Inside Outside

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with Jackie Miller, Program Director of the Corporate Innovation Fellowship at On Deck. She's also a former corporate innovator at Chobani and Chanel. Jackie and I talk about the ups and downs of corporate innovation and the benefits that a community of peers can bring to helping both startups and corporates navigate today's fast-paced world of change. Let's get started.

Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast, to help the new innovators navigate what's next. Each week, we'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to learn, grow, and thrive in today's world of accelerating change and uncertainty. Join us as we explore, engage, and experiment with the best and the brightest innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneering businesses. It's time to get started.

Interview Transcript with Jackie Miller, Program Director of the Corporate Innovation Fellowship at On Deck

Brian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger. And as always, we have another amazing guest. Today, we have Jackie Miller. She is the Program Director of Corporate Innovation Fellowship at On Deck. Which is an accelerator for startups and careers. Welcome to the show, Jackie.

Jackie Miller: Thanks, Brian. Happy to be here. 

Brian Ardinger: I'm excited to have you on the show to talk about this amazing On Deck Program focused on Corporate Innovation. You've got some heavy chops in corporate innovation yourself. I know a lot of our audience is familiar with the startup scene and what's going on in corporate innovation.

And they may have even heard about On Deck. Because I know over the last year on-deck has been putting on a variety of different accelerator types of programs. And now this move into corporate innovation. Maybe start off with telling us a little about what is On Deck? 

Jackie Miller: Yeah, absolutely. I was really excited to discover it existed. To your point, like working in the corporate innovation space, you're always a few steps away or immersed in like the startup ecosystem and world.

But I think that what On Deck is doing is something really unique and special. On Deck was founded by Erik Torenberg. He was early, employee number one at Product Hunt. And later founded Village Global VC firm. So, really immersed in this space. And started On Deck or the vision for On Deck as a series of live dinners for founders, founders in between, people, ambitious people, thinking about their next move. And started with some like in-person IRL dinners that quickly kind of grew outside of San Francisco. And clearly was filling a need. 

Then in the pandemic, really accelerated this community to become a virtual global one. Right? The idea that there was such demand for this leveling up. Finding your next thing. And connecting with the right people, and ideas. So that really created the On Deck momentum that has brought us to today.

It started with founders. A community for founders. And then quickly grew from there. So, we raised our Series A about a year ago, and now we have a startup accelerator. Yes. Which we announced recently. But we see ourselves as, like you said, as a career accelerator. So, there are programs for Chiefs of Staff, Product Managers, Designers, Marketers, Business Development, and now Corporate Innovation. 

Sort of designed to help people, whether you're starting a company or joining a company or kind of growing an existing company. How do you level up? How do you connect with your peers? And how do you find the safe space for digging into some of those ideas? And this is exactly the kind of thing I think, as you and your listeners probably know, could add a ton of value to corporate innovators.

Brian Ardinger: I've followed On Deck from the beginning. Has a lot of different overlap with some of the audience as far as things that we talk about as trends. Whether it's no code or podcasts, or angel investing. And all these types of multitalented types of people that have this intersection of building things.

And so, when you came to me and said, hey, we've got this corporate innovation fellowship spinning up, what do you think of it? I'm super excited to be part of it. And why is there a need for a corporate innovation fellowship versus anything else that's out there? 

Jackie Miller: You know, as you mentioned, I spent some time doing this at Chanel, spent the last few years in this space. And will probably be a surprise to no one that innovation in a corporate context can be really challenging. Right? 

The idea that every time I talk to people in this space. Both my colleagues at the time and my peers at other orgs. You quickly kind of realized that what people were looking for was moral support. Like this is almost envisioned as a support group, right? Like-minded builders who are navigating the same internal politics. Sometimes it's such a relief to hear. 

I was talking to someone the other day who described it as like, I feel like a unicorn in a forest. Find the other unicorns. Where they live and what they're doing. It's a really comforting and motivating, energizing feeling. And, you know, you mentioned following obviously the startup space. 

There sometimes it feels like we're drowning in startups, right? There's so many out there, but finding really good, vetted enterprise ready startups and having mutually beneficial outcomes with them is really hard too. As we all know, there's a big cultural difference there. So, there's a need for a better interface between corporates and startups.

We know both sides want to work together. But more often than not, it's hard to integrate those two worlds. Which usually comes down to the very, not so sexy part of innovation. Which is really like internal processes, infrastructure, and governance. I've always found that it comes down to this and none of us are reinventing the wheel with how you strategize and plan around that. But it's really hard to know what works and where the roadblocks are. 

And to your, you know, No Code mention on some of the other trends, I think all of this is intersecting around emerging tech. And like trends that are impacting brands. And, and why they even have to think about innovation. So, all of this to say, like there's a lot going on here. We're all facing the same challenges. Wanted to take down the innovation theater and buzzwords. And create a space for real talk about what's going on. 

Brian Ardinger: I think the other trend that this is really hitting on is this whole move to education. You know, this changing trend of education. And like you said, career paths. You know, we talk a lot about this slash career or this portfolio career that people are having to embrace because change is happening so fast. And you used to be able to get a degree and continue your career for 20 years. And that'd be good. 

But nowadays, everything's changing so fast. You need to have outlets to learn new skills and things along those lines. So that's another thing I really liked about what On Deck's doing is again, it's not focused on one particular thing. Even though you do get the ...

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we host Jennifer Smith, CEO and Cofounder of Scribe. Jennifer and I talk about her journey as an accidental entrepreneur and the trends and opportunity she sees as she grows a software company on a mission to build the first operating system of know-how. Let's get started.

Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help the new innovators navigate what's next. Each week, we'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to learn, grow, and thrive in today's world of accelerating change and uncertainty. Join us as we explore, engage, and experiment with the best and the brightest innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneering businesses. It's time to get started.

Interview Transcript of Jennifer Smith, CEO & Co-founder of Scribe

Brian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger. And as always, we have another amazing guest. Today we have Jennifer Smith. She is the CEO and co-founder of Scribe. Which is a startup software company that enables you to automatically generate step-by-step guides for any process or task. Welcome to the show, Jennifer,

Jennifer Smith: Pleasure to be here Brian. 

Brian Ardinger: I am so excited to talk to you. Not only because what you're building. But you've got a pretty interesting background that I think our audience will get into. My understanding is you got into entrepreneurship as a, an accidental entrepreneur. You've spent some time at McKinsey and at Greylock. Degrees from Harvard and Princeton. And now you're developing and building a startup from scratch. So why don't we tell the audience about how you got on your path to becoming an entrepreneur. 

Jennifer Smith: Yeah, I, I do say I'm a bit of an accidental entrepreneur, cause I, you know, meet so many folks in the valley who say, I knew since the age of 10 that I was going to found a company. And you know, if you had asked me even a few years ago before I started Scribe, I would have said no, unlikely not. 

To me I fell in love with a problem. So, I'll kind of take you on a quick history tour. Imagine it's 10, 15 years ago, you know, when you're a leading global corporation and you want to figure out how work is getting done. Maybe you're facing a productivity imperative or you're scaling up your company. And so what do you do?

You probably hire some fancy consultants, right? And they probably come around. And they interview your people. And they create a bunch of PowerPoints. Maybe they document what some of your best practices are like. Anyone who has seen office space can maybe just think of the Bob. And, you know, I should know, I spent seven years at McKinsey. Doing exactly that. 

I did mostly work in our Oregon operations practice. Which functionally meant spending about eight hours a day in an operation center, looking over the shoulder of agents, trying to figure out how they were doing things. And I learned really quickly the name of the game, at least as a consultant at the time was you figured out who the best person that ops center was. You sat next to them. And you said, what are you doing differently Judy. 

And Judy would tell you. Right? Oh, I was trained to do this. And you know, she'd pull out a big manual. I'll date myself. It was a big binder at the time. Right. Here's what I was trained to do. But, you know, I found these 30 shortcuts. And here's what I do. And I would write that down and my team would sell that back to our clients for a whole bunch of money.

I always thought like, gosh, if the Judy's of the world had just had a way to share what they know how to do, they could have had really big impact on that ops center. Right. They didn't need me and my team to be saying it for them. And so that always kind of nagged at me, but I figured that was a problem for someone else to solve someday.

And then fast forward a decade later, and I'm working at Greylock on Sand Hill Road. And I spent a lot of my time there meeting with CXOs of large enterprises. So CIO, CDOs, Chief Innovation Officers. A lot of folks who would kind of come talk to VCs to try to understand how they could be more innovative.

I counted them when I left actually. I talked to over 1200 folks. So pretty broad sample. And what I realized was nothing had changed. The way that you still wanted to understand how work was getting out. You were still getting some version of a 28-year-old Jennifer with a Lenovo ThinkPad running around, interviewing your people, right?

Maybe it was an internal person and maybe now you're using a fancy Wiki instead of PowerPoint to capture it. But the idea is still the same. It was still very manual, not very scalable. And that was crazy to me. We'd had so much technological innovation and something that's so core. So fundamental to the way that millions of people, billions of people around the world work, hadn't changed. And so, I just got really obsessed with this problem and Scribe was born. 

Brian Ardinger: So that's the impotence of the problem. It's like, okay, well, I've got this little nugget and ideas are great, but obviously you have to execute on that idea to make it an innovation or make something of value from that. How did you go from that nugget of information to finding a team or finding somebody who could help build or solve this problem for you?

Jennifer Smith: I believe in fast iteration around this. And so what we said was let's try to build the most basic MVP of a company and a product around this idea. And our idea was what if we could watch an expert do work and automatically capture what they know how to do? What if it was just like documentation as digital exhaust? Just a by-product of you doing your normal job.

And so, we built what was the very beginnings of Scribe. Wasn't even called Scribe at the time. And what we were focused on was just getting something very basic out there. That was for free. That people could test and use. And we could learn from that. And so, we kept the company very lean. Maybe a topic for another conversation. But I believe in running very, very lean as a team. Probably painfully so.

Until you really feel like the market is pulling something out of you. And so, we put our software out in the world. And sort of said, like, let's see how people use this. And what they tell us. And Scribe picked up some legs after a bunch of iterations and grew. And now it's being used by tens of thousands of workers around the world.

And that's because we really focused on a type of software that the end user would want. I think a lot of enterprise software today is focused towards a buyer. It's something that your boss tells you to use. And that's why you use it. And we said, let's flip this on its head. Let's try to iterate our way to a product that someone uses because they want to, not because their boss is telling them to. But because it makes their day easier, they're more productive. They get recognized for their contributions. 

Brian Ardinger: It's an interesting approach because we've seen a couple of different companies that have taken that B2B approach and flipped it on its head. Like a Slack where, you know, again, it's a product team or something that starts to engage and use the product. And then through that word of mouth and through iterations, they start getting to the point where the boss has to take not...

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with Ben McDougal, Author of You Don't Need This Book: Entrepreneurship in the Connected Era. Ben and I talk about his portfolio-based career in entrepreneurship from founder to 1 Million Cups organizer, to his current role as entrepreneur In residence and ecosystem developer with Techstars Iowa. Let's get started.

Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help new innovators navigate what's next. Each week, we'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to learn, grow, and thrive in today's world of accelerating change and uncertainty. Join us as we explore, engage and experiment with the best and the brightest innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneering businesses. Let's get started.

Interview Transcript with Ben McDougal, Author of You Don't Need This Book

Brian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger. And as always, we have another amazing guest. Today we have Ben McDougal. He is author of the new book, You Don't Need This Book: Entrepreneurship and the Connected Era. Welcome to the show. Ben. 

Ben McDougal: Thanks, Brian. It's great to catch up with a friend and looking forward to connecting with your audience.

Brian Ardinger: Absolutely. You and I have known each other for a number of years in the startup ecosystem building world. You hang out in Iowa. And I hang out here in Nebraska. It's been fun to see your journey. You joined Techstars Iowa as kind of a hybrid role as an entrepreneur residence and ecosystem development person. So how did you get involved in startup ecosystem development? 

Ben McDougal: Thanks, Brian. Yeah, I've always been an entrepreneur. I came out of school, admittedly, thinking that we got expensive pieces of paper to go build someone else's dream. But startup, wasn't a word back in 2004. I got a computer science degree wanting to develop video games.

And so looked at that industry. Which led me to web development. When I look back at it, it was pretty entrepreneurial. I mean, talking with endless different industries on how to build their business online. And so, while I was in somewhat of a traditional kind of business development role. I don't know what spawned the entrepreneurial spirit besides just recognizing an opportunity. 

So, I created a 3v3 soccer tournament. I had played soccer. I was in a web development shop and could make a nice live event come to life. Ended up having two years of that before selling it to a local soccer club, as we had launched a social network for gamers. It was interesting looking back using entrepreneurship to wedge myself into an industry I was always passionate about. But there's a whole community side that was emerging.

And so built Jet Set Studio. It's still a small sliver of my career portfolio. Doing video game events around North America and building community in person and online. That was some of the early interactions of community building. I would stay in web development for eight years and retire out of that and go into another kind of traditional role inside the home building industry. Never really touched a hammer and kind of avoid manual labor, genuine.

In that home building world, we found a disconnect between Home Builders and Realtors. So, we built an open house scheduler, knowing that it's not hard, but it's recurring when they're connecting that open house schedule. So that's Open Open. Alongside of that, that intrapreneurial spirit was fed with that parallel entrepreneurial spirit ended up building Flight Bright in the craft beer industry, which was an electronic beer flight paddle.

It translated and continues to be that type of electronic serving system. But we added a beer festival app. And so that's Flight Bright and that story continues to be written. And you think about this diversified career portfolio that has a mixture of entrepreneurial and intrapreneurial activities. And the glue that brings it all together, along with myself is the community. Leaning into community and recognizing the energy of accelerating others.

And so that's where you see my work in 1 Million Cups long ago. Like I was a part of a 1 Million Cups every Wednesday as an entrepreneur. But when the opportunity to lead emerged, I rose my hand. Got involved. That led to the chance of being a regional rep. So, we built this role to help support all of the different organizing teams across the United States.

And so, I've been the Midwest regional rep now for the last four years. And that has been remarkable. Supporting and connecting 45 different 1 MC communities across 12 states, has created an awareness when it comes to entrepreneurial ecosystem building, at a rural, medium, and large size environment.

Brian Ardinger: Absolutely. 1 Million Cups. I've mentioned this on the program, a number of different times, and I know a lot of people in the entrepreneurial startup side have maybe heard of 1 Million Cups. But on our corporate innovator side, it's, it's one of those programs that I think that more corporate innovators should become involved and that. 

Maybe give a little bit of background about 1 Million Cups and why that's so important, not only for the entrepreneurs in your community, but the companies and the other organizations.

Ben McDougal: I think intrapreneurship at existing companies, small, medium, and large is a critical component to any entrepreneurial ecosystem. Having employees that are the champions of change for their existing company, plugging into community activities, helps them stay in front of the innovation curve. Fuels like their innovative energy. And creates opportunities to collaborate with entrepreneurs that in a way that helps their companies.

And so, whether it's the energy. Kind of the network and human capital that can come from this type of active. All the way over to the financial capital and opportunities for those companies to benefit from their interactions with startups is real. One quick tactic, Brian, that catches my attention is larger companies treating activity within a startup community as volunteer hours.

So, removing the barrier of PTO for someone who wants to go to 1 Million Cups on a Wednesday morning. Or to that startup event. Instead of restricting that type of activity by saying they need to take time off. It's celebrating that activity, knowing that while it's a little less time outside of the office, the energy, the activity, the connections, the progress that has made through that activity, benefits the company, perhaps even more. There's some value when you think about giving intrapreneurs, the freedom to explore their curiosity. 

Brian Ardinger: Absolutely. And that's one of the things that we talk about a lot is not only entrepreneurs have to get out of the building, but intrapreneurs as well. And you can't build anything without actually getting out there and trying things and testing things and being a part of the communities.

We talk about this concept of a portfolio career and more and more folks I believe are going to have to be transitioning to this concept of, you know, you don't do just one job for 20 years of your life. It's a series of different side hustles and projects and people you work with and that. As an early adopter to this portfolio career type of lifestyle, what are some hints or suggestions you could make...

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with Jim Euchner, author of the new book Lean Startup in Large Organizations. Jim and I talk about the underlying fears companies have when trying to change and implement innovation initiatives. And what they can do to initiate and build Lean Startup methodologies to embrace change and stay competitive. Let's get started.

Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help the new innovators navigate what's next. Each week, we'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to learn, grow, and thrive, in today's world accelerating change and uncertainty. Join us as we explore, engage, and experiment with the best and the brightest innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneering businesses. It's time to get started.

Interview Transcript with Jim Euchner, Author of Lean Startup in Large Organizations

Brian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger. And as always, we have another amazing guest. Today, we have Jim Euchner. He's an honorary professor at Aston Business School in the UK. Editor in chief of Research Technology Management Journal. Former VP of Global Innovation at Goodyear. And he is author of a new book called Lean Startup in Large Organizations. Welcome to the show, Jim. 

Jim Euchner: Thank you. Thanks for having me. 

Brian Ardinger: Well, I'm excited to dig in. You've been involved in Lean Startup for a long time, specifically around this idea of corporate innovation, which I think when you hear Lean Startup, at least in the early days, you didn't think about it from a corporate perspective.

I found, like when I talk to establish enterprises and you bring up the word or the term lean startup, a lot of times it has baggage around it. They dismiss it or think about it as you know that startup term. How do you define or talk about Lean Startup? 

Jim Euchner: I think about Lean Startup, in its basics the same way that the founders of it did. You know, Eric Ries and Steve Blank and so forth. I think it's a way of taking a high-risk venture from a very high-risk place to a place where it's something that you can bet on. It's a way of iterating your way toward a great customer value proposition and a good business model. 

The challenge in large corporations is that each of the practices of Lean Startups in its own way, sort of sparks an antibody inside the corporation. So Lean Learning Loops. They are a wonderful way of learning. Business experiments is another term for it. But if you have a lot of experiments and pivots, it can seem very chaotic to people inside the corporate setting. 

So, you have to do what I would call an impedance match between the corporate setting and the Lean Startup practices. The central Lean Startup practices are still very valid. But the way they're managed, there are some complimentary practices that make them effective inside large organizations. 

Brian Ardinger: You bring up a great point. It really doesn't matter if you're building something brand new in an uncertain environment as a startup or within a corporate environment. The same principles can be used to navigate that unknown or that uncertainty. 

In your book you talk a lot about, I guess, the common fears that leaders and organizations have when it comes to change or Lean Startup and that. Can you talk through and outline some of the key fears that you talk about in the book? 

Jim Euchner: Yeah, sure. So, the first one is this sort of fear of chaos. That the innovation program will just be out of control. And one way that's effective in doing that is to create what I would call an Innovation Stage Gate. So the practices of Lean Startup are still practiced, but they're inside a discovery phase, a business model development phase, and an incubation phase. 

That gives people inside corporations the chance to learn, to comment, to review at very critical stages. So, review the customer value proposition and the customer value. Review the business model. And very importantly, the effects that the business model will have on the core business. And then before scaling, understand how it works in the real market. 

The first fear is the fear of chaos. The second fear is a fear that the innovation team will disrupt the operations of the core. Everybody they're working with has a day job. Right. And you're asking them to take exceptions, to move quickly, to do stuff that you know, that really on the financial side, doesn't matter a lot in the near term. But it still has an urgency. And it may be outside the bounds of their usual experience. So, it's risky. Helping people manage that is important as well. 

Brian Ardinger: This fear of distraction. I hear it all the time. We don't have time to innovate. You know, we don't have time to try these new things and that. What are some of the ways that you can get people to overcome that mindset? 

Jim Euchner: It's a combination of things. And I really think that each company has to look at their own culture in order to decide. One thing that people do is, and it's the first thing to do, is just try to get corporate air cover. Someone says it's okay to do it. And that gives a permission. And then if they don't do it, it gives us permission also to escalate.

The problem with that is escalation wears thin very quickly. And you make more enemies than you can afford to make. One of the things that I found most effective in my experience is to bring the functions along as you go, but to have no expectations of them in the early stage, other than that, they'll just provide the support you need to get something done.

So, if I'm talking to procurement, I don't want them to do a full RFP. I don't want them to take a risk with their own career on something, but I need their help in putting together a contract that will meet our requirements. And if I have to sign off on that or I have to provide them some resources in order to cover the cost that that will have to them, then I'll do that.

The very important one is legal liability. Legal liability is very important to protect the core corporation. But when you're doing experiments, they can seem awfully risky. In that instance, you may need to raise the issues, explore the issues, understand the implications, and then co-sign off. They may still say, I don't like that liability risk, you say, okay. But we'll take it in this one instance. And I'll take that on myself. 

The core thing is just to not keep people in the dark because you're afraid they'll jump in. And to give them at the stage of incubation, really a chance to rash through all those issues. So, if you're a non-standard IT organization, what are you going to do about the final product? And you can thrash that out in incubation, not during the early experiments. And the same kind of thing happens across the company in sales and procurement and everything. 

Brian Ardinger: Yeah. I find that if you have this almost side project mentality, it's like, oh, we're doing a side project to test or iterate or try something. And then by the time it gets to the point where you need to escalate it, a lot of times you have additional evidence or insights that you can then get that buy in from the higher ups. 

Jim Euchner: And that's exactly what you're trying to do. You're trying to get ...

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with Melissa Vincent, Executive Director of Pipeline Entrepreneurial Fellowship. This recording was part of our IO Live series and Melissa and I sit down and talk about the people, the resources, and the companies making the Midwest a great place for startups to grow and prosper. Let's get started.

Inside Outside Innovation, is the podcast to help new innovators navigate what's next. Each week, we'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to learn, grow, and thrive in today's world of accelerating change and uncertainty. Join us as we explore, engage, and experiment with the best and the brightest innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneering businesses. It's time to get started.

Interview Transcript with Melissa Vincent, Executive Director of Pipeline Entrepreneurial Fellowship

Brian Ardinger: Welcome to Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger. And as always, we have another amazing guest with us today. This is part of our IO Live series, which is our virtual conversation series to talk innovation and entrepreneurship. Part of our Inside Outside platform, where we have our podcast and newsletter and ongoing events like this. So I'm super excited to host Melissa today. Melissa is a good friend. She's the Executive Director of Pipeline. So welcome to the show, Melissa. 

Melissa Vincent: Brian, thank you so much. I love it when I get to chat with you. 

Brian Ardinger: I'm excited about this conversation. Before we get too far. I always like to thank our sponsors. Today our sponsor is the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. They are a private nonpartisan foundation based in the Kansas City, Missouri. They seek to build inclusive prosperity through entrepreneur focused economic development. They've been a huge help to a lot of things going on, including Pipeline. I believe they're a sponsor for. If people are interested in finding out more about Kauffman, go to kauffman.org or check them out @KauffmanFDN on Facebook and Twitter.

And so huge shout out to our sponsors for making things like this happen. And having conversations that make Midwest Entrepreneurs even better. I was gonna say, you're new to Pipeline, but you were new from the standpoint of you started working at Pipeline right before the pandemic. It seems like that's a short time ago, but it seems now we're what, almost two years into this thing. So it's exactly, exactly the pandemic years. 

But I wanted to have you on, because I think Pipeline has been one of those proven things in the ecosystem that has helped entrepreneurs across the Midwest here. And I wanted to get you on to talk about, you know, what have you seen? What's different and, and more importantly, what's going to happen moving forward. So maybe let's start the conversation with, tell us a little bit about what Pipeline is. For those who may not know that and where we're at right now. 

Melissa Vincent: I would love to. Yes. So I have been there for, as you mentioned, it'll be two years next month. So it's kind of crazy because it feels sometimes like six months and other times it feels like 10 years because of the pandemic. So you never know. So Pipeline is a fellowship for high- growth entrepreneurs in the Midwest. We are industry agnostic. So we do everything from Bio to Ag. You name it, everything in between. And do not take equity in the organizations that we work with. 

And so we're different in that way as well. And we focus on serial entrepreneurs because they have the greatest economic impact on the region, when you focus on someone who's going to get right back up, if they have a failure. And if they succeed, they're going to get back up, start another company and invest in the community. 

Brian Ardinger: Pipeline's been around for a number of years. It was actually started even prior to me starting Nmotion and that. I think you have over 140 or a 150 entrepreneurs that have gone through the program. Had had an economic benefit. 2,700 employees I think are, are based in Kansas and Missouri and Nebraska because of the founders that have been part of Pipeline. 

Your founders have raised over $600 million in capital since joining Pipeline. And it's a flywheel approach. So, you know what started 10 or 15 years ago. Now we're seeing some of the fruits of that payoff. So tell us a little bit about how you got involved in Pipeline. 

Melissa Vincent: Pipeline was started 14 years ago. It was started by Joni Cobb and a number of key people kind of in the Midwest. She was the CEO. And the idea was that there was such, as you mentioned, like 14 years ago, we were in such a different place.

There weren't all the entrepreneur support organizations that we have now. And so, you know, when she started the organization, it was around this idea that if you came and you brought resources from the coast to the Midwest. And you focus specifically on serial entrepreneurs to have a massive impact on the region because of what we talked about earlier, they're going to reinvest, they're going to get back up, start another company. And that was really true. 

So over the last 14 years, our members are not just creating jobs. They're creating really high paying jobs. So average salary for an employee of one of our members is $52,000. So they're creating great jobs. They're creating a lot of them. And they're raising capital and they are staying here in the Midwest.

And so really over 14 years, that whole concept that we were seeing, if it could be proved or not, if you bring in these resources, what impact would that have if you focused on serial entrepreneurs is proven. So it's like, okay, successful, we've done that. That's really amazing. But then it becomes the question of 14 years later, how things changed. Like to your point, we've had, with the pandemic and we've had social injustice that's been ongoing that really came to a head last year.

So we have all these different things that happened over the past few years. And so I think for us as an organization, we've really looked at well, how do we respond to that? And I think there's a lot of other entrepreneurial support organizations that are doing the same. How do we step in. How do we be a part of that progress and change that really needs to happen? 

That's where Pipeline is headed. But we couldn't have gotten there without the legacy that was started 14 years ago, by bringing in all these resources and creating some amazing fellowship programs. 

Brian Ardinger: It's been a very important piece of the puzzle. When I started Nmotion, I think it was 10 years ago, ish. It was the first accelerator in Nebraska at the time that's a equity based accelerator. But we quickly wanted to tie ourselves with Pipeline and get our founders an opportunity to move through the Pipeline. And you find those early stage founders. You get them a little bit of capital. You surround them with mentors and investment capital.

We help build that. And then you also then connect them into a wider network. I think that was one of the most important things about like an Nmotion is, you know, we started in Lincoln, Nebraska. But we realized quickly that you can't build a startup ecosystem by yourself. In...

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with Dr. Ben Bensaou, Professor at INSEAD and author of the new book Built to Innovate. We talk about some interesting case studies and essential practices that companies can use to make innovation accessible to everyone in the organization. Let's get started. 

Inside Outside Innovation is a podcast to help the new innovators navigate what's next. Each week, we'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to learn, grow, and thrive in today's world of accelerating change and uncertainty. Join us as we explore, engage, and experiment with the best and the brightest innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneering businesses. It's time to get started.

Interview Transcript of Dr. Ben Bensaou, Professor at INSEAD and Author of Built to Innovate

Brian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host Brian Ardinger. And as always, we have another amazing guest. Today, we have Dr. Ben Bensaou. He is the professor and former Dean of Executive Education at INSEAD and author of the new book, Built to Innovate: Essential Practices to Wire Innovation into your Company's DNA. Welcome to the show, Ben.

Ben Bensaou: Good morning, Brian. And thank you for having me. 

Brian Ardinger: I'm excited to have you. And I understand you're in Japan right now, so we're different sides of the world. You've got a new book out called Built to Innovate. But I wanted to step back and talk about how did you get into the field of innovation research.

Ben Bensaou: Well, actually, as a matter of fact, I got into the field of innovation starting where I am right now. I did my PhD looking at Japanese firms. And I had lived in Japan before, but my PhD at MIT Sloan was on the way that Japanese firms were actually developing production systems. And a production system was the quality management movement.

So, I was in Japan at the time. And then when I went back and joined INSEAD, I continued my interest in Japanese firms, but this time I want to know what they were doing in the field of innovation. And this is how I got involved with companies in Japan and outside of Japan. Mostly its established firms who are trying to become more innovative.

Brian Ardinger: One of the things that we think about is corporations, it's hard for them to innovate. Maybe now it's a little bit more thought of is, you know with all the disruption from everything from COVID to new technologies and that. Companies are a little bit more aware of the fact that they need to be innovating and that the world is changing around them. Can you talk a little bit about how your research and your experience in the field of innovation has changed and evolved over the years? 

Ben Bensaou: Yes. I would say that one thing that I've noticed over the years, I've been doing my teaching innovation and also helping firms is that I noticed that number one, a lot of people, a lot of organizations equate innovation with launching a new blockbuster product or coming up with a life changing new business model.

Many also think that you need to have a genius leader or to be a startup by a matter of fact, to be innovative, to be able to innovate. But I found out that it's not true. I found in my research established even centuries old companies are able to innovate. How did they do this? Well, they don't only focus on industry changing effects, but also for small important changes, very often in unexpected places.

And for this, what they do is that they rely on continuous and systematic innovation. Innovation of all kinds. And innovation driven by everyone in the organization. And that's what Built to Innovate is about. It's really about how do you embed continuous innovation inside an organization using a systematic approach.

Brian Ardinger: I think that's so important because a lot of corporations that I've talked to want innovation to happen somewhere else. Or like they have their teams and they're executing on their business model and they're optimizing that, but they want innovation to happen somewhere else. So, they create an innovation lab or something and they throw the idea over to someone else to execute. 

But what I've seen, and I think what it's apparent in your book, and the examples you give is that again, to survive in this changing world, we all have to become innovators. And it doesn't mean, like you said, you have to come up with the next electric car, but you have to find problems and take those early ideas and then innovate them and execute on them so that they become value creation, parts of the business.

Ben Bensaou: Absolutely. Absolutely. I find so many people expecting that the innovation is going to come from the leaders. Or, you know, like you say, they create a skunkworks, or they create specialist units that are supposed to do all the innovations for the company. 

And I think many organizations, and I found this very innovative companies in my research, are able to enlist and leverage the capability of everyone in the organization. For this, what they do is that that they create what I call an innovating engine. Which is a protected, fully legitimized and organized space within the company where everyone can innovate. Not just the specialist. 

You can innovate in everything you do. I mean, you can innovate of course, in your products and services, but you can innovate in your processes as well, or your internal functions. You can innovate in HR and legal. And you can make innovating a regular habit. Not a sporadic kind of burst of creativity when there's a crisis. And that's what I think I've seen some of these innovative companies do is to create this innovating engine. And leveraging everybody's inate capabilities. 

Brian Ardinger: So, what do you think are some of the common myths or mistakes that companies make when it comes to executing or putting these innovation initiatives into place.

Ben Bensaou: I think it's always the same thing is that many of these organizations, like you were talking earlier about startups, don't have the problem of size. When they start, they're all innovating in a sense innovating mode. Everybody is in contact with customers. But as soon as you grow, you start to be dominated by an execution logic. 

And the execution, what I call the execution takes over. And the execution engine takes over. And the execution changing is very much about control. It's no surprise that many organizations, established organizations, develop hierarchies and vertical silos focused on supplier side view challenges. 

And innovating in a sense is less about control. Is more about delegating and is more about collaboration. Is more about teamwork. Horizontal structures that are focused on the customer. Like you said earlier, I think this is a very important word. You said innovation is about problem finding. What kind of new problems do we need to find to solve for the customers. And execution is very much about problem solving. It's a very convergent mindset.

And I think this is where a lot of companies fail. Is that they don't realize that when you move into innovating and what I'm saying is that when you create an innovating engine, you allow for every employee to be able to spend time doing some innovating activity in the space of the invading engine. And at that time, they ne...

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with Karin Hurt, Co-author of the new book, Courageous Cultures: How to Build Teams of Micro-Innovators, Problem Solvers, and Customer Advocates. Karin and I talk about the difficulties and opportunities with creating a culture that values innovation and curiosity, and how companies can develop productive micro innovators. Let's get started.

Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help new innovators navigate what's next. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger, founder of InsideOutside.IO. Each week, we'll give you a front row seat to what it takes to learn, grow, and thrive in today's world of accelerating change and uncertainty. Join us as we explore, engage, and experiment with the best and the brightest innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneering businesses. It's time to get started.

Interview Transcript with Karin Hurt, Co-Author of Courageous Cultures

Brian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger. And as always, we have another amazing guest. Today, we have Karin Hurt. She's co-author of the new book, Courageous Cultures: How to Build Teams of Micro-Innovators, Problem Solvers, and Customer Advocates. Welcome to the show, Karen. 

Karin Hurt: Thank you so much for having me. 

Brian Ardinger: Karen, I am excited to have you on the show. I just got a chance to read through a preview copy of the book and excited to dig into that. Tell me a little bit about how you got interested in this particular topic.

Karin Hurt: Yeah. So, I run a company called Let's Grow Leaders. And we work with human centered leaders all over the world with practical tools and techniques. So we were noticing a consistent pattern. As we were going into organizations, we'd be working at the very senior levels of organizations. And we would hear things like why don't more people speak up. Why don't people share ideas? Why do I stumble upon a best practice? Why are people sharing them with one another? 

And then we would go into do leadership training at the supervisor level. And we would hear things like nobody really wants my ideas. Last time I spoke up, I got in trouble. You know, why bother nothing ever happens anyway. 

We thought, are you all working for the same company? So, you know, most leaders really do want ideas and employees have great ideas to share. So why was there this disconnect? 

So, we partnered with the university of North Colorado on an extensive research study to answer that question. When people were holding back ideas, what kinds of ideas were they holding back and what was preventing them from speaking up and sharing ideas to improve the customer experience, the employee experience, or productivity in a process. That's a little bit about why we got so excited about this research. 

Brian Ardinger: So, let's dig into it. What makes a culture courageous? 

Karin Hurt: You know, our favorite definition of culture comes from Seth Godin, the marketing guru, who just says culture is simply people like us do things like this. And so, when you're talking about a courageous culture, people like us speak up. They share ideas. The default is to contribute. People are coming to work every day saying, huh, how can I make this better. And managers are proactively going out and asking for those ideas and responding well when people share them. 

Brian Ardinger: So clearly that is not the case in a lot of organizations, at least the ones that I've worked with and have been around. It's not always courageous. What do you think makes it so difficult for people to speak their truth or overcome that particular fear? 

Karin Hurt: Yeah. So, Dr. Amy Edmondson of Harvard who wrote the Fearless Organization, you know, she's really a pioneer of psychological safety. And she talks about people are more likely to hold onto a negative experience than a positive experience. And that really played out in our research as well. 

We would ask people; we did a whole qualitative set of interviews in addition to the quantitative study. And we would say, okay, if you're holding back an idea, you know why? And they would say, well, because you know, something bad happened in the past. Was okay, how long ago was that?

And you wouldn't believe it. Sometimes people say, well about 10 years ago. And then we would say, well, was it at this company? Oh, no, no, no. I was away at some place completely different. But it was enough to teach them that speaking up is scary. So that's one piece of it. And then, you know, other things that came out in our research, 49% said, I'm not regularly asked for my ideas. Something as simple as that.

And when we got underneath that binding, the managers are saying, well, I told them I have an open door. And the problem with an open door is it's passive. And for some people, especially if they've had a bad experience in the past, it still takes some level of courage to walk through that open door. 

And another thing that people said, which the most surprising finding quite frankly for me was 56% said, they're not sharing ideas because of fear they will not get the credit. And, you know, as fascinating. As I've been sharing that statistic people like aha. Yeah, well that happened to me too. And  so, I think that really resonates with folks. And then another statistic that I thought was really interesting was 50% said nothing will ever happen. So why bother?

And sometimes that nothing will ever happen. Isn't actually true. Something has happened, but the loop isn't closed. Right? So, people think their idea went into this black hole, you know, and because we're not circling back. So, whether it's an employee survey, it's a suggestion box. It's in a one-on-one meeting. Are we closing the loop and what we call responding with regard to the ideas that are coming forward? 

Brian Ardinger: That's a fascinating insight, because I see that a lot when we talk with corporations and what are their innovation efforts. And a lot of them say, well, we're doing these hackathons. Or challenges and asking for employee feedback.

And that's great to do that, but what they fail to do is put the process in place and what to do with those ideas after they come through the funnel. And like you said, be able to either close the loop or have a process that moves those particular ideas forward. So, you don't have this environment where people throw things in and, and again, like you say, the black hole of nothingness. And they get discouraged to do it again.

In the book, you talk a lot about this loop between clarity and curiosity, kind of back and forth. Can you talk a little bit about that and why that's so important? 

Karin Hurt: Yes. So, when you're building a courageous culture, it really does start with clarity. And that's clarity around two things. One clarity that you really do want people's ideas. And we found this to be really, really critical as we were testing the different tools and techniques. Clarity about where you need a great idea. 

So, you know, not just going out and saying, hey, do you have any ideas to improve the business? Or what do you think we could do to improve productivity? Th...

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with Todd Embley, Senior Startup Advocate for Agora. Todd and I talk about the new technologies and trends from no-code tools to embedded audio and video platforms, that affect how we see, hear, and interact with each other. We also explore how companies are tapping into startups and startup ecosystems to enable founders to build and impact the world more effectively. Let's get started. 

Inside Outside Innovation as the podcast to help new innovators navigate what's next. I'm your host Brian Ardinger, founder of InsideOutside.IO. Each week. We'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to learn, grow, and thrive in today's world of accelerating change and uncertainty. Join us as we explore, engage, and experiment with the best and the brightest innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneering businesses. It's time to get started.

Interview Transcript with Todd Embley, Senior Startup Advocate for Agora

Brian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger, and as always, we have another amazing guest. Today, we have Todd Embley. He is a Senior Startup Advocate for Agora and a formerly with China Accelerator. So welcome to the show, Todd, 

Todd Embley: Thank you, Brian. It's good to be here. 

Brian Ardinger: I'm excited to have you because we've met a while back early in my startup days when I was running NMotion. You were in China. And we met at some global accelerator network conference. I think it was in San Diego, perhaps. So, you spent a lot of time in Asia, as I did. And recently moved back to the states, working for a interesting company called Agora. We had a chance to run into each other again in Lincoln. 

Todd Embley: Yeah. Thanks very much. I actually did come back from China and moved to the U.S. but now I'm back in Canada. I am Canadian and I'm living in Western Canada. 

Brian Ardinger: I wanted to start the conversation with the most recent company that you're with is a company called Agora. It's an interesting company for a couple different reasons. And it's a real-time engagement platform that a lot of popular companies are using to build on top of like Run the World, which is something that we've used for our IO Conferences and that. 

And some of our IO Live events. I think you guys provide like the SDKs and the building blocks to enable these types of startups to build off of. So, I I'd love to get your take, not on just Agora, but you've got an interesting role there as a Startup Advocate. So, what is a Startup Advocate? 

Todd Embley: It's a great role, for those of us who aren't necessarily adept at selling. And we fall under marketing. And the role is really, if I were to compartmentalize everything that we're about and our ethos and thesis. Is go out into startup land and be as helpful as possible. Try to integrate. You know, we sponsor. I run workshops. I meet with lots and lots of entrepreneurs all the time, and we're just out there trying to be as helpful as possible. 

And the great thing that the company and the founders and senior leadership have all gotten behind is just be out and be as helpful as possible. And wear the t-shirt while you're doing it. That's almost the be all and end of it. And for those that are really interested in what Agora is and what Agora does, then we can get into that. But essentially, we're not trying to put it in front of everybody and not trying to blast everybody with, with Agora specifically. 

The team is comprised of people who have been entrepreneurs, been in startups, been in VC, run accelerators. And who have just a lot of empathy for startups and that's kind of where it begins and ends. 

Brian Ardinger: We see a couple of different companies use this approach of startup advocate type of program to help build their business. Walk me through like, what are the benefits and the reasons why a corporation would want to put together some type of program around this.

Todd Embley: You know, I think AWS and what they've been doing for as long as they've been doing it are kind of the benchmark. And they were, I would say the pioneers, at least the most famous pioneers of running programs like this. Our senior leadership had an opportunity in China to talk to the heads of AWS Activate in China.

And they divulged some interesting statistics, which I think were the precipice of Agora wanting to build their own startup team as well. And that was that after 15 years of them having a program, they will now attribute up to 65% of AWS revenues today to the activities, you know, over the last 15 years, of their startup program.

And what we're trying to do is invest in our future huge customers. Knowing that the world's next billionaire companies, trillion-dollar companies. The unicorns of the future are still just startups today. And if we want to align ourselves correctly with what it takes to build a startup and how hard it is, let's maybe try to get out of their way at the early stages while they're trying to cross the early chasms of, you know, and the difficulties of what it takes. 

So, from a revenue perspective or from a cost perspective, let's give our stuff for free. You know, until you, their revenue. You can't get blood from a stone. So, while they're still searching for product market fit and revenue, let's let them use our software for free until such time as they are then finding product market fit and then able to start generating revenue. And only at that time, should we then start to talk to them about actually paying for the service? 

Brian Ardinger: That makes sense. And obviously it seems to be working. I think I read on your website, you've got over 50 billion minutes of engagement on the platform. Probably going up as we speak. I don't know if you can speak to any specific use cases or specifically what you do when it comes to helping these companies get up and off the ground. 

Todd Embley: Sure. As you alluded to, there are some famous companies that have been using us, especially in the real-time audio space. There are a few NDAs in place. So, you could mention who those companies are. And by all means it's pretty widely known. I necessarily can't speak directly to who some of those more famous ones are. 

But the nuts and bolts of the program essentially boils down to free minutes. So, my Director, Tony Blank. He and another friend of ours, Paul Ford, used to do this at SendGrid. And that's where they were a big supporter of the Global Accelerator Network where you and I met in the beginning and then the Twilio acquisition of SendGrid. So, he was there. And they were doing a great job as well. 

And leading on some of the data from their experience there, or Tony's experience there, and then understanding our business and the data that we had over the years that Agora has been thriving. We positioned the amount of minutes at 1 million, we figured 1 million minutes of Agora should be enough for most companies to achieve product market fit and revenue.

If you haven't achieved product market fit and revenue, after using a million minutes of Agora, you may have some underlying other issues that are getting in the way of that. But we really feel that upwards of 80%, even 90% of companies who do achieve and use up the million free minute...

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with entrepreneur and product developer Radhika Dutt, Author of the new book, Radical Product Thinking. On this episode, we talk about the product diseases holding back good product development, as well as ways to develop and execute a more radical vision to build products that have impact in a changing world. Let's get started. 

Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help new innovators navigate what's next. Each week, we'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to learn, grow, and thrive in today's world of accelerating change and uncertainty. Join us as we explore, engage, and experiment with the best and the brightest innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneering businesses. It's time to get started.

Interview Transcript with Radhika Dutt, Author of Radical Product Thinking

Brian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host Brian Ardinger. And as always, we have another amazing guest. Today we have Radhika Dutt. She is the author of Radical Product Thinking: The New Mindset for Innovating Smarter. Welcome to the show. 

Radhika Dutt: Thanks so much for having me on Brian. 

Brian Ardinger: I am excited to have you on the show. I always love to have entrepreneurs and product folks on here to talk about what it takes to build in today's world. You've been in product development for a long time, and you help companies figure this out. What's the state of product development today? What's working and what's not? 

Radhika Dutt: I think the most important thing in terms of where we have landed today, right. Is we've learned that the way we build products is by iteration. The mantras have been, you know, fail fast, learn fast. We keep hearing that you really just have to keep iterating and pivoting until you hit this nirvana of product market fit. And here in lies the problem. 

Because Innovation it's like having a fast car, a fast car is great. It's good to have a fast car. But the problem is, if a fast car is just not that useful, unless you know where you're going. And the ability to iterate fast has often given us this illusion that you don't need to start with a vision, just set off on your journey, and you'll kind of discover a vision. And that is the piece that's really not working.

So, if we think about the fact that Lean Startup, Agile, all of these methodologies have really become ubiquitous over the last decade, right? And yet fundamentally the number of startups who succeed or fail hasn't really changed. Right? 

So, we've really gotten this approach of innovating fast, but what we're really missing is a methodology that helps us set the direction and be able to navigate to it using this fast car. Meaning that our iterations have to be driven by a vision and strategy. And that's the piece that's been not working so far. 

Brian Ardinger: You talk about in the book, how folks in product and that, or they're building stuff, kind of run in to these product diseases that hold back good product development. Can you talk a little bit about what stops people from developing and maybe getting into this iteration rut? 

Radhika Dutt: These product diseases are things that we need to be able to speak openly about. Because regardless of the size of company or the industry that we're in, I keep seeing these same product diseases over and over. So, a few that I've run into or caught myself, right? One that I will admit to contributing to myself is obsessive sales disorder.

This is where your salesperson comes to you and says, you know, if you just add this one custom feature, we can win this mega client. And it sounds mostly harmless as a product person. I was like, yes, let's do this. Right. And pretty soon, by the end of the year, you're sitting with a stack of contracts and your entire roadmap is driven by what you have to make good on. And that's one example. 

A really common one is Pivotitus. Pivotitus is where you know this idea that we have that you just pivot until you find product market fit, it leads us to just keep trying different ideas to see what works. And your team just feel demoralized, confused, even your customers, they don't know what you're about anymore. And that's Pivotitus. 

Brian Ardinger: I love those. And I think a lot of us in product can relate to that. And even more to that, I think it's not just product folks that are running into these particular issues. A lot has changed in the world of product development with things like no code and low code. And pretty much everyone these days has run into this ability to create something. You know, and it's democratized the product development process in general.

And so, whether you are in product today and you've seen these things, the majority of folks are going to be running into these diseases, whether they know it or not. What can you talk about to the new product person, the person who maybe is new to this world and trying to understand what does it take to build something of value in this world?

Radhika Dutt: Yeah, maybe first, I want to talk about what I mean by product. Because, you know, traditionally we've thought about product is a software or a hardware. A thing, basically, right. A digital or a physical thing. And that view has really become outdated is what I've realized. To me product is your mechanism to create change in the world.

It's your vehicle for whatever that change is. And so, you know, whether you're a non-profit, you're working in a government agency, in a high-tech startup, or even freelance. You're creating change in the world. And as a result, you are building a product. And I think that's the first fundamental realization. 

Given that this is our new definition of product for every person who's entering this field, the question is then, you know, how can you create change very systematically? So, you're most likely running into these diseases and I list seven of them in the book. A few other examples are Hyper Metracina. Which is where we're all about analyzing data and optimizing for metrics, except that sometimes those wrong metrics. 

And things like Strategic Swelling. Which is where your, either your organization or your product just tries to do more and more and more, but it's just a very bloated product and you kind of lose your way.

So, all of these diseases, like it's not just in your product itself, it's in your organization that you might be seeing it. And so, we need to think about product differently as a mechanism to create change. And then think about, are we experiencing these diseases in our organization? 

And then finally, if you're seeing it, then it's time for a new approach where you create change systematically and build the successful product systematically, which is what Radical Product Thinking is about as a methodology. Instead of taking this approach of let's just try what works, which is kind of evolved from the venture capital business model over the last decade. 

Brian Ardinger: And what I like about the book is you say all the stuff that we're doing when it comes to Agile or Lean or that, they're good tactical stuff to continue to do. But you almost have to have a layer above. That thinks about the vision and thinks about how does the vision fit into, you called it the Sustainabilit...

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with Dave Parker, five-time founder, and author of the new book Trajectory: Startup. Dave and I talk about a range of topics for helping founders go from ideation to product market fit. And this conversation was part of our IO Live Series recorded during Startup Week Lincoln. Let's get started. 

Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help new innovators navigate what's next. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger, Founder of InsideOutside.io. Each week, we'll give you a front row seat to what it takes to learn, grow, and thrive in today's world of accelerating change and uncertainty. Join us as we explore, engage and experiment with the best and the brightest innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneering businesses. It's time to get started.

Interview Transcript with Dave Parker, Five-time founder and Author of Trajectory Startup

Brian Ardinger: I wanted to thank our sponsors for this event. We are part of the Techstars Startup Week here in Lincoln. So, we wanted to give a shout out to them and Startup LNK for making this all possible.

Also Inside Outside is sponsored by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. As many of you may know about the Kauffman Foundation, they run 1 Million Cups and a variety of other things, but they're a private, non-partisan foundation based in Kansas City. They seek to build inclusive prosperity through entrepreneurship- led economic development. 

So, we're super excited to have them as partners with us here. And you can find out more about them at kaufman.org or follow them on Twitter at Kaufman FDN on Facebook or Twitter. So, thank you again to the sponsors. Thank you, Dave, for coming on, we had set this up when your book was coming out and I said Hey, I've got the perfect time to do this during startup week. When we might have some startup founders who may be having some questions. 

You and I met eight or nine years ago through Up Global. We were with Startup America. And you were based in Seattle. You also helped found Code Fellows and you're a five-time founder, so you've got a lot of experience in this particular space. Eight years ago, the startup ecosystem, and what it was like was a little bit different than is today. So, what has been the biggest trends or things that you've seen that it's changed over the course of the few years that we've known each other? 

Dave Parker: Well, let me go a little further back. I started my first company in 98 in Seattle. And believe it or not bill gates and Jeff Bezos weren't really giving back to the startup community at that time. Oh, wait, they haven't yet. I mean, Bill gives back to like global change the world stuff. Right. But the idea there was, wow there's a bunch of us doing this startup thing, but there's not really anybody to give much advice. 

So, we did a peer cohort. Which was my first thing. And after a while I was like, wow, we need to level up our city. All of us tend to think of the next city bigger than us as like, oh, we want to be more like, Seattle doesn't want to be like Vancouver, Canada. We want to be like San Francisco. Where Portland's like, well, we want to be more like Seattle.

Because I grew up in Portland and then moved here to go to college and never went back. First startup in 1988. Built a software distribution company called license online. The company went from zero to 32 million in sales in 4 years. Which was ridiculously fast. And we went from 3 employees to 150 and in four years. And then we sold the company in 2002.

So then in 98 to 2002, if you remember back there, there was a tech bubble in there and there was 9/ 11 in there. So, it was an interesting time. Wasn't a great time to sell a company now, too. But got it sold anyway. And that was my first startup. First of five. Three of them sold. Two of them failed. One in a rather epic crater fashion. Which is funny. Because it was after the first one, that actually worked. 

So, you know, people were like, I wouldn't do this again. And they're like working on the next one? I'm like obviously got a serial glutton for punishment. So, 16 exits total. So as a founder board member advisor. So, my day job is helping companies and founders sell their companies. Which allows me to my 20% time to work on community building and giving back.

Which kind of got me to Startup Weekend and Up Global. Up Global was the merger of Startup America and Startup Weekend. And we did about 1,265 events worldwide, my last full year there, before we sold to Techstars. Including launching Startup Week globally. And we launched it in 26 cities globally, the second year. I ran it in Seattle.

Andrew Hyde started it in Boulder. And we ran it in six cities, the first year. And 26 cities the second year. So, startup communities stuff is awesome. And I love it. It's, as you know, though, it doesn't pay, so you have to have a day job. You have to have a side hustle, so you can keep your community building job, right. Or vice versa.

Brian Ardinger: Exactly. Yeah. I think we're nine years here at the Startup Week in Lincoln. We got grandfathered in when Techstars made it a global deal. But we found it very helpful to have these conversations, even if it's just once a year to get people connected and reengaged with why it's important to have a startup and why a startup ecosystem is so important in your own backyard.

So, you've got a great book out called Trajectory Startup. I would encourage you to take a look at this. There's a lot of books about startups out there. What made you say, I want to take a different take in this and give back to the community by writing a book about startups 

Dave Parker: Two big things about the book gap that I saw in the marketplace is one, I mean, you, you know, Brian, you've been around Startup Weekend. I'd see people coming out of Startup Weekend and they're like, woo. I met my co-founder, Charles. We're going to leave at eight and then go start our start up. And I'm like, yikes. Like, there are some things you can know before you leave your day job and your benefits and all those things, which allow you to really look at what do I want to know so I can de-risk this as the first semester, right. 

So, I got to do the market research and competitive analysis and look how big the market is and like, and how do I do that? The book's really focused on, the original title was Six Month Startup. And then I started delivering it in different formats and I'm like that doesn't work for the brand. So, it became Trajectory Series. 

But the program now is focused on a five-month program that takes you from ideation to revenue. And the idea there is, if you can't get to revenue in six months, it's probably not a great idea. There are exceptions to that rule. Like if you're a B2B or B2B enterprise and you need to build a really robust product, like that's an exception. Or biotech. Or you're doing B to C and you're competing with clubhouse and you're really about growth of users, right? You won't get to revenue in six months. 

But in general, you should be able to validate or invalidate your idea in six months was the goal. The second thing that came out of it, I kind of backed into was somebody came to me during my time at Startup Weekend. And they're like, hey, can I have your fi...