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Forbes Books presents the Startup Science Podcast with Gregory Shepherd,
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brought to you by Startupscience dot Io. Greg is an
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entrepreneur who's built and sold twelve businesses, a recipient of
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four private equity awards, featured ted X speaker and Ben
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Bella Publishing and Penguin Random House author Pierce Gregory Sheppard.
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I'm back with a Ras Shaky and entrepreneurial lead at
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UC San Diego and CEO of the Janis Innovation Hub.
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We've been discussing how he transformed his academic career into
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a mission of empowering immigrant entrepreneurs. So, Ris, what lessons
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did you learn from launching and exiting your first star
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up that you're using now in the Janas Innovation Hub.
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Yes, for this successful exit that we had and takes
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around eight months. As during the negotiations with the buyer,
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the most important lesson for me during that time was
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flexibility and being flexible. This is very importantly sent during
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that tone for me when you want to negotiate with someone,
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when you want to get something that you create with
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your hand, and you know you make it on your own,
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but this is a time you have to let it
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go and start the new job and start the new
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things to do to make a new impact in the world.
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So you should be flexible, You should be a gile
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in doing this kind of decisions because you know the
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opportunity is not happen all the time. The opportunity is
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not you're not in a flow an influx of opportunity.
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If you get an opportunity to do something and infusing,
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this is the right time, do that at that moment,
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don't let it go and don't somehow mess up with
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lots of factors from different aspect. Just if you decide
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to buy something, if you decide to sell something at
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a point in your vision and the point in your
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carrier pass, let's do it happen. Don't stick to something
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for all your life. You have to all the people
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the audience should have to somehow experience something new. Be flexible,
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be somehow agile in these kind of decisions and leap
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into your next business, leap into your next next era
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of your life.
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So, for people that are listening, can you explain what
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a innovation hub is, what a accelerator, incubator, et cetera.
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Like what this is. If if you're listening and you're
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a brand new founder and you're you're you're not even
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a founder, you're what we call a entrepreneur, right, and
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you're sitting there going, I really want to be an
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entrepreneur and I like listening to the podcast what is
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an accelerator? What is an innovation of what is an incubator?
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And how can it help me?
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Yeah, if you're if if the audience are considers themselves
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as an entrepreneur or have a plan to be an entrepreneur,
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the very in a very very elios stage. They need
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to get some kind of support from friends and family,
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people that they have some kind of experience, or maybe
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from incubators. Incubators are some places or some therms that
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help you to make your super eliot stage idea into
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something more tangible to the UH some kind of MVP
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menimum viable product or PROTOE type that you can present
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it for your potential customers, make something solid, make something
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rigid for your next customers, for next investors. So you
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need to go for these kind of programs to turn
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to your idea into prototype, into minimum viable product, minimum
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presentable product to the next level over of journey, the acceleration.
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When you talk about acceleration. It means that now you
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have MVP. Now you have minimum viable products, something that
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you can present it to your potential customers. Now that's
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time to add a more feature to it, make it functional,
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make it something that works as a product that people
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can use it, people can apply it in the real world.
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So you go for for example, acceleration program and get
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ready to raise fond for in a grous stage for example.
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And uh, that's a difference between incubator and accelerator. In
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Jana's Innovation HOB, we consider themselves as an incubator and
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when it means that we work with super AliOS stage startups.
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If you have any kind of ideas and if your
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character fits with fit with our demand, with our with
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Jane's Innovation Hob, then we put you in the next
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roasting roster and in next cohort we collaborate with you.
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We're providing three different support. First tailor made mentorship. Second,
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we bundle you with the technical team. It's very important
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to get you this kind of services in a super
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alio stity startups. And finally we found that based on
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our experience, people in earlier stage has some kind of
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lack of product management. They do not have enough understanding
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of being product managers, so they're somehow these their resources
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if they do not get enough support in product management services.
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So we bundle a senior product manager with them with
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a high level of commitment with those teams and support
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them to make their MVP during this sticks to nine
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months Cohorse. It's up to the program that they're sign
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up for that and at the end of the day,
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we connect them to the acceleration programs, we connect them
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to the VS pool that we have to to the
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other investors or see the stage.
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So let me shift a little bit. I'm interested in
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decentralized distributed data systems and the decentralized Data description Systems
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lab that you have. Can you talk a little bit
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about what that is and what drove you to do that.
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Yeah, Decentralized distributed data system that was the name of
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the lab that I had during I was working in
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Sheriff University of Technology as a faculty member. On that lab,
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we're working on blockchain technologies and tokenizations for different applications.
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That was one of the main vertical that you're still
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into it that you're still working on that and a
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few of this idea that you can find in Gene's
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innovation hob came from Decentralized Distributed Data Systems lab. And
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you know, we think that in the future the fintech,
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this is the promising that the fintech will go to
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this kind of technologies in crypto on the side of
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cryptocurrencies and blockchains technologies, especially with the new president elect
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and their teams, I think that we will shift more
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and more to this part of the technology. And yes,
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we will hear a lot about new kind of regulation
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that we will have in the US and new money
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that will influx to the blockchain and cryptocurrencies. And that's
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one of our verticals that you're still working on it.
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How do you approach building and leading multi disciplinary teams
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from your perspective, specifically as it pertains to Janus innovation,
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because now you're talking about a whole bunch of startups
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with all different disciplines. How do you approach working and
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leading with these teams. Yeah, you know, the most important
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things that help us to learn this issue to learn
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the skills as was.
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Covid. Really, Covid was the best teacher of all of
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our teammates and co founders of Jane's Innovation HOUB. We
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learned how we can manage teams from different places. We
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could not meet up any time that we wanted, so
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we had to learn how we can collaborate with each
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other from different parts of the Australia, from different part
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of the world. So we sharpen our skills. We had
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to sharpen our skills, otherwise the dooms to fail. For
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interdisciplinary teams, the most important things is make a harmony
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between different different disciplines. How you can translate, how you
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can interpret different themes, different people with different school of thought,
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with different hypotheses to talk with each other. How you
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can interpret this. Based on our experience, we found that
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every team has different features, has different characters. You need
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to understand the character of the teams and it takes
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and it really takes time to understand how people in
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a team can talk to each other. Communication. Communication, communication,
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This is the most important things I learned from COVID.
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If you want to be on the same page, you
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need to communicate as much as possible. You don't need
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to delve into the old disciplines and know every corner
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of science, for example, or every corner of that discipline.
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To talk with them. You only need to try to
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come unicate with people. Well, have a general knowledge of
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that and ask people. Ask the different disciplines. I have
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asked the different teams to talk with each other. The
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most important things that we do for interdisciplinary team is
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to help them is trying to support them to talk
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with each other more and more, to communicate each other
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more and more, to listen to each other more and more.
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So when we.
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Talk about effective communication, we really believe in to it.
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We educate that those guys our teams, we not only learn,
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we would also try to push them. Yeah, if you
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want to be on a saying page, you need to
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communicate guys, otherwise we gotta fail.
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Let me switch gears a little bit and ask you
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about some advice you would have for academic researchers who
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are looking to commercialize their work. There's a lot of
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academics out there who get patents and file things, and
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there's a whole there's an entire area called technology transfer.
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From people in academia who can't figure out how to
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commercialize what they do. What advice would you have for them?
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That's a very good question, dwig I asked several times
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from different academia people, what is the best time for
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being entrepreneur? And you know what's my answer is? My
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answer is now. Now. If they ask me this question
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next year, I say, Now, if they asked me this
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question last week, I say, now, you have to move
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out from open the door and start your journey. Otherwise
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you cannot learn. This is not something you can find
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from the book. This is not something you can find
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from getting a core says with watching YouTube. Yeah, of
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course you should do that, but first of all, you
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need to dive into the ocean of entrepreneurship. Otherwise that's
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just that's just blah blah blah blah blah.
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How would you what what advice would you have for
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people to identify market needs and the potential for new
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technology solutions As an academic, like let's say they haven't
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come up with something, but they want to be an entrepreneur,
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how would you how would you give them advice on
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identifying market needs and what potential there is for new innovations.
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This is one of the not a good character of
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academia people. That's because they're not connected with real markets,
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with the real ward. They think that what they develop
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in their labs. Is the best solution for the is
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the best solution for the markets. Uh. You know, so
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if there start, if they're attached to this kind of
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idea that they develop in their lab, they're gonna fail
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for sure. So my advice for people from academia for
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the other place, it's no, this is not a difference
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between where there are coming. And I criticize the concept
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of Norse's star. This is not a Norss star in
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the in the in the current word, the only Norse
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star is pivets. If you want to make something work,
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you should pivots pi vets, pivets, pivots and proceed. Otherwise,
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if you have an idea and you get a stick
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to it, you will be a patriot of that idea.
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You're gonna fail for sure. Stay in academia.
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What has been your most challenged startup experience and what
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did you learn from it?
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Yeah, the most challenging startups that I had, I had
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an startups in in Dubai. We're working on uh, we're
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working on a gang on that days, the gang based
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on cryptocurrencies and tokenizations, and what I learned from the data.
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Startup failed on that time and the most important things
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that I learned from that startup. Was the most lesson
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learned for me was uh, fie the the teams with
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high level of commitments. So if you, if you cannot
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sometimes because of lack of money, you decide to rely
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on on the valiable people with low quality with low
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level of commitments, that's the single failure points.
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I agree with that.
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Yeah, I think that if you're if you, if you,
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if you do not have enough money for that, try
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to find the high quality people, but change the approach
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of collaborate with them, for example, use some kind of
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Terman conditions to uh give them sharing instead of pay
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less money to low quality people, and at the end
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of the day your business would fail. Yeah.
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What emerging market technologies or sectors do you see that
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you're most excited about right now?
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Yeah, I'm very excited about blockchain technology. Yeah because yeah,
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because not only because of some kind of political reason,
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but also because of their the security matters and in
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this era, the reliability yeah, yeah, exactly, and accessibility and
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oh I think that blockchain is the uh next again,
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they would be the blockchain will be the next big attractor,
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a big absorb absorber of money and resources.
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Again, I think so too. I mean I think that
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I was thinking about it too with regards to elections
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and how awesome it would be if elections were run
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on blockchain, because yeah, of course, yeah yeah, it's like
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the perfect use case right for for blockchain is voting.
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You know, It's like, yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure,
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you wouldn't have the concerns about people, you know, tricking
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the machines and that sort of stuff because everything would
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be on the block. So it just seems like it's
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just a way better way to go about it. Aris.
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I really appreciate your time and your energy. Thank you
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so much for joining the Startup Science Podcast. I really
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appreciate it.
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Thank you so much Greg for having me, and I'm
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really happy to get connected to you and startup science.
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Startup science is one of the gem I really appreciate it,
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and I'm sure that not very far from today we
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will hear more and more about startup Science.
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Thank you so much. I hope you have a great day.
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I appreciate it.
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You too, have a good one.
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And that's it for another episode of the Startup Science Podcast.
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If you can leave a five star review on Apple
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or Spotify, I would deeply appreciate it. Founders is a
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thank you for changing our world. I'm offering free access
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to my startup platform, Visionaries by greg Re Shepherd, a
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one stop shop for founders with everything from a startup academy, investor,
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Matt Grant finders, pitchfinders, and a whole lot more. Go
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00:19:04.640 --> 00:19:07.799
to Gregory Shepherd dot com to get Visionaries access. Use
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Code Founders all Capital for free access to the platform
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and check it out yourself until I see you next time.
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My friends, no mistake.
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This Startup Science podcast with Gregory Shepherd is brought to
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you by Startupscience dot io. Founders can log on too
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startupscience dot io and use code Forbes to get free access.
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To connect and find out more about greg go to
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Gregory Shepherd dot com. The Startup Science Podcast is a
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production of Forbes Books.
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Forbes Books presents the Startup Science Podcast with Gregory Shepherd,
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brought to you by Startupscience dot Io. Greg is an
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entrepreneur who's built and sold twelve businesses, a recipient of
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four private equity awards, featured ted X speaker and Ben
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Bella Publishing and Penguin Random House author Pierce Gregory Sheppard.
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I'm back with a Ras Shaky and entrepreneurial lead at
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UC San Diego and CEO of the Janis Innovation Hub.
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We've been discussing how he transformed his academic career into
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a mission of empowering immigrant entrepreneurs. So, Ris, what lessons
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did you learn from launching and exiting your first star
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up that you're using now in the Janas Innovation Hub.
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Yes, for this successful exit that we had and takes
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around eight months. As during the negotiations with the buyer,
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the most important lesson for me during that time was
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flexibility and being flexible. This is very importantly sent during
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that tone for me when you want to negotiate with someone,
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when you want to get something that you create with
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your hand, and you know you make it on your own,
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but this is a time you have to let it
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go and start the new job and start the new
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things to do to make a new impact in the world.
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So you should be flexible, You should be a gile
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in doing this kind of decisions because you know the
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opportunity is not happen all the time. The opportunity is
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not you're not in a flow an influx of opportunity.
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If you get an opportunity to do something and infusing,
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this is the right time, do that at that moment,
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don't let it go and don't somehow mess up with
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lots of factors from different aspect. Just if you decide
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to buy something, if you decide to sell something at
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a point in your vision and the point in your
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carrier pass, let's do it happen. Don't stick to something
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for all your life. You have to all the people
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the audience should have to somehow experience something new. Be flexible,
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be somehow agile in these kind of decisions and leap
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into your next business, leap into your next next era
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of your life.
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So, for people that are listening, can you explain what
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a innovation hub is, what a accelerator, incubator, et cetera.
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Like what this is. If if you're listening and you're
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a brand new founder and you're you're you're not even
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a founder, you're what we call a entrepreneur, right, and
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you're sitting there going, I really want to be an
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entrepreneur and I like listening to the podcast what is
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an accelerator? What is an innovation of what is an incubator?
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And how can it help me?
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Yeah, if you're if if the audience are considers themselves
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as an entrepreneur or have a plan to be an entrepreneur,
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the very in a very very elios stage. They need
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to get some kind of support from friends and family,
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people that they have some kind of experience, or maybe
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from incubators. Incubators are some places or some therms that
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help you to make your super eliot stage idea into
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something more tangible to the UH some kind of MVP
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menimum viable product or PROTOE type that you can present
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it for your potential customers, make something solid, make something
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rigid for your next customers, for next investors. So you
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need to go for these kind of programs to turn
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to your idea into prototype, into minimum viable product, minimum
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presentable product to the next level over of journey, the acceleration.
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When you talk about acceleration. It means that now you
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have MVP. Now you have minimum viable products, something that
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you can present it to your potential customers. Now that's
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time to add a more feature to it, make it functional,
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make it something that works as a product that people
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can use it, people can apply it in the real world.
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So you go for for example, acceleration program and get
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ready to raise fond for in a grous stage for example.
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And uh, that's a difference between incubator and accelerator. In
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Jana's Innovation HOB, we consider themselves as an incubator and
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when it means that we work with super AliOS stage startups.
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If you have any kind of ideas and if your
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character fits with fit with our demand, with our with
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Jane's Innovation Hob, then we put you in the next
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roasting roster and in next cohort we collaborate with you.
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We're providing three different support. First tailor made mentorship. Second,
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we bundle you with the technical team. It's very important
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to get you this kind of services in a super
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alio stity startups. And finally we found that based on
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our experience, people in earlier stage has some kind of
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lack of product management. They do not have enough understanding
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of being product managers, so they're somehow these their resources
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if they do not get enough support in product management services.
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So we bundle a senior product manager with them with
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a high level of commitment with those teams and support
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them to make their MVP during this sticks to nine
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months Cohorse. It's up to the program that they're sign
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up for that and at the end of the day,
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we connect them to the acceleration programs, we connect them
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to the VS pool that we have to to the
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other investors or see the stage.
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So let me shift a little bit. I'm interested in
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decentralized distributed data systems and the decentralized Data description Systems
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lab that you have. Can you talk a little bit
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about what that is and what drove you to do that.
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Yeah, Decentralized distributed data system that was the name of
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the lab that I had during I was working in
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Sheriff University of Technology as a faculty member. On that lab,
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we're working on blockchain technologies and tokenizations for different applications.
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That was one of the main vertical that you're still
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into it that you're still working on that and a
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few of this idea that you can find in Gene's
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innovation hob came from Decentralized Distributed Data Systems lab. And
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you know, we think that in the future the fintech,
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this is the promising that the fintech will go to
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this kind of technologies in crypto on the side of
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cryptocurrencies and blockchains technologies, especially with the new president elect
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and their teams, I think that we will shift more
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and more to this part of the technology. And yes,
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we will hear a lot about new kind of regulation
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that we will have in the US and new money
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that will influx to the blockchain and cryptocurrencies. And that's
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one of our verticals that you're still working on it.
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How do you approach building and leading multi disciplinary teams
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from your perspective, specifically as it pertains to Janus innovation,
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because now you're talking about a whole bunch of startups
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with all different disciplines. How do you approach working and
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leading with these teams. Yeah, you know, the most important
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things that help us to learn this issue to learn
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the skills as was.
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Covid. Really, Covid was the best teacher of all of
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our teammates and co founders of Jane's Innovation HOUB. We
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learned how we can manage teams from different places. We
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could not meet up any time that we wanted, so
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we had to learn how we can collaborate with each
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other from different parts of the Australia, from different part
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of the world. So we sharpen our skills. We had
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to sharpen our skills, otherwise the dooms to fail. For
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interdisciplinary teams, the most important things is make a harmony
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between different different disciplines. How you can translate, how you
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can interpret different themes, different people with different school of thought,
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with different hypotheses to talk with each other. How you
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can interpret this. Based on our experience, we found that
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every team has different features, has different characters. You need
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to understand the character of the teams and it takes
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and it really takes time to understand how people in
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a team can talk to each other. Communication. Communication, communication,
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This is the most important things I learned from COVID.
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If you want to be on the same page, you
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need to communicate as much as possible. You don't need
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to delve into the old disciplines and know every corner
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of science, for example, or every corner of that discipline.
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To talk with them. You only need to try to
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come unicate with people. Well, have a general knowledge of
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that and ask people. Ask the different disciplines. I have
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asked the different teams to talk with each other. The
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most important things that we do for interdisciplinary team is
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to help them is trying to support them to talk
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with each other more and more, to communicate each other
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more and more, to listen to each other more and more.
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So when we.
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Talk about effective communication, we really believe in to it.
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We educate that those guys our teams, we not only learn,
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we would also try to push them. Yeah, if you
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want to be on a saying page, you need to
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communicate guys, otherwise we gotta fail.
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Let me switch gears a little bit and ask you
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about some advice you would have for academic researchers who
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are looking to commercialize their work. There's a lot of
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academics out there who get patents and file things, and
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there's a whole there's an entire area called technology transfer.
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From people in academia who can't figure out how to
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commercialize what they do. What advice would you have for them?
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That's a very good question, dwig I asked several times
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from different academia people, what is the best time for
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being entrepreneur? And you know what's my answer is? My
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answer is now. Now. If they ask me this question
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next year, I say, Now, if they asked me this
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question last week, I say, now, you have to move
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out from open the door and start your journey. Otherwise
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you cannot learn. This is not something you can find
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from the book. This is not something you can find
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from getting a core says with watching YouTube. Yeah, of
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course you should do that, but first of all, you
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need to dive into the ocean of entrepreneurship. Otherwise that's
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just that's just blah blah blah blah blah.
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How would you what what advice would you have for
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people to identify market needs and the potential for new
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technology solutions As an academic, like let's say they haven't
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come up with something, but they want to be an entrepreneur,
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how would you how would you give them advice on
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identifying market needs and what potential there is for new innovations.
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This is one of the not a good character of
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academia people. That's because they're not connected with real markets,
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with the real ward. They think that what they develop
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in their labs. Is the best solution for the is
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the best solution for the markets. Uh. You know, so
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if there start, if they're attached to this kind of
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idea that they develop in their lab, they're gonna fail
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for sure. So my advice for people from academia for
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the other place, it's no, this is not a difference
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between where there are coming. And I criticize the concept
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of Norse's star. This is not a Norss star in
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the in the in the current word, the only Norse
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star is pivets. If you want to make something work,
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you should pivots pi vets, pivets, pivots and proceed. Otherwise,
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if you have an idea and you get a stick
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to it, you will be a patriot of that idea.
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You're gonna fail for sure. Stay in academia.
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What has been your most challenged startup experience and what
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did you learn from it?
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Yeah, the most challenging startups that I had, I had
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an startups in in Dubai. We're working on uh, we're
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working on a gang on that days, the gang based
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on cryptocurrencies and tokenizations, and what I learned from the data.
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Startup failed on that time and the most important things
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that I learned from that startup. Was the most lesson
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learned for me was uh, fie the the teams with
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high level of commitments. So if you, if you cannot
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sometimes because of lack of money, you decide to rely
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on on the valiable people with low quality with low
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level of commitments, that's the single failure points.
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I agree with that.
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Yeah, I think that if you're if you, if you,
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if you do not have enough money for that, try
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to find the high quality people, but change the approach
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of collaborate with them, for example, use some kind of
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Terman conditions to uh give them sharing instead of pay
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less money to low quality people, and at the end
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of the day your business would fail. Yeah.
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What emerging market technologies or sectors do you see that
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you're most excited about right now?
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Yeah, I'm very excited about blockchain technology. Yeah because yeah,
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because not only because of some kind of political reason,
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but also because of their the security matters and in
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this era, the reliability yeah, yeah, exactly, and accessibility and
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oh I think that blockchain is the uh next again,
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they would be the blockchain will be the next big attractor,
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a big absorb absorber of money and resources.
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Again, I think so too. I mean I think that
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I was thinking about it too with regards to elections
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and how awesome it would be if elections were run
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on blockchain, because yeah, of course, yeah yeah, it's like
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the perfect use case right for for blockchain is voting.
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You know, It's like, yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure,
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you wouldn't have the concerns about people, you know, tricking
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the machines and that sort of stuff because everything would
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be on the block. So it just seems like it's
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just a way better way to go about it. Aris.
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I really appreciate your time and your energy. Thank you
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so much for joining the Startup Science Podcast. I really
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appreciate it.
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Thank you so much Greg for having me, and I'm
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really happy to get connected to you and startup science.
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Startup science is one of the gem I really appreciate it,
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and I'm sure that not very far from today we
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will hear more and more about startup Science.
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Thank you so much. I hope you have a great day.
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I appreciate it.
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You too, have a good one.
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And that's it for another episode of the Startup Science Podcast.
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If you can leave a five star review on Apple
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or Spotify, I would deeply appreciate it. Founders is a
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thank you for changing our world. I'm offering free access
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to my startup platform, Visionaries by greg Re Shepherd, a
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one stop shop for founders with everything from a startup academy, investor,
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Matt Grant finders, pitchfinders, and a whole lot more. Go
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to Gregory Shepherd dot com to get Visionaries access. Use
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Code Founders all Capital for free access to the platform
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and check it out yourself until I see you next time.
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My friends, no mistake.
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This Startup Science podcast with Gregory Shepherd is brought to
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you by Startupscience dot io. Founders can log on too
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startupscience dot io and use code Forbes to get free access.
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To connect and find out more about greg go to
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Gregory Shepherd dot com. The Startup Science Podcast is a
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production of Forbes Books.
