#27: - Andy Karsner, X (a division of Alphabet)

Welcome to From Startup to Grown up, the podcast. My name is Alyssa Cohn. I'm an executive coach, an angel investor, and the author of From Startup to Grown Up. Each week I talk to founders, creators, advisors, investors and builders of all kinds about their insights and experiences in going.

From startup to grownup.

This is episode 27 and I'm thrilled to have Andy Karzner on the podcast. Andy is such a renaissance man. He's an entrepreneur, an investor, a strategist, a mentor, and a board director. I'm just going to share a tiny bit of his bio. He was a managing partner at Emerson Collective where he founded and led Elemental, which is its environmental practice. He's a senior strategist and space cowboy at X the Moonshot Factory and in this discussion we get into how he got that great title and what he actually does. He was also in the US Department of Energy. He was served as the Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and renewable energy in 2006-2008. He's also on the board of Applied Materials and Exxon Mobil.

In this conversation we went to the Wayback Machine and we talked about his.

Early days as an entrepreneur when he started and led Intercorp as the CEO. Andy talked very candidly about how he dealt with some of the near death experiences he had. And then when Andy sold his company, we discussed why he thought he got a bad deal, even though it turned out to be a very good deal. Andy also talked a lot about his perspective and view as an investor and he discussed the two most important things he looks for in an entrepreneur when he's thinking about backing them. He also talked about how he's learned to have real talk and deliver tough messages when he needs to, as well as the advice he most often gives to to the entrepreneurs that he mentors. Andy is so wise. And my favorite quote from this discussion is you can only fulfill audacity when you've established the appropriate and proportionate humility. Wise words. You're going to learn so much. So please enjoy this fantastic discussion with Andy Karzner.

Andy, welcome to the show. I'm so excited to have you.

I'm excited to be here. Thanks Alyssa for having me.

I'm so excited. Ever since I met you at our meditation retreat that we're at together, I've been excited to have this conversation because that's when you revealed to me that, you know, with all your accolades and awards, you have this one job title that I want to dive into. You are a space cowboy at X the Moonshot Factory. So I want to start there to ask you, what is a Space Cowboy at X? And what is the coolest thing that you've been working on, that you've worked on there?

Wow, Good questions. Well, it's an unconventional, you know, nomenclature and titling that is, you know, somewhat more conventional around Silicon Valley. People like to be a little silly and inform their work with a sense of play. And since I work for the Captain of Moonshots, felt necessary to have something less vanilla than senior strategist. So, you know, I let the team kind of come up with their best shots, which included kind of payload specialist, booster engineer, you know, trajectory and escape velocity designer, this kind of thing, just to play on the moonshot theme. But my good friend Adi Aron Gilat came up with Space Cowboy. And everybody goes, yeah, yeah, Space Cowboy is exactly who he is. So in shorthand, I usually say Gangster of Love as a title was taken. So I got stuck with Space Cowboy. But. But the. Both are good. Both are great. But. But it's. It's a fun title and. And it's a fun place to work. It's a. It's not unlike the early days of Disney where they characterized the employees as imagineers. It's a place where there is a lot of license to imagine. I think much more importantly, there's a lot of license to learn. And there is an acknowledgement that learning comes primarily through failure and trial and error. And so there is an extraordinary and outsized embrace for failure and the necessity of trial and error. And amongst the coolest things, I work on almost anything that touches the environment or energy, somehow I will see or touch or advise. But overall, we have an incredible amount of percolations at the nexus of AI machine learning, meet cloud and data, meet devices at the edge that are measuring our planet. Most of those measures are facilitating far greater efficiency in commodity resource supply chains like ag and food or forestry or fisheries. And collectively, I call that the measure the treasure Portfolio at how can we devise a operating system for understanding our planet? We understand it well ever since, you know, we've been exploring it in great leaps with Linnaeus and classifying it, or Alexander Humboldt in talking about the raw natural capital value of things. But to now apply the greatest tools and technologies and engineering capacity of our species to understanding it in a way that we can protect it is I find tremendously exciting.

That's amazing. And I mean now more than ever, right. And how important that is, how urgent this crisis has become. And I know that you're extremely involved with, you know, Conservation and climate. Before we get into that, something you said is so interesting. You said we focus a lot on embracing failure and trial and error. Can you say specifically, like, if somebody who is an entrepreneur listening to this right now said, I want to create an environment that's good at failure, that's embracing failure, learns from it, that's good at trial and error, what specific strategies have you learned over your career that will help them create that kind of environment?

Well, there's many different takes on that answer and we debate it all the time because we try to maintain a differentiated culture. Hopefully it won't be too differentiated one day. Where it's psychologically safe to, to fail. You know, it starts with, you know, I have a nexus to a lot of companies, big and small, private, public, and, and there is always a degree of psychological impediments that might translate into structural impediments. How we give people bonuses depends on, you know, their alpha as opposed to their learning curve. You know, there is a place for that. There is definitely a place for the rigidity of process. By way of example, when you're in a security company, when you have environmental toxicity that you have to manage with extreme discipline or something like that. But, but in a place where you are seeking to promulgate and create something that didn't exist before, you have to have a very different mindset and let the content of your imagination guide the process that will unleash it, as opposed to the process curtailing people's imagination in exchange for conformity. And so to do that, you have to let people know that collectively you're in an exercise that not only supports the individual through failure, but actually encourages the rapidity of iterations that make failure not a dirty word or a cause to lose your bonus, but make it a source of bankable learnings. And if you can accrete enough learnings with enough rapidity, then you can accelerate breakthroughs. So that's the general underlying know, kind of, you know, consensus to that as a strategist, whether, you know, in this enterprise or others that I touch or affiliate or invest in or, or have governance on, you know, I'm, I'm kind of known for, you know, a pretty straightforward four part formula. You know, think big, try small, fail fast, scale now. Think big, try small, fail fast, scale now. And, and you know, some people talk about the fragility of fail fast. Maybe you should say learn fast. I don't mind saying fail fast because I'm, I'm from the school of the blessing of the skin Knee. And so failure has been a significant part of my success. And so I want to encourage people to be comfortable with failure. Not throwing it under the rug, but saying, this is everything I learned from that and this is how I'm better.

Yeah. So the idea of those failures leading to learning and that being kind of a really organic process and a natural and normal process.

Yeah.

Andy, you. I mean, you do so many things and I want to get into all of them. But, like, as a starting point, I'd like to talk about your own entrepreneurial journey. What do you know, what were the early days? I know that you were the CEO of Intercorp. Did you found that company, like, tease out what you did earlier in your career that was both leadership and entrepreneurial?

Yeah. It's funny when you say early days, certainly earlier days in my first energy entrepreneurship. Yeah. Would be marked by Intercor, because there was some success there. But, but, you know, when I think of the early days of entrepreneurship, I think of collecting, you know, glass Coke bottles in wooden crates and taking them into Piggly Wiggly and monetizing them and, you know, doing things like that. When I was seven and eight years old, I mean, I think of that those early days as an entrepreneur of how do I create value and, and enable that value to give me a modicum of freedom? And so whether it was mowing people's lawns or sacking groceries and taking out dog food for tips at Piggly Wiggly, those were all entrepreneurial activities and they were just suitable for a different age. But functionally, they reinforced the confident notion that I could master my time to create value, to exchange for freedom. And, and that formula, whether it was in building an energy company or anything else, it has. Has kind of stuck with me. That, you know, that's what I think of as early days. Founding of Intercorp was an unusual aberration for me. I was looking for what to do next after wandering around South America for a couple years, years. And, and I had earned my right to wander by in an entrepreneurial way. But for a major corporation, delivering the first private power plants in Pakistan, which was mainly because much more senior executives would not go to a war zone, was very lucrative for me in my 20s to be building and developing operating power plants and, and, but all the time with the notion that, gosh, I'm going to make so much money that, that I get to go wander South America, sort of that exchange for freedom in wandering South America, it came to me that, you know, I don't really want to spend the Rest of my life building power plants. You know, this is formulaic, I've gotten good at it. But you know, having exchanged my Coke bottles for freedom or my power plants for freedom at age 29 and 30, you know, what else is there? So I, you know, bought a flat in central London and sort of thought I would, you know, become a bookseller or write a long, you know, book of poems or something. I, you know, kind of went through a whole freestyling of what life could be since I was newly liberated and had no idea what the cost of children would be or the rest of my life. So, so toying with all that, somebody called me up who once worked for me on those power plants in Asia and said, hey, I'm working for a wind company and you should learn all about this and they want to talk to you. And I said, you know, why I don't know the first thing about wind and I'm not even sure I believe that that's real. And I mean these are early days, this is the late 90s, before there were any scale, when, when power plants. And they said, you know, you, you've got your formula for fast track concept to completion at scale. You know, that's your brand and these guys want you to take that into the wind industry. So as opposed to here's the grand vision how I'm going to change the world and here's my up and to the right tam and, and here's my deck and I'm going to get Silicon Valley guys to give a bunch of money behind this vision and trust me, I'm going to, you know, which is great. I wish I had done it that way. I didn't. I basically was asleep on the couch. Each shoe leather guy who said I need to learn this industry, I need to master this craft, I need to figure out if there is a technological inflection in the industry that I've been in, power generation and if it makes me feel better waking up in the morning and looking in the mirror and it did all those things, it fed my curiosity, it fed my sense of what I went abroad for. To make a new world order by helping bring light to where there wasn't any. And in my mind that meant literacy and other improvements in the human condition. And, and, and, but to do it clean, to do it without any throughput, of, of, of a dug up source of carbon and to generate electrons and, and make money, it just felt glorious. And, and so that's what led me into the world of renewables. That's what led me into the world of green, the idea that there was an important. A Rubik's Cube to be solved. And, And. And something that stimulated my imagination enough to make me persistent at it.

That's quite a story. And I can see how kind of one thing led to the other, including writing poems on the couch for a little while. And. But when you started. So this was like, we. This is a little enterprise we have and we need a CEO. Is that what it was? It was a founding team. It was you telling.

How did that go?

And what were the sort of early days like?

Yeah, this was. There was nothing. This was my former wingman, the guy who was my analyst and everything on those deals in Pakistan had gone to work for Enron Renewable Energy Corporation and Enron Renewable Energy Corporation, notwithstanding that it bears the moniker.

Enron was back in days before Enron was Enron.

Yeah, right before Enron was a scandalous mess. It was a great energy company. It was the seventh largest company in America, and it had a brilliant aggregation of intellectual capital. One of those guys was a gentleman named David Ram, who was, you know, freshly minted from West Point and had an executive career and had a vision of integrating Scaled Manufacturing with Scaled Power Development, which was very akin to what I had been doing for a company called Warzilla in Finland. And so for him to have the opportunity to meet some wild man, jungle boy who takes off around South America is completely comfortable going to any country in the world and had a proven track record of, you know, the metaphor I would use is, you know, diving out of plants with a knife between the teeth and going through the jungle and coming back with the idol, you know, it was, you know, I, I was known for this sort of emerging markets concept to completion, fast track, delay delivery. What they didn't know was that I was just completely motivated by being a backpacker. And then I just. I loved the work. I loved it. I relished it. Every day was an adventure. I probably would have paid them for it. So how it started was he said, you know, I'd like you to work for me. And I said, I. I'm not working for the man. You know, I'm. I'm freely new. And he said, well, how can we work together? And I said, I could begin a development company under these conditions, and if I did, this is what I would expect from you. And we, whatever. And ultimately he was able to meet those conditions. And that gave me the surety that I needed for the credibility of an engineering partner. So that when I Negotiated, we will build the world's largest power plant and it will be cheap and it will be clean and it will be transformative. I had the credibility of a balance sheet and a strategic partner and, and, and now that turned into crisis because Enron collapsed in the middle of that and I severed the relationship a year before they collapsed and, and so I had to go find a new partner and, and start over. And that was like I'm galloping on a horse that I think is reliable. Turns out the horse is crazy and, and I need to jump on another horse mid stride because I've done all this other work. Now how do I do that? And so I'd almost say the, the phase two of Intercor, the training transition away from Enron and towards building the Intercor Consortium. Building, you know, a consortium on my terms with world class engineering firms and advancing that deal is what was the real entrepreneurial stint.

Wow. I guess. So, so just briefly, did you, did you sever your relationship because Enron was crazy? Because of Enron? Like as in like what happened? Or is it like large companies are crazy?

No, no, it was amongst the conditions that I had imposed. Not that I had a lot of leverage, but it was like, you know, if you want to work for me and I'm straight out of South America and you have something that's a dubious proposition but somehow you've hired this guy that used to work for me and somehow it's intriguing and exciting to learn about the wind business amongst the conditions, and I said it almost verbatim was I don't know what you guys are up to. I have sold deals to Enron Capital and Trade, Enron Pipe, Enron International. I don't even know how you guys keep the shells on the table straight, you know, but here's what I do know. If I deal with anybody other than you, Dave Ram, CEO of Enron Renewable Energy Corporation. I have a legal out to do what I want. So Dave met me in London about a year before the collapse and he said I'm leaving and this place is crazy and, and, and it's probably going to get crazier and I as a friend want to give you smoke signals because you were very intentional about saying you didn't want to get sucked into the vortex of crazy so you have to do what you want. But I am telling you I am gone. And I've never stopped being grateful to Dave for that meeting in London. But I immediately sort of said, I gotta get a new pony. I'm not gonna hang out with crazy, for sure.

Wow. So you germinated that relationship and then how did you approach? Because you were in the middle of stuff and you couldn't just stop it. And so it sounds like it was a crisis for the company. How did you then quickly react to that and get a second pony, to use your words?

Yeah, it's comical. I'm really. I'm happy to recall these stories with you because I never get to talk about my life before I came to America. People think of me as starting as an assistant secretary and then everything in Silicon Valley. But this is my pre life, which is 50% of my career. How did I do? It was wits and persistence. I basically said, well, I don't know that much about the wind business. I was relying on these guys for the credibility of engineering. I know about developing power plants, but I'm on my way to an audacious proposition to developing the world's largest power plant, wind power plant. So somebody's going to be interested in that and it's likely going to be the biggest wind turbine producers. So let me go and find out who those are and I'll just start at the top of the list and I will cold call them. So I cold called the CEO of Vestas, which was then and now the world's largest wind manufacturer.

And.

And. But it was then, it was a sort of a Mirac because it was a Danish. A small Danish company in a fishing village. And I made my way to western Denmark, to Jutland, and stayed at the Legoland Hotel in the middle of winter, which was abandoned and kind of like the Shining, but with large LEGO characters posing at the desk as a bellboy and so forth. And. And I was just like, I am in Bizaroland. And they sent a car to take me to the train with Brigitte, who. Who took me to Lim, where I transferred to Lin Shipping and stayed in the Zimmer above the pub to meet the CEO of the world's largest wind company who had accepted my cold call, Johannes Poulsen. And Johannes was a man who would just kind of, you know, roll his own cigarettes and had to pack his own tobacco. And I think he found me an amusing oddity, you know, what an amusing oddity that this American by himself would find his way here and tell me he's going to change the world with the world's largest wind plan and that he'd just broken up with Enron and that he was giving me the deal of a lifetime. It must have occurred to him as just some crazy Odd ruse. And I remember his words to me roughly were something akin to, I love Americans. You walk on the moon, followed by, I have to walk on the ground. All those people you see out in the bay are fishing herring. And, and. And they come in to roll the towers for the turbines seasonally. And if I were to do your plan, there would be no herring in Copenhagen. And. And we would have a bit of a crisis. And. And I said, your crisis is you're going to be the largest asterisk in siemens, Mitsubishi or GE's empire if you don't do this. So. So you need to think audaciously. So I left with being the international agen 26 countries and, you know, with rights of technology transfer wherever I was developing power plants and with them as my engineering partner and credibility had been restored and had been upgraded, I should say.

So that's quite a colorful story, but just to say, Andy, I would love to just double click, maybe triple click on a few of those things, because I think some, you know, we all think about, like, oh, it was hard, and then it was a crisis, and then I did all these things, a little bit of fairy dust, and I emerged victorious. And. But I would like you to share maybe, like, did you know it was going to work? So even when you started cold calling, you literally, like, looked in the phone book, you went online. Was it online in those days? Like, literally, how did you get his phone number? Literally, why did he take your call? And then when you got there and negotiated, literally, what did you have to tell him? And did you just think, oh, I assume it's going to work out, but. Or like, like, really give us some of the secrets because the tactics are important.

Yeah, it had to work out. And if it hadn't worked out with Vestas, who was at the top of the list, I was going to go to the next term, the bonus. I was. I had a list of turbine makers that I would go through and say, my view wasn't. It's gonna. How's it gonna work out? My view was, which of you is going to be the lucky dance partner before the music turns off? You know, I'm going to go and tell you how I can transform your business and enlarge your world. And. And I don't want a recalcitrant, reticent partner who cannot see what I am telling you, what I believe will occur. And it's not to say I'm right, but it is to say that the partner I want is the one who shares vision and Risk and, and has. And breeds a degree of mutual confidence. So I was very much like, here's my, you know, here's the dance card in the order of what I know, which was very little. And, and I'm going to go through until one of these people bite. And it happened that the first and the biggest was the one that bit. And maybe that was why they were first and biggest. And, you know, and I prepared very diligently for it. I learned all about their recent transactions and their executive team and, and as much as I can do, there was no Internet. We weren't searching the Internet. You know, I mean, there was some mild Internet, but we was like Ask Jeeves and you know, Yahoo was still a thing in search and that type of thing. And so, so that wasn't the first choice magazine. What I did in those days, I went to the industry magazine, you know, and I, and I attended the industry conferences to learn what was going on. I read the industry magazine. I met with the editor of the industry magazine and I asked her a ton of questions. She happened to be based in London. Her name was Lynn. And I said, you know, I'm a new wind developer and I've got this thing. And she also found me to be an odd curiosity. But it was an early percolation day of, of wind. So I learned a lot from her and from other people of goodwill around the industry that wanted to see all the boats rise. And then I reached out and, you know, Johannes wasn't going to be able to deal with me persistently. He put his head of international on this, a guy named Neils Anderson. And Neil became my Sherpa into Vestas. Neil really loved the idea of creating a vendor manual, a vendor developer relationship, corporation, entrepreneur, strategic partnership, and empowering me to trailblaze new markets for the company and imagine new size and scale.

Got it. Oh, wow. So, I mean, you know, you had to navigate inside of that company as well, obviously. And then that company, did you sell that company? What happened to Entercorp?

I sold. I sold down the company 50% to a very successful company that became more successful called res, which stands for Renewable Energy System. It was the company that built the Millennium Dome in London. They built the Millennium Bridge that connects the Tate to St. Paul's Cathedral across the River Thames. And I was living in London and I saw their sign there, McAlpine Engineering Group, which is kind of the Bechtel of the UK family business that is well known for their engineering. And I thought, those guys must be flush with cash, you Know, I gotta, I gotta meet those guys and figure out how they become a strategic. So I sold them the company, sadly or fatalistically or whatever it was. Right. It was the summer before 9 11. So it was a good time for the seller and not a great time for the buyer to be investing deeply in emerging market risk, so to speak, infrastructure development risk. But nonetheless, you know, the lesson from that was important to me because I basically, you know, had a summer of ultimatum and we walked away from the table and we didn't talk for weeks during the sale because we had also been partners prior to the sale. And then we sort of had the bridge on Vienna moment where the compromise came and the deal happened and I was like, God, those guys had extra leverage on me. I didn't understand, I didn't get my right price on it and everything. And then 911 happened and I was like, I will never question again. You know, there's, there's not going to be a day when I say too much is, is too much is not enough. Because as fate would have it, you know, I monetized and cashed out right before the global markets collapsed.

Yeah.

Wow.

That there's so much to say. Like the Buddhists always say, you know, when something bad happens, it's like, well, wait a minute, turns out to be bad, actually turns out to be good.

Yeah, yeah.

And so you can see that. And so from there, again, I know that you've had a lot. I want to get into as many things as we can, a lot of experiences. But certainly you've been an investor, you've worked with entrepreneurs, you've been on boards. I'm curious now, if you think about, on your whole career, what do you look for in founders when you're going to make a bet on a founder, what do you personally look for?

Two things up front as sort of the price of admission of engagement at all. One is character and the other is self actualization. And the character piece can be a lot more variable to me. I appreciate the differences in character and culture and. But I want to know somebody has one. I want to know that there is something more of a catalytic engine inside of them that is moving them to an outcome than the mechanical pursuit of a dollar. Mechanical pursuit of a dollar. And I say this with all respect to my friends who have MBAs, but I think of that as more of a pedigree path exercise. And to be an entrepreneur you need something else a little bit spicy that you've developed on the inside. And it doesn't have to be my version of character. It can be wildly different than my version of character, but it has to be character. Then I'd say the more indispensable piece, you know, for success, whether it's me or anybody else looking for it, is a leader that is self actualized that and it can be a matter of selfish projections because I primarily view that as the long pole in the tent of my own leadership style of understanding my deficiencies, my gaps, being unafraid to reveal with vulnerability my failures and my learnings and my limitations and my probabilities and, and having the actualization and intellectual integrity and honesty to say I have to fill these things. Not only is it okay to expose them, I need to identify them with precision, to put the very best people at those fence lines and empower them to exceed anything I could imagine for myself. So I think in the, in the typical arc of founder syndrome, there comes a time when somebody who's been wildly successful, or the A student or the valedictorian or the head of the class, or the founder who got through stage A and B ultimately runs into their limitations and they find some way to cover them up and put them in the corner of the kitty litter box or diminish them and say those aren't important limitations or gaps or, or diminish the value of them if somebody else brings them. But whatever it is that feeds a some form of insecurity that disallows self actualization that has to be overcome for a great entrepreneur to lead, in my.

Opinion, yes, love it. As a coach, I'm like rabidly, yes, agree. And it's so true that all of us have to learn and grow. And part of that is just overcoming, identifying, overcoming weaknesses, everything, deficiencies. How do you help the founders that are in your line of sight, that you mentor, that you're invested in some way that you've helped grow over the years, how do you help them see the importance of that? How do you help them actually identify without fear their issues and deficiencies and then overcome them?

That's a great question. I probably should ask you that because you probably got more experience than me in that. I don't know if I went back in time what my hit rate would be in terms of my utility of success in that in translating. I do know that I have a strong conviction that I don't leave anything other than, and I don't say this has happened all the time, but it is my intention that I don't leave anything other than goodness in my wake so whatever happens that I feel privileged and grateful to, you know, have been invited on the journey and that I am very intentional concurrently, that there's no ambiguity in my wake, that people say, I wonder what he meant by that, or where does he stand on this? So those are two challenging concepts, that you're going to be very direct and matter of fact and candid and transparent and ask for accountability and be clear in your communication without guile, and at the same time say, whatever happens, I want us both to be stronger and to have said this was a worthwhile relationship. Those are almost. I think people pitch those as competing. I don't view them as competing. I view them as the challenge of human relations. And I think that even in cases where I haven't succeeded with an entrepreneur's enterprise or facilitating their outcome or maybe closing down their enterprise, I'd like to think that people would still have nice things to say at my funeral. Absolutely.

I mean, I love what you just said. I completely agree. Those two things are not at odds. You can love someone and also be clear and direct and deliver hard messages. In fact, they're going to hear you better when they know that you're speaking as an ally. And I think it's so important to recognize you can be candid and compassionate.

Right.

All those things together. Is there an example? I don't want to put you on the spot. Maybe I'm putting you on the spot, but. But, Andy, can you give an example of a conversation, a tough conversation, you've had with, again, the mentor, someone you've been mentoring, somebody who you've invested in, where you really had to have that difficult conversation? And how did that go?

Oh, my God, I've had dozens of them. You know, I think that's why I keep getting asked on boards and stuff, is that, you know, a lot of time, people, there's a necessity for these conversations and there is maybe natural trepidation to engage in them because of that philosophy. I don't have that trepidation. I don't sort of say, well, if he doesn't like it, tough. But I am more about, you know, let the truth set you free. And truth isn't always pleasant. And I, in my own dealings as an executive, invite truth tellers. I'm most comfortable with people who don't give me everything is up and to the right and growing daisies, but who come in and say, diagnostically, here's all the problems. Now how do I help you solve them? And so I try to be that person because that's the people I want around me to make me better. And the delta is, or I should say the definition of the bond is how much of a learner are you? How much do you thrive on learning and, and taking those learnings and usefully applying them? And, and so not to dodge your question, I mean, you know, I've had to fire founders, I've had to fire and replace CEOs. Transitions are difficult when, especially when someone gave birth and you're saying, ah, well, you know, you don't know how to manage your baby or you're managing your baby to its demise and I can't let you do that. And you know, so they can get really tough and visceral in those situations. And you know, I've had to do that in public companies. But I think it's harder when it's nascent, when it's a starry eyed young person who's on their first enterprise and you know, like everybody who's going to be a rock star on stage singing next to Mick Jagger, if they could just have the Mr. Microphone and the day at karaoke, you know, and you, and you say to them, if you want this to succeed, you will do what is necessary to hire your new boss. You know, you will do what is, you know, so the question is, what do you really want for your baby? You know, it's a Solomon moment of I'll split the baby and the real mother says it's hers. Because I love it so much, I'm willing to say to seed my position. And that's very hard for the human ego and for founders and everything else. But if you're a fiduciary, if you are there in the room for a reason, which is other than how do I enjoy the salmon and get some free shares, if you're really about, we are here to help this enterprise thrive. You have got to be prepared for those very tough talks. And you have to. When I say be prepared, I don't mean be prepared, just mentally and emotionally with stamina. I mean actually have substance to the logic chip of why things are the way they are and how do we make the most out of, out of making them what we all want them to be. I think people fail at this and other aspects of business when they reduce it to transactional case studies instead of relational bespoke engagements.

Yeah, I just had Scott Bilski on this podcast and he said, you know, it's foolish to think that management can be scaled honestly. You're always dealing with that person sitting across from you. And I think we always have to remember that because what's going to work for them is not going to work for someone else. And when you have to have really intricate, delicate, difficult conversations, you, you've got to address that person sitting across from you.

Yeah, that's exactly right. That's exactly right. I had an old crusty marine engineer in my power deal is stuck in those Karachi hotel and Jim Woolley, and Jim was 25 years older than me and. But he was, but he carried sort of the old salty wisdom of the sea. And so when I was young and you know, functionally founding companies to own these power plants, you were kind of like, I'm in charge, I know what's going on. And, and all of a sudden as the builders show up and the inspectors, the independent engineers and everybody, you know, that scrum enlarged and I was kind of going, I'm losing control because I was 25 and my frontal lobe wasn't developed enough to know what control is. And Jim was like, you can never succeed alone. That's impossible. What you can do is permanently earn the accolades for the catalyst. What you can do is enable people who will collectively succeed to win. Or you can self implode around the notion that you're going to do this alone. The lesson for me, the permanence of the lesson is that you can only fulfill audacity once you have established appropriate and proportionate humility. And that's been the lifelong lesson from that.

Yeah, that is so well said, beautifully said. You know, if I sort of zoom out a little bit and I think about all the entrepreneurs you're in contact with, can you share like the advice that you most often give or you find your, the topics you find yourself talking about over and over again?

Yeah, I mean, some of what we've said, you know, I had, I won't betray my dinner conversation, but I had dinner with two of the greats last night, Reid Hoffman and Astro Teller, who I work with at X. And no Agenda, a wonderful no agenda dinner. Let's, let's just be together and think and hang and laugh and imagine. And I would have loved to have circulated that as one of our questions. What's the best advice you ever gave? What's the, you know, and of course we've all been with each other on various deals that we've done together, but we've also been out in the wilds doing crazy deals separately with crazy people. And I think the best advice is the classic advice, Polonius's advice to his son in Hamlet when he first goes off to journey. And you remember it as it begins with neither borrower nor lender be. Which is also apt advice in terms of your balance sheet. But that is not the key. The key is this. Above all, no matter what else anybody else tells you, this above all, to thine own self be true. And to me, that is the single most important advice, not just to entrepreneurs, but especially to entrepreneurs, but really to our species. You know, be true, Be. Be put on pretense for no one. Find out what your character is, what your. What motivates you and propels you to achieve some useful dent in the universe, and be true to that. You know, that's the most important advice I can share with people.

I love it. I absolutely love it. One more question before we end. What do you personally wish you had known earlier on your journey?

What a great question that is. I wish I would have known how important one's ecosystem, whether it's a business ecosystem or a natural ecosystem, is to symbiotically thriving. By that, I mean, you know, you take a potted plant and you put it in your garden and it grows, and you. You take potted plant, you put it under the kitchen sink, and it dies. Same pot, same plant, same soil, different conditions. And probably a little piece of me began to die living in the suburbs after years of wandering around South America and Asia and so forth. And. And I think if I would have known and understood the correlation, I would have cultivated more conditions for me to think, thrive more effortlessly and with less friction. And so I think as much as I talk about what's inside, I think it's important not to lose your correlation and connection to everything that's around you. It sounds cliche, but for me, that's just the majesty of the natural world and what it does to my mind and my heart and my motivation. But it can be something as simple as, I live in a walkable suburb, and therefore I'm outside today, as opposed to I need to take a car to a strip mall and wonder how this happened to me kind of thing.

The ecosystem. I love it. The ecosystem. And Andy wants to make sure he lives in a natural environment. Let me just say thank you so much for talking to me today, and people are really going to really benefit from what we have from our conversation. So I just want to say thank you so much for joining me today.

Thank you, Lissa. I love you. I think it's such a great opportunity, and we should talk more often, even when we're not recording.

Agreed? Agreed.

Thanks thanks for listening to From Startup to Grown Up. If you like what you heard, give it a review on Apple Podcast so other people can find it. And if you know of a founder or someone else who is meant to be on this podcast, drop me a line through my website alyssacon.com.