April 10, 2025 • 63 mins
Debbie Irwin, Lighthouse Labs, explores metrics for evaluating entrepreneurial resilience, inspired by Rick Rubin's creativity. She shares insights and her experiences supporting founders. Topics include regionalism in startup funding, inspiration from the Kaufman Foundation, and Debbie's personal journey. The episode delves into founders' motivation, feedback dynamics, mentorship's impact, the Lighthouse (Labs) Network's evolving support, Richmond's corporate scene, and founder responsiveness.
(0:00) Metrics for measuring founder resiliency and reinvestment
(0:37) Zack Miller discusses Rick Rubin's creative book and Tim Ryan's thoughts on fluctuating temperatures
(3:12) Recollection of meeting at the Startup World Cup and behind the scenes chaos
(5:17) Appreciation for Debbie's support of founders and regional collaboration
(10:50) Barriers in startup communities and Lighthouse's role in economic development
(15:13) Debbie's transition to leading Lighthouse and shoutout to sponsor Roombrick
(17:30) Debbie's personal background, upbringing, and dealing with loss
(27:13) Challenges of mentoring, defining success, and handling feedback
(30:15) Lighthouse Labs' success metrics, mentor network, and founder skill development
(37:17) Importance of coachability and feedback for founders
(39:01) Personal anecdotes and introduction of the Lighthouse Network
(46:00) Long-term support, operational training, and founders learning from one another
(48:43) Benefits of partnering with founder-friendly lawyers and Pillsbury's legal services
(51:06) Richmond's corporate landscape and Engage program's impact
(52:58) Lighthouse companies seizing opportunities and expansion plans
(54:15) Tim's secret salad strategy
(57:06) Debbie's favorite Richmond and Stanton eateries and Tim's dining preferences
(1:02:00) Final thoughts and gratitude
- Focusing on founder resiliency and long-term support, Lighthouse Labs is transitioning to the Lighthouse Network, which includes three networks: Founders, Mentors, and Investors.
- Lighthouse Labs has successfully maintained a high rate of active companies, with 91 out of 140 still operating and several reaching significant milestones like $1 million ARR.
- Debbie Irwin's leadership emphasizes the importance of direct, non-personal feedback and the need for continuous development and support for founders well beyond the initial acceleration phase.
https://www.lighthouselabsrva.org/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
And so some other metrics that we've started to introduce even in the past year is for the companies that fail, how many of those founders try again, because that indicates resiliency. That indicates, the the willingness to try and learn and and just be a part of the entrepreneurial journey. And then how many of them that do exit, start to reinvest into future lighthouse companies. And we already have four alums who have started to move money back into current lighthouse and future lighthouse companies. Like, that's a big full circle moment for us.
(00:01):
So last week's guest recommended that Rick Rubin book. Oh, yeah. I read about I read about physically reading last week's guest, Nate Leahy. I didn't ask him how to pronounce his last name. Typical journalist in me.
He said there this is the line that got me when he said he read the Rick Rubin creative book once a month for a month A year. For a year last year. I was like, this cat read a book for twelve months 12 times in a year. That's ridiculous. Went to the beach on Sunday.
I was talking about this. I read, like, a hundred and seven pages that day, and I've read it, like, maybe 40¢. Very interesting book.
Yeah. Like like I said, my my thought was you you have to be in the right mindset because some of the stuff is it can be out there, but some of the stuff resonates really well.
Yeah. I like little tangent books like that because I'm squirrelly.
Yeah.
So it's it's good for a nut bag like me. I like that. So kudos to the rest, to that, recommendation. What's on your mind, Tim?
Well, right now, I'd like I'm, like, shivering because, like, this is the we had, like, fall spring, and we're back to, like, winter. And so I woke up this morning because I'm, like, fighting. I'm like, I dude, I can't have the heat on in the house because it's, like, the April. So I wake up, and I I just looked to see what the temperature was in the house. And 58 degrees, but I'm still holding strong and not turning on the heat, man.
It's just we'll see.
Well, if it makes you feel better, you know, AC one day, heat the next day, AC one day, heat the next day.
Right.
Sure. It's like this every year. I was trying to do what you did, but I shiver too much, and I you know, seven layers was too much, and I couldn't handle it.
Yeah. So we'll see. It's, yeah, 58. I think that might be a record. That's typically when the, yeah, smoke alarms start to chirp, and then you run around the house trying to find the smoking Weak
for real?
The chirping fire alarm. Well, because the now you have the battery. It's the batteries that's weakened because of how cold it is in your house. And
Never knew that. How well do you know today's guest?
I know I I'm nervous and excited at the same time because, typically, Debbie is a great person to find trouble with, and that that part of me is, this will be a fun show.
K. Allegedly, this is what I have just been told that Debbie and I met briefly at the Star World Cup back in August. I don't remember that. So was this like
Yeah. There was so much going on. That was a that was a wild day. That was pretty high stress on a lot of different levels. I remember so, yeah, so we had right out we did a random draw, and I think it was right out of the gate.
A Lighthouse Lab company went first. Correct? What do
mean? The first company I pitched?
(00:22):
Yeah. Yep. Oh. And it so and tech was you as we remember, tech was bananas at the time. Debbie sent me a text saying, they were cut short.
They were cut short. And I'm like, dude, I don't even like, what can I do at this point? It's like, I don't
blaming the clock now?
Yeah. Well, I Absolutely.
I think, like, half of
this is their pitch.
Maybe it should have been a three minute pitch.
I don't know. But it was that was a really stressful there there was, boy, all kinds of emotion going on that.
You know how, maybe you've done this, but, like, WWE does these things for, WrestleMania where they call it, like, twenty four, and they do, like, the full twenty four hours of the whole cycle. So you see the behind the scenes stuff. Like, the chaos and something like that is ridiculous. But it was somewhat like that backstage for us because during the politicians talking, we could hear that nonsense. But as soon as that they were ended, for some reason, they turned that off.
So we couldn't hear a damn thing in the backstage. So we don't know that anything's going on. So we're we're having conversations like, okay. This is what we need to do next. Yada yada yada.
This is where we are. Talking to other people. We're trying to communicate with our team in different parts of the room that
I will say
I'll just say that sixty seconds missed out. That sucks. Oops.
We've had a lot of fun. But the thing that I appreciate the most about Debbie is that she is a founder she she really is a founder's first, has the founder's back person, and she will speak her mind and let anyone know if she feels that the founder's getting screwed over. So from that aspect, I love that.
It's my type of person.
Smart. And so that is that's why I'm a little not not funny nervous about this show because there's no telling where this show could go today.
We haven't even let her talk yet.
I is that accurate, though, Debbie? I mean, you you you truly care. You are the mama bear for the founders that you work with.
%.
Yeah. Yeah.
I just remember at Startup World Cup,
(00:43):
I went backstage, and I was like, Tim, you cut them off by
a minute. You missed a whole minute of their pitch because the timer started forty nine seconds late.
No. And I I just want you to know that we do have video evidence of this. So if it's not true
I have video evidence of it.
Okay. Well, you've you I'm I'm going down that rabbit hole today. We're gonna find out.
I will send you my video because I recorded all their pitches.
So did they start at, like, three o 03:11, or, like, how did it, like what how did it happen?
I'd have
to go back and look at the video, but, like, they started their pitch in the after the timer had already started.
So it sounds like user error on their fault.
No. Like, they didn't know that the timer had already started, and they were like, alright. Go ahead and go. I don't know. I have to go back and look at it.
Yeah. We were I think the yeah. That was That'll be my I I I can rest assure that we have not announced yet where we are doing the start up World Cup. That will be soon. But I being able to go into this place, we've already established what what time the doors opened last year?
05:30? I don't know. We'll be we'll be able to go in the space at 01:00 as opposed to, like, a half an hour before start of doors open. So we'll have a lot of, a lot of that ironed out this year. So I'm super excited about that.
Solid. Excited. I mean, you also had significantly more planning time instead of four weeks. So there's that.
Yeah. We learning curve with everything. What was four weeks?
That's how long.
We were, like, last week? Yeah. Like, we were notified, like, three or four weeks before it was happening that this big thing was happening and to send all the pitches in.
Yeah. It's it was a lot of moving parts. And yeah. So Yeah. We're super excited to have Lighthouse is you've all have always been a really great supporter of of everything.
You know? Mean, like, it's great. So I I appreciate that that collaboration. That's been going on for a long time.
Yeah. All the way back to Todd and Larkin in 2012.
No. I think even before then. So because I
(01:04):
Before Todd?
No. No. No. I'm saying, like, they were like, I remember Todd had the idea because I met him I feel like I met him at when TechCrunch came to town when I convinced TechCrunch to come to town. Debbie, I sounds like you were that was thirteen years before that.
But Yeah. So in 2012, I guess it was early twenty twelve, I was about to open Hatch. And Todd was like, oh, I'm so, like, envious. I wanna use that word. Envious that you figured out how to get this open because he had the idea before me to do Lighthouse, and he just, for whatever reason, him and Larkin couldn't get it done.
Yep.
And so, obviously, it launched fairly quickly after that. But, yeah, I think that's where I met Todd. And then I remember a start up Virginia partnership, which I don't think they're still around, but that was, the Steve Case organization, Tim. Oh, Rise of
the Rest. Yeah. Rise
of Rest. They had something even before that. Yeah. And they sent us all out to Boulder, and they gave two tickets to Virginia. And I gave my ticket to Todd.
I still went there to Boulder, but he he got my ticket. And then, yeah, he's been I think Lighthouse has been good friend. Like, like, there's been good synergies between the communities, so that's been nice.
Yeah. Start up community way in Brad Feld back in the day.
Well, and that's the funny thing is that, like, you hear other people from, other parts of the ecosystem, and they're, like, making it such a big deal about Richmond and Hampton Roads working together. And I'm like, we've always worked together. Like, that's not anything new for us. That Yeah. I don't know what you mean.
Do you know why I think it is? And I don't think people wanna hear this. Is that because, I think in some capacities, startup communities are the new economic development, and you're getting people who are in jobs, and they're not on the ground level, ground ground, grassroots style. And I think because a lot of the people on these two organizations are very, like, bottom of the totem pole, people putting in the the the suspension to the foundation, I think that's why you see it where in the on the other communities, it's people that are like, okay. This is, like, my econ dev job in the community, and it's just it's just very different.
And, also, just, again, to Tim's point telling it like it is, it's the funding structures that exist behind these things too. So if you look at the funding that's available for ecosystem development, a lot of times they require regionalism. And so when you start to push outside of regionalism and combine regions, it starts to create this nuance of like, wait, why are you helping startups that aren't from your region? Like, you're supposed to be doing this regional bottom up specific to the regions need thing. And it's like, no.
That's not always how it works because sometimes there's either not enough density or you need certain mentors that are outside of that region or you need investors that are outside of that region. And so a lot of times for these organizations to thrive and continue to exist, we end up having to fight each other for certain funding pools because that's how the funding is set up. And so if we can get the funders to start breaking down that mindset, then there's a lot more cross collaboration and not just cooperation, but real collaboration that can continue to happen across the ecosystem.
Not to mention companies' founders don't look at barriers like that. They don't care. Right? So it's it's it's very obnoxious in the way that people think. It's like, okay.
All your customers are probably not local.
Yeah.
And you want that awareness globally, so be open to that. And it's always been shocking to me how, like, narrow minded individuals are about some of this stuff. It's like, yeah. I don't if you could sell someone in California in Cheyenne, Wyoming in in, you know, some, you know, Peru, why not?
Yeah. Yeah. And I yeah. I think that's another big thing too of if the entrepreneurs aren't focused to one area, why do we have to be? And at the same time, they're also not just getting their talent from here.
But when we bring in entrepreneurs that are outside of our area too, we're also getting them to show off the talent and the resources that exist here. And so one of the things we've been talking a lot about at Lighthouse is that this the way that we're approaching how we're developing Lighthouse is the new form of attraction based economic development. Back in the day, attraction based economic development was go find the big corporate, bring them in, have them set up shop, etcetera. But what we're doing now within ecosystem development and entrepreneur support and founder support is we're now the new type of attraction bringing in investors and bringing in corporate partners to be customers of the startups that we support and to invest in the startups that we support. And maybe that startups in Nova, maybe that startups in New York, maybe that startups in Richmond.
But being able to bring these communities and networks together creates real impact because now all of a sudden people are talking to each other all the time. There's resources that they can get from the different communities that they are part of, and it's also not a burden to the entrepreneur anymore. Like, think about all of the parents in particular. It's one that I focus on because I'm a parent to three kids under seven. I need to build where I have a support community.
And so it doesn't make sense to ask startups to move to the locations that Lighthouse sits in because maybe their community is not there, maybe their grandparents aren't there, maybe their families aren't there. Like, how are we building on the ground where these founders are and then connecting those hubs and spokes across the entire area that we serve rather than expecting you have to set up shop and stay here for three years.
(01:25):
Hubs and spokes. I like that.
Yep. That's the tech the the terminology in particular that Kaufman Foundation came up with during the eship playbook.
Here I am thinking you're a genius and you stole it.
No. I steal things all the time.
Like the yeah. That's yeah. Like the the airline model as well.
Yeah. Victor Quang is a genius, and so is Andy Stoll and all the folks that worked at Kaufman during those days. And now Victor's running right to start. So if you wanna look at cool policy work
Oh, is that what he's doing now? Victor.
Yeah. Oh, it's so cool. Victor's incredible. And Andy Stoll's running the Entrepreneur Ecosystem Builder Leadership Project. And so there's again, they're continuing to do amazing things but, like, I got the luxury of having Larkin Garvey as one of my mentors, which means I connected to the entire national ecosystem.
And I got mentors left and right center, and so I get to import knowledge for a job pretty much. I get to travel and bring knowledge back and bring investors back. It's a good time.
How many cohorts is are you in your second or third cohort now as the leader of Lighthouse?
This is my third. Wow. Yeah. I started one week before my first one last year. I started in February.
And so they're like, week on the job, by the way, cohort starting. And then we went immediately into recruitment right after that. And then I got to be a big part of that second cohort, so that was batch 17. And then, obviously, we've got batch 18 running right now, which will change names soon. But our founders of 2025 are are looking pretty good so far.
But, yeah, three three rounds already.
Wow. Where does the time go?
Right. Also, that's so many founders in one year, which, again, reasons why we're switching to one cohort instead of two.
Yeah. Shout out to Roombrick.
We love us at Roombrick. Leland and Adam and Justin are great.
Yeah. They're they're in the office next to mine. And, I mean, they're they the momentum is on their side right now. They have got a lot of things that are going, and, I don't know if you had a chance to check out the micro doc that, the video that we did, with featuring them, but I thought it turned out great. And
Yeah. They sent it to us in our lighthouse batch 18 group chat so we could all check it out.
Nice. But you haven't watched it yet?
I watched the first seven minutes, and then I got ADHD and distracted.
(01:46):
Okay.
Let's be honest here. I've got three kids under seven, and I run an organization, and life is nuts. So keeping my attention is difficult at times.
Sixteen minutes and thirty two seconds here. We still have your attention. Congratulations, Tim. We are rock stars. Okay.
So don't know you very well. Right? This was supposed to be an interview, like, eight weeks from now, so I did very minimal. Actually, I did no research on you, so I don't know anything. I don't wanna be a liar.
I wanna be I don't wanna be accused of as as a as a liar because as a four 41 year old, I just don't think it's necessary to lie. You know? It just seems ridiculous. So you said you lived in Stanton. Is that, like, born and raised for a long time, and then you moved to Richmond?
Like, give me, like, the the quick elevator thirty second of of you.
My very fast life story. I was born in Maryland and adopted at a day old. And we, three months later, moved to Lynchburg, Virginia. So grew up in Lynchburg. Moved to Harrisonburg, Virginia for JMU because my sister also went there.
So I was like, gotta go where my sister went. This is fun. And then met a cute boy while I was there and was like, crap. No. I'm staying here.
So I got married in between my junior and senior year of college. I was a baby. And then we moved down to Stanton because I was working in Charlottesville, and he was working in Harrisonburg. And so have been in Stanton or was in Stanton from 2014 to last November. And, yeah, then we moved to the lovely neighborhood of Church Hill in Richmond.
So I was commuting for almost a year for Lighthouse from Stanton to Richmond, which was not enjoyable.
Every every day?
Two to three days a week.
Is that a far drive?
It's an hour and a half.
Okay. I have two feeders off of that. Is he still a cute boy?
Yeah. Oh, for sure. He's gotten even cuter because now he has a beard and tattoos, which I'm a % here for.
Okay. Can I ask you a question about the adopted aspect? Absolutely. Okay. So a lot of people in my family are adopted.
Have you ever tried to reach out to the birth parent? Did you like, is there is there any, like, interesting aspects of that? Because it's it's it's quite interesting. My mom, had a brother, and another brother, and only her and one of the brothers were adopted together. And then, like, years later, she tried finding her other brother.
She did. And they lived actually lived here in Norfolk, Tim. They but, like, five miles apart from each other. But they I think they were adopted in, like, somewhere pretty far away from here. So it's just crazy that, like, they ended up in the same city.
They never ended up meeting us, I if I recall. But, like, it's it's all that's interesting to me. I'm just like, how how is that in your world?
Yeah. I had always known that I was adopted. My parents were always very open with it. My brother is my biological brother. He was born nineteen months before me.
(02:07):
And so I have other siblings that we were aware of. And so, three years ago, I matched with, two of my siblings on ancestry.com. And so went and met, one of them, and then ended up getting connected to my birth father and birth mother. I met my birth father with my brother, that I grew up with. And, yeah, there was a a can of worms that was interesting to open, and there are times where I wish I didn't open it.
Not still connected to them now because it's just a very loaded thing. But I think where I give my parents, my adopted parents, all of the kudos is I was very aware my entire life that I was adopted. We did foster care for other babies. So there was 24 newborns in my house from when I was 10 to when I left for college, and so it was always around the world of fostering and adopting. And so very appreciative to my parents for setting us up and understanding that.
But, yeah, my sister is also adopted and so there's three of us. And my sister, obviously, we hated each other growing up and I the heads off her Barbies because, you know, that's what you do when your sister pisses you off. But now we're best friends, and she's awesome. And it's really cool to be able to, like your family is what you create, not just what you not what not just what you're born in. And so kudos also to my birth parents for knowing that this was not something that they could do.
So I don't know. It was it was a very interesting journey. Still haven't met some of the members of the family, still deciding on that, but we'll see.
Tim, you called her the mama bear for founders? Is that what you called her?
Yeah. But, but I mean, that
yeah. That story, right, that you just told, to me sounds like because you were surrounded with all those kids your entire life, that is why you love the work that you do.
That and my dad. My dad so my dad passed away ten years ago, and my dad is the epitome of what it means to really see people. So he always saw the full potential in people, always had this approach to people that absolutely illustrates that it's nurture over nature. And so there was one story that my friend told me three years ago because my dad was his dad's boss. And he was like, Debbie, don't know if you realize that your dad changed my life.
And I was like, what do you mean? Like, what? And he said, my dad worked for you, and there is a promotion, and my dad wasn't ready or qualified for it yet because of his time at the company. And he went to your dad, and he said, just this is where my financial position is at for my family. I need to do more to provide for my family right now.
Things are really hard. Things are really tight. And my dad looked at me. He's like, no. I see the potential.
We're doing it. Like, let's go ahead and go for it. And my dad took a shot on him, ended up being able to, like, do this development of him as a person and changed my friend's financial position for his family from middle school and on. And so it's like those are the moments where I saw my dad even without noticing that I was seeing that in my dad, like just watching how he treated people and how authentic and how just like all open he was to seeing who they could be and helping them drive towards that and being very honest with them. There's a lot of conversations with my dad growing up of like obviously the whole thing I'm not mad I'm disappointed But he would expand on it on, like, why he was disappointed, and I knew that there was so much more in you and, like, you didn't let yourself fully experience everything that you could be in that moment.
You're like, you took the easy way out. And so he was always so direct. Yes. We screamed and yelled at each other and did the whole thing, you know, daughter, father relationship. But it did towards the two years that I was home alone with my parents after my brother and sister went to college.
Like, I got this deep experience with my dad and, like, definitely turned into one of my best friends. And so when I got married really young, I'd call him and be like, oh my god, dad. Nate did blah blah blah blah blah. And he'd hang up on me, and he's like, I'm not talking to you till you talk to your husband. You need to learn how to handle this on your own.
And so he's just like yeah. I will always be sad about the fact that I didn't my dad didn't get to see my kids and, like, didn't get to see all of his life, but I also got this really beautiful time with him as the only kid left at home and just, like, watching how he was with people and how authentic and just great he was with people. And then his viewing, it was hundreds and hundreds of people just telling us stories over and over again of how my dad saw them first. He didn't see their position. He didn't see their wealth.
He didn't see their title. He didn't see their failings or anything like that. He always just saw the person very holistically, and I came to realize probably, like, in my mid twenties that I approach people the same way, and it's because of my dad.
Thank you for telling that story.
Yeah. Yeah. I dig that. So cool. Think that that's one of the biggest compliments that I I can receive from someone.
It's like when I run into somebody or they reach out five, ten years after they've gone on to find some sort of success and say, hey. You know, you you changed the trajectory. You taught me the things that I needed to get to this point. And and, like, that right there makes it all worth it for me.
Yeah. Yeah. Don't care about the accolades or things like that. It's like how deep of a connection did I get to build with the people in my life. Obviously, also exasperated by I've struggled with a lot of loss in my life in terms of friends who have passed away.
And so from when I was a sophomore in high school to a sophomore in college, 17 of my friends and family members passed away. And then that all culminated in my dad, passing away, while I was towards the end of my college years. And, like, you learn very quickly when you experience loss like that over and over and over again. You have no clue how long you're gonna get to know this person and how long you're going to get to be with this person or experience life with them, so I might as well have real deep conversations from the get go. I don't do well with small talk and things like that.
And so that's the other reason why it's so fun to work with founders because a lot of times founders are also trying to cut through that crap pretty quick and just, like, really talk about what it means to be a founder, the struggles that come with it, the excitement that comes with it, the emotional roller coaster that comes with it, the indecision and decision that comes with it. And so it it's a type of person that I have found with founders in particular that crave that deep human connection. And so it's a good fit for me and my career because that's how I how I live life. So it's been very emotionally and mentally fulfilling and draining all at the
(02:28):
same time. Well, how how do you work or, you know, how do you when when I started the the incubator in Greater Williamsburg, 1 of the things that I was really, really challenging for me was I wanted their success more than they wanted it, and I had to learn the hard way. And so now I'm very, very candid with companies that we take on, and I'm and I tell them from day one, I cannot want this more than you. I will run with you step for step, but I can't want this more than you do. You know, how do you how do you handle that?
Because I it just seems like we have very similar personalities that did you have to learn the hard way? What how do you handle it?
Yeah. There's there's a lot of hard learning there, and also a therapist to help me realize, like, you cannot take their emotion and you cannot take their outcomes and bring them in and hold them to your chest and take them on. You have to just hold it out here with them and say, I'm acknowledging this. Like, yes. Okay.
Also, having a very early conversation with them of what do they define as success. I had to learn to start asking that very early on because the other part with my personality and just the way I approach life is I always see really big potential in every person, and sometimes that's not what they want to pursue. And so being very clear of, like, what does success mean to you? We can drive towards that together, getting them to set really clear goals. And also getting comfortable with it was less of their success and, like, where they wanted to go and more of sometimes they can't hear the feedback that I'm giving to them right now, and that's okay.
And so there's moments in the early days where I'd get so frustrated where I'm like, they just need to do this, and they need to hear this feedback, but they're getting so defensive or they're getting mad or whatever it ends up being. And I'm like, they're just not mentally prepared to take that feedback right now. Give them some space, give them some time, and continue to let them process, understanding that in the way that I approach life, when someone says there's a problem, I'm like, oh, that's objective. There's a problem and a solution. The end.
Yeah.
But for others, when you say there's a problem, it's like that's emotional and that's a personal affront to me and something's wrong with me because you said the word problem. And so it's like, you know what? Need to figure out how to better approach. We set a norm in my old organization that feedback is direct but not personal. It's never
Like upfront to you as
a human. It's there here's a problem that we've identified that we need to solve. And so there is a lot of relearning how I communicate with people because, like you said, I do cause trouble. I do say it like it is. But I usually need to set the ground rules that this is directed, not personal.
I don't think you're a bad person. I think that there's things that we can all learn together. So how are we going to learn that right now?
Yeah. She said
feedback is direct but not personal?
Yeah. I like that. Yeah. Yeah. And with that, I mean, it's like you said batch 18, I mean, that's there's a that's a a pretty long history in terms of the number of companies, the alumni, the strength, and the brand that you're protecting the brand of Lighthouse and of of Debbie.
So
Yeah. It's a it's a big lift, but it's exciting. Like, we've had a 40 companies go through. 91 of them are still active. That's a lot.
13 have been acquired. That's a lot of acquisitions too with I think some more coming within the next twelve months, but we'll see how it goes. But it now I get the opportunity to go back to all of these alums and, like, have real conversations with them. That's the part of the fun part of my job. Last year was doing a deep dive into the alumni network and understanding, like, where are you at?
Where are you going? What do you need? What is a real way Lighthouse can help? And that started informing the new direction for Lighthouse.
Okay. Mhmm.
Sounds
good. Yeah. But I'm I'm gonna go to the thing that you talked about first, and then we can go to the juicy part the juicy fruit part, Timmy.
I'm I yeah. I like fruit, so I like juicy. Go ahead.
(02:49):
And not vegetables. We have learned.
We can go back to that too.
Okay. I have no idea what the hell you guys are talking about there, but we'll get to it. 91% are still active.
Like 91 of the one forty, not 91%.
Okay. So what is that? Like, 60% or so? Something like that. I don't wanna do the math.
A lot. Right? That's that's a good amount. Yeah. Is that, like, they still have their business license?
I'm not I'm not I'm not trying to be a Debbie downer here. But, like, I'm just, like yeah. I think that that's a very big number. Right? And so it's like, are they is that just like, okay.
They have their business license. They're still very active. Like because that's pretty impressive because you see all of these accelerators across the country, and you see a lot of companies that, you know, accelerate jump, you know, and they go from thing to thing to thing. And it just seems like they're just throwing through companies and for you guys to still have that many
65.
See, I was close.
Yeah. You're I'd to take
my LSU.
Sixty five percent considering that 80 to 90% are of a a failure rate as that's
Right. Right. But from one organization and I know you haven't been there the entire time, but, like, what is that sauce to, like, to be picking correctly? Because I can think of the 13 hatch companies that we invested in. I mean, I think one is still probably active.
Right? And there was three acquisitions, I guess, you could say in there, and that's two companies once and then another company. But, like, that's pretty crazy that, you know, a company that started basically the same time as Hatch has seen so much more success. Now I think they're slightly different organizations. But, like, what what is the reason why?
What's the sauce behind that?
I will forever believe that a big part of it is in the mentor network that was built by Todd and Larkin and then the organization over the past thirteen years. We've, like, started really digging into the data more in the past year, and it's 60 of those companies of the 40 have raised more than $500,000, which is a pretty big number. And so the majority of the ones that are active, of that 91, 60 of them have raised more than 500,000. And, like, okay. There's something here.
And so for the ones that go on to have success again, it's also an indicator of that company of what they define as success. So are they all venture backable companies? No. That's unrealistic. Like, it's three to 5% of companies are venture backable.
But a lot of these companies who have raised funds are going on to become profitable and sustainable and revenue generating businesses. So the majority of those companies outside of some of our one setter med device and FDA approval is required are generating revenue with several of them getting to the point where they're over 500,000 in annual recurring revenue. We ran the numbers not long ago that 22 of the companies in the lighthouse network have gotten to more than a million ARR, which is huge. Like, it is a huge lift to get up to a million ARR to begin with, but to be able to get 22 of them there. And it's not just in our mentors.
It's in how the mentors trained the founders because we don't have a ton of interaction with alums from Lighthouse once they exit the program. And so there's something within that program that taught the resiliency and how to ask questions and how to build the foundation that they need to continue moving their companies forward. And so it's a lot of Lighthouse has always had the tagline of investing in the lives of founders. We've always cared significantly more about the skill set of the founder than just the outcomes of the business. And so some other metrics that we started to introduce even in the past year is for the companies that fail, how many of those founders try again?
Because that indicates resiliency. That indicates the the willingness to try and learn and and just be a part of the entrepreneurial journey. And then how many of them that do exit start to reinvest into future lighthouse companies. And we already have four alums who have started to move money back into current lighthouse and future lighthouse companies. Like, that's a big full circle moment for us.
(03:10):
That's what it's all about? That that that's that's the goal.
Should be about. Yeah. That's, like, so exciting to see these invest like, these alums turn into investors now, and they're like, oh, this is interesting. Like, oh, I like this company. And even the way they mentor is so spot on.
Like, the mentor for Vroombrick is James Barrett. James Barrett founded Tenet Turner, and he was batch two of Lighthouse, I wanna say. And then right after Lighthouse ended up getting into Y Combinator as well. And James is on our board now and is super involved with Lighthouse and is also mentoring Vroombrick, ended up being the perfect match because he was considering b to c and then moving b to b and Vroombricks looking at some other opportunities within what they're looking at. And so that really robust full circular moment is really, really, really important to the success of organizations like Lighthouse.
So it's been really exciting to dig back in to the alumni network and be like, where are you now, and how do you wanna engage? And if so, if you need help, how what does that help need to look like?
And I'm sure that help forms how you interview prospective companies for future batches as well.
Yeah. Yeah. Coachability is a big thing that we look at. And we also look at just overall like, we ask the question, how do you think Lighthouse can help you? And so we're really looking for them to say, these are the type of connections that they're looking for.
This is the type of the community that they're hoping to be a part of. Founders who are ready to push themselves as people and be able to take feedback. And, yes, there are times during cohort in particular where a founder will get pissed off at me or our mentors because of how much feedback they're getting over the twelve weeks. But at the end of the day, those founders still come back around after those conversations and say, I'm hearing what you're saying. I can take that feedback.
And they're they're also strong enough to know, that's not feedback that I'm gonna take, but here's my reason why. Rather than just, like, getting defensive and shutting everything down, they're like, I am picking this decision because this is what I've researched. This is what I know, and this is where I wanna go. And then they're still gonna be open to feedback in other areas too. So you're building that confidence within the founder rather than just, like, they have to take every piece of advice they get from a mentor because then they have everyone else running their company for them rather than teaching them how to make those decisions and drive that forward.
And so you're building better founders. And so then the investors that we partner with that are like, we want your deal flow. It's because they know our founders are well vetted founders.
Well, the feedback is direct, but not personal is what I take out of that. Right?
Precisely. Like, we love you. We swear we do.
Would you say building better founders?
Yeah.
We'll see if that turns out to be the title of this show afterwards. I don't know. I haven't decided yet. Okay.
Well, bounce it right for the robots.
I'm not I'm not ready to get to the juicy part, but what about fruit and veggies? What did I miss?
I was diagnosed with ADHD a little over two years ago now. And so there's a lot of things that make sense in my life now, but one of the things you're talking about and this is not proven, so no one come at me. But there's also this thing called being a super taster, and it's not because I am better than everyone at tasting food. It's because we experience certain flavors way more intensely than others. So, like, I don't like beer.
It's always too bitter. I don't like vegetables. They taste like dirt. So there's, like, these certain things where it just throws us off or it's overwhelming or whatever. So Tim and I
were at a dinner and I noticed that he didn't eat the vegetables on his plate and I didn't eat the vegetables on mine. And so then we started talking about how he doesn't like them. And I was like, hold on. I have a theory of ADHD people that were super tasters because it's very it could be overwhelming. Yeah.
It was You know what unlikely conversation that, yeah, that one would ever think you would experience over a dinner.
I saw you have lettuce on your sandwich the
(03:31):
other day. Is not vegetables.
No. I've no. You didn't there wasn't lettuce on my sandwich.
Name of the what's the name of that sandwich?
I had the hilltop. I I I strategically picked the sandwich because I wanna make sure that there there's not gonna be anything on there that I have to to pick around.
Yeah. I don't believe you.
%.
Now granted, I, like, eat veggies more now because my husband makes really good ones that are covered in other things. So it really you know? Precisely. So it takes away the health of it, the vegetable. And I'll still do salads because salads are are fine.
It's like when you put asparagus or green beans or, like, carrots and whatever in front of me,
I'm like, I don't I don't like vegetables. I don't wanna eat these.
Oven roasted turkey, provolone, house dressing on French. I'm wrong. I'm wrong.
Yeah. But that then that led to the fact that as much as we do not like to participate in vegetables, fruit on the other hand is something like Fruit. Just for for example so, Debbie, I yeah. I I not even knowing that you're gonna be on the show today, went to Costco on Saturday and got a big thing of grapes. They were gone by Sundays.
Then we went to Costco on Sunday to get another big thing of grapes. Wow. All that to say, two things of grapes, three cartons of strawberries, a carton of blueberries. They're just gonna be gone. Like, all that's left is a is a few blueberries, but, yeah, go to town on the fruit.
Heck yeah.
Wow. Fruit life. Okay.
It is the way.
K. So what's the juicy aspect? What are we talking about? So what was juicy that you guys were talking about?
Debbie mentioned that there's a new direction of of Lighthouse. So I was just like, that's just that sounds juicy.
Oh, yeah. Y'all would be getting the scoop on this. We will be officially launching it all with new branding and everything
Oh, wow.
In three to four more weeks. But Lighthouse Labs is now the Lighthouse Network, and there are three networks that exist within that, which is the Lighthouse Founders Network, the Lighthouse Mentor Network, and the Lighthouse Investor Network. The big reason for this is the more and more we've talked to alums, the more and more we've talked to our investing partners and our mentor partners is there's a big gap between exit from program and what a founder really needs. They need ongoing support. And it's not just they need community, but they need additional training.
They need additional access. And so without creating that for them, a lot of times are like, wait. Which mentor do I go to, and how do I do this? And so there's a lot of floundering that can happen for a founder post any type of program. I mean, you see it happen with national programs.
(03:52):
You see it happen with local programs. Like, we don't do a great job as accelerators following up with founders. And so one of the things that we're moving towards is actually dropping some of the accelerator language and leaning more into our founder development program because that's what we're really here for. We're here for the long term support of our founders. And so with the network, it'll be one cohort a year, which is still traditional acceleration programming.
And then the rest of the year is committed to investor roadshows for anyone in the network that's raising. It's ongoing training that is built by some of our mentors like sales ops. I love my founders. They're incredible. It is very hard to sell, and a lot of them need some additional support and learning some of the facets of not just how to go and close a sale, but how to operationalize it.
And so building out additional content on sales ops, building out additional content on activation. Once you do have a customer within your platform, there's a lot of things that you need to do because as humans, we want us we want to be led, and we want someone telling us what to do every step of the way. So if your marketing is not matching that, once you bring someone onto your platform, you end up having a lot of attrition. And so then there then you just have ton of customers fall off, you're like, wait. What happened?
It's like, well, you didn't engage them the right way. And so really building out the systems that support this growth to million ARR. And we have some genius alums within the Lighthouse network that are going to come back and do some of that training for us as well as past mentors and current mentors that are helping us to build that content to be able to deliver it. And then we'll also be having a network summit in the fall that brings together any company. It'll be open to any company that's ever gone through Lighthouse to give them additional opportunity to connect.
And so this really long term engagement with our founders, especially on the fundraising support side and operational support side, like, hey, founder. You're beating your head against the wall because now you have a $500,000 ARR company, and that's very different than when you were trying to build to there. And here's culture things you need to worry about as you're bringing on new employees and things like that. Like, those are areas that as an organization like Lighthouse, we should be filling, and we should be coming alongside those founders for the long term.
I like that.
This reminds me of no. It's okay. So you you don't know the story about me. Tim knows some of it. So started hosting a bunch of, like, different verticals of meetups.
So, like, like, entrepreneurs, designers, developers, and then we started this thing called drinks downtown. And I was like, oh, all these people are in one place at one time. This seems like there's, like, this opportunity where these people wanna hang out. What happens if we can have them build a company in a weekend? So we did, like, a start up weekend style thing, but we, it wasn't associated with them, but it was called Start Norfolk.
And there, it was like, okay. There's three days. What happens if we can work with these companies longer? Okay. Let's start Hatch.
We invest in them. We get them for ninety days. And then there, it was like, oh, there's more problems, so let's keep doing programming, which be became this thing called 1,004. And so that evolution, it sounds exactly what you guys are you're realizing, like, okay. Like, we're supposed to be here for these eight, twelve, however many weeks for a cohort, but it's like, that's not the whole cycle of the business.
The cycle of the business, fifteen, twenty years. And so it's cool that you guys are seeing that and and are doing the old switcheroony to to really help those companies, and I think that'll be very valuable for your three Lighthouse network thingamajigs.
Pillars The network. If you will? Network. Yeah. Well, yeah.
And the thing that that I learned as well is, like, as much as I like to be the papa bear or or in in Debbie's case, the mama bear, it's like the the real magic happens when the founders learn from one another. You know? Like, it shouldn't be us spoon feeding them everything, and then they become dependent, and that's not scalable. So it's like it's like when you can find that magic and they learn from one another, that is that is super key.
And it also starts to attract more corporate partnership opportunity as well as well as just additional sponsor opportunity because now for a lot of these service providers that do wanna sponsor what you're doing or a lot of these other organizations that do wanna partner with you, you're now giving them more opportunity to see later stage founders, which is where they thrive. And it also gets to a point where it's just a great like, we are personally obsessed, we as in me, personally obsessed with Steve Ryan and Angie Collier with Pillsbury as well as David Lay with William Smullens. So it's like two lawyers who I have been night and day impressed with. They're so founder friendly. But it's so much easier to build a partnership with them now because it's like, hey.
We're going to get founders vetted and supported to this point before we refer them to you, and then we're going to continue to work with them. And so it's minimizing the cost on the founder, and it's giving the lawyer exact deliverables that they can work on. And so it makes it a lot easier for the lawyer to do their job and for the founder to be prepared before going into those meetings. Like, the more that we, again, develop these founders, the more that we talk to these founders and say, is what you need to know. This is what you need to build.
This is what it needs to look like. The easier it is for us to build partnerships with folks like Pillsbury and Williams Mullen because now we're sending them vetted, ready to go founders versus a founder will engage with them and the lawyer has to do what the lawyer has to do, but then the lawyer's asking 12,000 questions that could have been answered beforehand. Then the lawyer feels bad because they've got to charge him for the hours. And so you have these crazy costs for the founder and then the founder's like, lawyers suck. And it's like, they actually don't if you leverage them the proper way and you're prepared when going into that meeting with them.
And so the more that we can partner alongside these founders to say, like, hey. We're gonna get you prepped for this. We're gonna get you prepped for this. The more that we can start bringing them real value added service and get other service providers in there that we have vetted and know are going to work with the founder the way that service provider should be working with founders, which aka isn't predatory.
Is is pills really legal legal firm or is it food? Because is that you're thinking the same thing, Tim?
Yeah. Well and then I was like, if it's if it's the food, I I didn't know that they're a Virginia based company. But
No. It's Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw. It is a legal firm. They are based in Nova. But it's really funny because their startup division is called Pillsbury Propel.
And so I've been needing to make an AI image of the Pillsbury Doughboy drinking a Propel energy
(04:13):
drink to send to Steve to
send the ship their new The robots aren't good with images, so it'll probably look terrible.
No. It looked really weird the first time I tried, and I was like, might just need a
graphic designer for this,
but we can try AI a couple more times as it learns. But that that's it needs to be their logo. It's a Pillsbury Doughboy with a Propel energy drink, but, you know, trademarks and copyrights and whatever so they can't. But it would be hysterical.
Yeah. Because I was like, boy, I had no idea. Well
Well, Mars is from is Mars from Richmond?
Yes.
Or is it just Virginia? Okay.
Yeah. Right outside of Richmond.
Okay. So Richmond is famous for candy and cigarettes. Those are two things that kill people. Great.
I mean, why not?
How many for not to put you on the spot, and I should've done the research, but how many Fortune 500 companies are around the Richmond area?
We have 11 Fortune one thousands.
Fortune okay. 11. Yeah. Yeah. That's nice to have that kinda and especially if you can shape the culture for them to adopt early stage.
Yeah. That's a that's a that's a nice foundation to build off of.
Yeah. If everything were rainbows, roses, and unicorns, we would have a program similar to Engage. So there's an Engage program based out of Atlanta, Georgia with Tech Square Capital. Jason Kuo is the one currently running it. I got the amazing chance to meet him during Venture Atlanta.
And so founders, if you're ever looking for a good investor big investor conference to go to for connections, Venture Atlanta is one of them. And so he what Engage does is they got 17 corporate LPs into a fund, and then those corporates not only invest in the companies that go through the program, but they create a contract for an early customer with those companies as well. So now we're talking about revenue generation and capital because, like, that's where programs like Lighthouse should live is in customer and capital, not just acceleration. Like, we should be doing this ongoing support of helping them identify corporate customer, enterprise customer, whatever it is, or helping them with customer acquisition and retention after that. Like, there's so many things that we can do on helping these founders build these companies that isn't just helping them raise capital.
So, like, with that, I'm curious. Is it part of the DNA within Lighthouse to take advantage of opportunities when presented to you? Because it seems like whenever we reach out to Lighthouse companies, they're very quick to respond, raise their hand, and say yes. And and you don't find that everywhere else.
Yeah. We I mean, we're constantly telling them for certain opportunities. We're teaching them what is and isn't a good opportunity, But they are
important to know too.
(04:34):
Yeah. They're very responsive when there's when there's things out there. And they also vet it through us of, like, is this legitimate? Like, is this something that you would deem good? And for sometimes, yes, it's a pitch event for exposure that could be really great for them.
For other times, it's like, this investor approached me, and I don't really know anything about them. And it's like, oh, we do. They're in our network. And by the way, they've also already invested in six other lighthouse companies. You should absolutely talk to that person.
And so also being available to help them vet through those, but we are also, as an organization, constantly sending that stuff out to our founders. So as soon as we know it's available, we're like, hey. Apply to this thing. It could be great. Whereas the other things that I don't find value in, I'm obviously not gonna push out to them from the network perspective.
So are you guys telling me that you don't eat salads?
Yeah. I will I will that that's what it's sort of super funny. So, like, man
No. No.
Deep deep deep secrets of of the life of Tim. So, yeah, if I'm at a dinner, like, if I'm at, like, a evening dinner, especially when Terry is next to me, she'll, like, eat her salad, then we do the switcheroo of the plate so that I have an empty plate in front of me, and then, she'll have yeah. Yeah. That's that's been going on for
I do that to my husband all the time.
I've known you for fifteen years.
Yeah. And I'm observant.
I just I feel
like I feel like I need mastered the craft.
Yeah. I feel like I need to leave.
Well, so, like, it's Debbie is like I I go to Debbie for strength and, you know, that make me not feel so out there on my own.
Need my superpower that my dad taught me of being able to really see people and, like, know all of the fun parts about them.
I have never been so disappointed in my life. I mean, this is no. I'm just kidding. Okay. Is there anything we haven't talked about that you wanna talk about?
No. I think it's exciting to be able to engage on on things like this because for Lighthouse in particular, we're not focused on just Richmond. We're focused on everywhere with some of our, like, key opportunities being in Nova and other parts of the Commonwealth and Hampton Roads and also in some states that surround us. And so it's really fun to go outside and and talk to other people outside of Richmond because it's like, hey. There's really cool things, and we can partner, and we can do collaborations and not just cooperation.
And so it's just yeah. It's really fun to link up with you guys again. I mean, I talk to Tim all the time. Let's be honest. But, you know, I get to meet you now.
And Well,
that's news to me too.
For two seconds.
(04:55):
I mean, we got Tim and you guys talking all the time. You guys don't eat salads.
Guess I because Tim is part of the Virginia Accelerator Network, so it's more of, like, Tim and I and several other folks from across the state are constantly talking to each other because we all run organizations like this and it's all a headache and all of when and all everything in between. So it's like, I need my peers just like founders need their peers to be like, is life and why is this so hard?
Right.
Do that.
What now that you're you've you're new to Richmond, the Richmond area, what what is what has then become now become your go to place to grab a bite to eat? And then on the flip side, now that you're out of Stanton, what is what is the one place in Stanton that you miss that you just love to jump in the car and Oh. Visit again?
Alright. So for Richmond side, I live in Churchill, and so there are a couple spots in Churchill that I absolutely love. Obviously, Union Market. And there's a place called Kala's, which is very close to my house because they have good cheap nachos, and so I can pick those up really quick to feed my children. We don't go out very much because I have a seven, four, and two year old, which means we are that family that everyone gives a side eye to.
Well, you know, and, like restaurant? Going through that, we would purposely pick the loudest restaurants to go to so that that way they're drowned out and
Yep.
We wouldn't get the side eye.
Yeah. Because we're not gonna be going to nice restaurants right now because Yeah. I have little kids. Also, dining is prime. Anywhere there's outdoor dining, we're absolutely here for it because my kids can be nuts.
So there's a lot of spots. But, obviously, I am doing this podcast right now from the podcast room at common house in Richmond, and they have a built in restaurant and bar. So I end up eating here a lot because I work here every day or most days. But I love a lot of spots in Jackson Ward in Richmond as well because that's where my office is located. So it's just been fun.
I get to explore a lot. We've only been here since November, which means I haven't gotten to do a lot of the outdoor dining scene yet. So looking forward to that more. In terms of Stanton, it ended up closing. And so I guess I'm I'm glad because then I would be jealous that it's not near me anymore.
There is this amazing restaurant called Aioli, and it was Mediterranean. And they had this duck over a blackberry reduction risotto that was to die for.
But
he retired. Yay for them. And so there's a new restaurant there that's by the local trap house. And so we haven't tried it yet. But, yeah, definitely, aioli was my go to spot, and then my drink spot was the green room, which was a blast and a half.
Benjamin and Lauren built a really cool spot with that. But I don't know. I still appreciate a lot about the Shenandoah Valley, but I am very happy. I'm in Richmond now.
Yeah.
So if there was lettuce and tomatoes on your nachos, would you tell them to to, like, put them on the side? Like, how would you
handle it? No. No. I eat that. That's fine.
It's like, for me, it's not the same as Tim. For me, it's like, if you put a beautiful steak and potatoes and then, like, green beans on the side, I'm not gonna eat the green beans or the asparagus or, like, the roasted winter vegetables, squash stuff. Like, I don't I will if it's made with a lot of, like, maple and other stuff great on it, like roasted brussels sprouts in a certain way. But, yeah, like, you put, like, tomatoes and avocados Breach. Everything on top of nachos.
Whatever. That's fine.
(05:16):
Okay. Yeah. Well well said. Well said.
I've been doing this, but I'm a do this now because I like this is this is not okay. Like, y'all are missing out. It's fine. Y'all can live your lives however you want.
It's okay. Delicious food all the time, so I'm good.
I literally had lunch with mister Ryan on Monday.
That's You it's a very stressful time for me. Like, when people are like, hey. Let's. When you get invited to dinners or lunches and stuff like that, I mean, it's just like Tim is quickly going online to to make sure I know what the menu looks like ahead of time. So I'm not What do you do at those silly situation.
What do you do at those silly chamber of commerce meals where it's a salad with chicken on top? You just eat the chicken?
Pretty much. And I will, like you know what mean? Like, thank goodness for ranch dressing. Right? I mean, it's just you can drown it with ranch and, you know, eat eat eat enough to be polite.
Precisely. This is not the South where you always have to clear your plate anymore. Thankfully, we've gotten rid of some of that. I do not force my children to eat everything off their plate anymore.
I have no words. I'm done with this conversation. I'm just I'm just
I hope people people walked away learning a whole lot more about Debbie and Tim than I I knew that this was it it was it was inevitable if this was gonna come out. But Wow.
Thanks for being here today. This has been a delight, question mark. Maybe. For those of you who cannot see my sarcasm, that was being sarcastic for the last sixty two minutes. Just wanna make sure you guys know that.
You know? I've only been canceled three times. Can't have a fourth.
Third time's not the charm, apparently.
So we'll find out. Final words, mister Ryan?
Non salivating? I'm afraid to say anymore. I've done enough. I've said enough. No.
But, Debbie, seriously, thank you for all that you do, and you are such a great person to collaborate with. And Lighthouse is just has always been top tier, and it's it's going continues to go on that trajectory. So thank you. I look forward to many, many more future partnerships and collaborations with you, and, really thank you for all that you do for Richmond and most importantly, the founders. That's what matters most.
So thank you for all that you do.
Always a pleasure. Fun to talk with you guys.
Thanks for watching. Have a great day. Toodles.
What a close.
And so some other metrics that we've started to introduce even in the past year is for the companies that fail, how many of those founders try again, because that indicates resiliency. That indicates, the the willingness to try and learn and and just be a part of the entrepreneurial journey. And then how many of them that do exit, start to reinvest into future lighthouse companies. And we already have four alums who have started to move money back into current lighthouse and future lighthouse companies. Like, that's a big full circle moment for us.
(00:01):
So last week's guest recommended that Rick Rubin book. Oh, yeah. I read about I read about physically reading last week's guest, Nate Leahy. I didn't ask him how to pronounce his last name. Typical journalist in me.
He said there this is the line that got me when he said he read the Rick Rubin creative book once a month for a month A year. For a year last year. I was like, this cat read a book for twelve months 12 times in a year. That's ridiculous. Went to the beach on Sunday.
I was talking about this. I read, like, a hundred and seven pages that day, and I've read it, like, maybe 40¢. Very interesting book.
Yeah. Like like I said, my my thought was you you have to be in the right mindset because some of the stuff is it can be out there, but some of the stuff resonates really well.
Yeah. I like little tangent books like that because I'm squirrelly.
Yeah.
So it's it's good for a nut bag like me. I like that. So kudos to the rest, to that, recommendation. What's on your mind, Tim?
Well, right now, I'd like I'm, like, shivering because, like, this is the we had, like, fall spring, and we're back to, like, winter. And so I woke up this morning because I'm, like, fighting. I'm like, I dude, I can't have the heat on in the house because it's, like, the April. So I wake up, and I I just looked to see what the temperature was in the house. And 58 degrees, but I'm still holding strong and not turning on the heat, man.
It's just we'll see.
Well, if it makes you feel better, you know, AC one day, heat the next day, AC one day, heat the next day.
Right.
Sure. It's like this every year. I was trying to do what you did, but I shiver too much, and I you know, seven layers was too much, and I couldn't handle it.
Yeah. So we'll see. It's, yeah, 58. I think that might be a record. That's typically when the, yeah, smoke alarms start to chirp, and then you run around the house trying to find the smoking Weak
for real?
The chirping fire alarm. Well, because the now you have the battery. It's the batteries that's weakened because of how cold it is in your house. And
Never knew that. How well do you know today's guest?
I know I I'm nervous and excited at the same time because, typically, Debbie is a great person to find trouble with, and that that part of me is, this will be a fun show.
K. Allegedly, this is what I have just been told that Debbie and I met briefly at the Star World Cup back in August. I don't remember that. So was this like
Yeah. There was so much going on. That was a that was a wild day. That was pretty high stress on a lot of different levels. I remember so, yeah, so we had right out we did a random draw, and I think it was right out of the gate.
A Lighthouse Lab company went first. Correct? What do
mean? The first company I pitched?
(00:22):
Yeah. Yep. Oh. And it so and tech was you as we remember, tech was bananas at the time. Debbie sent me a text saying, they were cut short.
They were cut short. And I'm like, dude, I don't even like, what can I do at this point? It's like, I don't
blaming the clock now?
Yeah. Well, I Absolutely.
I think, like, half of
this is their pitch.
Maybe it should have been a three minute pitch.
I don't know. But it was that was a really stressful there there was, boy, all kinds of emotion going on that.
You know how, maybe you've done this, but, like, WWE does these things for, WrestleMania where they call it, like, twenty four, and they do, like, the full twenty four hours of the whole cycle. So you see the behind the scenes stuff. Like, the chaos and something like that is ridiculous. But it was somewhat like that backstage for us because during the politicians talking, we could hear that nonsense. But as soon as that they were ended, for some reason, they turned that off.
So we couldn't hear a damn thing in the backstage. So we don't know that anything's going on. So we're we're having conversations like, okay. This is what we need to do next. Yada yada yada.
This is where we are. Talking to other people. We're trying to communicate with our team in different parts of the room that
I will say
I'll just say that sixty seconds missed out. That sucks. Oops.
We've had a lot of fun. But the thing that I appreciate the most about Debbie is that she is a founder she she really is a founder's first, has the founder's back person, and she will speak her mind and let anyone know if she feels that the founder's getting screwed over. So from that aspect, I love that.
It's my type of person.
Smart. And so that is that's why I'm a little not not funny nervous about this show because there's no telling where this show could go today.
We haven't even let her talk yet.
I is that accurate, though, Debbie? I mean, you you you truly care. You are the mama bear for the founders that you work with.
%.
Yeah. Yeah.
I just remember at Startup World Cup,
(00:43):
I went backstage, and I was like, Tim, you cut them off by
a minute. You missed a whole minute of their pitch because the timer started forty nine seconds late.
No. And I I just want you to know that we do have video evidence of this. So if it's not true
I have video evidence of it.
Okay. Well, you've you I'm I'm going down that rabbit hole today. We're gonna find out.
I will send you my video because I recorded all their pitches.
So did they start at, like, three o 03:11, or, like, how did it, like what how did it happen?
I'd have
to go back and look at the video, but, like, they started their pitch in the after the timer had already started.
So it sounds like user error on their fault.
No. Like, they didn't know that the timer had already started, and they were like, alright. Go ahead and go. I don't know. I have to go back and look at it.
Yeah. We were I think the yeah. That was That'll be my I I I can rest assure that we have not announced yet where we are doing the start up World Cup. That will be soon. But I being able to go into this place, we've already established what what time the doors opened last year?
05:30? I don't know. We'll be we'll be able to go in the space at 01:00 as opposed to, like, a half an hour before start of doors open. So we'll have a lot of, a lot of that ironed out this year. So I'm super excited about that.
Solid. Excited. I mean, you also had significantly more planning time instead of four weeks. So there's that.
Yeah. We learning curve with everything. What was four weeks?
That's how long.
We were, like, last week? Yeah. Like, we were notified, like, three or four weeks before it was happening that this big thing was happening and to send all the pitches in.
Yeah. It's it was a lot of moving parts. And yeah. So Yeah. We're super excited to have Lighthouse is you've all have always been a really great supporter of of everything.
You know? Mean, like, it's great. So I I appreciate that that collaboration. That's been going on for a long time.
Yeah. All the way back to Todd and Larkin in 2012.
No. I think even before then. So because I
(01:04):
Before Todd?
No. No. No. I'm saying, like, they were like, I remember Todd had the idea because I met him I feel like I met him at when TechCrunch came to town when I convinced TechCrunch to come to town. Debbie, I sounds like you were that was thirteen years before that.
But Yeah. So in 2012, I guess it was early twenty twelve, I was about to open Hatch. And Todd was like, oh, I'm so, like, envious. I wanna use that word. Envious that you figured out how to get this open because he had the idea before me to do Lighthouse, and he just, for whatever reason, him and Larkin couldn't get it done.
Yep.
And so, obviously, it launched fairly quickly after that. But, yeah, I think that's where I met Todd. And then I remember a start up Virginia partnership, which I don't think they're still around, but that was, the Steve Case organization, Tim. Oh, Rise of
the Rest. Yeah. Rise
of Rest. They had something even before that. Yeah. And they sent us all out to Boulder, and they gave two tickets to Virginia. And I gave my ticket to Todd.
I still went there to Boulder, but he he got my ticket. And then, yeah, he's been I think Lighthouse has been good friend. Like, like, there's been good synergies between the communities, so that's been nice.
Yeah. Start up community way in Brad Feld back in the day.
Well, and that's the funny thing is that, like, you hear other people from, other parts of the ecosystem, and they're, like, making it such a big deal about Richmond and Hampton Roads working together. And I'm like, we've always worked together. Like, that's not anything new for us. That Yeah. I don't know what you mean.
Do you know why I think it is? And I don't think people wanna hear this. Is that because, I think in some capacities, startup communities are the new economic development, and you're getting people who are in jobs, and they're not on the ground level, ground ground, grassroots style. And I think because a lot of the people on these two organizations are very, like, bottom of the totem pole, people putting in the the the suspension to the foundation, I think that's why you see it where in the on the other communities, it's people that are like, okay. This is, like, my econ dev job in the community, and it's just it's just very different.
And, also, just, again, to Tim's point telling it like it is, it's the funding structures that exist behind these things too. So if you look at the funding that's available for ecosystem development, a lot of times they require regionalism. And so when you start to push outside of regionalism and combine regions, it starts to create this nuance of like, wait, why are you helping startups that aren't from your region? Like, you're supposed to be doing this regional bottom up specific to the regions need thing. And it's like, no.
That's not always how it works because sometimes there's either not enough density or you need certain mentors that are outside of that region or you need investors that are outside of that region. And so a lot of times for these organizations to thrive and continue to exist, we end up having to fight each other for certain funding pools because that's how the funding is set up. And so if we can get the funders to start breaking down that mindset, then there's a lot more cross collaboration and not just cooperation, but real collaboration that can continue to happen across the ecosystem.
Not to mention companies' founders don't look at barriers like that. They don't care. Right? So it's it's it's very obnoxious in the way that people think. It's like, okay.
All your customers are probably not local.
Yeah.
And you want that awareness globally, so be open to that. And it's always been shocking to me how, like, narrow minded individuals are about some of this stuff. It's like, yeah. I don't if you could sell someone in California in Cheyenne, Wyoming in in, you know, some, you know, Peru, why not?
Yeah. Yeah. And I yeah. I think that's another big thing too of if the entrepreneurs aren't focused to one area, why do we have to be? And at the same time, they're also not just getting their talent from here.
But when we bring in entrepreneurs that are outside of our area too, we're also getting them to show off the talent and the resources that exist here. And so one of the things we've been talking a lot about at Lighthouse is that this the way that we're approaching how we're developing Lighthouse is the new form of attraction based economic development. Back in the day, attraction based economic development was go find the big corporate, bring them in, have them set up shop, etcetera. But what we're doing now within ecosystem development and entrepreneur support and founder support is we're now the new type of attraction bringing in investors and bringing in corporate partners to be customers of the startups that we support and to invest in the startups that we support. And maybe that startups in Nova, maybe that startups in New York, maybe that startups in Richmond.
But being able to bring these communities and networks together creates real impact because now all of a sudden people are talking to each other all the time. There's resources that they can get from the different communities that they are part of, and it's also not a burden to the entrepreneur anymore. Like, think about all of the parents in particular. It's one that I focus on because I'm a parent to three kids under seven. I need to build where I have a support community.
And so it doesn't make sense to ask startups to move to the locations that Lighthouse sits in because maybe their community is not there, maybe their grandparents aren't there, maybe their families aren't there. Like, how are we building on the ground where these founders are and then connecting those hubs and spokes across the entire area that we serve rather than expecting you have to set up shop and stay here for three years.
(01:25):
Hubs and spokes. I like that.
Yep. That's the tech the the terminology in particular that Kaufman Foundation came up with during the eship playbook.
Here I am thinking you're a genius and you stole it.
No. I steal things all the time.
Like the yeah. That's yeah. Like the the airline model as well.
Yeah. Victor Quang is a genius, and so is Andy Stoll and all the folks that worked at Kaufman during those days. And now Victor's running right to start. So if you wanna look at cool policy work
Oh, is that what he's doing now? Victor.
Yeah. Oh, it's so cool. Victor's incredible. And Andy Stoll's running the Entrepreneur Ecosystem Builder Leadership Project. And so there's again, they're continuing to do amazing things but, like, I got the luxury of having Larkin Garvey as one of my mentors, which means I connected to the entire national ecosystem.
And I got mentors left and right center, and so I get to import knowledge for a job pretty much. I get to travel and bring knowledge back and bring investors back. It's a good time.
How many cohorts is are you in your second or third cohort now as the leader of Lighthouse?
This is my third. Wow. Yeah. I started one week before my first one last year. I started in February.
And so they're like, week on the job, by the way, cohort starting. And then we went immediately into recruitment right after that. And then I got to be a big part of that second cohort, so that was batch 17. And then, obviously, we've got batch 18 running right now, which will change names soon. But our founders of 2025 are are looking pretty good so far.
But, yeah, three three rounds already.
Wow. Where does the time go?
Right. Also, that's so many founders in one year, which, again, reasons why we're switching to one cohort instead of two.
Yeah. Shout out to Roombrick.
We love us at Roombrick. Leland and Adam and Justin are great.
Yeah. They're they're in the office next to mine. And, I mean, they're they the momentum is on their side right now. They have got a lot of things that are going, and, I don't know if you had a chance to check out the micro doc that, the video that we did, with featuring them, but I thought it turned out great. And
Yeah. They sent it to us in our lighthouse batch 18 group chat so we could all check it out.
Nice. But you haven't watched it yet?
I watched the first seven minutes, and then I got ADHD and distracted.
(01:46):
Okay.
Let's be honest here. I've got three kids under seven, and I run an organization, and life is nuts. So keeping my attention is difficult at times.
Sixteen minutes and thirty two seconds here. We still have your attention. Congratulations, Tim. We are rock stars. Okay.
So don't know you very well. Right? This was supposed to be an interview, like, eight weeks from now, so I did very minimal. Actually, I did no research on you, so I don't know anything. I don't wanna be a liar.
I wanna be I don't wanna be accused of as as a as a liar because as a four 41 year old, I just don't think it's necessary to lie. You know? It just seems ridiculous. So you said you lived in Stanton. Is that, like, born and raised for a long time, and then you moved to Richmond?
Like, give me, like, the the quick elevator thirty second of of you.
My very fast life story. I was born in Maryland and adopted at a day old. And we, three months later, moved to Lynchburg, Virginia. So grew up in Lynchburg. Moved to Harrisonburg, Virginia for JMU because my sister also went there.
So I was like, gotta go where my sister went. This is fun. And then met a cute boy while I was there and was like, crap. No. I'm staying here.
So I got married in between my junior and senior year of college. I was a baby. And then we moved down to Stanton because I was working in Charlottesville, and he was working in Harrisonburg. And so have been in Stanton or was in Stanton from 2014 to last November. And, yeah, then we moved to the lovely neighborhood of Church Hill in Richmond.
So I was commuting for almost a year for Lighthouse from Stanton to Richmond, which was not enjoyable.
Every every day?
Two to three days a week.
Is that a far drive?
It's an hour and a half.
Okay. I have two feeders off of that. Is he still a cute boy?
Yeah. Oh, for sure. He's gotten even cuter because now he has a beard and tattoos, which I'm a % here for.
Okay. Can I ask you a question about the adopted aspect? Absolutely. Okay. So a lot of people in my family are adopted.
Have you ever tried to reach out to the birth parent? Did you like, is there is there any, like, interesting aspects of that? Because it's it's it's quite interesting. My mom, had a brother, and another brother, and only her and one of the brothers were adopted together. And then, like, years later, she tried finding her other brother.
She did. And they lived actually lived here in Norfolk, Tim. They but, like, five miles apart from each other. But they I think they were adopted in, like, somewhere pretty far away from here. So it's just crazy that, like, they ended up in the same city.
They never ended up meeting us, I if I recall. But, like, it's it's all that's interesting to me. I'm just like, how how is that in your world?
Yeah. I had always known that I was adopted. My parents were always very open with it. My brother is my biological brother. He was born nineteen months before me.
(02:07):
And so I have other siblings that we were aware of. And so, three years ago, I matched with, two of my siblings on ancestry.com. And so went and met, one of them, and then ended up getting connected to my birth father and birth mother. I met my birth father with my brother, that I grew up with. And, yeah, there was a a can of worms that was interesting to open, and there are times where I wish I didn't open it.
Not still connected to them now because it's just a very loaded thing. But I think where I give my parents, my adopted parents, all of the kudos is I was very aware my entire life that I was adopted. We did foster care for other babies. So there was 24 newborns in my house from when I was 10 to when I left for college, and so it was always around the world of fostering and adopting. And so very appreciative to my parents for setting us up and understanding that.
But, yeah, my sister is also adopted and so there's three of us. And my sister, obviously, we hated each other growing up and I the heads off her Barbies because, you know, that's what you do when your sister pisses you off. But now we're best friends, and she's awesome. And it's really cool to be able to, like your family is what you create, not just what you not what not just what you're born in. And so kudos also to my birth parents for knowing that this was not something that they could do.
So I don't know. It was it was a very interesting journey. Still haven't met some of the members of the family, still deciding on that, but we'll see.
Tim, you called her the mama bear for founders? Is that what you called her?
Yeah. But, but I mean, that
yeah. That story, right, that you just told, to me sounds like because you were surrounded with all those kids your entire life, that is why you love the work that you do.
That and my dad. My dad so my dad passed away ten years ago, and my dad is the epitome of what it means to really see people. So he always saw the full potential in people, always had this approach to people that absolutely illustrates that it's nurture over nature. And so there was one story that my friend told me three years ago because my dad was his dad's boss. And he was like, Debbie, don't know if you realize that your dad changed my life.
And I was like, what do you mean? Like, what? And he said, my dad worked for you, and there is a promotion, and my dad wasn't ready or qualified for it yet because of his time at the company. And he went to your dad, and he said, just this is where my financial position is at for my family. I need to do more to provide for my family right now.
Things are really hard. Things are really tight. And my dad looked at me. He's like, no. I see the potential.
We're doing it. Like, let's go ahead and go for it. And my dad took a shot on him, ended up being able to, like, do this development of him as a person and changed my friend's financial position for his family from middle school and on. And so it's like those are the moments where I saw my dad even without noticing that I was seeing that in my dad, like just watching how he treated people and how authentic and how just like all open he was to seeing who they could be and helping them drive towards that and being very honest with them. There's a lot of conversations with my dad growing up of like obviously the whole thing I'm not mad I'm disappointed But he would expand on it on, like, why he was disappointed, and I knew that there was so much more in you and, like, you didn't let yourself fully experience everything that you could be in that moment.
You're like, you took the easy way out. And so he was always so direct. Yes. We screamed and yelled at each other and did the whole thing, you know, daughter, father relationship. But it did towards the two years that I was home alone with my parents after my brother and sister went to college.
Like, I got this deep experience with my dad and, like, definitely turned into one of my best friends. And so when I got married really young, I'd call him and be like, oh my god, dad. Nate did blah blah blah blah blah. And he'd hang up on me, and he's like, I'm not talking to you till you talk to your husband. You need to learn how to handle this on your own.
And so he's just like yeah. I will always be sad about the fact that I didn't my dad didn't get to see my kids and, like, didn't get to see all of his life, but I also got this really beautiful time with him as the only kid left at home and just, like, watching how he was with people and how authentic and just great he was with people. And then his viewing, it was hundreds and hundreds of people just telling us stories over and over again of how my dad saw them first. He didn't see their position. He didn't see their wealth.
He didn't see their title. He didn't see their failings or anything like that. He always just saw the person very holistically, and I came to realize probably, like, in my mid twenties that I approach people the same way, and it's because of my dad.
Thank you for telling that story.
Yeah. Yeah. I dig that. So cool. Think that that's one of the biggest compliments that I I can receive from someone.
It's like when I run into somebody or they reach out five, ten years after they've gone on to find some sort of success and say, hey. You know, you you changed the trajectory. You taught me the things that I needed to get to this point. And and, like, that right there makes it all worth it for me.
Yeah. Yeah. Don't care about the accolades or things like that. It's like how deep of a connection did I get to build with the people in my life. Obviously, also exasperated by I've struggled with a lot of loss in my life in terms of friends who have passed away.
And so from when I was a sophomore in high school to a sophomore in college, 17 of my friends and family members passed away. And then that all culminated in my dad, passing away, while I was towards the end of my college years. And, like, you learn very quickly when you experience loss like that over and over and over again. You have no clue how long you're gonna get to know this person and how long you're going to get to be with this person or experience life with them, so I might as well have real deep conversations from the get go. I don't do well with small talk and things like that.
And so that's the other reason why it's so fun to work with founders because a lot of times founders are also trying to cut through that crap pretty quick and just, like, really talk about what it means to be a founder, the struggles that come with it, the excitement that comes with it, the emotional roller coaster that comes with it, the indecision and decision that comes with it. And so it it's a type of person that I have found with founders in particular that crave that deep human connection. And so it's a good fit for me and my career because that's how I how I live life. So it's been very emotionally and mentally fulfilling and draining all at the
(02:28):
same time. Well, how how do you work or, you know, how do you when when I started the the incubator in Greater Williamsburg, 1 of the things that I was really, really challenging for me was I wanted their success more than they wanted it, and I had to learn the hard way. And so now I'm very, very candid with companies that we take on, and I'm and I tell them from day one, I cannot want this more than you. I will run with you step for step, but I can't want this more than you do. You know, how do you how do you handle that?
Because I it just seems like we have very similar personalities that did you have to learn the hard way? What how do you handle it?
Yeah. There's there's a lot of hard learning there, and also a therapist to help me realize, like, you cannot take their emotion and you cannot take their outcomes and bring them in and hold them to your chest and take them on. You have to just hold it out here with them and say, I'm acknowledging this. Like, yes. Okay.
Also, having a very early conversation with them of what do they define as success. I had to learn to start asking that very early on because the other part with my personality and just the way I approach life is I always see really big potential in every person, and sometimes that's not what they want to pursue. And so being very clear of, like, what does success mean to you? We can drive towards that together, getting them to set really clear goals. And also getting comfortable with it was less of their success and, like, where they wanted to go and more of sometimes they can't hear the feedback that I'm giving to them right now, and that's okay.
And so there's moments in the early days where I'd get so frustrated where I'm like, they just need to do this, and they need to hear this feedback, but they're getting so defensive or they're getting mad or whatever it ends up being. And I'm like, they're just not mentally prepared to take that feedback right now. Give them some space, give them some time, and continue to let them process, understanding that in the way that I approach life, when someone says there's a problem, I'm like, oh, that's objective. There's a problem and a solution. The end.
Yeah.
But for others, when you say there's a problem, it's like that's emotional and that's a personal affront to me and something's wrong with me because you said the word problem. And so it's like, you know what? Need to figure out how to better approach. We set a norm in my old organization that feedback is direct but not personal. It's never
Like upfront to you as
a human. It's there here's a problem that we've identified that we need to solve. And so there is a lot of relearning how I communicate with people because, like you said, I do cause trouble. I do say it like it is. But I usually need to set the ground rules that this is directed, not personal.
I don't think you're a bad person. I think that there's things that we can all learn together. So how are we going to learn that right now?
Yeah. She said
feedback is direct but not personal?
Yeah. I like that. Yeah. Yeah. And with that, I mean, it's like you said batch 18, I mean, that's there's a that's a a pretty long history in terms of the number of companies, the alumni, the strength, and the brand that you're protecting the brand of Lighthouse and of of Debbie.
So
Yeah. It's a it's a big lift, but it's exciting. Like, we've had a 40 companies go through. 91 of them are still active. That's a lot.
13 have been acquired. That's a lot of acquisitions too with I think some more coming within the next twelve months, but we'll see how it goes. But it now I get the opportunity to go back to all of these alums and, like, have real conversations with them. That's the part of the fun part of my job. Last year was doing a deep dive into the alumni network and understanding, like, where are you at?
Where are you going? What do you need? What is a real way Lighthouse can help? And that started informing the new direction for Lighthouse.
Okay. Mhmm.
Sounds
good. Yeah. But I'm I'm gonna go to the thing that you talked about first, and then we can go to the juicy part the juicy fruit part, Timmy.
I'm I yeah. I like fruit, so I like juicy. Go ahead.
(02:49):
And not vegetables. We have learned.
We can go back to that too.
Okay. I have no idea what the hell you guys are talking about there, but we'll get to it. 91% are still active.
Like 91 of the one forty, not 91%.
Okay. So what is that? Like, 60% or so? Something like that. I don't wanna do the math.
A lot. Right? That's that's a good amount. Yeah. Is that, like, they still have their business license?
I'm not I'm not I'm not trying to be a Debbie downer here. But, like, I'm just, like yeah. I think that that's a very big number. Right? And so it's like, are they is that just like, okay.
They have their business license. They're still very active. Like because that's pretty impressive because you see all of these accelerators across the country, and you see a lot of companies that, you know, accelerate jump, you know, and they go from thing to thing to thing. And it just seems like they're just throwing through companies and for you guys to still have that many
65.
See, I was close.
Yeah. You're I'd to take
my LSU.
Sixty five percent considering that 80 to 90% are of a a failure rate as that's
Right. Right. But from one organization and I know you haven't been there the entire time, but, like, what is that sauce to, like, to be picking correctly? Because I can think of the 13 hatch companies that we invested in. I mean, I think one is still probably active.
Right? And there was three acquisitions, I guess, you could say in there, and that's two companies once and then another company. But, like, that's pretty crazy that, you know, a company that started basically the same time as Hatch has seen so much more success. Now I think they're slightly different organizations. But, like, what what is the reason why?
What's the sauce behind that?
I will forever believe that a big part of it is in the mentor network that was built by Todd and Larkin and then the organization over the past thirteen years. We've, like, started really digging into the data more in the past year, and it's 60 of those companies of the 40 have raised more than $500,000, which is a pretty big number. And so the majority of the ones that are active, of that 91, 60 of them have raised more than 500,000. And, like, okay. There's something here.
And so for the ones that go on to have success again, it's also an indicator of that company of what they define as success. So are they all venture backable companies? No. That's unrealistic. Like, it's three to 5% of companies are venture backable.
But a lot of these companies who have raised funds are going on to become profitable and sustainable and revenue generating businesses. So the majority of those companies outside of some of our one setter med device and FDA approval is required are generating revenue with several of them getting to the point where they're over 500,000 in annual recurring revenue. We ran the numbers not long ago that 22 of the companies in the lighthouse network have gotten to more than a million ARR, which is huge. Like, it is a huge lift to get up to a million ARR to begin with, but to be able to get 22 of them there. And it's not just in our mentors.
It's in how the mentors trained the founders because we don't have a ton of interaction with alums from Lighthouse once they exit the program. And so there's something within that program that taught the resiliency and how to ask questions and how to build the foundation that they need to continue moving their companies forward. And so it's a lot of Lighthouse has always had the tagline of investing in the lives of founders. We've always cared significantly more about the skill set of the founder than just the outcomes of the business. And so some other metrics that we started to introduce even in the past year is for the companies that fail, how many of those founders try again?
Because that indicates resiliency. That indicates the the willingness to try and learn and and just be a part of the entrepreneurial journey. And then how many of them that do exit start to reinvest into future lighthouse companies. And we already have four alums who have started to move money back into current lighthouse and future lighthouse companies. Like, that's a big full circle moment for us.
(03:10):
That's what it's all about? That that that's that's the goal.
Should be about. Yeah. That's, like, so exciting to see these invest like, these alums turn into investors now, and they're like, oh, this is interesting. Like, oh, I like this company. And even the way they mentor is so spot on.
Like, the mentor for Vroombrick is James Barrett. James Barrett founded Tenet Turner, and he was batch two of Lighthouse, I wanna say. And then right after Lighthouse ended up getting into Y Combinator as well. And James is on our board now and is super involved with Lighthouse and is also mentoring Vroombrick, ended up being the perfect match because he was considering b to c and then moving b to b and Vroombricks looking at some other opportunities within what they're looking at. And so that really robust full circular moment is really, really, really important to the success of organizations like Lighthouse.
So it's been really exciting to dig back in to the alumni network and be like, where are you now, and how do you wanna engage? And if so, if you need help, how what does that help need to look like?
And I'm sure that help forms how you interview prospective companies for future batches as well.
Yeah. Yeah. Coachability is a big thing that we look at. And we also look at just overall like, we ask the question, how do you think Lighthouse can help you? And so we're really looking for them to say, these are the type of connections that they're looking for.
This is the type of the community that they're hoping to be a part of. Founders who are ready to push themselves as people and be able to take feedback. And, yes, there are times during cohort in particular where a founder will get pissed off at me or our mentors because of how much feedback they're getting over the twelve weeks. But at the end of the day, those founders still come back around after those conversations and say, I'm hearing what you're saying. I can take that feedback.
And they're they're also strong enough to know, that's not feedback that I'm gonna take, but here's my reason why. Rather than just, like, getting defensive and shutting everything down, they're like, I am picking this decision because this is what I've researched. This is what I know, and this is where I wanna go. And then they're still gonna be open to feedback in other areas too. So you're building that confidence within the founder rather than just, like, they have to take every piece of advice they get from a mentor because then they have everyone else running their company for them rather than teaching them how to make those decisions and drive that forward.
And so you're building better founders. And so then the investors that we partner with that are like, we want your deal flow. It's because they know our founders are well vetted founders.
Well, the feedback is direct, but not personal is what I take out of that. Right?
Precisely. Like, we love you. We swear we do.
Would you say building better founders?
Yeah.
We'll see if that turns out to be the title of this show afterwards. I don't know. I haven't decided yet. Okay.
Well, bounce it right for the robots.
I'm not I'm not ready to get to the juicy part, but what about fruit and veggies? What did I miss?
I was diagnosed with ADHD a little over two years ago now. And so there's a lot of things that make sense in my life now, but one of the things you're talking about and this is not proven, so no one come at me. But there's also this thing called being a super taster, and it's not because I am better than everyone at tasting food. It's because we experience certain flavors way more intensely than others. So, like, I don't like beer.
It's always too bitter. I don't like vegetables. They taste like dirt. So there's, like, these certain things where it just throws us off or it's overwhelming or whatever. So Tim and I
were at a dinner and I noticed that he didn't eat the vegetables on his plate and I didn't eat the vegetables on mine. And so then we started talking about how he doesn't like them. And I was like, hold on. I have a theory of ADHD people that were super tasters because it's very it could be overwhelming. Yeah.
It was You know what unlikely conversation that, yeah, that one would ever think you would experience over a dinner.
I saw you have lettuce on your sandwich the
(03:31):
other day. Is not vegetables.
No. I've no. You didn't there wasn't lettuce on my sandwich.
Name of the what's the name of that sandwich?
I had the hilltop. I I I strategically picked the sandwich because I wanna make sure that there there's not gonna be anything on there that I have to to pick around.
Yeah. I don't believe you.
%.
Now granted, I, like, eat veggies more now because my husband makes really good ones that are covered in other things. So it really you know? Precisely. So it takes away the health of it, the vegetable. And I'll still do salads because salads are are fine.
It's like when you put asparagus or green beans or, like, carrots and whatever in front of me,
I'm like, I don't I don't like vegetables. I don't wanna eat these.
Oven roasted turkey, provolone, house dressing on French. I'm wrong. I'm wrong.
Yeah. But that then that led to the fact that as much as we do not like to participate in vegetables, fruit on the other hand is something like Fruit. Just for for example so, Debbie, I yeah. I I not even knowing that you're gonna be on the show today, went to Costco on Saturday and got a big thing of grapes. They were gone by Sundays.
Then we went to Costco on Sunday to get another big thing of grapes. Wow. All that to say, two things of grapes, three cartons of strawberries, a carton of blueberries. They're just gonna be gone. Like, all that's left is a is a few blueberries, but, yeah, go to town on the fruit.
Heck yeah.
Wow. Fruit life. Okay.
It is the way.
K. So what's the juicy aspect? What are we talking about? So what was juicy that you guys were talking about?
Debbie mentioned that there's a new direction of of Lighthouse. So I was just like, that's just that sounds juicy.
Oh, yeah. Y'all would be getting the scoop on this. We will be officially launching it all with new branding and everything
Oh, wow.
In three to four more weeks. But Lighthouse Labs is now the Lighthouse Network, and there are three networks that exist within that, which is the Lighthouse Founders Network, the Lighthouse Mentor Network, and the Lighthouse Investor Network. The big reason for this is the more and more we've talked to alums, the more and more we've talked to our investing partners and our mentor partners is there's a big gap between exit from program and what a founder really needs. They need ongoing support. And it's not just they need community, but they need additional training.
They need additional access. And so without creating that for them, a lot of times are like, wait. Which mentor do I go to, and how do I do this? And so there's a lot of floundering that can happen for a founder post any type of program. I mean, you see it happen with national programs.
(03:52):
You see it happen with local programs. Like, we don't do a great job as accelerators following up with founders. And so one of the things that we're moving towards is actually dropping some of the accelerator language and leaning more into our founder development program because that's what we're really here for. We're here for the long term support of our founders. And so with the network, it'll be one cohort a year, which is still traditional acceleration programming.
And then the rest of the year is committed to investor roadshows for anyone in the network that's raising. It's ongoing training that is built by some of our mentors like sales ops. I love my founders. They're incredible. It is very hard to sell, and a lot of them need some additional support and learning some of the facets of not just how to go and close a sale, but how to operationalize it.
And so building out additional content on sales ops, building out additional content on activation. Once you do have a customer within your platform, there's a lot of things that you need to do because as humans, we want us we want to be led, and we want someone telling us what to do every step of the way. So if your marketing is not matching that, once you bring someone onto your platform, you end up having a lot of attrition. And so then there then you just have ton of customers fall off, you're like, wait. What happened?
It's like, well, you didn't engage them the right way. And so really building out the systems that support this growth to million ARR. And we have some genius alums within the Lighthouse network that are going to come back and do some of that training for us as well as past mentors and current mentors that are helping us to build that content to be able to deliver it. And then we'll also be having a network summit in the fall that brings together any company. It'll be open to any company that's ever gone through Lighthouse to give them additional opportunity to connect.
And so this really long term engagement with our founders, especially on the fundraising support side and operational support side, like, hey, founder. You're beating your head against the wall because now you have a $500,000 ARR company, and that's very different than when you were trying to build to there. And here's culture things you need to worry about as you're bringing on new employees and things like that. Like, those are areas that as an organization like Lighthouse, we should be filling, and we should be coming alongside those founders for the long term.
I like that.
This reminds me of no. It's okay. So you you don't know the story about me. Tim knows some of it. So started hosting a bunch of, like, different verticals of meetups.
So, like, like, entrepreneurs, designers, developers, and then we started this thing called drinks downtown. And I was like, oh, all these people are in one place at one time. This seems like there's, like, this opportunity where these people wanna hang out. What happens if we can have them build a company in a weekend? So we did, like, a start up weekend style thing, but we, it wasn't associated with them, but it was called Start Norfolk.
And there, it was like, okay. There's three days. What happens if we can work with these companies longer? Okay. Let's start Hatch.
We invest in them. We get them for ninety days. And then there, it was like, oh, there's more problems, so let's keep doing programming, which be became this thing called 1,004. And so that evolution, it sounds exactly what you guys are you're realizing, like, okay. Like, we're supposed to be here for these eight, twelve, however many weeks for a cohort, but it's like, that's not the whole cycle of the business.
The cycle of the business, fifteen, twenty years. And so it's cool that you guys are seeing that and and are doing the old switcheroony to to really help those companies, and I think that'll be very valuable for your three Lighthouse network thingamajigs.
Pillars The network. If you will? Network. Yeah. Well, yeah.
And the thing that that I learned as well is, like, as much as I like to be the papa bear or or in in Debbie's case, the mama bear, it's like the the real magic happens when the founders learn from one another. You know? Like, it shouldn't be us spoon feeding them everything, and then they become dependent, and that's not scalable. So it's like it's like when you can find that magic and they learn from one another, that is that is super key.
And it also starts to attract more corporate partnership opportunity as well as well as just additional sponsor opportunity because now for a lot of these service providers that do wanna sponsor what you're doing or a lot of these other organizations that do wanna partner with you, you're now giving them more opportunity to see later stage founders, which is where they thrive. And it also gets to a point where it's just a great like, we are personally obsessed, we as in me, personally obsessed with Steve Ryan and Angie Collier with Pillsbury as well as David Lay with William Smullens. So it's like two lawyers who I have been night and day impressed with. They're so founder friendly. But it's so much easier to build a partnership with them now because it's like, hey.
We're going to get founders vetted and supported to this point before we refer them to you, and then we're going to continue to work with them. And so it's minimizing the cost on the founder, and it's giving the lawyer exact deliverables that they can work on. And so it makes it a lot easier for the lawyer to do their job and for the founder to be prepared before going into those meetings. Like, the more that we, again, develop these founders, the more that we talk to these founders and say, is what you need to know. This is what you need to build.
This is what it needs to look like. The easier it is for us to build partnerships with folks like Pillsbury and Williams Mullen because now we're sending them vetted, ready to go founders versus a founder will engage with them and the lawyer has to do what the lawyer has to do, but then the lawyer's asking 12,000 questions that could have been answered beforehand. Then the lawyer feels bad because they've got to charge him for the hours. And so you have these crazy costs for the founder and then the founder's like, lawyers suck. And it's like, they actually don't if you leverage them the proper way and you're prepared when going into that meeting with them.
And so the more that we can partner alongside these founders to say, like, hey. We're gonna get you prepped for this. We're gonna get you prepped for this. The more that we can start bringing them real value added service and get other service providers in there that we have vetted and know are going to work with the founder the way that service provider should be working with founders, which aka isn't predatory.
Is is pills really legal legal firm or is it food? Because is that you're thinking the same thing, Tim?
Yeah. Well and then I was like, if it's if it's the food, I I didn't know that they're a Virginia based company. But
No. It's Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw. It is a legal firm. They are based in Nova. But it's really funny because their startup division is called Pillsbury Propel.
And so I've been needing to make an AI image of the Pillsbury Doughboy drinking a Propel energy
(04:13):
drink to send to Steve to
send the ship their new The robots aren't good with images, so it'll probably look terrible.
No. It looked really weird the first time I tried, and I was like, might just need a
graphic designer for this,
but we can try AI a couple more times as it learns. But that that's it needs to be their logo. It's a Pillsbury Doughboy with a Propel energy drink, but, you know, trademarks and copyrights and whatever so they can't. But it would be hysterical.
Yeah. Because I was like, boy, I had no idea. Well
Well, Mars is from is Mars from Richmond?
Yes.
Or is it just Virginia? Okay.
Yeah. Right outside of Richmond.
Okay. So Richmond is famous for candy and cigarettes. Those are two things that kill people. Great.
I mean, why not?
How many for not to put you on the spot, and I should've done the research, but how many Fortune 500 companies are around the Richmond area?
We have 11 Fortune one thousands.
Fortune okay. 11. Yeah. Yeah. That's nice to have that kinda and especially if you can shape the culture for them to adopt early stage.
Yeah. That's a that's a that's a nice foundation to build off of.
Yeah. If everything were rainbows, roses, and unicorns, we would have a program similar to Engage. So there's an Engage program based out of Atlanta, Georgia with Tech Square Capital. Jason Kuo is the one currently running it. I got the amazing chance to meet him during Venture Atlanta.
And so founders, if you're ever looking for a good investor big investor conference to go to for connections, Venture Atlanta is one of them. And so he what Engage does is they got 17 corporate LPs into a fund, and then those corporates not only invest in the companies that go through the program, but they create a contract for an early customer with those companies as well. So now we're talking about revenue generation and capital because, like, that's where programs like Lighthouse should live is in customer and capital, not just acceleration. Like, we should be doing this ongoing support of helping them identify corporate customer, enterprise customer, whatever it is, or helping them with customer acquisition and retention after that. Like, there's so many things that we can do on helping these founders build these companies that isn't just helping them raise capital.
So, like, with that, I'm curious. Is it part of the DNA within Lighthouse to take advantage of opportunities when presented to you? Because it seems like whenever we reach out to Lighthouse companies, they're very quick to respond, raise their hand, and say yes. And and you don't find that everywhere else.
Yeah. We I mean, we're constantly telling them for certain opportunities. We're teaching them what is and isn't a good opportunity, But they are
important to know too.
(04:34):
Yeah. They're very responsive when there's when there's things out there. And they also vet it through us of, like, is this legitimate? Like, is this something that you would deem good? And for sometimes, yes, it's a pitch event for exposure that could be really great for them.
For other times, it's like, this investor approached me, and I don't really know anything about them. And it's like, oh, we do. They're in our network. And by the way, they've also already invested in six other lighthouse companies. You should absolutely talk to that person.
And so also being available to help them vet through those, but we are also, as an organization, constantly sending that stuff out to our founders. So as soon as we know it's available, we're like, hey. Apply to this thing. It could be great. Whereas the other things that I don't find value in, I'm obviously not gonna push out to them from the network perspective.
So are you guys telling me that you don't eat salads?
Yeah. I will I will that that's what it's sort of super funny. So, like, man
No. No.
Deep deep deep secrets of of the life of Tim. So, yeah, if I'm at a dinner, like, if I'm at, like, a evening dinner, especially when Terry is next to me, she'll, like, eat her salad, then we do the switcheroo of the plate so that I have an empty plate in front of me, and then, she'll have yeah. Yeah. That's that's been going on for
I do that to my husband all the time.
I've known you for fifteen years.
Yeah. And I'm observant.
I just I feel
like I feel like I need mastered the craft.
Yeah. I feel like I need to leave.
Well, so, like, it's Debbie is like I I go to Debbie for strength and, you know, that make me not feel so out there on my own.
Need my superpower that my dad taught me of being able to really see people and, like, know all of the fun parts about them.
I have never been so disappointed in my life. I mean, this is no. I'm just kidding. Okay. Is there anything we haven't talked about that you wanna talk about?
No. I think it's exciting to be able to engage on on things like this because for Lighthouse in particular, we're not focused on just Richmond. We're focused on everywhere with some of our, like, key opportunities being in Nova and other parts of the Commonwealth and Hampton Roads and also in some states that surround us. And so it's really fun to go outside and and talk to other people outside of Richmond because it's like, hey. There's really cool things, and we can partner, and we can do collaborations and not just cooperation.
And so it's just yeah. It's really fun to link up with you guys again. I mean, I talk to Tim all the time. Let's be honest. But, you know, I get to meet you now.
And Well,
that's news to me too.
For two seconds.
(04:55):
I mean, we got Tim and you guys talking all the time. You guys don't eat salads.
Guess I because Tim is part of the Virginia Accelerator Network, so it's more of, like, Tim and I and several other folks from across the state are constantly talking to each other because we all run organizations like this and it's all a headache and all of when and all everything in between. So it's like, I need my peers just like founders need their peers to be like, is life and why is this so hard?
Right.
Do that.
What now that you're you've you're new to Richmond, the Richmond area, what what is what has then become now become your go to place to grab a bite to eat? And then on the flip side, now that you're out of Stanton, what is what is the one place in Stanton that you miss that you just love to jump in the car and Oh. Visit again?
Alright. So for Richmond side, I live in Churchill, and so there are a couple spots in Churchill that I absolutely love. Obviously, Union Market. And there's a place called Kala's, which is very close to my house because they have good cheap nachos, and so I can pick those up really quick to feed my children. We don't go out very much because I have a seven, four, and two year old, which means we are that family that everyone gives a side eye to.
Well, you know, and, like restaurant? Going through that, we would purposely pick the loudest restaurants to go to so that that way they're drowned out and
Yep.
We wouldn't get the side eye.
Yeah. Because we're not gonna be going to nice restaurants right now because Yeah. I have little kids. Also, dining is prime. Anywhere there's outdoor dining, we're absolutely here for it because my kids can be nuts.
So there's a lot of spots. But, obviously, I am doing this podcast right now from the podcast room at common house in Richmond, and they have a built in restaurant and bar. So I end up eating here a lot because I work here every day or most days. But I love a lot of spots in Jackson Ward in Richmond as well because that's where my office is located. So it's just been fun.
I get to explore a lot. We've only been here since November, which means I haven't gotten to do a lot of the outdoor dining scene yet. So looking forward to that more. In terms of Stanton, it ended up closing. And so I guess I'm I'm glad because then I would be jealous that it's not near me anymore.
There is this amazing restaurant called Aioli, and it was Mediterranean. And they had this duck over a blackberry reduction risotto that was to die for.
But
he retired. Yay for them. And so there's a new restaurant there that's by the local trap house. And so we haven't tried it yet. But, yeah, definitely, aioli was my go to spot, and then my drink spot was the green room, which was a blast and a half.
Benjamin and Lauren built a really cool spot with that. But I don't know. I still appreciate a lot about the Shenandoah Valley, but I am very happy. I'm in Richmond now.
Yeah.
So if there was lettuce and tomatoes on your nachos, would you tell them to to, like, put them on the side? Like, how would you
handle it? No. No. I eat that. That's fine.
It's like, for me, it's not the same as Tim. For me, it's like, if you put a beautiful steak and potatoes and then, like, green beans on the side, I'm not gonna eat the green beans or the asparagus or, like, the roasted winter vegetables, squash stuff. Like, I don't I will if it's made with a lot of, like, maple and other stuff great on it, like roasted brussels sprouts in a certain way. But, yeah, like, you put, like, tomatoes and avocados Breach. Everything on top of nachos.
Whatever. That's fine.
(05:16):
Okay. Yeah. Well well said. Well said.
I've been doing this, but I'm a do this now because I like this is this is not okay. Like, y'all are missing out. It's fine. Y'all can live your lives however you want.
It's okay. Delicious food all the time, so I'm good.
I literally had lunch with mister Ryan on Monday.
That's You it's a very stressful time for me. Like, when people are like, hey. Let's. When you get invited to dinners or lunches and stuff like that, I mean, it's just like Tim is quickly going online to to make sure I know what the menu looks like ahead of time. So I'm not What do you do at those silly situation.
What do you do at those silly chamber of commerce meals where it's a salad with chicken on top? You just eat the chicken?
Pretty much. And I will, like you know what mean? Like, thank goodness for ranch dressing. Right? I mean, it's just you can drown it with ranch and, you know, eat eat eat enough to be polite.
Precisely. This is not the South where you always have to clear your plate anymore. Thankfully, we've gotten rid of some of that. I do not force my children to eat everything off their plate anymore.
I have no words. I'm done with this conversation. I'm just I'm just
I hope people people walked away learning a whole lot more about Debbie and Tim than I I knew that this was it it was it was inevitable if this was gonna come out. But Wow.
Thanks for being here today. This has been a delight, question mark. Maybe. For those of you who cannot see my sarcasm, that was being sarcastic for the last sixty two minutes. Just wanna make sure you guys know that.
You know? I've only been canceled three times. Can't have a fourth.
Third time's not the charm, apparently.
So we'll find out. Final words, mister Ryan?
Non salivating? I'm afraid to say anymore. I've done enough. I've said enough. No.
But, Debbie, seriously, thank you for all that you do, and you are such a great person to collaborate with. And Lighthouse is just has always been top tier, and it's it's going continues to go on that trajectory. So thank you. I look forward to many, many more future partnerships and collaborations with you, and, really thank you for all that you do for Richmond and most importantly, the founders. That's what matters most.
So thank you for all that you do.
Always a pleasure. Fun to talk with you guys.
Thanks for watching. Have a great day. Toodles.
What a close.
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