Best Of Forbes 2023: Entrepreneurs

no one grows up thinking I want to be a great non-alcoholic beer producer non-alcoholic beer had never really crossed my mind as any sort of thing that would be a big part of my life prior to being in the business of non-alcoholic beer [Music] itself My Lifestyle was an intense one I've never been someone to go slow at anything I do but it was wake up early workout very intense day job in the financial world and one of the most intellectually challenging environments there is that 72 and then go out to work dinners really burning the candles at both ends and wake up and do it again the next day it was everything about high performance and my workouts my job and everything I [Music] did I grew up as most people did with all the jokes around the existing category and why would you drink it kind of the decaf coffee jokes and it wasn't until I was living this high performance Modern Life that it occurred to me beer and adult beverages in general have not adapted to the modern lifestyle and there was an enormous Gap here about only 50% of adults consume alcohol on a regular basis and the breadth of non-alcoholic options at on and off premise places for high- performing adults was super limited and that struck me and once the wheel started turning I couldn't turn it off because I was drinking five or six nights a week not in huge amounts most of the time I assumed everyone drank with regularity every time they went out to a bar restaurant anything and it took me stepping away from drinking for performance lifestyle reasons to realize that not that many people actually consume a lot of alcohol with regularity it's actually a very small percentage of the population that consumes a majority of the alcohol so as I was in these places bars and restaurants and in pain looking for better options I realized that there were a lot of people like me and yeah it didn't start out as I was researching a business idea and I I didn't necessarily know I was going to do this but it became a passion that I just couldn't turn off before I knew it I was working on it nights and weekends waking up at 400 in the morning before I went to work I found myself in a spreadsheet working on the business plan on Saturday when it wasn't even my full-time job and that's kind of when I knew that this was something I was really passionate about for the first time in my life I expected when I started talking about non-alcoholic beer all my friends family and colleagues would think I was absolutely insane and they were all like yeah if it tasted good I would probably drink that a good amount and like that's when I was like wo like if there were better options I think almost everyone would drink a great non-alcoholic option with some regularity and then I started running actual surveys and got big data behind that the non-alcoholic beer market in 2016 and 17 was 3% of the overall Beer Market in the us but as I ran surveys of thousands of people 55% plus would say they would drink great non-alcoholic beer with regularity if it didn't come with the bad taste and the stigmas attached to it but then when we talk to people in the industry everyone would very nicely say hey like be really careful how much you invest here there's no demand for it there's no evidence that this is going to be a thing and I think it just wasn't a thing because there wasn't great options that got people excited I teamed up with an incredible co-founder of brew master and John and he was by far the most talented person who' ever turned his attention on this category before John had won every alcoholic craft beer award Under the Sun and we started Brewing at super small scale on Gatorade jugs just making tweaks dialing in that process and getting the real award-winning craft beer that just happened to be non-alcoholic the first batches were kind of fun and kind of terrifying I had been brewing for seven years at that time but we really had to deconstruct Brewing as it was and think about the ingredients in a much different way and so it was the first time I had experienced those same ingredients in a different format and so it was a great learning process for me as a brewer so really I was starting from scratch it really started with the product at a super small scale hundreds of Trials and then the same kind of Grassroots attention out in the world we went door Todo taste testing retailers meeting people at Finish Lines of races when they were sweaty and having a good time putting a non-alcoholic beer in their hand and telling them a little bit about it I think we created thousands and thousands of super fans face to face that for summer and then we just have kept doing that building our community authentically talking to people getting people excited along the whole way the biggest between Brewing traditional and non-alcoholic beer is food safety primarily because you don't have ethanol as a preservative and we want to create a shelf stable product that will be good for 6 months or a year and in order to do that without a preservative you have to be really careful about your entire process through and through until it's a finished product in a can and pasteurized what makes us unique and not unique at all at the same time is that we don't ever remove the alcohol so we don't require that single unit that single machine that strips everything out we brew a beer that is fully fermented to under 5% so we don't have to add a step we don't have to remove anything or add anything [Music] back it's a really exciting time for athletic as we take on kir Dr Pepper as a new partner they LED our series D with a recent investment in that we're getting a really scaled partner operates at the biggest of the beverage industry and a great adviser in our Corner building a manufacturing business is expensive we've built two of the biggest non-alcoholic beer breweries in the world in Connecticut and California and that investment allows us to get those facilities up and running profitably and puts us on a really good sustainable financial future for all of our teammates being commercial hasn't always been cool in the beer industry but from John and I's perspective there's nothing cooler than providing great jobs great opportunity for teammates and that comes with financial stability especially in this economy one of the biggest learnings I found in developing athletic and our Brewing process was that it wasn't alcohol I was after it was all the ingredients and if we can just find a way to Showcase those same ingredients in a different format people are going to like it just the same humans have been drinking beer for 5,000 years and we think it's got a really important place in society and so we want to give people options that fit their life anywhere anytime no matter what their preference is by giving people the full social and taste experience of drinking beer without the alcohol it just allows us to take beer where it's never gone [Music] before for the 45.3 million American households with a cat the anoints of scooping cat litter is a daily one and pet owners are Big Spenders pet industry sales reach $124 billion in 2021 according to the American Pet Products Association that spending combined with the popularity of Robot vacuum cleaners and the acceptance of technology in our homes has led to a growing business for Michigan based whisker Revenue reached nearly $180 Million last year a 24-fold increase from 2015 7.5 million and it all began in the basement of whisker founder Brad Baxter I have to go back over 20 years back to 1998 now at this point I had decided that I wanted to go into business for myself I wanted to start an Engineering Services product development services company and and I ended up doing that and while I had some success with that I realized that what I really wanted to do is I wanted to invent I wanted to build a company around that invention and at the time I didn't really know what that was I was working on a few different things at the time you know experimenting exploring but really hadn't found that aha moment that set me on the right path a year later after starting that business that opportunity actually came in the form of two cats and an overflowing litter box I was down in my base B cleaning up kitty litter mess because when my cats had a dirty litter box they wouldn't actually go in the Box they would go outside of the box and while I was doing that I was thinking about ways that I could somehow automate the process because I was just sick and tired of having to scoop the litter box what I was thinking about was really some kind of a rotational sifting device using gravity to our advantage instead of raking through the litter and pushing clumps and it was you know that was a fairly inefficient process and I thought the next step really is to start to do a patent search so I went ahead did a patent search and found something very similar to what I was already doing and instead of abandoning the idea or the dream of pursuing this product I decided I would contact the inventor and see if we could work out a license agreement which is exactly what we did I was in California demonstrating the very first litter robot in April of 2001 the early days were actually pretty difficult there was no funding my parents actually refinanced their home so that they could uh provide $35,000 which was what the tooling cost to get this off the ground and so my dad became a partner in the business he owned 35% of the business at the time and uh that was really my first source of funding after that there was no external funding Banks were not going to touch me with a 10- foot pole because there really wasn't any collateral so I had to find a way to make it work and the other business that I had started in 1998 which was an Engineering Services business and I kept that running for almost 20 years and it was that business for the first five years of starting automated petare that other business kept automated Pet Care alive I was able to funnel all my profits from the automotive business back into the pet care business there were a lot of challenges early on because this was really a new segment of product and all although there was one other product on the market the way I was doing it was quite different and there were a lot of things that we learned about safety making sure that the the appliance is safe for the cat there were a lot of learning experiences there there was a lot of experiences and lessons learned about running a business especially without external funding it made it very difficult I actually had to retool the product at about the fifth year in in order to take cost out to make it more efficient so that we could actually start making a profit once we started making a profit I was able to reinvest a lot of that money back into marketing and then we started to see real growth after that in 2015 Jacob zupki came on as a consultant to help whisker with its marketing a Serial entrepreneur zupki was asked by an old friend to help the pet goods company with their digital marketing he built such a good relationship with Baxter that he stayed on and became CEO in 2022 in 2015 when I joined the company I saw a really cool opportunity where the company had a phenomenal product was about to launch a new version of the product and maybe lacked a little bit on the marketing front I know I can poke some fun at Brad there and he won't be offended but if you do Wayback machine and you take a look at our 2015 website I think you'll see there was a lot of room for improvement as a marketer I saw this really cool opportunity where the reviews were just insanely cool I remember reading one specific view of a woman who said that it saved her marriage because her then fiance did not want a cat in the home and the only way he would tolerate it is with a l robot and I remember reading that at the time not having a cat and saying I can tell this story and I can do something with this and my big aha moment was at the end of 2015 as we got ready to launch the L robot 3 I lined up what was at the time called social celebrities and we had 25 social C celebrities lined up and each day in December they would give away a litter robot at the time our previous record traffic was about 35,000 visits to our website in one month on December 1st alone we had 35,000 website visits and it was an aha moment for me and I carried that into 2016 where we ended up growing by over 80% that year and we continued to double down and double down one of the things I had a misconception about was marketing I felt that if I built the greatest product that they would all come running for it and I wouldn't have to really spend all that much on marketing and that word of mouth would take over that is not the case marketing is something that you have to constantly invest in you have to constantly adjust and adapt because everything is changing in the marketplace all the time I didn't realize this early on but as I started investing in marketing I realized that that is some you know it's a very important component of what of what we do and it's something that you have to constantly adapt and change and modify and so the more money we made the more we put into marketing and IT you know the results of that were and the success of that are what really sold me on taking that approach with marketing at the end of 2017 you started to see the landscape change a little bit and at that time we really pivoted the television so in 2018 we shot our big big first commercial called don't be a scooper and it was our way of poking fun at people that were still scooping we almost made it a negative term to be a scooper it was an aha moment for the company how do we tell a story about how this litter box can truly change your life and how the thing of the past is not the thing of the future and it was a really cool moment for us where we really saw the direct correlation between putting out a spot that helped people see the litter box differently and the goal of that spot when we set out to go on our creative Retreat and write that spot together was we want somebody who's previously scooped to never be able to look at the litter box the same again and to remember this spot the next time they're elbow deep in cat dece and that's exactly what we came out of it with and I think ever since then we've tried to find creative moments of telling our story different and breaking through the noise and the Clutter of what is advertising it's been great working with Jacob I think the key to us working together is that we are very different he is a very very much a people person open I like to call him the glue within the company he's also very Adept at walking into a room distilling the situation and figuring out kind of what the next steps are and I think that's very important for a leader we compliment each other because I'm a lot more focused in tactical operations engineering focused I really get into to uh problem solving spending a lot of time with focused work where it's you know it's a different way of working and as the company has grown there's been a greater need for let's call it that glue that that Jacob provides in his role we work together very well and we have a mutual respect for each [Music] other with the direct to Consumer business growing they moved to a 30,000 ft Factory in Juno Wisconsin in 2008 since then the expanded the factory to 225,000 [Music] Ft so in 2015 when I joined the company I remember Brad telling me that in 2009 when he bought the property that were still in today that he was going to tarp off half of the building to rent it out to somebody else and fast forward to 20123 we have now done several expansions of our facilities investing as as much as $13 million into our Juno Wisconsin location here proudly manufacturing our robots here in America that's allowed us to go from 30,000 ft to 60,000 in 2020 2021 and then we did another expansion in 2021 2022 that carried us from 60,000 to 222,000 Ft today that allows us to employ over 300 employees here in Juna Wisconsin for a total of5 00 in our company that allows us to keep up with consumer demand and will allow us to grow into what will be nearly a million robots a year here in our Factory in Wisconsin for us manufacturing here in the United States is important and actually it's it's a good business decision really I mean because we make a fairly large product and to have this product made overseas brought over on a boat stored in a warehouse and then ship to the customers I mean there's a lot of expense in the supply chain and actually shipping the product over from um some other offshore suppliers so from early on we decided we were going to locate our manufacturing close to our suppliers and we we identified our plastic suppliers here in Wisconsin and we decided to locate the plant here for that reason so that we we would be close to the supply of parts so all we were doing is integrating the actual assembly process into the W you know with the warehousing of the product and the Fulfillment side of things and it just made a lot of sense to be vertically integrated when I think about what makes whisker magical it's really it's our inventive culture we have a lot of people that are super passionate about building the future of pet care and they get to bring that inventiveness and their tenacity to work every single day whether you are in our operations facility where you are working on the line and you're saying I have an idea and I I think I can make this process a little bit better or you're in our engineering lab in Michigan working on a new inventive product that may redefine a new category in Pet Care in the future the goal of what we're trying to do is bring a lot of very creative people to whisker to help bring their best selves to work every day and really help help us shape the future of pet care I've been at whisker now for 23 years and whisker is completely ingrained in me I mean this whisker is a part of my life this is this was a vision I had over 23 years ago and I was told many times that this would never go anywhere that it was not suitable for retail but I stuck with it and I think our success is what shows that it was you know the right decision to stick with it at the time and I think for for me whisker is evolving a great deal and I'm very very excited to see what we're going to do in the future with our our digital products and our apps and what we can do with the data that we collect from all the hardware and how we how we integrate that into a holistic view of the uh the pet wellness that's what I'm really excited about is is the data side as well as the great Hardware that we can couple with [Music] that bolt is a riling company just like uber you can book a taxi through them now you can also rent electric scooter or have your groceries or your takeout order delivered you can even book a rental car through them and bolt is mainly competing with Uber in Africa and in Europe there are a couple things that stood out to me about bolt and Marcus villig when I started reporting on this story Marcus was unusually Young when he started this company he was only 19 years old so what I saw in Marcus villig and bolt was something of David and GL story you have a much smaller startup and a young founder going head-to-head against a much larger a much better resourced American rival in the form of uber Uber also play very very tough we're seeing Marcus and bold at times winning despite the odds being stacked against them starting any business is hard but it's especially hard if uh you're starting as a 19-year-old kid in a small country like Estonia uh with very limited experience and funding so the first months were brutal uh was coding the app myself during the summer I was going on the streets of ton signing up taxi drivers one by one 90% of them immediately said get out of my car uh you're just a young kid what what are you going to offer me it makes no sense uh so it was very very tough and it was just persistence and very hard work that uh got us to where we are today so B has grown very quickly in recent years and today is raised 1.8 billion for venture capitalist at his last rounds last year that valued the company at 88.3 billion dollar but when we look at corporate filings for 2021 we can see that they generated around 570 million dollar in Revenue how does that compare to Lyft or Uber on a revenue basis that means that bolt is around five times smaller than left or around 50 times smaller than Uber Marcus vill grew up in talin the capital of Estonia it's a small European country on the Baltic C in northeastern Europe he founded this business right out of high school so he had a few entrepreneural Adventures beforehand he was web designing and he started a small sort of edtech app kind of quickly realized it would be very difficult to scale that and sort of started looking around for sort of new ideas New Opportunities and I think a big inspiration was Skype Skype was estonia's kind of pioneering unicorn startup that created a prese zoom online video and online call-in software that ended up being acquired by Microsoft several of his early investors came through Skype and his older brother martin who helped co-found the business had also worked at Skype as well Estonia actually has an interesting background where due to the Russian occupation for 50 years all entrepreneurship was outlawed so nobody could start the business and that that was the environment I was first growing up in but also of course as soon as they ended and Theon G its independence everybody wanted to start something new so actually starting a company seemed like a very popular new trendy thing to do and what also happened was there was no other big companies to join because the economy was so new so it wasn't like you could go and join a large corporation what many young people exactly wanted to do was start their own business so it was actually a pretty natural environment for me to grow up wanting to be like that as well marus talks about having been in to see many of the kind of leading Venture capitalists across Europe and Beyond and was met was same answer no thank you investors were intrigued by him and what he builds but when they were looking at the opportunity of this very young founder from this very small country to build a product that could compete with Uber which had already raised over a billion dollars investors were not optimistic about his prospects as a result of that Marcus had to learn to do things his own way on a very small budget this meant that Marcus and bolts had to find new ways to grow and had to find Smart solutions to do that and to beat Uber some of these examples would be looking at Africa where B was very quick to offer cash payments this is meant that you could book a taxi through the bolt app and instead of making a payment via Apple pay or with a card you would hand your driver cash and the driver would settle up with bolt at the end of the day or at the end of the week this may sound like a small thing but around 25% of people in South Africa don't have access to a bank account or credit cards and that's even higher in other parts of Africa where B operates i' say the hardest part of our journey so far were the first 5 years because we were barely able to raise any funding at all we managed to raise about1 million EUR and and we built the company uh into more than 10 countries with that limited amount of funding while our competitors were raising more money than any company in the history of technology so we were completely completely outspent by all these other players uh and the only way we could succeed was by being smarter so we were really focused to making sure that the team is very focused on frugality and we count really the impact of every Euro that we spend it's a common playbook for startups in Europe that as soon as you start to build some traction you should go to the US which is the largest possible Market however marus was relying on his own data there he started looking at the stats and saw that the greatest possible potential was actually in Africa specifically in South Africa rather than the US he also knew that he would face less competition there than he would do where he had to go head-to-head with Uber oryt in the US market you need to expand only to the cities where you can actually offer something better than the incumbents do uh otherwise you're just generating no value there uh so we realized very early on that Central and Eastern Europe was underserved uh other platforms didn't really understand the local customers well as we did and that translated into many things for example local payment methods they didn't work with all the drivers in these markets they didn't necessarily focus on safety and some other aspects that were important here after years of running bolt on a very tight budget Marcus was able in the pandemic to raise some really large sums of money from investors that supercharged the growth of Bolt and helped it expand into new areas like scooters like food delivery like groceries and even offering rental cars but it's been really expensive e SCS are a tough business though investors around the world have invested around $5 billion into startups like bird but many of them still don't turn profit and aggressively burning money most companies can barely build one product that reaches millions of customers and even less companies are able to actually build multiple products that ever work really well so we were always very conscious that we don't want to expand into products that are not centered around our core Mission but with electric scooters we realized early on that there's many synergies that we can benefit from by having the leading ride Hing service in a city and by also having the leading scooter sharing service in a city because it's largely the same customers anyway so we don't need to spend nearly as much money on marketing to acquire those customers but we can take that money that other companies spend on on marketing and actually invest that into having a better product and cheaper prices Paul's Mission from day one has been that we want to build better cities and we believe the best way to do that is to replace private cars so it's it's never been that we only want to be a riling company I don't even have a driver's license so for me it was always how do we expand the the product set so we can truly replace the private car and electric scarters were the next obvious place for us to expand into because most of the trips in cities are short and electric scarters one of the best ways to replace those trips right handland is a tough business it's hard to make money here with very tight margins Bolton has got a lot bigger but the business also burnt through $600 million in 2021 and investors be watching marus and Bs numbers very closely but also Uber and lift which have still yet to turn at annual profit our mission is to make cities better by replacing private cars and we think that we're truly at just the very early stages of that we already have more than 100 million customers across Europe and Africa but when you look at the potential then we think there's more than a billion people that we can address over these two continents over the next 10 years to come David David Adelman is CEO of Campus Apartments a student housing company headquartered in Philadelphia as CEO he's expanded the company at 80 schools in 23 States managing properties valued around $2 billion Adelman is also a minority stakeholder in the Philadelphia 76ers and recently became the face of the NBA's team effort to build a $1.3 billion arena in Philly Center City so who is David Adelman for those people who don't know just Philly guy love the city love the town love my friends family guy just a guy yeah just a guy right nobody's just a guy though I'm just a guy you're just a guy that wants to do a big thing uh and get to that in a minute but talk about campus apartments right you're the CEO of Campus apartments right one of the biggest College real estate companies in the country and you took over this role at age 27 years old right a 27y old CEO what is it about campus departments that's so unique what is the business talk to me about it well it's Unique because it's kind of a fabric of what made me a businessman it really is you know I started as a kid as people know my story I had a great mentor founder who taught me business uh and for me it was the way to cut my teeth and learn how to accomplish things but what was really satisfying is how University City changed kind of on my watch out here you know I think people used to look at University City West Philadelphia very differently I think us helping establish the creation of the University City District I'm very proud of that we were the first business to sign on the largest business contributor at the time uh and then literally redeveloping block by Block in University City when you see those sidewalks and brick walls out there that's not the city of Philadelphia doing that we did that and we learned that the way to make a positive impact in a local community is to do it yourself and so I didn't ask for help the streetscape lighting the new sidewalks the brick walls all things that people rely on city services for I did it privately you know we'll talk about my you know the arena the Ambitions there but for me um I'd rather control my own destiny prefer not to ask for help or assistance and I just want to do it yeah take me back to the 11-year-old David adman right we're going to get back to campus departments but you were trying to control your own destiny then where you was a bet that you made with your Uncle Allen Herz horz um who you know you were betting a basketball game and you lost right why were you so overconfident that you were going to beat this grown man in a basketball game and as an 11y old kid well first of all you know I've grown to realize I'm not very good at basketball um but also you know most people let the kid win right yeah um not Allen very competitive guy uh just said I'm going to teach about life and uh you know you don't always win yeah what did you lose oh my basketball my football my baseball glove and my bank book your bank book remember back then like saving people don't know what a savings book is but uh yeah I remember a bank book very well why did you lose your with did he want with your bank book he just was like I'm going to teach you about betting and you know he he roped me in he said and uh he just said you know TI left take your possessions you have to earn them do something to earn earn them back all right and it was at this very headquarters right this very building that you came here during Summers and learned about real estate it is so I started here uh in the back behind here was a little Warehouse where I stacked Lumber M swept sawdust because they would you know kind of preab things there and uh you all these properties are around I you know cleaned painted you name it leasing accounting whatever it took yeah shoveling snow when so when it snowed I had to come down here even as a property manager and you know start clearing the path even as an 11y old kid that you were doing at 12y old that was as a teenager was a teenager okay teenage years so what got you hooked on real estate when you were in this you was you know most people when they working in the back with Lumber they and have to sweep up saw dust they don't want nothing to do with really but here you are it's big real estate interest I I think and you know the people who follow your publication would understand this like you know the power of the fact that you could have your customers or your tenants essentially paying your bills paying your debt reducing your mortgage advertising your your properties was fascinating to me and so the ability that you could provide a service do it with respectfully treat your customers your tenants very well treat your staff well and uh you have this you know kind of notion you pay down your debt there's appreciation and value and you know the middle in between is for you yeah yeah you had a story that you told me when you were in college about one electrical outlet at a frat house that you fought to get more outlets in this house and that was your first experience as a landlord right and here you are decades later as this landlord is David adaman just another landlord is he just another guy who's a landlord or is he a different landlord well so first of all the the the college thing I was a tenant and the landlord only had one Outlet in each bedroom absolutely and uh I asked for another for us each of our rooms and he said no and I was like that doesn't seem right that you like one Outlet per bedroom and I went down to the city of Columbus and asked the building inspector what's the rule I was 20 years old 19 years old and I said shouldn't it be on like every wall and he told me what the rule is said can I have a photocopy of that handed it to the landlord and I said we'd all like Outlets every eight feet like this says so what supposed to be every eight feet it's every 8 feet on a wall yeah okay how many per room on whatever the square so it would be you know instead of one there should be four six whatever it was but every 8 ft on the wall wow wow and so all those Outlets got passed but now here you are again as a landlord um what makes you different than any other landlord because most people hate landlords nobody wants to pay rent but most people hate their landlords I think what we try to do is we have a unique constituency right so I have the students because these are college kids it's usually their first time running an apartment or experiencing not being under Mom and Dad's roof so you're their landlord but you're kind of their parent and their Guardian a little bit so we take that responsibility very seriously but you still have Mom and Dad as constituents and how do you manage all of that at once and so communication you know teaching your staff patience because you know kids back in I'm dating myself but you know a lot of kids couldn't balce their checkbook to pay their monthly rent their check rent check would bounce not because they meant to but they were like not keeping track you know now they're ven mowing it in electronic payments that doesn't happen as much but uh you know for us it's just being compassionate you know most of the people who work with me all have kids I have kids in college I'm paying rent to other landlords so I understand what they're going yeah yeah how would you look at real estate today you know I mean you you see it and we talked before you say commercial real estate is in trouble how are you looking at it today what would if someone wanted some investment advice from you real estate investment advice what would you tell them I am a long-term thinker and so I'm not looking at today you know certainly our office building's in trouble absolutely not all of them many of them you know but that's based on debt what kind of debt do you have and so for me it's about you know are you investing in an asset class whether it's student housing hotels retail what's the long-term value you know not all asset classes are dead or hurt and so where do you find the value in that given an asset class yeah and when you look at campus apartments right the business you help build this business by you convincing colleges to Outsource running the those apartments especially off campus and uh over two billion in assets under management properties under management now how did you build this take me on the inside of how David a would helped build campus Apartments um one is I'm stubborn and so I looked around and I thought that universities shouldn't be in the real estate business institutions should stick with whatever their their core competency is so for colleges and universities that's educating students you know they figured out a long time ago that food service they didn't need to employ the man or woman that was serving the sloppy joe sandwich at lunch they could hire narar or sedexo or Levy or somebody else out there that could do perform that so really what popped in my head is like why can't I be you know the ly or Aramark of real estate for colleges no one had done it uh I thought it was a problem that needed to be solved and that's why I started pitching yeah now the company is successful right but what keeps dvan up at night when it comes down to campus apartments and its future considering where we are right you have high interest rates uh B turmoil at the Regional Bank level those are big lenders for commercial properties what keeps David adman up at night in 20203 well you know fortunately it's not interest rates every I have never been greedy I've never had floating very rarely had floating R debt everything's longterm fixed in 7 years 10 years plus so usually that weathers through a bad time I think for me what you know as I get bigger between campus apartments and my other activities to make sure that we don't lose kind of the culture we have here where people really care about each other take care of each other I believe that you should enjoy going to work okay in my 25 years of working in this office I've never once said I'm going to work I say I'm going to the office there's a real distinct difference there and so I encourage everyone who works with me too they need to enjoy this if they come to a point in their career where they're not they should come talk to me and we should figure out what's best for them and so can I create an environment that does that so culture is a big thing that keeps me up at night to answer your question how do I make sure people feel good about getting up every day and coming here and doing their job yeah and how do you do that communication what do you tell them I'm well one I'm very accessible to our team you see something tell me reach out okay so they can call you at 1 o'clock in the morning 100% okay 100% will you answer I do I'm sleeping a lot better now but usually I uh yes um but you know I want to know what can I do to make their lives better what can I do to help make your family's life better and for me that's important that if we know that we have a team member that's struggling what can we do to help you know unfortunately when you have you know lots of employees things happen in their families that are really unfortunate how can me or the company be there to support them through that yeah how would you define good culture in your business I think good culture is at the end of the day if our customer is Happy the people providing that service are coming from a happy and comfortable place you know and you see if you ever have an experience where you're getting bad customer service it's probably because those employees aren't being treated well yeah so CEO of campus departments FS Investments Vice chair men of FS Investments people he corrected me off camera um and you're a billionaire uh and you told me you had to sit your daughters down and you had to talk to them about what was coming the public scrutiny what was that conversation like what did you tell them and why didn't they know um I mean I think my kids knew that I worked hard they knew that you know I was making sacrifices you know to be able to do things for them but to also do things for our community philanthropy is a big part of my life and I think I sat down with them and I said look you know with money comes responsibility and you know we we can talk about philanthropy and how I sat down with you know my teenage girls and said like what what's on your list to make things better um to obviously this Arena project is local here and they the they're friends and I just said like you know we're signing up for you know a little bit of publicity here um and you know I took them downtown I showed them what it looks like now on Market East and I said this is what I think will happen if I build this and I said hopefully your kids will be standing here and like say your grandfather did this and he changed the neighborhood and improved it and brought back you know quality of life that Philadelphia deserves and that's why I said to them yeah jumping forward but since you took it there um also minority ownership group and the minority ownership group of the philia 76s which makes you so involved in this Arena project downtown you're you're proposing a $1.3 billion project um in the heart of downtown uh there is concern uh Chinatown there's residents there people who believe that there could be some disruption there um and it may put you in a bad light right tell me about this Arena project why you feel like this is so successful and and and also how you plan on pushing back against the resistance that's historically has always been there and now you're coming with this another big idea again how you going to pull it through well you know first you know the the idea is you know it's time for the Sixers to control their own destiny have their own home um and you know build an arena that is fit for an NBA team of you know this day and age two to be able to do it with my partners Josh Harrison David Blitzer in a way that can be great for our team our fans but the community and so we picked a site that had great infrastructure it's on top of the best Urban transit station in Philadelphia two could we make an impact immediately you know Market East used to be the C Center of Commerce it the department store was invented in Philadelphia Market East had nine department stores at its Heyday it has one left right now Macy's which was the old John Juan makr and how do we take boarded up retail in the heart of our city and reactivate that and so for me to be able to take a mall that was built 49 years ago in the Heart of the City so it's not as if this you know there wasn't a big large scale project there already and take a mall that isn't living up to its full potential take part of it down build another box I like to say and create energy and vibrancy into the city to me it's a no-brainer it's exciting 9,000 construction jobs 1 th000 permanent jobs and that's not even counting what we think will be the direct benefit to the adjacent properties on Market Street when those get redeveloped and that could be 20,000 jobs that get created yeah why do you think you're getting so much resistance then if this project seems to be any 400 million right in in annual economic impact right why is it getting so much resistance well I don't know if it's a lot of resistance what I've learned is the people who support projects like this and other people who spers who think it's a no-brainer don't feel the need to speak up and support so you really only hear the denters and I probably need to do a better job of you know getting the folks that are for it to come out so people understand the level of excitement for the small business owners for our fans for the people who are you know aren't moving back into Center City because of what's happened postco here you know the city's dying a slow death here we need to reinvigorate it and so all those people who are excited spoke up you'd probably have a different perspective yeah yeah people look at it and say oh this is a land grab this is a real estate play do you push back against that what do you say land I mean that that doesn't make sense to me the goal is like let's build an arena let's do something great down here you know I need a piece of real estate to do it um but when you look at how I'm doing this and we're doing this where you know we're not displacing any Community residents or any Community businesses we taking an existing box that's the mall and putting a new box you already had an entertainment center it's not it didn't work let's put a new one there and so to me you know there's so much noise around this and misinformation but when you look at the fundamental impact that Market East has been the center of Commerce for a hundred years okay this mall has been there for 5050 years years I I've never heard anyone complain about that mall I've never heard anyone say that that mall is in Chinatown okay and so for me take one box put a new box on top of a train station the Sixers are playing Boston Celtics right now Boston figured this out 20 years ago their Arena the TD Garden sits on top of a train station and that helped redevelop a part of downtown Boston that was not doing well you have residential you have office so I walked out that Arena cuz I'd never been there and I'm like oh my God this is it I don't even need renderings anymore I just need people to come see what happened up here and this is Boston Philly's way better than Boston like we're going to do a better job and they figured that out 20 years ago yeah as a real estate guy when you hear things like hey Arenas don't have the economic impact they promise a lot but it doesn't bring any I've been through enough Arenas throughout the United States and I can say there may be some truth and also some that that's not true when it comes to that particular narrative what do you say about that so I think you normally hear that dialogue related to if the city has put City dollars in there what was the return on investment okay and how do you grade it five years 10 years later was it a good investment for the city the beautiful thing here is I'm not asking the city to put any money in if this turns out to be a bad deal for Josh David and I that's our problem it won't affect the city they still get the vibrancy right and so for me if we don't have to take City money which we pledge not to do and are willing to privately invest in this what does the city have to lose that's what I don't understand you have critics that'll push back they'll say hey development is already there right it's risky knocking it down and trying to build something on top of it why not choose an empty spot what do you say to that I'd say to that if I wanted just some parking lot somewhere I don't accomplish the goal of that vibrancy back in the core of our city and there's a reason that every NBA team but one plays in a downtown that's where people want to be that's where our fans want to be yeah when you're going around a country and you're developing other properties right what's your strategy what do you look around what do you see when you're standing in the middle of something that could be whether it's developed or not like what are you looking for one I'm looking for like you know if I build it will they come two what's the experience that'll be here once it's open and I already know the answer for this people are going to come people are going to be able to be thankful that they're not paying you know you know spending an hour in traffic coming downtown when they can take public transit that goes right underneath like we have this amazing infrastructure it has some challenges it needs some branding it needs some things but you know we're going to include for the first few years that we're open we're going to include a seop pass on your ticket to come to the game yeah we're going to make it really user friendly yeah speaking this what's it like being a sports owner now you're you're in the public light we know you're a billionaire and again you're you're you're putting up this fight to get something that you feel is going to leave a lasting Legacy for your family and help Revitalize an area um what's that like and at the same time trying to balance being a public figure as a Sports owner of of a major team being an owner is really fun when you win yes right so I'll say that uh two you know I I'm a firm believer and I'm learning from my partners that you know at the end of the day this is the city's team right we're stewards of it but like you know this is the you know these teams belong to our our fans yeah and so how do we make sure that they can have the best experience watching our teams yeah does David at all and Josh they're pushing you obviously but does David Adelman give up at all with this Arena play I'm not stopping not stopping I'm not stopping you know I feel very comfortable there are forces at work that would like us to give up I'm not giving up this is too important our city needs this and uh that's what I say to myself every day when I'm wake up and I you know I'm getting punched in the face is that our city needs this we need the energy we need the activity you know there were people in the city before me other developers Willard Rouse is a famous developer in Philadelphia he was the first guy I don't know if you know this no one could build a building taller than William Penn in Philadelphia it held Philadelphia back all through the 60s 7s and ' 80s it wasn't until the late ' 80s that they finally passed him that this guy fought for to build Liberty Place it changed the skyine of Philadelphia and everyone thought he was crazy so maybe I'm not crazy when you walk around the arena as a sports owner does do people give you Flack for this at all or you know what do they say I would tell you overwhelmingly I get way more excitement especially when I'm walking downtown in Philadelphia not even at the games and people stop and say don't give up so they know who you are then they do see your face yeah I'm actually surprised about it but yes so is that weird at all that when you in public people know who you are now yeah I mean look we've I've been here a long time I do a lot you know from a philanthropy perspective so you know obviously I conduct business and know people but I'm certainly getting more fans yeah so talk about your philanthropy right what what does it mean to you and and and who's your your biggest you know the people who you donate the most money to um I I think for me it's you know where can I make a difference working my wife and I make a difference and you know we we kind of have three buckets um Jewish philanthropy um my grandfather was in the Holocaust and you know we built our family led the construction of the Philadelphia Holocaust Memorial very important to me uh two I'm chairman of the Jewish Federation here in Philadelphia which you know provides you know services to you know both here and in Israel uh second my wife is a former teacher a former college professor and children's book author School and education are very important to her so that that's a bucket where we spend a lot of time supporting schools and supporting kids uh and then three you know health and you know medicine is kind of our last bucket thinking bringing it full circle again you're a billionaire right when that word when you hear that word now and and now that you're Associated so closely with it what comes to mind the arena um you know one like I I I cringe a little bit um you know you know because I think about my kids and stuff like that you know creting it but I I think for me I just think about you know I'm proud of the work I've done to build my career the businesses that we've helped build we've created so you know I'm I'm fortunate and I'm appreciative I don't take it for granted the success that's come with it and as I keep saying like you know this Arena and I know no one's going to you know feel bad for a real estate guy or my partners but this is not a great economic deal for us okay compared to other opportunities where we could put capital and invest capital in our business life we all believe the three of us believe that making an impact on the city is hugely important we're the poorest big city in the country right now what can we do to make an impact and that's what we think about David ad thanks for the time thanks for having [Music] me one of the things that's really helped me a lot is I love solving problems and I believe you know in engineering you can always solve a problem and I think that's actually true in business as well my name is Lisa Sue and I'm CEO of AMD Lisa Sue is the CEO of AMD she's an MIT PhD she's a Taiwanese immigrant and she really saved this historic Silicon Valley company bringing it back from the dead and making it one of the most important chip companies in the industry I was born in Taiwan and I came to the US when I was two with my parents and you know growing up my father used to quiz me with math tables at the dining room table so that's how I first got into math and when I was young I like to actually take things part my brother had a toy remote controlled car and it stopped working and I was wondering why did it stop working and so I opened it up tried to see what was going on and there was like a a wire that was loose and and we were able to get it back working again by putting it back together I went to the Bronx High School of Science in New York and I was surrounded by you know people who loved Math and Science and Technology I will say there was a part of me that wanted to be a concert pianist but I don't think I was good enough to do that so I ended up being an engineer but I was really inspired by when I was a freshman at MIT is um I went into a semiconductor line for the first time and I saw how you made chips and that was just so cool to me that's really how I ended up being in semiconductors having a a summer job when I was a first year college student I was at IBM in the mid90s we were working at the Forefront of semiconductor devices semiconductors were so interesting to me I mean I love the idea that you could you know really make something that works you know all of these transistors these tiny little things that you could really put together in a chip and so we worked on some of the newest Innovations things like copper interconnects and you know new ways to make devices faster and and less power and [Music] denser in those days people always said you know is more as law ending are we not going to be able to make devices smaller and and and so much of the challenge was how could we keep increasing performance and increasing capability while also making these devices smaller so we could put more transistors on a single chip so that was the key thing and you we had a great team that was working on that I joined AMD in 2012 I always knew about AMD as a important company in the industry and it was an opportunity to work on a bigger platform so I was you know very interested in joining AMD there are a lot of things happening at that point in time there was this this whole revolution of you know where were PCS going what was happening in Mobile phones what was going to be the next big Tech going on so I wanted to be at a company that really would work at the bleeding edge of Technology when Sue came into the role she had this really gargantuan task ahead of her the company stock had plummeted a quarter of the workforce had been laid off and she's really been able to pull off one of the greatest turnarounds in Silicon Valley history Sue really boiled down her turnaround strategy to three things building great products focusing on customer relations and the third thing is simplifying the company so focusing on strengths like PC chips and data centers in the early days when I joined AMD it was actually about getting customers and large Partners to trust us and trust that we could develop the best technology in the world and that they could trust their road maps and you know their business with our technology you know what I would say is look it's going to take us 5 years but we will be best-in-class in the industry and we're going to do it in these three steps with our new Zen architecture and our new microprocessors and so it really is about a track record and doing what you say you're going to do and ensuring that we meet our commitments the people who know her also points to this unique mix of technical ability and people skills and that's kind of what's Driven her success being able to bring people together problem solve and focus on more than just the business what I've really enjoyed about being an engineer is really Building Products that's what I love in life it's really you know how do you build great products how do you see where your products go and you know really make the world a better place and the role of a CEO you know that's one piece of it that's not all pieces of it we have many stakeholders we have our employees we have our board our shareholders our partners and so it's really balanced ing not just the technology but also balancing and ensuring that you know we are really meeting all of our stakeholders expectations the thing about semiconductors and you know developing you know chips is you really do have to make bets 3 to 5 years in advance and you have to think about okay where is the industry going and how are we going to bring you know sort of new ideas to an industry that really has lots and lots of great companies and lots of smart people so you know at am we spent a lot of time thinking about where is technology going in the future what's going to be really important what are the limiting factors and how do we do something that nobody else can do I've been in the semiconductor industry for the last you know 30 years and you know sort of in the beginning people didn't really understand what semiconductors were for they were kind of like underneath the surface you know you knew something about chips and something about computers but not exactly you know why they were important I think what's been amazing over the last few decades and especially even over the last 3 or four years people Now understand that semiconductors are essential like you need chips and everything that you do in every part of your life and every part of the business and every part of how we deliver you know great health care and you know great technology and great capabilities and I think that's what makes it cool is that you know semiconductors are now something that everyone thinks about as being super important for our daily lives we love seeing our products and techn Technologies really make a difference in everyone's lives I'm not sure I'm ready to talk about Legacy I think we have a lot to do right now to continue pushing the envelope on technology touching billions of people with AMD technology would be a wonderful thing so the US Hot sace Market is estimated to be around $1.5 billion as of 2021 the largest in that business is tobasco which is made by meleny a family-owned company second is McCormick which is publicly traded they own Frank's Red Hot and they also own chalula which they purchase for $800 million in late 2020 and then after that we have uh Huong which is around 9 or 10% of the market so they're still much smaller than the the two biggest players in the market but they have grown a lot in the last uh two decades or so until now so hun Foods is a company that's best known for its biggest product Sriracha they're based in orndale California they were founded by David Tran who came to the us as a Vietnamese immigrant in 1979 and they're obviously their biggest product is sriracha that's what everyone knows them for the iconic rooster logo on the bottle with the green squeeze cap they also have two other products that they make one is called sbal elic which is very similar to the Sriracha hot sauce but uh it's not Blended and then chili garlic which is very similar but also without the vinegar and the sugar so what's really interesting about Huong is that you know it's never done any direct advertising it's only pretty much grown through Word of Mouth initially the its main customers were chinesee American Vietnamese American communities restaurants markets in LA and Southern California and it's just spread you know organically since then you can actually sort of see its growth based on the factories that it's had it started out with that 2500t facility in Chinatown in 1987 they moved to a much larger one he eventually expanded that to around you know more than 200,000 sare ft and then in 2013 they moved to what is now their main facility in Irwindale east of LA that's 650,000 sare ft they can make up to 18,000 bottles of sriracha an hour Sriracha is now everywhere right it's really become a cold product and it's a very unique example of a product that has gone from being I guess fairly Niche initially to being so widely used to the point of that it's now the third largest hot sauce in the country according to Market Research from Ibis world and it's only behind Tabasco which has been around since 1868 and then Frank's Red Hot which is own by mccormic right a publicly traded spices giant so for a company like weong that was only founded in 1980 to reach that level competing with a company that's got you know more than 150 years of history in Tabasco and and then a you know massive public traded Corporation is is really astounding so David Tran he's the founder of weong foods he first came to the US in the summer of 1979 he was born and grew up in Vietnam during the Vietnam more uh he was in the South vietnames Army he didn't fight but he was drafted to it like everyone of his age was at the time he had actually started producing um a hot sauce using the chilies that were grown on his brother's land in South Vietnam after the war ended in 1978 there was a lot of pressure from the Communist Vietnamese government on citizens of Chinese origin like David Tran and his family to leave the country and so he and his son and his wife as well as other members of his family um ended up leaving Vietnam as refugees they had to leave on different uh trollers he left on a freighter called Hong in December 1978 which is actually how he got the name of the company eventually all that he brought with him was a locket and 100 ounces of gold that he hid in cans of condensed milk so that they couldn't be taken by the the Communist authorities he landed up in Hong Kong after a brief Journey on the Freer in Hong Kong he was at a refugee camp for 8 months and then in the summer of 197 79 he was resettled to Boston however Boston was cold they didn't really end up liking it that much and his brother-in-law had actually resettled to La he he mentioned that he he would call his brother his brother-in-law and his brother-in-law had told him there were chilies available in the markets in La which he was not able to find in uh Boston so they ended up moving to LA in January of 1980 that's when he started looking for uh freshly grown chilies Jalapenos in in local markets in LA he sold some of the gold he had brought with him to open up a 2,500 foot factory in Chinatown started producing um the hot sauce that we now know SRA which was similar to the recipe he had been making back in Vietnam in the first two months of business in 1980 the company brought in $2,300 and he would actually sell the the bottles of of hot sauce out of a blue Chevy van driving around La to different uh Vietnamese and Chinese markets to sell it so Hong I think because it started out as a product that was mainly used by uh nurse types of you know Asian restaurants and Asian communities in the US it sort of grew out organically from from those communities and those customers it wasn't sort of you know advertised or pitched to a lot of different places you know it's it's used by a lot of sushi restaurants around the us there was actually a study made in 2015 by the NPD Group which showed that nearly one in 10 households in the US Stock Catra and actually higher than that if you look at households uh with people um under the age of 35 it's also kind of iconic right everyone knows the rooster logo The Squeeze cap it's sort of Dependable as a very spicy hot sauce you'll find anywhere and it's interesting there was a documentary made in 2013 on Sriracha uh by Griffin Hammond you know he talks all these people who are big fans and a lot of people don't even know that Sriracha is made in the US right if you look at the bottle it's written in Vietnamese and Chinese people have this idea that it's more authentic because they might believe that it comes from outside the US it's not right it's a it's a product made by David TR and his family who he's American uh but obviously he he came from Vietnam he started making it in Vietnam it has that authenticity and that simple recipe and the ingredients that is's used have never changed the recipe has always been the same and you know what you're getting when you're getting Sriracha right it's it's very identifiable and they focus on that product right they also have S elic and chil like but they're a much smaller um sort of source of revenue for them it's really mainly Sriracha that they sell and they're so highly identified with that product over the years weang has had to deal with some challenges including some lawsuits uh shortages of chilies and also counterfeits that have tried to sell their product illegally one of the first ones that sort of got a lot of uh news coverage when the city of Irwindale which is where their facilities located uh sued Hong for basically odors that the factory was submitting and you know this ended up going on for a little while Hong actually opened up their Factory to the whole Community they started doing factory tours eventually the city dropped this lawsuit it's interesting this this actually got a lot of coverage around the US you know Senator Ted Cruz actually asked weong if they wanted to move to Texas to get away from orndale that didn't end up happening and then another lawsuit that happened was in 2021 Hong used to have an exclusive chili producer up until a few years ago called Underwood ranches based in California and they would produce all of the jalapenos that hang needed there was a lawsuit over sort of the agreements that they'd had with with Underwood ranches the all of since concluded and what's interesting about sort of the production process is that the chili growing season is pretty short and so if the Harvest goes bad that means that they're not going to have enough chilies to produce the Sauer the rest of the year and so they had all the production with this one producer um now they have multiple producers I believe in California and in northern Mexico so that's in the past now but that was a major challenge for them in terms of having to to deal with that lawsuit and also on on sort of how they were going to get their their tril production more recently in 2022 there was a severe chili shortage in the spring um whong actually sent out a notice to a lot of their customers saying that it was going to severely impact their ability to produce any sriracha and so there's a lot of news articles around the us about the Catra shortage I actually spoke to an analyst who was looking at Neilon data that showed that sales initially spiked after this announc as people were trying to hoard all the Catra that's passed now uh they they they've been able to sort of get back to to regular production um and also the fact now they they have sort of a diversified sourcing for their Chili's but when there's severe weather events like happened in 2022 and there's only one chili growing season that can sort of severely impact how much of you are able to produce for the for the rest of the year David Tran by all accounts is a very humble person he is fairly press shy he has done a few interviews over the years but what's really interesting is one of his main phrases I've seen a lot that he said to me also over email is that he's just focused on making a rich man's hot sauce at a poor man's price he's not changing the ingredients he's just trying to keep making the same product and make more of it as long as more people want it he's also said in the past that his his American dream was never to become a billionaire you know he's said in the past that he's received offers over time to to buy the company and he's not interested he just wants to pass it on to his family and to keep growing it as much as possible and that's what's happened over you know the last 40 plus years that the company's been in business especially the last 20 years the company's grown so much in some years even they've grown even by around 20% uh each year in some years it's this phenomenal growth and a very humble backstory right an immigrant Refugee from Vietnam built this company grew it organically and is not interested in in selling it or bringing out new products or changing the recipe that has brought the company and the family so much suc [Music] success vant is a company that basically automates other companies security and compliance processes so the security part is like making sure a company is managing and storing customer data in a way that's like [Music] safe so a lot of the software we use right has all this customer data knows so much about us and we sort of found that when you know that there's a data breach or there's a hack right in that data is everywhere it has like real consequences for people I feel about like Equifax or Target or these big breaches and so there's just so much scrutiny on whether companies are kind of doing the right thing and securing the customer data they have um and they're right they kind of rightly a lot of scrutiny on that a notable thing about V's investment strategy was Christina the founder and CEO like worked in Venture as her first like institutional drop out of college basically and from that there are two I guess lessons that she likes to talk about one is that companies are the best at like raising money when they don't need it and the other is that it's like easy to confuse fundraising success with like company product success and I think she's been really conscious about trying like not to fall into those traps Christina actually waited until vant reached 10 million in annual recurring Revenue which is like the way vant to measures Revenue because it's a subscription based company um to raise its first like big institutional funding round at series a um most companies usually try to raise a series a when it's like 1 million at that metric so vanta waited until much later so that was in May of 2021 they raised 50 million in Suva led by Sequoia and then a year later they announced the series B in June of 2022 it was an 110 million round led by Craft Ventures and that round valued the company at $1.6 billion so when vanta launched in 2018 uh we launched this category of automated compliance so helping companies get compliant and secure quickly um since then we've grown with our customers and now offer a broader trust management platform but still staying core to helping technology companies secure the customer data they have and then go demonstrate and prove that they're you know have reasonable security to their customers so they can go grow their business when I was a a product manager at Dropbox trying to take a new product to Market and we were really excited about giving the product to you know big companies Enterprise customers and and then you know the legal team kind of correctly told us we we couldn't do that we couldn't show that the product was Secure and compliant you know we thought we had reasonable practices but we couldn't demonstrate them in the way these Enterprises expected um and I didn't know anything about the space SP but as more and more I learned the process itself or the the goal made sense right it's like of course we should show we're trustworthy to Big customers um and do the right thing what that scrutiny ends up meaning is these companies have to one have reasonable practices and two then go through these pretty onerous processes to prove they have good security practices right and they're actually securing the data and historically that was like spreadsheets and manual Audits and like everything was one off um which both Took a ton of time and effort and also was like pretty inefficient cuz we're like talking about software and we're taking it into you know pieces of paper almost literally but companies would still go through it because it was so important to them to show that they were good stewards of customer data and their customers wanted that you know almost before they'd make the purchase right so it's like such an important thing to prove and felt you know kind of a like a large problem and an important one to solve because as someone who who build software um I actually do believe still believe in the transformative power of software but you know we can't do that if we don't trust [Music] it I think in the beginning you know because we created the category because we created the product we didn't have software competition uh we truly were the only thing and so the the trick and the the kind of sales or go to market processes was convincing someone they could rely on software for something they had a bunch of manual processes before and as uh like kind of 2020 and 2021 went on and just more startups got funded there were more entrance into the space people that copied what we did took it to Market and I think that just you know breeds some amount of resilience it it it deeply shows that in software you're sort of only as good as your your last release in a lot of ways and you may have created the category and brought this new product to Market and done this Innovation but if that happened 2 years ago right it's it's much more about well what's you know what are you doing this quarter next quarter how are you continuing to show that you're useful to customers and not sort of resting on The Laurels of a prior success I think waiting to waiting until we were 10 million in AR to raise our series a instilled a lot of discipline in the company it forced us to think about are we doing the right thing do we have a good business not um does some VC think we have a good business right it's kind of made it more insular in a helpful way there I also think it forced discipline around practices like we charge customers annually up front and these like cash flow things that actually helped us not need funding for longer um and in those ways it you know those sort of smaller decisions helped us build a stronger more resilient business um and I think finally the answer was like we didn't need the cash and again some of it was things like charging annually up front but um we you know we certainly had problems to solve but they weren't problems where it felt like it was you know more money would solve them it felt like more money actually might make it more complicated or raise the stakes or do other things and so you know why don't we solve those problems first and then when we get to the problems where it seems like money can solve them you know go go pursue investment two things came across really clearly when I was talking to Christina and like her former and current business partners and investors um one is that she's like super Scrappy and really prioritizes like product over ego like when I was asking her oh like what Fanta the category Creator she was like visibly uncomfortable like I don't want to like claim credit for this kind of thing um and that's definitely something that carries into like how she runs a business the other thing is that she's like clearly someone who like will learn anything for the sake of learning it so prior to vanta I worked at an early stage investment firm a VC firm in New York Union Square Ventures I think working at the early stage VC firm and interacting with like seed stage Founders I very much wanted to be one of them and start a company I didn't quite know in what yet I got into beanie babies when I was like in fourth grade cuz my my mom's family lived in Chicago and they found out about them a little earlier than everyone else and um collected Beanie Babies had still have hundreds of them in my mom's basement much to her CH grin and then um got to like buying and selling them on eBay like early eBay um and putting them together in different like groupings and trying to sell them that way and riding my bike to Kroger like local grocery store to get money orders cuz was before there were many credit cards in the internet and I definitely didn't have a credit card at this stage um so would like go to Kroger and like slide quarters across the counter and get a money order basically to go pay for them I think one thing from when I was a kid to now is is kind of a a deep curiosity and I really do like to learn things for the sake of learning things sometimes to a fault um as a college student it meant I changed my major like 12 times I like couldn't really settle on something um so there there's definitely too much but I think in this role it's been really helpful because for the first couple years of of a quickly growing company you're sort of doing all of the different roles in a company until you can sort of do them well enough to convince someone who is much more experienced and much better than you to come in and do it better than you were and going into each of the those new roles and being like well you know I don't I didn't know what customer success is but I'm going to go talk to the people and do the things and and learn about it um and figuring out how to have joy in that versus just feeling like it's another Hill to climb um I think I think that Curiosity piece has been helpful I basically started the news app because I went to beu I was not admitted into the business school like I wanted to I was admitted into the General Studies program and I'm actually doing the business school commencement speech in a few days uh so that's going to be cool because I barely uh graduated I actually almost got kicked out my name is Daniela Pearson I am the founder and CEO of the news at Media Group which encompasses news at media and new land our agency and I'm also the co- founder of Wonder mind when I was growing up I definitely had a huge fascination with media in terms of reading magazines so I remember going into the grocery store Publix because I'm from Florida and my mom just saying only one because I would just come to the register with 10 magazines um so I I always wanted to work for a magazine in terms of being an entrepreneur I was kind of an out out of the box kid uh I didn't really like school I didn't really buy into it um even you know in middle school I would say why do I need to know about the Earth's crust you know I'm not going to be an expert in that I swear um and I I felt really stupid as a kid because um I'm an identical twin and my sister um Alex um is you know a genius but I ended up being so excited for you know college I was like I'm going to learn about what I'm going to do and so I guess there the first day and guess what we're learning about the Earth's crust as a sophomore I realized okay I have 4 years where I'm lucky enough that I don't have to have a job right now so this is the perfect time for me to basically create a job because if no one's going to hire me because I have bad grades I need to hire myself and so I made a list um and I had one column what am I good at and then the other column is what do I love and I am ashamed or not that ashamed now to say but before I was ashamed to say that I was not good at anything literally that column was blank and I'm not just saying that to be humble I really was not good at anything I had zero passions I I skills I just was kind of there and that that was a you know eye opener so then I said okay well if I'm not good at anything what do I like and the first thing was magazines and so I thought you know no one's going to hire me to be an intern at these magazines I don't have amazing grades and usually have to know somebody who knows somebody whatever and so why don't I just make my own magazine but instead of it being printed what if it was like a daily magazine almost like a daily gift in your inbox and that's when I came up with the [Music] newsette the second I started the newsette I felt like even though it was this you know shitty little newsletter that people read every single day after that I never missed a day for the 5 years I wrote it myself every weekday I would wake up at 5:00 a.m. I would get my Fruity Pebbles my orange juice and I would just write it and I would literally like finish writing and say oh my gosh it's 10:00 a.m. like 5 hours went by but it didn't even feel like it because it was such a rush and so every time I saw my little newsletter list grow it literally felt like I was winning a lottery essentially the first month when I graduated I made $25,000 off of ads and I was like oh like I can do this so I moved to New York it was just me and then I had an intern and then I had two interns and it just kind of kept growing from there but I think the year that we did a million dollars in sales um without any VC funding I was really proud because uh at that time the media was only covering people with you know how much have you raised or or it was all all about you know raising money um and I was probably 22 or 23 at the time and I felt so embarrassed that I wasn't able to raise any money but then I thought you know honestly it's kind of more impressive and I'm actually more impressed with entrepreneurs now when I invest in their companies it's more impressive to convince hundreds of customers to believe in you to make a million dollars than convince three guys in a boardroom to give you a million dollar and so that's when I kind of felt like maybe I don't need VC money maybe I can actually grow this big the next year we did 7 million and then we did 40 million and you know uh by the end of the year we are going to have over a million subscribers and that's a big deal to us because we could have had over a million subscribers you know a year or two ago but we clean our list to make sure that only the best you know 500,000 600,000 people are reading and so for us to get to a million those are a million people who are reading you know almost every day they're engaging and so they're real you know people and Views so I have always been uh in the quality over quantity approach for everything we want people that are going to be so excited to read our newsletter every single day and almost wait for it and like refresh their inbox until it comes and I think our editors because they really are the people that are writing the content are are the people who are reading it and it's so authentic and there's no red tape there's no board that we have to abide by oh don't write about this don't write about that the buck stops here and I've I don't think I've gotten involved in anything editorial in years because I trust the people on my team I it's just whatever our readers want to read about let's write about that Pearson is also a co-founder of Wonder mind a platform for exploring and maintaining one's mental health its underlying philosophy is that mental Wellness requires daily effort the same same way that achieving physical fitness requires regular exercise the company first announced in November of 2021 raised 5 million in August of 2022 from Serena Williams's Venture Capital firm Serena Ventures valuing the pre-revenue startup at $100 million I have OCD which is obsessive compulsive disorder ADHD and depression and those were things that you know even just a few years ago I would have rather you know just had the there's a saying in in Spanish where have the Earth just like rip open and eat me up uh rather than say I have OCD or ADHD or anything having to do with mental health when I spoke on the Forbes 3030 panel and I left the auditorium after I was done and I was standing there and we all of a sudden were bombarded by this huge line of other entrepreneurs other forbs 30 under 30 recipients like people that I look up to and I had a line of people wanting to talk to me and shake my hand and take a picture with me some people were like I can't believe how open you are with your you know mental health like good for you but like I would never be but then some people were like wow like you talking about that like I like have OCD like Whispering it to me and stuff and and even just that is I know so hard in a in a world where you're supposed to be emotionless and Fierce and tough and make all the right decisions and be perfect you know a CEO wouldn't say uh wouldn't be embarrassed about telling people that they had a heart problem or diabetes so why should somebody be embarrassed about saying that they have a mental health disorder and so I thought you know how can I basically change the narrative around mental health and make it so that it is treated like normal health and it's actually cool to talk about it and so that's when you know Wonder mind kind of came to be and um Selena Gomez and Mandy tii are my co-founders and it was just really important for us to uh set up an ecosystem that made it okay and fun and cool and trendy and exciting to learn about mental health and learn about how the most powerful people in the world the people who are like this on the cover of Forbes uh you know how they deal with their anxiety or their mental health because truly that's how I felt comfortable enough to say something the people I'm hoping to reach are not the people who are actively trying to find a therapist of course we want to reach them and we have and it's great we're looking for the people who maybe have thought about it but thought oh you know like I might see a therapist and their friends like why you have a problem I have accomplished things that I didn't even know I could dream about I didn't even think that it was a possibility ever people who are not you know ivy league students people who um are from minorities people who come from different backgrounds they don't have you know all of this pedigree they don't have connections you know all that stuff those people should feel like they have a chance they shouldn't count themselves out because I counted myself out and the only reason why I'm sitting in this chair is because I was in survival mode and I had no other choice and I am stubborn as hell and it shouldn't be like that for other people and so the next 5 years I want to continue investing in entrepreneurs especially entrepreneurs that like me are not the conventional you know let me invest in you type matum is a family business built out a passion for live sport built out the fundamentals of sport for competition for legacy for greatness for putting a smile on people's face now that's key for us is not just to deliver for our athletes but to deliver Live Events and content that the viewer watching on platform or live in the arena can leave with a smile on their face and realize the true beauty of sport Eddie Hearn is the chairman of matchroom sport which is a British event promotion company it was founded by Eddie's dad Barry in 1982 and they cover all sorts of sports like snooker darts nineball and eventually boxing which Eddie revitalized over the years when I moved to the company I took the golfers that I was representing on the PGA tour and European tour from another company to matcham to set up a golf division um boxing was a tiny tiny part of the business our biggest business probably was the emergence of online poker and we were in charge of put putting together all the major Productions globally for televised poker and I took over the poker department and we grew that to a substantial size to the point where virtually every televised poker event that you would see was a match room production and it made us a lot of money we like characters you know we like creating content we like creating formats we like creating compelling TV if by Sports even better but I looked at poker and I looked at the characters and the personalities of the players and just believe that we could create something fun we could create great content great narrative great story lines I think one of the reasons we've been so successful in sport is through building those characters those personalities and those story lines all great sport events have great narrative and and that's something we've been very successful with and in poker the characters were some of the best we've ever work with Eddie's impact has primarily come in boxing which matchroom had boxing operation but not to the level that Eddie has transformed it to Barry Hearn is Eddie's dad an accountant by trade he found in matum in 1982 and he told me that was because he was bored he had uh been buying up snooker halls around England and that had become a a pretty viable business for him and uh he had become close friends and work with former world champion Steve Davis and they had seen a real interest in the sport and from there they found they could just promote those events and one thing led to another one sport led to another and matchroom eventually became the company that you see today when Eddie joined matchroom in 2000 The Firm was pulling in roughly 1 million in profit on 10 million of Revenue I was playing a poker event the World Series of Poker and I bumped into odley Harrison who was the Olympic gold medalist heavyweight tried to kind of guide his own career and lost and kind of wasn't bit of a dead end in his career and we just started talking and he said you know could you promote me said I don't work in boxing he said I know but I know matm do a few shows here and there so I said look you know I could take you into prize fighter which was this tournament we were doing and then you could fight for the European title and if you win that you could fight David Haye for the world heavyweight title and he sort of said really can you do that I was like yeah 100% and left that conversation found my dad who wasn't an odle Harrison fan and he just said look you're on your own you know he went out he won prize fighter he won the European title and then he fought David hay for the world heavyweight title we did that fight it was a disaster it was a complete mismatch Ali Harrison didn't throw a punch we made some money Ali made Seven figures and I said that's me done in boxing all of a sudden all the fighters started calling me would you represent me so all of a sudden next we've got Kyle FR who was the world champion Darren Barker Kell Brook three of the best fighters in the UK waned to sign with me I was all of a sudden in front of all the cameras at the press conferences selling this fighter I was you know mid 20s or late 20s and didn't really know what I was doing but I was a breath of fresh air in boxing you know I mean I've seen everything that you could ever see in boxing and I never felt that I would necessarily become a boxing promoter but matum had a great reputation in boxing but British boxing was dead no one was trying you know there was our broadcaster which was Sky Sports had four promoters which was matchroom Frank Warren Ricky Hatton and Frank Maloney no one liked each other no one was really trying you know the the industry and the Old Guard didn't like me but all of a sudden this young kid's coming in whose father's a Hall of Fame promoter saying he's going to rip up the script to box him and then I went to our broadcast I said you need to get rid of everybody and just sign an exclusive deal with me and they said we don't do that we've got our four promoters I say it's never going to work none of them have any ambition and none of them like each other you need to get rid of them and give me the exclusive deal I said I'm going to show you what I'm going to do and I went out from local Leisure centers started building big fights in big Arenas 7 8 9,000 creating big numbers and big audiences on sky for boxing and when the deal came up 6 or eight months later they got rid of everybody and gave me the exclusive deal from there Eddie did things like embracing social media putting boxing in stadiums more often you know embracing the celebrity and women's fighting spaces and ultimately eventually tried to crack the US market and brought fights to the Middle East we don't sit here and profess to be Albert Einstein but we know that you will never outwork us and he keeps it simple you know if things start getting a little bit tough he just says make sure you go to sleep an hour later and get up an hour earlier and work harder you know it was a very unforgiving development that I had you know I had I had a nice house but it was just just drilled into me from day one work work work work work you know don't give in don't let them get you down just outwork them and outperform them and and when you have consistency and when you have ability and when you have a drive that is unbeatable you can't lose it's just a case of playing the game over time Forbes estimates that in fiscal year 2023 matchroom posted revenue of 365 million and a net profit of 60 million Ross the entire business Doone is a streaming service that has strived to be the Netflix of sports they've bought up all sorts of different sports rights around the globe and their partnership with Eddie and matchroom was a means to enter the US boxing Market in 2018 Eddie and matchroom to a degree shocked the boxing World by signing an estimated $1 billion deal with Doone done has had a bit of a rocky course but has more found its footing of late and they they operate globally they have all sorts of different sports rights around the world but this deal was supposed to be Eddie's entrance into the US market this was going to bring you know the successful things he had done with match room in the UK overseas into America when you're putting on a fight there's a lot more risk than let's say when an NFL team plays a game and that's because if you're the New York Jets even if nobody watches the game you're still going to get your share of the medeor rights money that that comes down from the league whereas in boxing the event has to make money or exceed that to reap the reward Awards now promotions and broadcasters have gotten pretty good at working with other companies to project out how many pay-per-views they can actually sell and they can get it to a pretty good margin so that they can prepare for the worst and hope for the best and that makes it so it's hard to kind of completely Miss on a fight but there's a risk there and they're taking a risk the US is one of the richest uh loudest noisiest Sports markets on the planet there are so many different things competing for eyeballs whether it's you know professional football basketball or whatnot and boxing already has its own established presence here so for him to say he was going to come in and take it over you know essentially it was a bold claim you know we've been with Sky for decades in boxing and they were a fantastic broadcaster but our vision had changed from a British promoter to a global Powerhouse we wanted to replicate the success of the UFC and the WWE to become a global promoter we wanted to go out and do individual broadcast deals in new territories create government interest and start taking our brand globally for boxing The Zone shared that passion and that Vision they had a platform globally that could be used and would invest in different markets that were key to our expansion so UK we did a big us deal all of a sudden we're doing six shows here in Mexico Italy Spain Australia the Middle East and the only way we could move forward with that global vision was to do a deal with the Zone in the UK space and obviously financially it was a huge deal for us that really changed the look of our business as well so it was a difficult decision because we took a risk if you like in terms of the exposure to follow the growth and we believe in streaming we believe that streaming is the future of live sports um and I believe that OT platforms are also the future of live sports as well I just believe that the way the new generation digest content is now completely different you know we know that people do not sit at home in front of the big screen like they used to they want to watch content on the go they want to watch it via their handset I'm a strong believer that that's the future of broadcast you only have to see the Next Generation when it comes to fight fans the sentiment can be mixed but when it comes to other promoters especially here uh it seems that there's no love loss for Eddie Hearn and matchroom and part of that stems from the denone deal and entering the US market you know he's someone who has never been afraid to play the villain and to be in front of the camera and to piss people off so naturally people aren't going to like you when you do that I mean I everybody likes to be a hero you know I receive a huge amount of criticism and a lot of it my own doing you know I'm very outspoken as you've seen today do 50 or 60 interviews a day I'm going to say something that's going to piss somebody off and the way the internet works the way headlines work and clickbait works of all these different Outlets you're going to upset people when I went into America the strategy was to upset people quickly to build a profile to create noise create interest um I'd like to be a hero in terms of the time and the sacrifices I've made for the sport of boxing I love boxing It's My Life um and I've given a lot of my life to boxing and I make a lot of sacrifices for boxing and for the business but at the same time I have no problem being a villain and every Market that I go into they try and get me out of as ASAP so when I came into the UK there's a very famous photo of all the current British promoters who all hated each other and they all put their hand in the middle in this picture and they said a united front for British boxing and then there was Eddie H and that was it and that's the same in America now Oscar La Hoya Bob Aram Al hayon L Elby they're all talking with with vo to say this say this keep keep the pressure on he won't he won't be able to handle it cuz that was a thing in the UK it was like we're just going to break him and they never did and now in the US to try and do exactly the same thing keep the pressure on force him out turn the fans against him but they don't realize one how good I am but also the power I have across my platform they can't work like me so I'll do as many interviews it takes and I'll communicate with the fans all the time and that's the most powerful tool we have the ability to talk to the audience Barry and Eddie have a really good relationship Barry said to me that him and his son are are very close and like best friends but they are almost unhealthily competitive they will still go back and forth about you know how different divisions in the company are having financial success I had a very famous father um certainly within the area that I grew up with and I loved it you know I couldn't stop telling people that Barry H was my dad and probably for my early years everyone knows me as Barry's son you know or Barry's boy you know my dad was quite flamboyant um came from nothing really made money was quite extravagant and enjoyed himself he was a away a lot but always had the time when he was at home to play with me play sports with me and that was really what my childhood was built on sport we played every sport we played to win competition was ferocious and that's what I was that's how I was brought up winning is everything you know it was never about taking part you know if I went out and lost three near at game of football he'd say what are you doing come on you know not well done you know you did well there son sport was a foundation for us to learn about the important aspects of life and and that transferred into business when I left uh College I wrote to every major sports event athlete management sponsorship Marketing consultancy in London you know Advantage IMG I wanted to cut my cloth in the industry without just working for matum and I went to one sponsorship of marketing sports agency called BDS and I sat down with them and they were reading my TV and they said can I ask you are you any relation to Barry Hearn I said yes my dad and they sort of said what are you doing here it was about the time when Jerry McGuire came out really I always saw myself as a budding sports agent and that's the field that I wanted to to go down and that's really where I cut my cloth before moving into the the business you know my dad is as I said earlier he's money mad you know every day he's analyzing I mean my dad's a ched accountant by trade so every day he's analyzing accounts he's looking at bottom lines he's looking at profit and losses from each individual event and he drives me berserk because we're working with you know in boxing particularly sometimes there's more of an emotional attachment you could be investing in a fighter to bring a major world championship fight to their home City but the show loses money but You' got that emotional investment for the fighter he'll remove himself from that but um yeah I I think that my father has always said no shareholders no float we do things our way and I convinced him to change his mind on that probably 3 years ago as our growth continued to to move rapidly and he's Chang his perception so probably that probably that the opportunities we have for a rapid Global growth come potentially in different ways and and he leads those conversations today Eddie wants to take match room public and he does think that could happen sooner rather than later which is one of the reasons why he has been talking about a private Equity investment in the company but also he does see a future Beyond boxing one of the sports that matchroom promotes darts they effectively own the sport they just completed a lengthy acquisition acquiring the professional darts Corporation and Eddie is extremely bullish on the growth of that we want to make sure that our Sports our business our brand name is recognizable in every key market across all our Sports um it's a natural move for us to lead to an IPO I think it's only a matter of time I think we're so unique in what we do in terms of ownership of sports and being able to mold those Sports um but we must continue to have fun cuz that's really his his Mantra you know we love what we do and we love to have fun what we do we believe we've built an incredible management within the business that must be free to continue to spread their wings but we also realize the opportunity that presents itself um in this economic world of of of growth for the business globally and to do that in a rapid way then um these conversations that are ongoing that will lead to an IPO is a natural progression Coro was co-founded by Andrew grower his two brothers and a class me at Corell Rec carrian in 2006 and started and still is really this online library a collection of class notes essays exams for students uploaded by students before course hero I spent hours looking for help online when I was stuck on homework or setting for test ever since a friend told me about course hero it's the only tool I use for every course I just drop in whatever I'm working on we started corer about 17 years ago in 2006 and the whole idea was born out of helping students study and helping students who are studying for a test uh prepping and working on an assignment and feeling stressed feeling anxious and it was something that I had empathy for being a student myself uh I experienced it and so really when we built it uh the idea was how can we we best build something that would help students study and the lucky and most important thing that we got right was that we started we just did it and we kept building in the beginning of course hero we focused on crowdsourcing uh resources study materials test prep materials um materials helping people with homework from students and Educators across different campuses and the idea was can we we connect people to knowledge that came from other people versus having to go to people to get to the knowledge and the the visual in our heads was to build a Wikipedia like product that instead of organized around in encyclopedic taxonomy we would build a product that was organized around a course specific school specific taxonomy corer is a fores 30 under 30 company and you know with all of those companies we like to stay in touch we were seeing the Acquisitions cor her was making in recent years and then how they created their new parent company learni out in late 2022 and so really jumped on that news and became even more interested in his strategy his Acquisitions and just how they're pipping course hero began acquiring companies in 2020 with his first acquisition of civo lab and since it has acquired seven businesses and it really was a combination of things that LED them to this strategy of Acquisitions you know first they fac The increased competition in the edtech space another Factor was a surge in Venture Capital during the pandemic for hero raised nearly 500 million total by the end of 2021 and so that capital is really used for their Acquisitions another factor with college enrollment decreasing it led the company to look for way ways to diversify and so that was through Acquisitions of companies like pbot and symol lab focused on professionals and so the company now rebranded under learo is focused on adhering to both students and professionals you know how do you take that chor clientele and carry it on through the Work World building learo and acquiring different businesses that are founder-led with really R preneurial Builder teams is incredibly important at Lio the IDE idea of building a platform of businesses and Founders each continuing to be led by their CEOs is a belief that decentralization and delegation of autonomy is incredibly powerful and each of us each of the CEOs are able to focus on building for a closely clustered set of customer needs they can go incredibly deep and they don't have to worry about about another teammate or potential future teammate being able to take on an incredible new opportunity and that's the opportunity to be able to balance going super deep and also broadening and going after New Opportunities it takes an incredible amount of time and energy passion to be able to start something work on it uh build it over time get product Market fit get to expansion phase and for us that is something we want to really facilitate and continue postacquisition for us creating an environment that empowers autonomy and responsibility entrepreneurialism just like when we startups individually is incredibly powerful and that's core to how we want to build learn you as a platform of businesses that are powered by Founders Builders and entrepreneurial Talent Rohan is a co-founder of clot which is essentially an AI powered writing and paraphrasing tool for both students and professionals it was founded in 2017 and acquired by Lio in late 2021 my co-founder and I were studying at the University of Illinois uh Urbana champagne we both were in love with artificial intelligence and we were just tinkering with the technology uh made a breakthrough in technology to rewrite sentences thought it was pretty interesting just put it up on Reddit and it started going viral and that's how we found a coot back when we started in 2017 there was not a lot of support for building AI tools especially compared to what it's like to build uh on top of AI today and yeah back then we were just the three of us were tinkering in an apartment on campus we had next to no funding we just had a small Grant from the University uh so we had to be very very Scrappy and it was just a green field and uh every day was a new experiment I met Andrew uh in the winter of 2020 it was really exciting I was a user for course hero for several years and so it was nice just meeting him as a fan and then as a fellow entrepreneur understanding his experiences and getting advice from him a completely changed her trajectory uh I mean one thing is just having access to so many brilliant Founders and CEOs to share best practices with and uh learnings from uh it's also been a privilege to be able to partner with some of the best writing businesses in the sector and collaborate with them on new product development uh and finally we just have access to way more resources than we would have otherwise every single business has a unique culture and a unique way of operating and it's uh you can think of it as many different experiments being run at the the same time uh so seeing what works for another business and how I can apply it to my own has been uh invaluable especially because everyone within Laro is so transparent about what's working well and what's not some of the challenges in the evolution of building out learo from one business to a platform of now eight companies have to do with how can we uh make sure that we stay true to our operating principles of empowerment and responsibility we think there's a huge value in being a decentralized platform and creating autonomy for the different businesses and as you scale from not just running one business with multiple product lines to two to four to eight uh being able to create an operating model that is effective at each of those stages is an incredible challenge um and also something really fun to solve the pandemic saw an increase of venture capital specific ly in that Tech space and so now companies are kind of dealing with the decrease in that from 2021 to 2022 it nearly half it went from 20.8 billion to 10.6 billion and so companies are dealing with less Venture Capital out there right now college inment has decreased the last three years as students and jenzy particularly are rethinking the value of a college degree and that means you know declined customers for a companies like learo and so companies like learo are asking themselves how do you diversify in this space and so they're focus more on professionals as well as students and so learo Acquisitions of clot symbol lab you know indicate that trend of professionals using a tech tools like these with artificial intelligence tools like open ai's chat gbt and Google's barred popping up it's really created just a lot of competition for these education technology companies like for hero and c I think with so many students and professionals looking for resources for maybe school reports or business reports they're looking for more of a free option that if chat gbt can provide rather than a subscription service like Che or corero CH was kind of an extreme example there where they had said chat BT affect It signups it ended up pling a stock and really just with these tools it's creating a lot of competition for you know customers both professionals and students looking for tools like this artificial intelligence is an incredible theme uh in opportunity and disruption in the world today and at Lio we're incredibly excited about how these Technologies um and Transformer based Technologies large language models are are impacting language summarization translation question generation question answering and I'm not sure I've ever seen a time in our history of building where there's so much opportunity and a a huge amount of energy being developed to act fast and with conviction and to iterate on a huge technological change [Music] I was 6 years old when the plane crashed in 1970 I was sitting at home with my brothers watching television with my Mom and Dad we heard the siren blaring my mother's nephews were actually First Responders so we were always very attentive when we heard a siren so the phone calls began to be made there were CB scanners which were basically radio scanners to see where the police or the fire trucks were being dispatched all the neighbors were talking about there had been a plane crash and so I ran to the back window and I looked out and I could see the haze and the sky glowing red and you could see that that fire basically was happening and at that moment in time I started to see the beginning of A Life Lesson which is that we're all born angels with One Wing and the way we flies behold n one another so I'll never forget how that Community came together and helped each other Rise From the Ashes Brad Smith is the former CEO of Inuit which is the company behind QuickBooks and Turbo Tax and since January of 2022 he's been the president of Z Elma moer which is Marshall University in West Virginia Smith grew up in a small town of about 3,000 people called Kenova West Virginia which is right next to Marshall and Back in 1970 there was a plane crash near campus that killed 75 people including the school's whole football team viewers probably know these events for later depicted in the Matthew mccon movie We Are Marshall he and his brothers were the first in their family to go to college and he initially went to West Point but he ultimately decided to go back home to Marshall after a semester and he still wears the Marshall class ring that his dad gave him right before he had a heart attack a few days later after receiving his master's degree in management from ainus College in Michigan Brad took a sales job at PepsiCo initially despite an early bosses insistence that he attend corporate Communications courses to rid himself of his West Virginia twang Smith quickly climbed the corporate ladder at 7 Up and Direct Mail marketer advo with the inherent flaw of his accent proudly intact my dad taught me servant leadership My dad became the mayor of that hometown of 3000 in Kenova and he became known as something that other Mayors hadn't done he rode the sanitation trucks every week he would ride with the drivers as they picked up the trash in the city and I asked him one day I said dad why do you ride the sanitation trucks why are you not in the office he said Son first of all this is the best way to get to know your tame you ride 8 hours in a truck with someone you learn about their family you learn about the things that keep them awake at not and you learn about how you can help them and the second is there's no better way to know your city than to go down the back of the alley not in the front where everyone has it all spruced up so I know where the real problems are that we can help solve so when I got the Pepsi I became known as the young district sales manager that rode the routes with with the drivers and when they called in sick I delivered the soft drinks in the snow and at the end of the day they always remembered that I was willing to work with them and so when we had sales contests we won every time not because of me but because the drivers knew that I was in it with them and it ended up helping my career cuz I simply served them and in return they did great work after rising to the role senior vice president of marketing and Business Development over seven years at ADP Smith joined into it in 2003 as vice president and general manager of its accountant Central and developer Network just 5 years later he was running the entire company Smith inherited a 25-year-old business with really tremendous brand Equity whose Turbo Tax and QuickBooks software products were beloved by individuals and small businesses alike but few could have foreseen its radical transformation over the next decade its market capitalization soared almost Sevenfold to 51 billion in revenues near doubled to $6 billion by 2018 so when I joined into it I had the opportunity to join the accountants business in Dallas Texas and Plano Texas the company was known as a leadership development Factory and started out in the accounting business then I was asked to go to Turbo Tax and Lead that business in San Diego and then I was asked to move up to QuickBooks the small business Division and Lead that business so over a 5-year period I'd had a chance to see all the corners of the company at that time when I was then asked to step in as CEO and they announced it in August of 2007 that I would take the role in January 2008 I knew that I had the privilege to serve an iconic company that had a strong Foundation but candidly in 2008 there were a few things happening the first was we had started to see social platforms like Facebook move off of the education campuses and move into the do world so you had this notion of social the second is Steve Jobs had just released the iPhone so this move to mobility and mobile became big and then ultimately because of the cloud we were starting to see local markets become Global so we stepped back and said we're going to be the same great company we are but we're going to lean into being more of a connected Services Company an analyst told me Brad understood the power of the cloud early on and not just on the application side for their tax and QuickBooks businesses he also shut down all their own data centers and moved their data to Amazon web services and Google Cloud which really POS positioned them well to take advantage of AI now into its billionaire founder Scott Cook told me that Smith's impact on the company goes beyond business results cook called Brad quote the ultimate servant leader and told me that Brad had changed the lives of the company's customers and employees lives forever when Smith left into it in January 2022 at the height of his career the company etched his signature phas work hard be kind take pride in stone on the face of its headquarters which which was recently renamed for Smith we had developed a balance scorecard where it was employees first customers and our community second our shareholders third and I began to tell the stories about why because everyone saw it clinically but I don't think they really understood it ideologically so we said if we were a human body the employees are the oxygen they're the air the body can only make it about 3 minutes without air and it begins to shut down and then they go to customers and communities they are the water you can make it about 3 days but then the body starts to shut down then ultimately you have the shareholders as a public company they own the company but they're the food you can make it two or 3 weeks and the body shuts down so you have to serve all of them but it begins with employees first who are there with one purpose in mind to do amazing things for customers in their Community if you have great employees who are fired up and you've supported them and you've taught them they'll do unbelievable things for customers and communities and as a result the shareholders will win so we became an employee Centric company with a purpose and our purpose was to power prosperity to fight for the overlooked and the underserved to help those who struggle to make it paycheck to paycheck which was a story that many of us grew up with and we could be the ones that could be their champion and that's what really bonded us [Music] together Brad's sudden move from Mountain View to the mountain state really shocked many in the industry but you know to those who knew him it really made sense um because they'd heard him reminisce about West Virginia over the years Smith and his wife Elise a lawyer from Ohio with a shared love for Appalachia founded their education entrepreneurship and environment focused Wing Towing foundation in 2019 but their philanthropy in the region goes back even further just since 2015 they've donated $35 million to Marshall to establish a scholarship that gives preference to first generation students from West Virginia in Ohio and to transform its recently renamed Brad D Smith schools of business so first of all when he stepped down um we thought wow we'll finally have an opportunity to spend a little more family time well that's just not the case because Brad is a Workhorse he's wired to work he would do coaching Executive coaching he would coach uh entrepreneurs and he would do that 12 hours a day but he was unfulfilled and then he got a call from several people actually saying hey hey would you be willing to consider becoming the president of Marshall University you know the job's going to open up and at first he thought h no no no this this is not something I'm interested in you know so he he mentions it to me when we're in South Carolina we're we're taking a walk on the beach and he mentions it and uh I immediately said oh oh no I'm not going to West Virginia I mean I I love California and then we decided to go through the whole Pro con thing we decided you know what let's give this opportunity a real shot and ultimately we just decided you know what you're not happy doing what you're doing Brad I've been looking for something that makes me feel that I'm doing what I was meant to do and here's that opportunity let's just do it the couple also has an outdoor Economic Development collaborative named after them at rival West Virginia University thanks to a $25 million our gift in 2020 that's being used to recruit and retain talented out ofate workers and to develop outdoor recreation resources in the area clearly we want to focus on Appalachia because Appalachia is both overlooked and underserved and that is the community that we want to focus on because very few others do you know all the VC firms in the country Focus most of their money on California New York and Boston and the people in Appalachia are every bit as bright and talented as anybody in those locations we can do everything that they can do and and quite honestly maybe better and so we decided that we would focus our energy and our our money on helping people in Appalachia have greater opportunity and we chose these three areas because we think they're the great equalizers particularly education it's by far the great equalizer um it can raise anyone up to do whatever they dream dream of in their lives there is a period of reinvention happening at higher ed right now you have the enrollment Cliff coming fewer High School seniors will be graduating starting in 2025 that number is going to go down 15% a year across the country you have fewer High School seniors who are now also less likely to go to college and so the number of those that want to go to college is decreasing by 12% you've got digital transformation you have all these amazing things like chat GPT or you have KH Academy or you have corsera or YouTube so all these alternatives to learning and so it was a chance to step back and say how can we as Marshall University hold on to the 186 years of things that we've done but embrace the new ways and be the platform for the 21st century and so when I stepped in we facilitated a process across the campus 38 listening sessions a th000 people 1,00 ideas we engaged with two outside firms and we began to explore the best practices all around the globe and we developed a strategy that we're now following called Marshall for all Marshall forever Marshall for all Marshall forever is focused on a value proposition that has three components affordability flexibility and achievement since 2007 the average college tuition's gone at 10% year and student loan debt has grown 45% that's become a barrier to a lot of people who need access to a college degree so we're tackling affordability I'll talk about how in a minute the second is flexibility many students today are non-traditional students they're working adults they may have dropped out for a period of time they may have a kid they may have a full-time job they can't come to class in the middle of a workshift so you need to basically be able to have a flexible work schedule and a flexible class schedule and then the third is achievement they want to know that they're going to have the ability to get a degree or to get a certificate and then have that translate into some sort of earnings potential so Marshall for all Marshall forever is that we're going to have an emand curriculum that teaches UND demand classes so you can take them online you can take them in a classroom or you can take them a hybrid environment and we've chosen where we're going to be distinctive our goal is for individual success 100% of our students will graduate they will get the career of their choice and 0% will have student loan debt so our first promise is 100% placement zero debt the second promise is we're going to take our research our grants and contracts that Advance innovative ideas from today's $65 million to 150 million and in doing that one increase the number of small businesses getting started in our state by 3x and then economic impact today Marshall for every dollar the state invests in Marshall we give them a 14x return our goal is to make it 30X that's $2.5 billion so we've set those True North goals and everyone here is fired up and to let you know it can be real we just admitted the first 100 students this fall on the guarantee that they will have a job and no student loan debt thing I was most uh struck by in talking with Brad and doing my reporting um was just you know how personal it is to him and it comes across as as totally authentic you know he talks about believing there are as many Geniuses uh there in West Virginia as there ours in Silicon Valley and you know he gave up a lot to to go back and do what he's doing West Virginia have always answered the call we've mined the coal we forged the steel we built the roads we built the trucks we fought the wars when our president said we want to have a man on the moon we produced home Hickam and the boys in October Sky that built the first NASA rockets and then when we needed that astronaut home we produced Katherine Johnson and The Hidden figures and brought them home and for a while people told us we didn't belong and we believed them I don't we do belong we've got another chapter and we're showing the world who we are here at the 2023 B Summit in Atlanta man Nick Cannon in the house man really appreciate the time what do you think of the event man jaar man y'all setting it off up in here it's it's it's live it's electric it's us man so job well done I appreciate that man you know I wanted to do this because every time I watch that clip of you and Keenan and how he always say used to be a Jabari right like it's amazing man now you sitting talking to a Jabari actual Jabari yeah you're talking to an actual Jabari how does it feel to talk to an actual Jabari I mean I I've envisioned Jabari in my life n man it's it's a inside joke that Keenan and I have that's one of my best friends in life and we literally cuz you know that's that's like that's a black name we all you know it's your name so like everybody know what jar is when I when I write the name and I you know fill out your ethnicity I'm like come on y'all can figure that out y' can figure it out so what's what's 2024 in store man 2023 is over right and you know I'm sure you so excited about 2024 all the Innovation and uh entrepreneurial efforts that we're putting together in the space of just content ownership assets Acquisitions you know what I mean like um I've had the opportunity throughout my career to kind of watch the game shift and be able to adapt uh and now I'm in that space man of really building platforms to give others opportuni so you know we got a few new shows we got the future Superstar show that just launched uh that really is about the next generation of music artists we got a a show uh doing a lot of stuff in the Amazon platform and building you know they have so much going on from the spaces of Commerce and content merging together so I'm on there daily I'm on Twitch I'm on Prime I'm on freebie so we doing stuff with them and then of course building this wild and out brand to kind of continue to sustain in the space of you know content creators comedy and really just brand Innovation what's the future to wilding out man because you just mentioned I mean it was with MTV for a long time I me do you continue on that path or I think it's grown Beyond it you know what I mean I love what Paramount is doing of how they' you know kind of compartmentalized everything but still keeping everything under the uh Paramount umbrella so now it's not Wilding Now isn't just MTV isn't just bet isn't VH1 it's its own brand uh and you'll see that more and more it's uh Paramount's most number one digital brand out of all of their you know entities combined so I'm excited to just allow it to grow and continue to partner with them uh and allow it to stand on its own because that's where it's going like we used to you know turn to a certain channel to watch something now you just type it in and and from that you know we've had so so much traction and so much growth especially in the digital space so we living there uh super strong yeah and you're just coming off of our panel man thanks you again talking about Africa and ways you can expand on that continent and I've been having so many conversations with people that live in Africa businesses I know fintech is one of the areas that they're looking at what are you looking at when it comes I know you want to expand wild or not over there but dip and and the talent there you know what I mean obviously music has already led the charge absolutely you know they're they're the the number one music around the world right now um and then I feel like that's the same way in the space of film and television man I want there there's so many stories that should be told I mean about the continent great historical stories man like that's I wanted to even talk more about that on the panel like we we want to hear the story of matam Musa we want to hear the story of Nefertiti we want to hear the story of yeah yeah it's so it's so many that you know if we if we dig deep because I'm always one of the the pontificators when it comes to like yo we're much more than just you know our our post-traumatic slaves you know what I mean the African-Americans here always believe our history starts with slavery when we come from great lineage of Kings scientists creators you know the The Architects of our culture and I want to be able to help tell those stories yeah yeah 2024 that's what the future is but let's flash back one minute for 2023 right because you cannot talk about hip-hop culture without mentioning you and that right I mean you can't go and drum line was a piece of hip hop culture right you're a piece of hipop culture did you like the way that hip-hop was celebrated on 50th 50th Anniversary or could it have been better uh I mean I always believe it could have been better just because I feel like I am a child of hip-hop as you put it so I want to see it on on on the biggest stages I think everybody who saluted it and celebrated did a fantastic job I love the fact that you know everything from seeing the hip-hop Museum go up in the Bronx to all of the things that we got to see at the Grammys and certain uh I believe there's even another uh coming up literally this week a celebration that the Grammys and CBS are putting on but we got to keep going we got to go harder because it is our culture it's the it's the number one export and and everyone knows that hip hop is taking over the world so and it's still young it's 50 but I I I want him to scream it scream it louder from the mountain tops but uh every celebration has been dope and it's so dope to see our ogs get recognized absolutely you know what I mean and and bring it together with you know everybody who's who's moving and shaking in the culture right now I think Jay did it you know or Jay was celebrated in such an amazing way with the you know the Brooklyn Museum and you know all have you been I haven't I want to go try to get I'm back in New York next week so I'm going to try to get out you got to man cuz not going to be there forever right keep begin is is an exhibit so I got to go myself man listen I get you out of hearing this cuz you got a plan a catch um always ask people at the end because Jim Collins wrote a great book it's called good the great right um how do you transition from good to Great you've been there Nick you you climbed the ladder in entertainment Steve Harvey's one of your mentors like you know done that how does one get from good to great in this Society uh perseverance you get from good to Great by not stopping uh it's going to be many obstacles going to be many challenges but those are only meant to sharpen you from good to Great you start off is good we all got some goodness in us but that perseverance that uh that that s intuitiveness is what allows people to become great you know what I mean especially when you weather the storm and you see adversity uh that's that's where the greatness occurs perseverance yeah appreciate it man Nick Canon 2023 BLK Summit got to have you back in Future Summit come on man let's do it yeah absolutely and you going to Africa bana man let's go I'm here make me part of the fors family you already are man appreciate the time bro thank you man I'm looking at the dream right now so congratulations here at the third black ambition demo deck for Williams sir thank you so much for the time really appreciate it congratulations uh to on making it to year three uh of this initiative um when you get to year three of something like this how does it feel uh it's awesome I think more and more I just try to like take myself out of the Forefront because I just want like these black and brown ideas to to get the shine that they deserve they're the ones that's really they're keeping it going just as much as our our you know our crew and staff yeah it's it's really but it's really these great ideas yeah so take me back I mean 2021 2020 what that what was that in 2020 that that we see after George Floyd died you know you had about 50 companies of the top companies they committed 40 plus billion dollars right to help racial inequality um what did you see after 2020 now they we're in 2023 have we regressed at all when it comes to funding black businesses well it's funny you say 40 because I remember the number being more to the tune of 66 a lot of it felt like Mary yeah I'm just being honest um and it's interesting because a lot of like Charities um are headed up by the marketing Departments of a lot of Corporations and as long as you do the work I mean who J yeah you know but we need it we need the real change you know and um the thing is we can't keep waiting you know our parents and their parents and their parents parents parents you know for them equality was number one and for us equality is AB absolutely on the list but um you know Equity is more powerful than equality because with equality you're asking for um an acknowledgement of justice and fairness with Equity um you don't have to ask for anything yeah because it's yours yeah and that's what we want we want more black and brown um ideas to be supported you know by the Strategic scaffolding of mentorship um resources and an opportunity you know and their fair share of um light Under the Sun and uh it's crazy because you would think that like black and brown ideas are like a new thing the way that it's portrayed in in the media but black and brown ideas are not new I was just saying this tonight the audience you know the pyramids you know it's a black and brown idea all the way to now you know you think about the GPS systems that like we we all depend on in the world that was a black woman Gladis West and I'm not sure how she fared I'm I believe that she fared well um but there's not hundreds of thousands of stories um that are authored and and created and um conceptualized by black and brown ideas where the people have equity and ownership and that's what we're wanting to change is that part yeah take me back from when you was a kid when did you first know you wanted to be an entrepreneur I did not you didn't know at all I didn't know I didn't know what that word meant when did you discover what it meant uh when I first started really making money and then you know you have Bankers talk to you you have investment people talk to you and yeah that's funny I wake up this morning right first thing I see this Tower Banks clip rolling around it was you Slim Thug sitting next to each other in the college and you were so enthusiastic by what you had discovered slim had did right being independent making money and at that point you were like yo we do business differently because of what he is what what that moment was that when you oh that was amazing that's still like one of the highlights for me cuz he was a millionaire before I met him yeah yeah he's and he's still doing well if you look up if you look up Slim Thug right now he's still doing well he did a thing um it's like a month ago and he was like every day he was he was showing a different car that he had they're all black he was just showing all of his cars and he's not just like car rich like slim puts a lot of money away he's been doing that since before I knew him yeah you know so if you see all those cars and you know that like he's he's doing his thing it's it's amazing black ambition that's up that is a black ambition yeah yeah when you you think about where we are now 2023 hip-hop at 50 right I mean this is your core it's where you come from right and some people may think it wasn't celebrated the right way what do you say oh I I don't know that's not where my I I don't I didn't think about it that way I just thought how blessed we are to have this opportunity at such a crazy divisive time um the opportunities for black and brown ideas are not drying up they're becoming more plentiful because even the powers that be some of the ones that are how should we say racially conservative folks even they know where we are where the Prophet is there's no denying that we influence it you know and I think they're also realizing they can't use that word minority I mean how can you be the minority when you make up a huge your DNA makes up a huge portion of this world and we influence a lot it's kind of like where the wind blows it's like the black taste black and brown taste it's a beautiful thing and across many genres um and so the idea that like we can actually have equity and some of these things and some of these um tranches that we influence it's a it's a it's a it's a it's beautiful even in the most trying of times you know all these trials and tribulations that we're all going through it's like it's still beautiful that like we have this opportunity and I'm just so excited that like something like black ambition exists because it just shows you you know the intellectual uh prowesses at an all-time high is not going backwards here at your demo day you saw you I don't stage you were out there for a minute when you were holding those checks and saying all those black entrepreneurs Hispanic entrepreneurs come to the stage yes sir what you feel God is the greatest was that the feeling because you were able to provide and help these black entrepreneurs you know get some Capital take their business to the next level that's a beautiful thing yeah everything you just said that's amazing I was growing up I never seen nothing like that nothing we was staring at a television just completely unaware oblivious and I grew up at a different time you know we had like cable boxes and if your parents couldn't pay for the cable then like you know get cut off it'd be cut off and then you get static yes you know but look at us now I know and this is just the beginning yeah you see you I was the your dinner on Wednesday and your CEO felicha has said something that kind of shook me a little bit she said this particular initiative is return on investment for our ancestors sacrifice I thought that was the powerful you said she JG jayzed you with that line oh cuz she has the bars yeah she is one of the best speakers I've ever heard she motivates me the way that she see sees things she's such a value for her jine the whole Squad they're just different man those are different kind of women bro you know and you think about it like to her to speak the way that she does and I don't mean cuz she's has one of her most amazing you know vocabularies ever I hate when people like oh you know you speak so intelligently like what do you think that's not what I mean I'm saying the way that she can motivate people with her you know cuz she's an empath you know the the gravity on on black women is like three times as much as anybody else in this country yeah and to be able to speak with that kind of load on your shoulders to be able to aate and like change the energy in the room and motivate people and make them really believe in their hearts that they can do and be anything they want to be and she ain't even shook your hand yet that's powerful she's I adore her and I admire her so much why did you hire as a CEO what made you what what did you see before you even met her that you knew she was the one well she comes well her her resume is well decorated I mean this is she's been changing lives been we're Tech week absolutely no we're lucky to have her yeah when you looking at now um where you are your where's black ambition going let's fast forward to 2030 where do you want to see it by the end of this decade um onwards upwards I heard the 90 million plus that was you know funded out 92 million 92 million where where should that number be by 2030 I'm crazy north of a billion speaking to existance right it's it's too low oh okay oh north of a billion yeah I like that number yeah yeah I thought she was saying like oh it's too low yeah all right two three billion yeah 2024 what is forell Williams looking at it's a lot that's uh going to occur right we have an election year coming up politics always tend to shift things and shift narratives and shift motives and shift company uh their objectives and as you said we had a lot of marketing that was done between 2020 and 2023 what's 2024 looking like for you I'm not a politician but uh but um I think we should all be prepared for just getting our business in order um I think we should be galvanizing she we should be sharing the codes amongst each other um and we should be supporting each other's businesses yeah and that way it doesn't matter who's in office um we'll have our own buildings expand Eagle system why not absolutely that's what they do yeah you got a lot of entrepreneurs out there I want to let you go and I get you out of here on this yes Jim Collins he's always he's written one of my favorite books good the great um and I look at your career as a whole and I see all the things you've done I mean when you think about collaborations that's how you had to make a living right you had to be a master collaborator you did it with Jay Nori Despicable Meat yes sir I'm from North Philly I remember when clips and ab livea rolled through blumberg projects when my mother was born wow and the whole neighborhood was just shook because they saw you they saw Clips they saw some people come through that just changed them right there that's crazy North Philly lava 69ine that's crazy that was a good collaboration right that was a great collaboration how what is the difference or how do you go from a good collaborator to a great one and you've gotten some great collaborations lvmh Chanel the list goes on and on and on what's the difference between a good collaborate and a great one a good collaborator knows how to make it work and enjoys it a great collaborator um knows how to reduce and pull back their energy to allow someone else to shine as bright and be comfortable to get the best out of them not everybody can deal with having equal energy in the room and so for me I uh for people who are really like super Al Alpha I become more of a mirror than I am anything else and I'm helping them to see their blind spots without pointing them out I'm just being a mirror I think that's the greatest in collaboration when your energy is not impeding on somebody else's ego space be themselves yes sir uninterrupted uninterrupted you study for all Williams thanks man thank you thank you for your [Music] time I was never supposed to go from C student to CEO but I'm here here at the black ambition third annual demo day CEO Felicia Hatcher black andish thank you so much for the time I know you're running on fumes right it's been a couple of crazy few days but here you are though it's this over and I'm I'm seeing those entrepreneurs out there I saw saw the faces on the uh the looks on their faces when they were getting them checks especially the million dollar Lear I mean it must feel good over you're running all films to to see that you're changing lives yeah I mean it it feels amazing right just to not only know that we're changing lives but the lives that those entrepreneurs are going to change as a result of the investment the mentorship the support the community that we've built like to me that is what matters the most yeah so we had that strange elevator moment right we want to elevator together is that her is it okay it is um but after that was over I was thinking through the night as you were talking uh you for on the M uh and I'm thinking I said what do you see what do you look for uh in an A world what is that yeah we look for quite a few things you know I think we're one product Market fit right like is it the right moment are they building are they are they the right team as well um then really looking at the founder itself like do they have the risk tolerance do they have the tenacity do they have a level of resource magnetism like no matter what they can go out and get it and find the resources that they need and Attract it to their business those are a lot of the things that we look for and then with blacking Mission we kind of have this unspoken rule that we're investing in for-profit companies absolutely but we're also looking for people and entrepreneurs that we know we're going to have a connection like a deep connection back to their community and so like it's that other thing that we're looking for in the conversations that we have in the interview process as they're in their mentorship Pro pods we're also evaluating them as well and then it's that that it Factor right like are they the building the right product at the right time and are they the right person to be building the company as well yeah pra pitch competitions are very unique right because it says Ashley Sim was in build and tulson down Oklahoma I love what she says she says all it takes is Sweat Equity right you're not doing is Sweat Equity right well you're on stage think a little swag a little entertainment that factor in it as as well and then passion right like you know when you meet an entrepreneur and the passion is just exuding out of them they're going to figure it out they're going to knock it out the park they are going to whether the I and flow of Entrepreneurship because it's not easy as as well and like you feel that when you're having conversations with them and then the other part of that is Vision right like the organization was founded by a Visionary and so seeing entrepreneurs showcase like the bigger Vision that they have that they're building something much bigger than themselves like those are qualities and characteristics that make them like the ideal Cate for a black ambition entrepreneur yeah I for I was just sitting here he said that by 2030 right I asked him is he want to see the number as it stands now believe black ambition 92 million that they have uh distributed raised black Founders let me make sure I get the number right 92 million what is that number yeah so 92 million is the number that those entrepreneurs have raised in Venture Capital Venture Capital yeah and so the entrepreneurs that we invest in as well as the we work with about 250 entrepreneurs a year through our cohort stop mentorship program and so that's considered the black ambition Network okay and so over the course of the three years we we've worked with 750 entrepreneurs and they've raised over $92 million and then they do about $27 million annually in Revenue combined combined combined now how much this far as the 92 how much has black ambition given out total yeah so as of today close to $10 million close to $10 million okay and so for says by 2030 he wants that see that number North of the good me too how did you get there yeah I mean we get there with strategic partners that align with our vision that um understand the ROI of investing in Black and Hispanic entrepreneurs at the highest level um they not only become massive contributors back into their communities they're good customers as well they're opening up Innovative processes in which corporations can acquire those companies like there's so many different they they become vendors for these like there's so many different Ripple effects that happen when you invest in these companies at the highest level but then we we also need those companies to be um funders and supportiv of our work so that we can mentor those entrepreneurs so that when they get the opportunities they get the funding they know what to do on how to grow and scale Lo companies so it's that right um it's strategic partners and then it's also really good Retail Partners so the e-commerce not just the e-commerce companies that we're working with but we invest in a lot of cpg companies as well and making sure that they can get their products on the shelves or the virtual shelves as well yeah again the initiative black ambition this is empowering black and entrepreneurs black and brown people and the focus are Tech design Healthcare consumer products why those areas yeah we looked at high growth areas in which that's what you consider high growth areas in black and brown Community absolutely and so they're growing by Leaps and Bounds in the technology industry most of most we see a high majority of those companies in consumer packaged Goods it's a low barrier to entry for them but there's a high upswinging potential for them as well and then we're also looking at in areas in which culture is an ass ET like they don't have to explain away their culture in order to be able to do business there and so like those are a lot of the reasons why we pick those sectors and then we're also looking at like which sectors are right for Innovation um and then also need a higher level of respect in Innovation from us and so healthc care is one of those sectors right we know the large number of disparities in the health space as it relates to black and brown communities well we want to invest and fund those innovators that are building the technology and the healthare solutions to make sure that that is a place that is much more helpful to us um and can alleviate some of those disparity numbers that we see yeah again Felicia hash CEO black ambition take me back to that young Felicia Happ right because I'm looking young I I got seeds in school too right so much that my dad left me back in the seventh grade because he didn't think I learned enough right here you are getting Seas why when you getting seed at high school me I was lazy I didn't do homework I was only looking at girls and I was not paying attention why did you get seized though same story my mom hates when I tell that story I'm like if I can major and minor in anything at high school I major and minor in the 2 bees boys and basketball right so that's where I spent most of my time uh unfortunately right but I also you know not dating myself like I love MacGyver as a kid so I was like wow one of those kids that would Tinker like I taught myself how to code at 16 I could rewire cable into my room but like as far as what showed up in the classroom were you doing all that because you w in punishment because you got SE or was no because I was just a naturally curious kid and I think you know one of my favores is an Albert Einstein quote and it says if you judge a fish by ability to clim a tree it will live this whole life feeling that it's stupid and that was me as a kid right like I was being judged by what was happening in the classroom but not all the other stuff that I was doing I was a big sister I was on five different sports teams I had um over you know 1,500 hours in community service but that didn't equate to my GPA and so there's more than one path way to success like that is the thing that's most important right I think black ambition exhibits that you know you hear the titles of non-traditional um and underrepresented and underestimated well there's more than one Pathway to success for them as well and that's why we do the work that we do but like that was my story as a kid like I had a guidance counselor who told me I've never a guidance counselor told me I'd never make it to College when she went on to say I should just get a job uh or go to a vocational school she didn't even say Community College and Community College accept everybody right and so it's unfortunate that at 15 16 and 17 years old you can have people that put such a limited belief on your life and they're projecting that um and so with black ambition when we talk about things being uninterrupted and being Limitless and you look at like our logo and our branding and being the sky and constellations is making sure nothing stands in the way especially doubters we do not have capacity for any of those people to disrupt what we're doing with lack ambition yeah 2002 you're at ly University right you uh swore off entrepreneurialship and you said look I don't want to do it anymore um and but you did get back in you started a business while you were in Lyn what business was that why did it fail and what did you learn uh it was an educational consulting company sounded much more sophisticated than it really was uh I had won $130,000 in scholarships as a c student and what immediately happens after that is your mom starts telling her church friends that you can teach their kids how to do it too and so I actually turned that into a business and so companies like or organization like d University the Urban League the YMCA start hiring me at 19 years old to build out their college prep programs and then build out like opportunities for non-traditional CND D students to be able to get into college and then Al also find scholarships and so that was my first business which was a really successful business uh where it failed is I got a contract for $25,000 I thought I was like rolling in the dough you couldn't tell me nothing um the work start consuming me from this contract that I had I asked my parents if I could leave school in order to like pursue this as a business I hired one of my friends and within three months like they stole the company for me wow and so I was devastated absolutely devastated and I swore off I would never be an entrepreneur ever again because I really kind of bet so many things um like not compromise but sacrific so many things in order to actualize this dream only for it be to be taken away from me by somebody that was really close and so that was my only image of Entrepreneurship other than my dad being an entrepreneur in the construction space and coming home like dirty and tired every day and so like those were my first two early experiences with entrepreneurship and I'm like I don't want to do this like I want to be as far away from this as possible um but that was what happened to me with my first business what you got back in right it was the famous story that came out she thought she would never be an entrepreneur again and then a recession hit then H recession hit and then you find you and your husband you're you're on full uh full steam ahead with entrepreneur shiing doesn't sound like you regret that decision I don't regret that decision I think if I were to do it over again I make some different choices um but I don't right and it was just it was at a time where there was an economic downturn of 2008 I did we we all collectively experienced it um but it was such a in moment for me because I could like if I could have gotten a job back in my field I would have never pursued another business and marketing field was that marketing yes an experiential marketing and so that's what led down that path of just not having a check not having an opportunity moving back home to my parents house not just by myself but also bringing my husband with me and so like those moments when your back is up against the wall and you have no other options like so many of our entrepreneurs have those stories like you're just forced to figure it out because you do not have a plan B C or D and like that was the moment that brought me back into entrepreneurship and are we going to stay hip-hop 50 right 50 what song that what what what artist or what album got you over that hump as far as motivation right like what was that music play like you know like we all we when we go through heartbreak saw days there all right but what what music or what hiph hop artist what album got you through oh I don't know about hip-hop but rap for sure I'm a South Florida girl so it was it was a combination of Rick Ross and Trick Daddy I don't know how not Trina no you know okay yeah so those those two because it was just like you know when you're going through your go through it's such an out-of- body experience that often times like the lyrics of just like although the life experiences weren't similar but that grit that tenacity that get up in get get it like that was really helpful in me in those moments and so it was definitely between between those two when hustling came out was like and Jay-Z I would say J Jay-Z as well yeah hustl mean that was a great time but uh back in 2021 you decide that you're going to leave you know black Tech and you know go and you're going to help for real build black who pitched who y'all this is demo day right you're telling everybody else to pitch who pitched who on this CEO position uh you know the the interesting thing is it started with a conversation um with his chief of staff at the time um and was telling me about like black ambition and I think it was a little bit of a pitching both right because I had understood what the organization was and saw the announcements and I thought that there were just some some some holes that I we could fix at the organization that I had co-founded at the time um and by the next day I got a phone call I was just like you uh do you want to run this thing and I was like run what you know cuz I didn't think the conversation was going in that direction but I definitely thought that there was some ways that we could be helpful uh it's like that's where the conversation initially started with with his chief of staff at the time and when you talked to him what was the thing that got you to say yes other than the money it was so being an ecosystem builder for the past 10 years uh like literally building Miami startup ecosystem making sure that the black community was not only an active participant but like a financial beneficiary of the like Innovation economy had been my work for the past 10 years the one thing that we had had been able to do was actually physically like write direct checks to organization um to companies and to entrepreneurs like we were able to get the VCS to come together look at them invest in them but like personally being able to say like this company needs investment um and I can bet on this like I hadn't been able to do that in the work that I've done it built the community to support every every every Avenue of that happening and so that was the thing that really stuck out to me with with the role I say the other the other part of that is building family Legacy is something that's really important to me and I just realized like that was a component that black ambition represented right and so forel being the Visionary and like the architect and um coming up with the idea and the importance and the partners for black ambition um but then building upon what that means he often talks about like it being like a ripple effect right or like the echo he starts it and then it continues like this cycle um and so being able to build upon that with his family Legacy I think as a part of that was something that was really important for me yeah when you did he say a phrase anything at all it gets you to just like click at all you know Real's a good innovator right yeah no no he is uh jesis right it's usually that um that's said JIS was the thing I I I mean it start it's it sparked the conversation right um you know I often tell the story of like us just having a conversation about uh Lovecraft country right and like thatr who are you uninterrupted and like that was a big connection point for us it was a conversation with not just him but then also Virgil who actually created the logo for black ambition many people don't know that um and so like that conversation with the three of us around what does it actually mean to build black ambition um to fund them to support them was one of the very first conversations that we had together and then really kind of building the thing from there um building the team building the infu structure and support so that we're now here celebrating 100 companies at at the three-year Mark yeah for those people who may not ever or have not heard Virgil how would you describe him in one word uh I I mean I don't know like I feel like if you flip through the dictionary and you look up Visionary and innovator he's going to be right there at at the top um I've only had the experience to meet him once but our conversation was purely around black ambition and what is required and then also the role that the mentorship played and him getting to where he is and like those are so many of the pillars of our organization um and kind of building upon like the initial conversations that him and frell had in the very beginning that led to so many different foot um fingerprints on the organization yeah now that we're here right take me inside of the organization nonprofits are very tricky thing for I like for profits I know that the nonprofits you know the operational cost there are a lot of people who look at that expense and say this is where all the money gets locked up in operational cost because you got to pay stat and none of the money really gets to the people as intended to right highest black ining want to you know navigate yeah I mean we're we're literally sitting in the distribution of the funding right and so um it's very clear where our funding goes because we directly financially support entrepreneurs with the work that we do and so um you know we have our programmatic work that we do like the mentorship the HBC tour the HBCU pre accelerator to help those entrepreneurs um become better applicants of our prize at any other accelerators and programs like that uh we have our so ambitious dinners that we do across the N Across the Nation and then we have like our big moment where we support the entrepreneurs and so we invest about $3 million into about 35 to 36 companies every single year and now we're at 101 entrepreneurs that we've invested in yeah how do you get that number up do you got go back to your partners and say hey we need more funding coming in do you go to other entertainers we got a lot of money to say bring some money in how do you get that number so you can be given out more every yeah yeah it's all of the above of what you just said right and so finding partners and funders that align with the vision uh continuing to have conversations with our current Partners as well um most of our current partners are multi-year Partners was just absolutely amazing and looking for more institutions family offices um or organizations and foundations that can also make those U multi-year commitments to our organization is extremely important I think you know when you're talking about supporting Black and Hispanic entrepreneurs at the highest level it's not a one-off thing right because then it's not helpful to the entrepreneurs at the end of the day it doesn't allow you to build the momentum that turns into the tangible results and so you know the more convers we get conversations all the time with partners that are interested in supporting our entrepreneurs at the highest level and then we've just showed that the model and our thesis around supporting Black and Hispanic entrepreneurs work yeah and so again that $92 million is how much the companies have raised raised and you guys have given out uh that numbered in 20 plus 10 million excuse me 10 million they're bringing in collectively 23 million when it comes down to to revenue for 27 27 got to got to include all the all the zeros I don't want to miss any number at all 27 million at that's what it is right um looking at that again Brookings Institute uh came out with a very in-depth research paper it's called who was driving black business growth insights came out in May 23 and in that finding they found some very interesting stats in to 2020 right black business employers they employed about 1.3 million people created 48,000 more than 48,000 new jobs and added an additional 1.7 billion to the payroll of the US economy right um and then it says black business ownership it continues to grow but if it continues to grow at its current rate right which is about 4% um it will take 256 years to reach parody um to to the share of Black America right but if you want to reach parody in 15 you need a 74% growth and if you want to do it in 25 44% and so on and so on how can we speed this up yeah yeah um one of my favorite quotes from from my mentor myON Is wealth has a Need for Speed and so things need to happen faster for entrepreneurs in order to even begin to close the wealth Gap um what I've realized in this work is that there's so many institutions people corporations that have gotten really comfortable wasting the time of Black and Hispanic entrepreneurs and so that part has to stop right um getting them the funding faster is also something I think from a non-profit organizational standpoint I'd love to see that shift happen just in that industry alone because we are forcing them to continue to qualify over and over again to be able to receive funding uh the other part of that is the respectable amount of funding right and so I think in the past three years we've seen a lot of initiatives stand up to support black entrepreneurs specifically um but like their processes and their Cycles are so long that it takes forever for those entrepreneurs to actually get the funding that they need in order to grow their companies and so like there's some changes that need to happen in how we support entrepreneurs structural changes structural changes absolutely as a as a whole so that we can get them the money faster that they can build faster they can hire faster um they can continue to raise raise additional sources of capital much faster as as well and then I think the other part of that is we see a lot of funding and support in the very beginning stages of of Entrepreneurship for Black and Hispanic entrepreneurs as they start to grow and scale their company the funding available to them at those next levels is almost non-existent and so we can we're doing all everyone's doing a really good job of getting them to start but when they start to scale which is required for them to become massive contributors to their communities um to be able to come Mass of employers then that Capital that they need that growth capital is even more extremely hard for them to be able to get yeah you know I tell you I love this Spirit though when I was at the private dinner that you guys would had Cedric was buzzing I'm sitting listening to these entrepreneurs talk you know One S at my table talk about freight cost and this I'm like oh they getting busy right I love that right um when you hear that talk right and you hear is it hey're we're getting yeah I I think we are farther along than most people will get give us credit for as a as a I think as a race um just in respect in the Venture startup space as a whole um the other part of that is you know a lot of these entrepreneurs are building very sophisticated systems and solutions um that don't get the respect that they need right and so as a result you get a lot of like well they need financial L I'm like they passed that they are past that what they need are the right experts at the right moment at the right time so they can grow and scale their companies um and so like we actually learn a lot from our the companies that are in our Network and our corporate Partners equally learn a lot from our entrepreneurs one of the things that we launched um last year was like a learning lab series where we bring our entrepreneurs into some of our corporate partners for for two days it's a literally a two-way street even though they're working with some of the sea sues at some of the top brands in across the globe they those companies leave saying to us like we learn more than the entrepreneurs probably learn from us but it's an absolute two-way street and it's because a lot of them are you know top graduates of their their classes at the cor at the universities that they've gone to many of them have worked years in um in Corporate America have run and exited successful businesses as well and so that there's these multitudes of stories to tell about who these actual entrepreneurs are they are not always just like literally like starting from the bottom now they're here many of them have a high level of subject matter expertise years in the game and then have seen problems that they can solve through the businesses that they've launched and so giving a higher level of respect of who they are is also really important yeah I mean as you said problem solvers right people solve the problem it's they are the best entrepreneurs um within black Ambitions portfolio and what you guys have seen from companies you've helped I of get that when I call my investor friends and VC friends and I ask them about some of the companies that I'm getting pitched on they always say you bar are they companies or are they tool right what are you guys sitting on companies or tool I would say combination of both right and so um and that's only because we invest in so many different stages of entrepreneurs uh most of all of our entrepreneurs are early stage but then we also invest in HBCU entrepreneurs so current college students or you know post five five years and so we have a mix of entrepreneurs that we're invested in I would say most of them were companies maybe not all of them were startups is the real thing right but a lot of them have built companies that can play really well in the startup space or in the Venture space but there's small businesses at their core so they're not going to rapidly accelerate in two years with a repeatable fundable model but they are building companies that may be around for the next 10 or 20 years and their family businesses or like their lifestyle businesses and that's also just like the Dynamics of in black and brown communities you need a mix of both right and I think more than any what we saw during the last economic downturn over the past few years during the pandemic is that people went back to small businesses as the core that kept us our communities afloat and so you always need to be nurturing both of those at the same time the companies that are going to accelerate in high growth but then the companies that you can rely on that are going to be in your communities that going to be in be in the mom and pop shops that going to solve local solutions to local problems you need to be able to invest in both and we're able to do so yeah what do you say to the entrepreneur that just can't get the fun that that's I'm trying and trying and trying always uh go back to a sister named Adrien Smith Company Blitz Champs card game has an NFL license yeah for some reason some VCS or people they're not interested because sister is having a hard time maybe attracting funding that she wants so she can scale what do you say to people like that o um look at alternative sources of funding like I said not every company is well suited for venture capital and you got to be very careful to make sure that you want you want to go down that road you can actually play on that road you can actually offer some sort of return um and you can scale and grow at a rapid Pace where it makes sense not every company's like that and that's perfectly fine um you know I think for government is is what one of the largest employees in the world um or or they they're the largest employees of the United States but then they also are some of the the largest contractors right and I've seen some really amazing companies get the funding that they need from local government from federal government as well and it's what they get to fuel their companies some of our companies have received SB grants that allow them to get the capital that they need coming from the government um I would say continue to apply for pitch competitions uh they serve a really really important role of getting entrepreneurs unrestricted Capital oftentimes serving as like that friends and family round for them uh also looking at uh crowdfunding and Equity crowdfunding uh we crowdfund every Sunday in the black church like it's not new to us us uh you know you mean with the plea best seriously right the utility of like a Kickstarter Indiegogo is the exact same thing like peers are coming together with a small amount of money to help you get to your goal to be able to fund the thing that you've done that's not foreign in the black community it's like it's existed in the Caribbean for for Generations called um partner and then on the continent of Africa literally Generations is called suzu so like this coming together to like fun things is not new to us but it's definitely an underutilized tool that you can play really really well in in the AIS of going you know in the absence of venture capital and oftentimes to be able to fund your thing much faster you look at like Angela Benton who's been able to raise um um I think she's raised over a million dollars on in equity crowdfunding Max tuckman who we had come in and do like a learning lab for entrepreneurs the first Latina to raise over a million dollars in equity crowdfunding so it's like definitely a possibility for these entrepreneurs to like literally use their social capital their pure networks to raise the money that they need to do in order to grow and scale their companies or at least give them a little bit of Runway while they're playing The Venture game Felicia hasher CEO black ambition two more things let you get out of here cuz you're CEO right you're busy right even though it's night time it's night time you're probably going to be going to bed at there's a party out there um you know looking deep into it now um at that dinner you said something that was very intriguing you said that black ambitionist initiative is a return on investment for our ancestor sacrifice can you elaborate on that yeah you know there's our and by the way spel said he love that you JayZ J do you you always do that huh we we have a thing back and forth yes if you JayZ him what does he do to you does he being SE to you maybe maybe a lot a lot um yeah you know there's we often talk so much about return on investment in the business space absolutely it's super important but I think from a cultural standpoint a return on your ancestor sacrifice is also something that's really important there are people that have come before you that you only get to do what you're doing today because of their sacrifice right um and no matter who you are from a cultural standpoint what your background is all of us owe the people before us that level of attention care dedication um Grit in tenacity to to what we're doing and so you know entrepreneurship will punch you in the gut more times than you can ever be able to count like I can attest to that myself um but those moments where I wake up and I'm like I don't really want to do this anymore um I don't want to build this company anymore like any of those things natural feelings that you have as an entrepreneur remembering who came before you and what they sacrificed in order to do so is really important I'm the granddaughter of a Jamaican sugar cane and yarm like farmer like that's my history and I know what my grandfather did so that I can actually be able to do the work that I'm doing he paid ultimate sacrifices it was really hard walking miles in order to be able to sell his yam and his sugar cane to put a you know roof over my mother's head that I can actually do what I'm doing and so knowing that is a thing that is my deep why I me that's what I mean by making sure that we are providing a return on the sacrifice of those that have come before us that paved away absolutely uh always like to get CEOs and ask them um because they're some of the more intelligent people right and you're definitely intelligent you studying mcgyver by the way did you like the car the the the that was like really good technology had a car talking I got in a lot of trouble I used to do all the weird stuff that that mcgyver used to do it was problem that was your favorite show mgy Absolutely it still today you're a teenager right like that was my favorite show I haven't watched it in years but like hands down like you go back I feel like I can solve any problem with the i phone like a h rubber band and a paper clip because ofy because ofy Jim KY wrote a great book good to great my favorite Business book um because it really teaches you how companies make that transition and leaders how they lead um what's the difference between a good CEO in a great o a good CEO listens yeah um a good CEO good leader listens probably more than they talk and I think that's the difference right and so um I'm a big person on communication as far as like words and how they have meaning um and how it affects change and you know communication is at the as at the top of the four highest levels of value imagination is number one communication is number two and so you know CEOs are Vision why that order um you know the people that come up with the ideas rule the world right you think of if you think about Apple right who is the most impactful person to Apple I'm asking you to I'm turn Steve Johns I guess why not Steve wac he actually built the technology true right um or Tim Cook he took the company from a one trillion dollar company to a three trillion dollar Company Steve Jobs didn't do that in his lifetime well at that point then I would say the con the customer is the biggest thing to Apple because they couldn't do all that without the money Steve came up with the ideas yeah and that's why he's remembered and revered as being the the number one top contributor to the organization and so you can have vision but if you can't communicate that Vision in order to make your team do what they need to do then you don't really have a company right and if you can't communicate the value to your customers you don't have business right and if you can't communicate the big Vision to the people when you're an entrepreneur and you don't have money you need to pull this person from like one of the top technology companies to come be your engineer that is Vision at the end of the day and so having the ideas and then being able to communicate the ideas are the two highest levels of value especially as it relates to that's leading a company absolutely so that makes a great SE that makes a great SE that's a the the top but there's a lot of lot of components for sure absolutely uninterrupted CEO an uninterrupted CEO I like you Felicia has thank you so much for the time thank you so much as well

Channel: Forbes

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Id: dLTmuDAW8Ug

Length: 181min 10sec (10870 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 19 2023