New Discussion: Listening to Customers

So hello everyone and thank you for coming to our panel today. Listening to the Customer. Our panelists today are Errol Archelich, Grant Warner, Weston Waldo and Ben Schrag. And you'll learn more about them as they make their opening remarks. I'm Nancy kamay from the SBA and during the first 30 years of my career I was a serial entrepreneur and then an investor. And when a founder would say something like all that matters is advancing the science, a red flag would go up in my mind because in business it's really all about the customer, and more specifically a paying customer. And for those founders who thought that all that mattered was the science, all I could do was pass on the deal. Thanks to the people on this panel. Nowadays there are other ways that we can support the science focused founder to cross over into the world of business and customers who want to pay for their product or service. So let's start with Errol Arkalik. Back in the early 70s, there was a lone program director at the NSF who saw a need, piloted a program, and that grew up to be the $4 billion SBIR program. That was Roland Tibbets, for whom the Tibbetts Awards are named. Someday when awards are established around customer discovery and I Corps, they could be called the Archalic Awards because Errol has a similar story to tell. Let's hear that origin story.

Aril Nancy, those are very, very kind words. I had the unique privilege of working with Roland Tibbets or meeting Roland Tibbets at NSF while I was there many years ago. And just to be voiced in the same paragraph as him, it's a huge praise. Roland was extremely extreme foresight, was a remarkable man. Before his time at NSF, he was a venture capitalist. And in the 70s he was tasked in part to build out what became known as the SBIR program. And I think that actually he would say even then that the critical role of the entrepreneur was really to assemble the resources to pursue the opportunities. And the critical role of the innovator was really to create the, create the knowledge base to pursue that opportunity. And he emphasized when we spoke about the importance of really exploration. And I'll never forget the conversation that I had with him at NSF as a young program manager. Really remarkable man. With respect to the I Corps, the genesis story is that we had a new program, a new director of the NSF who was the former dean of the School of Engineering at mit, and he knew from his experience at MIT that in order to get some technologies out of the lab There really had to be an exchange and interaction with those in the field that were actually purported to benefit from the technology. And my experience, having been at NSF for about eight years at that point, was that most of the projects that we saw coming out of academic research labs really were launched in a way that didn't really benefit from a significant amount of customer discovery. And it was surprising to me that people would be willing to take on the role and challenge of being the entrepreneur, the CEO, the founder of a company, without having done that homework. And so in the future 2011, 2012 timeframe, a bunch of us program directors got together and came up with the concept of putting together a program to really support that specific type of engagement, the engagement that a tech technologist has with the customer. And that was the beginning of the I Corp program. So that was a direct result of the challenges that I and several of us faced in the SBIR program, including Ben, I'm sure you remember those days, saw with respect to the getting the technologies out of academic labs.

Well, there's kind of a famous story about you calling up Steve Blank. Do you want to share that?

Yeah, that story is infamous in a way. There was a. Steve was working on a class at Stanford developing a basically what's now known as Customer Discovery Lean Launchpad. And I happen to be pursuing the program for I Corps. And I've been a long time fan of Steve's writings and work and was surreptitiously watching his class as he was blogging about it on a weekly basis. And so I called him up from Arlington and gave him a little pitch about nsf and his initial response was, you know, I've upcoming government service. I was drafted and spurred my time in Vietnam, but somehow we convinced him to take on the role of leading the education component for I Corps. And of course he ran with it and developed a entire really program and curriculum around customer discovery. And the reason some people often ask me why, why did you choose this particular approach? And the reason was that given the survey of activity that I'd had as a program manager at nnsf, I saw customer discovery really as a, an extension of the scientific method. And by using the scientific method and the business model canvas, I thought that we could basically advance the cause of identifying value propositions using tools and techniques that every scientist was comfortable with, namely the scientific method. So when I get asked, you know, why customer discovery and why the Lean Launchpad approach? The answer is because it's really just a scientific method and very, very powerful tool for discovering the unknown. In fact, the only tool that I know of in terms of discovering the unknown. And so it's very aligned with the approach and techniques that people use in the lab on a daily basis. It's just now pointed in the direction of customer value proposition and segments and so on.

Thanks, Errol. Well, since that pilot and the establishment of the I Corps program, customer discovery has become a way of life for many companies and the program has grown and morphed into many different types of offerings. So let's hear the voice of the instructor from Grant Warner, who was one of the earliest members of the national NSF I Corps instructor team and has subsequently been an instructor for many, many specialized programs. Take it away, Grant.

Thank you, Nancy. Hats off to Errol for having the vision to establish the program, even if he won't be on my panel. So all good. The the initial instructing instruction team, including Steve Blank for executing on the vision. And really due to the excess success of the NSF program, as you mentioned, the I Corps instructional model has continued to expand to other agencies, notably the Department of Energy and the National Institutes of Health. But even within the nsf, right, the program has continued to expand, which speaks to its effectiveness. The NSF program traditionally has targeted academic researchers, right, doing that deep tech research, but has grown to include SBIR Phase 1 funded companies as another example. So those companies are provided with a low touch boot camp. So all of the phase one companies that helps them identify a beachhead opportunity like who might the early adopters be and then they have the option to participate in a more immersive seven week experience to explore kind of the more complete go to market strategy that informs the development of the 15 page phase two commercialization plan. Again even within NSF, really, really fantastic growth. But expanded to other agencies as I mentioned, the Department of Energy is an example. So they have a really robust I core footprint. So in their canonical I Corps program, much like the nsf, they provide access to the program for lab researchers, right? But their own lab researchers inside of the DOE research complex and they explore the commercial potential of their research and innovations. Probably much like the faculty likely not to launch startups, though some do, but it helps the technology transfer professionals, right, really explore the potential impact of the innovation, who might be good licensing partners, et cetera. So again, fantastic impacts there. In addition, their canonical program also supports entrepreneurs who are part of their elite program, that lab embedded entrepreneurship program. So they're given access to DoE facilities, the DoE network, a stipend, all as part of a Comprehensive acceleration strategy to really explore problem solution fit. So overall, that canonical program, very similar to NSF with some differences. You know, higher focus on ecosystem mapping a little bit because the innovations are often for regulated markets. And as I mentioned, they're kind of these LEAP participants a little different than the standard, standard researchers. But they also run a phase, phase one program for their SBIR teams. Right. Much like the NSF program intended to inform that phase two commercialization plan. So it has a slightly higher focus on individual coaching than the NSF program. And there's always this balance, right, as we look at the programs between kind of the didactic approach, like oh, I'm lecturing and teaching and the coaching, right, where I'm kind of responding to what's actually happening in your environment and providing direction. So there it's a little bit more individual coaching. Another, another big difference is they have an optional program that follows the, the, the extended I Corps program which focuses on the coaches working directly with the teams to translate their discovery into, into findings for their commercialization plan. So it's a, it's a, another follow on six week engagement where we take discovery findings, apply them to the commercialization plan, look for gaps and identify new opportunities for discovery. And then lastly, I'll talk about the NIH program. They focus only on phase one awardees, but they're a little bit different in that there are three verticals that they have therapeutics, diagnostics and medical devices. Right. So NSF kind of takes all, brings them together. Again, NIH organizes around these verticals. Another difference is that it also has a different approach to instruction. So you have the traditional kind of I Corps instructors who are really looking at the process and they're paired with domain experts in each of the, each of the verticals, but otherwise runs really similarly. And then lastly, when we look across federal agencies, there are many that participate in I Corps without their own standup programs and they'll participate in an NSF program, for example. So I'm running an NSF SBIR cohort right now and that has NASA teams that are sent, you know, kind of from that agency to participate.

Thanks, Grant. A large percentage of I Corps participants are somehow related to academic institutions. And these institutions have found many ways to support applicants and participants in I Corps programs. So let's hear the voice of these organizations from Weston Waldo, who has been at several institutions involved in I Corps programs and listening to customers. The floor is yours, Weston.

Thanks, Nancy. And just wanted to say what an honor it is to be here on this panel. Definitely Some really big players that are here and such a wealth of information. I think really when I was thinking about what I wanted to say to really spark an interest in terms of listening to customers first I would share is really my role. Had the chance to be at several different universities, all different levels of federal funding levels and expenditures, and able to be really successful. I think in terms of this I Corps program implementation. And I think one of the big things that I was thinking about in terms of top of mind is really customer service is absolutely really key in terms of working with these types of teams, getting them ready to do the I core program or anything like with SPIR and stuff like that. And so that was kind of the premise of where we started was how do we create the Disney like experience for these team members to really get them ready and to succeed and to completely blow everyone out of the water and with how good they are going through this program. And so really we've created this cycle of programming of starting from all the way from the recruitment of a team to actually getting them ready to submit their proposal to I Corps, preparing them for the. For the interview, and then even what happens next after their I Corps program. So engaging in SBIR and STTR and so every step in the way in terms of that process, having a really unique in terms of methodology to really engage these individuals. Because I think if you take a step back in terms of listening to your customer, at least what our customer is, I think is the faculty and their graduate students. You also have to kind of put yourselves in their shoes, where you can imagine asking them to do these types of activities puts them way out of their comfort zone. And so to be that voice and also to be that liaison, to essentially walk them through is really, really critical. And all this stuff that Gran and Earl and everyone has been talking about, my belief is the higher that you can prepare a team, the more likely that they are to succeed. And so really that's really kind of the premise of what we've been doing in terms of that to find people to work with, prepare them to execute, and really make sure that have a great experience going through this, no matter what the outcome is of their journey. One of the things that I'll mention before passing it back to Nancy, for the next person, the schools that I've been a part of. So a quick thing about me originally started my career off actually working at a theme park. And so the way that I actually got into this space was I had a close colleague, his friend or my friend, his dad worked in a private equity and venture capital firm and so invited me to, at the very least, work in the office over the summer to start. And so in my mind, hey, this is a cool place to work. It beats staying outside. And so that was essentially how I got into entrepreneurship in terms of that realm around it. But then, lo and behold, a couple of years later was actually an entrepreneurial lead for a national I Corps team that really started to go forth, led by UT Austin, which actually coming full circle, I just started my position at UT Austin, which I know we'll have a chance to talk to later. But what I really want to emphasize in terms of all of this is that anyone can really do this. There's tons of resources and help that you could totally take advantage of. And really, at any time, definitely myself or anyone I'm sure on this panel would love to help you to have some really great results and engage your community. That spurs off of these deep convictions that this is really making a difference and we get to be change makers to help enable that.

That's wonderful. Thank you, Weston. And now we're going to hear about how all of this listening to customers can make a difference for innovators, SBIR applicants and grantees. Like, can listening to customers make a difference in those SBIR review panels? Let's hear from Ben Schrag, who can shed light on some of the impacts of I Corps and listening to customers. Take it away, Ben, of course.

Thanks, Nancy. It's great to be with this group. I love to. Glad to hear all everyone's thoughts and I'm happy to share my perspective. So the answer to your question, Nancy, is absolutely, yes, I think, and this is not something that I think was uniquely observed by the program, the SSBIR program at NSF. But, you know, the biggest reason startups fail is because they're building something nobody wants. That's a truism. It's a Paul Graham Y Combinator. And others have kind of have kind of crystallized that better than I could. And so, you know, customer discovery is basically the best thing we found to avoid that potential failure mode. There's other failure modes, but that is the biggest one. And honestly, it's probably, it's a really unfortunate one for companies to run into, given that it, you know, it's not a hugely expensive thing to do to talk to your customers. So it's something that, you know, if you can, if your technology fails because, because this technology doesn't work in the lab, that could take $10 million to figure out. But customer discovery is cheap. And so we absolutely focus on this like a laser in the review process at the National Science foundation and, you know, the NSF and other agencies, but especially the nsf, we look for these big disruptive platform technologies, and especially for those technologies where there's this new platform, platform that nobody's seen before. Those are especially important to apply customer discovery because the phase space of potential use cases and customers and value propositions is almost infinite. It's gigantic. Imagine something like the laser, like, you know, the different things that people could have conceived of to do with the laser when it was invented. It's very difficult to figure out what that and highest use of such a, such a technology is. So I think it's especially important for us. I resonate with what all my colleagues have said, but I would say a couple more things that kind of underline how important and how valuable the whole I Corps existence is for us at nsf. You know, first of all, like Grant mentioned, we do send all of our Phase one awardees through a light version of the I Corps. It's 30 interviews, which is I think, maybe not enough to necessarily get to full demographics definition of the key parts of your business model, but it is absolutely enough to get out of the comfort zone, as was mentioned. And so to some extent, we do this with our folks when they get their Phase One award in the first couple months. And it is the first thing uncomfortable thing that they're asked by an investor of sorts. Right. It's the first time we get to observe them getting asked something that they're not totally on board with necessarily, and how do they respond. And just watching, in addition to all the value this creates and them understanding their customer, it creates a lot of diligence information for us to understand how this team thinks and how they approach challenges and how they adapt and how they, how they are they coachable all these things. And so I think just, just having the experience of I Corps and watching them go through it is incredibly valuable. And you know, I remember once upon a time, Grant and I were emailing each other on a Saturday about a team of mine that he was taking through a national I Corps and, and how much value and insight he got into the team dynamics by virtue of that. I don't know if you remember that, Grant. It was many years ago. So we absolutely. We get as much value out of this process as we can in terms of trying to work with the teams and coach them and also to learn about them as well. So, yeah, so the best Thing I think in a proposal from for, at least for the NSF is to have a team that really is kind of completely bought into the idea of customer discovery as a critical tool. If I could pick one thing besides really disruptive technology, which we have to have, the second thing I would pick for a successful awardee at MSF is that is being a profit, being a true zealot on customer discovery. That basically is going to be useful until our company is done in many ways.

Thanks, Ben. Well, I want to express gratitude to all of our panelists today for everything you do to build the bridge for innovators and company founders so they can make that crossing from the world of technology to the world of business. Now as a panel we're going to pivot a bit and let each of the panelists share how listening to customers is part of their day to day life or anything else they might want to share with this national audience of members of the innovation ecosystem. Let's start with Weston.

Yeah, thanks Nancy. I think one of the really big things to share with the audience is just start engaging with your community. I think there's a lot of really low hanging fruit practical ways to just reach out and figure out what are their problems and how can I help you solve them. Especially whether it's regarding the I core program or whatever that they're at in their, their startup team journey. I think that's a really awesome practical way. And then whatever they tell you like really help them, you know, not just talk about it or anything like that, but actually engage and, and get into the weeds with them to, to start and really care about that. So I think that's the first thing is just, and I feel like we talk about this a lot and it's super easy to say all these things, but it's another thing to actually go out and do it and execute on this. And so anyone in the room, I would totally challenge anyone that's listening to our panel today, reach out to us. I think there's ways if there's bumps in the road or whatever that you may be struggling, we may be able to actually help you overcome that to take the next step. I hope there's a lot of action that's spurred out of this and hopefully we could be resources to help you to whether sending your next team to the national program or whatever it may be. I definitely would encourage you all to be very action oriented and start to do something and reach out and help.

Thanks Weston. How about I kick it over to Errol?

Thanks Nancy. So with respect to my current role, I'm the Chief innovation officer for UC Irvine, and University of California Irvine is an R1 institution. That means that we use research primarily as a vehicle for education. And in my role as the Chief Innovation Officer, I'm responsible for managing the IP portfolio of the campus. And what we are focusing on here really is using the tools and experiences and knowledge I've gained from customer discovery, specifically to empower the teams coming out of academic institutions with ip. And the principles that we use are directly derived from the principles I've learned through my years at NSF as an SBIR Program Manager and then as the I Corps Program manager. And they are basically this. Every exchange that we have here at the office revolves around leading with curiosity, following up with experimentation, and then building through collaboration. In my experience that if you do those three things and you follow the principles of this is what I thought, this is what I did, this is what I learned, this is what I'm going to do next. You kind of drive yourself to success or at least to the ground truth about why you're building or opportunity is going to fail. And so those are all elements that are driven, baked into really the scientific method. And I just want to emphasize one more time, lead with curiosity, follow up with experimentation, and build through collaboration. And if you do that, your probability of success, in my experience goes way, way up.

Terrific. And Grant, what do you want to share?

I'm going to pivot off your question a little bit, but it's all related, all related. So, you know, I've done a lot of work over the last few years, particularly on inclusion. You know, how do we get, you know, black and brown innovators more integrated into I Corps, sbir, et cetera. And, you know, it's interesting, one of the things that Errol was saying about this curiosity, experimentation and then collaboration, because oftentimes what you find is that when people want to partner, they're really focused on their own objectives. Right. So I might go to an HBCU and say, well, you know, if you just share your students, like, I'll meet my objective. I haven't really asked about what your objective is, but, you know, kind of, I'll be able to check the box. And I want to take my hat off to NSF in their approach to how they're trying to solve the problem, because I do think it was led with curiosity, involved some experimentation, and was built on collaboration. You know, you look at what they've done with with jam, again, very early on in the Program, there was an issue with representation. They started to explore, well, how might you do something about that? It didn't go to Jim and say, hey, give me your fellows. It was, well, let's, let's explore what a solution might look like. Right. What assets do you bring to the table that we might experiment with. Right. And see if we could be successful. They invested in jam, built out capacity. You know, that the capacity within GEM allowed GEM to leverage its own capability. Right. Things that they develop to recruit graduate students as part of their own program and apply it to innovation. So prior to that GEM collaboration, I think there were like two, between two and five GEM participants in any I Corps programming. Now I think it's a couple hundred. Right. When we look at regional and national altogether. So it's a, it's a program with impact, but it's really built on, you know, kind of how do we approach the problem. So I don't generate the solution. I build something no one cares about. Like, I talk to the community, I figure out how we experiment around solution and then collaborate around that solution. So I wanted, I wanted to share that as, as Errol was talking about it. I think in general, you know, moving forward, that's, that, that's the role I play currently. And moving forward, I'll play a very, a very similar role. So I don't know if we're, if this is the part where we share, don't share, but I do, I am, I'm moving into a new role. I can't share too much about it yet because we're going to have a press release about it, but it's really the same thing, right. How do we build ecosystems and, and partnerships? How do we close the wealth gap? And when you look at the, you look at the wealth gap, it's kind of 13 to 1 when we look at, as an example of black to white decreases to 4 to 1 when we look at black and white business owners. So this pathway to entrepreneurship and ownership is a very impactful part of how we decrease the wealth gap. So heavily invested in that will continue to work on doing those things.

Okay. So we can all Google press release and Grant Warner over the next few days or something, figure out what that was all about.

Okay.

And Ben, I feel like I need.

A new job now. I'm getting a little jealous here. Yeah. So, you know, I think, I think, you know, the thing that NSF has been really focused on in our SVR program over the last decade is really moving toward a strong focus on startups. It's been a long time. I think, you know, transitions are slow in the government. But our portfolio of companies we fund now, about 80% of them have, they're just submitting their first ever grant of any kind to NSF. 80% of our companies that we fund, this is the first document ever sent to us. So we're very proud of that. We're proud that it doesn't take 10 tries to get to get into the program. We're proud that we're willing to overlook some of that. So I think that's, we feel like we've done that. The next thing is that we're really hoping to focus on. There's a couple of, I think, you know, to resonate with what Grant said. I think there's new ways to try to broaden the pipeline for science based entrepreneurship, especially with focus on inclusion both geographically and demographically. NSF just made a $20 million award to activate Global as the first investment on new entrepreneurial fellowships initiative that we've launched. The focus of that funding will be to expand the highly, I think successful model of the LEAP programs into a broader set of geographies and demographics and allowing more folks to participate who maybe couldn't within the traditional approach to the kind of in residence communities that they've had. The other thing I think that we're still working on, that's going to be work in progress is in again. We're now, I think we have a strong brand and marketing towards startups. I think we have a strong offering to startup but our process is still difficult. Somebody in the earlier session mentioned it takes 400 hours to write a phase one proposal. I hope it's not quite that much to NSF, but it's a lot. It's definitely a lot. And I think we need to really kind of mark to market our process with respect to the types of community and types of companies that we're trying to fund and really make it match up with these kind of early stage agile, fluid companies that we're trying to attract. You know, we can't, we have great curb appeal but then when they come inside the house, the house is a little bit, needs a little bit of renovation in terms of how the, how the process works. So I think that's the next frontier for nsf and it's trickier to do that just because the government has a lot of regulations. But we have a very, very strong advantage in that. We have a new directorate at NSF for the first time in 30 years called the Technology Innovation Partnerships Directorate. Tip with really visionary leadership to try to do things in new and better ways. And so that will be the, hopefully the platform from which we can make some disruptively improved processes both for SBIR and for other programs in the foundation. So stay tuned.

Thank you. And if you've been following the chat, there's a lot of shout out to the panelists for being so amazing. So thank you for all that. And there's a question here from Margarita. Looking for advice about how to engage faculty who might have an amazing idea for a grant, but they have some fears like about losing their freedom or if they get overwhelmed on this entrepreneurial journey. So it's a question about how do you help faculty either work through or get over their fears. Any thoughts on that?

I can jump in first. I suspect Errol and I will be singing the same song on this. Maybe all of us will. You know, I think that that most of the time when we see our companies successful, the faculty members have a huge role to play, but it's oftentimes not as the lead entrepreneur. It's certainly true that I think faculty members have all the tools to become very strong entrepreneurs, but it's hard to do that with a full time job. You really have to have the lead entrepreneur be full time. And so the most common model we see, we've had 42 companies in our portfolio over the last six years that have reached a valuation of $2250 million. And looking at that small set of successful companies as kind of a data set, we see that out of those 42, none of them have a lead entrepreneur who has another day job. You know, they're all, and most of them are led by recent graduates and people who have recently stepped out of graduate programs and postdocs. So about 37, maybe more than that of them are led by first time entrepreneurs who just very recently jumped out of a purely academic or science based role. And, and so I think that's a strong model. Not every model works the same way, but I would suggest the faculty member that they try to build support around that from their institution, from students and from postdocs, and that they try to find a role where they can be an advisor, a scientific mentor to the company and let someone else take the reins.

Yeah, I'll double down on that if I may, Nancy. That data that you just shared, Ben, is, is very valuable. We have similar experiences in years of supporting academic spin outs. But it's nice to see the data behind it. And the charge that I often give to faculty members is that they are generating the most valuable asset for the startup, and that is the people that are going to go run the startup and work at the startup. And a faculty member who views themselves as a resource provider or a talent spotter can generate enough energy in their Lab to start 10 or 15 companies if they look at the force multiplication of their graduate students and postdocs. Whereas if they take the key lead role, they can do at most a half of one. And a half one isn't likely going to be successful. So I always try to encourage the faculty members to think of themselves as force multipliers and talent spotters. And of course, with Ben's data, it's borne out.

Only thing I'll add to that is, again, don't look at it as losing freedom. Empower freedom. You know, part of the piece that we used to battle through very early on in the I Corps program as well. Can you look at your graduate student as an equal? Like, do you have to be the boss or can you let go? And if you let go, there's opportunity for growth and it will benefit you. And if you can't, it's going to be a struggle.

One thing just to add on top of what everyone else said, I think using that word fear, I think that was a really interesting kind of barrier word that could have hindered participation from even trying. And so I think there's also an approach where sometimes as facilitators, maybe we have to take the role as cheerleader sometimes to really encourage and also really to know that when things don't go what they think are going to go like or something, that there's resources to essentially back them up, to help them pivot and to essentially learn from failure and, and really do encourage that. That's okay to learn from that. And I think that's a totally cool environment that entrepreneurship has. Is that, you know, really encouraging, failing fast and knowing that that's something that's celebrated and not something that has to be feared. So I think that's a really interesting, you know, kind of new environment. Yeah, fail forward.

So, yeah, terrific.

There's another question in the chat that has to do with a startup company trying to collaborate with other companies. And if anyone has any best practices or strategies about how to, you know, onboard collaborators or find the right collaborators.

I have some experience in that area. I'll take a stab at that. The tool set that we use regularly in the I Corps program is the Business Model Canvas. And it turns out that the Business Model Canvas is an incredibly powerful tool not just to assess the your own company, but to assess the alignment between your potential collaborators and in your interests. And so I, I use this, I continue to use this on a regular basis as I'm trying to identify potential partners that are going to provide some unique capability. I literally try to understand how I fit into their business model, how they fit into my business model. And when there is alignment between those two interests, collaboration is super easy because naturally you're pulling in the same direction. And when there's a misalignment in those business models, no amount of legal or no amount of talking or no amount of anything can really bring back, bring alignment to that. And in that case, collaboration is incredibly difficult. So I go back to first principles and I ask myself, what are the alignments of our interests? And if there's alignments of interest, collaboration is fun. It's like playing a game with your friend that is only about to the same rules and it's rewarding if you're not agreeing on the same elements or the alignment isn't there.

Yeah, agree. Not, not a lot to ask, but we, we add, but we do kind of in I core, kind of eating our own dog food. When we, when we talk about partnership, we put up this grid and say, well, what are you giving and what are you getting? And when you evaluate those things and you know, are they, are they equal? Right. Are you getting a lot and giving a little, probably not going to lead to really great collaboration and partnership. Right. So it's really beginning to evaluate, just like Errol said, kind of what's the alignment? What are the things that they value? And you know, kind of is there a basis for a partnership?

One thing just to add really quick to that and totally agree with all of it. But one thing that I think is interesting, especially for those that are in the audience that are from like, not from big cities or that have these really robust metropolitan areas to have access to these partnerships, you've got to knock on a lot of doors too. So for context, I came from Arkansas and then prior to that from Lubbock. And I mean, you could count with one hand how many venture capital groups and even investment groups that there were in the entire state, let alone the city around it, versus now in Austin. I mean, just today, you know, I could meet with three to five different groups coming to me, you know, not having to even go to them. And so I think I want to put that into context for those that are in the audience where, especially if you're from smaller communities, you know, having those mutually beneficial goals. But then also, you're probably going to have to knock on a lot of doors and don't give up. You're definitely going to probably hear no more than yes. And that's okay, because you know, you know that this partnership is probably essential for your community to really help your startups take the next step. So just want to put that into a frame of context where it's hard. It's really, really hard. And, and you'll probably hear no more than yes, but it's worth it to.

Keep on going so well, that's great. And I think we are just about at time. And so I just want to again thank all the panelists for coming today. It was awesome panel and can't wait to see what you all are doing sometime soon. So thanks everybody for coming.

Thanks, everyone.

Thank you all for having me.