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Forbes Books presents the Startup Science Podcast
with Gregory Shepherd, brought to you by
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Startupscience dot Io. Greg is an
entrepreneur who has built and sold twelve businesses.
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He's a recipient of four private equity
awards and is a featured ten X
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speaker and Forbes author. Here's Gregory
Shepherd. I'm back with my friend Owen
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Matthews, the chairman of Alacrity Canada, where they equip founders with the skills,
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knowledge and network and capital to launch
and grow transformational businesses in Canada.
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Now, Owen, you recently shared
with me a relationship that you've established with
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Fulbright. Can you explain what Fulbright
is, what they do, and what
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the relationship is that you struck as
a co founder of the Fulbright Entrepreneurship Initiative
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in Canada. Sure, that's in
my mind, very very exciting. If
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I go back and describe a little
bit of what the organization I found in
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night Share, you know, called
Alacrity does. We worked with university grads,
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put them into IT program where we
helped them create a company. And
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those companies, you know, were
very focused on understanding customer demand, very
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focused on building products that we knew
were going to lead to early sales in
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a very top market, remember two
thousand and nine, and grew those companies
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to be quite successful. When I
thought about how to make that much bigger,
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to me, the obvious conclusion was
Fulbright. Fulbright, for those of
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you who aren't aware, is a
really amazing, you know, seventy odd
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year old, you know, scholarship
program that was started out of the US
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and supported by the US government,
and to me was was just a,
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you know, just an amazing organization. They're tied into something like the top
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thousand research universities in the world.
We're talking about Oxford and Cambridge and Harvard
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and Princeton and Stanford and University of
Toronto and McGill and UBC, like really
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really top notch phenomenal organizations. And
you know, when I think about their
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reach into those organizations, to me, I think about the incredible talent that
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are in those organizations that haven't made
that leap of faith that we talked about
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earlier. You've got amazingly talented people
who have taken the most difficult subjects.
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Their chemists, their computer scientists,
their data scientists, their engineers, and
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the idea of entrepreneurship maybe hadn't occurred
to them because there's no reasonable path to
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do it. Well, if I
can work with Fulbright and bring that,
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you know, try to get around
the leap of faith, try to bring
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a reasonable path to creating a company, it felt like I could make Alacrity
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a thousand times bigger. So if
I could understand the market needs, bring
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the corporate needs, find the challenges
that the markets needed, distill that down
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into challenges that I could put out
into a network and bring it to the
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Fullbright connected universities, then Fulbright would
be in a position to be engaging scholars
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Fulbright scholars on problems that we know
have commercial demand and we know are solving
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some of our most serious problems in
the world. We have a big focus
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on sustainability and industrial transformation, and
if we can do that work, we
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can get some of the smartest people
in the world to engage in a scholarship
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to solve commercial problems that lead to
some really, really exciting startups. So
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for me, it was a natural
way for me to take the platform that
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we've had at Alacrity and make it
as big as I possibly can make it
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with some of the best and brightest
people in the world. So this program
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it's starting in Canada, right,
but then it's going to go elsewhere after
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the pilot is conducted and successful out
there in Canada. And when you look
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at this whole situation with regards to
what corporates are after and the problems that
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are out there, and you think
about, you know, the corporate normally
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has to sit there and look at
the field of opportunities to try to see
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if there's anything, any kind of
needle in the haystack that fits their needs.
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Does this program that you're putting together
have any ability to help those corporates
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find deals or somehow get solutions to
the problems that they're really trying to solve
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instead of just sit there and go
through whatever people create. Yeah. Absolutely,
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you can imagine. You go to, you know, a corporate and
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some of the challenges of corporations are
they're highly committed to a large existing business.
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If you're doing billions of dollars in
revenue, you really need to concentrate
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on continuing and keeping that train moving. And there's oldpile stuff you'd love to
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do that you can't get to do
because you know, we've got all these
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resources that are fully invested into making
sure that machine keeps rolling and you keep
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keep hitting those those billions of dollars
in revenue. There's a lot of stuff
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that you know that your customers want
that you're going to take years and years
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to get to. That that you
would love to get to more quickly,
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but you just can't get to it. So to turn to an organization that
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is going to listen to that and
deliver on some of those needs in a
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partnership where you're either creating companies or
doing research for them and they're licensing it.
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Generally, we prefer creating companies.
You know, from from my perspective,
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you have corporate needs desperate for innovation, and you've got this incredible,
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you know, group of brilliant people
who are willing to step up and solve
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those problems in exchange for the opportunity
to sell to that market. You know,
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for me, that's the natural place
for corporates to innovate, To go
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after the best and brightest people in
the world, who have a commercial connection
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to to your needs and are motivated
to help deliver on your needs, and
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they can they can they can bring
that next wave of innovation to your corporate
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So we have a long history of
doing that with any of the large corporations
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that we've been involved with, whether
we founded them and built them up or
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partnered with them over the years.
It was just an obvious this is what
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we need to do. This is
the where the innovation lies. And we've
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done an excellent job building those kind
of innovative organizations over the years. This
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to me is an obvious obvious step. One other aspect of that is,
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you know, the scholarships are very
prestigious. So when we partner with full
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Bright and we're talking about issuing scholarships
to academic institutions or to individuals and academic
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institutions, it's quite prestigious. So
we can find a way to encourage them
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to go down a commercial track with
a classic academic you know encouragement, which
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is which is you know, that
sort of prestigious scholarship. But not all
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of the value to the corporate will
come from just the just the scholarships and
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the people involved in it. In
that way, in alacrity, we also
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want to source all kinds of other
people who are applying, they're sharing what
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they're doing to get after those scholarship
dollars and get after those those you know,
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the support money coming from the corporate, so they're going to be sharing
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what it is they're working on.
They might get selected, they might get
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some funding, or they might just
get some support. And for us working
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with those corporates, they're going to
get you know, not just you know,
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people like Alacrity solving their problems and
we're happy to partner with lots and
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lots of people to do that around
the world. They're also also going to
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see on a platform all kinds of
interesting you know, technology and interesting solutions
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that come from all kinds of places
around the world as people vie for those
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dollars. It's a little bit like
when you do a challenge. You know,
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when you put that challenge out there, you're going to see many,
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many different ways of addressing that challenge. You might only select one or two
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to get funding, but you're going
to see ted or twenty or thirty.
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So you're taking the interchange right.
So this middle spot where you have these
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founders coming in. Some founders have
ideas, some of them don't, but
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they want to be a founder.
And then you're taking the needs that the
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corporates have and you're putting those needs
in front of those founders so they can
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build things with you knowing that there
is a corporate that is interested in buying
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that. So this is sort of
turning things upside down. Right. Normally,
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what you do is you're a corporate
and you have to hunt from whatever's
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available. But what you're saying is
tell them what you want, put it
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in front of them, and then
have them build it. It seems like
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this would work for foundations and other
sides too, But you also mentioned something
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about the universities. So if the
university has somebody who is working on a
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project, but the project, let's
say a research paper or something like that,
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it's just going to go on a
shelf after it gets stamped and somebody
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gets some of the reward. You're
actually, if I hear you right,
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you're actually taking these things and putting
them in front of founders. So you're
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actually giving the founders things to work
on, knowing that there is either already
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research done on it or a corporate
that's asking for something in particular, and
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then you're matching all of this up. Absolutely, we think that's the best
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way for early stage companies to succeed. You've got amazing talented researchers working on
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things, and you're prompting them to
come and solve some commercial solutions. You've
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also got a pile of universities that
have intellectual property and great people who continue
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working on that intellectual property, and
again you're giving them a commercial avenue to
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make something from it and prompting them
with the prestige of scholarships and stuff like
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that. But that takes understanding of
the market. And bringing that understanding the
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market to universities and the people who
work inside universities is critically important. Otherwise
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they wouldn't know the demand is there, and they wouldn't know that the commercial
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opportunities. You know, taking a
huge leap of faith to start a company
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to decide to you know, commercialize
a piece of research, you know,
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seems pretty daunting. But when you
you know, have an organization like ours
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telling you that there is demand and
you know you're quite clear that there's a
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corporate that requires this thing. Where
a large foundation is looking to solve a
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complicated climate problem or or environmental problem, you know, you want to deliver
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the clear need that might have some
dollars behind its sponsorship dollars or or customer
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dollars, someone wants to buy it
from you. That can really prompt someone
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in research to go and actually solve
the problem in a commercial way. And
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that's the kind of work we're trying
to do. A lot of government funding,
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you know, goes into universities and
a lot of that research gets published
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and goes on the shelf. And
I'm sure that's valuable to society. But
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I find startups and successful companies employing
people and doing R and D that ends
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up solving the problem as opposed to
just looking at the problem. You know
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what, was certainly in my experience, much more valuable to society. So
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if you walk through this whole process, right, so you're a founder at
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some sort of startup assistance program and
I want to be a founder, and
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you're hunting for the idea. One
of the biggest challenges that product market fit.
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Right. So essentially what you're doing
is you're drastically reducing the risk associated
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with product market fit by coming to
the table with product market fit right,
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coming to the table and saying this
is a problem that this corporate wants to
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solve, or this is a research
paper at this university student or professor already
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solved and then exchanging those ideas with
these founders knowing that there's some light at
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the end of the tunnel and it's
not a train. Yeah, dramatically reducing
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the risk is the goal, right, You don't You don't want founders to
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to suffer unnecessarily for two or three
years thinking they've got an idea. A
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huge focus of entrepreneurship, which which
I think is wrong, is a huge
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focus on the idea. And you
know, a college student or a young
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person that doesn't have much market experience, you can't possibly expect them to have
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an idea which is likely just to
magically have brodduct market fit because you personally
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understand that there's some demand or personally
understand that the world will be better if
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if you did this particular thing that
you had an idea for. The reality
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of the market often gets in the
way. You know, you're talking lottery
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ticket odds. You know, I've
got this idea in college and is going
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to turn into a huge thing.
Most of the time, you really need
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to, you know, get in
the market for a number of years before
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you understand and you you can wrap
your head around where the opportunity really lies.
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So the advice I typically give when
when we're talking about ideas is,
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you know, you want to find
a market opportunity where there is a lot
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of disruption, where a market is
under pressure, there's a lot of changes
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going on. I particularly like industrial
transformation right now, big industries like oil
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and gas and mining and construction and
you know, agriculture and water treatment.
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They're under enormous pressure to change their
ways. So a lot of pressure and
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a lot of disruption in that market. Great place. You know, big
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companies, lots of money, you
know, large values, huge potential customers,
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desperate for changes. They are under
pressure to change their traditional practices.
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Great place to be, and you
know they want innovation, so there's an
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opportunity for an early stage company to
come in. So you've got a lot
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of money splashing around and you've got
lots of disruption. That's a great place
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to play. You know, if
it's a relatively static market without high values,
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it's much harder when you come in
with your idea and your idea doesn't
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quite work out, because almost every
time the idea doesn't quite work out,
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you don't get another door open.
When you're in a market where there's a
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lot of disruption and a lot of
money splashing around and a lot of need
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for innovation. Then when your initial
idea doesn't work out, which is almost
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always the case, another opportunity opens
and it's bigger and better, and your
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market experience leads to a better opportunity. So you know, when you go
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get banged around for a couple of
years, try to make your startup work.
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You just keep learning and learning and
learning, and you get better and
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better at finding a product market fit, which which is a really exciting market.
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If you're in a stagnant market,
you just those doors just don't open
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for you. So essentially, because
when I looked at the data, the
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product market fit is a huge failure. Right, they go out, they
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try to do product market fit and
they miss the mark. Right. So
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essentially this is eliminating, I mean
ninety percent of the risk because you already
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know there's product market fits and now
it's just a matter of can you built
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and execute on a plant. When
I spoke to you earlier, you have
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a fund that you're setting up to
help with this transformation. You have the
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accelerator community that you've built that's out
there. You have connections with the government,
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you have connections with Fulbright. What's
the future plan for Alacrity? I
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mean, this thing is on fire. I'm like sitting here going tech stars.
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If you're listening five hundred, If
you're listening plug and play. If
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you're listening, somebody's getting ready to
take you to take you to school.
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I don't I don't think they should
be be threatened by by by me.
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I don't. You know, those
are well established and and I love how
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we love what they do, and
and certainly they shouldn't be looking over their
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shoulder at what I'm doing. You
know. More that'sible. Businesses help everybody,
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and and there's no I don't I
don't think they need to worry about
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about what we're up to. But
at the same time, you know,
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you are dramatically reducing the risk of
creating success, right, So you know
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a lot of people, certainly investors, will say, you know, I
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was swinging for the fences. Well, you know, our view is every
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you know, unicorn we've ever built
started with a practical problem and engaging with
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customers and getting some traction and then
growing and growing, and the markets happened
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to be really dynamic there's lots of
opportunity in it. It grew and grew
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and turned into something giant. So
you know, we don't think swinging for
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the fences out of the gate is
necessarily the best idea. You know,
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listen to your customers and you'll survive
long enough to build a unicorn. So
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so, you know, we maybe
have a different philosophy. But yeah,
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certainly, you know, the fund
we haven't talked about that. We've been
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technology investors. You know, the
Family Office has been investing for something like,
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you know, fifty years since,
since their early seventies. We you
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know, have an amazing track record
of investing successfully. And you know,
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industrial transformation just seems like the next
horizon. You know, they're desperate for
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innovation. They they've got, you
know, their big, big markets and
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and you know, lots of capital
and a huge amount of pressure to change
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the way they behave right. I
mean, you look at the energy sector
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and they're going to spend something crazy
like two hundred and eighty trillion dollars over
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the next twenty years, you know, to transition the energy you know,
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the energy industry. Well, tell
me there aren't incredible opportunities for innovation inside
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that of course there are you know, the way the valves work, the
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way they move molecules around, the
way they generate energy. You know,
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all of that stuff is up for
grabs for the first time in one hundred
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years. Yeah, it's an amazing
opportunity. Of course we want to invest
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in. That's tough, right,
It's like a cluster of opportunity, right,
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it's just bounding off its alf you
know, bigger than you know,
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all of B to B SaaS,
you know, by a factor of you
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know, one hundred, like it's
it's it's you know, it's such a
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huge opportunity that that it's almost embarrassing
to talk about it when you're so when
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you're a technology investor and you've been
talking about you know, B to B
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SaaS and the big returns and how
great it is, and then you look
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at something like the energy sector,
which has to completely transition you know,
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in the next you know whatever thirty
or forty years, it makes B to
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B SaaS look tiny. And that's
not even counting like water treatment and agriculture
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and you know, these big industries
that are desperate for innovation and are under
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a huge threat to change. That's
just like amazing opportunities. So you've got
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to get comfortable with hardware again,
You've got to get comfortable with you know,
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SaaS business models that involve hardware and
sensors. And you've got to really
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sort of understand how to deploy with
industries. You can't just sort of,
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you know, do the do the
normal you know SaaS go to market methodologies.
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Doesn't change the fact the opportunities are
just wild. So it's a good
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play to play and and and that's
why we're excited about about about you know,
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doing a new fund in that area. So you you you heard it
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here first. The next big disruption
is going to be industrial transformation. So
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you know this is from Owen Matthews. If you guys ever get a chance,
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this guy is amazing. And I
can tell you that the track record
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that I've seen from Alacrity, I
have not seen. I'm trying to think
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of a single startup assistance program that
has a track record like yours, but
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I don't. I can't even come
up with one. Well, pretty pretty
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focused on a small number of companies
and take them through, you know,
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a pretty substantial development period. You
know, we have run programs, you
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know, we we saw the importance
of digital marketing and digital customer acquisition.
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Put a huge amount of energy into
into that, you know, going back
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to when when we started ten years
ago. You know, we focus on
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helping companies succeed and that takes a
lot of effort across multiple stages, lots
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and lots of guidance. It's not
easy work and you can't really do it
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at scale. One of the reasons
why we're excited to work with some of
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the platforms that we're working with is
because they can help us scale all that.
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So we're doing what we can,
working with partners like Startup Science to
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try and you know, try and
make that impact as big as possible and
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as broad as possible. So let's
talk about the future for Owen, Matthews
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and Alacrity. So here you are
one of the most successful startup assistance programs.
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You have done fund after fund,
You've done over a billion dollars in
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value into different companies. You have
offices all over the world. You know,
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what's the future for Owen, what's
the future for Alacrity? Well,
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I'm just lucky. I like what
I do, so there's no reason for
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me to stop. Right. The
bigger the platform. The more companies they
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get involved with, the more I
get to surround myself with people who are
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like me who just can't wait to
roll up their sleeves and get involved in
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startups and help them out and make
them as successful as possible. That's just
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that's just what I love and and
and the people around me love. So
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it's easy for me to just keep
expanding that platform and and and keep driving
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the success. I would know no
other life. It's it's the life I
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I came into. I'm very very
lucky. I get to work with very
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smart people who took very difficult subjects
in school, who think differently, and
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and come from all kinds of different
backgrounds. It's such it's such a fortunate
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place for me to be that it
never feels like work. I just you
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know, you know, I travel
all the time, and I'm excited about
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and and uh, you know,
energized by the experiences that I have working
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with people around the world, and
and you know, inspired by what entrepreneurs
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are doing, and you know,
helping them through their challenges. You know,
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just really getting intimately involved with the
companies is so important, and it's
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just so much fun. I couldn't
understand being a passive investor, like writing
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a check and saying good luck and
you know, or showing up once a
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quarter to board meeting and saying,
well, you know, it's a when
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are we going to drive to an
exit? And if we talked about getting
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the company ready to sell yet?
And I just that stuff doesn't energize me.
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I recognize a value in that.
So I work with other investors who
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are far better and far more disciplined
about the exits, and they work with
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me because I just love growing companies
and we're good at it. I mean,
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you're a global thought leader, and
we haven't heard too much from you,
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right, so I think that we
should look forward to Hopefully we can
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look forward to you starting to spread
some of that wisdom and experience out to
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the community. Can we look forward
to anything? You know, Are you
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going to do anything really exciting that
you can share with investors and entrepreneurs to
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spread all of that knowledge that you've
acquired. I would love and do as
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much as I can, and you
know, share with entrepreneurs and with investors
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and with other startup assistance programs.
You know, I'm always happy to share
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what I do. But you know, my passion is really in the companies,
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and when your passion is in the
companies, that's your sort of your
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go to, that's the default thing
that you do. Marketing and telling people
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what we've done, telling people about
our track record is not sort of central
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to my values. I know it's
important, certainly, it can bring resources,
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and there's lots of reasons to do
it, so I don't discount the
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importance of it, but my default
is to just listen to a company,
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you know, listen to the founders
and try to help them out. And
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my time gets consumed and meeting with
larger corporates and early stage companies and trying
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to broken relationships between them and stuff
like that. So you know, you're
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quite right. We've been pretty quiet
about what we've done. Maybe that's just
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sort of default Canadian humbleness, but
we have done a really, really remarkable
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job in building technology companies from scratch, in supporting thousands of companies you know,
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around the world, and I would
love to do more of it and
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appreciate the platform Greg for allowing me
to speak a little bit about what we've
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done. We all producing kind of
an impact report that goes back over this
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sort of ten year history of Alacrity, which you know, which we'll be
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publishing in the net in the next
week or so, and that's the kind
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of thing that that you know,
might attract some more attention. But primarily,
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I just love helping the companies and
I've got a great platform to do
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that for a long, long,
long time. I am so happy that
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you took the time. I know
you're super busy and you're traveling everywhere.
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I really really appreciate you taking the
time to come on the podcast and you
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know, lay out some of this
advice and some of this experience. There's
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this depth of experience that you have
for all the people listening. If you're
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a founder or you're an investor,
what you see here is the realty.
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I mean, this is a little
different than other guests that are writing books
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or running big programs. He is
a real entrepreneur, literally from birth,
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a real entrepreneur, a guy that
actually runs funds and builds the funds himself
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and runs accelerators. This is very, very unique. So I hope we
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get to see more of you and
see more of your work, and man,
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you should write a book or something
that there's definitely enough information in there
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to write a book. There might
be some books in the future, you
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know, but for now, I
just really appreciate you, know you,
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Greg, being as complimentary as you
are, coming from somebody as talented and
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as remarkable as yourself. That's high
praise and it's greatly appreciated. Well,
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I'm humbled by that. Thank you
so much for your time. I really
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appreciate it. Yeah, thanks Greg, And that's it for another episode of
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00:25:48.960 --> 00:25:53.119
the Startup Science Podcast. If you
could please leave a five star review on
345
00:25:53.200 --> 00:25:56.680
Apple or Spotify, and if you
have a moment, write out a review.
346
00:25:56.799 --> 00:26:00.160
I read all of them. I'd
really appreciate it. Founders, as
347
00:26:00.160 --> 00:26:04.119
a thank you for leading the changes
in our world, I'm offering free access
348
00:26:04.240 --> 00:26:10.640
to the Startup Science platform Visionaries by
Gregory Shepherd, a one stop shop for
349
00:26:10.759 --> 00:26:15.920
founders. It has everything from your
startup academy education to investors, grants,
350
00:26:17.200 --> 00:26:22.079
pitch events and more. Go to
Gregory Shepherd dot com to get the Visionaries,
351
00:26:22.319 --> 00:26:26.079
use the code Founders All Capital for
free access to the platform. Check
352
00:26:26.160 --> 00:26:30.279
it out for yourself. I'll see
you next time. Now a stay my
353
00:26:30.319 --> 00:26:37.079
friends. This Startup Science Podcast with
Gregory Shepherd is brought to you by startupscience
354
00:26:37.279 --> 00:26:44.000
dot io. Founders can log on
to startupscience dot io and use code Forbes
355
00:26:44.240 --> 00:26:48.839
to get free access. To connect
and find out more about Greg go to
356
00:26:48.000 --> 00:27:03.359
Gregory Shepherd dot com. The startup
Science Podcast is a production of Forbes books.
1
00:00:01.280 --> 00:00:07.040
Forbes Books presents the Startup Science Podcast
with Gregory Shepherd, brought to you by
2
00:00:07.080 --> 00:00:13.720
Startupscience dot Io. Greg is an
entrepreneur who has built and sold twelve businesses.
3
00:00:14.160 --> 00:00:18.800
He's a recipient of four private equity
awards and is a featured ten X
4
00:00:18.800 --> 00:00:24.519
speaker and Forbes author. Here's Gregory
Shepherd. I'm back with my friend Owen
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00:00:24.600 --> 00:00:28.960
Matthews, the chairman of Alacrity Canada, where they equip founders with the skills,
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00:00:29.079 --> 00:00:34.600
knowledge and network and capital to launch
and grow transformational businesses in Canada.
7
00:00:34.920 --> 00:00:38.479
Now, Owen, you recently shared
with me a relationship that you've established with
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00:00:38.520 --> 00:00:43.840
Fulbright. Can you explain what Fulbright
is, what they do, and what
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00:00:43.880 --> 00:00:49.520
the relationship is that you struck as
a co founder of the Fulbright Entrepreneurship Initiative
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00:00:49.679 --> 00:00:55.399
in Canada. Sure, that's in
my mind, very very exciting. If
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I go back and describe a little
bit of what the organization I found in
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night Share, you know, called
Alacrity does. We worked with university grads,
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put them into IT program where we
helped them create a company. And
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those companies, you know, were
very focused on understanding customer demand, very
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focused on building products that we knew
were going to lead to early sales in
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a very top market, remember two
thousand and nine, and grew those companies
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to be quite successful. When I
thought about how to make that much bigger,
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to me, the obvious conclusion was
Fulbright. Fulbright, for those of
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you who aren't aware, is a
really amazing, you know, seventy odd
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year old, you know, scholarship
program that was started out of the US
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and supported by the US government,
and to me was was just a,
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you know, just an amazing organization. They're tied into something like the top
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thousand research universities in the world.
We're talking about Oxford and Cambridge and Harvard
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and Princeton and Stanford and University of
Toronto and McGill and UBC, like really
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really top notch phenomenal organizations. And
you know, when I think about their
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reach into those organizations, to me, I think about the incredible talent that
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are in those organizations that haven't made
that leap of faith that we talked about
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earlier. You've got amazingly talented people
who have taken the most difficult subjects.
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Their chemists, their computer scientists,
their data scientists, their engineers, and
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the idea of entrepreneurship maybe hadn't occurred
to them because there's no reasonable path to
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do it. Well, if I
can work with Fulbright and bring that,
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you know, try to get around
the leap of faith, try to bring
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a reasonable path to creating a company, it felt like I could make Alacrity
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a thousand times bigger. So if
I could understand the market needs, bring
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the corporate needs, find the challenges
that the markets needed, distill that down
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into challenges that I could put out
into a network and bring it to the
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Fullbright connected universities, then Fulbright would
be in a position to be engaging scholars
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Fulbright scholars on problems that we know
have commercial demand and we know are solving
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some of our most serious problems in
the world. We have a big focus
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on sustainability and industrial transformation, and
if we can do that work, we
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can get some of the smartest people
in the world to engage in a scholarship
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to solve commercial problems that lead to
some really, really exciting startups. So
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for me, it was a natural
way for me to take the platform that
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we've had at Alacrity and make it
as big as I possibly can make it
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with some of the best and brightest
people in the world. So this program
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it's starting in Canada, right,
but then it's going to go elsewhere after
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the pilot is conducted and successful out
there in Canada. And when you look
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at this whole situation with regards to
what corporates are after and the problems that
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are out there, and you think
about, you know, the corporate normally
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has to sit there and look at
the field of opportunities to try to see
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if there's anything, any kind of
needle in the haystack that fits their needs.
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Does this program that you're putting together
have any ability to help those corporates
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find deals or somehow get solutions to
the problems that they're really trying to solve
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instead of just sit there and go
through whatever people create. Yeah. Absolutely,
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you can imagine. You go to, you know, a corporate and
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some of the challenges of corporations are
they're highly committed to a large existing business.
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If you're doing billions of dollars in
revenue, you really need to concentrate
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on continuing and keeping that train moving. And there's oldpile stuff you'd love to
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do that you can't get to do
because you know, we've got all these
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resources that are fully invested into making
sure that machine keeps rolling and you keep
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keep hitting those those billions of dollars
in revenue. There's a lot of stuff
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that you know that your customers want
that you're going to take years and years
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to get to. That that you
would love to get to more quickly,
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but you just can't get to it. So to turn to an organization that
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is going to listen to that and
deliver on some of those needs in a
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partnership where you're either creating companies or
doing research for them and they're licensing it.
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Generally, we prefer creating companies.
You know, from from my perspective,
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you have corporate needs desperate for innovation, and you've got this incredible,
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you know, group of brilliant people
who are willing to step up and solve
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those problems in exchange for the opportunity
to sell to that market. You know,
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for me, that's the natural place
for corporates to innovate, To go
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after the best and brightest people in
the world, who have a commercial connection
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to to your needs and are motivated
to help deliver on your needs, and
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they can they can they can bring
that next wave of innovation to your corporate
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So we have a long history of
doing that with any of the large corporations
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that we've been involved with, whether
we founded them and built them up or
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partnered with them over the years.
It was just an obvious this is what
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we need to do. This is
the where the innovation lies. And we've
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done an excellent job building those kind
of innovative organizations over the years. This
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to me is an obvious obvious step. One other aspect of that is,
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you know, the scholarships are very
prestigious. So when we partner with full
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Bright and we're talking about issuing scholarships
to academic institutions or to individuals and academic
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institutions, it's quite prestigious. So
we can find a way to encourage them
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to go down a commercial track with
a classic academic you know encouragement, which
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is which is you know, that
sort of prestigious scholarship. But not all
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of the value to the corporate will
come from just the just the scholarships and
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the people involved in it. In
that way, in alacrity, we also
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want to source all kinds of other
people who are applying, they're sharing what
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they're doing to get after those scholarship
dollars and get after those those you know,
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the support money coming from the corporate, so they're going to be sharing
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what it is they're working on.
They might get selected, they might get
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some funding, or they might just
get some support. And for us working
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with those corporates, they're going to
get you know, not just you know,
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people like Alacrity solving their problems and
we're happy to partner with lots and
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lots of people to do that around
the world. They're also also going to
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see on a platform all kinds of
interesting you know, technology and interesting solutions
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that come from all kinds of places
around the world as people vie for those
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dollars. It's a little bit like
when you do a challenge. You know,
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when you put that challenge out there, you're going to see many,
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many different ways of addressing that challenge. You might only select one or two
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to get funding, but you're going
to see ted or twenty or thirty.
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So you're taking the interchange right.
So this middle spot where you have these
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founders coming in. Some founders have
ideas, some of them don't, but
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they want to be a founder.
And then you're taking the needs that the
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corporates have and you're putting those needs
in front of those founders so they can
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build things with you knowing that there
is a corporate that is interested in buying
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that. So this is sort of
turning things upside down. Right. Normally,
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what you do is you're a corporate
and you have to hunt from whatever's
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available. But what you're saying is
tell them what you want, put it
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in front of them, and then
have them build it. It seems like
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this would work for foundations and other
sides too, But you also mentioned something
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about the universities. So if the
university has somebody who is working on a
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project, but the project, let's
say a research paper or something like that,
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it's just going to go on a
shelf after it gets stamped and somebody
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gets some of the reward. You're
actually, if I hear you right,
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you're actually taking these things and putting
them in front of founders. So you're
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actually giving the founders things to work
on, knowing that there is either already
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research done on it or a corporate
that's asking for something in particular, and
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then you're matching all of this up. Absolutely, we think that's the best
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way for early stage companies to succeed. You've got amazing talented researchers working on
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things, and you're prompting them to
come and solve some commercial solutions. You've
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also got a pile of universities that
have intellectual property and great people who continue
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working on that intellectual property, and
again you're giving them a commercial avenue to
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make something from it and prompting them
with the prestige of scholarships and stuff like
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that. But that takes understanding of
the market. And bringing that understanding the
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market to universities and the people who
work inside universities is critically important. Otherwise
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they wouldn't know the demand is there, and they wouldn't know that the commercial
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opportunities. You know, taking a
huge leap of faith to start a company
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to decide to you know, commercialize
a piece of research, you know,
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seems pretty daunting. But when you
you know, have an organization like ours
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telling you that there is demand and
you know you're quite clear that there's a
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corporate that requires this thing. Where
a large foundation is looking to solve a
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complicated climate problem or or environmental problem, you know, you want to deliver
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the clear need that might have some
dollars behind its sponsorship dollars or or customer
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dollars, someone wants to buy it
from you. That can really prompt someone
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in research to go and actually solve
the problem in a commercial way. And
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that's the kind of work we're trying
to do. A lot of government funding,
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you know, goes into universities and
a lot of that research gets published
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and goes on the shelf. And
I'm sure that's valuable to society. But
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I find startups and successful companies employing
people and doing R and D that ends
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up solving the problem as opposed to
just looking at the problem. You know
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what, was certainly in my experience, much more valuable to society. So
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if you walk through this whole process, right, so you're a founder at
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some sort of startup assistance program and
I want to be a founder, and
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you're hunting for the idea. One
of the biggest challenges that product market fit.
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Right. So essentially what you're doing
is you're drastically reducing the risk associated
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with product market fit by coming to
the table with product market fit right,
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coming to the table and saying this
is a problem that this corporate wants to
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solve, or this is a research
paper at this university student or professor already
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solved and then exchanging those ideas with
these founders knowing that there's some light at
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the end of the tunnel and it's
not a train. Yeah, dramatically reducing
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the risk is the goal, right, You don't You don't want founders to
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to suffer unnecessarily for two or three
years thinking they've got an idea. A
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huge focus of entrepreneurship, which which
I think is wrong, is a huge
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focus on the idea. And you
know, a college student or a young
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person that doesn't have much market experience, you can't possibly expect them to have
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an idea which is likely just to
magically have brodduct market fit because you personally
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understand that there's some demand or personally
understand that the world will be better if
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if you did this particular thing that
you had an idea for. The reality
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of the market often gets in the
way. You know, you're talking lottery
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ticket odds. You know, I've
got this idea in college and is going
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to turn into a huge thing.
Most of the time, you really need
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to, you know, get in
the market for a number of years before
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you understand and you you can wrap
your head around where the opportunity really lies.
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So the advice I typically give when
when we're talking about ideas is,
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you know, you want to find
a market opportunity where there is a lot
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of disruption, where a market is
under pressure, there's a lot of changes
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going on. I particularly like industrial
transformation right now, big industries like oil
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and gas and mining and construction and
you know, agriculture and water treatment.
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They're under enormous pressure to change their
ways. So a lot of pressure and
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a lot of disruption in that market. Great place. You know, big
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companies, lots of money, you
know, large values, huge potential customers,
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desperate for changes. They are under
pressure to change their traditional practices.
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Great place to be, and you
know they want innovation, so there's an
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opportunity for an early stage company to
come in. So you've got a lot
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of money splashing around and you've got
lots of disruption. That's a great place
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to play. You know, if
it's a relatively static market without high values,
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it's much harder when you come in
with your idea and your idea doesn't
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quite work out, because almost every
time the idea doesn't quite work out,
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you don't get another door open.
When you're in a market where there's a
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lot of disruption and a lot of
money splashing around and a lot of need
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for innovation. Then when your initial
idea doesn't work out, which is almost
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always the case, another opportunity opens
and it's bigger and better, and your
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market experience leads to a better opportunity. So you know, when you go
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get banged around for a couple of
years, try to make your startup work.
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You just keep learning and learning and
learning, and you get better and
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better at finding a product market fit, which which is a really exciting market.
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If you're in a stagnant market,
you just those doors just don't open
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for you. So essentially, because
when I looked at the data, the
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product market fit is a huge failure. Right, they go out, they
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try to do product market fit and
they miss the mark. Right. So
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essentially this is eliminating, I mean
ninety percent of the risk because you already
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know there's product market fits and now
it's just a matter of can you built
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and execute on a plant. When
I spoke to you earlier, you have
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a fund that you're setting up to
help with this transformation. You have the
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accelerator community that you've built that's out
there. You have connections with the government,
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you have connections with Fulbright. What's
the future plan for Alacrity? I
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mean, this thing is on fire. I'm like sitting here going tech stars.
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If you're listening five hundred, If
you're listening plug and play. If
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you're listening, somebody's getting ready to
take you to take you to school.
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I don't I don't think they should
be be threatened by by by me.
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I don't. You know, those
are well established and and I love how
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we love what they do, and
and certainly they shouldn't be looking over their
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shoulder at what I'm doing. You
know. More that'sible. Businesses help everybody,
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and and there's no I don't I
don't think they need to worry about
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about what we're up to. But
at the same time, you know,
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you are dramatically reducing the risk of
creating success, right, So you know
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a lot of people, certainly investors, will say, you know, I
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was swinging for the fences. Well, you know, our view is every
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you know, unicorn we've ever built
started with a practical problem and engaging with
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customers and getting some traction and then
growing and growing, and the markets happened
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to be really dynamic there's lots of
opportunity in it. It grew and grew
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and turned into something giant. So
you know, we don't think swinging for
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the fences out of the gate is
necessarily the best idea. You know,
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listen to your customers and you'll survive
long enough to build a unicorn. So
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so, you know, we maybe
have a different philosophy. But yeah,
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certainly, you know, the fund
we haven't talked about that. We've been
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technology investors. You know, the
Family Office has been investing for something like,
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you know, fifty years since,
since their early seventies. We you
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know, have an amazing track record
of investing successfully. And you know,
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industrial transformation just seems like the next
horizon. You know, they're desperate for
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innovation. They they've got, you
know, their big, big markets and
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and you know, lots of capital
and a huge amount of pressure to change
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the way they behave right. I
mean, you look at the energy sector
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and they're going to spend something crazy
like two hundred and eighty trillion dollars over
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the next twenty years, you know, to transition the energy you know,
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the energy industry. Well, tell
me there aren't incredible opportunities for innovation inside
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that of course there are you know, the way the valves work, the
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way they move molecules around, the
way they generate energy. You know,
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all of that stuff is up for
grabs for the first time in one hundred
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years. Yeah, it's an amazing
opportunity. Of course we want to invest
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in. That's tough, right,
It's like a cluster of opportunity, right,
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it's just bounding off its alf you
know, bigger than you know,
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all of B to B SaaS,
you know, by a factor of you
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know, one hundred, like it's
it's it's you know, it's such a
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huge opportunity that that it's almost embarrassing
to talk about it when you're so when
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you're a technology investor and you've been
talking about you know, B to B
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SaaS and the big returns and how
great it is, and then you look
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at something like the energy sector,
which has to completely transition you know,
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in the next you know whatever thirty
or forty years, it makes B to
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B SaaS look tiny. And that's
not even counting like water treatment and agriculture
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and you know, these big industries
that are desperate for innovation and are under
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a huge threat to change. That's
just like amazing opportunities. So you've got
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to get comfortable with hardware again,
You've got to get comfortable with you know,
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SaaS business models that involve hardware and
sensors. And you've got to really
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sort of understand how to deploy with
industries. You can't just sort of,
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you know, do the do the
normal you know SaaS go to market methodologies.
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Doesn't change the fact the opportunities are
just wild. So it's a good
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play to play and and and that's
why we're excited about about about you know,
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doing a new fund in that area. So you you you heard it
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here first. The next big disruption
is going to be industrial transformation. So
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you know this is from Owen Matthews. If you guys ever get a chance,
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this guy is amazing. And I
can tell you that the track record
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that I've seen from Alacrity, I
have not seen. I'm trying to think
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of a single startup assistance program that
has a track record like yours, but
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I don't. I can't even come
up with one. Well, pretty pretty
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focused on a small number of companies
and take them through, you know,
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a pretty substantial development period. You
know, we have run programs, you
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know, we we saw the importance
of digital marketing and digital customer acquisition.
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Put a huge amount of energy into
into that, you know, going back
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to when when we started ten years
ago. You know, we focus on
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helping companies succeed and that takes a
lot of effort across multiple stages, lots
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and lots of guidance. It's not
easy work and you can't really do it
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at scale. One of the reasons
why we're excited to work with some of
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the platforms that we're working with is
because they can help us scale all that.
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So we're doing what we can,
working with partners like Startup Science to
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try and you know, try and
make that impact as big as possible and
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as broad as possible. So let's
talk about the future for Owen, Matthews
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and Alacrity. So here you are
one of the most successful startup assistance programs.
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You have done fund after fund,
You've done over a billion dollars in
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value into different companies. You have
offices all over the world. You know,
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what's the future for Owen, what's
the future for Alacrity? Well,
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I'm just lucky. I like what
I do, so there's no reason for
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me to stop. Right. The
bigger the platform. The more companies they
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get involved with, the more I
get to surround myself with people who are
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like me who just can't wait to
roll up their sleeves and get involved in
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startups and help them out and make
them as successful as possible. That's just
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that's just what I love and and
and the people around me love. So
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it's easy for me to just keep
expanding that platform and and and keep driving
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the success. I would know no
other life. It's it's the life I
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I came into. I'm very very
lucky. I get to work with very
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smart people who took very difficult subjects
in school, who think differently, and
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and come from all kinds of different
backgrounds. It's such it's such a fortunate
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place for me to be that it
never feels like work. I just you
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know, you know, I travel
all the time, and I'm excited about
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and and uh, you know,
energized by the experiences that I have working
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with people around the world, and
and you know, inspired by what entrepreneurs
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are doing, and you know,
helping them through their challenges. You know,
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just really getting intimately involved with the
companies is so important, and it's
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just so much fun. I couldn't
understand being a passive investor, like writing
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a check and saying good luck and
you know, or showing up once a
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quarter to board meeting and saying,
well, you know, it's a when
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are we going to drive to an
exit? And if we talked about getting
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the company ready to sell yet?
And I just that stuff doesn't energize me.
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I recognize a value in that.
So I work with other investors who
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are far better and far more disciplined
about the exits, and they work with
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me because I just love growing companies
and we're good at it. I mean,
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you're a global thought leader, and
we haven't heard too much from you,
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right, so I think that we
should look forward to Hopefully we can
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look forward to you starting to spread
some of that wisdom and experience out to
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the community. Can we look forward
to anything? You know, Are you
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going to do anything really exciting that
you can share with investors and entrepreneurs to
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spread all of that knowledge that you've
acquired. I would love and do as
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much as I can, and you
know, share with entrepreneurs and with investors
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and with other startup assistance programs.
You know, I'm always happy to share
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what I do. But you know, my passion is really in the companies,
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and when your passion is in the
companies, that's your sort of your
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go to, that's the default thing
that you do. Marketing and telling people
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what we've done, telling people about
our track record is not sort of central
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to my values. I know it's
important, certainly, it can bring resources,
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and there's lots of reasons to do
it, so I don't discount the
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importance of it, but my default
is to just listen to a company,
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you know, listen to the founders
and try to help them out. And
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my time gets consumed and meeting with
larger corporates and early stage companies and trying
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to broken relationships between them and stuff
like that. So you know, you're
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quite right. We've been pretty quiet
about what we've done. Maybe that's just
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sort of default Canadian humbleness, but
we have done a really, really remarkable
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job in building technology companies from scratch, in supporting thousands of companies you know,
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around the world, and I would
love to do more of it and
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appreciate the platform Greg for allowing me
to speak a little bit about what we've
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done. We all producing kind of
an impact report that goes back over this
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sort of ten year history of Alacrity, which you know, which we'll be
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publishing in the net in the next
week or so, and that's the kind
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of thing that that you know,
might attract some more attention. But primarily,
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I just love helping the companies and
I've got a great platform to do
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that for a long, long,
long time. I am so happy that
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you took the time. I know
you're super busy and you're traveling everywhere.
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I really really appreciate you taking the
time to come on the podcast and you
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know, lay out some of this
advice and some of this experience. There's
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this depth of experience that you have
for all the people listening. If you're
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a founder or you're an investor,
what you see here is the realty.
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I mean, this is a little
different than other guests that are writing books
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or running big programs. He is
a real entrepreneur, literally from birth,
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a real entrepreneur, a guy that
actually runs funds and builds the funds himself
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and runs accelerators. This is very, very unique. So I hope we
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get to see more of you and
see more of your work, and man,
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you should write a book or something
that there's definitely enough information in there
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to write a book. There might
be some books in the future, you
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know, but for now, I
just really appreciate you, know you,
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Greg, being as complimentary as you
are, coming from somebody as talented and
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as remarkable as yourself. That's high
praise and it's greatly appreciated. Well,
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I'm humbled by that. Thank you
so much for your time. I really
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appreciate it. Yeah, thanks Greg, And that's it for another episode of
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the Startup Science Podcast. If you
could please leave a five star review on
345
00:25:53.200 --> 00:25:56.680
Apple or Spotify, and if you
have a moment, write out a review.
346
00:25:56.799 --> 00:26:00.160
I read all of them. I'd
really appreciate it. Founders, as
347
00:26:00.160 --> 00:26:04.119
a thank you for leading the changes
in our world, I'm offering free access
348
00:26:04.240 --> 00:26:10.640
to the Startup Science platform Visionaries by
Gregory Shepherd, a one stop shop for
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founders. It has everything from your
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it out for yourself. I'll see
you next time. Now a stay my
353
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friends. This Startup Science Podcast with
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dot io. Founders can log on
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