NobleReach Foundation's $500M Endowment to Transform American Innovation

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I'm Jean Gray, publisher of American Entrepreneurship Today and host of the podcast series Experience Voices where I talk with highly accomplished people who share the critical elements that led to their success. Artificial intelligence has made visible the technological challenges facing our country. Noble Reach Foundation CEO Arun Gupta is leading a non profit startup, presenting a new model to solve these challenges, bringing together academia and the private and public sectors to drive innovation. Arun is a highly successful venture capitalist, best selling author of Venture Meets Mission, a faculty lecturer at Stanford University and an adjunct professor of entrepreneurship at Georgetown University. He shares with us the early steps now under way at noblereach the that include a half billion dollar endowment and the launch of the first cohort of Noble reach scholars. The 19 selected are being placed into positions at the intersection of academia and the private and public sectors, building a community whose members are dedicated to public service in a disruptively new way. Arun, thank you for being a guest on Experienced Voices.

Thank you for having me today.

Well, I'm actually very excited to speak with you this morning because I looked at your background. Entrepreneur, venture capitalist, best selling author, professor of entrepreneurship. As I was reading your background, I was really impressed on how deeply involved you are with entrepreneurs. So I thought the first step we would take in our conversation is for you sort of lay the groundwork of how do you assess the entrepreneurial talent that exists in America that is part of your story of keeping America competitive.

Well, thank you for the question and thank you for having me today. You know, when I, when I think about the entrepreneurial talent in the US it probably has a couple of dimensions to it. One is, you know, the, the cultural, the spirit of entrepreneurship that we have here in America, which I think is unlike anywhere else in the world, and our ability to create entrepreneurs in the talent creation process. You know, I like to consider those are kind of our two superpowers in this country. Our ability to create talent and our ability to innovate with entrepreneurs. And the evidence of that is everyone from around the world comes here to do both. They come to our higher ed ecosystem and they also come to start companies here. I think what makes us unique is deeply, culturally, the ability to take risks, fail, get back up and do it again. And so while I think our talent is, is, you know, outstanding here in the US compared to other places in the world, I think what really differentiates us is the cultural infrastructure that we put around that talent to allow them to be able to really grow and succeed and if they don't succeed, be able to do it again, receive capital and Learn from it and succeed accordingly. And that, I think is the core of our entrepreneurial ecosystem here.

Now, you've established a mission through your foundation, NobleReach, and we'll get into the details of that. But part of that that I picked up was that you're advocating for some changes and that the time is now for those changes, specifically about entrepreneurship. So why now? What has been prompting you to say there should be change?

Yeah, I think the why now has a couple of elements. One is around where is the innovation coming from in our society? And the second is where is that talent coming from? And then third, what are the kinds of problems we're looking to address? When you look at the kinds of problems we're looking to address, the world is changing rapidly, right? The world is. You know, anyone that had a five year plan didn't have chatgpt in their five year plan. And the point being that the kind of mindset that we need today to solve these problems requires a level of testing and learning, or, you know, the mindset of building the plane while you're flying it. We can't just sit and plan for five years and then go execute. We had the benefit of that in previous decades. We don't any longer. And so the folks best equipped to build the plane while they're flying it are actually entrepreneurs because that's what they're used to doing. That's what they've been trained to do. And that requires constantly testing and learning and iterating and building, you know, a minimum viable product and having a lean startup. And so why we contend the why now is that for great power competition, especially against our autocratic adversaries today, again, our superpowers, our ability to innovate in this country. Having said that, what we now also need to think about is not how do we innovate because we have the most robust entrepreneurial ecosystem in the world, but how do we now connect that to government in the scale and reach of government to solve these big problems? We're not going to solve climate or national security or defense or cyber or health with just a startup either. We need the scale and reach of government to be able to do this. Because a lot of these problems aren't only US problems, they're global problems. And they require a lot of different stakeholders to participate in a meaningful way. And so that's why we think the time is now, even more so than, you know, a decade ago.

Now, I know you're advocating for this publicly. You wrote your best seller Venture Meets Mission, and now You've also founded Noble Reach Foundation. So share a little bit about the mission of Noble Reach and how that dovetails into your advocacy.

Yeah. So, you know, three core areas that we focus on at noblereach. One is, while students are at school through our academic programs, how do we inspire them to think about using their entrepreneurial talent not on things like Candy Crush 3.0, but creating curriculum whereby they're using that entrepreneurial talent to solve mission driven, social impactful problems, but in a for profit way. We're also trying to, you know, break down the barrier of an artificial choice that we've given this generation with the vernacular that we use for profit, not for profit, private sector, public sector makes it feel like they have to pick making money or doing good. But we feel like there's a middle ground there and we're trying to create a language around that and highlight that. So that's the academic side. Once we're inspiring these students around that, we also think we need to start thinking about how do we modernize the infrastructure to take that talent and expose them to government In a Teach for America like model where people are top tech, students can now go into government for a year or two, really understand the landscape and the language and the purposefulness of government, and humanize government in that process so that they can then decide whether they want to stay in public sector or look at a career where they're creating change from the outside in a positive way and we can start to rebuild trust in the society. And then the third is we have an innovation program where really what we're looking to do there is like, how do we create an army of entrepreneurs that we can start connecting to the deep research that we do inside of government in our academic institutions and bringing that research out in more with more efficacy so that we have more at bats in this country to take that research and commercialize it to solve big problems. And so those are the three areas that we're really advocating for. How do we create a renewed partnership between government entrepreneurs to go solve big problems?

Can you give the listener an example of these students that come into Noble Reach and then you place them, where are you placing them? And can you give an example of the exposure to a big, big challenge or big problem that's drawing out their sort of entrepreneurial spirit?

Sure. I mean, so, you know, the students that we're bringing on board are, you know, we received application from across 90 universities. We were 10x over subscribed and, you know, they fit into our, you know, deep tech Model of looking. These are students that have AI, cyber materials, bio backgrounds that we're placing in. Currently we're placing them across eight agencies. Those include, but not exclusively Space Force, Navy, Treasury, Commerce, cisa, FDA and hud. And you know, as the students now go in, they've just completed a three week boot camp that we held here in D.C. where we brought in senior leaders across academic, industry and government to speak to them, to talk to them about why they are needed at this point in time in a meaningful way. And you know, those speakers included Secretary Raimondo from Commerce, Condoleezza Rice, who leads the Hoover Institute, and former Secretary of State National Security folks like Matt Pottinger and Colin Call from the Trump and Biden administration respectively, and Jenny from CISA and numerous others that came and spoke to these students to really show the need for think it's going to be a growing need of dual citizens, people that understand the public sector and the private sector in a meaningful way. These students are now going in and we're trained during the boot camp as well on a model of what we call Innovation for Impact, which is based on the Hacking for Defense model of Lean Startup methodology created by Steve Blank of how do you identify problems out there and then work backwards to test and iterate on solutions? And we look to see them go in and start their public service here next week. And so, you know, we're excited about the kinds of opportunities that they're going to get to participate in across these diverse agencies.

How long are they committed to this program?

One to two years. Students will be there at least one year and they have a one year option to continue on at these agencies. And again, this is our first cohort. You know, we are going to begin recruiting here at the end of September for our next cohort. Last year we didn't start recruiting actually until late January, but this year we're going to be hitting, you know, a normal recruiting cycle. So September 30th applications will be out there and you know, we expect to have a much bigger cohort, you know, targeting 40 to 50 students that we can place not only in federal agencies, not only the ones that we have today, but we have, we've been inundated with interest from other agencies now wanting to participate, but also state governments, local governments, international allies, you know, that have asked to maybe place students at their embassies here and then also mission oriented adventures.

So you've described something of enormous ambition. How has Noble Reach been set up to sustain itself or to scale as quickly as you're hoping.

Great question. And I think it's one of our big differentiators. So we've had the benefit of being started here with an endowment of close to half a billion dollars so we don't have to go out and fundraise each year. And you know, we have our capital. What I'd like to say is that we've, you know, we've done the seed round and the series A round, you know, we, where we've ideated on what the program should be. We've now gone and done the product market fit and testing of those programs and we funded that ourselves. And you know, as we look to scale now, you know, we've been approached by other foundations that have interests around these three areas, Talent, academic curriculum and innovation and commercialization, to, you know, join us on this journey. And so we're beginning that those conversations over the next few months to bring more partners on to bear. But you know, we, we have the, the benefit of having starting with a meaningful corpus that allows us to also think long term and start to put the foundation in place, put the infrastructure in place to have these programs not only scale but sustain themselves, you know, over decades. And we think this can be, hopefully becomes a national asset that is able to catalyze more interaction between academia, industry and government to solve big problems.

Looking down the road five years, are you establishing something that is like a network across the country, that there are satellites that are propelling your initial mission, or is this something that's centralized in your headquarters? I think the scale of it is kind of interesting of where you're going to integrate it throughout everything that goes around in America and entrepreneurship.

Yeah, so it's a great question and you know, the, exactly how the model plays itself out. You know, we're, we're in the process of, you know, being entrepreneurs ourselves and testing that out, you know, but you know, I think the current hypothesis 1 on the talent side and the academic side, you know, we want to have a national footprint where we're recruiting talent nationally, but we're also placing them nationally, again, not only in federal governments, but state governments as well. And so what we're trying to do on that front is really create more of a movement again, think Teach for America, where you're creating a movement of folks that really care deeply about wanting to participate and be part of the change in public education. That doesn't mean they're going to stay in public education for their entire career, but they're going to stay connected to public education because they're now sensitized to it. And you know, we want to create that community of public service change makers that can be on the inside, understand what the inside's like. Many of them may stay, but those that don't will stay connected and through entrepreneurial endeavors, be connected to it. So, you know, the community, as you say, or the network we think is incredibly important. You know, we want, you know, this cohort not to only be connected to each other, but to be connected to subsequent cohorts and to be growing that community. And the value of a network, as you well know, increases exponentially to the next person adding into the network. And you know, that's what we think we're on the tipping point. And you know, and I think we've been overwhelmed by the positive response that we've, we've had from different stakeholders. And in fact, you know, whether I'm talking to government folks, and those could be Republicans or Democrats or industry folks, you know, from tech or finance or entrepreneurship or academic institutions, you know, across the country, you know, they all have the same question, you know, and that question is how can we help? And I think that, you know, that speaks loudly about, I think a recognized view that we need to think about how we do things differently and how we collaborate differently and people wanting to, you know, help us in whatever way they can. And so I think we have a moment in time right now given, you know, a lot of things that have been happening on existentially. You know, you take we've come off of COVID you take the geopolitical conflicts we've had, you take what's happening in climate and you know, the, the acute nature of how we're all starting to feel that. And then also great power competition and you know, or you know, competition with our autocratic adversaries. I think this, you know, people are looking for a way for us to kind of collaborate to solve these big problems in a different way. And what we try to write about in the book is look, we actually have the capacity to do it. We've done it before. You know, the question we more try to raise in the book is, you know, why don't we do more of it and how do we do more of it? And so, you know, I think that's what leaves me very optimistic as well as I'm out on campuses talking to folks or in industry or you know, even within government folks, is that there's a desire to want to collaborate to solve these problems in a different way.

Have you established short term measures of success versus success that might not appear for five to 10 years. So you know, you're increasing the number of your scholars, but there is an end product or end result that you're hoping is going to emerge from this investment you're making. So is it a two stage goal setting of first getting the scholars in place, getting a network, but measuring success in five or 10 years by what, by what type of change might occur in the longer term?

Yeah, it's a really great question. And you know, the honest answer is we're continuing to test and figure this out. You know, what I'll say is on the near term, the more measurable metrics you have or how do we help change the narrative, the excitement, the energy around students wanting to do these kinds of programs. Right. And so the number of applications, the breadth of the applications of where we're getting them from and the number of placements that we have and the kind of experience we can provide are all important metrics for us right now. Right. Because that's what influences the next cohort in wanting to apply and the next cohort after that is that energy. And so we're spending a lot of time on that front on the innovation side. Equally, you know, how many of these companies can we take from science stage and bring them into the venture community? You know, we're, and we're tracking that stat. You know, we, we've now done about 90 of these spin outs from science to venture, you know, in collaboration with DARPA and NSF and now starting to do it with academic institutions. And those have gone and raised over, you know, billion three in capital. So how do we attract more capital to these kinds of opportunities? Some of them have gotten acquired now. And so, you know, we're starting to see some of those shorter term metrics that we can start to bring to bear. And then on the academic side, you know, how do we get more. And then the scholars piece being the infrastructure that allows them to connect into what we're doing. So I think those are the shorter term metrics, I think the longer term metrics that you're getting into are the success stories of those companies that are getting spun out. It's not just about capital raised, but it's about impact that you've had on society. And we need to be tracking that over a five to ten year period of time with our students that come into the program, really tracking over a longitudinal sense of five to 10 years, the impact that they have, the connectedness that they have with public service. Right. And you know, I look at Teach for America many times that what they're tracking is how many of our alumni 10 years out are still connected to public education. That can mean being part of the pta, that could mean volunteering at your school or being on a school board. It may not mean being just a teacher. You know, you can see those kind of metrics being important as well with public service. Right. It doesn't mean you just are inside a government. But even if you're on the outside, how are you staying engaged? Cause I think this is deeply at the core of like, how do we start to break this, you know, polarized fever that we have right now and rebuild trust amongst our society and create that fabric again where we're able to collaborate across sectors in a meaningful way.

It's very exciting as you talk about the vision for the future because I'm an entrepreneur and you're out there problem solving. So when you speak to someone like yourself and you have this very grand vision and all the possibilities that could emerge from it. So again, going maybe back to the near term and you mentioned your initial funding, can you give a hint as to who was behind the funding? Is it some of the big names that we know in entrepreneurship or venture capital? And part two of the question is going to be in the very near term, who are some of the influencers or players that make this go faster? Because you've mentioned Teach for America and it seems you are very familiar then with the model. So I guess I'm just trying to get a handle is who are the players that are involved in all of this? The immediate players.

Yeah. So we're right now building out. So I can't shed too much light on some of the players that will be coming on a luminary advisory board. But it'll be a name recognized folks across sectors of finance, business, tech, government and academia, university presidents, et cetera. As far as where the money came from, you know, the, the money was part of a, we were part of a spin out so of lmi. And so lmi, which was set up as a not for profit and had a subsidiary, when we sold the subsidiary to a group of investors, the funds of that went into the. For the not for profit entity, which is what Noble reaches today. So in that process there were a group of investors, including David Rubenstein's family office, you had David Rue and you had a number of other investors around that, that really very excited about the mission of what we could try to create. But I think the folks taking this forward is really evidenced by the quality of the speakers that we have that are engaged with us. And our private sector partners include a number of the top investment firms, investment banks, VCs, consulting firms and big tech firms.

Who in the organization now or you're ramping up to is going to be sort of your lieutenants that are going to unfold the program and work directly with the scholars. How many people are you bringing on board and how quickly?

We've scaled pretty quickly in a short period of time over the last year and a half. We've gone from about four people to close to 50 today. And so, you know, as far as folks leading different aspects of our work, we've got Rebecca La Madrid, who was the former PIF director, the Presidential Innovation Fellows Director at the White House. She's leading our scholars program and helping us scale that and really done a phenomenal job in the work she's doing. Sri Ramaswamy, who was a senior advisor for Gina Raimondo at chips, has been a real, again, voice and narrative around science to venture and helping us scale what we're doing on the innovation side and brings deep expertise around how do you collaborate across industry, government and academia. And then we have Dr. Linda Bixby, who has a lot of experience with being in the academic world, but also having been at the agency and having been in our intelligence community. Again, how do we bridge exciting students at this intersection of mission, tech and entrepreneurship?

When you put the plan together, I guess again, twofold question is how long did it take for you to create the model before taking the first concrete steps? And did you identify particular hurdles that. It sounds very exciting, but where might there be pushback or where there might have been misassessments in what you were trying to achieve?

Yeah, I mean, I think we did spend a decent amount of time thinking about the model. Look, I had the benefit of, you know, flushing some of that out as we were writing the book. Honestly, we weren't intending when we were writing the book to actually then have a foundation to kind of go put a lot of that to work at. And so, you know, we, we had thought about this. Having said that, like any entrepreneur would tell you, like you don't know until you, you start. And so, you know, I think around here the team would say we have a bias to action. Right? Let's just start doing stuff and learn from it. You know, strategy is great, but let's have more of a direction of where we're going and let that. It doesn't need to be perfect because no Matter what you come up with your strategy, it won't be perfect. So I'd rather you be out there learning. And so I think, you know, look, the first hurdle, honestly is can you attract a team? As any entrepreneur would tell you, your, your idea is only going to be as good as a team that you can recruit to come join the journey. And so I think that was hurdle one for me. And you know, I probably our most, you know, proudest accomplishment is the team that we've assembled here and the level of interest of folks that want to now be part of our orbit. Not only joining the team, but being, you know, a partner with us. I think the second piece as we started with the talent programs was, you know, really, it's a two sided marketplace, really inspiring the students and graduates to want to do this, given the people we're going after have, you know, very lucrative job offers to go do other things. The second piece is talking to agencies about wanting to collaborate with us. And I think that succeeded our expectations. That doesn't mean that we didn't have to try a few different things in that process to, you know, make sure the messaging resonates. But with these early processes, a lot of it comes down to relationships and trust. And so that's reflective of the team that we've brought on board. A number of folks, you know, are collaborating with us because of that trust and I think that's been paying big dividends for us.

Well, I think from your experience, the people you're asking to be involved with buy into the adaptability of your model.

Yes, absolutely. I think, you know, I think what they all recognize is that there's a big opportunity there. They also recognize that, you know, we have a direction that we're heading in. So a North Star, we've laid kind of a path of, you know, how we think we can get there, but at the same time, that doesn't mean we're going to hit potholes and we may detour. And you know, we encourage that everyone keeps testing and learning different hypotheses because if we don't, we're not going to be innovating fast enough ourselves. And so that's how we're approaching it. Right. I think, I think people feel the demand, they feel the need, they feel the positive reinforcement of our partners wanting to be helpful to us. And so the rest of it's about like, how can we, you know, try to scale and put the processes in there. I feel like we've done a lot of the hard work upfront over this past year. And a lot of what we're now doing is more, you know, refining the processes to see, look at how can.

We scale this for the first cohort of scholars, there's a certain amount of risk in everything that's being done for the first time. Is their expectation that one, they're doing these, you know, two year program that they're getting training. Is mentoring part of the structure that coaches them through their two years?

Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, while they're going in, you know, what we like to say here is that, you know, while we're modernizing the infrastructure, we're doing it across two dimensions. One is connecting them to these opportunities. But that's not sufficient. Right. It's not about just, you know, finding talent and placing them in an agency and then checking in in two years. The second piece is we're providing them the scaffolding. So we're building the infrastructure to support them while they go in. That support takes a few different dimensions. One is mentorship. So we're providing them external mentors. An example is, you know, two of our scholars that are going into Space Force, General Raymond has volunteered to be their mentor who stood up Space Force. And the theory of change there is that when your first job, who your mentor is matters as much as what you're doing and who you're doing it for, because they set you up for that next linear opportunity. The second is skill development. So here's where we're collaborating with our private sector partners, finance firms, consulting firms, tech firms, where they can provide finance skill training, consulting training and tech training to these students while they're in public service. And the third is, you know, creating a cohort. Right. In a sense a camaraderie, which arguably could be as important, if not more important than the other two. It's important for the students to feel a sense of belonging back to the community aspect. And we have monthly and quarterly get togethers that we have planned. We'll bring in speakers and ways for the students to stay connected. You know, and that was a large part of the boot camp as well, of setting that up was for the students could really sit and talk to each other, get to know each other and build trust and relationships with one another.

Is part of the vision that in five years or ten years, the community exists of five hundred or a thousand of these scholars that are now scattered around the country.

Yeah, I think, you know, what the number is, is tbd. We're hoping it could be more than that by five years on an annual basis and that, you know, you have scholars that have come through the program and they could become mentors now to your new. Your. Your scholars. They absolutely could be scattered around the country and hopefully are staying connected in some capacity to public service and are helping also be ambassadors to the, you know, if they do go into the private sector, of the ways to which to collaborate with government to help solve big problems.

Well, we've covered a lot in our short discussion, Arun. I definitely enjoy listening to your vision and what you have plans for. So what would you say, sort of to wrap up what would be the next big milestone? We should be keeping our ear to the ground to be coming from Noble Reach.

Yeah, look, I think what you should take away from this is a sense of optimism that I think we have. I think that optimism bears itself with wanting to be around recent graduates that are starting their careers, but also being around entrepreneurs that are, you know, innovating and building. As far as next milestones, I think you'll be hearing a bit more about, you know, the existing scholars that are in their program and the success they're having and why they're enjoying it so much as the application comes out for the next cohort of scholars. How we ramp this up in the folks and the, in the people and the. And the partners that we bring into this ecosystem to reinforce the importance of this at this moment in time for us to create this cross collaboration between industry, academic, and government. I think you'll be seeing a lot of that over the next six to nine months.

Well, great. Again, thank you for being a guest on Experienced Voices, and we will look for a report at that next big milestone.

All right, thank you.

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