He ran fishing boats at 13. Now he invests in deep tech with Abe Murray

Picture this. You're 15 years old. Your family's fishing business is about to go under. The bills are late. The house might not be yours much longer. And you are the one hiring and firing the crew, some of whom have drug problems, some of whom have pulled knives on you. There's no adult coming to fix this. You are the adult. That was my guest's teenage years. Pretty intense, let me tell you. Today, he's a general partner at one of the most respected venture firms in the country. And what he learned on those boats before he ever set foot in a meeting or in the corporate world is exactly what this show is about. Welcome to the NeuroLeadership Edge, the podcast for leaders who want to think clearly when everything is going crazy, chaotic, as in is on fire literally around them. I'm Claire Hayek, NeuroLeadership expert, TEDx speaker, and founder of Mind Soul Purpose Team Building. By the end of this episode, you'll understand why separating emotion from action is actually a skill. You'll hear why authenticity is what actually builds followership. And you'll learn why there is no single fix for leading through chaos, only the discipline of doing the next right thing. But before we get into it, hit that follow so you don't miss next week's episode. My guest today is Abe Murray, General Partner at AliCorp, where he leads deep tech investing across aerospace, energy, manufacturing, and robotics. Before Alley Corp, he spent 15 years at Alphabet working on Android, Google AI, and Verily. He holds an engineering degree, a master's, and an MBA from Harvard Business School. But before any of that, he dropped out of high school to run his family's commercial fishing boats. Abe was actually also part of the research behind my upcoming book, The Leadership Skill Nobody Taught You: Calm Under Fire in the Age of Disruption. And he and his perspective basically on pressure appears in the closing pages. Abe, finally, how are you?

Thanks for having me. It was great chatting earlier regarding the book. Totally fun conversation and excited to talk here today.

Yes. Well, I'm very excited to have you. Thank you for joining me on the show. I think I've teased this one enough. So, let's dive right in, right? So, tell me about that pressure moment that I kind of talked about and teased at the beginning of the episode that fundamentally shaped how you lead today.

Yeah. And it's great fun to hear you telling the story as an outsider looking in. And the pressure was there, but it's funny because looking back, I don't think I exactly felt it. He just did the things that had to be done. And yes, I was 15 when I started really working full-time in the business, but I'd been going into the factory since I was a kid. I grew up there, 5 years old on the factory lines, 13 years old shipping out on fishing boats. So I'd lived it the whole way and money was always tight. There were ups and downs and ups and downs. And just watching a startup, a new company being formed, taught me a lot about There's no steadiness to it. Great one day, terrible the next, and that's how it goes. Our college fund sank with one of our fishing boats when I was 11, I think. So I was used to these things. So it's absolutely true that stepping up into that moment when the family business needed help and saying, I'm not going to go back to school, not going back to high school, I'm going to come make these fishing boats profitable, make the cash that the family needs, solve the problems that a family member needs to solve. We can't hire for this. We can't afford to hire for this. And I don't know that you could ever pay anybody to work as hard or with as big an ownership mentality as a family member in the first place. So I just had to do it. The thing that needed to be done had to be done, and I went and did it. And it also had the benefit of I love working with my hands. I love doing things. I believed in what the business was doing. We were building mussel farms. We were harvesting mussels, feeding people healthy, cheap protein, right? The thing should exist in the world and we wanted it to work. Right. And I got to work with my parents who I love and admire. They've taught me so much. So it was a wonderful moment, but it was full of pressure.

Yeah. But like, tell me about when things were falling apart and you had to kind of step up and be the adult, although you're a teenager. Can you tell us a little bit more about what happened there? Like, what's going on?

Well, looking back, I think we all benefit from when we're teenagers, we feel pretty invincible that we can do anything. But it's also a little scary, you know, looking back. I did not like not knowing whether we'd pay the bills. It was definitely uncomfortable feeling like the family house would be at risk. And, you know, we couldn't pay mortgage for many months and we were deeply in arrears and the bank was calling and All of that was not fun for a child. And I'm the oldest of 4, so I had 2 younger siblings in school, in high school, looking to go to college and thinking about, you know, I can't just disappear and go off to college. It's a little scary for all of us.

Right.

But it was also exciting. You know, you just looked at what needed to be done. My dad was doing a great job with the business, but he'd had some challenges with business partners and they'd left, but now there was a hole. And so I stepped up. We knew that the fishing boats could make the money that we needed, but they were not making that money. So I had to show up. The boats had effectively been mothballed. I spent a summer doing maintenance on them. You just kind of— you make a list of everything that has to happen and you go solve one problem at a time. And the first problem was that the boats didn't work. So I taught myself welding and torching and did all the things that had to happen to make a fishing boat seaworthy again. Right. And then you had to go find the mussel beds. We didn't know where they were. If anybody's read the book The Perfect Storm or seen the film, our business suffered from that. The mussel beds that used to make a lot of money for us literally disappeared. And I went back out with my boat to the places we thought they might be that used to have beautiful mud bottoms full of mussels, and I would pull up literally 12-ton boulders that would almost tip my boat over trying to find the mussel beds. And, we couldn't find them. And so, I spent weeks out just searching around not knowing what the answer was but knowing that there was no alternative except to try. You had to just keep going until you solve the problem. And, it was myself and one crew member at that point just trying to even find an opportunity to go make this money if we could find the mussel beds. We went hundreds of miles offshore where nobody else was allowed to go except mussel boats.

Wow.

And, we were the only one. So it was beautiful and scary. There were 30-foot waves, big storms, moments when you felt like, well, if the boat doesn't work, then it's done for. But you just keep going and it's all beautiful in its own way.

So where is this coming from? You know, I know you mentioned something about your father's rule that I would like for you to share with our audience because I find it very inspiring. And I think it's sometimes you need to hear this. Do you mind sharing a little bit about what your father told you or his rule?

Yeah, there are many rules and many things I learned. I always say I have 2 MBA degrees. One was from Harvard and it's wonderful. And one was from my dad working in the business and my parents growing up in this business. But, and I don't even know if it was a rule stated, but basically being told there are no adults. You just have to show up and do the thing. There's no magic to the world. There's just people who choose to solve the problems and people who don't. And I think we were all pretty inspired by many people in our family heritage. My grandfather had a Nobel Prize from doing the first organ transplant. I think my dad and my aunts and uncles have been very inspired by that and worked very hard to do very meaningful, impactful things in the world. But I can look back at ancestors down many paths and see how they all did amazing things in the face of uncertainty and hardship. Grandmother, opera singer, all my grandparents in World War II, you hear those stories. Those are common stories we all have. A great-grandfather built the first flight simulator, which helped us win World War II. But the story there is that the family organ business was going out of business in the Depression, and they didn't know how to solve that problem. And the children came home from where they were, and they stepped up and they invented something new that transformed the world. And so you hear those stories and you just know it's possible, right? I think the existing economy—

How do you do that? How do you do that? How do you, in the middle of a storm, literally, or just a situation, how do you decide to just focus on what needs to be done? Are there any steps? Are there any Is something or any tools you can share with the audience listening, somebody listening to this going, wow, I mean, I'm sure you probably have it in you somehow, but let's say somebody doesn't. What helped you? The steps. Sometimes we need those steps, right?

Yeah. So there's one story I will never forget that stuck in my head. And I was probably 13 or 14 at the time, but I was doing something in the business. And I was a snotty teenager like all of us have been at one point in our lives. And I think I was tired and cold and hungry, and I was being probably petulant or taking it out on the people I was working with. And my dad pulled me aside and said, look, it doesn't matter if you're cold or if you're hungry or if you're angry. You know, he's like, whatever you're feeling doesn't matter. If you want to be a leader of people and if you want to, you know, help make this work, you have to put all that aside and do what's needed by the people around you and by the company around you. And you have to do that first. So basically, put other people first. Get over yourself. It's fine to have those feelings. It's fine to be cold. It's fine to be hungry. It's not fine to be rude to people or to be discouraged or discouraging. Your job is to level yourself up and level up the people around you. So, that stuck with me. And, I definitely took that with me to everything I did because we were cold, we were hungry, we were scared, we were uncertain. But, there's no magic person who doesn't have those feelings. It's just some of us let them control us and some of us observe them and set them aside and then just go do the next thing anyways. So I found it incredibly important to kind of observe the feelings, set them aside, and then try to get back to that logical portion of your brain, which can help you solve the problems or at least make the plan that might solve the problem and then work the plan. And at the end of the day, I think that's the only way anything ever gets done is that you go figure out what needs to be done and you do it. And, you keep doing that until it's either been done or you've just totally exhausted every possibility. So, I think that's almost the only thing that works, the only thing that's worked for me. And, I don't think there's any magic to it. Many, many years later, I discovered Stoicism and I said, oh, that's kind of the thing that I've been doing.

I mean, what you shared is really interesting because in neuroscience, under real threat, we all know your body is going to pull all the resources away from clear thinking, from strategic thinking, from— it's going to push you straight into reaction, keeping you alive, survival. And most people never get taught how to override that, right? And your father handed you a rule at a young age that happens to be exactly what the research shows works. It's— he probably didn't know that, or he didn't Read that in a book. It was just something that he learned and probably rehearsed and practiced and then saw that that was working for him and got him focused, aligned, and helped him take action and stay in his strategic brain. So, you notice what you feel. You set it down and choose the action your people need from you. He pretty much taught you how to regulate.

Yeah.

And I mean, that's the best gift he could have given. A young boy, and regulation is trainable. People think that it's just you're born with it or you're not. No, this is what you're training. This is what you're wiring your brain over and over again. Every time you fall into the trap, you try to get out of it. You do the thing, the step one, two, three, and that the more you do it, then it becomes the foundation of how you direct as opposed to react, and how to you really pull yourself out of that. Emotion. Not that emotions are bad. It's not about that. We're not telling people to be robots. But when the emotion and that state of survival or panic or whatever it is you default to is not serving you at the moment, you have a choice. And unfortunately, we don't get taught that. And I think it's a blessing that you were taught that at an early age. And that's literally the foundation of what I call pressure-proof leadership, what I install in organizations. But let's move on to my next question. I'm really curious to know what you would wish more leaders understood when leading through complexity, change, chaos, uncertainty, big transformations, M&A, pressure, right? What do you wish they understood?

Many things. And one that jumps out is there are no silver bullets, there are only lead bullets. So I think often when you're stuck in a moment, a crucible, things are going wrong, you look around and wish there was an answer. You wish there was something easy to do, or if somebody could figure it out. And often there's not one thing. And this can be when things are going wrong or when things are going well. I think it's still the answer. The only way to make things better is you just shoot a lot of bullets. There's no magic answer. There's sometimes you might be pointed in the wrong direction. So if you're pointing wrong, you need to figure out what direction should we aim in? What's the plan? But once you've done that, I find the only way to win is you just do all of the things. Do the thing, do the next thing, do the next 100 things. There's never an easy answer. There's only ever just hard work. When I think about some of the best founders I'm working with, or the best leaders I've worked with, they've absolutely employed this. They just work harder. They work in a more focused way. It's kind of like the Elon cliché of just find the longest pole in the tent and work on that until you find the next thing, and then you work on that, and on and on.

This is one of the biggest traps I see. Some of the leaders I work with, they're waiting for that one insight or one framework or the one hire that's going to save the day, is going to fix everything. The brain actually loves that story. It just sounds great. We have a lot of imagination because it promises some kind of relief, right? But the leaders who actually hold it together, the ones that actually survive under pressure or thrive even, are able to snap out of pressure and chaos are the ones who stop looking for the single fix and just keep executing. They take action even if they don't know what exactly they need to do, but just taking little steps, one decision at a time. And that consistency is literally what rewires the pattern for good to get back at that. Because when you're taking action, going back into the street, strategic brain, where focus lives, where alignment lives, where you feel more— you have better access to your skills. Because we're all talented, we all have skills. But the question is, are we really accessing them when we need to, right? Not just in theory. But tell me about the network you've built. You've built a massive network, but you've also told me you actually hate networking. Networking. I don't know if hate is a big word, but I'm throwing it out there. Can you explain that to us?

Yeah, I was actually shy as a kid. It was hard for me to step up and lead folks. I was always pretty quiet in a room, and I just love reading. I love building. I love coding. I'm an introvert engineer. My wife is, you know, we happily just go silent and do our thing. And yet I've spent 20 years leading people and leading teams, and you can't be Exactly an introvert in those moments. So, you build up the muscle and the skill and you just do the thing that you need to. But, I still don't love networking. I don't love going to big events and talking to lots of people. It's hard for me. And, when I was young and early career, you'd have people tell you, you need to be networking, you need to get out there, you need to do these things. And, it just rubbed me wrong. It was not something I wanted to do and I almost rebelled against it, said, I'm never going to do that. But, what I did is I spent 20 years building things I love with people I like. And, I can make very good friends with folks I'm building with in those one-on-one interactions or even the small team interactions. You can make really great friends. And, I do love building things with people. And so, it turns out if you do that for 10 years in a row, 20 years in a row, you turn around and you look backwards and you say, well, I've somehow touched 1,000 people all over the world doing all kinds of wild things. And it all comes back around and you'd be surprised how these things work. There are studies that show that people who have these very broad networks that cross multiple intersections between domains wind up being very valuable networks. I just accidentally stumbled into that by virtue of doing a bunch of different things. So it was fun for me. I just built quietly with The people who bumped into me along the way, and then it laddered up to something I think pretty special. What's fun is when I interact with those people now, even— and I'll have folks call me up 10 years later and we did deals together, maybe even across the table in a more oppositional way until a deal's done. We're friends, acquaintances, and we can be helpful to each other. And you established a trust at that time that lasts a long time. I think people talk about how Your reputation is everything. Business is a repeat game. And I stand behind everything I've ever done in my career. I'm sure I've made people unhappy, but not by being unethical or wrong, just by sometimes we might have crossed purposes. But I've wound up friends even with the people who we disagreed with along the way. And so then they like you and they remember you, and I like them and I remember them. And we all just help each other. Networking doesn't have to be networking. It can just be finding the people who are kind of doing things that you're into. And it's worked out very well. Yeah.

I mean, you know, what you're describing is a skill in a way. You know, you could, you, you could be wired one way just to kind of escape others and you just want to be in your own bubble, but you can still choose one moment after one moment, just like, like I said, little steps. You can choose how you show up. in a room or in a networking event. And you don't have to do the thing that everybody's doing or that maybe an extrovert would do. You just do your own thing that is more authentic and genuine towards yourself, even if it puts you a little bit out of your comfort zone. But then eventually, you'll find you'll wire that habit in, right? You'll develop that skill. And the most important part is the people listening here that have trouble networking or even showing up. It's the story you tell yourself before you even walk in. That story changes your energy, your physiology before you say one single word out of your mouth. So if you set your intention and you're just being true to yourself, what you're comfortable with, what you want to achieve, you know, maybe that authenticity, those quality conversations as opposed to how many conversations I can go through in one room. I have 30 minutes.

Boom.

You know, like that. And that's not valuable, qualified networking, right? I mean, in my book anyway. And I totally relate with that, Abe. You know, those people that you really connect with when you build your network and then you cross paths maybe years later and it feels as if you just saw them yesterday and you just pick it up where you left off, right? I love those. And I find that these are really the true That's the true network that you surround yourself with. And I can totally relate to the introvert thing, although I might look like an extrovert or sound like an extrovert. I'm a— I'm like a coach. I'm a podcast host, right? Everybody's going, yes, you're not an extrovert. Yeah, right, Claire. I am not. I'm an actual introvert. And in networking events, I literally just watch the room and I choose in a way. I feel like I kind of let myself trust myself to just walk towards the person that I feel comfortable around. I don't know, I can't explain it energy-wise, I think. And it just happens. And I, I'm not the one going in and I don't want to be the center of attention. I want to be kind of more in the corner somewhere. I find that really interesting. I think they, they call us ambiverts. the introverts that were able to develop that ability to be outside themselves as well, right? It's to have that balance.

Yeah. And 2 follow-up thoughts is one, Paul Graham wrote a lovely article on the importance of being earnest. And I think if you just show up earnestly, it comes through. That's the authenticity. And people remember that. And the other thing is, Introvert or extrovert, people are great. And every time I walk up to a person, I just walk up assuming that I can learn something from them, that they are an interesting human, that they have interesting life stories. And I just go looking for those. And that helps me because it gives me a purpose. Instead of saying, oh, I'm afraid of how to approach this group or enter this conversation, I just approach saying, I get to learn something interesting from somebody new. And that makes it fun.

Yes. And that's exactly how you show up. You set your intention and you know what you want out of this room. What do I want to do with my time for the next 30 minutes, 45 minutes?

Yeah. And I also love what you said about not showing up with like, I have to talk to everybody, I have a schedule, I need to talk to this person. To some extent, just letting the flow happen and letting the universe happen to you. And people can tell the difference between somebody who's like, oh great, you got my 30 seconds, now I'm looking beyond your shoulder at the next thing, versus somebody who actually cares.

I know.

Yes.

And I feel that, you know, sometimes people, you cannot expect that out of people. People will network and communicate the way they want to communicate. I'm not going to impose this on anybody, but I know that as I, you know, I guess I have more experience with networking than I realized how to be more comfortable with myself first before I'm comfortable around people and just relax. Just relax. It's that simple. And the minute you relax, things just happen. It's amazing how that works. And I mean, it took me a long time. I was a very nervous young professional, you know, and I wanted to— I wanted a lot. I really wanted everything, you know, very passionate, you know, in my personality. Still am. But let's say that it's a bit more— the dosage is a bit more balanced at this point. And definitely learning to let go. I find that it's the big— because then you're surprised. You know, you get these amazing surprises and that's the fun part. Anyway, time is flying by. Let's get to the rapid fires. I'm gonna have some quick questions, quick answers. Are you up for it?

Totally. Let's go.

All right, let's do it. One word to describe how you lead under pressure.

Smile.

All right. What's the first thing you do when a deal or a decision starts to fall apart?

Folks may have heard of the OODA loop. If you haven't, look it up. But it's basically look around you, assess what's going on, make a plan, take action on the plan, and then you loop around that. So it goes back to the just start figuring out what the next thing to do is and do it and go on. So I never run away from the thing that's falling apart. I run into it.

I like that. I like that a lot. Coffee or no coffee before a high-stakes meeting?

The routine is the routine. I don't change anything. Wake up, work, coffee, workout, get the thing done. Just trusting that every moment you're ready to go for a high-stakes thing.

I like that. I like that. Last one. What's one thing every founder you back needs to hear at least You got this and we got this.

I think a lot of investors, board members, folks backing companies, even CEOs, you never take a moment to focus on the thing that's going right, because the moment it's going right, your attention has to go to the thing that's going wrong. And so you can always be confronted by the challenge and it's always existential. I think that we need to actually do cheerleading for the doing of hard things. That's why my one word for leading under pressure is smile. I do smile. I love the hard work. I love the hard moments. And I've been on teams where we didn't know if we'd make it happen, and I just walked around smiling and assuming we would. And I've had junior team members come up to me and say, it felt dark, felt like we couldn't succeed, but I saw you walk around smiling, and I figured he must know something I don't know. I think we can figure this out. And then we all did. And it's just injecting that positivity and the optimism. It could work out. Yep.

You change your state. By changing your state, you change everybody else's state around you without forcing it. It just, it just, it just did. That's brilliant. Thanks so much for sharing, Abe. My book is almost here. It's called The Leadership Skill Nobody Taught You: Calm Under Fire in the Age of Disruption. It launches in one week on September 9th. The early readers group closes very soon. So if you want exclusive access before it hits shelves, literally go to clairehayek.com/book to sign up today. Don't wait, take action. And if you sign up by tomorrow morning, actually, you'll also get access to a live webinar I'm running on research that didn't actually make it into the book. And if you can't make it, no worries, you get to watch the replay only if you join. All right, so any last words before we wrap this up, Abe?

Optimists and builders build the future, so join us and follow the universe. This morning it told us stripes was the answer, and here we are.

I wanted to say something at the beginning of the episode, so perfect ending. I love it. Um, but we definitely match, and Stripes just look good. Come on, right?

Amen. Yeah, totally.

Amen to that. So everyone, lead boldly, stay human, and let every challenge sharpen your edge. See you all next time.