Arun Gupta on the Future of Public Service: An Entrepreneurial Approach to Solving Big Problems

Like to say is my experience in both teaching and in being venture capital the common through line? For me, there is optimism. When you think about those two ecosystems, there's no one more optimistic than an entrepreneur, because you have to be if you're going to go out there. And there's no one more optimistic than college students, which is why faculty likes to be on campus. How do you harness that optimism and show them a path? And so this idea of needing to pick a career of mission or a career of private sector work is, I think, a false choice. You can do both in embracing nonlinear careers becomes important to that have you.

Ever noticed that some of the best ideas come from unexpected places? Your next breakthrough may come from a leader facing similar challenges, but in a completely different sector. Welcome to Chief Influencer. I'm your host Anthony Shop. Join us as we explore how today's successful leaders inspire, influence and connect with others. Chief Influencer is a production of Social Driver and the Communications Board, who have teamed up to spotlight how great leaders and communicators are making their impact in the world. This episode is brought to you by the George Washington University's College of Professional Studies. With in person and online programs ranging from master's degrees in public relations strategy to certificate programs and digital communications, GW offers more than just the credentials to help working professionals get ahead. It prepares them to be leaders in their field. As a proud graduate myself, I can attest that faculty members combine academic rigor with real world lessons that can't always be found in textbooks. Check out CPS GWU.edu for more information. I am thrilled to introduce today's guest, Arun Gupta, who is the CEO of Noble Reach. Noble Reach is a nonprofit that aims to place recent college graduates in federal government jobs to promote public service over lucrative private sector careers. Before we dive in, here are three things that I think you should know about Arun Number one, he is a successful venture capitalist. Arun initiated Columbia Capital cybersecurity investments with a focus on emerging tech enabled services and infrastructure companies in national security, AI and SaaS cloud infrastructure sectors. He also worked at the Carlisle Group. Now we don't have time to walk through all of his investments, but needless to say, Arun has been very successful in this field. Number two, he also advises and teaches at top universities. At Georgetown University, Arun is a Senior Advisor to the Provost, serves on the Georgetown Entrepreneurship Advisory Board, and he teaches entrepreneurial finance and Venture Capital at the McDonough School of Business where he received the Entrepreneurial Faculty Teaching Excellence Award and the Peter W. Gonzalez Jr. Award for Excellence in Faculty Teaching at Stanford University. Arun serves on the Stanford and Washington Advisory board and is a faculty lecturer. Teaching Valley Meets Mission Purposeful Entrepreneurship With Government number three. Arun is changing the face of public Service. With a $500 million endowment, his organization, Noble Reach, partners with agencies like the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security agency and the U.S. space Force to infuse innovation minded talent into the federal workforce, ultimately offering these graduates permanent positions after one or two years. This organization was inspired by his top selling book, Venture Meets Aligning People, Purpose and Profit to Innovate and Transform Society. Arun, you have been called many things as we heard from corporate board member to award winning faculty member. Congratulations on that one, by the way. To venture capitalist, bestselling authority and mission driven founder. Today we are thrilled to call you a chief influencer. Welcome.

Thank you, Anthony. Thank you for having me on today.

Well, I'm really excited to dive in. You have such a fascinating career and you know, the teaching part jumps out at me because I think of all those awards, you know, being voted by students as a top faculty member is probably the most difficult to get. So congratulations.

You know, it's interesting you say that it definitely was probably one of the most rewarding ones to get because you really realize that what you're doing and saying and trying to spark in the classroom was really resonating in a deeper way. So I appreciate that.

Yeah, I mean, you can't juice that or fake that one, right? I mean, that's one of those things that it's real. Well, obviously it's really clear to me that you are passionate about inspiring young people, whether that's your own students at Georgetown and Stanford or the Noble Reach scholars that you're placing into positions within the federal government. And you're trying to inspire these young people to pursue mission oriented entrepreneurial careers. So I wonder if you could kind of help us understand how did your experience as a venture capitalist focused on tech bring you to this personal mission?

Yeah, thanks, Anthony. It may be worth just taking providing the lens of which I kind of approach this from and which is really, you know, your life experiences. So my father has worked in public service for 45 years and still is an able Sea System Command. So public service has been in my family. So that was point one. And then my professional career as you identified, it's been in venture capital. Started at Carlisle, but the bulk of it was at Columbia Capital. In the second half of my tenure there, we really spent time looking at the intersection of mission, tech and entrepreneurship of how we could use the power of venture capital and entrepreneurship in collaboration to solving government problems. And in this case, it was really targeting cybersecurity. And there you got a front row seat on the opportunities of solving big problems, but also the challenges of making these venture relationships with government work. And so, you know, I think. But what you also saw is that once you're part of mission, it's hard to kind of step away from that because there's a greater purpose there. You're not just building companies to just flip them really quickly, but you're solving major problems that, you know, can affect people's lives. And, you know, I think that was the first spark, honestly, of being able to not think of mission and venture separately, but, you know, that these are things that should kind of come together. And the second then was obviously when I started teaching at Georgetown and then at Stanford. I created a class at Stanford called Valley Meets Mission, which I was teaching at Stanford and Washington. And that was really around, like, how you take the entrepreneurial spirit of the Valley but not point it to Candy Crush 3.0. Like, how do you talk to these students about saying, like, we need your talent, we need your platform to go solve big problems, but you can do that in a for profit way. And I think we, we'd gotten ourselves to some time here where we were talking about this in a very kind of, you know, artificial binary choice that students had to make for profit, not for profit, private sector, public sector. So very much a sense of one's about making money, the other one's about doing good. But how do you do both? And what you really realize that we don't really have a language around that. And that's what really inspired the class. I saw students kind of rescind banking consulting offers to go into this world. And that's what sparked writing the book. And then subsequent to that, now, you know, we have a foundation called Noble Reach, where we have about, you know, close to half a billion dollar endowment. And what we're doing with that is really trying to build the infrastructure to connect our top tech talent and our top innovation just to going and solving these big problems.

I. I just love hearing that pathway, and particularly when you describe that venture capital doesn't just have to be about, you know, flipping companies or the next candy crush, but we can really use it to address some of the biggest challenges of our time. I would assume that maybe a lot of people have a misconception about that and that they do think about venture capital and investing as kind of More of the former. And you even said yourself we kind of don't have the language around that. I'd love to talk a little bit about how you've been developing that language through your course and through your book. Because of course we can't influence anyone to see this future if we don't have a way of talking about it. And in particular in your book, Venture Meets Mission, you explain that, you know, Venture refers to the path, while Mission is all about the ultimate goal. So can you kind of unpack a little bit for us the language that you're using and how you're sort of developing that narrative to help people understand this, this mission that you're on?

Yeah. You know, so the language that we're trying to use here is to show something that's more integrated. And so think of it as moving from an or function to an and function. So it's not make money or do good, but it's make money and do good. It's about innovating to solve problems. And you know, what we're really focusing on in what we're doing and with the book, a lot of it really is now that we have examples of this. And what I mean BY that is 10 years ago we were talking about it, but now we have companies in the climate space, in the national security space, in the energy space, in food and healthcare that have been born this way, where they were born from the notion of a venture idea going and solving a big societal problem, but doing it with for profit business models. And you know, what I like to say is like my experience in both teaching and in being venture capital, the common through line for me, there is optimism. What really, when you think about those two ecosystems, there's no one more optimistic than an entrepreneur, because you have to be if you're going to go out there. And there's no one more optimistic than college students, which is why faculty likes to be on campus. And it really is around like, how do you harness that optimism then and show them a path? And you know, one of my realizations when I was inside of teaching as well is that, look, I think a lot of our academic institutions are still adjusting to the new, the new reality of how students are going to be living their careers. And what I mean by that is, you know, we still prepare students for a career. And you know, part of this journey of breaking down the barrier of either or is that I think students are going to have four to five careers over their professional journey.

Right.

And so this idea of needing to pick A career of mission or a career of private sector work is, I think a false choice. You can do both over the, you know, in embracing nonlinear careers becomes important to that. And so I think that's the language we're trying to bring into this, is that one, you, there are places that you can integrate both at the same time. Right. And those could be around many of these interesting ventures and startups that are collaborating with government. But it also is, it's also to kind of understand and create the appreciation. You know, we have a chapter in the book called Personalizing Entrepreneurship and Humanizing Government is to understand what these two ecosystems really are. Right. You know, what do I mean by that? You know, when we, when we personalize entrepreneurship, it's easy to conflate entrepreneurship and say, oh, it's socially extracting, it's the billionaire class, et cetera. But that's a very, very small group of individuals. Like entrepreneurship is deeper. It's a mindset. It's the idea of testing and learning and resilience and creating and building and to personalize it. It's like we're all entrepreneurs, right? Raising a family is an entrepreneurial endeavor. You have a co founder, you may have multiple products down the road, you have 17, 18 years of product market fit and then you launch them. But how you do that can be very entrepreneurial. So even starting a company, you don't need to be an entrepreneur to start a company. It could be how you live your life. And likewise, humanizing government is incredibly important in understanding that what is government at the end of the day? Group of organizations which are made up of people which are actually going in, like my father, going in and working and doing their best with positive intent day in, day out. Right? And the more we can humanize that and not treat it like an opaque black box, the more we can appreciate like what is what, what do they bring to the table for our, you know, for our day to day life. And you know, I think that's, that's the language that we were trying to pull into this, right. As we talk about it. You know, the through line that we were really trying to get at is that like we're not going to solve these problems with just a startup in the Valley. And we're not going to be able to start solve these problems with just government because we're not going to innovate fast enough. But how do we create a renewed partnership between entrepreneurs and government to go solve these big problems? And that's where we're really trying to lead an idea that it's not a new ideas is actually what we're trying to say is that we're trying to amplify examples of where this is already existing and really positive discussion of why don't we do more of it. This is a superpower of our country. What do we do? Well, we create talent better than anywhere else in the world and we innovate better than anywhere else in the world. How do we now connect those two infrastructures to solve big problems with this, you know, scale and reach of government? And look, I think in great power competition, if we are going to compete, we. This is, this is necessary, right? This is how we compete because it's our strategic differentiator.

Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, as we talk about this concept, right. Developing the right language and telling people is one thing, then the next is showing them with examples. And you have some really great examples in the book, but then you're also showing by creating examples today. And I want to talk about Noble Reach. So your inaugural cohort of Noble Reach scholars, they're placed inside the federal government, including, and I want to just read some of the. The agencies and offices because I think it's important for folks to hear the Internal Revenue Service, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the National oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Food and Drug Administration, Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency, U.S. navy and U.S. space Force, which sounds especially exciting to me. So I think it's really impressive that you've done two things. One, you've sourced top talent and helped get them placed within these agencies. But also you've gotten government agencies that, you know, are probably used to doing things that the way they've been doing it for a long time to agree to let you help them source this top talent. And so to me, there's. There's influence required on both sides of that business model that I want to talk about. Let's start on the recruitment side. How do you inspire young people, especially those who could go on to make a lot of money right out of school in the private sector to work in the federal government? We heard the wonderful places that you've gotten them placed. Obviously you're influencing them as you recruit them, that this is an opportunity that they should take advantage of.

Yeah, so it's a great question, Anthony. You know, let me try to unpack it. One, I do think there's a massive shift going on where students are looking for impact. They're looking to have purpose. And so I see it in my students that I teach. You know, I see it now, having been at almost 20, 25 campuses, just talking about what we're doing is that students are looking for purpose, right? And so then when people ask me like, why, why now? You know, I say, look, you know what a theory on that is that they've been through a lot of trauma with existential threats over the last four or five years. So you take starts with COVID you know, so you have a healthcare existential threat. Then you look at kind of the geopolitical situation and what's happening in Ukraine and then Middle east, you know, it's a geopolitical existential threat. You look at our environment, that presents an existential threat to them. We look at great power competition with our autocratic adversaries increasing. You know, that's a, you know, a second kind of, that's another threat. And then, you know, for some of them, even, you know, the, the emergence now of AI, right, can feel unsettling. I don't view AI as a threat by any stretch, but it can be feel unsettling. And I think that's a lot, right? That's a lot. And I think when things are feeling stable and fine, people tend to focus on themselves. But when things get feeling unsettled and which, you know, I think we're arguably in that place now, people are looking to kind of be connected to something bigger and wanting to be part of something bigger than themselves. And I think that's the shift that I think we're seeing. I, I, I give that as a backdrop because, you know, look, I'll get asked like, well, how do you inspire these kids to go in? And I'm like, that's actually the easy one. Because all it is is about language. It's about showing them that, you know what I say, it's like government many times sells careers, but we're trying to provide them experiences. Why is that important? Like going and saying, hey, come to public service for a career in public service for 30 years. That can feel daunting to any kid. I've got two in college, you know, I don't think they think of their lives in 30 year increments. Having said that, saying, hey, why don't you come do something that's mission driven, impactful, and learning a lot for a couple of years, you know, the line's out the door because that's what they're looking for. So I think words matter. Anthony. Right. I think also packaging it a program that can feel inclusive yet selective. So there's a prestige, a respect about being part of it. Also, it feels that they're, you know, like in the program that we're providing, we're providing mentorship, we have private sector partners like the financial institutions, consulting firms, big tech firms providing skill development. And then, you know, we're creating a cohort, so there's a community that they're part of. Those all become very important to them. Right. And then most importantly, by having these private sector partners around you, it's viewed as a career enhancer. So, you know, think about like a program like Teach for America, you know, and this was a little bit of our, you know, aha moment. I had two Stanford students, both female, both CS majors. One gets selected to do a government project and she tells her friends she's going to go into government. Her friends go, why would you do that? Right. Why would you go to government when you can do all these other great things in the Valley? Her other friend was selected to do Teach for America, and her friends go, wow, that's amazing. You're going to serve, you're going to give back, and then you can go do whatever you want. And the reason that example is even more poignant, Anthony, to your question, is that the one going to Teach for America is getting the affirmative positive response.

Right.

But they're actually making half the amount that the one going into government's making. So it's not even about the money.

Yeah.

It's actually about something much deeper. Right. It's about respect for the job. It's about or feeling impact. It's about prestige with your peers because it matters. One we can say shouldn't matter, but it does when you're 22. And then also a view that it could be a career enhancer, like, hey, I can go do Teach for America for a couple of years, you know, learn a lot about myself, have real impact, but then I can also then use that experience and still go and do banking consulting, grad school, whatever it may be. Right. And that's what we're trying to do. Right. But we haven't, you know, how do we point that same energy to public service? That doesn't mean everyone's going to stay in public service. But, you know, I think our metric would be how many of them stay connected to public service, that we create a diaspora of public service change makers inside or outside. And, you know, I think that's what Teach for America does well, and I think there's a lot, you know, of opportunity there. So to answer your question, I think that's how we've been talking about it with Students. Right. It's important not to have judgment on them if they decide to stay or if they decide to leave after the experience from government. Right. But we want to sensitize them to it and hopefully have these be your ambassadors. Yeah.

And I love that Teach for America story kind of the, the, the tale of two students and how the brand is perceived. And it shows really the value of the brand you're creating. And in a minute, I want to get into, I have a couple things I want to talk about what you've created around the program to really just create that brand. Before we get there, we sort of talked about this is a double sided model of influence. Right. You got to influence the young people to sign up because they're your talent that you're sourcing. You also have to place that talent. You have to approach organizations like the IRS and the FDA and the Space Force and say, hey, we'd like to help source some top talent for you. And you know, my immediate reaction to that is that even if you have the best talent, you know, I've worked in federal government for a short time myself, you know, it generally is slow moving and there's not, you know, there's always folks who are opposed to any change, whether that change is a good thing or not. And so how have you influenced these various federal government agencies to say, yeah, we would love your help bringing some of the best talent in because it's so impressive the different varied departments within the government that you have placed your noble reach scholars already.

Yeah, Anthony, so thank you for the question. And you know, I think it's interesting, it's counterintuitive to many, but this was the harder part in the, in the marketplace. Right. Was. Was the placements. And only because, look, anytime you're doing something new, you know, it's hard for anyone to want to be the first one. And so we had a lot of conversations with a number of agencies. You know, we've got deep relationships with folks and supporters and sponsors, and everyone conceptually was interested. But then everyone asked the same question, who else is doing it?

Yeah, first.

Yeah, yeah. And so everyone was interested to be a fast follower. And look, I think it took time of getting people comfortable with what we're doing. It also helped that we were able to start to show them the quality of individuals because ultimately we're letting them select so when we can show them use of the quality of applications that we have. And then, you know, we have a great team. You know, our woman running our talent program comes from the Presidential ran the Presidential Innovation Fellows Program at the White House. So she's known, you know, our Chief Administration Officer, Pat Tamborino, with a chico at the dod, Chief Human Resource Officer. So he's known. And so when you have someone like Rebecca La Madrid, who was the PIF director, and Pat going and talking to him, they have credibility. It doesn't feel like, hey, wait a second, if you guys are involved and this is going on. But it still took time. And then we got a couple of agencies to jump in first, and that immediately then created the, you know, the ability for others to feel comfortable. Now that we have the first cohort off and running, you know, we already have as many new agencies wanting to sign up for our next cohort as we did in all of our first cohort. Right.

Wow, that's great.

And so I think the need is there, Right. People wanted to feel the structural air cover would be okay to do this. They're now seeing the quality of students. They're also seeing the economic benefit of it because we take all the recruiting costs, et cetera. We don't pass that along onto the agencies like some of the other programs do. And, you know, we're also, you know, talking about, like, we're looking to scale. Like, the whole idea behind the program is to do something that can scale. So, you know, I think with that, you know, I think we are now, I feel a lot more comfortable, Anthony. Right. But it always takes a few leaders, right? And in agencies that have that leadership. Right. And so it's not even surprising some of the agencies that we have, you know, that we, we've got folks at, like, as you said, at treasury, we have folks at Commerce with Secretary Raimondo's leadership. We have folks at Space Force with General Raymond's leadership. Right. We have folks at CISA with Jenny Easterly's leadership. I mean, these are folks that are thinking this way, that feel that this is important. And then, you know, now, you know, we're starting to see a larger groundswell of interest. And look, I think if we, you know, move ahead, this is going to become even more important because, you know, a really important piece of this for us. And part of our theory of change is we need an institution that's apolitical from getting this talent into government. Right. It can't be viewed as tied to the administration, you know, because otherwise you go through your ups and downs. It needs to be about the government and the service and the mission, that in the problems you're solving, less about the administration, that you're working for, and especially in a polarized time that we're in. And, you know, and, you know, I think what's been heartwarming for us is that, like, whether we've been talking to, you know, we've been talking to both campaigns, we've been talking to both administrations, and, you know, both of them are equally interested, you know, because this isn't a political issue getting better talent around government. This is, you know, it's deeper. Right.

You've done what's almost impossible in Washington, which is you figured out something that you could get everybody to agree is a good idea.

Yeah. But it's important for us to be intentional in maintaining that. Right. As you know, Anthony, words matter and how we talk about what we're doing and the programs that we're doing. Even when we ran a boot camp, we had a session where we had Matt Pottinger from the Trump National Security Council and we had Colin Call, who was in the Biden national security apparatus and both speaking to the students at the same time. And it was powerful. It was powerful because they could see that these folks actually had mutual respect for each other. They actually agreed on a lot of things. That's important for folks to see. Look, I think that's, I think, the institution in the place we're looking to play and be hopeful in. Yeah.

The bipartisan nature of your program really came through to me, just researching and seeing the different speakers. I love that you shared that example. I also just want to say thanks for sharing that getting the placements and getting the government agencies on board, which you've done successfully, was not easy because I think for folks who may want to launch something new, it's really important to go in eyes wide open and realize where you're going to have challenges, especially with entrenched systems that, you know, are just not set up to change rapidly. And you gave some really good examples about how you brought on the right talent with credibility. You were very clear in your mission and your values. You identified, you know, recruiting the top talent to walk in the room with examples of some of the people that you could help place, and then just knowing you had to get some early adopters and that others would be, I think you said, fast followers, but that, you know, you did have to get some on board first. And I just think when I hear that, I can imagine a number of scenarios that leaders could be dealing with in today's environment, whether it's a startup in the private sector, whether it's an association that's launching a new association. Those lessons that you shared are very universal. And I'm really happy to hear for you that, that that was successful for you all because.

Well, look, Anthony, you know, I appreciate the comment. And you know, at the core there, look at 20 years of venture capital and trying to get companies off the ground, you know, it's less about the idea, it's about the people. Right. And you know, even when I teach my Georgetown entrepreneurship class, you know, I say entrepreneurial finance is with a lowercase F. It's less about the finance, it's more about people. And at the core of people, it's trust. Like the early customers, the early adopters, the early partners ultimately come down to, do they trust you? Do they think you're going to deliver? Do you have a past history with them? Right. And so I think what happens to your point, many times when people are creating a new association and not for profit, a for profit is they, they over index on the idea and they're like, this is such a phenomenal idea, everyone should want to do it. And that may be true, but they under index on investing. And how do you build the trust that people want to experiment with that idea? Right. And I think that's, you know, if I could, you know, leave you with the takeaway for your group would be to really think about how do you build trust with the people that you want to bring along with you in this process.

I think that's such an important lesson, especially right now. You know, without the trust, you just can't move forward. And you've clearly built this trust up. I mean, I was looking at your boot camp and who your scholars are hearing from. Some pretty big names like US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. CISA Director Jen Easterly, first U.S. chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra, White House Special Advisor for AI Ben Buchanan. Clearly you've established that trust where these folks are coming in. And I wonder, could you share some of the themes that you are hearing that your scholars are hearing from these leaders about innovation in government?

Yeah, happy to. So look, all of them, you know, when they see these scholars are amazed at the quality of talent they have. Right. And they are very sensitive and are aware also of all the opportunities that they could be pursuing. And so I think some of the themes that really resonate that, you know, whether it be Secretary Condoleezza Rice or Secretary Raimondo or as I said, you know, Matt Pottinger, Colin Call, et cetera, is a few Things one, there's a power to understanding how the public service, how public service works and how government works. And there's a power that can help you either build a career in public service, but it also is increasingly going to be important whether you build a career in the private sector or in academia, because what we need more of, and many of them talk about this, we had the CTO at the CIA speak to his students and Nan Molchandani, and he talks about the need for dual citizens. And what he means by dual citizens is not him being an Indian American, but it's about him being a citizen of the Valley, but also a citizen of D.C. meaning that he had started for startups, knows how venture works, knows how tech works and growth companies work, but he has also now spent, you know, five years at the Jake and has been over at the CIA. And when you embed and have that deep understanding, you bring a unique perspective, right? And then we need more of that. And so I think they're inspiring. Secretary Raimondo talks in that context, Secretary Rice talks in that context. It's both sides of the aisle. Why I think that's really important is it helps the students understand this isn't about needing to choose, do I want a career in only public service, but it's how do you embrace public service as being. Think of it part of the mosaic of your career. If you're going to have a nonlinear career where you have four or five careers embedded or chapters inside of your professional journey, why not have one of them be public service right now? And why not understand how that works and identify some of those problems that may be on the inside that you can then help fix, even from the outside or from the inside. Right. We need to go back to a world where we can identify folks needing people to go in and out of government in, in the private sector and to solve these big problems. So that's one, right? They, they, they really resonate with them about wanting to be, you know, creating a. We have a need for dual citizens. They also, you know, talk deeply about the impact that public service had on, on their own lives and, and, and a feeling of impact and how it never had anything that provided them that kind of that sense of feeling and that all people should do some level of public service in that context. But they also talk about, you know, such. 2, 3. But they also talk about a real depth and, you know, of that it's not either. Or that public service needs to understand how to collaborate with the private sector. It needs to understand how to collaborate with students and how to bring them in and how to make the experience worthwhile for them. So it's not saying this is the end all, be all, but it's like, if we're going to solve these big problems, we need to be able to build an ecosystem that allows you to want to come in here. I think they, that recognition that private sector is important, I think also strikes the students as valuable. Right. Because I think it, again, all of those things that I just said are all the messages to help reinforce the. And function. Right. It's mission and it's not mission or I think that I think ends up being really important because I think many times these students feel like what they're going to hear from folks inside is like, here's why you should have your entire career be this. And this is why this other ecosystem, you know, could be demonized. And there's none of that. But they also talk about like the real impact that you can have going in. So I think those three things are kind of like, you know, what I've seen really resonate with the students deeply where they feel and they walk away with a sense of why this would be a career enhancer for them. Like spending a year or two doing this, you know, will help them, whether they go to grad school, whether they go to another company or whether they start their own company, understand the lay of the land of how I can collaborate and learn a language to collaborate with, you know, an institution like government to go solve big problems.

Yeah, your language incorporates the sort of, you know, what's in it for me for the young people, but also the what's in it for us and the greater purpose, which is one of the three things that you mentioned. You know, I want to ask you, Arun, as an investor, I know you were in a position where you were analyzing companies balance sheets and their total addressable market and, you know, their, their talent to decide if these companies were worth investing in. And I wonder how have you brought that experience and that expertise from the world of venture capital to the role of establishing a brand new nonprofit?

Yeah, look, I think when I look at, you know, the best entrepreneurs I backed or was around and what they did, you know, what are key elements there? I think one I touched on earlier, they were able to build trust with the people around them, you know, because again, your idea is only as good, you know, as the people that you can put around the idea. And then, then, and then the people that convince that the idea is a, is, is a worthwhile one, and that again, I think the core of that is trust. So I think that was, you know, how do you assemble a team early on and build a network of, of partners that, you know, based on the goodwill and trust that you've built over your career and that, you know, others have as well. So that's one, I think two is the recognition that you need to be always testing and experimenting, right? That you don't have the answer. And so, like, how do you run experiments and how do you let people in your organization feel agency, that it's okay to fail as long as we're learning from it, right? Doing the same thing and failing over and over again, that's not a good strategy. And so I think early on we were running a lot of experiments, like trying a number of things. You know, back to the example of like, you know, getting agencies. You know, a lot of that was like refining our message, right? Like, so you talk to them, you hear what their issues are, and then we're like, all right, let's think about, like, how do we talk about this slightly differently and then refining the message so that it met what they were looking for. And we were, you know, now speaking a common language like that. That takes time, but it also means that we have to have. Give people the agency to go out and have these conversations and recognize that some of those conversations early on may not go the way we want. And that's okay. You know, that's not a reflection on the individual. That's a. That's a reflection on. We need to be able to kind of go learn. And so I think the culture, you know, that you build, you know, so you start with trust. And then I think you have to build a culture quickly that is going to be entrepreneurial in your own right. And then I think third is really be intentional with the words you use. Being intentional with how you talk about. It's easy to say, hey, we're apolitical, but then you start putting words out there that are clearly not and recognizing and asking for feedback. If people are feeling like the language we're using is drifting one way or the other that you tell us, right, so that we can self correct. Because I do think that's an important superpower for us right now is to, you know, how do we stay apolitical in this process? And that's a, that's a hard thing to do, right In. In the polarized environment that we're in. You know, I think the, so the language we use and then I think the Fourth is, you know, trust cuts different dimensions. There's obviously the people you recruit and bring in, you know, the. Your customers per se. In this case, it's the agencies that you're partnering with and the students that you're recruiting. But I think also for us, it was starting to build a sense of trust with partners that allow us to play above our weight class. Right. Because as you build partners, you're leveraging their goodwill as well. Right. And it allows and builds your credibility in the broader ecosystem. And so, you know, we were fortunate to be able to have, you know, really, you know, brand name partners wanting to, you know, who believed in the vision and, you know, trusted us, you know, agreed with the words that we were using to be around this. Right. And so whether it be being judges at a case competition where you had your top financial institutions and consulting firms and big tech firms asking them to have a speak at their convenings, that gives you credibility. Right. Being seen at convenings that were across academia, government and industry shows that you really are trying to speak to all three of those stakeholders. Right. And so I think, you know, making sure we were intentional with creating that diverse group of partners has really been, you know, a big part of where we are today. And, you know, like, even on the policy side, as we collaborate, being very intentional with making sure that we're. We're talking to both sides of the aisle. Right. And making them aware of what we're doing and listening, you know, and understanding what words resonate and which words may serve as obstacles. Right. And then how do we find those words that are allowing us to have a common middle ground?

I want to bring you back to.

One of the words you used earlier.

That I think relates to this topic, which was scale. So, you know, one of the things I've observed is a lot of nonprofits, they might start with like a local program, and then they say, oh, this. They later think about scale. Oh, that went really well. Maybe we should scale it somewhere else. And I know one of the things you've talked about, and I think maybe this comes from your background in vc, is the intentionality of starting out with scale in mind. Could you say a little bit more about that?

Yeah, no, it's a really great point. That probably is the fifth thing I should have added to the list of things, because when I think of our North Star, it was always to be apolitical in what we're doing, but it was also to be able to create scale. Anthony. And so all you bring up a great point you know, all the decisions we would make on programs we wanted to create, you know, people we wanted to collaborate with were all around this notion of like, in venture, it's not about like, hey, can I do it once and then can I do. I'd rather do one thing 10 times than do 10 things one time with 10 different people. Yeah, right. And because the latter just has operate, the former has operational leverage to it. And so even when we were talking to agencies, there were some agencies that we ended up not doing anything with because they wanted a very custom program. And for us, it was important that like, we need to have the program, you know, have some level of scalability to it. If we started to create, you know, with eight agencies, eight different custom programs, that's never going to scale. So for us, it was to find eight agencies that could buy into, that could help us be design partners for a program that all of them would want to be part of, that we could then take to another eight agencies or now 50 state governments or local governments, et cetera. And so that's at the very core, the foundation of how do we scale? It's what are the products and services we provide? But then it's also around the investments we make internally to support that. So what are tech investments we can make so that we can start to scale how we identify students and entrepreneurs and what are processes that we can put in place that will allow us to scale. And we just had a meeting yesterday and we were talking about this. You know, having 20 scholars going to 50 doesn't double the cost for us. The idea was to have put the program in place and then there's a marginal cost for each scholar, but not a, you know, it's not a one for one. And so those are the kinds of businesses I'm used to investing in. Those are the kinds of business models that we would collaborate on with entrepreneurs. And so it's at the very core, you know, because for us, you know, what I've seen in the not for profit world, and only having been in it now for a year and a half, is that there's a lot of folks doing great work, no doubt about it, but there's a lot, very few that are actually taking that great work and scaling it. And it's usually because they're over indexing on the mission and they're under indexing on how do we do this at scale and building that model in place. And I say the difference between great work and impact is scale. If you really want to have big impact you have to be doing a lot of it. And so our programs are with a vision of like, we're starting with 20, but how do we get to 100, how do we get to 500, how do we get to a thousand? And you know, that's how we're thinking about this.

Yeah. And I think as you talk about like the agencies you didn't work with, it just strikes me that as, you know, as leaders hear this, you had to make some important trade offs because, you know, probably some of those were really cool agencies, but it wasn't the right opportunity because for your vision of scaling, you had to identify the ones where you could replicate your success and so that maybe those agencies will come on board in the future as you further, you know, build.

And that was the intent. They were like, look, we'd love to stay in touch. We're in touch with them. A couple of them are already engaged now to want to, you know, be part of this in the next cohort and, you know, we'll move forward. And they now recognize the benefit of it. Right. And you know, it is the, I think it's the danger that a lot of entrepreneurs and leaders and not for profits have is that, you know, wherever you can get revenue or a customer, you kind of go get it. But you have to be really intentional of all revenue is not the same, Every customer is not the same. And like when you take on a customer, is that one gonna be able to be one that you can replicate 10 times, 100 times, or is that just a one off?

Absolutely. So you mentioned the next cohort. As we close out here. I just want to ask you, I know that the application for your next class of Noble Reach Scholars, you know, that's open right now. Some folks may listen to this before that deadline, some may miss it and be looking at next year. But for somebody who's interested or might know somebody who'd be interested, you know, who's a standout candidate for the Noble Reed Scholars Program.

Yeah. So, Anthony, you know, we've got the scholar applications open. You know, we've already received more applications in the first three weeks than we did all of last year. So we've seen great interest and we're always looking and asking for top candidates to apply. We're looking at folks that have great experience in or education in AI, cyber, bio, energy, finance, business, you know, that really, you know, that are early professionals, anywhere between zero and four years. So people graduating or maybe you've done your, you know, two year analyst at some place and, you know, came away disillusioned, wanting to do something more mission oriented. You know, this is a great place to kind of come in and really experience the opportunities inside of government. You know, I was just with our, you know, a number of our scholars from our first cohort yesterday, and, you know, the enthusiasm of what they're learning and what they're seeing. They know they can't get that anywhere else. And they're seeing, you know, really how, how things operate. They're getting real responsibility. They have great mentors and they're building a great cohort. You know, they get together, you know, for happy hours and, you know, and are able to share stories across what's happening across different agencies. And so I think, you know, what I would say is for folks that have that intellectual curiosity, have that interest in wanting to do a tour of duty, think of it as in government, want to feel like they don't have to make that decision of whether this is what I'm going to do, but it could be an input into that decision of what you want to do with your career. And I think it could be a really valuable input. Gives you a little bit of introspective space to think about, like, you know, how you think you want to, you know, craft out the next, you know, 10 to 20 years of what you're looking to go do.

Yeah, well, it's a really compelling, exciting program. You know, I hear about it. I think that would have been cool if it existed back when I was.

I get that a lot from people in my generation of like, God, I wish I'd create. You know, that was there when I was coming out of school, but it's.

There for their kids. So that's pretty cool.

That's exactly it.

I hope folks will check out Noble Reach and see if they or somebody they know might be interested in the application. Coming up, Arun Gupta, venture capitalist turned nonprofit CEO, focused on changing the way we think about public service. I love how you talked about being a dual citizen that one of your speakers shared. And that really resonated with me so much that you shared about the work you're doing, but also just your strategies for influence across sectors. So thank you so much for your time and sharing your story with us today.

Thank you.

Anthony, thank you for joining us for another episode of Chief Influencer, a production of Social Driver and the Communications Board. If you know a leader who should be featured as a chief influencer, please nominate them@chief influencer.org for show notes and more. Visit us at chief influencer.org or follow Chief Influencer on LinkedIn until next time.