you know that was like web 1.0 so I went and did web 1.0 I worked at pet store calm which was not the sock puppet it was the other one and then I you know got interested in working in entertainment and being closer to my publishing roots and so I moved to LA and I opened a talent management agency and I ended up producing movies and so I was close to storytelling but I wasn't doing the storytelling myself I was

00:37:00 working with storytellers yeah and then I met a woman on an airplane and had this great idea for a business which was to do a store where kids make their own books storytelling again right helping kids be storytellers and it was funny I just had a moment I was about to give birth to my second child and my fourth child total because I also had two stepkids at the time and I met this woman on the airplane I knew we were gonna go do this this together I just I had this feeling I like the hair on my arms standing up

00:37:31 and I was like this is it so I shuddered my management business and we went and launched that company we got a dive way deeper into that weight so you met me on the airplane let's start a business together what pretty why don't you vet her to be like oh yeah this is gonna be there so she went to Yale I went to Yale so we combined it over that we're both parents you know so we kind of had a lot in common if she was wearing this t-shirt that said mrs. Darcy which is a reference to Pride and Prejudice which

00:38:01 is my favorite book so we just instantly hit it off and you know I never talked to people in planes and I know a lot of people are like that it's like put your little you know don't talk to me all right you put up your little defenses now I tell people always be open to talking to someone on a plane because you don't know what might happen yeah so is a cross-country flight we were sitting in business class just the two of us and so we had the whole flight to talk and and I just I had a lot of conviction that this idea should exist

00:38:30 in the world right and it also seemed like a really interesting business problem how do you how do you create a build-a-bear retail entertainment format that also has a book production facility baked into it you know and make that work and make it profitable right and so my wheels were just turning and I knew I had to kind of work on that problem yeah and so you worked on that and now getting to them moving forward then yeah the tech stars oh yeah sorry I got distracted because that was just talk if

00:39:01 you want airplanes who does this yeah so I went through a big journey with that and we ended up launching it as a digital product too because the iPad came out so we had conceived the original business back in 2006 and the iPad came out in 2010 and so it had another life as a digital publishing tool for basically elementary school students sold that company moved on from there and was coaching and advising and consulting and you know realized that what I really wanted to do was help other entrepreneurs I had now launched

00:39:34 or created things a number of times and I had a lot of a lot of hard-earned wisdom let's just say about things including this idea of having EQ being important because it wasn't something that was one of my strengths as a young CEO and so I became really interested in helping other people develop those skills so I was actually getting certified as a coach and I got a call from a friend saying hey there's a business opportunity to run a TechStars accelerator I recommended you I think you'd be great

00:40:09 and so that's how it happened and now at tech stars I mean how is your day-to-day spent like what are you doing what are some of the activities you're doing for those who don't know like what you actually do every day I mean mostly what I do is talk to founders right and mostly what I do is help founders you know so it's either companies that I'm already working with so talking to them you know I was just talking to someone about you know an issue brainstorming an issue around stock option compensation

00:40:40 you know for employees working with another company that is debating whether to raise more capital or reduce expenses and go for profitability so working with portfolio companies around things like that and then just meeting new founders and trying to understand what makes them tick you know why are they doing what they're doing and you know I mean I could do that all day I just think it's interesting I find entrepreneurs fascinating I always just want to understand why they're doing it what there's what they see why this matters

00:41:07 to them you know and then ideally like there's some specific way I can help them yeah and one thing is I'm always curious about with will there be entrepreneurs VCS whoever how do you manage your time in terms of when you like start or stop or because you could in theory look at companies all day you could be taking more meetings all day how do you decide on what you do yeah I mean not well because I tend to be a little bit of a workaholic [Music] [Laughter] yeah and you know like you said there's

00:41:40 always an endless amount to do so I try now to construct my week around the things that are non-negotiable which is time with my kids which is getting to the gym or going to yoga you know the things that I need to do to kind of take care of myself and I put those on my calendar first you know and then the work stuff kind of gets slotted in around that right that's no that's the only way I've found to do it that really works and then I don't check in on I usually either Saturday or Sunday I'm just completely dark and I'm just with

00:42:14 my family so yeah but if you don't do that and you flip it and you allow your life to fill in the spaces then it won't happen yeah that never works and I where can people go to learn more about techstars and all you're doing TechStars calm and my Twitter account Anna W barber is a great place I think I have a pin tweet up there about the applications so as of when this will be released I think applications will be open yeah and I'm so I'm pretty easy to find there on Twitter and also on TechStars comm there's a blog page for

00:42:49 me too awesome thank you so much of the time today Anna thanks so much it was really fun thanks for checking out stirrup 2.0 from spark XYZ if you want to learn more about startups and investing and check us out join the ecosystem at spark XYZ dot IO