Founder Showcase, Patrick Riley Keynote Presentation April 2021

I'm the CEO of, CEO of GAN, which is a global community for the leaders of accelerators, venture CEOs, and Fortune 500 innovation teams around the world who lead and innovate with startups. And I'm also the managing partner of a VC fund called GAN Ventures, which invests in 1 to 3 seed-stage startups a month. Working with startups over the last decade, I've come to realize that we're wasting our abundance. And in the next 24 minutes, we get to dig into this question. And here's what I mean. Until, let's say, 1900, we as a collective group lived in a world of scarcity. That world around the turn of the century, around 1900, was full of factories farming, and very little extra time. At that time, only the rich were ones that had time to relax and enjoy the good things of life. Until that time, the majority of people thought more about their survival than about what it means to thrive. I know people are from all over the world here, but the average lifespan of an American at the turn of the 20th century was around 47 years old. And I have a child. I know many of you have a child. Most, most of us would have had at least one child die at that time. So on today's call, most of you are running a company. And what's different from today than what happened a few years ago was that what was required of business owners back then around the turn of the century was extraction and development. So think about this, businesses before 1900, mainly what they're doing is taking raw materials out of the world and utilizes new technologies like the steam engine, the factory, all to turn materials into durable goods. And there was a strong and primary focus on taking what the world had and immediately putting it to use for our own survival. Most farms were creating only enough food for those in its close orbit. Most technologies were only focused on better extraction and development. For instance, the Ford Model T truck was all about extracting metal and gas out of the ground and creating a tool that moved people and goods more efficiently than a horse and a buggy. Frankly, that project worked. Over time, and with real ingenuity, the Pax Americana of the post-World War II America and in developing countries around the world, that emerged. Beginning then, at least in the Western world, access to credit skyrocketed along with government spending, ensuring that many of the humans in our country now had access to a house and basic necessities fulfilled. And also through innovations in public health, nutrition, and social support, many of us on the call today, and this is really important, many of us on the call today traded questions premised about the facts of scarcity for a set of questions about the quality and direction of our lives. What's happening? Now, all over the world, people can now anticipate living well into their 70s. Life is not only getting longer, but it's getting better. Think about it, guys, we now trade worrying about our next meal to worrying about things like race and sex and drugs and self-actualization and rock and roll. All of this was actually the result of the fact that for more and more people, finding one next meal or housing had become a thing of the past. And this isn't something that came out of nowhere, right? Many of you have probably read John Keynes's famous essay, which is called Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren. Keynes published it in 1930, just after the market crash. And here's what he predicted. He predicted that through the power of compound interest, the real question for all of us was not how are we going to overcome scarcity and what he called the world of wants, but what in the world are we going to do with all of this leisure? This is what he called our permanent problem. In one of my favorite passages from the essay, he expressed real concern that once the problem of subsistence, of getting people food and shelter was solved, We as an economy, as countries, would have a collective nervous breakdown, which he likened to this condition of aristocratic woman who could not find domestic duties to find sufficiently amusing. As he put it, "To those who sweat for their daily bread, leisure is a longed-for sweet until they get it." Here's my point. Keynes in many ways has been proven right. Think about it. Today we have such material ease and comfort, allowing us to do things like today, where we get in and we get to discuss and debate whatever we want to. And we get to discuss and debate and build whatever we want to go build. Think about COVID times. Even if it's COVID times, we have abundance of time. How many of us can watch Netflix on the weekends and at night? We have abundance of friendship. How many of us continue to have time to see and hang out with friends? We have abundance of health. How many of us on the line are healthy because of modern medicine and access to fairly healthy food? We have abundance of longevity of life. We're living longer than we've ever lived before. And we have abundance of peace. Most of us are not at war. Are worried about our safety most of the time. You may have noticed here that I use the word abundance because we have an abundance of all of these things, and it's a gift. Abundance is a gift, and it's a new gift. It allows us to think, to discuss, and to debate what will lead to the best quality and direction of our lives. Just like any gift, we can either use it or set it aside. Yeah, I think about this bike that I just gave my daughter for her birthday. She's 6, right? I gave her this new 20-inch bike. This is her trying to figure out how in the world to use it. She can barely fit on the thing, you know, but she's kept at it. And now she rides the bike like a pro. Like, she's not wasting that gift. But like Keynes predicted, frankly, we're having a nervous breakdown. And I fear that many of us, and I'm including myself here, Many of us have been wasting this abundance that we have. And it's not because we don't want to waste it. It's that we don't have a good roadmap for what to do with our abundance. So there's two questions we're going to dig into today that I want us all to consider. And it's this. First, what are people currently doing with their abundance? Secondly, what does it mean for us, for all the hundreds of people on the line today? What does it mean for us as leaders of startups to thoughtfully extend our abundance to others? First, what are people currently doing with their abundance? I see people doing one of two things. They're wasting it through true realities and hoarding it. Or they're sharing their abundance with others. So to the initial point here, what does it mean for us to waste our abundance through trivialities and hoarding it? Okay. Think first at the most basic personal level, outside of work, what do many of us, including myself, what are we doing with our time? We're doomscrolling. Through TikTok and Instagram. We're binge-watching whatever is served up next to us on Netflix or some such. Like, we go out and we're eating crap food at a local bar. We're drinking a little too much on the weekends. We're working too much. We're neglecting the relationships that actually sustain us, and we're lacking gratitude. Before 1900, we were fighting for our survival. Now, instead of fighting for our survival, we're now spending our time consuming whatever is in front of us, and we're calling that progress. Okay, well, let's do this. Let's give ourselves some grace and say that we don't waste our whole of our life on abundance, but the most common alternative to wasting our abundance is actually hoarding it. Where with hoarding it, we keep building bigger and bigger homes for ourselves. We keep getting bigger and bigger cars for ourselves that use more and more gas. We're getting more and more things for ourselves with this abundance. And as you all know, hoarding and wasting our abundance has drastic implications for us as humans in our world. But hoarding and wasting our abundance also has drastic implications on the products we're building at our startups. As humans, if we only consume what's been given to us, what's in front of us, and keep hoarding more and more for ourselves, we never actually get outside of ourselves. And at the same time, study after study is showing us that the happiest, and the most successful people out there are the ones who are givers. You know, many of you know Adam Grant here. Adam Grant, a really famous psychologist out of University of Pennsylvania, says that the most successful people are the ones who constantly ask, "How can I help you?" versus "How can I consume better?" Said another way, Adam says that the most meaningful way to succeed is to help others succeed. He goes on to say that the more connected you are, the happier you'll become, and that all starts with how you can help others with giving them the resources, skills, and talents you have. So startups, as leaders to startups, if we only focus on building products and services that lead to people consuming more in an abundant world, We're effectively leading them to an empty well where they'll be stuck, unhappy, and self-focused. Okay. But here's the interesting thing we face as leaders to startups in an abundant world. Because of the financial abundance, because of the financial abundance where there is more dry powder from VCs ever in the history of our economy, you can go and build almost whatever you wanna go build. And dry powder, for those of you that don't know, dry powder is the money that's being given to VCs that haven't spent it yet. So with the way our economy is today, investors are able and willing to put their money into just about anything that has somewhat of a decent chance of success. Said another way, You, each one of you, can go and build just about anything. I mean, think about that for a second. You can go and build just about anything. But we're at the risk of building more and more ventures that make life less and less interesting and that lead to more and more human self-consumption and frankly, less and less friction. I mean, you guys can go build a company that creates a new way for us to get around, like Uber or Tesla, or an app that sends yo to your friends. You can go create a company that changes how we keep in touch with friends, or a company that's incentivized to keep you away from friends in a virtual world. You can go create a company that ensures food is quickly and easily delivered to your home. But here's the deal. For each of those real companies above, they've created a valuable product. A product that people use. Yet I'm curious to know how many of them are asking what makes people's lives actually better. For instance, okay, stop for a second and think about the best movie you've seen lately. Like seriously, just stop for a second and think about the best movie you've seen lately. I'm going to suggest that that movie had some sort of friction, something where someone was up against the world and had to overcome some huge struggle. Like this past week, I just watched Greyhound. It's the World War II movie with Tom Hanks. He's the ship captain trying to take a flotilla across the Atlantic. He was leading the group that was the first ship in the flotilla, right? So every time the Germans came up against the flotilla, he was in charge of attacking the Germans, right? The movie had a great ending, but the whole movie was about the struggle of Tom Hanks' character working through his personal tiredness, stress, and vulnerability to lead his shipmates to safety. And just like the movies we love, the best lives are typically ones that are known for that same sort of friction, where people overcome incredible obstacles to achieve some sort of success. Yet most of our products and services are being built to take away that friction. And the point is this, for all of you on the line, as people who are building startups, we can optimize for anything. Our abundant world means that you can create just about whatever you want and probably get it funded and have customers. And unfortunately, there isn't much consensus in our world today about what is worth optimizing for. For instance, okay, how many of us today think about new venture creation, creating startups as an exercise in helping people manage their abundance? For years, I never did this, right? And why would I? Investors and my friends aren't focused on this question. Most of the world just cares about how much we're killing it, how much revenue we have, how many customers we have, how much we just raised. But instead of using our abundance for hoarding or for trivialities. What would happen if we used it for something outside of ourselves? And it's something that I like to call abundance for others versus using abundance for myself. And I may suggest that we think about this idea of abundance for others, and here's why. By using our abundance for others, we're betting on core human needs, even if they're not obvious. We're building products and services that are both better for end users and better for long-term business strategy. Essentially, every business operates on some form of human need, and they're placing some sort of bet on a better self that's inherently valuable and worthwhile in the long run. So building something that lasts has to do with building something that helps humans become more of who humans were created to be. And if we think about it that way, where our job is to optimize people's abundance, where our job is to create solutions that help them navigate the abundance in front of them, then we can go on to our second question, which is this, which is, what does it mean for us as leaders of startups to thoughtfully extend our abundance to others? And this is something that I'm thinking about a ton. And I, so many of you heard, right? I run a for-profit VC called GAN Ventures. I run another for-profit community called GAN that connects the accelerators, venture studios, and Fortune 500 innovation teams to one another. And for the last decade, I focused on running two great companies. I focused on creating great products and services and a great culture. Okay, and that is all really, really good, and yet I realized something. I realized that, you know, especially as a white male in America, I've been given incredible opportunities, and even as I create products and services and cultures and invest in companies, I can still create companies that are effectively leading to my and my children's and my friends' long-term demise. I can go and fund companies that make my life easier but more disconnected from others, that make accessing information easier but make me less intelligent along the way. I can go and create great companies for humans that are also horrible for our humanity. So in light of that, I've spent the last few years trying to understand what does it mean to create great companies for humans that are also great for our humanity. And I've been introduced to this amazing woman, uh, named Martha Nussbaum. She's part of a set of development, um, um, economists who are thinking about this idea like ad nauseam. So she is someone, Martha Nussbaum, is someone who's worth thinking about if you're convinced that we are wasting our abundance and could help people live better lives. When people ask Martha, what can we go and build that will help other people live their best lives in a world full of abundance? Here's what she says. She says, what does it mean for people to live their best lives? And to answer that question, Martha Nussbaum and her colleague Amartya Sen They developed this idea called the capabilities approach to development economics. And frankly, they've been wildly successful. And their basic insight is really simple but profound. And it said this, it said, if we want to improve, if we want to improve people's lives in an abundant world and help them live the best lives possible in this world, we need to be able to measure what people can actually do. For instance, if people can't get around a city due to their city's infrastructure, or they can't get around the city because they're handicapped and they don't have a wheelchair, it's going to be hard for them to get to work, let alone start a business. And while an economic measure like GDP can give you a sense of how much buying and selling takes place in a society, it tells you very little about what people can actually do. But the goal of managing abundance is not just increasing more and more activity, like whether it's GDP or user engagement or raising capital, like how much capital you've raised, right? But it's actually about making things that make people better. And what do we need to do to go make things that make people better? Nussbaum wanted to say that all of her research pointed towards this idea that our job is not to create more GDP, more investment capital and more revenue, although those are good things. Rather, the best thing we can do with our abundance, our job is to help people have capabilities to do the things they want to do in the world. And over time, ensure that people have more and more capabilities to do what they want to do in the world. Like for instance, going back to my daughter, Nussbaum would say that it's not my job. To help my daughter get an A on her test. It's not my job to help my daughter get an A on her test. It's my job to ensure that she has the capabilities to live in a safe home, a home full of emotion, a place where she can be attached to others, a place where she's capable to play, and a place where she's capable to have agency, the most agency she can have as a 6-year-old living in Denver, Colorado. And that's why I'm gonna give each of us the following prompt. She would say that our job as CEOs of companies is not to just get people to use our app and pay us money, although those are good things. Rather, the best use of our time and energy and the best thing that will lead to our long-term success as founders is creating companies that give people the capabilities they need to ultimately go and live their lives. That's why at GIN Ventures, we invest in things like Spark Grills. It's a charcoal grill that operates like a gas grill, but uses charcoal as its fuel. And I love their CEO, you know, because there are two ways that Ben, the CEO, could have thought about the purpose of his company. He could have said that his only purpose was to get users for the grill and revenue and investment capital. Yet Ben is saying that his purpose is to give people the capability to connect with others. 'Cause you think about a grill, what are you doing? You're outside with friends providing food that then ultimately people connect over. So he's going, instead of just making a product with revenue, he wants to make, he wants to provide a grill that gives people the capability to love, care, and be attached to others. Okay, so as we round this down, as we start wrapping up, what in the world does this mean for us as leaders of startups to thoughtfully extend our our abundance to others. And frankly, I have no idea what this means for you, but Nussbaum and Sen would say that the best use of our time, energy, and work is to use our abundance, our tools, our resources, and gift to give others the capability to go off and do whatever they want to do in the world, to give others things like this, the ability to be free, to love, grieve, care, and be attached to others, right? The ability to play, to be able to recreate and find joy, the ability to craft a plan for one's life. But here's why I like all of this. In a world of scarcity, where the metric for success was all about financial metrics, like how much are we gonna produce? How much are we gonna create? What are we gonna form? And in an abundant world, those metrics, while still useful, don't get to the heart of what we're able to do with our abundance. And the metric that I get excited to do, to go after, is one that has to do with asking if the products we're building actually help people have increasing capabilities to live lives full of agency, connection, and health. Okay, so where do we go from here? Here's what we now know. We now realize that one, we're living in a world full of abundance, 2, we realize that the chief question for us is what are we going to do with that abundance? And 3, we realize that the great opportunity for us and our startups is to increase the capabilities for others to be able to go and do what they want to do in the world. And as I think about this, it's like, what is the roadmap to make sure that we and others don't waste this abundance? And here's what I found. Like, number one, I'm asking myself a lot, what does it mean? What does a thriving person look like in an abundant world? And for me, this is watching the people at Snooze in Denver. It's a breakfast restaurant in downtown Denver. People there are free to connect with others over a great breakfast. They're laughing, connecting, discussing life with one another. And why is this thriving to me? It's because it's people who have the time, resources, freedom, and capabilities to connect with other humans and engage freely in thoughtful, life-giving discussions. Secondly, it's this. It's— secondly, it's— I've done a lot of work to ask myself, what has happened to make these people thriving in an abundant world? And for me, this is where Nussbaum has helped me tremendously. Like she said that people who are thriving have the capability to thrive, and without the capability to thrive, they'll never end up becoming thriving people. Without the capability to get to work, people can't actually work. So she would say that thriving people need to have the capability and increased capabilities to go and to do what they want to do in the world. And finally, I'm asking myself this, which is, what can I do through my work to increase people's capabilities to become more thriving people in an abundant world. What can I do? And it's things like, how can I go invest in more Spark Grills that are better letting people be free to live with and towards others? And how can I invest in companies like Omnia Fishing, which is another one of our companies that helps people find the best fishing spots and the tackle to go with them when they go fishing, help them play, create, and find joy. And how can I go and build a community again that helps people have more control over their environment through our company culture and being, being a community that empowers people to become who they want to become, right? And ultimately, this will lead us to a place where we can live out our vision, which is a more whole economy where our systems are more responsive to the needs, dignity, and potential of all people. Okay. So, but it all boils down to this. What would it mean for you and your startup to handle our abundance with seriousness? And that is frankly our task. What would it mean for you and your startup to handle our abundance with seriousness? I can't wait to hear what you do. Thank you so much.