September 6, 2024 • 44 mins
Episode Description
In this episode of Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) Live, hosts Ilya Tabakh and Terrance Orr introduce themselves and the podcast's mission. They discuss the origin story of their collaboration and the goals they aim to achieve through this series. Ilya and Terrance explore the roles and definitions of Entrepreneurs in Residence, sharing personal journeys and insights from their diverse backgrounds. This episode sets the stage for future discussions, aiming to connect EIRs globally and provide valuable content for current and aspiring EIRs.
Key Points From This Episode:
- Discussion on the origin story of the podcast.
- Explanation of the term "Entrepreneur in Residence" and its variations.
- The role of an EIR in different contexts: corporate, academic, nonprofit, and more.
- Importance of connecting EIRs globally and building a community.
- The impact of EIRs on organizations and the value they bring.
- Goals and future plans for the podcast, including audience engagement and content delivery.
- Personal stories and experiences from Ilya and Terrence's careers as EIRs.
Links
- (00:00) - Introduction to EIR Live
- (03:19) - EIRs as Translators and Diverse Perspectives
- (07:43) - Terrance Orr Backgroud
- (14:13) - Ilya Tabakh Background
- (24:44) - Types of EIRs
- (27:31) - Transforming Hearts and Minds: Changing Organizational Culture
- (32:52) - EIR Live: The Podcast for EIRs and Aspiring EIRs
- (43:19) - Actionable Advice and Inspiration for EIRs
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Ilya Tabakh (00:02):
Welcome to EIR Live, the podcast where the
entrepreneurial spirit shinesthrough stories and insights
from entrepreneurs in residencefrom across the ecosystem. I'm
your host, Lili Tabak, joined bymy co host, Terence Moore. Each
episode, we dive into the uniquejourneys of innovators and
disruptors, from the firstsparks of inspiration to the
(00:22):
challenges and triumphs alongthe way. This podcast is for the
self starters, for venturecreators, for the translators
who can connect the dots.Whether you're aspiring to be an
EIR, have been in the game for awhile, or work with an EIR, EIR
Live offers you a front row seatto the highs and lows of the
innovation journey.
Our conversations are filledwith actionable advice, deep
(00:45):
dives into stories of EIRs thatare redefining the role, and
live q and a sessions, alldesigned to engage, inform, and
inspire. Tune in, join theconversation, and let's explore
what it takes to turn ideas intoreality, and connect your
expertise to accelerateorganizations who aspire to
build the future. Welcome to EIRLive, where entrepreneurs speak,
(01:07):
we listen, and communities grow.Alright. So I'm I'm super
excited to to be here with you,Terrance, because, this has been
sort of coming for a while.
But what's exciting, is, youknow, in in this first episode
or episode 0 as we're callingit, it it's really interesting
(01:27):
for me to to talk about how wegot here. You know? And and for
the reason that 2 of us are areon the screen here today was,
I've been reaching out to EIRs.You know, what's crazy is for
years now, I've been I've beentalking to some folks recently,
and I sort of retell the story.And I'm like, you know, I
started at, like, the end of2020, early 2021.
(01:49):
And and then I, like, stoppedfor a second. I'm like, man.
It's 2024. I'm like, that's it'sit's been years since I've been
talking to people. And andwhat's funny is, normally, when
I talk to people, I'm one of thefirst EIRs that they talk to.
You know, a a a common reactionis like, oh, man. That's
awesome. I've you know, I wantedto see what other people are
doing, but I just I've neverI've, you know, I wanted to see
what other people are doing, butI just I've never reached out.
Or or, you know, they're like,hey. I have an awesome group of
(02:11):
EIRs in my company.
We're pretty close. Or, youknow, we're we have a great,
group of EIRs at the universityand really good exchange, but
people don't really reach outbeyond sort of that, kind of
gate, that fence for whateverreason. You know? And and what's
(02:31):
what's great is you actuallyreached out to me. That's right.
You know? And through some kindof force in the universe, I get
this, you know, awesome messagethat popped up in my inbox. And
you're like, hey, man. You'redoing some cool things. I love
the EIR thing.
Let's talk. And I'm like, man.That has not happened to me.
Terrance Orr (02:49):
That's right.
Ilya Tabakh (02:49):
That's right. That that's like a a a super meta
game. So it's super awesomethat, you know, we were able to
connect. And then, you know,also just, in that conversation,
kind of our originalconversations, we were both
pretty pretty excited about, youknow, that kind of connecting
the network and and and buildingthose bridges. And so I think
(03:10):
that's a pretty cool, originstory for, you know, kind of a
conversation or a a set ofconversations.
So you know? And and as we werekicking around, you know, and
ultimately decided to do apodcast, we decided to call we
decided to call it EIR live.What's your take on that? Why
why do you think that's a goodkinda name for for what we're
(03:31):
going for here?
Terrance Orr (03:33):
I mean, honestly, you know, EIRs, we sort of, we
live in that moment, right? Weget things done sort of on the
fly and I think having adialogue and a conversation with
EIRs live, right, I think sortof was a natural step for the
name to get here and because weplan on hosting these
conversations to share insightswith people from different walls
(03:56):
of life, from differentresidents, which Ilya will talk
about later on, in differentactual aspects of how do you
actually do this? And talkingabout it live, there's a live
aspect to this versus just arecorded aspect of it. You know,
to like most other podcasts iswe want to engage our audience
and the people who are gonna beengaging with the podcast. So,
(04:18):
you know, that's what I believe,you know.
Do you have another definition?
Ilya Tabakh (04:22):
No, I think that's great. I think the, I like the
live part because I really dowant it to be more interactive.
And in a lot of theseconversations with EIRs, they're
really excited about kindaconnecting with other folks. I'm
hoping that part of the livepiece can be, you know, kind of
including that audience, reallyhaving them be part of the
conversation before the show.And I think over time, we'll
(04:44):
we'll evolve it, and we canbuild some mechanisms into
where, they can be, involvedduring, potentially, the
recording of the show.
But definitely, after we do theepisode, also kind of join, on a
live session, afterwards. And sowe have we have some ideas today
on how to make it live, butwhat's cool is I think we can
kinda continue to extend and andthen think about how else we can
(05:06):
add to that live experience. Andso we have some ideas, but I'm
excited to you know, part of theinteresting thing about a
conversation is people get tosort of add and contribute to
that. So I'm excited to see howit develops over time.
Terrance Orr (05:20):
Absolutely.
Ilya Tabakh (05:21):
And I think, you know, it it sort of builds a
little bit on the goals of thepodcast as well. I I think part
of it, you know, even in thename, it's kinda connecting
people and creating a forum, aplatform, a live conversation.
What are some of the other goalsyou're thinking about kind of or
hoping that we'll be able toachieve in some of these
conversations?
Terrance Orr (05:40):
You know, me, for me, it's all about ecosystem
building. Right? How do you addvalue to a ecosystem of EIRs who
probably do not know each othertoday, but who need to know each
other, who are experiencing aproblem that another EIR is sort
of experiencing right now, butthey haven't encountered yet.
How do you avoid those landmines? I'm hoping that when we
build this ecosystem of EIR ledcompanies or ventures or the
(06:04):
things that they're working onin their residence, that people
have a community now, that theycan go to that in my mind
doesn't exist today in atangible way.
Ilya Tabakh (06:14):
Yeah. That that's awesome. For me, I think as
we've been kinda preparing forsome of the episodes, I think
really the getting in the weedswith the folks that were there
and and really capturing theirinsights
Terrance Orr (06:25):
and Right.
Ilya Tabakh (06:25):
Maybe even capturing a little bit of the
background and kind of what werethey thinking, what were they
feeling. You know? A lot ofthese things are pretty
transferable. In some ways,talking to other EIRs is almost
like a counseling session. Itshould be done.
The experiences are verysimilar. They can kinda relate
to similar stories, some of thestruggles, things like that. So
I think for me, that's kind of,at least off the bat, the
(06:48):
exciting part, you know,connecting with folks that are
doing it, in some cases, thatmaybe have expanded the role,
and and really capturing that.
Terrance Orr (06:57):
That's right. Yeah.
Ilya Tabakh (06:58):
And, you know, a a lot of other kinda things as
well. I think, one of the funthings that I've I've been
asking recently, and it waskinda Terrance's idea, but
asking EIRs kinda what's theirdream EIR role. Right? Right. As
as we've been kinda continuingto to dialogue on this topic,
it's sort of expanded mythinking a little bit, and and
(07:20):
also talking to other people,just seeing what they get
excited about.
And so this idea of of kindamanifesting, helping folks find
the places that they wanna endup, you know, having a career as
an EIR isn't necessarily a thingfor everybody, but there's
definitely folks that have had,you know, multiple, and and
(07:40):
continue to have EIR roles. Youknow, Terrance is one of them.
And so maybe it's it's helpfulto to jump into your background,
Terrance, and and and really digin Absolutely. And give folks a
little bit of an idea why you'reso excited about this topic.
Terrance Orr (07:53):
I'm really excited about this topic and I think
very few people that you meet inthe world, like the origin story
that Ilya shared earlier, havethe same passion about this
topic as me because I think likemost EIRs in the world when they
first got their firstopportunity, they had no clue
what the role was or they nevereven heard of the thing. Right,
and they had to go figure outwhat is an EIR. They started
(08:14):
going to their good friendGoogle, right, to figure out
what is this role and thismysterious title, right? But my
background didn't start in thisplace. It started in the world
of corporate America, workingfor a company called EMC, had a
few roles before that, but atthe formative part of my career,
(08:35):
I worked for a data storage ITinfrastructure company called
EMC where we built data storageproducts and solutions.
But not just data storageproducts and solutions, right?
You know, obviously softwaresecurity services, things that
actually make those solutionsfunction, in the marketplace.
And usually when people refer tothe cloud, technically it's
gonna end up on some piece ofhardware somewhere, in
(08:58):
somebody's data center. And forme before I started working in
that field, I actually wasn'tthat experienced in that space.
Right.
But that's sort of where I cutmy teeth and got my background
and my infrastructure to what Ido today, working at that
company. And I've doneeverything in that company from
product to business development,to strategy and ops, to building
(09:19):
new ventures all the way upuntil the company got acquired
by Dell and now the 2nd largestacquisition in technology
history for 67,000,000,000. Ithink the largest one today is
now Activation Blizzard, Ibelieve, and another transaction
that went through. So I wentthrough that whole sort of
(09:40):
transition and became a part ofDell EMC, the new combined
entity. And in that capacity, Iwas doing strategy and new
ventures, and helping take newprograms and projects and
initiatives from 0 to 1,bringing these 2 massive
companies together.
And that was super interestingwork for me, but it's what
(10:01):
sparked that alongside a fewother things, sparked my
interest in the world ofentrepreneurship, startups and
venture capital. And thatinterest sort of led me to leave
the company, not long after,maybe a year or 2 later to go on
to study law of all thingsbecause I had a background in
(10:24):
business, had a background ininformation systems and this
legal piece will help round outmy background in a 360 point of
view. But I wanted to not go tolaw school to become a lawyer,
right? Or to practice law perse. I actually wanted to be an
investor.
So long story short, I went offto law school, I studied venture
capital law andentrepreneurship, a program
(10:45):
designed specifically for STEMprofessionals. I had the
privilege to get intoNorthwestern law school. So I
moved to Chicago and really fromthat point on, I started to cut
my teeth in the world ofentrepreneurship, started
mentoring founders at some ofthe world's largest and most
renowned accelerators andincubator programs. I was trying
my hand in my first startup,which failed by the way, which
(11:06):
is focused on DVT, deep veinthrombosis, which is essentially
blood clocks, right? There'sreally no effective way for
physicians to monitor theirpatients post care, in real
time, for those who have DVT,right?
And trying to find a solution tohow do you actually do that? We
learned a lot along the way,failed miserably, but that's
okay because one of the thingsthat you'll see as a thread in a
(11:30):
lot of EIRs that we've done alot of different things and
we've failed a lot, but we'vealso had a lot of successes
along the way. And over time youbuild a skill of taking things
from 0 to 1 in a very effectiveway. And doing those things sort
of after those failures landedan opportunity at Techstars,
helping a portfolio of 10startups do business development
and growth. Shout out to my goodfriend, Neil Sales, who took a
(11:54):
shout on me at the time and sawsomething in me and the
potential.
There's also a piece of thatthat mounts back to the role of
the EIR, but I left Techstarsand started to work for a family
office to start up studio of anNBA player. Started to cut my
teeth in the world of sportstech, and gaming and e sports
and other things that surroundedthat ecosystem. While I was
(12:17):
doing the opportunity atTechstars, I started to start my
second venture focused on theworld of supply chain and
logistics. And that's what endedup getting me folded into SAP
and me landing my firstmysterious role as an
entrepreneur in residence,right? But I had to give you
that long winding path to sortof how did I get the
opportunity?
(12:38):
Because it was a mix of, youknow, working as an accelerator,
having a few failures, going outin the ecosystem, having some
experience already ininfrastructure under me, right?
From my previous corporatecareer that led me to my first
opportunity in Silicon Valley tobe an EIR for SAP, in a multi
$1,000,000,000 software companyin their studio called sap. Io.
(13:01):
And in that studio, I wasresponsible for incubating
solutions, enterprise software,pains and solutions, from SAP. I
went out to my next EIR role,which is at a company called
Mach 49, which is a venturebuilder that partners with the
world's largest corporations tospin out new venture capital
(13:21):
firms and new ventures fromscratch.
And I became a EIR there,partnering with our corporate
partners to help them build newventures in construction and
healthcare, in food ingredients,a lot of different things under
the spectrum. But my role atMach 49 was very different from
my role, at SAP. Then I went onto do some more work supporting
(13:45):
a growth stage company as anentrepreneur in residence. So
I've done this call one day. SoI've done this so many different
times, as an entrepreneur inresidence and every single time
my residence was different andthe work that I did was
different.
So I won't bore the audience,but that's my background journey
to being a EIR and along the wayI became a venture partner, a
(14:06):
scout, an advisor to multipleventure capital firms and
startup studios. But I wannapass it back to Ilya to talk
about his background becausehe's equally as impressive, in
in this space. So Ilya, talk tothe people.
Ilya Tabakh (14:23):
Yeah. No. Absolutely. And before I jump
into that, you know, I I believeEIRs really are translators. And
and what's cool is, you know,every time we talk about
backgrounds, there's always,like, a a new layer to the
onion.
Right? But but I think it'sreally important to sorta have a
a collection of languages.Right? Because if you're gonna
translate, it's not just thewords. It's kinda the cultural
(14:43):
understanding, you know, sort ofthe expectations in the market.
And as you were sort of walkingthrough your background, first
of all, kinda funny becausethere there's a couple more
similarities I picked up on thistime than last time, and I'm
sure next time we'll talk aboutit same. But the other thing,
you know, that kinda struck mewas the operations background,
(15:05):
the business, the legal, thebuilding piece. There's a lot of
kinda complementary, but alsodifferent perspectives there.
And and I think to your pointabout it's important to to fail,
and you learn a lot throughthat. I think it's also
important to sort of have thethe the viewpoint and and be
(15:26):
able to bring a little bit ofthat perspective
Terrance Orr (15:30):
Absolutely.
Ilya Tabakh (15:30):
From all these disparate markets, roles, things
like that. I think that reallykinda steps you up. And, you
know, it's funny because becausein my background, there there's
a lot of that too.
Terrance Orr (15:41):
Right.
Ilya Tabakh (15:42):
And so when you look at I I, just like most of
the rest of the EIRs, that Italk to, think I'm a little
weird. Right? A lot of thoseconversations start with, I'm
probably different than theother EIRs you talk to, but
right? And so, I I've sort ofembraced that, having a
(16:02):
nontraditional weird, you know,maybe not not clear line career
path is is actually a feature,not a bug. And so for me for me,
that's kinda how it's turnedout.
You know? The the I'm, rightnow, pretty much on the 3rd
chapter of my professionalcareer. The first chapter was
(16:23):
mostly academic and research. SoI was, got a couple degrees in
computer engineering and wasworking on my PhD in
environmental engineering, atthe University of Kansas when I
got a pretty awesome opportunityto help, stand up a university
wide transportation researchinstitute. And what was amazing
about that is, the gentlemanthat came in to run it had spent
(16:45):
30 years running thetransportation program at Oker
Jascha lab.
And so he was sort of, you know,on his second or third career at
that point, and, came to theUniversity of Kansas to try to
grow this program. And and hisapproach was really to be kind
of expansive and inclusive inlooking at different
(17:07):
disciplines, bringing inperspectives from the, you know,
kind of administrative federalside, from the academic side,
from industry, and and reallycreating a conversation and a
really interesting ecosystemwhere there really wasn't one
before.
Terrance Orr (17:23):
Yeah.
Ilya Tabakh (17:24):
And so in that, I got to help build biofuel, sort
of algae to biofuel program. Dida lot of work in, first, kinda
waste, oil to biodiesel and thenplayed around, a little bit with
inductive charging of transitbuses. Now keep in mind, this
is, like, the late 2000, early20 tens. So
Terrance Orr (17:45):
Early days.
Ilya Tabakh (17:46):
Probably. Yeah. Climate or not even Climate. It
was CleanTech 1.0 or 2.0depending who you listen to. But
that was pretty awesome.
Also, I I was a NSF fellow, and,you know, did some things in
kind of interdisciplinarydevelopment for looking at how
do you develop biomedicalproducts, did some of the I
(18:08):
Corps curriculum. So I wasreally lucky in some ways that,
the academic establishmentrealized that, hey. We need our
folks that are gonna be facultymembers to be able to
communicate, properly, to beable to think about how do some
of these inventions and IP getcommercialized. And so, I I got
a lot of exposure pretty earlyin my education, and and really
(18:32):
in kind of building that thatfirst chapter. Ultimately, I
ended up, taking a leave ofabsence for my PhD to do a
program with the KauffmanFoundation.
And that program was initiallydesigned to teach, oh, funny
enough, British PhDs how tocommercialize technology.
Fortunately, by the time I gotinto the Kauffman Global
Scholars Program, I had beenopened up beyond British PhDs
(18:54):
because I'm clearly not British.But it was awesome because it
was a combination of kind of anEMBA in entrepreneurship if such
a thing exists. Okay. And sosome really good curriculum and
the latest thinking.
And, you know, a lot of it I'dseen in pieces, but it was great
to kind of see it as more of acomplete thought. Yeah. Then the
second part of the program was,going to some of the stronger
(19:17):
entrepreneurial ecosystems inthe US, and really interacting
with some of the kinda keystructural pieces of each one of
those ecosystems. So we went tokinda the Boston ecosystem,
Chicago, Silicon Valley, and gotto sit down with some of the
folks that really werestructurally crucial to each one
of those. And it was reallyinteresting to see, you know,
companies integrating m and atransactions and thinking about
(19:41):
how do you kinda create a bigforum.
For example, in in Cambridge,the, you know, Cambridge
Innovation, Center and and kindof that that that whole area was
was sort of the, a place where,folks started first connecting,
and then there's all kinds ofcrazy stories that happened
(20:02):
afterwards. And so that was areally important perspective.
And and because I got to seesort of all these places next to
each other, it was great tostart to see how are they
different, how are they similar,what's an what is an ecosystem.
Right? Everybody uses the wordecosystem.
But it's really interesting tothink about stakeholders. Why do
they show up? Why is it good?You know? Who is it good for?
(20:25):
And so I got to see a lot ofthat. And then, ultimately, the
the third part of the programwas to create an opportunity
for, the fellow to kinda get anexperience to expand their
expand their capabilities. Andfor me, I that was the first
time I ended up being inresidence. I was the Kauffman
Global Scholar in residence, atCisco. And so I was sitting in
Cisco Systems, like the networkcompany.
(20:46):
I was sitting in theirintellectual property group, and
that was pretty important to mebecause I was interested in
seeing how large techorganizations use intellectual
property to go to market andkind of maintain proprietary
advantage. And what was coolabout Cisco is at the time they
had issued their 10,000 patent,and they were also completing or
(21:07):
kind of executing their 100 85thM and A transaction in the
history of the company. And soit was really interesting to
sort of see how do you had areason about creating value. How
do you ultimately kind of thinkabout IP? What is prior art?
Right? A lot of the time Right.People have patents. At the end
of the day, patents are like a awhole different animal. And so
(21:28):
it was really interesting for,you know, somebody that has
spent most of their time in kindof research academic settings to
really think about that in moreof an industrial way.
That ultimately ended up beingkind of an off ramp from my,
chapter 1. After that, I wassaying, you know, became an
entrepreneur in the wild, as Isay. And so, started doing
startups. I did a few differentstartups in kinda related
(21:49):
fields. I did one on humanreactions, so capturing kind of
facial expressions and thingslike that from video.
The second one I did was kindataking some of those insights
into sports analytics. Weactually ended up building the,
first, sports app powered by IBMWatson. So that was kind of a
crazy time. Ultimately, that wasalso the year where FanDuel and
(22:12):
DraftKings put, quarter of a$1,000,000,000 into advertising,
to change the fantasy footballmarket from sort of the
traditional to daily. So thatwas kind of a crazy time.
We ultimately ended up pivotinga few times, try to do some
athlete health stuff. And that'sI've learned a lot about, kinda,
the health care system at thatpoint. And then, ultimately, the
the most recent startup I didwas, we built a distributed data
(22:34):
center in the Midwest that hadabout 40,000 CPU cores. So
pretty significant, data centerinfrastructure. And that got me
super excited about, you know,what does infrastructure look
like if it's kinda meshed andconnected and all that stuff.
And so, as we're bringing thatstartup in for landing, I
started to support a little bitof, innovation work over at,
(22:56):
Black and Veatch, which is alarge global engineering
procurement constructioncompany, and and got to know
their innovation team, got toknow the company. It actually
turns out, you know, I'mconvinced that the world is a
small village. But but,definitely, the Midwest of the
US is is a small village. And itturned out that my graduate
advisor was actually the N. T.
Veatch, chaired professor ofcivil environmental
(23:18):
architectural engineering at theUniversity of Kansas, and N. T.
Veatch was one of the foundersof Black and Veatch. So I it it
never sort of occurred to methat, you know, I I had kind of
a lot of exposure, but I got tolearn what they were working on.
They got to learn about sort ofwhat I was good at, and and and,
ultimately, I became, kind ofthe first, what I call,
(23:38):
corporate horizontalentrepreneur in residence.
I'll jump into some of what thatmeans a little bit later. But
that got me to kinda chapter 3where I'm at today is thinking
about how can you bring in someof that perspective and some of
my past experience into thisentrepreneur in residence role.
And I, you know, jokingly callcall it the entrepreneur in
captivity, chapter of my career,but, you know, it's just very
(24:03):
different than than being in thewild and doing your own thing.
And I think kinda knowing whatthat difference is and thinking
about what you need to besuccessful is pretty important.
I see.
But, you know, backgrounds areare are really fun and sort of
diving in because you can startto kind of take some of those
modifiers and and really talkabout, hey. In this other world,
(24:24):
you know, this is different andthings like that. And and so I
think, you know, having kind ofthat that background and and
that, perspective has actuallybeen helpful in in talking to
other EIRs and and starting tosort of think about them and
kinda codify them and thingslike that. And so, you know, I
(24:44):
think it's important when whenyou say EIR, there's a lot of
ways that that term gets used.There there is the kind of
academic.
So so I found I found it helpfulto add, essentially, 2
modifiers. 1 is what's theresidence, and 2, what's kind of
(25:05):
the function? Right? And and Ilike to describe the function as
either horizontal or vertical.And and to me, vertical is if
you're brought in to run abusiness line internally or
potentially spin one out.
And then horizontal is if you'rethere to work on the kind of
innovation capacity of theorganization. You know, are you
(25:26):
there to help them think about,what skills the team needs and
how to kind of build muscle todo it? Or potentially connect
with the outside world as well.I see I see sort of EIRs as as
being at the interface of theoutside world and inside the
company. And so, most of thetime, I even when I'm talking
about functions, I'm sayingthere's a role that you can play
(25:47):
inside, but there's also a rolethat you can play outside, and I
think it's important to keep aneye on both.
And and, yeah, what I found isthat by looking at what's the
residence and then what's thefunctional role and
realistically, by the way, I sayeverybody's diagonal. Nobody's,
like, completely vertical orhorizontal. In some cases,
there's there's people that arevery, very focused on running
(26:09):
their business line, but they'restill having to kinda
communicate and align across abroader standpoint. And and
there, you can't be completelyvertical, because otherwise,
you're gonna get orphaned. Butbut once you sorta have those 2
motor modifiers figured out, youyou can sort of really start to
understand how how folks aresimilar.
(26:32):
And what's cool is this EIRconcept is being spread to many
more residences. So, you know,I've I've talked to folks that,
have been in EIR in in kind of afederal defense context. I've
talked to folks, that are EIRsat some of the bigger
corporates, and, you know, thethis whole idea of a a corporate
(26:52):
EIR is is relatively new. Andthen, ultimately, you know, even
nonprofits and and kinda publicentities are starting to get
this kinda role. And so it'sgonna be exciting in these
conversations to to really divein and think about what kind of
roles and and continue toexpand.
And, hopefully, you know, ourour audience, you guys, the
(27:14):
listeners, will will will workwith us to to continue to sort
of peel back that onion anddiscover other people that's out
there. Terrance, you youobviously have a lot of insight
and background here too. Wouldlove to sort of hear about your
your thoughts on kind of therole, of an entrepreneur in
residence and kind of what whatthey do in an organization.
Terrance Orr (27:35):
No, absolutely. And you actually, you did
something that I was about to dobecause I think we've been in
EIR land for so long that Ithink we've been using the term
EIR in the podcast, but we neverintroduced it as entrepreneur in
residence per se. But that termcould also mean executive in
(27:56):
residence, right? As I start tothink about the role of the EIR,
depending on what your E or yourX is at the beginning of that
term, right? Entrepreneur,executive in residence, you can
be an operator in residence,which we will extend this
opportunity to on the podcast.
You can also sort of be aninvestor in residence. There's
(28:21):
multiple different types ofresidence or multiple different
types of names like a founder inresidence, right? Some of them
there are slightly differentroles, but that in residence
piece is very consistent, right?And the role of a EIR will
differ depending on what yourresonance will be, right? What
organization are you going tosupport?
(28:43):
And usually I've seen that theyall have some sort of
organization to go to, right?It's a question I get often,
which is, is there a role of aEIR at all types of
organizations? Sure. Theorganization could be a venture
capital firm. It could be amuseum.
It could be an association. Itcould be a nonprofit, right? It
could be an academic institutionas Ilya described earlier. But
(29:03):
your role will differ dependingon what your residence is as he
started to, you know, dive intothis many different types of
residences that you can actuallygo into, right? So my role as a
EIR, if I'm in residence as auniversity, might be to mentor
students and help them withtheir startups, right?
My role as an EIR at a museummight be to help them digitize
(29:27):
things that used to be physicalfor people, right? To bring more
digital initiatives into themuseum, right? Which is what I'm
reading and seeing about anotherEIR currently, right? That you
could be an EIR for acorporation, right? Where you're
helping them actually spin upbrand new net new ventures that
will be a brand new businessline, or it's gonna be a brand
(29:51):
new venture, completely acompany that they're gonna spin
out separately and have its ownseparate cap tables, own
separate investors.
I've seen entrepreneurs andresidents, you know, do this
role in a nonprofit, right? LikeUnited Way. Actually they have
multiple EIRs at United Way andmultiple other nonprofits as
(30:11):
well. So we're seeing this role,you know, be used in a different
residence because people see thevalue of it, right? So what
exactly is the baseline sort offoundational things you need to
do as an EIR and what are youactually doing on a day to day,
right?
Being an EIR and being in thatrole is really an opportunity
for you to connect dots, right?Not only for the broader
(30:33):
organization, but for theoutside world, right? Because
the outside world doesn't knowwhat the organization is doing
and what they care about. As anEIR, your job is to be a
translator, right? Your job isto be bilingual in the world of
startups and whatever elseyou're focused on in the
ecosystem.
And I think understanding that,you being bilingual would be
affluent in the languages thatyou speak or the things that
(30:56):
you're translating, You'reusually translating experiences
into your residence context,right? That I started to give
examples of, earlier. You bringthe outside in perspective. I
get to bring in perspective. Soworking at an IT infrastructure
company, right?
That's supporting multipleindustries. I get to bring in
the expertise from the world ofsports, for the world of gaming,
(31:18):
right? From the world ofentertainment and fitness, for
the world of food, for the worldof construction, right? When you
bring in all of these differentperspectives and you apply it to
a new residence or a newcontext, right? That is a
superpower, right, of anentrepreneur in residence,
right?
For them to be able to translatethat experience into value,
tangible value, right? Thatorganizations can actually
(31:41):
leverage and use, but that's notit. I think that my most
favorite thing about workingwith early stage team, if I'm
doing it in a corporateenvironment or a team of
students, which is gonna be ournext generation of leaders
trying to build theirbusinesses, that I get to
transform the hearts and mindsof people. I get to transform
the culture of whatever myresidence is at the time, right?
(32:02):
How do you take the library frombeing physical and manual and
and doing things not aseffectively as they could have
done to being more efficient andsee people reap the benefits of
that, right?
How do you see these thingsinside of a corporation or a
mothership or whatever thatenterprise might be and see
people change, right? You seepeople leave sometime and go
(32:22):
spit out their old companies andraise a lot of capital. You
know, you had a piece ofinfluence of doing that from
changing their hearts and mindsof taking risks, but tangible
risks that you think you can addvalue to in an organization. So
when I think about the role ofthe EIR, it's highly dependent
on the residents, but usingthose as examples that I just
described as some of the waysthat people could actually
(32:45):
perform the role of the EIR,Right?
Ilya Tabakh (32:47):
We're we're gonna have to jump into that one. I I
love, like, a lot of the meatand potatoes
Terrance Orr (32:52):
of Absolutely.
Ilya Tabakh (32:53):
You know, sort of inspiring and changing hearted
minds is where sort ofsuccessful and not successful
roles, You know? There's just somuch texture there that I as
soon as you said sort oftransform hearts and minds,
seeing people do stuff, I I'veseen definitely a lot of those
things. I've also seen somecounterexamples where, you know,
(33:14):
generally, folks know what theyknow. They don't know what they
don't know, and it it's a loteasier to be comfortable in the
things that you've built yourcareer on. So we'll we'll table
that for now, but but I lovethis this is one of my favorite
topics on really thinking abouthow do you take the individual,
partner them with the residentsin a way that's sort of
(33:34):
strategically impactful,meaningful, and then kind of
help everybody reskill andreally collaborate and work
together well.
Absolutely. So we'll be talkingabout this more anyway. I didn't
wanna didn't wanna interrupt youthere, but you got you got me
pretty excited about
Terrance Orr (33:48):
that topic. 100%. I I mean, because when it when
it's all said and done, right,ideas don't build companies
only. Right? You know, and wecan work 80 hours a day, but we
need people, we need actualhuman capital to build new
companies, new ventures, newvalue, right?
And then we can automate, we canstart to streamline, and then we
(34:08):
can repurpose the value of thosepeople to do other new things
and innovative things. So Ithink there's a unique
opportunity and probably myfavorite part of being a, what
people call, some people call mea serial EIR, right? Sort of
doing this sort of work isbecause depending on my
resonance, I get to deployempathy and impact that skill in
a very different way. And Ithink, as you think about that
(34:32):
and what we are looking toaccomplish in the near term for
EIR Live. We're gonna bebringing you this sort of
content from people who've hadexperience in different
residences, right?
We're gonna have the 1 on 1convos, right, to start, but as
with all things that are EIR ledand created, we're gonna co
create and we're gonna co createwith you, the listeners in our
(34:54):
audience, right? We're gonnalearn from the audience and
bring in some things that youwanna see. Those 1 on 1
conversations might evolve overtime to be a panel of EIRs,
maybe at the request of peoplewho are listening, or maybe
people that we've justidentified in the ecosystem that
we think would have a gooddialogue about this topic. We're
(35:15):
certainly not gonna do it everysingle day as a cadence, but
we're not gonna do, we're notgonna make you wait a whole 2
months either, okay? So, youknow, we're gonna try to find
the appropriate cadence,somewhere between, hey, not a
month and not every week, but acadence that's gonna be
appropriate to bring to theaudience with great content that
we think would add value to whatyou wanna do and learn from and
(35:39):
learn about the people that wehope can get value from this as
current EIRs, people who wannaget their 1st EIR role and wanna
know what is it like doing thisday to day.
I've met all sorts of people whowant experience in doing this.
The other thing that we love foryou to do is to like it, right?
(36:00):
Share with people, participatein the conversation, recommend
people that you like to see onthe podcast, please, subscribe
and share it. If you see value,if there's a clip of value that
you found from the podcast, wewould encourage you to share
with people. The other thing isthat let other EIRs know in your
(36:24):
network, there's other people inthe world building right now,
EIR like companies that arehappening right now and people
doing interesting things that wedon't know about, right?
We want to meet those people. Wewant to meet those entrepreneurs
and residents that are outreally building and operating in
the wild and doing differentthings and to learn how is it
different from their residentstandpoint versus others that we
(36:47):
might bring on the show. We lovefor people to join a live
discussion. There's a liveLinkedIn group right now that
you can go request to join andwe'd love for you to join and we
want to share opportunitiesthere, value, things that's
gonna help people, and hopefullystart to share opportunities,
right? That other EIRs can startto look at and take advantage
(37:08):
of.
And, hey, drop some questions.You want questions for, you
know, future shows, futureepisodes that probably wasn't
addressed on the first fewepisodes, but you wanna see it
addressed on the other episodes.So I think those are the things
that we are really, reallyinterested in, engaging with our
listeners. We don't wanna justbe another podcast. We want
(37:30):
people to get tangible value,which is where that live piece
really starts to kick in.
And we're gonna have somereally, really, really fun,
conversations, to to really dothis. So and maybe we'll get
into, the fun conversationaround future roles and things
that we wanna do as an EIR. AndI almost wanna ask Ilya that
(37:53):
right now, you know, that if hehad a dream role, you know, to
be at EIR somewhere, where wouldit be?
Ilya Tabakh (38:01):
Yeah. You know, it's a I won't dive into this
too much because we're gonnasteal our own thunder here.
Terrance Orr (38:06):
But That's right.
Ilya Tabakh (38:07):
For me, I mean, the the reason that I'm EIR at a
company that's really excitedand focused on climate tech, is
is it gives me an opportunity tosort of, you know, add another
couple languages. And and theselanguages are probably gonna be
critical in the scaling ofclimate tech, if we're gonna
sort of be able to accomplishthe audacious goals that the
(38:29):
world has, and then also solve alot of the the problems with
deferred maintenance and and allthese other things in
infrastructure. And so, in manyways, actually, I am in in in a
pretty impactful role for metoday. That's right. Generally,
as as I've been thinking aboutit more, I I see it as kind of a
two way street.
(38:50):
Right? There there's roles whereI can bring a lot of value to as
an individual, and then there isroles that can be very enriching
for me, my capabilities, and soon and so forth. For sure. And
so when I think about kind ofthat and and, you know, ever
since we started talking aboutit in a real way, those are kind
of the themes that I thinkabout. But but in many ways, I'm
(39:10):
I'm I'm in a great place.
Absolutely. And, you know, wherewhere it's a good combination
of, you know, languages andskills and things that I
possess, and a problem spacevertical where I can also learn
and and grow from. And so That'sawesome. Great question, and and
it's one of those things where Icould probably come up with a
couple other things too becausethere's a lot of amazing
(39:33):
organizations in the world. But,I I I think those are kind of
the 2 themes.
And and then, generally, youknow, like, today, we've already
talked about it's funny becausewe could we could probably spend
another hour talking about theoverlap of backgrounds. You
know? Both of us, some datacenter background. Both of us
sports tech background.
Terrance Orr (39:52):
There we go.
Ilya Tabakh (39:53):
Completely, like, unrelated. Right? And so you get
a lot of muscle memory and sortof market norms and things like
that. And and, also, dependingon what time it was, Right?
There's also kind of the periodof time, what was going on in
the broader world that's fun.
You know, we've we talked aboutbuilding a community and and and
sort of connecting EIRstogether. I found in the past
(40:15):
few years, you know, sort ofdoing that more as as
opportunities presentedthemselves for me to connect
people that definitely shouldtalk. Lots of interesting things
happened from from that. And soI'm excited in in kinda growing
that. And, ultimately, there'sjust so much, you know, kind of
opportunity to learn from eachother, connect the dots.
And and and for me, you know,one of my hopes is kinda bring
(40:38):
some of the insights that thatthat have contributed to the
world from tech, from healthcare, from kind of places that
have been relatively innovative,in the last couple decades out
into the broader world. BecauseI think that's a pretty big
opportunity, kind of a largelever to to scale some of the
change that we need. So thoseare the things I'm excited
(40:58):
about. What are you excitedabout in the conversation that
we wrap up here?
Terrance Orr (41:03):
Man, I'm super excited about a lot of different
things and thanks for sharing. Ithink you're in a great place
too. And I would also argue thatthere's a legal overlap to our
background as well when youworked in the IP group at Cisco
as well. And like you said,there's so many different types
of patents, which again, there'sso much breadth when you're at
EIR, you can get into utilitypatents, design patents and so
(41:24):
on and so forth. But what I'msuper excited about to actually
do in the podcast is honestly,you know, I think people who
want to connect and engage withactual technical content, you
know, that they can actually useabout a subject that's not a lot
(41:45):
is written about on a day today.
There's high level articles.There's very few people that you
get the privilege to see who'sbeen a former EIR and they spill
everything that they've learned,all the roadblocks, all the war
rules, the things that they'vebeen battle tested on, right? In
their different roles and theirdifferent residences. And I
(42:07):
think I'm really excited aboutthis because we're building the
podcast that I was looking forwhen I became an entrepreneur in
residence. I was looking for aplace to go and find different
EIRs who had done differentthings in different places that
I could learn from.
And I'm incredibly excited aboutlearning from the people that
we're gonna bring on the show.I'm incredibly excited about
(42:30):
contributing to thatconversation. I'm excited about
trying to create pathways forthe roles that they wanna
manifest, as an entrepreneurresident in some other
organization in the future, asoutside of what they're doing
today. And I'm excited to seethe light bulb, come on for
people who wanna go after their1st entrepreneur in residence
role and wanna take their 1stswing and to know that it's
(42:53):
gonna be hard, but it's gonna beworth it. And to have the
privilege to be a translator andbe bilingual in these
environments to become fluent inanother language and to sort of
sharpen up your your pencils andto put more tools in your
toolbox.
Those are the things that Ithink people are gonna get from
the podcast, and those are thethings that that I'm really
(43:15):
excited about.
Ilya Tabakh (43:16):
That's awesome. Well, I mean, I could add, but
it's not worth it. I I I thinkyou got 99% of the things I'm
excited about too. So I say wejust leave it there. And excited
to have folks join us in thefuture.
Terrance Orr (43:29):
Alright. Well, looking forward to people
joining us in the future, andplease share, subscribe,
participate. We're lookingforward to engaging with you.
Thanks for tuning in to thisepisode of EIR Live. We hope you
found today's conversationenlightening and inspiring as we
journey through the highs andlows of entrepreneurship with
our incredible guests.
(43:49):
Be sure to join us next time formore stories, strategies, and
insights from theentrepreneurial front line.
Subscribe on your favoritepodcast platform on YouTube and
share the inspiration with yournetwork. Do you have a EIR in
mind that'll make a great guest?Drop us a line. Engage with us
and fellow listeners in the EIRlive LinkedIn group and join the
(44:10):
conversation.
Plus, get your questions readyfor our LinkedIn live sessions
following future episodes. Yourinsights help us shape our
journey. Let's co create andinnovate together. Until then,
let's keep innovating, striving,and exploring ways to make our
mark on the world. I'm TerenceSoar, alongside my co host, Ilya
Tabak, and we're signing off.
Let's keep building, everyone.
Welcome to EIR Live, the podcast where the
entrepreneurial spirit shinesthrough stories and insights
from entrepreneurs in residencefrom across the ecosystem. I'm
your host, Lili Tabak, joined bymy co host, Terence Moore. Each
episode, we dive into the uniquejourneys of innovators and
disruptors, from the firstsparks of inspiration to the
(00:22):
challenges and triumphs alongthe way. This podcast is for the
self starters, for venturecreators, for the translators
who can connect the dots.Whether you're aspiring to be an
EIR, have been in the game for awhile, or work with an EIR, EIR
Live offers you a front row seatto the highs and lows of the
innovation journey.
Our conversations are filledwith actionable advice, deep
(00:45):
dives into stories of EIRs thatare redefining the role, and
live q and a sessions, alldesigned to engage, inform, and
inspire. Tune in, join theconversation, and let's explore
what it takes to turn ideas intoreality, and connect your
expertise to accelerateorganizations who aspire to
build the future. Welcome to EIRLive, where entrepreneurs speak,
(01:07):
we listen, and communities grow.Alright. So I'm I'm super
excited to to be here with you,Terrance, because, this has been
sort of coming for a while.
But what's exciting, is, youknow, in in this first episode
or episode 0 as we're callingit, it it's really interesting
(01:27):
for me to to talk about how wegot here. You know? And and for
the reason that 2 of us are areon the screen here today was,
I've been reaching out to EIRs.You know, what's crazy is for
years now, I've been I've beentalking to some folks recently,
and I sort of retell the story.And I'm like, you know, I
started at, like, the end of2020, early 2021.
(01:49):
And and then I, like, stoppedfor a second. I'm like, man.
It's 2024. I'm like, that's it'sit's been years since I've been
talking to people. And andwhat's funny is, normally, when
I talk to people, I'm one of thefirst EIRs that they talk to.
You know, a a a common reactionis like, oh, man. That's
awesome. I've you know, I wantedto see what other people are
doing, but I just I've neverI've, you know, I wanted to see
what other people are doing, butI just I've never reached out.
Or or, you know, they're like,hey. I have an awesome group of
(02:11):
EIRs in my company.
We're pretty close. Or, youknow, we're we have a great,
group of EIRs at the universityand really good exchange, but
people don't really reach outbeyond sort of that, kind of
gate, that fence for whateverreason. You know? And and what's
(02:31):
what's great is you actuallyreached out to me. That's right.
You know? And through some kindof force in the universe, I get
this, you know, awesome messagethat popped up in my inbox. And
you're like, hey, man. You'redoing some cool things. I love
the EIR thing.
Let's talk. And I'm like, man.That has not happened to me.
Terrance Orr (02:49):
That's right.
Ilya Tabakh (02:49):
That's right. That that's like a a a super meta
game. So it's super awesomethat, you know, we were able to
connect. And then, you know,also just, in that conversation,
kind of our originalconversations, we were both
pretty pretty excited about, youknow, that kind of connecting
the network and and and buildingthose bridges. And so I think
(03:10):
that's a pretty cool, originstory for, you know, kind of a
conversation or a a set ofconversations.
So you know? And and as we werekicking around, you know, and
ultimately decided to do apodcast, we decided to call we
decided to call it EIR live.What's your take on that? Why
why do you think that's a goodkinda name for for what we're
(03:31):
going for here?
Terrance Orr (03:33):
I mean, honestly, you know, EIRs, we sort of, we
live in that moment, right? Weget things done sort of on the
fly and I think having adialogue and a conversation with
EIRs live, right, I think sortof was a natural step for the
name to get here and because weplan on hosting these
conversations to share insightswith people from different walls
(03:56):
of life, from differentresidents, which Ilya will talk
about later on, in differentactual aspects of how do you
actually do this? And talkingabout it live, there's a live
aspect to this versus just arecorded aspect of it. You know,
to like most other podcasts iswe want to engage our audience
and the people who are gonna beengaging with the podcast. So,
(04:18):
you know, that's what I believe,you know.
Do you have another definition?
Ilya Tabakh (04:22):
No, I think that's great. I think the, I like the
live part because I really dowant it to be more interactive.
And in a lot of theseconversations with EIRs, they're
really excited about kindaconnecting with other folks. I'm
hoping that part of the livepiece can be, you know, kind of
including that audience, reallyhaving them be part of the
conversation before the show.And I think over time, we'll
(04:44):
we'll evolve it, and we canbuild some mechanisms into
where, they can be, involvedduring, potentially, the
recording of the show.
But definitely, after we do theepisode, also kind of join, on a
live session, afterwards. And sowe have we have some ideas today
on how to make it live, butwhat's cool is I think we can
kinda continue to extend and andthen think about how else we can
(05:06):
add to that live experience. Andso we have some ideas, but I'm
excited to you know, part of theinteresting thing about a
conversation is people get tosort of add and contribute to
that. So I'm excited to see howit develops over time.
Terrance Orr (05:20):
Absolutely.
Ilya Tabakh (05:21):
And I think, you know, it it sort of builds a
little bit on the goals of thepodcast as well. I I think part
of it, you know, even in thename, it's kinda connecting
people and creating a forum, aplatform, a live conversation.
What are some of the other goalsyou're thinking about kind of or
hoping that we'll be able toachieve in some of these
conversations?
Terrance Orr (05:40):
You know, me, for me, it's all about ecosystem
building. Right? How do you addvalue to a ecosystem of EIRs who
probably do not know each othertoday, but who need to know each
other, who are experiencing aproblem that another EIR is sort
of experiencing right now, butthey haven't encountered yet.
How do you avoid those landmines? I'm hoping that when we
build this ecosystem of EIR ledcompanies or ventures or the
(06:04):
things that they're working onin their residence, that people
have a community now, that theycan go to that in my mind
doesn't exist today in atangible way.
Ilya Tabakh (06:14):
Yeah. That that's awesome. For me, I think as
we've been kinda preparing forsome of the episodes, I think
really the getting in the weedswith the folks that were there
and and really capturing theirinsights
Terrance Orr (06:25):
and Right.
Ilya Tabakh (06:25):
Maybe even capturing a little bit of the
background and kind of what werethey thinking, what were they
feeling. You know? A lot ofthese things are pretty
transferable. In some ways,talking to other EIRs is almost
like a counseling session. Itshould be done.
The experiences are verysimilar. They can kinda relate
to similar stories, some of thestruggles, things like that. So
I think for me, that's kind of,at least off the bat, the
(06:48):
exciting part, you know,connecting with folks that are
doing it, in some cases, thatmaybe have expanded the role,
and and really capturing that.
Terrance Orr (06:57):
That's right. Yeah.
Ilya Tabakh (06:58):
And, you know, a a lot of other kinda things as
well. I think, one of the funthings that I've I've been
asking recently, and it waskinda Terrance's idea, but
asking EIRs kinda what's theirdream EIR role. Right? Right. As
as we've been kinda continuingto to dialogue on this topic,
it's sort of expanded mythinking a little bit, and and
(07:20):
also talking to other people,just seeing what they get
excited about.
And so this idea of of kindamanifesting, helping folks find
the places that they wanna endup, you know, having a career as
an EIR isn't necessarily a thingfor everybody, but there's
definitely folks that have had,you know, multiple, and and
(07:40):
continue to have EIR roles. Youknow, Terrance is one of them.
And so maybe it's it's helpfulto to jump into your background,
Terrance, and and and really digin Absolutely. And give folks a
little bit of an idea why you'reso excited about this topic.
Terrance Orr (07:53):
I'm really excited about this topic and I think
very few people that you meet inthe world, like the origin story
that Ilya shared earlier, havethe same passion about this
topic as me because I think likemost EIRs in the world when they
first got their firstopportunity, they had no clue
what the role was or they nevereven heard of the thing. Right,
and they had to go figure outwhat is an EIR. They started
(08:14):
going to their good friendGoogle, right, to figure out
what is this role and thismysterious title, right? But my
background didn't start in thisplace. It started in the world
of corporate America, workingfor a company called EMC, had a
few roles before that, but atthe formative part of my career,
(08:35):
I worked for a data storage ITinfrastructure company called
EMC where we built data storageproducts and solutions.
But not just data storageproducts and solutions, right?
You know, obviously softwaresecurity services, things that
actually make those solutionsfunction, in the marketplace.
And usually when people refer tothe cloud, technically it's
gonna end up on some piece ofhardware somewhere, in
(08:58):
somebody's data center. And forme before I started working in
that field, I actually wasn'tthat experienced in that space.
Right.
But that's sort of where I cutmy teeth and got my background
and my infrastructure to what Ido today, working at that
company. And I've doneeverything in that company from
product to business development,to strategy and ops, to building
(09:19):
new ventures all the way upuntil the company got acquired
by Dell and now the 2nd largestacquisition in technology
history for 67,000,000,000. Ithink the largest one today is
now Activation Blizzard, Ibelieve, and another transaction
that went through. So I wentthrough that whole sort of
(09:40):
transition and became a part ofDell EMC, the new combined
entity. And in that capacity, Iwas doing strategy and new
ventures, and helping take newprograms and projects and
initiatives from 0 to 1,bringing these 2 massive
companies together.
And that was super interestingwork for me, but it's what
(10:01):
sparked that alongside a fewother things, sparked my
interest in the world ofentrepreneurship, startups and
venture capital. And thatinterest sort of led me to leave
the company, not long after,maybe a year or 2 later to go on
to study law of all thingsbecause I had a background in
(10:24):
business, had a background ininformation systems and this
legal piece will help round outmy background in a 360 point of
view. But I wanted to not go tolaw school to become a lawyer,
right? Or to practice law perse. I actually wanted to be an
investor.
So long story short, I went offto law school, I studied venture
capital law andentrepreneurship, a program
(10:45):
designed specifically for STEMprofessionals. I had the
privilege to get intoNorthwestern law school. So I
moved to Chicago and really fromthat point on, I started to cut
my teeth in the world ofentrepreneurship, started
mentoring founders at some ofthe world's largest and most
renowned accelerators andincubator programs. I was trying
my hand in my first startup,which failed by the way, which
(11:06):
is focused on DVT, deep veinthrombosis, which is essentially
blood clocks, right? There'sreally no effective way for
physicians to monitor theirpatients post care, in real
time, for those who have DVT,right?
And trying to find a solution tohow do you actually do that? We
learned a lot along the way,failed miserably, but that's
okay because one of the thingsthat you'll see as a thread in a
(11:30):
lot of EIRs that we've done alot of different things and
we've failed a lot, but we'vealso had a lot of successes
along the way. And over time youbuild a skill of taking things
from 0 to 1 in a very effectiveway. And doing those things sort
of after those failures landedan opportunity at Techstars,
helping a portfolio of 10startups do business development
and growth. Shout out to my goodfriend, Neil Sales, who took a
(11:54):
shout on me at the time and sawsomething in me and the
potential.
There's also a piece of thatthat mounts back to the role of
the EIR, but I left Techstarsand started to work for a family
office to start up studio of anNBA player. Started to cut my
teeth in the world of sportstech, and gaming and e sports
and other things that surroundedthat ecosystem. While I was
(12:17):
doing the opportunity atTechstars, I started to start my
second venture focused on theworld of supply chain and
logistics. And that's what endedup getting me folded into SAP
and me landing my firstmysterious role as an
entrepreneur in residence,right? But I had to give you
that long winding path to sortof how did I get the
opportunity?
(12:38):
Because it was a mix of, youknow, working as an accelerator,
having a few failures, going outin the ecosystem, having some
experience already ininfrastructure under me, right?
From my previous corporatecareer that led me to my first
opportunity in Silicon Valley tobe an EIR for SAP, in a multi
$1,000,000,000 software companyin their studio called sap. Io.
(13:01):
And in that studio, I wasresponsible for incubating
solutions, enterprise software,pains and solutions, from SAP. I
went out to my next EIR role,which is at a company called
Mach 49, which is a venturebuilder that partners with the
world's largest corporations tospin out new venture capital
(13:21):
firms and new ventures fromscratch.
And I became a EIR there,partnering with our corporate
partners to help them build newventures in construction and
healthcare, in food ingredients,a lot of different things under
the spectrum. But my role atMach 49 was very different from
my role, at SAP. Then I went onto do some more work supporting
(13:45):
a growth stage company as anentrepreneur in residence. So
I've done this call one day. SoI've done this so many different
times, as an entrepreneur inresidence and every single time
my residence was different andthe work that I did was
different.
So I won't bore the audience,but that's my background journey
to being a EIR and along the wayI became a venture partner, a
(14:06):
scout, an advisor to multipleventure capital firms and
startup studios. But I wannapass it back to Ilya to talk
about his background becausehe's equally as impressive, in
in this space. So Ilya, talk tothe people.
Ilya Tabakh (14:23):
Yeah. No. Absolutely. And before I jump
into that, you know, I I believeEIRs really are translators. And
and what's cool is, you know,every time we talk about
backgrounds, there's always,like, a a new layer to the
onion.
Right? But but I think it'sreally important to sorta have a
a collection of languages.Right? Because if you're gonna
translate, it's not just thewords. It's kinda the cultural
(14:43):
understanding, you know, sort ofthe expectations in the market.
And as you were sort of walkingthrough your background, first
of all, kinda funny becausethere there's a couple more
similarities I picked up on thistime than last time, and I'm
sure next time we'll talk aboutit same. But the other thing,
you know, that kinda struck mewas the operations background,
(15:05):
the business, the legal, thebuilding piece. There's a lot of
kinda complementary, but alsodifferent perspectives there.
And and I think to your pointabout it's important to to fail,
and you learn a lot throughthat. I think it's also
important to sort of have thethe the viewpoint and and be
(15:26):
able to bring a little bit ofthat perspective
Terrance Orr (15:30):
Absolutely.
Ilya Tabakh (15:30):
From all these disparate markets, roles, things
like that. I think that reallykinda steps you up. And, you
know, it's funny because becausein my background, there there's
a lot of that too.
Terrance Orr (15:41):
Right.
Ilya Tabakh (15:42):
And so when you look at I I, just like most of
the rest of the EIRs, that Italk to, think I'm a little
weird. Right? A lot of thoseconversations start with, I'm
probably different than theother EIRs you talk to, but
right? And so, I I've sort ofembraced that, having a
(16:02):
nontraditional weird, you know,maybe not not clear line career
path is is actually a feature,not a bug. And so for me for me,
that's kinda how it's turnedout.
You know? The the I'm, rightnow, pretty much on the 3rd
chapter of my professionalcareer. The first chapter was
(16:23):
mostly academic and research. SoI was, got a couple degrees in
computer engineering and wasworking on my PhD in
environmental engineering, atthe University of Kansas when I
got a pretty awesome opportunityto help, stand up a university
wide transportation researchinstitute. And what was amazing
about that is, the gentlemanthat came in to run it had spent
(16:45):
30 years running thetransportation program at Oker
Jascha lab.
And so he was sort of, you know,on his second or third career at
that point, and, came to theUniversity of Kansas to try to
grow this program. And and hisapproach was really to be kind
of expansive and inclusive inlooking at different
(17:07):
disciplines, bringing inperspectives from the, you know,
kind of administrative federalside, from the academic side,
from industry, and and reallycreating a conversation and a
really interesting ecosystemwhere there really wasn't one
before.
Terrance Orr (17:23):
Yeah.
Ilya Tabakh (17:24):
And so in that, I got to help build biofuel, sort
of algae to biofuel program. Dida lot of work in, first, kinda
waste, oil to biodiesel and thenplayed around, a little bit with
inductive charging of transitbuses. Now keep in mind, this
is, like, the late 2000, early20 tens. So
Terrance Orr (17:45):
Early days.
Ilya Tabakh (17:46):
Probably. Yeah. Climate or not even Climate. It
was CleanTech 1.0 or 2.0depending who you listen to. But
that was pretty awesome.
Also, I I was a NSF fellow, and,you know, did some things in
kind of interdisciplinarydevelopment for looking at how
do you develop biomedicalproducts, did some of the I
(18:08):
Corps curriculum. So I wasreally lucky in some ways that,
the academic establishmentrealized that, hey. We need our
folks that are gonna be facultymembers to be able to
communicate, properly, to beable to think about how do some
of these inventions and IP getcommercialized. And so, I I got
a lot of exposure pretty earlyin my education, and and really
(18:32):
in kind of building that thatfirst chapter. Ultimately, I
ended up, taking a leave ofabsence for my PhD to do a
program with the KauffmanFoundation.
And that program was initiallydesigned to teach, oh, funny
enough, British PhDs how tocommercialize technology.
Fortunately, by the time I gotinto the Kauffman Global
Scholars Program, I had beenopened up beyond British PhDs
(18:54):
because I'm clearly not British.But it was awesome because it
was a combination of kind of anEMBA in entrepreneurship if such
a thing exists. Okay. And sosome really good curriculum and
the latest thinking.
And, you know, a lot of it I'dseen in pieces, but it was great
to kind of see it as more of acomplete thought. Yeah. Then the
second part of the program was,going to some of the stronger
(19:17):
entrepreneurial ecosystems inthe US, and really interacting
with some of the kinda keystructural pieces of each one of
those ecosystems. So we went tokinda the Boston ecosystem,
Chicago, Silicon Valley, and gotto sit down with some of the
folks that really werestructurally crucial to each one
of those. And it was reallyinteresting to see, you know,
companies integrating m and atransactions and thinking about
(19:41):
how do you kinda create a bigforum.
For example, in in Cambridge,the, you know, Cambridge
Innovation, Center and and kindof that that that whole area was
was sort of the, a place where,folks started first connecting,
and then there's all kinds ofcrazy stories that happened
(20:02):
afterwards. And so that was areally important perspective.
And and because I got to seesort of all these places next to
each other, it was great tostart to see how are they
different, how are they similar,what's an what is an ecosystem.
Right? Everybody uses the wordecosystem.
But it's really interesting tothink about stakeholders. Why do
they show up? Why is it good?You know? Who is it good for?
(20:25):
And so I got to see a lot ofthat. And then, ultimately, the
the third part of the programwas to create an opportunity
for, the fellow to kinda get anexperience to expand their
expand their capabilities. Andfor me, I that was the first
time I ended up being inresidence. I was the Kauffman
Global Scholar in residence, atCisco. And so I was sitting in
Cisco Systems, like the networkcompany.
(20:46):
I was sitting in theirintellectual property group, and
that was pretty important to mebecause I was interested in
seeing how large techorganizations use intellectual
property to go to market andkind of maintain proprietary
advantage. And what was coolabout Cisco is at the time they
had issued their 10,000 patent,and they were also completing or
(21:07):
kind of executing their 100 85thM and A transaction in the
history of the company. And soit was really interesting to
sort of see how do you had areason about creating value. How
do you ultimately kind of thinkabout IP? What is prior art?
Right? A lot of the time Right.People have patents. At the end
of the day, patents are like a awhole different animal. And so
(21:28):
it was really interesting for,you know, somebody that has
spent most of their time in kindof research academic settings to
really think about that in moreof an industrial way.
That ultimately ended up beingkind of an off ramp from my,
chapter 1. After that, I wassaying, you know, became an
entrepreneur in the wild, as Isay. And so, started doing
startups. I did a few differentstartups in kinda related
(21:49):
fields. I did one on humanreactions, so capturing kind of
facial expressions and thingslike that from video.
The second one I did was kindataking some of those insights
into sports analytics. Weactually ended up building the,
first, sports app powered by IBMWatson. So that was kind of a
crazy time. Ultimately, that wasalso the year where FanDuel and
(22:12):
DraftKings put, quarter of a$1,000,000,000 into advertising,
to change the fantasy footballmarket from sort of the
traditional to daily. So thatwas kind of a crazy time.
We ultimately ended up pivotinga few times, try to do some
athlete health stuff. And that'sI've learned a lot about, kinda,
the health care system at thatpoint. And then, ultimately, the
the most recent startup I didwas, we built a distributed data
(22:34):
center in the Midwest that hadabout 40,000 CPU cores. So
pretty significant, data centerinfrastructure. And that got me
super excited about, you know,what does infrastructure look
like if it's kinda meshed andconnected and all that stuff.
And so, as we're bringing thatstartup in for landing, I
started to support a little bitof, innovation work over at,
(22:56):
Black and Veatch, which is alarge global engineering
procurement constructioncompany, and and got to know
their innovation team, got toknow the company. It actually
turns out, you know, I'mconvinced that the world is a
small village. But but,definitely, the Midwest of the
US is is a small village. And itturned out that my graduate
advisor was actually the N. T.
Veatch, chaired professor ofcivil environmental
(23:18):
architectural engineering at theUniversity of Kansas, and N. T.
Veatch was one of the foundersof Black and Veatch. So I it it
never sort of occurred to methat, you know, I I had kind of
a lot of exposure, but I got tolearn what they were working on.
They got to learn about sort ofwhat I was good at, and and and,
ultimately, I became, kind ofthe first, what I call,
(23:38):
corporate horizontalentrepreneur in residence.
I'll jump into some of what thatmeans a little bit later. But
that got me to kinda chapter 3where I'm at today is thinking
about how can you bring in someof that perspective and some of
my past experience into thisentrepreneur in residence role.
And I, you know, jokingly callcall it the entrepreneur in
captivity, chapter of my career,but, you know, it's just very
(24:03):
different than than being in thewild and doing your own thing.
And I think kinda knowing whatthat difference is and thinking
about what you need to besuccessful is pretty important.
I see.
But, you know, backgrounds areare are really fun and sort of
diving in because you can startto kind of take some of those
modifiers and and really talkabout, hey. In this other world,
(24:24):
you know, this is different andthings like that. And and so I
think, you know, having kind ofthat that background and and
that, perspective has actuallybeen helpful in in talking to
other EIRs and and starting tosort of think about them and
kinda codify them and thingslike that. And so, you know, I
(24:44):
think it's important when whenyou say EIR, there's a lot of
ways that that term gets used.There there is the kind of
academic.
So so I found I found it helpfulto add, essentially, 2
modifiers. 1 is what's theresidence, and 2, what's kind of
(25:05):
the function? Right? And and Ilike to describe the function as
either horizontal or vertical.And and to me, vertical is if
you're brought in to run abusiness line internally or
potentially spin one out.
And then horizontal is if you'rethere to work on the kind of
innovation capacity of theorganization. You know, are you
(25:26):
there to help them think about,what skills the team needs and
how to kind of build muscle todo it? Or potentially connect
with the outside world as well.I see I see sort of EIRs as as
being at the interface of theoutside world and inside the
company. And so, most of thetime, I even when I'm talking
about functions, I'm sayingthere's a role that you can play
(25:47):
inside, but there's also a rolethat you can play outside, and I
think it's important to keep aneye on both.
And and, yeah, what I found isthat by looking at what's the
residence and then what's thefunctional role and
realistically, by the way, I sayeverybody's diagonal. Nobody's,
like, completely vertical orhorizontal. In some cases,
there's there's people that arevery, very focused on running
(26:09):
their business line, but they'restill having to kinda
communicate and align across abroader standpoint. And and
there, you can't be completelyvertical, because otherwise,
you're gonna get orphaned. Butbut once you sorta have those 2
motor modifiers figured out, youyou can sort of really start to
understand how how folks aresimilar.
(26:32):
And what's cool is this EIRconcept is being spread to many
more residences. So, you know,I've I've talked to folks that,
have been in EIR in in kind of afederal defense context. I've
talked to folks, that are EIRsat some of the bigger
corporates, and, you know, thethis whole idea of a a corporate
(26:52):
EIR is is relatively new. Andthen, ultimately, you know, even
nonprofits and and kinda publicentities are starting to get
this kinda role. And so it'sgonna be exciting in these
conversations to to really divein and think about what kind of
roles and and continue toexpand.
And, hopefully, you know, ourour audience, you guys, the
(27:14):
listeners, will will will workwith us to to continue to sort
of peel back that onion anddiscover other people that's out
there. Terrance, you youobviously have a lot of insight
and background here too. Wouldlove to sort of hear about your
your thoughts on kind of therole, of an entrepreneur in
residence and kind of what whatthey do in an organization.
Terrance Orr (27:35):
No, absolutely. And you actually, you did
something that I was about to dobecause I think we've been in
EIR land for so long that Ithink we've been using the term
EIR in the podcast, but we neverintroduced it as entrepreneur in
residence per se. But that termcould also mean executive in
(27:56):
residence, right? As I start tothink about the role of the EIR,
depending on what your E or yourX is at the beginning of that
term, right? Entrepreneur,executive in residence, you can
be an operator in residence,which we will extend this
opportunity to on the podcast.
You can also sort of be aninvestor in residence. There's
(28:21):
multiple different types ofresidence or multiple different
types of names like a founder inresidence, right? Some of them
there are slightly differentroles, but that in residence
piece is very consistent, right?And the role of a EIR will
differ depending on what yourresonance will be, right? What
organization are you going tosupport?
(28:43):
And usually I've seen that theyall have some sort of
organization to go to, right?It's a question I get often,
which is, is there a role of aEIR at all types of
organizations? Sure. Theorganization could be a venture
capital firm. It could be amuseum.
It could be an association. Itcould be a nonprofit, right? It
could be an academic institutionas Ilya described earlier. But
(29:03):
your role will differ dependingon what your residence is as he
started to, you know, dive intothis many different types of
residences that you can actuallygo into, right? So my role as a
EIR, if I'm in residence as auniversity, might be to mentor
students and help them withtheir startups, right?
My role as an EIR at a museummight be to help them digitize
(29:27):
things that used to be physicalfor people, right? To bring more
digital initiatives into themuseum, right? Which is what I'm
reading and seeing about anotherEIR currently, right? That you
could be an EIR for acorporation, right? Where you're
helping them actually spin upbrand new net new ventures that
will be a brand new businessline, or it's gonna be a brand
(29:51):
new venture, completely acompany that they're gonna spin
out separately and have its ownseparate cap tables, own
separate investors.
I've seen entrepreneurs andresidents, you know, do this
role in a nonprofit, right? LikeUnited Way. Actually they have
multiple EIRs at United Way andmultiple other nonprofits as
(30:11):
well. So we're seeing this role,you know, be used in a different
residence because people see thevalue of it, right? So what
exactly is the baseline sort offoundational things you need to
do as an EIR and what are youactually doing on a day to day,
right?
Being an EIR and being in thatrole is really an opportunity
for you to connect dots, right?Not only for the broader
(30:33):
organization, but for theoutside world, right? Because
the outside world doesn't knowwhat the organization is doing
and what they care about. As anEIR, your job is to be a
translator, right? Your job isto be bilingual in the world of
startups and whatever elseyou're focused on in the
ecosystem.
And I think understanding that,you being bilingual would be
affluent in the languages thatyou speak or the things that
(30:56):
you're translating, You'reusually translating experiences
into your residence context,right? That I started to give
examples of, earlier. You bringthe outside in perspective. I
get to bring in perspective. Soworking at an IT infrastructure
company, right?
That's supporting multipleindustries. I get to bring in
the expertise from the world ofsports, for the world of gaming,
(31:18):
right? From the world ofentertainment and fitness, for
the world of food, for the worldof construction, right? When you
bring in all of these differentperspectives and you apply it to
a new residence or a newcontext, right? That is a
superpower, right, of anentrepreneur in residence,
right?
For them to be able to translatethat experience into value,
tangible value, right? Thatorganizations can actually
(31:41):
leverage and use, but that's notit. I think that my most
favorite thing about workingwith early stage team, if I'm
doing it in a corporateenvironment or a team of
students, which is gonna be ournext generation of leaders
trying to build theirbusinesses, that I get to
transform the hearts and mindsof people. I get to transform
the culture of whatever myresidence is at the time, right?
(32:02):
How do you take the library frombeing physical and manual and
and doing things not aseffectively as they could have
done to being more efficient andsee people reap the benefits of
that, right?
How do you see these thingsinside of a corporation or a
mothership or whatever thatenterprise might be and see
people change, right? You seepeople leave sometime and go
(32:22):
spit out their old companies andraise a lot of capital. You
know, you had a piece ofinfluence of doing that from
changing their hearts and mindsof taking risks, but tangible
risks that you think you can addvalue to in an organization. So
when I think about the role ofthe EIR, it's highly dependent
on the residents, but usingthose as examples that I just
described as some of the waysthat people could actually
(32:45):
perform the role of the EIR,Right?
Ilya Tabakh (32:47):
We're we're gonna have to jump into that one. I I
love, like, a lot of the meatand potatoes
Terrance Orr (32:52):
of Absolutely.
Ilya Tabakh (32:53):
You know, sort of inspiring and changing hearted
minds is where sort ofsuccessful and not successful
roles, You know? There's just somuch texture there that I as
soon as you said sort oftransform hearts and minds,
seeing people do stuff, I I'veseen definitely a lot of those
things. I've also seen somecounterexamples where, you know,
(33:14):
generally, folks know what theyknow. They don't know what they
don't know, and it it's a loteasier to be comfortable in the
things that you've built yourcareer on. So we'll we'll table
that for now, but but I lovethis this is one of my favorite
topics on really thinking abouthow do you take the individual,
partner them with the residentsin a way that's sort of
(33:34):
strategically impactful,meaningful, and then kind of
help everybody reskill andreally collaborate and work
together well.
Absolutely. So we'll be talkingabout this more anyway. I didn't
wanna didn't wanna interrupt youthere, but you got you got me
pretty excited about
Terrance Orr (33:48):
that topic. 100%. I I mean, because when it when
it's all said and done, right,ideas don't build companies
only. Right? You know, and wecan work 80 hours a day, but we
need people, we need actualhuman capital to build new
companies, new ventures, newvalue, right?
And then we can automate, we canstart to streamline, and then we
(34:08):
can repurpose the value of thosepeople to do other new things
and innovative things. So Ithink there's a unique
opportunity and probably myfavorite part of being a, what
people call, some people call mea serial EIR, right? Sort of
doing this sort of work isbecause depending on my
resonance, I get to deployempathy and impact that skill in
a very different way. And Ithink, as you think about that
(34:32):
and what we are looking toaccomplish in the near term for
EIR Live. We're gonna bebringing you this sort of
content from people who've hadexperience in different
residences, right?
We're gonna have the 1 on 1convos, right, to start, but as
with all things that are EIR ledand created, we're gonna co
create and we're gonna co createwith you, the listeners in our
(34:54):
audience, right? We're gonnalearn from the audience and
bring in some things that youwanna see. Those 1 on 1
conversations might evolve overtime to be a panel of EIRs,
maybe at the request of peoplewho are listening, or maybe
people that we've justidentified in the ecosystem that
we think would have a gooddialogue about this topic. We're
(35:15):
certainly not gonna do it everysingle day as a cadence, but
we're not gonna do, we're notgonna make you wait a whole 2
months either, okay? So, youknow, we're gonna try to find
the appropriate cadence,somewhere between, hey, not a
month and not every week, but acadence that's gonna be
appropriate to bring to theaudience with great content that
we think would add value to whatyou wanna do and learn from and
(35:39):
learn about the people that wehope can get value from this as
current EIRs, people who wannaget their 1st EIR role and wanna
know what is it like doing thisday to day.
I've met all sorts of people whowant experience in doing this.
The other thing that we love foryou to do is to like it, right?
(36:00):
Share with people, participatein the conversation, recommend
people that you like to see onthe podcast, please, subscribe
and share it. If you see value,if there's a clip of value that
you found from the podcast, wewould encourage you to share
with people. The other thing isthat let other EIRs know in your
(36:24):
network, there's other people inthe world building right now,
EIR like companies that arehappening right now and people
doing interesting things that wedon't know about, right?
We want to meet those people. Wewant to meet those entrepreneurs
and residents that are outreally building and operating in
the wild and doing differentthings and to learn how is it
different from their residentstandpoint versus others that we
(36:47):
might bring on the show. We lovefor people to join a live
discussion. There's a liveLinkedIn group right now that
you can go request to join andwe'd love for you to join and we
want to share opportunitiesthere, value, things that's
gonna help people, and hopefullystart to share opportunities,
right? That other EIRs can startto look at and take advantage
(37:08):
of.
And, hey, drop some questions.You want questions for, you
know, future shows, futureepisodes that probably wasn't
addressed on the first fewepisodes, but you wanna see it
addressed on the other episodes.So I think those are the things
that we are really, reallyinterested in, engaging with our
listeners. We don't wanna justbe another podcast. We want
(37:30):
people to get tangible value,which is where that live piece
really starts to kick in.
And we're gonna have somereally, really, really fun,
conversations, to to really dothis. So and maybe we'll get
into, the fun conversationaround future roles and things
that we wanna do as an EIR. AndI almost wanna ask Ilya that
(37:53):
right now, you know, that if hehad a dream role, you know, to
be at EIR somewhere, where wouldit be?
Ilya Tabakh (38:01):
Yeah. You know, it's a I won't dive into this
too much because we're gonnasteal our own thunder here.
Terrance Orr (38:06):
But That's right.
Ilya Tabakh (38:07):
For me, I mean, the the reason that I'm EIR at a
company that's really excitedand focused on climate tech, is
is it gives me an opportunity tosort of, you know, add another
couple languages. And and theselanguages are probably gonna be
critical in the scaling ofclimate tech, if we're gonna
sort of be able to accomplishthe audacious goals that the
(38:29):
world has, and then also solve alot of the the problems with
deferred maintenance and and allthese other things in
infrastructure. And so, in manyways, actually, I am in in in a
pretty impactful role for metoday. That's right. Generally,
as as I've been thinking aboutit more, I I see it as kind of a
two way street.
(38:50):
Right? There there's roles whereI can bring a lot of value to as
an individual, and then there isroles that can be very enriching
for me, my capabilities, and soon and so forth. For sure. And
so when I think about kind ofthat and and, you know, ever
since we started talking aboutit in a real way, those are kind
of the themes that I thinkabout. But but in many ways, I'm
(39:10):
I'm I'm in a great place.
Absolutely. And, you know, wherewhere it's a good combination
of, you know, languages andskills and things that I
possess, and a problem spacevertical where I can also learn
and and grow from. And so That'sawesome. Great question, and and
it's one of those things where Icould probably come up with a
couple other things too becausethere's a lot of amazing
(39:33):
organizations in the world. But,I I I think those are kind of
the 2 themes.
And and then, generally, youknow, like, today, we've already
talked about it's funny becausewe could we could probably spend
another hour talking about theoverlap of backgrounds. You
know? Both of us, some datacenter background. Both of us
sports tech background.
Terrance Orr (39:52):
There we go.
Ilya Tabakh (39:53):
Completely, like, unrelated. Right? And so you get
a lot of muscle memory and sortof market norms and things like
that. And and, also, dependingon what time it was, Right?
There's also kind of the periodof time, what was going on in
the broader world that's fun.
You know, we've we talked aboutbuilding a community and and and
sort of connecting EIRstogether. I found in the past
(40:15):
few years, you know, sort ofdoing that more as as
opportunities presentedthemselves for me to connect
people that definitely shouldtalk. Lots of interesting things
happened from from that. And soI'm excited in in kinda growing
that. And, ultimately, there'sjust so much, you know, kind of
opportunity to learn from eachother, connect the dots.
And and and for me, you know,one of my hopes is kinda bring
(40:38):
some of the insights that thatthat have contributed to the
world from tech, from healthcare, from kind of places that
have been relatively innovative,in the last couple decades out
into the broader world. BecauseI think that's a pretty big
opportunity, kind of a largelever to to scale some of the
change that we need. So thoseare the things I'm excited
(40:58):
about. What are you excitedabout in the conversation that
we wrap up here?
Terrance Orr (41:03):
Man, I'm super excited about a lot of different
things and thanks for sharing. Ithink you're in a great place
too. And I would also argue thatthere's a legal overlap to our
background as well when youworked in the IP group at Cisco
as well. And like you said,there's so many different types
of patents, which again, there'sso much breadth when you're at
EIR, you can get into utilitypatents, design patents and so
(41:24):
on and so forth. But what I'msuper excited about to actually
do in the podcast is honestly,you know, I think people who
want to connect and engage withactual technical content, you
know, that they can actually useabout a subject that's not a lot
(41:45):
is written about on a day today.
There's high level articles.There's very few people that you
get the privilege to see who'sbeen a former EIR and they spill
everything that they've learned,all the roadblocks, all the war
rules, the things that they'vebeen battle tested on, right? In
their different roles and theirdifferent residences. And I
(42:07):
think I'm really excited aboutthis because we're building the
podcast that I was looking forwhen I became an entrepreneur in
residence. I was looking for aplace to go and find different
EIRs who had done differentthings in different places that
I could learn from.
And I'm incredibly excited aboutlearning from the people that
we're gonna bring on the show.I'm incredibly excited about
(42:30):
contributing to thatconversation. I'm excited about
trying to create pathways forthe roles that they wanna
manifest, as an entrepreneurresident in some other
organization in the future, asoutside of what they're doing
today. And I'm excited to seethe light bulb, come on for
people who wanna go after their1st entrepreneur in residence
role and wanna take their 1stswing and to know that it's
(42:53):
gonna be hard, but it's gonna beworth it. And to have the
privilege to be a translator andbe bilingual in these
environments to become fluent inanother language and to sort of
sharpen up your your pencils andto put more tools in your
toolbox.
Those are the things that Ithink people are gonna get from
the podcast, and those are thethings that that I'm really
(43:15):
excited about.
Ilya Tabakh (43:16):
That's awesome. Well, I mean, I could add, but
it's not worth it. I I I thinkyou got 99% of the things I'm
excited about too. So I say wejust leave it there. And excited
to have folks join us in thefuture.
Terrance Orr (43:29):
Alright. Well, looking forward to people
joining us in the future, andplease share, subscribe,
participate. We're lookingforward to engaging with you.
Thanks for tuning in to thisepisode of EIR Live. We hope you
found today's conversationenlightening and inspiring as we
journey through the highs andlows of entrepreneurship with
our incredible guests.
(43:49):
Be sure to join us next time formore stories, strategies, and
insights from theentrepreneurial front line.
Subscribe on your favoritepodcast platform on YouTube and
share the inspiration with yournetwork. Do you have a EIR in
mind that'll make a great guest?Drop us a line. Engage with us
and fellow listeners in the EIRlive LinkedIn group and join the
(44:10):
conversation.
Plus, get your questions readyfor our LinkedIn live sessions
following future episodes. Yourinsights help us shape our
journey. Let's co create andinnovate together. Until then,
let's keep innovating, striving,and exploring ways to make our
mark on the world. I'm TerenceSoar, alongside my co host, Ilya
Tabak, and we're signing off.
Let's keep building, everyone.
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