647: If VCs & Gov. join forces we can solve society’s biggest problems (with venture capitalist and lecturer at Stanford University, Arun Gupta)

Hello, this is Kristofarova. Welcome to another episode of the Strategy Skills Podcast. And our podcast today is sponsored by strategytraining.com if you want to strengthen your strategy skills, you can get the overall approach used in well managed strategy studies. It is a free download one pager. Go to firmsconsulting.com overallapproach f I-rmsconsulting.com overall approach. And if you are currently looking to advance your career and need to update your resume because you're looking for another role, I have another free gift for you. It is McKinsey and BCG winning resume example actual resume that got offered from both McKinsey and BCG and you can get free download go to firmsconsulting.com resume PDF and today we have with us Arun Gupta. Arun is a venture capitalist, lecturer at Stanford University and adjunct entrepreneurship professor at Georgetown University and co author of a new book called Venture Meets Mission. Welcome Arun.

Thank you very much. Thank you for having me, arun.

So over 20 years you were a venture capital investor. With your most recent focus on investments at the intersection of mission, technology and entrepreneurship. Let's dive into your journey that got you here because you have such an exciting journey and I would love to hear more about it and I know our listeners do and then we can focus more on your current work and the new book.

Sure, Chris. So thank you again for having me. So look, my journey began here in Washington, D.C. my father immigrated from India. My mom and dad both did and settled here in the D.C. area. My father was has been working in Federal Services, Federal Navy, Sea Service, Naval Sea System command. Now approaching 45 years and he's still working. So you know, military, government services. Has been in our family since I was growing up. I went away to school, went overseas. Actually was at a consulting firm for a while, Arthur D. Little doing strategy work. Went to India to go open up their office after business school and then came back to the DC area. And when I came back to DC, this was the late 90s, so the DOT com boom was taking place. And it really kind of, you know, found that I was really enticed by wanting to be in the venture and entrepreneurial ecosystem. And what I think I loved about it most was the optimism, right? There's no one more optimistic, I say, than entrepreneurs. Because you have to be if you're going to go down that route, you have to believe. You have to believe you can change the world. You have to believe you can do something really radically different. And so I started networking in the DC area And I didn't know much about venture startups and started to learn the language, the vernacular and found myself over getting recruited to go to Carlisle in their venture group and then soon after went over to Columbia Capital where, where I spent the bulk of my career, nearly 18 years at Columbia as a partner with, working with terrific folks, but you know, working in during difficult times. You know, I joined in 2000. Soon thereafter we had the dot com bust. So. But you know what I was most proud of is the way our firm and our partners stuck together. We came through that and then, you know, 0809 hit and we came through that equally strong. And so after a great run there over 18 years, you know, retired and started looking at other opportunities of what my next chapter would look like and you know, really got into, you know, had been approached about teaching in Georgetown. And I started teaching at Georgetown at the business school and really enjoyed it. And you know, I think back on it, Chris, part of what I really enjoyed about it was what I enjoyed about being around entrepreneurs, which was optimism. I really enjoyed the optimism of students. I enjoyed, you know, the optimism that they were at a stage of their lives where they felt like they could do anything and they believed anything was possible. And so I enjoyed teaching quite a bit. And so it was something that I knew I wanted to be part of what I was doing, but not what I wanted to do completely. So I continued my venture investing as well, sitting on boards and also personal philanthropy. But then what I enjoyed about it is that you brought a very experiential voice to the classroom, having been in this realm. And well, I started teaching at Georgetown. The class won a few awards from the students and faculty and then folks at Stanford had asked about teaching and so I wasn't going to fly out to California, but there's a Stanford and Washington program here in D.C. and I started teaching a class there and created a class actually, and we called it Valley meets Mission. So whereas I was teaching just straight entrepreneurship and venture capital at Georgetown, here was really teaching a class for students that were coming from Stanford and really trying to expose them to the entrepreneurial excitement of doing things in Washington and in the D.C. area. And we called it Valley meets Mission because it was like how do you take the entrepreneurial spirit of the Valley and how do you combine it with the scale of admission, focus of government to solve big problems? And we would quip that a lot of what we were trying to do was not, you know, not have these kids go and waste their talents and energy on Candy Crush 3.0. But like use that energy and talent to go, you know, solve larger social problems, but do it in a for profit way. I could be a climate company, a cyber company, a national security company, a healthcare, food. But you know, think about, you know, and part of that was in the latter half of my career of investing at Columbia was really at this intersection of mission, tech and entrepreneurship where I was investing in cyber companies and security and govtech companies. And in doing that you saw both the challenges of collaborating with government when you're a startup, but you also saw the magic when it worked. And you're in an ecosystem of very purposeful oriented individuals. And that was really exciting. And what I saw when we were teaching that class, Chris, is these students were fairly siloed. You know, engineering students hadn't really thought about doing something with government, and government students hadn't really thought about doing something in the entrepreneurial realm. You know, Mike Morell would say it well, and he was one of the speakers. I would have come in and he would say, I think 45% of your class hates government, the other 45% hates entrepreneurial capitalism. And you're trying to land the plane by the end of the course that we need both if we're going to solve big problems. And we did. And what you realized is that people have biases, but when you bring in individual, those biases tend to melt away. And so we'd bring in speakers from government like Mike Morrell or Chris Darby, Jason Matini, Tony Townes Whitley, Ted Davies. And we bring in leaders from, you know, that were financing these companies and then we'd bring in entrepreneurs that were creating these companies and you know, like a Chris lynch and Nicole Camarillo, Rahul Singvi and others. And what you saw is that the students realized that there's a place where you could do both right? And I think that was really energizing. And I saw a number of, I think my badge of honor was seeing a number of my students rescind their banking and consulting offers to go into this middle world government adjacent ventures where they could solve big problems. And that I think was the spark that started to inspire like, wow, there's something bigger going on here. And I would see this more and more. And then it only accelerated after Covid. And that that ultimately was the foundation for what we ended up writing about in Venture Meets Mission.

And my understanding is that your first 10 years as a venture capitalist were focused on high growth tech companies outside the government sector. And then you started exploring collaborative investment opportunities with the US Government. And my understanding is that you realize that entrepreneurs by themselves could not solve societal problems, and that larger problems could only be solved by bringing together the, as you mentioned, innovation capabilities of entrepreneurs, but also be the scale and reach that uniquely resided within the government. What led to this realization? Did something happen, some defining moment that shifted your thinking this way?

Yeah, I don't think it was a moment, but I think it was a series of experiences. You know, look, we as a firm stayed away from doing anything really with government or investing around that ecosystem because, you know, it was thought to be slow, it was thought to be hard to collaborate. It was thought that you wouldn't get valued for government as your customer. And I think a few things happened. And, you know, it's coincidental with, you know, around 0809 starting to look at this, I think one, we were going through a massive technological shift, 07 with the emergence of the iPhone, so there was a big mobile shift going on. Around that same time is when you really saw AWS really starting to emerge. And so cloud computing was starting to take place. And while they were still very nascent, you were able to see very quickly that these were going to be technological changes that had, you know, that were profound, that the level of innovation was going to require government to just not have all their solutions be proprietary and they would need to leverage this. You also saw the early emergence of, you know, cyber hacking and threats in a more networked environment. And so, you know, I think what you started, you know, I think it was Michael Hayden that coined the phrase, you know, there was, you know, we used to fight wars on land, air, sea and space, but the fifth domain was going to be cyber. Right? And so, you know, that led to kind of looking at opportunities there. And that also the cyber threats were such that the velocity of innovation with our adversaries was going to require technology and platforms and products to compete. It wasn't, you know, it wasn't going to. You couldn't keep up with it by just building custom products because the procurement cycle would be too slow. We needed, you know, we needed a way to be able to compete appropriately. So I think that was one that was happening on the market side. You know, I think, you know, second, you know, we were going through a financial crisis, right? And so honestly, at that time as well, you saw, you know, a lot of our commercial companies were looking at the government as a customer because the commercial client base was so, was struggling. And so that, you know, for the first time started to have you take a look at what was happening there? And then third, you know, had been involved with much of the, some of the activity on the Obama tech transition project and in that process also saw, you know, some of the thinking that people were looking at of like how do you collaborate more with, with the private sector? And so I think it was a confluence of things that, that took place around the same time, which is what brought us into it. Once in it, you really, you know, I will say that's what shifted my mindset, my shift in my mindset in understanding that like the real levers that government has, right, and the real reach and the real scale. So when you talk about, you know, impact on national security at a broad scale, what any of our agencies can do far surpasses what any one enterprise can do. And it was that, I think that really started to spark that interest around how do you take that innovation that we see with our companies? And also look, honestly, some of the more complicated problems were on the government side. So it flipped on its head a bit where if you could sell to the, you know, the DOD or a three letter agency, you know, a cyber product that gave you credibility to then go to Wall street or any of the larger enterprise customers. And so I think that dynamic also led us to really think about spending more time around that. But the final piece is once you're in it, you know, the composition of the people that you work with and what they're looking to do is different. And what I mean by that is, you know, for the most part, whether it be board members, entrepreneurs, they're doing it for their North Star's mission. That's not to say they don't want to make money. That's not to say they don't want to do well, but they lead with mission first. And that's just a very different way of looking at the world, that's all. And after, you know, a decade of, you know, focused on the commercial side, where you're focused really on just, you know, your options first and the value of them, you know, it was, it was hard to go back, you know, it was hard to, you know, when you see that, that opportunity. Now look, that's not to say it's not without challenges, right? A lot of the things that you're used to on the commercial side, you know, take a little bit longer. There's less transparency sometimes. But goodness, when you, when it actually worked and when you sold that product and you know, how it was being used and the difference it was making in Keeping either, you know, the nation more secure and protecting folks, you know, that was really rewarding.

And when you shifted your thinking, what do you wish you knew then that, you know now?

Yeah, it's a great question. You know, I think what I wish I had known then was the importance of customer empathy. And the importance of it's not about having the best solution or the best product, but it's about being able to communicate and understanding what the customer is going through and being able to then fit your product into that. And that's, you know, it's a lot of why we write in the book the idea that, you know, we really need to humanize government. Right. And personalize entrepreneurship. I don't think I appreciated the cultural divide that really existed. You know, one of my folks that we interviewed, federal Cruises, had a saying that technology is the easy part, people are the hard part. Right. And I think at that point you're always so enamored with technology and how technology can solve the problem. But the piece that I feel like I underestimated that I, you know, knowing what I know now would be the emphasis on cultural fit, right? Because if you don't have the cultural fit, you don't have trust. And if you don't have trust, the technology doesn't matter. And, you know, that took some time to really understand. And, and we saw a big difference in some of our portfolio companies. We had to make changes, management changes, folks that really knew the technology well or really knew the Valley well, or really knew that community well, but they didn't know how to talk to the end customer and they didn't know how to build trust with the end customer. And that became a real differentiator.

Arun, you mentioned trust so important. Do you think that we are living now at a time when people prefer to do business with people versus companies? Do you feel there is this shift that happened over time and we are now living at a time where when you're building a business, the trust element becomes even more important and the people behind the company, that connection between them and the customer, become even more important than ever before?

Yeah, I do, Chris. Having said that, I think that's always been the case. We, we sometimes put too much emphasis on the company piece. But I'll tell you where it normally the company, the more risk averse a customer is, the more the company label matters, right? You know, there's an old saying, you never get fired for, for buying from IBM or from a large company, and the more innovative and the younger the company is. It's about the people, it's about the trust because they don't have the benefit of a large brand stability, you know, been around for a long time. And so absolutely, as you move into this, you know, world of venture meets mission, I think the core of that is trust, right? Because, you know, and I say this in my entrepreneurship class I teach Georgetown, you know, trust is your currency in entrepreneurship. You know, it's your currency and how you recruit like the best people are going to go want to work with people they trust. It's your currency and how you partner, you know, because partners want to partner with folks they trust and it's your currency with customers because people will buy product from you sometimes ahead of what you have because they trust and believe in your ability to deliver. And that's why the individual is absolutely the most important piece of this, right? It's incredibly important. And that's why and it's an important piece that I think a lot of firms, when they come with a venture mindset, but then just assume that they now want to just transport what they're doing into mission miss because they haven't spent the time and energy to invest in building that trust, you know, and that can come from, you know, how you interact with customers and the time you spend educating and learning, not only educating them, but learning, you know, what they're really trying to solve and what their problems are, but also how you build your team. You know, building a team that of folks that have these shared experiences or diverse experiences is incredibly important because folks will trust those individuals and they'll trust if those individuals are part of your company, that means something to them. And so no, I look, I think it's incredibly important and I think it's incredibly important in a world where people sometimes mistake links with relationships. You know, what I say is just because you have a bunch of LinkedIn followers or social media connections doesn't replicate trust. And I think that's an important there's still something to be said about sitting down and having coffee and talking in person face to face and establishing that trust. And I think that's just hard to do in a digital world.

That is so true. I feel that now people listening to this would want me to ask this question because many of our listeners are leaders and they have teams that they're responsible for and they want to make sure that their teams are happy and they are thriving and they're delivering huge value for the overall team and for the company and for the customers. What are some of the things you learned in your career so far that you could share pass along in this moment in terms of building your team, building the trust with your team, and being a great leader.

Yeah, look, I caveat a lot of this by saying you learn this the hard way. Right. You don't necessarily have it right the first time. So this is, as one of my friends would say, my career didn't make sense looking forward, but it made sense looking backwards. Right. And so if I'm looking backwards now at my career, what do I take away from it? Look, I think diverse teams build trust, actually. And I, I say that because it allows there to be an ability to accept and signal that different perspectives are valued. And I think that's important. And I think it's important to actually have real debate, but, but not personalize it. And so I think great leaders are those that are able to encourage debate, not discourage it. But more importantly, once a decision is made, we've moved on, what you don't want is to have a decision made and then everyone's lingering and arguing and undermining and things of that sort. So I think, you know, a core tenet of leadership is engaging in debate, but once a decision is made, is unifying around that decision. And that's incredibly important. And I think, you know, that took some time to really understand how and why you need to do that. I think the second is, is transparency. And what I mean by that is, look, I think it's important to be. People can, can adjust if they know what the rules are, and with transparency comes consistency. But if you're constantly changing the rules or it's unclear what the rules are, that's when I think you start to get behavior manifest itself that doesn't have, isn't embedded with trust because people are trying to guess what the system is or they're trying to, you know, they figure that, you know, what you say may change, and so they continue to move accordingly. So I think transparency is incredibly important. I think humility, honestly is incredibly important as a leader. And with that is being vulnerable, admitting when you're wrong. And as I say many times to my class, you can tell a really functional board and a dysfunctional board. In a dysfunctional board, everyone's worried about being right, and in a functional board, everyone's worried about getting to the right answer. And the difference really is being devoid of ego. As you go into that debate, when you're worried about being right all the time, you're going to be hard to be trusted because people feel like you're always going to come at it from the side of needing to be right when you are able to demonstrate that you're more worried about getting to the right answer. So I'll put out my hypothesis of what I think we should do, but let's challenge it. And if you can be vulnerable and be humble enough to say, that's a good point, we should do something different. I think that goes a long way to building trust, because I think that it also, back to point one, enables people to want to engage in that discussion, not assuming that you're just going to do what you think is the right thing to do. And so I think humility is incredibly important in this. And with that, I think also is, you know, the fourth thing I would say is also being able to.

Show.

That you believe in the organization. You know, you can have an audacious goal and a vision, and then you got to show that you believe in the people that are around the table, that we can get there, but it's, we can get there. And you believe in them helping you get there. And that requires you also encouraging them to have to be willing to take risk and not being in a situation where they feel like they have to be right all the time. And I think that's incredibly important. And that's really hard to do because it's not only about you, but it's also about your other team members, that if someone makes a mistake, they hold them accountable to it. But you, you, you focus on what do we learn from the mistake, and you move on. Now, if you repeat the same mistake over and over again, you've got a problem. But I would contend that an organization or a team that's not making mistakes isn't innovating fast enough. You need to be testing and you need to be making mistakes. And so being able to openly discuss the mistakes we've made as a team builds trust, actually, because people feel like they can come to the table and be like, yeah, we tried this last week and it didn't work. And here's what we learned from it. And, you know, here's an hour we're going to go ahead and go do. And I think that's an important trait in building trust, but it starts at the top, because this person that's leading the organization's got to be willing to say, hey, everything I'm doing is not working either.

Arun so as humans, we learn through stories. It's easier for us to learn through stories. And I feel that it would be a nice cherry on top right now. If you could share a story, if you could, if something comes to mind of you leading teams or you observing someone leading teams and when certain change is implemented and a big impact it had for that team.

Yeah, you know, look, I was, you know, on the board of a portfolio company that, you know, the senior leader was very much about. You know, someone made a mistake, they were, you know, chastised and, you know, was always about, we need to get it right and we can't be wrong. And it's a hard charging, you know, organization. And, you know, we as a board, you know, asked, you know, it'd be great if we at the board meetings tell us the five things that didn't work last quarter and what you learned from them. And you know, at first there was a little bit of resistance to it, but then, you know, the next board meeting, they did it and next thing you know, there was this collaborative sense. You could feel the board meeting itself with the team taking on a much more. It brought the team together. Before, I felt like when we would sit in that meeting, people were individually guarded, they were protecting their turf, they were defending what they said. And in doing this, I found that, you know, two board meetings into brought the team together where people were trying to defend each other. And when one person said, this is the mistake we made and here's how we overcame it and what we did, someone else would chime in and go, well, it was really great they did that because that would lead us to being able to solve this problem in getting this customer. And I'll tell you, Chris, it was phenomenal to see what we were really concerned about of being an organization where we were going to have to probably do some, you know, it was hard to see how they could all coexist. And it would probably need to be some managerial changes to one that six months later was a high performing team hitting on all cylinders. And we started seeing our revenue, you know, reflect itself in our revenue and profitability as well. So I think that's probably an example of a story, you know, I've got to be sensitive about not naming names of companies or individuals, but of a story where, you know, in a, you know, relatively short period of time, we went from heavy concern on needing to maybe change the team to one where that became the team that, you know, really led us to a really great exit.

What do you feel were the biggest drivers of that change? Do you feel that maybe normalized for people that it's okay to fail? What do you feel were the biggest drivers that that team actually changed their behavior.

Yeah, I think it humanized the entrepreneurial process a bit like it made it okay to. Everyone is making mistakes, they're just not telling anyone. Right. But once you could talk about it, you're now able to bring the shared collective wisdom to fixing it or learning from it. And so what it did was it brought everyone together as opposed to making a mistake and not wanting to share it. And then being isolated, you could run what you thought was the best thesis and if you were right, great, double down on it. But if you're wrong, you're, you're almost encouraged to share it with your peers so that, and try to dissect it and learn from it in a way. And in, in that process of doing that, you're building trust actually. Right. You're showing that you're vulnerable, you're showing you didn't get it. Right. And your peers are not only respecting you, but, you know, feeling like they could reciprocate as well. And you know what, what was being built there then was a camaraderie of I've got your back and you've got my back. And you know, it's that shift of we're no longer worried about being right, were worried about doing what's right. Right. And it was, it was that transition.

Were there any negative elements of implementing this change that you observed or only positive?

What we noticed was clearly overwhelmingly positive. You know, you know, if there's a negative, it's just containing it. Right. You don't want a culture of where everyone's trying to make mistakes. So this isn't about trying to make mistakes, but it's about being open about them. And, but it's still, you know, a culture, but also wanting to be accountable that, you know, we can't keep, you know, we make a mistake. There's two angle. There's two aspects to it, right. One is when you're testing and experimenting, you're doing it in a, in a defined amount. Right. You're not making company wide bets and being wrong, like that's dangerous. So it's understanding how to experiment, but it's also, you know, the learning piece is important. Like if you make, if you make a mistake in something in your hypothesis, but you keep doing it over and over again, that's a problem. Right. And so, you know, I think in going down this path, I think the only piece is to regulate it in a way that you're making sure that we're not rewarding failure, but we're encouraging risk taking is what we're doing.

Very good point. I thought you will say that. I wanted to make sure we mention it before we move on. So earlier you mentioned that you were teaching the violin mission class at Stanford, which was focused on how entrepreneurial talents can be applied to solve societal problems at scale by collaborating with the government. And what I wanted to ask you, you mentioned a little bit of some of the experiences you had in teaching that important course. But I was wondering what were your personal biggest insights from teaching this course? From listening to all the speakers and seeing how students change their view of the world and so on. What were some of the insights that come to mind right now?

Look, I think some of them, some of my insights, one, I think generationally we, we don't engage in complicated discussions in a way that, you know, which requires us to be able to unpack things. We, we tend to make things either about it, you know, that fit into a tweet or, you know, we assume things are black and white and the gray area is where most of life is and in there. I think what I realized in that class was how many biases students had. But when you really started to pull the thread as to why they thought what they thought, that the why was ill informed, right. And that was more just not having had the time to really sit and unpack it, right. And look at other people's perspectives as to how they would approach the problem or why they may have done what they did. Look, I would bring in, you know, you know, someone like Mike Morrell, former CIA director and you know, you know, there were folks that would be, you know, somewhat hostile, ready to, in class when you said that, you know, someone from the agency's coming because they had their biases of what that meant, I guarantee you every one of them to a T at the end of that class thought, you know, this is a humble, thoughtful, patriotic, you know, mission driven individual that they wanted to be like. And I think. But that comes with being able to invest the time to go back and forth, right? And in expediency and being in the digital era, we lose that right now. We've lost that. And it's that humanization piece. So I, I don't think I appreciated until I was in the classroom.

How.

Important that is right to be bringing back in. And you know, I think so that was, that was probably, you know, observation one, you know, observation two, it's, look, you start to unpack why that is and you know, we're from, we've got an educational system, you know, Starting even way before college, you know, where. Where students are just on a track, you know, you know, you've got, you know, the book 10,000 Hours. People feel like they just got to get really excellent in something really narrow. And, you know, that works for some. I would contend that doesn't work for most. You know, I probably fall in the Dave Epstein, you know, camp of range where like, you know, build a foundation that goes across areas, you know, and we don't emphasize that enough early on. And so, you know, I think the manifestation of what I would see in class many times is people being good at what they're good at, but not having the lateral, you know, having biases that, you know, because they just haven't had the experience yet. And so, you know, I think the more at the academic level, we have these interdisciplinary classes that bring people together. You know, the way a CS major views the world, you know, has a different data set than maybe the way a international relations person views the world. Right. Combining them in a class where they're debating and talking and is shared learning across the board, like, I think they're all better for it. It doesn't mean one's right or one's wrong. And so I think that was a really telling piece for me. You know, so it's. It wasn't the complicated stuff. It was the simple stuff, but it was just the need for folks to understand that. Look, I think third, I think I started to appreciate words matter. You know, we. We use a very binary lexicon with the generation. You know, we say public sector, private sector. We say, not for profit, for profit. You know, one implies doing good, the other one implies making money. We don't have a term for the thing in between. Right. That you can go do both. And so, you know, I would get people in my class going like, you know, I want to. I want to do something really purposeful, but I feel like I want. I need to make some money. And you're kind of looking at them going, like, you don't have. That's not a choice. Like, it doesn't need to be a binary choice. Right. But I think, you know, we've socialized the vernacular that, you know, for many conflate this binary choice around it. And so I think, you know, again, I think the more interdisciplinary interaction that they have with folks, you know, people will say simple things like, you know, government's bad. They're like, well, what is government to you? Right? Or, I don't want governmental life. Like, define that. Right. And I'm not trying to take a side one way or the other, but I'm just, you know, government's just another organization made up with individuals. And for the most part, most of those individuals are trying to do their best. That doesn't mean they get it right, but like it's an organization, right? It's a, it's a, it's a group of people. And so I think breaking it down, breaking the conversation down and biases down to the molecular level of how they're, of the why they're thinking about it that way is incredibly important. Right. And so, you know, I think my bigger takeaway when I was seeing this was that there was also this odd paradox where, you know, students weren't going into government, but you could tell they wanted to or they wanted to go do more mission oriented work. The problem is the infrastructure we had was not conducive to making that easy for them. Right. Agencies aren't showing up on campus. They're not, you know, they're not able to take you out for a recruiting dinner. They're not making you feel wanted. They're not making it feel like it was a real prestigious thing that you got awarded this. And you saw that for many of these students, the easy button was just whoever showed up on campus. Right? The easy button. Even though that may not be what they want to do or what they're inspired to do, it was the easy thing to go do. And so I don't think I appreciated the power of that as well. And I think that's what got us thinking a lot when we were creating the Noble Rouge foundation, which is really an offset of, you know, offshoot of the book with now a half a billion dollar endowment, was like, how do we, you know, invest in rebuilding that infrastructure so that students that would want to go in would feel inspired as they do in other opportunities.

I'm glad that you brought up the book because I feel that the remaining part of the session. Let's talk about that. What were some of the key things you want people to take away from reading your book?

Yeah, look, I think some of the key thoughts, you know, is our theory on the case. Our theory on the case is in great power competition, you know, against our adversaries. If we're going to do two things right in this country, we need to get better talent around government and better innovation around government to compete, you know, to do that. You know, I think the two ecosystems that to my mind are still far and away better than anywhere else in the world are our ability to create talent and our higher ed system and our ability to innovate in our entrepreneurial ecosystem. And both, you know, are deeply cultural. And what I mean by that is, you know, your adversary can't just open up a thousand universities and have a university system like we do, and they can't overnight replicate our entrepreneurial ecosystem. You know, it takes, it takes time, it takes generations. Right? And so I think the second point, if you believe the first point on the theory, on the case, is better talent and better innovation. The second point is a superpower of our liberal democracy has always been those two hallmarks, our higher ed and our ability to create talent, our ability to innovate. So the third point then is how do we connect the two, right? How do we connect them in a meaningful way? We've gone through decades of letting a thousand flowers bloom, and that doesn't mean that needs to be government intervention in any of these areas, but there should always be government ambition, right? Like, how do we go solve big problems and then let the private sector and let the talent kind of form around those opportunities? So point three is, you know, you know, it's a lot of storytelling of examples of people, of companies that are doing this. So this is already happening. This isn't, you know, it's not a book of saying like, this is what we should do. This is a book of this is what we are doing and then really exploring on how do we do more of it, right? How do we, how do we make this happen more, you know, in that, in the, you know, the fourth thing I would say then, as we explore the, how do we do more of it, you know, we look at it at three layers. An individual layer, a, an adventure layer, and then a societal layer. You know, at the individual, you know, layer, you know, we talk about like, we need to encourage folks to live, you know, have nonlinear careers because the more, you know, you narrow in, you know, that's, that might be good for, you know, you're not living a robust life and, and career and a purposeful one. So you should be able to go into government for a little bit and then go into private sector and do some work and then, you know, if you need to, you know, be connected in the academia world, because that's how we're going to solve big problems. You know, at the venture layer, as we were talking about earlier, Chris, you know, how do you build companies that can operate in this realm? It knows how to be government adjacent, speak the talk, you know, collaborate where need be to solve big problems. But, you know, harness that entrepreneurial energy in a meaningful way. And then at a societal layer, it's, how do we connect the dots, right? How do we create the right, you know, reward system that, you know, people are encouraged to, you know, to, you know, rebuild trust between these institutions. And that's what we talk about in, in the book. And, you know, and there's different organizations that can play various roles in helping rebuild that trust, you know, and, and the fifth thing I would say is the book is written in a very aspirational, optimistic tone. And I am very aspirational, optimistic. This isn't a, oh my God, we're going over a cliff. And, you know, if we don't do this, you know, this is a. Look, in a world that's changing faster technologically, socially, geopolitically. We need a renewed partnership between government and entrepreneurs to solve these big problems. And we need it because, you know, the folks that are best trained to kind of build the plane while you're flying it are entrepreneurs. They're used to, you know, building something for. With a moving target in place. And, you know, in our mind, that's really incredibly important, right, is to have that mindset. And, and that I actually think is the ethos of America, right? That is what makes this country great, as we are the most entrepreneurial, you know, nation in the world. And, you know, bringing that into our ethos to solve these problems in a meaningful way. I think it's incredibly important for our.

Listeners who are running their own companies, who are entrepreneurs, and let's say it's not a large organization because it is more straightforward, but small organizations. Any thoughts you want to share on what steps they can take to work closely with the government?

Yeah, I mean, look it, you know, as we talk about, you know, in the book, so much of this is about, you know, creating a shared vernacular. It's about customer empathy, you know, like know who you're working with, know how they make decisions, know what the mission really is. Right? Align yourself with the mission. So many people want to just kind of come in and don't make this transactional. This needs to feel like a partnership. You know, one of my. Somebody who had shared a pre publication copy of the book to read and asked for some feedback, said, look, Arun, like, words matter. And what I think is interesting about what you wrote and the way you guys, it's the words you used. You know, you call this mission inventure. You know, we've had an industry called government contracting for decades. Government contracting puts the emphasis on the contract. It sounds very transactional, right? That doesn't, doesn't inspire in the same way, you know, mission inventors, you put mission at the center of it. That's the why, right? That's the why people are doing this. Inventors implies partnership, like we're going to grow together, and that's important, right? We need to move away almost from a government contractor mindset into much more of a mission venture mindset where we're focused on the why. So it's very clear to the next generation as to why this matters and the how, which is, look, this isn't about a transactional relationship. This is about building something that will really make a difference to address the why. And I think that's important, right? I think it's incredibly important for folks that are trying to do that is to have that latter mindset. Because I think the first one, which has always been around government and contracting, lends itself to just procurement and very tactical kind of way of looking at how we collaborate. And you need to elevate that up a level. And I think with that you can also elevate the kind of talent you can recruit because you put mission and you put at the center of it.

Such an important point, this point about not being just transactional, you can see it everywhere, even just look at any consumer experience, they always want to know that it is about something bigger than just a transaction for the other party. And it comes back to trust.

It comes back to trust. And look, at the same time, Chris, you have to recognize that there's different incentive systems in place, right? And you just need to understand that that doesn't make it right or wrong. You know, we write about in the book how, you know, look, if I was measured as a vc, like I would be measured as government, I'd never raise another fund. And what I mean by that is, you know, as a vc, I measured by my best deal. I'm measured by, you know, if I make 10 bets and eight of them are bad, but two of them are home runs, my fund is over subscribed, right? At government. I can make 10 bets. And if nine of them are okay, but one of them is Solyndra, I'm carrying that around, you know, for next decade. And you know, you know that risk that drives risk averseness, right? No one's going to want to take risk. And we just finished talking about earlier, like, you know, encouraging your team to take risks is how you innovate faster, you know, and part of the issue there is that like Every agency has got an ig, an Investor General, right? And the inspector general is like, that's their job is to make sure you're following the process in. A friend of mine, Dan Tangarlane, who we interview in the book, said the solution to that is that every agency should have two IGs. And I'm like, what? Two IGs? How does that help? And he's like, the second one should be called an Innovation General because the same way folks, you know, try to make sure that they stick to the playbook because they're afraid of being dragged in front of a congressional hearing for making a mistake. It would be great if there was an Innovation General where if you weren't innovating fast enough, you felt concerned that you could also be brought in front of a congressional hearing. Now, you know, does that happen or not? Unlikely. Having said that, it's an interesting thought bubble. Like, how do you create the tension so that it's not only about, like not making mistakes, but it's also about rewarding, putting the reward structure in place so that people want to be innovating and reward them accordingly?

Very true. This is a great place to end this session. Before we do that, do you have anything else you want to share? And also can you please share with our listeners how they can learn more about your work, where they can get your book, and so on.

Well, thank you, Chris. This is a great conversation. I appreciate you taking the time. I really enjoyed your questions regarding the book. For anyone that's interested, you could go to venturemeatsmission.com and order the book. It's also available on Amazon. In addition, as far as the work that we're continuing from Venture Meets Mission, you could go to the noblereachfoundation.org and look up the work that we're doing there both on helping rebuild the infrastructure to get better talent into government and better innovation into government as well.

Thank you for doing this work, Karon. It's such a privilege always to meet people who have a bigger mission than just taking care of their own needs or even immediate needs of their family. I myself very mission driven. So I really appreciate everything that you are doing for the world and I appreciate you being a great role model and example for people. I'm sure a lot of people have higher standards for what they want to accomplish in life because they came across your work. Thank you so much for being here again. Our guest today have been Arun Gupta and you should check out his book. It is called Vence Meets Mission. And if you want to strengthen your strategy skills, go to firmsconsulting.com overallapproach and you will get one page called overall Approach used in well managed strategy studies. And if you are looking to get another role, if you are going through a recruitment process and need to update your Resume, go to firmsconsulting.com resume PDF and you will get an example of McKinsey and BCG winning resume that actually got offers from both BCG and McKinsey. Even at senior levels. It's good to have a good resume. Aaron, thank you again for being here. Thank you everyone for tuning in and I'm looking forward to connect with you all at the next session. Bye everyone.

Thank you very much. Chris.