#impactinvesting – Bryan Emerson – Investor, Board Member and Mentor to Early-Stage Companies.
welcome to impact investing brought to you by the supporters fund from the most sunniest days of year coffee center of the country Marse France I’m your host Jeffrey podin and let’s please welcome from the city built on gold in 1897 from Willow Alaska United States Our Guest Brian Emerson from Starlight Capital welcome Brian it’s a real pleasure having you join us today hey JP great to be here thanks so much for inviting me I’m really excited about this conversation not because we’ve had to try a couple times to make this all all work with travels and everything else going on in the world but you pretty much are running such an awesome show that you’ve been in this industry for I think it’s 20 25 years now um so you’re kind of like a pinnacle to how all this investing started and where it’s been going and there’s so much learning that we’re going to gain from you today because again when you’re in the trenches this long you’re going to have a lot of good insights on what makes a successful company and what are the areas that people tend to falter on and don’t really pay attention to when they’re running and gunning their business so before we dive into all that excitement we’d love for you to share a little bit more about your background from your MBA days all the way across to what you’re doing today and then one thing about you that nobody would know okay great thanks JP uh so I guess the short story is when I graduated uh with my MBA in the mid90s uh some friends had uh put together a I bought a little shell company for 20 cents a share with the idea of doing a roll up of Latin American Telecom provider so I moved to Mexico City for what would be three years and at the end of the three years we had six companies in The Firm doing about 150 million a year the stock was trading about $24 a share so I had the good luck of cashing in before the dot bust and I moved back to Houston Texas and at that point I did two things first I started Angel Investing and second I started a small investment Bank a finer registered broker dealer and so those are the two things that I’ve been working on for the last 23 years the short story on the investment on the uh angel investor group is now we’re up to about 30,000 members in our Network we funded about 600 million over the years and we’re we now meet each month on Zoom we get probably somewhere between 500 and a thousand members and we picked six companies to pitch to us and then from the investment banking standpoint I had sold my firm a few years ago but still have all my Securities licenses and tend to work on helping uh small public companies that need 20 to 40 million in equity so that’s the real short story of of my business background I’m not sure we should do it any justice by doing it short but we’ll we’ll let that go and we’ll start to peel into that because that’s pretty awesome and pretty exciting and it’s not and I guess the reason why it fits that category of being awesome is because I’m not sure where it came across your mind to say hey I just built these companies we rolled up six companies and now we’re diving in and we’re going into Angel Investing 23 years ago anciel investing was you know very thin like everywhere there was very few um from my recollection I started working in the space 20 years ago plus years ago and there was very few like it was very refined on who were going after and the types of people that would be interested and we I heard so many great stories over the years of um the angel investors that were investing at the time and it just seemed kind of ad hoc it was meeting in a coffee shop and the person’s handing a check for 20 grand and that was your investment and it was kind of like not structured the way it is today and the way it’s been done so I’d love to kind of peel back onto what got you involved in this but before I do one thing about you that nobody would know so the one thing that not many people know is a few years ago when the kids moved out my wife and I retired to our lake house here in Alaska and we just love being surrounded by the mountains and uh get outside and enjoy the fresh air so there’s a there’s a little tidbit for for your uh listeners I love it and the outdoors are the best um in the more recent podcast that I was doing um it was with um a lady investor out of Germany and I find that Germans are the best and I’m going to compare it to the Canadians and now to yourself that just love getting outdoors and exploring and just being part of that so I think that’s exceptional it’s it’s pretty amazing we love it so to take a layer back to where this all started and and I love the story that you started off at 20 cents a share and you kind of just started rolling up companies and then within three years you were doing 150 million incredible can you share a few tidbits on what created that success was it an area that nobody was doing anything in what kind of got you interested and what I also love about this story is that you were all in you moved to Mexico to do this it wasn’t something that you just thought took lightly and said I can do this at home or I’ll just go do this in Texas you literally picked up and re-rooted yourself to a whole new area and Dove right into this what was kind of the impetus to this what drove you to say this is important and I know this is going to be successful and what got you there and maybe there’s a couple things you can share the audience on why it it took what it did to get you to make this big leap yeah you bet well you know I think the old refrain is is a perpet here a rising tide lifts All Ships this was a time when uh MCI had uh been battling against AT&T for a while and the Telecom markets were starting to open up worldwide and I just happen to be in the right place at the right time with the liberalization and uh I can remember back in those days if you wanted to make a call uh from let’s say the US to Central America you were probably paying one or more dollars a minute to AT&T for those international calls well as things started to open up and there were more competitors in the market and there were options like prepaid cards and dedicated lines uh we happened to be in the right place at the right time and put together this team so that we dramatically lowered the cost of International uh phone service and we were able to benefit from that that’s that’s you know so I would say for anybody who is looking to create a unicorn uh there are these things that come around a couple times in someone’s lifetime where they’re the game changers where you know whether it’s now the you know AI or um other things that can you know social media some years ago those are the things that if you happen to be there at the right time you can do well and what’s really cool about this is that you were able to pick up on the trend and then you moved to Mexico started to roll these companies up what kind of gave you the idea that this business was the leader or the driver to make this happen and it wasn’t just a whim and you weren’t going to get crushed by AT&T or one of the other dominant players well right so my good luck started uh probably 10 or or 15 years before as I was getting ready for what would be a fun ride so in college I had spent my junior year living in Spain so I came away from that speaking Spanish real well I then uh went in with a telecom company that was starting to dabble in different areas and I set up the first prepaid phone card from Latin America so I kind of had an idea and started to see these things take shape started to build my network and then when we were ready to hit it when I got out of uh my MBA program then all the everything was there aligned and ready to go so it it took a lot of preparation and I happened to be in the right place at the right time so uh I think for for those of your listeners who are working hard and building skills and talents and abilities you know those can pay off at at the right circumstances as uh as as they find those those types of opportunities I love that and and there’s a couple things that you mentioned there the biggest one is that you started to building your network so going back that previous 15 years you know there’s um there’s a great podcast out there by Jordan Harbinger and he’s always talking about build your network this is how you have to build it and he gives a lot of cues on how to do that and he’s one of the top 1% or 3% of podcast downloaded and his whole thing was building that Network now you’re going back uh you know 30 years ago and saying I was already building a network and I already had mentally sorted this out and started to grow and get into these areas and then the next thing that kind of supported that was the language you started to pick up on the language which of course if you start to learn that you’ve got some of these key metrics that are going to really help you move into Mexico and start to dominate in a market one you can speak the language and two you know the culture and three you’ve got that focus and you’re hitting that Runway of of a brand new company so taking that energy and that that drive that you’re going after uh did it help that um you had this NBA behind you did it was it a supporting feature that gave you the confidence or is that just another tool in the tool belt it kind of helped you move forward it was it was hugely uh beneficial and helpful you know I learned so much in the NBA program I think going into the NBA program I I pretty much knew everything about business and uh of course I learned so much more and how to think in different structures uh you know there’s so many different areas of an MBA that I was able to get involved with as anyone does who goes through those those types of programs there’s a lot you’re going to come away with so you have just more tools in the tool chest so when you come across maybe an HR problem you kind of have some uh initial ways to think about well how would I look at that problem you know new ways to employ technology okay again you look back to your toolkit what do you learn what are some of those authors that you read how did they you know with the case study method what were the cases you saw that work then and so you you wind that in with your experiences and and your uh intellect and uh hopefully it helps put the puzzle together quicker it certainly did in my case W that’s great so it starts to unfold and and you Dive Right In now you’re kind of shifted you’re perhaps you were doing some uh entrepreneurship before so what kind of intrigued you to take the dive into entrepreneurship World versus staying behind a big corporate or what kind of drove you into this new I I guess portion of what you were going to do in business and what were the lessons that you gained from that three years because it’s rare to see a company go from zero to 150 million which is awesome so what was some of the learnings that you gain from that well you know I guess I could go deeper about uh my entrepreneurism I mean I can remember when I was uh I don’t know in fifth or sixth grade I started shoveling snow in a suburb of Chicago and earning money so I could buy a better bicycle and uh these kind of things I remember in seventh and eighth grade I bought a snow cone and cotton candy machine and went around to all the fairs in the Chicagoland area and uh started really making quite a bit of money as a young person my parents would drive me around and in the you know in the the family station wagon and then in high school I I started buying some trucks and uh started an asphalt maintenance company I think I ended up having about a dozen trucks and two dozen laborers uh and most of them spoke Spanish so I was kind of learning a little Spanish back then um and I had a software company I ran for a while ended up selling two branches of my asphalt company uh just after college so I ran that through college so I had a taste of entrepreneurism and and selling to companies albeit you know very small but uh I think that kind of lit the flame for me that I really wanted to be more in an entrepreneurial setting than I did in a big company I realized there are a lot of people that start with a big company route especially after business school and learn a ton uh so it’s a it’s a different skill set that they pick up in a different set of tools and uh depending upon your situation they can all work out great I just happen to try to put myself in a situation where I can best use my skills and abilities I love that and it sounds like because you have this um background of Entrepreneurship that it kind of LED you this way no matter what you were kind of uh built to be an entrepreneur you started at a young age and you kind of made your way through so taking the learning that you gained from getting these businesses to 150 million was there any clean takeaways that you said I I’ll do this better next time time or I need to focus stronger on these areas maybe I wasn’t as strong on is there something that kind of um helped you on your next your next build out absolutely yeah I think when I went into when I transitioned to Angel Investing I looked at a lot of of what I learned and you know there were a lot of failures and missteps and you know broken fingers along the way and that that I didn’t want to repeat and I think one of them was invest in the jockeys not the horses meaning I started looking for the best management teams I could as an early angel investor more so than the business model itself because whereas you know consumers change business plans change the markets change you don’t really want the people you write the checks to to change and so I really dug in to understand who are the people running these startups or these early stage companies and are they the ones that I want to be with you know for the long term and you know clearly there were some several Investments that went down the drain they were learning experiences but I think the idea of of of really focusing on can this manager or this founder or this this team uh take it to the next level and Beyond I think was something that I learned the human element is was very important for me and when you take that human element and I’m I’m assuming that you imposed a lot of this even in your own businesses when you started out and now taking them forward have you kind of looked at it and said well if I’m an early stage investor a lot of them don’t have the opportunity to build the right team so are you kind of pushing for them to layer in the right team or at least plan ahead on who they need to be in that team in order to make sure that you’re willing to invest because not only do they have a strong maybe one or two people but you know that they’re going to grow into a better business because of the founder unit that they already have right now I would say typically before they would uh you know hire a lot of folks in my case I was coming into company’s very early stage you know maybe one of the First Investors at a small amount so I would probably want to make sure that that founder had a VI minimum viable product and that there was some Acceptance in the market and it was probably the next round which would be the first Venture round that would have the kind of money behind it that would be able to allow them to staff up once they’ve proven out some of those initial uh markers that I wanted to see so I helped fund the very early early early products and then let the next T Le the next group that was even more capable uh fund the the buildout of the of the staff well that makes sense so taking this earlier almost like um uh an oracle on figuring out what new texts what new products what things would have that possibility of succeeding um is there kind of any I wouldn’t call them War Stories but are there any things that you predicted that would be become huge that maybe didn’t make it in time and have now come out today you know like way ahead of their time like it could have been a product business maybe Google Glass was out 20 years ago and it just didn’t kick it and it didn’t make it to Market is there anything that you kind of that uh you were almost betting on that the future should be buying into this and it didn’t make it because the future just wasn’t ready for it well I’ll have to admit that um one of my biases was to try to invest in telecommunications the problem with that is that there was so much deflation and the prices were going down so quickly you had have to scale up very fast even on a thin margin and you know you might have to have some intellectual property protection or some kind of an unfair Advantage uh to really beat out everyone else so it was a little bit of investing on a treadmill where even though I could try to find some good niches within Telecom um it was just so brutally competitive so for instance I can remember investing in some very early stage Telecom equipment companies where somebody had invented something in their garage and I can remember there was this fat of Auto dialers so I don’t know if you can think back to that time in the you know I guess mid 90s roughly or so where to get along if you didn’t want to use the phone company uh that that came with your service like AT&T then you would have to dial typically a long code to then route you over to a longdistance uh provider and people just didn’t want to dial those codes so these Auto dialers came up and and they were very P Prof profitable for a little while meaning in then you know like a year or two or three and then of course all that was automated and you have to go to the next one so uh I also remember investing in Linux thinking that was going to be huge and of course Linux has done done well over the years it it it uh but uh I I invested with a small team that was focused on Latin America and they had some inroads the company was sold so I probably broke even but um you know that my my investment in Linux in Latin America didn’t do as well as as others but I did try to build upon that experience when I went further to learn certain lessons like you know how long do we think this Market’s going to be viable before it just gets you know swamped by competition and of course you had talked about the infrastructure where way back then there wasn’t a lot of infrastructure for Angel Investors and entrepreneurs and now it’s just incredible um the sophistication out there between incubators accelerators Angel groups you know capital is is much more efficient and much more efficiently applied today which is great but um you know there were there was a lot of lessons along along the way but uh it was it was fun partaking and learning of them so that that technology driver is is a tough steep curve but uh sometimes you just have to invest in several different hoping that that you know the one will be the Unicorn it it sounds like and there’s a couple pieces all unpacked there but it sounds like even 15 20 years ago that the game was still speed it was still about taking this product and getting it into Market as fast as possible because you’re going to have competition and you don’t know where it’s coming from but it is smart to move quickly and with that also set up for an acquisition quickly as well like do you see that has any of that changed over the last 20 years are companies staying around longer trying to generate more Revenue uh because they are the incumbent in the space or is it changed and they’re all just as much in a panic mode to build and sell well you know I think everybody wants to be first and they’re in a panic mode to to build but then you know the day comes for the vast majority is it time to sell is it time for me to merge with someone bigger or you know take some chips off the table because again the odds are against any one company uh being the next unicorn and um you know there were quite a few uh stock certificates that I’ve got that I can use to pay for a room with that uh didn’t go anywhere uh but but there are others uh that were acquired that went on to do real well and so I would say that maybe 10% of what I invested in did well enough to cover up the losses for the others and then some that’s great so if if the the game is still build and grow and scale quickly and that hasn’t changed over the duration of 20 years there is a bigger difference that’s changed which is there’s a lot more companies coming into the space there’s a lot more people looking to build entrepreneurship style Lifestyles and there’s a lot more dollars coming into the market so are you feeling today that the change really is more around the amount of money that’s being poured into the space than it was 20 years ago and that the talent is also improved or is it kind of all work itself out again like it’s there’s no difference from 20 years ago to today it’s still run hustle grow and sell well I guess the message that I’ve learned uh on my investments have been what is the Smart money for me to accept as an entrepreneur and so what I’ve been doing for 23 years in the angel group is trying to connect entrepreneurs with the Venture funds that will fund them a few years in the future by twisting the arms of my friends that run those funds to see if they’ll invest now as an angel because if you can find you know six potential Venture funds that you want to receive money from in the future and you can get their principles owners or man managers to put in a small amount of money now you probably don’t really have to worry about raising money going forward if you do things right and so the idea of really choosing wisely your Capital sources and what do they deliver can they do the networking leverage their networks because they’ve been out doing what they do successfully for maybe several decades so let’s piggyback on them don’t reinvent the wheel and uh so I think looking understanding what that money Source will deliver for you in your specific firm is is the most important uh aspect that I found in in this in early stage investing now that’s very valuable it’s that’s a very good Insight that if you can get the people later later on that are going to come in at a larger scale if you can get them in coming in for something a bit smaller into that phase they can learn their way through and then when they decide that you’re doing the right things check their kpis and it matches to what they’re looking for from a scalable business then there’s a higher potential that they’ll want to keep investing to ensure that business grows so it’s it’s a it’s a smart way of looking at it and I guess as a Founder you may not have experience these things you may not understand when you’re first going into Market as a first-time founder how you’re supposed to approach investors or the types of investors you want to get in with so I guess you can learn from your your fellow um startup Founders and how they approach it but this sounds like a pretty viable solution you’re right you know there’s so many options it’s really overwhelming for the firsttime entrepreneur to raise money again you know online uh sources for uh connecting entrepreneurs and Angel Investors and networks and it it’s really confusing so hopefully uh entrepreneurs will get some good advice from their trusted colleagues and uh and find the right people to get on their team agreed you mentioned one other piece which was about the like staying viable is there kind of a window for this like you know there’s the flashy stuff that’s just happening that’s kind of fly by night but may carry on for a year or two is there something where you’re looking at trends that you’re trying to decide how and will this company become a commoditized product so that it will be around for 20 30 years how do you kind of look at a business today versus what you used to look at and say today you know this isn’t just a fly by night thing this is something that people are going to need in 10 years do you have some metrics on how you look at this as not being a oneoff type product that no one will ever come back to have you built any kpis in your own system to make sure that the companies you’re throwing in front of your investor group have that longevity and potential for scaling you know I wish I were smart enough to know the answer there but I’m afraid I’m not um you know there’s so many good companies that I’ve seen that didn’t get funded and there are so many lousy companies that uh did get funding um and it’s it’s really hard to tell who the winners are going to be from my standpoint I’m probably focused a little bit more on the singles in the sense that if I think there’s an area that’s good maybe I have some insights on Telecom or Communications in general or some other area then um then I’ll say okay let’s get to first base let’s get our product up let’s make sure we have enough cash in the bank to be able to come back and fundraise another day because most companies run out of cash and they don’t get to first base and so if you can if if you can get them to first base with enough cash there there to help have someone else get them to Second that’s a win because you’re buying more time on that option for there to be value and they might have developed enough to sell what they have at at a premium which is great so in terms of the final you know huge unicorn you know the next chat GPT I I it’s hard to say but uh but getting them to first and second is something I think most investors could probably uh work on and and help with and run the numbers and get them to that next base is there any uh stories or companies that you mentioned of course that have won and the ones that have failed Etc is there any companies that you saw in the past and it could be at any point in time that you really felt they had a really unique opportunity and a great product but unfortunately uh the rest of the world just couldn’t catch up to where they were from an innovation standpoint you know yes I think certainly at the time I had mentioned that company that was doing Linux in Latin America and it just seemed such a slam dunk you know I’d spent years in Latin America and I realized um a lot of monopolies existed down there there were a lot of opportunities for startups and software it just seemed to me as though it was going to work and I think one of the problems is there there were such entrenched distribution channels down there in many different fields that to break out of those is was extremely difficult and in hindsight it probably took you know decades to do that in many fields um another example within Telecom I remember going down and offering big discounts on Comm equipment at one point in my career that seemed like a no-brainer but the these firms that installed this Telecom equipment had such alliances and sometimes through marriage and blood that you know no price discounting was going to have them change their suppliers and um so it it took it took in that case it took a lot longer than I thought so that that was one where I just uh was more optimistic I probably had my North American hat on that surely this is better faster cheaper everyone’s going to realize that and know that there are human networks in place that often times supersede that and that’s super valuable that you share that because this is commonly in Japan it’s the kitsu model which is the businesses integrate and invest in each other so they float all their boats so they all work together so if one goes down they’re picking each other up to continue to grow which means that when someone tries to come in and sell to one they have to sell to all or they all just miss it as a value and to your point this is very entrenched in other countries and and other regions that we sometimes don’t think too deeply about we think that hey we’re offering the best value it’s the cheapest product for the best price except for all these things or vice the other way around but we don’t think about the human Network and you kind of really Define that that it’s super important and you know I I always say to to Founders or to anybody when it comes to um investing is you got to figure out how to make other people money and if you can’t figure out how to make other people money in the chain which is all the different layers of investing from C up to series d e and vice versa they got to figure out how can your product get in and help these people and make them money if you’re just going in there trying to crush everybody eventually you’re going to hit a brick wall because people realize that this isn’t going to work you’re going to kill four other businesses you’re going to affect the bottom lines of these companies and then they just just choose not to want to work with you so you have to really Envision that yes you can make a change in cost and you can make a change in plan but there has to be a better way to ensure that all the incumbents still can make their money and still make their value um if you’re going to squeeze into this new model or to this new business line exactly I completely agree yeah it’s almost that there’s a learning that needs to shift in the mindset you know when you when you talk about change change is the hardest thing for people to really grasp because change is um very uh threatening to a person to anybody really so it almost feels like there should be a course just in how to I integrate my company into a space how do I get people to get behind me and support me and then how do I make sure everybody finds their balance in making money and and all those good things that come with supporting a business along the way that’s right and we can’t under underestimate the uniqueness of culture in a business because businesses do have different cultures uh maybe some for the better some for the worse um and you can we we’ve talked about that geographically in different countries different parts of the world uh so try to look at the culture if you can I know it’s very difficult especially if you’re maybe new to business you’re a younger person maybe you haven’t had the chance to look at other cultures in depth but really try to ask people either in that business if maybe if you’re applying to work for a startup or an early stage company or any company What’s the culture like what do you like what you don’t like do your due diligence you know there’s a lot of due diligence out there just uh on the internet and talking to folks and reaching out to them through social media so learn all you can I I think that’s another one of the big changes that’s happened over the last few decades uh people will share information with you oftentimes if you ask so uh get all the information you can as quickly as you can no very well shared there was kind of you mentioned when you were talking about your shift and changing into another country and doing these Acquisitions is there any advice or anything that you learned by doing that because again you could have run it out of the US you could have run it anywhere and I come across a lot of companies when they’re talking they share things like you know I’m I’m having a tough go in my country but in my head I’m thinking man this would be a perfect fit for the Philippines why don’t you go sell it there do you ever make recommendations on where a company could be better fit to see if that’s something that’s of interest to the founder and how driven they are and say you know if you go there then we’ll make an investment because we see that there’s a bigger window here for you like is there that kind of um ideology that gets built into the investing side as well yes and I think there are two big aspects to it from my standpoint the first is obviously the quantitative meaning can we get our prices down can we get the product shipped out cheaply enough or delivered electronically um so the quantitative is pretty easy to figure out a lot of resources what’s a little bit more difficult is the qualitative in other words by having you know my luxury brand based in Thailand or wherever does that connote a higher quality does it connote that you’re living your uh dreams and aspirations um in a way that’s going to make the product seem more genuine genuine and more uh easier to sell and so there’s a story behind most successful Brands and the idea of passion and what you were meant to do is important so if someone says you know I really wonder if I should go to say the Philippines to start this call center one of my questions would be well have you ever been to the Philippines would do you think you do you know anybody there have you ever traveled vacation there you know what happens if you get there and you hate it or you don’t like the food or the people so my going to Mexico I think was a little bit passion-based in the sense that I had gone to Latin America a lot I did like uh Mexico like the people the food the culture and so there was a little bit of me that said you know I’m going to probably go through some difficult times and I think of those five times that I went to the hospital because I got you know food poisoning or drank drank the water or ate those great snacks off the food vendor on the sidewalk uh but I I wanted to be there and and that gave me more motivation more inspiration to to power through the difficult times that you’re inevitably going to find um so so passion’s a part of it and I think people need to answer the passion question Joseph Campbell talked about following your bliss so that’s something someone might read up on if if they uh have an inclination that being in a different place of the world might somehow help them or their business I love that follow your bliss I think it’s uh it’s a good motivation and and it’s a good way to look internally to figure out where you want to go and and what’s going to motivate you and drive you and if being away and building something all on your own by yourself is a motivation then take it and run with it and find the the supporting networks to your point earlier that can support you while doing that so build that Network right away start talking to people sharing what you’re doing and kind of build on it from there yep that’s right I love it all right well we’re gonna kind of now we’re going to shift Pace because I think we could go all day I I literally have a billion more questions on on the experiences that you’ve had and all the great things you’ve done it’s so amazing U what you’ve gone through and I guess maybe what will before we shift into the the 60c rant um the the question I’ll ask is what’s the toughest lesson you’ve learned as an investor I think the toughest lesson I’ve learned is when to quit in other words I’m a glass half full kind of guy and I want to ride something to the end but I’ve tried to set a goal that if an investment or an experience reaches that goal or exceeds it I need to start thinking very seriously about is it time to cash in the chips because I’ve set that goal um and you know I had an incredible experience back in 2013 when someone who owed me $350 said Gee you know I don’t have the cash but would you mind if I paid you one Bitcoin and I thought ah what’s this Bitcoin thing and uh so you know I took a flyer and and I said to myself you know once that Bitcoin gets to X I’m out of here it just looks you know like a a Fly by Night Thing well anyway I ended up selling that Bitcoin for 12,000 uh it went way beyond my expectations uh but I think you should have something in mind as to when it’s time to get out so I got out too early but uh it was a good ride well I think from your increased percentage I’m sure you didn’t you got out early based on where the markets sit today but at the time uh that $122,000 probably made you another 50,000 somewhere else so I think it’s uh how you evaluate to your point the ex side of it and I think you had a great increase and it’s really how you did the next investment from there and how it benefited from you so I’m going to say it was successful all around so that’s a that’s a great way of uh understanding even as an investor we have to set goals in line so that um we know where our thresholds are and and where we’re willing to accept failure or where we’re willing to accept our wins and I think that makes a a really big uh difference um for yourself to reduce your own stress but also to build excitement in the wins that you do gain and take your wins when they’re there yep yeah I love it all right we’re going to go into the 60 second rant so the way this works is that you’ve got 60 seconds you can rant about anything you like I will work my best to put in one rebottle and then you can close it off I will let you know at 60 seconds that you’re at 60 seconds I will also share that this has never happened I everybody goes at least two three minutes because uh the rant is that good so I’ll let you rant and um we’ll go from there but you let me know when you’re ready and I will start the clock I’m ready all right you’re good to go okay my rant is on renewable energy the good news is that my house is off grid and we have 10 solar panels and a wind generator and a battery bank so we live by renewable energy it’s great we are talking right now on yesterday’s photons the bad news is it’s not always reliable there are times when we get several overcast days I’ve got to go start the generator the gas generator so what I’m whereas I think this is a good solution for people who can deal with intermittency on a personal level I’m afraid I don’t see it working out on the level of a country or a huge area you know we see what’s going on with problems in Texas we see that you know Germany’s committing suicide but with this intermittency problem and they’re having to go back to Coal so a lot of the wind projects that were offshore are now being deemed unviable without huge subsidies so I think people should look very carefully about uh renewable sources and will it work for them I hope it could work for everybody but will it work in the larger picture in for countries and the bigger scheme I’m not so sure there’s my rant I love it so my my I’m heavily supporting but I’m also going to counter for a second is there a way to balance these out where you’re having renewable and you’re having some form of backup storage if it’s micro grids whatever that might be so that it has become a global impact where in a country everybody’s committing to the grid everybody’s utilizing this renewable energy so you’re getting backups storage you’re not having to run generators is there a way that you can have all of these different energies operating from nuclear if you have to have a little bit of coal whatever those pieces are that all kind of collectively work together because I do know that in the US there’s so much conversation around companies starting up building grids and then not doing anything with it shutting down and failing and leaving all of the homeowners with all of this storage that they’re not using and then can’t access it and they got to pay thousands and thousands more to get access access to it but then on the other side you’ve got in South Africa where everything is battery backed up so your lights are ready to go no matter what so there’s so many different ways that we’re trying to tackle this but it seems to be convoluted and not really one easy structure so that can support you so that you don’t have the intermittency is there a way that can support that or no I think so I think on the national level and and I am no energy Engineer Expert technologist so it could very well be that some technology will be developed tomorrow that that will make all this moot but I think given the Technologies we have now I think probably nuclear is going to have to be the lowest carbon most efficient way to run a country or or a nation you know it I think it converts something like 90% of the energy basically carbon free and so if we want to have grid scale energy I think it’s going to have to be nuclear on the other hand I think everybody needs to learn to deal with intermittency if you look at all the people around the world and when they need energy um you know we don’t use much energy when we’re sleeping okay I realize that our refrigerators and freezers are going and our clocks are being powered but for the most part and certainly in the third world intermittency is something that that we all have to deal with I’ve had to deal with where I am do I want to run the generator another hour or do I want to go you know read a book or you know read some uh cached material that I downloaded on the internet I can kill an hour doing that I don’t need to have it up 247 and I think the more people around the world especially in first first world industrialized countries realize that they can be fine with intermittency because they’re not having to pour molten steel 247 then that’s going to be their solution they’re going to find renewable sources and it’s going to help them economically uh as well as uh psychologically and we’re going to do just fine with a little intermittency well said I love it I do agree there’s uh I think that’s the middle ground is the intermittency but it’s also figuring out how do all of these Technologies operate and coincide together uh to be able to build that intermittency and reduce the latency but keep it to a value that allows all of us to function and still feel that we’re part of the fast-moving world that we’re in today uh but I do agree there’s got to be a balance and well shared well shared all right we’re going to jump into the business questions so these are from the Viewpoint of yourself as the investor you choose one or the other at rapid fire here we go founder or co-founder founder unicorn or a 4-year 10x exit the ladder Tech or cpg Tech nfts or web 3.0 web 3.0 AI or blockchain blockchain first time founder or second third time founder second third first money in or series A for me first money in angel or VC Angel for what I’m doing okay board seat or Observer board seat safe for convertible note that’s a more tough that’s tough one I’ll go with convertible I’m I I like to set up a series of options so that’s an option value for me go ahead Fair uh lead or follow a lead favorite part of investing helping Mentor the founder management team love it number of companies invested per year uh probably two I just don’t have the bandwidth for more than that now okay verticals of focus uh verticals would be anything in Communications um maybe some things related to social media um and I’m I’m a junkie for just about any business plan love to look at them and critique them but for me I probably stick mainly with something related to Communications okay two qualities for a startup to stand out to you one is that the founder or the fundraiser is willing to sacrifice something personally some kind of skin in the game and number two that they can show me that they have done that in the past with the goal that they’ve wanted to achieve personally I like that that’s uh it’s a good option proving yourself along the way right yep what is nine what what is the piece of advice you give Founders nine out of 10 times do your due diligence on the people that are looking to fund you and make sure you understand them their value proposition how they make money and what they’re going to bring to the table and make sure you put some clawbacks in there if they don’t deliver I like the clawbacks I like all of that but certainly like the idea of throwing in the clawbacks that’s uh that’s brilliant do you have a philosophy or any rules that you stand behind you know I would say the one that keeps coming up most for me in the back of my head and among my fellow investors is invest in the jockey not the horse it’s really about the managers and the founder and the team then than the technology or the business itself at least at the very early stage for sure who is your hero mentor and why oh gosh um uh there’s so many that I um think back on I would have to say uh my hero is Don kot he’s um up there with his uh Lance and going after the windmills and you know and that’s me uh trying to maybe change the status quo and uh kind of conquer the the goliaths and a lot of times it doesn’t work but I’m with Don kot I like it what line do you find you share to investors over and over a do you know the person and the company you’re investing in again all about due diligence and if they don’t deliver claw back okay if you could change one thing about Venture what would it [Music] be one thing about Venture I would say they continue to be open to as many people as possible I think it’s gone from a little bit more insular model to an open model and I think that continuing of opening is important to try to give as many people as possible at least the the chance to pitch and and be heard I like that double-sided question what is your favorite and potentially your toughest investment the favorite in terms so I guess my favorite type of investment is the one that um that I know best and I feel that I can control the downside of that is that’s the only industry or model or set of circumstances under which my wife says I can lose money Fair hey you have to have you have to have your uh guard rails and your rules to keep you moving forward so that uh you don’t get carried away right yep okay personal questions what is the most famous person that pops in your mind most famous person is Alexander Hamilton he’s the namesake first pops your college Hamilton in college ah I love it okay first brand that pops in your mind Nike book or movie movie um I just saw police state it came out and it’s a scary look at someone’s version of the future I I hope it doesn’t happen all right uh Superman or Batman Batman fortune cookie or birthday cake oh birthday cake and I hope it’s chocolate five minutes with basos or Oprah I’ll go with Bezos okay mountain or Beach oh definitely Mountain no question I’m not a beach person bike or run uh biking yeah especially if it’s a Fat Tire Bike Big Mac or chicken McNuggets Big Mac trophy or money I’ll go with trophy at this point in my life but It generally was money so I think I’ll stick with trophy now okay beer or wine oh beer I’m a home Brewer oh I love it Ted talk or book reading I’m a video guy Ted Talk okay Tik Tok or Instagram Instagram Facebook or LinkedIn LinkedIn by far favorite movie and what character would you play favorite character I would say that I would um have to say When Harry Met Sally and I’m I’m Billy Crystal I like it haven’t seen that in a while but it was a good good movie back in the day uh favorite book uh don kote I I did my senior thesis in college on it okay favorite sports team favorite sports team I would have to say the ners at this point 49ers Fair they’re doing they did okay they did okay yeah yeah we’re almost there what is the meaning of success to you the meaning of success is waking up in the morning having a goal a good goal a worthy goal and accomplishing it I realize that’s very small but in the big scheme of things if I if I hit my daily goals and enjoy what I’m doing the big goals will fall into line I like it what is your superpower my superpower is my wife we we’ve been married 21 and a half years and are completely in love I love it that’s a fantastic superpower to have great team great team well I want to say thank you very much oh go ahead go ahead no please go ahead I I I misheard something well I just said you guys had a great team and that’s what makes a big difference so having that support and to be able to go out and and uh challenge the world and having the support behind you and that doesn’t matter if it’s husband wife or family friends or anything in the world uh I think what you’re doing is fantastic you’ve built out a massive Network and of course being able to help all of those founders with the investor community that you’ve built is the same thing as you mentioned with your wife it’s having that support so it makes a big difference in any founder to have that support behind them and every little bit helps so you’re you’re uh you’re crushing it so keep up the amazing efforts and thank you very much for all of your time today Brian it was great to get to know you and to share and learn I’ve taken lots of notes and you’ve got a lot to share and I’m sure there’s way more that we can dive into but I’d like to say thank you on behalf of our community for joining and sharing and the way we like to end our show is we like to to give you the last words anything you want to share to the investor Community or to the startups I turn it over to you and please let people know how they can get a hold of you well JP number one I want to return the thanks I’ve been following you for a long time and have seen excuse me a lot of your interviews so impressive you’ve built an incredible Network I’m so glad we hooked up and I’m sure there’s a lot we’ll do over many years so thank you for all you do for the entrepreneurial Community um let’s see my website is Starlight capital. and I have my contact information there uh I am a sucker for business plans and helping uh early stage companies I I give a lot of free advice uh they don’t have to accept it but uh I always just love helping out where I can I love giving back so JP thanks again for your time today it’s been great look forward to our keeping in close touch bye-bye likewise thank you okay that was a great conversation with Brian fantastic like all the years of experience that he has in the investment world really makes a difference but also his entrepreneurial Journey because he started off taking risks and that’s what it is all about for entrepreneurs you know he mentioned some great stories of when he was a youth and the things that he did but as he progressed through and he took that leap of faith and went to Mexico he had a lot of background there already but he still took the leap and you know some of the great things that came out of the conversation was building that Network and building it up right away when you know early on you never know when that network is going to become important and have some value in your business or in anything you do you know it’s the people you go to school with in College University High School that become leaders 10 20 years from now and those people to build those relationships with are going to make a big difference in the future um some of the other points that he that he touched on um you know set goals and Achieve them even if it’s daily goals or weekly monthly goals but setting those goals and going and achieving them and also the same thing for your Investments so that you know when to exit take the money when you have it take the value and move on I think we forget that we’re always going for this big uh payout when at the end of the day we could lose it all or we could just gain a little bit and I think we have to realize what are we willing to gain and what are we willing to to lose and there’s a fine balance there and he really staged that well on putting that together and then of course understanding the qualitative and quantitative side of business and risk those are some other points that he made um and then I like the idea that what he looks for in a Founder is that they’ve got skin in the game what have they’ve proven in the past that they’ve gone above and beyond to make something work what did they do to challenge themselves what did they give up to lose in order to gain something better and learning those things are pretty cool because it’s the same thing you did by moving to another country to build a company same concept is what are you willing to do to make this work because those are the people you want to invest in so thank you for joining us today if you enjoyed this conversation please feel free to share with your friends subscribe to our YouTube channel or please follow us on Spotify Amazon and or apple feel free to share an audio clip or video clip around our show and we may include in a future podcast if you can find us on all social platforms including LinkedIn at supporters fund your support and comments are truly appreciated please visit us at supporters fund.com and or startup events at opene network.com and thank you and have a fantastic day
A financial operations and compliance professional, a mentor to early-stage companies, and an occasional investor. Bryan is the founder of Starlight Capital Inc., which has developed an angel investment network and hosted more than 100 conferences for entrepreneurs to meet investors.
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The Open People Network, founded by Jeffery Potvin in 2016, is a group of like-minded entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and professionals with a desire to mentor, advise and provide practical, technical and tactical training and leadership to help set up future entrepreneurs and their businesses for success.