Episode 05 - Intentional Chaos: Building a Portfolio of Impact with Musaddeq Khan (MK) - EIR Live

Episode Transcript
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MK (Musaddeq Khan) (00:00):
Kids like me around me in college. I was
really young and I remember likebeing really like homesick, but
having to adjust sort of eachtime through that process gave
me a little bit of grit. I thinkI could readjust and recalibrate
anywhere from there on. Andtherefore, every time there was

(00:21):
a job loss, when I'm buildingcompanies, there were, as you
know, like when you're buildingcompanies, you're running out of
money, your employees areleaving you, your customers are,
leaving you, your product is notcoming to market the time you
said you thought it would. Soall these challenges you're
having to constantlyrecalibrate.

Ilya Tabakh (00:40):
Welcome to EIR Live, where we dive into the
lives and lessons ofentrepreneurs in residence. I'm
Ilya Tabakh, together with my cohost, Terrance Orr, ready to
bring you closer to theheartbeat of the innovation and
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everything in between. Foreveryone from aspiring EIRs to

(01:01):
seasoned pros, EIR Live is yourgateway to the depth of the
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into the broader world. Checkout the full details in the
episode description.
Subscribe to stay updated, andjoin us as we uncover what it
takes to transform visions intoventures. Welcome aboard. Let's
grow together.

Terrance Orr (01:24):
Alright. Welcome to another episode of EIR Live.
We're here with my co host, IlyaTabak, and our esteemed guest,
who I like to refer to as MK.Right? And you'll learn a lot
more about MK on on the podcastepisode today.
It's been a long time coming, myfriend. Thank you for coming on
to, the show. Thank you for forcoming and willing to share your

(01:45):
journey, with our audience. AndI could introduce MK, and I I
can take 3 days to do it becausehis track record is just that
long. But I won't be able to dohim justice like he can do
himself and introduce himself totalk about his background, his
early days, right, and walkingus through his career journey

(02:05):
today from his entrepreneurship,you know, endeavors in the Wow
to moving into helping out theecosystem, helping corporates as
well, and then actually movingback and taking a step back and
helping people, the nextgeneration of entrepreneurs, you
know, focus on their businessesand companies and how they can
scale and grow.
MK, I won't delay the people anylonger. Can you give us a brief

(02:28):
introduction of your backgroundand and and upbringing and how
you got to where you're attoday?

Thank you for having me, first of all,
Ilya and, Terrance. Super stokedto be here. MK stands for what
it doesn't stand for is MichaelKors. Not to confuse not to
confuse that. But, this, standsfor Musadegh Khan.
That's my full name. When I cameto the US, I came to the South

(02:53):
and most people had a hard timepronouncing a 3 syllable name.
So I decided to go by MK just tobreak the ice. I'll tell you a
little bit about myself, alittle bit about me, sort of my
personal background and myprofessional background. My
heritage is from Bangladesh.
That's where I was born. I neverreally lived there long enough

(03:14):
to really become a true sort ofculturally ingrained into that
culture, simply because of, thechallenges within the, within
the country itself, politically,economically. And so my father,
who's an engineer, decided tomove to Iraq, back in 1975, 76,

(03:36):
around that time. And that'skind of where I lived for the
first half, for the first fewyears of my life. Unfortunately,
the same thing happened.
Iraq Iran war hit, and then wehad to move out again, and then
we moved to Kuwait. And that'swhere I kind of grew up for up
until about 16 years old. Andthen 1990, the invasion of

(03:58):
Kuwait happened. We were againall displaced. And then we had
to move there.
I moved to Bangladesh for alittle bit, and then came back
and settled in the UnitedStates, went to school here for
college, initially at Universityof South Alabama in Mobile, and
then transferred to GeorgiaState University, where I

(04:19):
finished my bachelor's thereunder the Robinson College of
Business. And from there,basically, you know, I started
working as a software engineerfor a startup. Initially, I
started actually, startedworking for a really big company
and that, I could not really getmyself acclimated to the

(04:41):
culture, to the corporatepolitics, did not stay there for
more than I think a few months,and then found a job at a
startup, went to work there. 8months later, that startup went
belly up from the dotcom bust,and then sort of we were out of
a job. And so from there, Idecided to go and work for

(05:01):
another startup, but it was alittle bit of a growth stage
startup and was there for 2years.
The 9:11, event happened, andthen again, was laid off. And so
then I decided that I reallydidn't want to keep on doing
this rigmarole around thiscorporate, you know, lifestyle
going from job to job. I wantedto sort of chart my own future.

(05:24):
And so partnered up with somereally amazing people and
decided to start a company,which was in really around
revenue and collections, butaround the small to medium
hospital systems.

Hey, MK. Be be be be be before we go too far
there, one of the things, youknow, I so I I moved from Moscow
to the US when I was 7. And soin that process, you know, a
name like Ilya in Kansas City,is is is also, interesting. I
sort of stuck it out a littlebit. But but one of the things
that I noticed is it was alwayshelpful for me to sort of know

(06:00):
that there's at least 2 or 3,you know, kind of cultural and
geographic and sort of thesedifferent perspectives you can
look at at a problem, or or at areally any situation.
Right? And it seems like in yoursort of upbringing, in your
foundation, you know, you had alot of different lenses you can
sort of pull out. And and evenin sort of the early big

(06:24):
companies, start up, you know,there's a couple other lenses
that you put in. Can you talk alittle bit about, you know, how
you see that kind of playing outand whether you, you know, sort
of see it the same way that I door not. I just I've noticed
that's been sort of a powerfultool for me.
I'm curious how it sort of haslanded for you.

Yeah. I think the there are 3 things
that really played a big role interms of my sort of personal and
professional journey. One isthis constant moving around and
having to constantlyrecalibrate, and sort of like,
even as a child, when you'removing around, there's a lot of
like, you know, people don't seeit. Of course, the adults are,

(07:02):
you know, trying to deal with itdifferently, but, you know, kids
are looking at it, and they'retrying to reframe their mind.
What are they supposed to thinkabout it?
Obviously, they don't have thesame pressures as an adult does,
you know, in terms of how am Igonna, you know, sort of protect
my family, raise my family, andraise my children, put them
through school, whatever. Butkids are sort of going through

(07:24):
that same sort of recalibrationeach time. And so I I've had to
recalibrate a number of times,but the one that I remember the
most vividly is when I came tothe US, pretty much on my own.
My family was left behind, andit was just, you know, kids like
me, around me in college. And Iwas pretty I was I was really

(07:47):
young, and I remember, like,being really, like, homesick,
but having to adjust sort ofeach time through that process
sort of gave gave me a littlebit of grit.
I think I could readjust andrecalibrate anywhere from there
on. And therefore, every timethere was a job loss or there

(08:08):
was, when I was when I'mbuilding companies, there were,
as you know, like when you'rebuilding companies, you're
running out of money, you know,your your your employees are
leaving you, your customers areleaving you, your product is not
coming to market the time yousaid you thought it would. So
all these challenges you'rehaving to constantly
recalibrate, and that sort ofsort of background of

(08:30):
recalibration every time, Ithink gave me that sort of grit
to, to be able to do it andsaying that, okay. It's okay.
Let's restart.
All is not lost. Let's keepgoing. That was a major part of
that. The other thing is, Ilya,I'll tell you is, like, I like
to call myself the product ofthe American South, because, I

(08:52):
am for for everyone listeningnow that I'm 50 years old, half
a century, on this planet, and34 years of those I have spent
in in the United States, andmost of them or all of them, I
have lived in the South Alabamaand then Georgia. And, I like to

(09:14):
say I'm a southern boy.
I don't know if you can tell bymy accent. I love I love grits.
I love Waffle House. Right? Sothere you go.
I started my first company in2002, you know, left that,
exited that in 2005, then did abunch of little roles here and

(09:36):
there around product androlling, commercializing product
and managing product. And thenstarted my 2nd startup in 2,008,
which is around the greatrecession. And so took advantage
at the time where everybody wasleaving the job, leaving their
jobs. And people think like,okay, when recessions or

(09:56):
depressions or any kind ofeconomic turmoil happens, is it
a good time is to start a job toto start a company or look for a
job? And I think those are thebest times to start companies
because that's where you findamazing resources that are
looking for work.
And that's the time where youkind of, and through those kind
of recessions, a lot of thingshave come up that if you can

(10:17):
really listen in into themarket, for example, when the
recession great recessionhappened, the ARRA act was
enacted. A part of that was this$11,000,000,000 going into this
energy market, and really, youknow, sort of upgrading the
American electric grid androlling out the smart devices,

(10:37):
like smart meters and in homedevices and all of that. And
there was a ton of things goingon there. And so I decided to
take advantage of that andreally built this first public
cloud system in the utilityspace where we could manage huge
amounts of data that was gonnabe sort of coming out of these,
you know, smart meters and smartdevices. That company was

(10:58):
eventually acquired in 2014 byone of the meter manufacturers
out there.
Funny, like, we were actuallythe first company that was
selling a product in the utilityspace that was used to this huge
sort of enterprise products with1,000,000 of dollars, and we
were selling the 1st SaaSproduct, in that space through

(11:19):
the, you know, through thethrough the AWS cloud back in
the day, where it was not muchknown. And we we were selling it
sort of an app you know, like anapp based, system. And we were
called like the Itunes of thesmart grid. That was a that was
a great thing that, you know, wekind of, sort of latched onto.
From there, I went and started anumber of other companies that

(11:40):
was kind of like 5050 success.
But really, I started workinginto within corporate
innovation. Started with thefirst one was with Best Buy. I
remember, you know, sort of whenBest Buy was about to go out of
business, where, you know, atthe time where they were getting
their, you know, sort of, luncheaten by Amazon, Circuit City,

(12:03):
Montgomery Ward, Sears, if youremember back in the day, it was
kind of like getting, like,disrupted. And the question was,
will Best Buy be around? And sothey had to they had to change.
They had to rethink. And so Iwas within this group of people
where they're trying to bringall of Best Buy's products
online in a way that could bedistributed around the world by

(12:25):
anybody. And so, basically, webuild this $120,000,000 API
business, you know, just byexposing, all of Best Buy's
infrastructure from distributionto payments to, you know, SK,
you know, product SKUs and allof that. So that was amazing.
And then after that, I got thissort of, real amazing,

(12:46):
experience around.
Okay. This is, I guess, this isinteresting.

Let me ask you a question, MK, before you go into
the to to to the next partbecause I have a I have a few
threads, right, that I that Ilike to sort of grab as you're
as you're walking through, whichis, you know, your upbringing
across, you know, 3 differentplaces. You get to the US in in
the South. Right? You go toGeorgia State, you graduate from
the School of Business. But tobe clear for our audience, you

(13:09):
know, MK, you know, majored ininformation systems, and did
some work in engineering aswell, right?
Where he got his early chops,right, from from the school
around, you know, buildingtechnology based and software
based products, essentially. Andand in that experience, talk to
us about you started talkingabout your first company and
your second company, right,which was Acquire. Talk to us

(13:30):
about your experiences inproduct management. Right? And
how did those experiences helpyou?
Right? As you were, like, goingback and forth between starting
companies in the wild, right,and taking on product roles as
well. Did the product managementrole help you sort of in is
helping to form those companiesa little bit better as you
continue to learn more and shapeyourself as an entrepreneur?

Yeah. I think at heart, I am a product
person. I'm a product guy. Andwhat I mean by that is sort of
like, it's not the skill setsthat I have that makes me that.
It's my mindset of how I look ata product or a solution.
And that is through the lens ofthe customer and the problem.

(14:14):
And so most people out there aretrying to build features where
I'm trying, I'm focusing on whatis gonna be the outcome of what
I'm building and how is gonnareally help my end user or my
customer. And that sort ofmindset when I'm starting a
business and a company, goingout there and having
conversations with my potentialusers or customers, I'm not

(14:39):
trying to sell them a product.What I'm trying to sell them on
is their problem, and they're,sort of like what they're where
they're trying to get to. Whatdoes that end goal look like,
and then coming back from thatand sort of building that the
most models version of that totest out and experiment and run

(15:01):
experimentation within thecustomer premise.
And that's what I'm doing nowwith Nokia Ventures as well, is
kind of like talking withcustomers, really understanding
where they are, where they wantto go, and how we can take them
you know, on that journeythrough that process and solve
that problem through what we'reoffering.

Absolutely. And, you know, before you before you
go to Nokia, we're definitelygonna circle back to, to, to to
Nokia Ventures. But there'sthere's a few things that that
you said in there. 1, I like thethe thing that you being
adaptable for moving around andhaving to reinvent yourself in
different ecosystems and geosand around different people made

(15:43):
it a lot easier for you to goout. Not that it was easy, but
made it a little bit digestibleto go out and have those
customer conversations to touncover deep pain that these
people were facing and to try tofigure out a value proposition
that you can position againstthose pains and problems that
they were that they were facing.
Right. I believe that a lot ofthe folks that we start to

(16:04):
interview, you know, on EIRLive, they have this this this
this threat of being adaptable,being forced to reinvent
themselves in new environments.Right. And not being afraid to
take the leap and raise theirhand, right, for certain things.
And we've already sort ofuncovered a bit of that about
you.
Hey. I could have took a job,right, in 2008, but instead, I
just started to go and createthem and start my own company.

(16:26):
Right? Like, it's it's that risktaking, the appetite that you
build up over time, as anentrepreneur. And I just don't
wanna lose that thread, MK, inin in your background.
But you're about to go to thenext part.

Hold on. I got I got one more question.

There you go. Ilya, lean in please.

No knowing something about selling to
utilities, you know, and kind oftaking that product mindset, I'm
curious in sort of your secondstart up. What did you learn
about, you know, the anytime yousay Itunes for cloud and
utility, for start up andtechnology folks, that's super
exciting. For operations folks,that's scary. Right? It's new.

(17:04):
It's different. My phonecrashes. What happens? You know,
I just wanna kinda pick at thata little bit because I'm sure
there's a couple learnings thatyou that you were able to sort
of figure out from 2008 to 2014that I'm hoping that you can
share a little bit of that withus.

Yeah. That's great. So I I will just say so
the first thing is, like, when Italk about iTunes, I'm talking
about not the solution itself,but the business model. So
utilities are, really bigstructures in in the in the
United States. The utilitymarket is really sort of big and

(17:41):
fragmented in many ways, andthere are a lot, but there are
only a very, very small group ofvendors that actually sell into
it, but they sort of monopolizeit in ways where they sell
really, really big solutions,where like only 20% of that
solution may be applicable tothe customer at one point at at

(18:02):
any point, but the customer hasto pay upfront and, you know,
spend all this budget.
And there are reasons for that.There's CapEx and all that
stuff. But what we decided to dowas we decided that we wanted to
go after this small segment ofutilities, specifically the
cooperatives, where they didn'thave big budgets. They didn't
have big IT departments. And andthis is like this goes into sort

(18:25):
of like, you have to sort ofunderstand your customer segment
and customer niche and how theyoperate in order to really sort
of, you know, build a businessaround that, you know, ecosystem
of that segment.
And so when we said Itunes, wesaid, hey, these utilities,
these cooperatives, they havethe same problems as this other

(18:46):
big investor owned utilities orbig municipalities, but they may
not have the whole budget. Atthe same time, they're they
wanna solve the same problems ofreliability and efficiency. And
so we said, what if we only soldthem what they needed to solve
at that point in time? So forexample, if they wanted to do

(19:07):
outage management or outageanalysis or blink analysis for
that matter, let's sell themonly that part of the solution,
and then charge them only forthat part of the solution,
instead of trying to sell themthe whole big platform and say,
you have to you have to buy thewhole thing whether you use it
or not, but, you know, and ifyou when you decide to use it

(19:27):
later, you you don't have to paylater, but you have to pay up
right now. And we said, no.
Let's not we don't wanna dothat. We wanna charge for this
problem that they're solving andthe solution that we'll be
delivering to solve thatspecific problem. That's how
that came. The other thing,Ilya, is interesting that I've
learned over the last 18 yearsin the utility space or

(19:48):
regulated space or any regulatedbody, There's 2 things that
really drive regulated bodies toreally move, move and, you know,
buy or make decisions. 1 is whatI call the carrot and the stick,
right?
So for example, very recently, Iwent and worked as a chief

(20:09):
product officer for a companycalled Blue Conduit, where these
2 professors from University ofMichigan, you know, built this
machine learning model where youcould identify the lead service
lines underground. Right? Beforethat, you know, in the city of
Flint, for example, where peoplewere dying of lead poisoning,

(20:30):
there were engineering firmsgoing out there and digging
everywhere. And then sometimesthey would find it, sometimes
they wouldn't, and that rate wasabout 15%. Right?
That means a if they dug a 100times, they only found a lead
service line or a pipe 15 ofthose times, and the other 85
times they didn't, but theutilities or the municipalities
or the city would still have topay up because the digging cost

(20:53):
money. So these, theseprofessors came up with a way
where they could actually do itwith predictive modeling, and
that success rate was about 85or 90%. And so, you know, we
went there, you know, I was sortof helping them sort of bring
bring that product to market,but what I really learned was
there's 2 things that drive soone was a carrot, actually,

(21:15):
let's let's start with a stick.So the stick was, the government
said by October of 2024, we'rein October 2024, amazingly, this
was 2 years ago, every watermunicipality, which is about
56,000 of them, must come upwith a inventory of all their
service lines that are servicingtheir customers. Right?

(21:37):
Now, the challenge with that isall of these municipalities,
these 56,000 municipalities,most of their records are not
digitized. Right? They havepaper records, and many of them,
ironically, is has water damageor something like that. You
know, it's in the basementsomewhere.

And not only that, a lot of them have, you know,
when you build something, youget sort of your engineering
drawings. You may be lucky thatyou get as builts, but then you
sort of maintain and replace.And then in many cases,
municipalities don't have thisas much, but definitely
utilities do. They merge and yousort of bring together different

(22:15):
entities. And so, you know,that's also there's there's a
bunch of other variables.
But without a doubt, like, theknowing what you have in your
either collection ordistribution system is a huge
problem, especially as folksare, you know, trying to kind of
turn that that system moremodern. So definitely hear you
there.

Yeah. So so that was that was a stake.
Right? Like, if they don't comeup with that inventory by the
set time, that they will facepenalties. Right?
That so that was a stake. Nowthe carrot part of that was the
Biden administration through theinfrastructure, jobs and
investment Investment and JobsAct, the IIJA, and then the
Inflation Reduction Act,basically allocated about, I

(22:58):
think, initially, 15 to20,000,000,000 dollars that they
said, hey. If you produce aninventory and you can show us
that you have service lines toreplace the poisonous lead
service lines, we will give youmoney from that, you know, from
that grant. So there was thiscarrot and a stick. And so in
the regulated bodies, whenthere's these two things can

(23:18):
sort of colliding together, youknow, coming together, is where
the opportunity is.
And so in the, you know, ARRAact, like I said, there was this
$11,000,000,000 going out to theutilities that, hey. There's
money here. You can, you know,take advantage of this and
upgrade your grid and all ofthat. But then the other part of

(23:39):
that was they also said, by theway, you know, you cannot raise
rates. That means you cannotjust go willy nilly raise rates
on your customers, so theirrevenue was very, very, you
know, becoming sort of limitedin some ways.
And that's happening today even.Right? Like, the government is
saying, hey. Climate change ishappening, whether you believe
it or not, do you know, carb,you know, carbon, carbonization

(24:02):
is happening. We need todecarbonize, and therefore, you
cannot just go and build morepower plants.
We're not gonna let you do that.Also, you cannot, you know, just
build more wires and then chargeyour customers in in a through
the rate plan, because we're notgonna let you do that. However,
though, if you wanna go andbuild non wire solutions, like

(24:23):
you wanna serve your customersthrough microgrids, maybe
battery storage, you know, youknow, through these other means
of wind and solar, rooftopsolar, and you wanna do it that
way, we're we we'll have we'rehappy to give you grants to do
that. And so that kind of carrotand stick is still there, and so
that's where you sort of findyour niche and your segment that

(24:45):
that that wants to takeadvantage of that and provide
solutions there.

Yeah. Awesome. Thanks for letting us, kinda
defer. I just didn't wanna miss,you know, that that's a really
interesting and weird field, andso I didn't wanna just gloss it
over. But, Terrance, I'll, tossit back over to you to take us
forward here.

I really like that story, MK, because it shows that
you can do a role as a chiefproduct officer or advising a
company on product that's trulygonna deploy impact at scale,
not just for the business, butfor the residents and the people
who was experiencing thatproblem on the actual ground.
And and I like to think thatentrepreneurs like yourself and
others that we've sort of, like,engaged on the podcast, they

(25:23):
also, like they get a high fromgoing to solve those sort of
problems, you know, in in theworld, things that are gonna
actually be impactful to people.And and you started to touch on
something that I love to bringup when I'm talking, coaching
different founders, which isthere's a few reasons why people
do business with you or will dobusiness with your startup or
your company. 1, you're helpingthem to make more money. You're

(25:44):
helping them save money.
You're helping meaning you'rereducing costs. Or the third one
that I like to say is you'rehelping them stay out of jail,
right, or be more compliant.Right? And and, you know, the
timing is also an importantaspect of this because that that
act that had just passed, thatthat made 11,000,000,000
available at the same time youwere solving that problem in the

(26:06):
company that you were doing atthe time, right, made it a happy
medium. Right?
But sometimes you just have togo and get started. Right? And
the the other pieces will startto fall into place around you.
So I think great great on youand and your cofounders and the
team, for 1, seeing that aroundthe corner, being able to look
around corners, finding a way touse a very regulated industry

(26:28):
and and process to actuallycapitalize on that to solve a
problem, but also move thebusiness forward. So you just
touched on a a few of thosethings.
But lastly, you left off talkingabout the chief product role,
the work you had done aroundbuilding the API business up,
you know, at Best Buy. Now let'stalk about the bridge. Right?

(26:49):
Talk to talk to us about yourfirst entrepreneur in residence
role, that that you took on notlong after, you know, you left
the Best Buy role or you've donethings before that at Itron Idea
Labs. Could you talk to us aboutthat that experience?

Actually, that's a very special role that
I will never forget, and I'lltell you the reason in a minute.
But going back to what you weresaying is, like, you know, being
a founder, being an entrepreneuris about be willing to be
uncomfortable, and willing to beokay with ambiguity and risk.

(27:28):
And that's, that's the, that's,that's what it takes if you
really want to be a founder andwilling to fail, many, many
times over and over again, andwilling to be wrong. After I
sold my second company, whichwas to a, one of the largest
meter manufacturers, in theUnited States, a company called

(27:50):
Sensus. And by the way, if youlive in Georgia, and if you go
in your power producer isGeorgia Power, if you go outside
your house and look at yoursmart meter, it'll say Sensus
FlexNet.
That's the that's the companythat acquired my company, and
all of their analytics on theback office that happens is
through the product we built,and that's what they acquired.

(28:11):
So, after I sold that, I had alittle bit of, there was non
compete. I couldn't I could notwork with for some of their
competitors. 2 years after that,I I was approached by a company
called Itron, which is reallythe the big 800 pound gorilla in
the utility space, around, smartaround metering, smart metering,

(28:34):
IoT devices, and such. And Itronsaid, hey, you did this.
You sold it to sensors. We'retrying to build this. Come on,
join us. I said, okay. Soundslike a plan.
I could do it. So I went intoItron corporate. And 3 months

(28:54):
later into the into the job, Icame to the realization I could
not do it. I could not do itbecause everybody thinks, oh,
that startup did it. We shouldbe able to do it.
What they don't realize is thatmost big companies cannot get
out their own way to to reallydo something innovative. Right?

(29:15):
Because VPs gotta keep theirjobs, some, you know, directors
gotta keep their budget, Thetechnology stack, even though
it's legacy, can be changedbecause if it's changed, then
somebody's not gonna have theirjob anymore or not gonna be
relevant anymore. And so beingwilling to really do the hard

(29:35):
things, like, I think BenHorowitz talks about it in his
book about the hard things abouthard things, where he faced
multiple times, you know, likedebt, you know, almost close to
death of the company at Opsware.And then each time he came out
of it, willing to do the hardthing and making tough changes

(29:56):
is something that, you know,that I realized that they were
not willing to do, and I was notgoing to be around.
And so I decided to not to notto be around, But around the
same time that was happening, agentleman by the name of Roberto
Aiello, and that's this is thisis the person I wanna really
call out, Roberto Aiello. He'sno longer with us. He passed

(30:16):
away last year. He was my coachand mentor. And, you know, he
saw me for who I am and what Iam and sort of how I operate.
And he said, MK, you are here atIturan at the right time, but
you're in the wrong place. And Iwas like, well, I don't know
what that means. And he said,well, I am building this entity

(30:41):
within Itron. It's called ItronIdea Labs, where we will be
disrupting business and findingnew new business models and
launching new products andsolving hard problems. And I am
looking for an EIR.
And I'm I was like, what's anEIR? I don't know. I don't know
what that means. Like, like,what does what do they do?

(31:03):
Because I I really don't want toget stuck in a job where people
like, what does MK do all day?
Like, and that's exactly if yougo around in most companies that
have EIRs and if you go outsidethe EIR ecosystem or on the
broader company, I ask somebody,hey. Do you do, you guys have
EIRs? They're like, yeah. We do,but we don't know what they do.

(31:26):
Right?
And you'll hear that a lot allthe time, like, what does an EIR
do? Like

I actually love leaning into that because when I
introduce myself at Black andVeatch internally even, I'm
like, hey, I'm an entrepreneurin residence, and that probably
means you have no idea what Ido. And in many cases, most of
the company doesn't. But it itit it's in some ways kind of a
bit of a superpower because youget to, first of all, get
everybody to come out of theirautopilot. Because if I was
process engineer 4, you know,they're like, oh, I roughly know

(31:53):
what you do and, you know, kindaput you in the box. But, it's
always good to sort of pullfolks and and be able to frame
that up.
And so I actually have seenthat. But I I hear definitely
what you're saying. I just haveintentionally leaned into that
in some ways, and it's beenreally good because it allows
you to sort of talk aboutgenerally what you do, but also

(32:14):
listen to, you know, what do youdo at the organization? Or what
do you do kind of in the market?And you can sort of frame up
here's how I could be kind ofhelpful.
Here's insights I can share. Andso I've actually found that to
be kind of, an accidental,awesome superpower, you know, as
as opposed to a a a bug. Butyeah. No. Definitely definitely

(32:36):
have the same experience there.

Yeah. I mean, you know, like, you'll
see, like, you when you go intoa presentation, in a room full
of people and you say you're anEIR within the company, and if
it's a dark room, you turn onthe lights, you'll see everybody
either rolling their eyes orlooking like deer in a
headlights. And, okay, what whatdoes this guy do? And so it's
really it's really interesting.But what I tell them is, like,
look, you guys are here helpingthe company pays its bills, and

(33:01):
I'm here to make sure thecompany sticks around long
enough for you guys to keep ondoing that.
Because the only only constantin this world is change, and
everyone will be disrupted. Andso, therefore, I wanna make sure
that this company isn't, andtherefore, here I am. And
they're like, okay. That kindamakes sense. They're still kind

(33:22):
of skeptical, but over time, youknow, they kinda get it.
But I try Idealabs. That's wherekind of I got my first chops as
an EIR. Roberto brought me in.And Roberto, one thing about him
was he told me, he's like, MK, Idon't ever want you to come and
ask me for permission. Come tome for apology, but not for

(33:45):
permission.
He said, that's it. And he he,like, let let me lose. There I
was going and talking withcustomers, discovering problems,
build you know, building sort oflike a solution to sort of
figure out, okay, how canutilities make sure that their

(34:05):
delivery, their power is alwaysbalanced? You know, the power
that they serve to theircustomers don't go off balance.
Right?
Kind of feel like you thinkabout it like, you know, in the
North American grid, it's a 3phase system. There are 3 wires.
Right? And the idea is like whenpower is flowing, each of those
wires are gonna be flowing equalamount of power, like 33, 33,
33%, right, around that. Butmost of the time, what if, you

(34:27):
know, it goes out of whack.
Right? Outages happen. Peopleyou know? And then what happens
is one of the wires only has80%. The other one is, like,
10%, and the other one is 5%,and the other one is losing
power or something.
And so the only way to do thatis every few years, they spend
1,000,000 of dollars going outthere with physical equipment
and, you know, touching everywire to make sure that they're
they're they're balancing theload. And, you know, some they

(34:51):
get to some percentage of that,but most of the times, they
don't. And so we were usingdata, like, very simple hourly
voltage data and running machinelearning algorithms to figure
out we could do that without anyhardware and just pure software.
And we were getting, like, youknow, amazing success rates and
the same thing with, like, youknow, making sure that the, you

(35:12):
know, the transformers arebalanced and they have you know,
they're serving the right amountof households or so on and so
forth. So that was my EIR roleat Itron Idea Labs.
I was there for 3 years. It wasmy favorite. Roberto got got
cancer. He was hospitalized. Andso when he left, what changed

(35:33):
was the culture.
And one thing I realized, what Ilearned as an EIR, it's not,
again, the skillset of theindividual. It's the mindset of
the business for EIR to besuccessful, and it's the culture
that's built within that littleentity of of of the EIR's

(35:56):
ecosystem that that you have tohave for the EIRs or the
entrepreneurs in residence tothrive and let them do what they
are hired to do. Right? Andreally, if you think about it,
like, what's the job of an EIR?Like, why or, you know, what's
what's the what doesentrepreneur in residence really
mean?
And that is basically bringingtheir experience as an

(36:17):
entrepreneur, which is takingrisks, failing fast, trying
things, and and really, reallysort of moving moving without
any kind of barriers, any sortof that sort of that corporate,
you know, you know, backlog iskind of what an EIR is supposed
to be doing. And if that culturedoesn't exist or that mindset

(36:40):
doesn't exist within thebusiness leadership to let them
do that, It doesn't work. And soRoberto kind of made sure that
that was there, and he and hesort of we there was a group of
EIRs. We were there, a number ofus. He kind of made sure that
was he blocked and tackled that.
But when he left, that was gone,and the the culture changed. And

(37:02):
so and so, therefore, I couldn'tbe there anymore, and so I had
to leave as well. And so thatyou know, I was there for about
3 years and when he was gone,and then eventually, Roberto
came back, and it it wasn't thesame. He then Roberto went and
worked at Meta with RealityLabs, and, he was there, and
then that's where he got sickagain, and then eventually
passed away. But he was he wasmy rock, and he was my mentor

(37:24):
and my coach, and he kind ofallowed me to really develop
into this EIR role and, youknow, sort of this job, if you
will.

So a quick comment, MK, before we move on
because, one, I appreciate yousharing that story about about
Roberto and really cool how youlanded your first your first
opportunity, but it also showsthat people, not companies, not
ideas, but people keep us arounddoing the things that we're
doing. And and I think that's animportant thing to pick up on.
The second thing that I wannashare with our audience who are

(37:56):
who's listening to this podcastis that almost all the EIRs we
talked to had no clue what anEIR was or what they did, even
though they had already beenoperating in the wild as as an
entrepreneur. Right? So, youknow, your EIR gig or your role
could come to you at any point,any time, and you might have
that similar reaction like Ilya,like MK, like myself, because I

(38:18):
sure I sure did.
I was like, what the hell isthat? What is the EIR? What do
they do again? And every singleperson in the company, to to
MK's point about culture andmindset, they need to have that
mindset. Otherwise, youshouldn't probably have an EIR
inside of your organization.
And I'm gonna toss it over toIlya now.

Yeah. No. I just I'm gonna pile on. This is, this
is almost like a tag teamwrestling match here. You know,
I'm coming in over the ropes.
But, the way that I talk aboutthis is in order to be kind of
an effective entrepreneur inresidence, because Terrance is
completely right. You know? Idropped into my EIR role. I knew
sort of what capabilities I canbring to the org. But but I

(38:56):
think in order to be effective,you sort of have to know the
org, need to be able totranslate.
So so the way when I talk aboutthese things, I say, kinda
what's your secret sauce? Whatcapabilities do you have? You
know, MK, you were talking aboutproduct. You were talking about
sort of early stage, you know,kind of 0 to 1 being able to get
these things to market. Thoseare all, like, important to talk

(39:17):
about because many of the folksyou're talking to don't
necessarily have that backgroundor even in some cases don't know
that it's important.
And so I think it's incumbent onthe EIR to be able to sort of
capture that and be able to kindof explain it. And I know some
folks that are really good atit, and other folks that are
really rock stars are not greatat explaining, you know, why are

(39:37):
they the best guitarist in theworld as far as the EIR is
concerned. But they are. Right?And it's it's it's really
important to capture that.
The second part is sort ofunderstanding how it sort of
lands on the, you know, corestrategy and also how innovation
enables the core strategy of theorganization. In most cases, the

(39:57):
parent organization hasn't donethe work to be able to to answer
that question, but I actuallyencourage folks that are
thinking about an EIR role tosort of dig into that and spend
a couple beats, understanding,you know, how much of the
leadership time is spent oninnovation? Is there sort of an
enunciated innovation strategy?You know, budget, time, all the

(40:19):
things that are important. Justunderstanding how the org thinks
about it.
And then kinda more recently,the third part is, in many
cases, when you're in the wildand doing your own thing, you
don't have to sort of doconsensus building and sort of
understanding organizationaldynamics as much. And so I think
there is, like, really kind of abit of a rescaling part,

(40:40):
especially if you're gonna bemore on, like, the horizontal,
so working on the capacity ofthe organization. I think the
vertical so, like, if you'rerunning a business line or
spinning one out, that's easilytranslatable from being in the
wild. Although, many of thethings you described make it
very frustrating. But that'sthat's kinda the framework I
use.
And I'm sorry to cut you off asecond, when I was talking, but
that's I found that helpful forfolks to sort of wrap their head

(41:04):
around. Okay. That makes sense.I can explain, you know, some of
this experience in a differentway. And then, you know, by
knowing what the core strategyand how innovation enables the
core strategy, you know, how theleadership team's spending time
on it, what the priorities are,that gives me a lot of insight.
And and I found, like, lots offolks, that kinda resonates with
them. So I just wanted to sharethat in the discussion here.

Yeah. No. I agree. I mean, you know, one of
the things when I go into an EIRrole or if if I'm interviewing
for 1 or talking to some someoneabout it, There is the most
important thing that I wannalearn and I wanna understand is
that how much money they'reinvesting into this role and
when and when do they need thatmoney back. Right?

(41:48):
Because look. At the end of theday, a big corporation coming
down from board directors toCEO, somebody saying, hey, I'm
gonna put this much amount ofmoney into this initiative where
I'm gonna have these group ofpeople call them EIRs or
whatever you wanna call them,innovation leaders. And the
question always somebody shouldask is, when are you expecting

(42:09):
this money back? Which is thethe return on investment and how
much of it. And if that answeris, like, next year, I'm out
because I'm, like, there'snothing happening next year or
even the year after.
Right? It's just like angelinvesting. Right? We all angel
invest. I'm sure all of us do.
I do. And, Aris, you do, and,Ilya, you do as well. When I'm

(42:30):
investing as an angel in acompany, that money is I'm
playing with house money. I'mlike, I'm not getting it back. I
know.
Like, if if it comes back,great. But I'm investing in the
founder and the idea and the andthe passion I have around it.
And it's the same thing if youare building an EIR or an
innovation organization, you'reputting a 1,000,000, 2,000,000,

(42:50):
$3,000,000, the CEO may be like,hey. This money's probably gonna
go to waste, and but ifsomething comes back, it'll be
great. It's kind of like what,you know, those tier 1 venture
capitalists do or, you know, inthe in the Bay Area, especially,
or even any VCs, like, you know,we're gonna invest on a 100
companies, and probably 50 ofthem are gonna fail.

(43:12):
20 of them are probably gonna dothe 1st base. 20 another 20 of
them is gonna probably do the2nd base, and then 9 of them
will probably go to 3rd base.But then there's gonna be this
one that's gonna do a home run,and that's gonna make up for the
rest of the fund. And so if youlook at it from a EIR investment
perspective, innovation, you'resaying, okay, I'm I'm gonna put

(43:34):
a $1,000,000 in this, and900,000 of this is gonna go to
waste, but this other 100,000could really build something,
and it's gonna come back 10times, and that's what we are
banking on, and that's it. Andif it doesn't happen, we'll do
it again the next year, the nextyear after, and we'll keep on
trying it because the cost ofnot doing it is that doing
nothing.

(43:55):
And then what what happens? We,you know, we become the
BlackBerry of the world.

You know what? Okay. I love that. I love how
you're applying the power law ofventure capital. It's just sort
of the EIR role and how peopleshould be thinking about it sort
of, you know, long term, if youwill.
And it's a perfect actual segueto what I to to the other sort
of part we wanna take you to,which is talk to us about your
EIR role at Georgia State,right, for the mainstream fund

(44:23):
and and investing in thoseentrepreneurs, right, living out
sort of what on the other sideof the table. Can you talk to us
a little bit more about yourroles at Georgia State and and,
at ATDC as an entrepreneurresidence?

Georgia State's Main Street Entrepreneur
Seed Fund is a perfect exampleof putting money in in founders
no matter where they are, whothey are, what businesses they
lead, and there's a reason wecall it the Main Street Fund.
I'll talk about that in aminute. But my role at the Main
Street Fund as an EIR is reallyoriginally, they I think I like

(44:59):
the original name. Althoughinitially, when when they hired
me for, I didn't. They called itthe startup shepherd.
And I was like, I don't likethat that's I'm not sure. I'm
not sounds more like a sort oflike a Jesus Christy, kind of
thing. And I'm not I reallydon't feel I don't have that
mantle. So I like the EIRs. Ichanged it to an EIR.
But now that I go back, I'mlike, actually, I'm a startup

(45:20):
shepherd. Right? I'm shepherdingthese founders and startups and
trying to get them to this,making sure that they're not
going off trail and going to thenext into to the to that next,
you know, part of the journey.But over there, I manage
businesses and founders that areliterally ideas in a napkin.
They could be companies that arethat are technology companies.

(45:43):
They could be companies that aretech enabled. As a matter of
fact, I I I talked with afounder yesterday from one of
the, you know, from one of thecohorts. She's building this
beauty care product, kind oflike, you know, sort of using,
you know, the the I the the newiPhone features that you could
really analyze your skin andthen sort of, you know, get

(46:03):
consultation. And so basicallyover there, you know, with the
technology companies, they couldbe tech enabled, or they could
have nothing to do withtechnology. Right?
And you will see the, you know,the, this founder who's thriving
right now, she, she came intothe first cohort of the Main
Street and she had a sewingschool, and she was helping,

(46:24):
found people who could not getinto expensive design schools,
like SCAD, for example, withhelping teaching them how to
design clothes, sewing, and thenyou know, sort of placing them
into jobs. And now she'stransformed into this amazing
business where she's helping 100of designers, placing them in
different places. So that hadnothing new technology at all,

(46:46):
and that's why we call it theMain Street Seed Fund because it
is for every company, not just atech company, not just tech
enabled, but any company. Itcould be a coffee shop. It could
be a STEM school.
So, and it's focused on reallyunderrepresented women led
businesses. Right? And that's,you know, we wanna focus on

(47:07):
them. And Georgia State, if youthink about it, like it's the,
you know, in in the state ofGeorgia, it's the largest
school. People don't people youhear about UGA and Georgia Tech
and Emory, but Georgia State isthe largest school in the in the
state of Georgia right now, andit is the largest student
population of minority studentsoutside of an HBCU, one of the

(47:27):
largest in the United States.
And so that's what I do there.At ATDC, what I work on is on
companies that have achieved atleast or on their way to achieve
a $1,000,000 in revenue orfunding, and they get to their
next level. And sort of I workas sort of a coach to really the

(47:48):
CEOs of the businesses and thefounders of the businesses to
really understand theorganization, their product. For
example, I was talking to,talking to one of the founders
the other day where, you know,their product metrics is all
off. Right?
I'm like, what are you how areyou measuring whether your
product is being used? You'renot getting users. Users are
falling off. And I looked atthem like, what are your

(48:10):
metrics? And they're like,revenue.
I'm like, well, that's not ametric. That's like that's a
that's a that's like a trailingmetric. Like, how are you
getting the revenue? What arethe things that are leading you
to that? Right?
What are your leading metrics?And so I was helping them with
that. Another company I workwith the other day I was working
with was they're everywhere.Right? I'm like, what is your
segment?
How are you going to market?Which is your target segment?

(48:32):
And, you know, who are youselling to? Because if you don't
know who your, you know, idealcustomer profile or ideal buyer
profile is and why they'rebuying or why would they buy
your stuff, it doesn't make anysense. So going back, the main
street fund is basically, if youthink about it like, you know,
like the Techstars, of the worldand a incubator had a baby.

(48:57):
Right? Basically, we bring incompanies through this process.
We give them investment anywherefrom 15 to 20,000 in realm, but
we don't invest. Like, it's nota we don't take any equity in
the company. We give them wegive it to them as a grant.
So they'll you know, we don'ttake any money back, but we also
tranche the money in layers sothat they can meet with certain

(49:20):
milestones and so that we knowthat they're on track, and I
manage those companiesthroughout the process. We've
done about 4 cohorts. We'vegraduated about 60 companies
through that process so far. Theinitial fund came from the
Marcus Foundation. We also gotmoney later on from Bank of
America and Georgia Power andCoca Cola and some individual

(49:45):
donors like Ahmed Boser.
So, I mean, we we we continue todo that for the Main Street Seed
Fund, and that's sort of mythat's my happy place because
I'm a Georgia State alumni, andthat's my passion. I wanna help
as many founders from GeorgiaState University as possible.
And, really, you know, my goalis, like, to talk to a talk to a
founder every day for the restof my life. And that's what I

(50:07):
do. I find some way somehow tohave a conversation with a
founder and help them in someway.
And that's sort of how I wannagive back and continue to give
back. And that's that's from anentrepreneur perspective, that's
the best thing I can do.

That's awesome. So, we we mentioned kinda your, most
recent role in in Nokia Venturesand sort of how you've kinda
gone back to the future in someways. Can you talk a little bit
about that and kind of whatyou're excited about there? And
then maybe, like, the the otherthing that's fun is you've sort
of built a little bit of a, youknow, portfolio of things that
you do. And so I wanna kinda diginto that, a little bit as well.

So let's talk about Nokia. I look so
Nokia Ventures, and I'm notgiving anything up here, but we
all know Nokia as the failedphone company. Right? But that
was a very small part of thebusiness. Right?
And, it's funny, I was talkingto one of the, one of the senior
vice presidents who happens tobe my cousin actually, at Nokia.

(51:11):
And, you know, he's amazing. Heused to work with Bell Labs, and
now he's on the technology side.But he was telling me, like, you
know, the original research thatled to the formation of the

(51:35):
iPhone, which is the touchscreen, and and all of that was
actually came out of Bell Labsand out of Nokia. Right?
But some executive decided thatwho wants that? You know?

(51:55):
Somebody decided some guy insome ivory tower decided that,
you know, I don't think anybodywould wanna pay so much money
for that stuff. I don't let youknow what? Very nice idea.
Let's put that on the shelf.Right? And then what happened?
And and that gives me that tellsme, like, if there was an EIR in
that room, some founders, someentrepreneurs would be like,

(52:18):
guys, can we at least have someconversations and discovery
around this to see that, willthis dog hunt? Right?
But there was no idea. Right?Some big board members, some
chairmans, some, you know, someguys said, yep. Nope. Not worth
it.
Don't let's keep on making thesmall, little phones and, you
know, selling those, and guesswhat happened? There's no more

(52:39):
Nokia phones, right, or at leastphone business. So but what no
what people don't realize,Nokia's footprint is pretty much
everywhere around the worldbecause they're at the end of
the day, they'retelecommunications, you know,
broadband provider. Theirtechnologies from 3 gs, 4 gs, 5
gs, and now going to 6 gs,they've enabled amazing stuff

(53:01):
around that and continue to dothat. And what what's happened
is through a number of differentacquisitions and, you know, roll
ups, they landed on Bell Labs.
So Bell Labs, which isoriginally the AT and T
business, was, you know,divested. Lucent Technologies
bought it, then Alcatel boughtLucent, and then Nokia bought
Alcatel Lucent, and it all cameback to us. So full circle.

(53:23):
Right? And Bell Labs is anamazing research business, and
people don't know, like, theyhave Nobel Peace Prize they have
Nobel Prizes attached to them.
They were the original inventorsthat led to the invention of
transistors that we talk aboutin our radio,
telecommunications, and, youknow, telephones, whatever you
wanna call it. So they havethese all these research. But at

(53:43):
the end of the day, thatresearch doesn't mean anything
if it doesn't drive some kind ofrevenue in some way. And so, the
CEO and the leadership at Nokiadecided to start this Nokia
Ventures, where basically theybring in people to commercialize
some of this research. And oneof that research happens to be
in this energy and utility spacewhere we are basically taking

(54:08):
this technology of streamingdata, real time data, and
applying it to like, you know,non wire solutions around like
battery storage and micro gridsand, you know, rooftop solar and
all of that, and kind of lookinginto them and how they can
utilities and energy companies,can leverage those technologies

(54:30):
and sort of, really save moneyor even make money, if you will.

That's awesome. So what so what's it like kind of
having a portfolio of, you know,it seems like you're super
passionate about the Main StreetVenture, kinda work. You know,
kind of seems like you're wellon your way to talking to an
entrepreneur a day for the restof time, which is amazing. I
mean, I love that's like areally good way of saying that I

(54:55):
I actually worked for a guythat, built a transportation
program at Oak Ridge NationalLab for 30 years and then came
to the University of Kansas askind of his second career. And I
could just tell that, you know,he gained energy from just being
on campus and being around, youknow, kind of younger energetic
folks.
So I definitely hear the,connection. But how do you think

(55:16):
about sort of this, you know,portfolio being able to choose,
and and kind of, decide how youkind of deploy your time and
your resources? Because that'sthat's something that sort of
I've seen happens in, you know,maybe not the first season of an
entrepreneur's life. Right? Andit's kind of a cool perspective
to have.
So maybe if you could talk aboutthat for, you know, a minute or

(55:38):
2. It seems like, you have kindof a interesting perspective
there.

My wife has a big problem with me, which is,
like, my lack of sleep. Like, Idon't sleep much, and she says,
you know, it's gonna catch up tome at some point. Maybe it has
already. I don't and and I don'tknow about it. But, you know, to
me, every time I go to sleep, Ican't wait to wake up again, and

(56:05):
doing the things that I do.
Whether it's working with Nokia,Nokia's business, talking with
customers, I just love doingthat. I love talking with,
especially the customers I workwith, you know, in the utility
space, just listening to themand about the hard problems to
solve. And then what reallykeeps me keeps me going the rest

(56:27):
of the day is coaching andmentoring founders and
entrepreneurs. And the thing is,like, it doesn't feel like work.
It's like I feel like I'm I'mthings that they're asking are
so second nature to me and hasbeen for a while that it doesn't
feel like, you know, I'm I'm I'msort of telling them, and and I

(56:47):
feel great that I'm I'm I'm ableto share that and sort of guide
them in a way that they can,like, go towards, you know, a
certain outcome.
Like, for example, I was talkingto this founder yesterday, and
she's trying to launch thisbusiness around skincare, and
she's talking aboutconsultation, and she's talking
about in dermatologists, andshe's talking about compliance.

(57:07):
I'm like, don't worry about anyof that. Find a high school
grad, just graduated. Tell themfor every consultation do they
do, you're gonna pay them 50.Your lifetime value of your each
customer is probably gonna be500, and, basically, that's 10%
of the lifetime value, andthat's great.
And don't don't worry aboutcompliance. Don't worry about
all this stuff. That's it.Right? As long as they're

(57:30):
certified dermatologist, that'sthat's good enough.
And she was like, I never Inever thought of it this way.
Okay? I was thinking abouthiring a doctor and doing all
this stuff. When you hearcertain things, you've you've
done it I've done so many times.We all have done so many times.
It just comes to you. Right?It's just like you're training,
you know, like a Navy Seal, youknow, when they're going into
battle. Right? Their, you know,their training just kicks in.

(57:52):
Right? You know, it doesn'tmatter. Like, you just you know,
that the you know, your brainstart working certain ways, and
you're like, oh, I know thesolution. I know what I know
what we should be doing. Right?
The challenge is in that. Thechallenge really is is on the
other side. Is whether andthat's something you don't
control and we can't control is,like, will the founder listen?
Will the CEO listen? You know,should you know?

(58:15):
And as founders, me included, wehave we have a really high ego.
We think we know everything. Andover the time, now that I'm 50,
I've learned that I need to bein a learn it all mode all the
time versus in a know it allmode. And it's sometimes hard to
do because people are like, Iknow the answer. I already know

(58:36):
this.
This is my industry, and this isthat, and I've done this. And
you're like, no. You gotta,like, let all of that go and
start from, you know, be willingto be wrong, be willing willing
to start from scratch. And Ithink that's the hardest thing.
Right?
I mean, the problem and that'swhy I'm like, it's hard for
corporate employees many timesto become founders. Right?
Because in the corporations, youare working as a on a

(58:59):
transaction basis. 2 weekspaycheck, 2 weeks paycheck, 2
weeks paycheck, and that's whatyou're working towards. Where
you come to a startup orbuilding a company, an EIR,
you're working on atransformation.
And so that transaction mindsethas to go away, right? In the
corporate world, you're workingas a mercenary. In the startup

(59:20):
world, you're working as amissionary. You're on a mission
to make an impact, to solve aproblem, to change things, to
disrupt things, to to be say tobe willing to be brave enough to
tell people, like, the way it'sbeing done now is wrong. It's
not going to work.
We don't need more horses. Weneed a better automobile. Right?
So like that that kind ofmindset, it's hard to acquire.
Right?

(59:40):
It's it's I don't think it'ssomething you can learn. It's
something that you have to,like, intentionally, sort of,
over time, train your mind andtrain your thought process too.

Yeah. Absolutely. I I kinda wanna pick apart a
couple things. You you sort ofput in a bunch of knowledge into
about 30 seconds of,conversation there. So I wanna
pick apart a couple things.
One is you sort of talked about,you know, knowing what you get
really excited about and sort ofcuriosity mixed with, things
that give you energy, mixed withkind of the things you know you

(01:00:16):
enjoy is, the way that I took itis a really good way to sort of
prioritize that portfolio. Andsort of once you sort of have a
a feel for that, I always whenI'm talking to, you know, folks
interested in startups,everybody says they wanna be a
founder. And I always spend sometime with them saying, are you
sure? You know, are you sure youwanna be a founder? Are you sure
you wanna be an early employee?

(01:00:37):
Like, what actually brings youthat energy and kinda where do
you when when you really, havehad the opportunity in the past
to try it? Where where do youreally draw energy from? And
what's cool is I think you weretalking about, you know, you
have a clear vision of what thatmeans for you. And it's a good
way to sort of prioritize. Andso that would be the the thing
that I would maybe highlightfrom your description of of your

(01:00:59):
portfolio and how you'respending your time and
resources.
Is it seems like you have areally good kind of feel, and an
idea for what those things are,and you're doing it. So,
awesome. The the the other partis you sort of talked about, you
know, effective entrepreneursare coachable, and they focus on

(01:01:19):
the problem. And, you know, youalmost I'm not gonna get on my
soapbox here, but I loveentrepreneurs that fall in love
with the problem, and then just,you know, chase it to where they
find the truth. Not, you know,here's my solution.
You guys should all buy it. But,hey, this group of people has
this idea. And and, you know,you you can't take all input
from everybody about everything.But I think that coachability

(01:01:43):
and the search for, you know,kind of the curiosity to be able
to get to the bottom of what'sgoing on is I think a huge
thing. So I just wanted to kindof unpack those two things
because I think they're related,but they sort of get into a
little bit of a different viewhere.

MK (Musaddeq Khan) (01:01:57):
So there are 2 things I wanna say. The first
thing I'll say is, I'll answeryour second question, which is
falling in love with theproblem. And my mindset and
thought process has evolved overthe last, few years around that.
And I think I wanna work withfounders who fall in love with
their customer and the audienceto discover what the problem is

(01:02:22):
rather than falling in love withthe problem. Look, there's 2
ways to achieve it.
Right? So let's say I wanna Iwanna sell an an efficient car,
and I wanna solve the problemefficiency, mileage efficiency.
So I can go to an audience, andthey say, well, that's great,
but I really I'm not looking forefficiency. I'm looking for
luxury. So that's so now I couldeither solve that problem, or I

(01:02:46):
could stay on my problem andsay, let me find another
audience, and I can go to adifferent audience to see if
they had that problem.
And there is that but I thinkthe best way to do it, and as
I'm as I'm coaching and workingwith, you know, founders and
entrepreneurs, I I tell them,like, a better way is to go and

(01:03:06):
find the audience, and let'stalk to them about it. Let's
find the hero of your journey.Let's find Luke Skywalker, or
let's find Obi Wan, and, or, orDarth Vader, or Anakin say, hey,
what are you trying to solve?Well, I'm trying to kill Jedi,
or I'm trying to kill, you know,I'm trying to defeat the empire.
Okay.
Let's see which problem I wannasolve. And then then that

(01:03:29):
becomes your audience, and thenyou fall in love with that
audience. You fall in love withAnakin, like, whatever you do,
let's go kill those Jedi andget, you know, get rid of all of
them. Right? Let's figure thatout.
How we would, you know, you canuse the dark side of the force
to do that. So that's my firstthing. I think falling in love
with I'm now more of thatmindset of let's fall in love
with the customer, because thecustomer is the hero of your

(01:03:50):
journey and the story, let'sbuild a story around them. And
it becomes, to me, at least, itbecomes an easier way of
approaching that. The other partof it, Ilya, is the sort of how
I kind of energize myself.
I am not into predictability. Ilook for ambiguity. I look for

(01:04:14):
uncomfortable situations, and Ilook for places where people are
running around with a chicken,like a chicken with a head cut
off and doesn't know wherethey're going, and I want to go
in there in that messyenvironment and figure things
out. That's why I'm not a goodcorporate player. Right?

(01:04:36):
Because I'm not gonna sit there9 to 5 and do the things that I
need to do in check boxes. Ijust can't do that where I know
I'm gonna get a paycheck every 2weeks. I'm not this is gonna
happen. Of course, nothing wrongwith a paycheck. You know?
Love that. You know? Keep themcoming my way, but what I wanna
be in a place is, like, I wantto do the hard things about the

(01:05:01):
hard things. And that's why Ilove that book, you know, Ben
Horowitz's book, I thinkeverybody should read that.
Like, if, you know, you can't,you know, most times people keep
on doing the same thingexpecting different results.
And I think willing to do hardthings and, you know, making
changes and willing to disruptis what I'm looking for, and
that's what gives me energy.It's like, okay. Problems have

(01:05:24):
not been solved. There's a lotof unsolved, you know, things
here, and that's what I lookfor. Nothing is predictable.
Things could this thing couldfall apart tomorrow, and that's
okay. And and I'm willing to andI'm willing to take it take take
a chance there. And that's whatsort of, you know, drives me
with energy is like this on thisunpredictability, you know, this

(01:05:45):
unknown, you know, of thefuture. And because I and maybe
this is because of my ownbackground, because never having
this constant, like, lifestyleof staying in one place and
building a family, always movingaround and doing all of that.
And but that's kind of, like, Ithink is built into sort of my

(01:06:05):
mindset of, like, doing things.

Terrance Orr (01:06:08):
Those are the pieces of your background, MK,
that make you unique, right, andand give you superpowers, that
that have helped you buildmultiple businesses. Right? And
I wanna be respectful of yourtime. So just a comment and then
one final question for you.Okay?
So a comment quick commentbecause I'm itching, I'm itching
to go down this thread, but Iknow I I keep you for another

(01:06:29):
hour if I do. But a quickcomment. Man, I gotta tell you,
I can talk to you for anotherhour about the whole corporate
structure and how sometimesthose things just don't work.
And the 2 things that I see,given the work that we do here
at Mach 49 and helping corporatesort of, like, think through
these things is, a, aligning ofincentives for the people that
they're gonna bring in and 2,the governance. Right?

(01:06:50):
Entrepreneurs are not driven bypaycheck. They're driven by
equity. Equity is my lovelanguage. Right? And it's most
of their love languages, youknow, for the for the for the
most part.
So I'll leave that as a comment.My final question for you, my
friend. Tell the audiencesomething that's not on your
resume that we cannot find onLinkedIn about MK? I know a
bunch of funny fun stories thatyou've shared with me, but is

(01:07:12):
there anything that you feelcomfortable sharing with the
audience that's not on yourresume that you like to end on?

Yeah. That's a great question. I will tell
you something that's not on myresume, and I think that a lot
of people may or may not knowabout it, but I tell the story
every every chance I get topeople that are close to me or
people that that, you know, thatthat that I can become
vulnerable with. So I'll be alittle bit vulnerable here. My
understanding of this process ofgoing to market and

(01:07:41):
understanding customersegmentation actually developed
through an experience of sellingvacuum cleaners door to door.
And that that is not on myresume, as this vacuum cleaner
salesman. But back in school,way back when when I was gonna,
you know, in in in Alabama, thisone summer, I had a dream. I

(01:08:05):
know that sounds like veryMartin Luther King esque, but I
did have a dream that I wasgonna make a lot of money that
summer. And so there I waslooking through the mobile press
register, going through theclassifies in this one place
where it says, hey, make a lotof money this summer. And I was
like, great.
I called that number. I showedup, and I found out that
basically what they're gonna dois give me a very expensive

(01:08:27):
vacuum cleaner, Kirby vacuumcleaner to sell. So if you think
about it, right, Kirby vacuumcleaner, if you do all the math
for inflation and everything,back in that day, it was 1600.
If you convert that into currentmonetary value, it's about
$5,000. Right?
So this is back in 1993, and I'mdoing this. And so, I was like,

(01:08:49):
okay. And what basicallyhappened was I figured out that
the lead list that they gave mewas these this list of very rich
people. And when I ended up inone of their houses, they were
like, hey, listen. You look likea good kid.
Go out there and actually get areal job because I'm never gonna
buy a vacuum cleaner, because Idon't need to clean my house. I

(01:09:10):
don't clean my house. I don'teven know how a vacuum cleaner
works. So why are you eventrying to sell this to me? I'm a
doctor, my wife's a lawyer, andgo find somewhere, you know,
someplace else.
And so I ended up, you know, inthis McDonald's, you know,
trying to eat lunch, and that'swhere all great American stories
start, at the McDonald's. Andso, basically, sitting there,
and there's this guy next to me,you know, like, looking at me,

(01:09:31):
and I'm like, hey. You gotsomething to say? And he was
like, I'm just wondering, like,you know, like, what do you do?
Who you are?
You know, where you're from? Youknow? I'm like, well so I asked,
you know, I'm like, you know,I'm, you know, I'm trying to
sell a vacuum cleaner. Like, Ineed a vacuum cleaner, and I end
up in his trailer park. And loand behold, at the end of
everything, he buys a vacuumcleaner.

(01:09:51):
And I'm like, wait a minute.This is what I need to do. So I
go back. I've basically, youknow, find out this list of
trailer parks, and I basicallythe next 60 to 90 days, I just
hit up every trailer park andwithin a 30 mile radius. And I
sell a ton of those Kirbys, ofcourse, you know, to poor people
who would never probably canafford them, but they could

(01:10:12):
finance them.
And, you know, all they neededwas to sign a check, and and and
and that's my and that was mycommission. And I did that for 1
summer, and when I figured out,I was like, that's where your
segmentation and understandingof your customer comes in.
Because you would thinkexpensive expensive item like
that could only be bought byreally rich people, and they

(01:10:33):
were not the right audience.They don't care about it. And
turned out this totally unknowngroup of people that probably
would want that.
Of course, I would never do thatagain because I sold my soul
that summer, and and, you know,it was I've been repenting
since. But, you know, I there'sa lot of Kirby vacuum cleaners

(01:10:53):
somewhere in Alabama and a lotof trailer parks if you go and
look for them. But, there I was.But so that's something that
people don't know is how kind oflike how I learn about, you
know, go to market strategy andmarket segmentation. And I use
that example a lot when I'm whenI'm coaching entrepreneurs.
I'm saying, look, tell me if Igive you a vacuum cleaner, that

(01:11:15):
$1600 or $5,000, what's yourideal customer profile? And they
say, somebody who makes a lot ofmoney, somebody lives in a big
house, somebody who drives a bigcar, I'm like, wrong. And then I
tell them the story and they'relike, wow, wait a minute, we
would never have figured thatout. And that tells you that
that tells you sort of that'skind of what, you know, the
experience of talking withcustomers and doing discovery

(01:11:36):
and really understanding thataudience is super important
before you just go and try tosolve any problem and build
something.

Incredible. MK, it's been a privilege, my
friend. Thank you for coming onthe podcast and, thank you for
being honest and vulnerable withour audience. I'm sure they're
gonna get a a a nice nice listenout of all all the wisdom that
you've shared today.

For having me, guys. Really appreciate it,
Ilya. Thank you, Terrance. It'sbeen a pleasure and an honor.

Alright, my friend.

Ilya Tabakh (01:12:08):
That was an awesome episode. We say awesome all the
time, but there there's somereally, cool and and and
specific points that came up, inthe discussion for me. I I think
that the first one that thatreally kind of rang true with me
is that I just love that MK isreally aware and focused on, you

(01:12:29):
know, kind of what is the skillset and the capabilities that he
brings to the table. And he's,like, super intentional about
kinda what is his portfolioabout how he spends his time.
And I think, you know, if youcan have that clarity, that
intention, and kind of bringthat to the table, it's a
really, really huge thing. Andso, you know, that that that

(01:12:50):
really kinda ring true with meand and for myself, I've really
tried to, you know, get betterat that over the years. And so
it's really cool to seesomebody, you know, seem to do
it well. And then I think thethe other part is that, you
know, I I'm I'm always big aboutdifferent perspectives and that
you can take a lot of differentpaths to a destination. And I
think, MK's background, youknow, both growing up as well as

(01:13:13):
in business, really allows himto bring a bunch of different
lenses, a bunch of differentperspectives.
And, you know, just kindathinking about it, he's got a
lot of curiosity. He kinda hasthat, variety of perspective.
And I think, ultimately, forhim, that's a that's a really
strong superpower. And I thinkfor many of our listeners, can
be a pretty strongdifferentiator as well. So

(01:13:34):
that's really what stuck out tome.
What about you?

Man, a ton stuck out to me in in this episode
about about MK, plus 1 to to allthe things that you said. The
other thing is the threat ofimpact, that that MK has had
throughout his career. If youreally look at the the roles and
the companies that he startedand the roles as a chief product
officer in the in theorganizations that he was a part
of, all of those opportunitieswere about at an impact, right,

(01:14:00):
at scale for the world orsociety in some capacity, right?
You think about the Smart GridAnalytics company, right,
helping out. That's a, that'ssomething that helps the world
and society, like working withutility companies.
If you think about his role inhelping out, you know, as a
chief product officer at acompany that was gonna help

(01:14:20):
supply, better sort of water andmaterial and infrastructure, in
another region, I think thosethings are, like, important. So
the the the threat of impactcontinued even after he sold his
companies. Right? You can hearin this episode how he got
really passionate about the MainStreet Fund and giving back to

(01:14:41):
future generations ofentrepreneurs. I can literally
hear the passion, in in hisvoice and the energy that that
gave him and how mentorship ledto his first role as an
entrepreneur and resident,right, at Itron.
And if it wasn't for thatmentorship and that guidance,
from people who've walked thepath before and saw something
different in him, and thatcuriosity that you talked about,

(01:15:03):
and how his first role as anentrepreneur in residence, you
know, really came from, youknow, that person trying to
guide him to say, hey, maybeyou're in the wrong position,
you know, but not in the wrongcompany. Right? Let me show you
another thing where you can sortof feed your curiosity, and that
led to his 1st entrepreneur inresidence role at Itron, and

(01:15:26):
lastly, from selling vacuumcleaners to selling his first
company. Just what what ajourney, man. So those are the
things that really stuck outstuck out to me amongst other
things in in the episode.

Yeah. No. Absolutely. Just to pick on the
vacuum cleaner story, it's, youknow, it's amazing when people
sit down and talk about, youknow, what's gonna happen.
Everybody kinda takes theirbackground and, perspective and
have a rational discussion.
It's like, this is how it'sgonna play out. And I've been in
so many situations where that,you know, plan sort of the

(01:16:00):
expert opinion, here's how it'sgonna play, just doesn't work.
Right? And it's it it I thinkit's really valuable at an early
and I think that was the pointMK was making is that, look, you
know, when you're out there andyou're talking to people, you
can know a lot, you can assume alot, but, you know, when when
your map and and the terraindon't match, you know, you gotta
follow the terrain. And and Ithink that's, like, a really

(01:16:22):
salient lesson to pick up early.

And you guys might also pick up on that. You know,
we did something a littledifferent, in in this episode,
right? More free flowing, reallygetting into more and more
details, and and I think, youknow, we're gonna experiment a
little bit, like great EIRs do.We're gonna experiment, we're
gonna test, and we we wanna hearfrom from my audit from our

(01:16:44):
audience, what do you thinkabout these new formats that
we're testing out? Ilya,anything to add to that?

Yeah. No. Absolutely. You know, the the we
started the format by havingsort of a reflection at the
beginning of the episode, giveyou guys a summary. We got some
feedback, from some of thelisteners that, you know, they
just wanted to jump in rightinto the discussion.
We have really interestingpeople, and the synthesis was
cool, but, you know, they wantedto hear from, kind of the the
raw discussion first, get rightinto it. We took that. We're

(01:17:12):
gonna try this for, you know, atleast a few episodes, by putting
kind of the reflection at theback, and then also, you know,
giving us an opportunity to talkabout kind of what's going on
with the platform, what are wedoing, and things like that. So,
you know, this is the firstepisode, or or at least an early
episode we're gonna try this on,and we'll see how it goes. You

(01:17:33):
know?
And a lot of it is about what doyou think? What's good? What's
not? You know, format. We'llcontinue to take feedback,
looking for kind of the ratingsand comments and things like
that, and, you know, we'll buildthis thing together.

Absolutely. We consider feedback to be a gift,
at EIR Live. So please continueto send us feedback. That's how
we make the podcast better foryou all.

Yeah. And then the last thing, you know, we, are
also starting to do, a couplethings like physical events. You
know, Terrance and I recentlydid a event in Atlanta where we
had, some folks come out and wedid a little bit of a launch
party and kinda an entrepreneurin residence happy hour. And so,
you know, kind of flaggingcommunities that have a good or

(01:18:15):
at least a beginning density ofEIRs is super helpful because,
you know, both of us travel morethan we'd like to admit
probably. And so as as we comeout, you know, kinda connecting
with other EIRs, continuing tobuild the network, allows us to,
you know, kinda makeconnections, but also continue
to sort of expand, thefoundation of of the network.

(01:18:37):
And so kinda any any suggestionsthere are good. And then other
things we're talking about is,doing kinda panels and
discussions and things like thatin places where folks are
already aggregating. So there'sa lot of, you know, amazing
conferences, amazing discussionsthat happen, on an annual level.
So kind of we're thinking aboutsome opportunities there. So
we'd love to hear that.

(01:18:58):
Terrance, what am I missing?

I think you got it, man. You you covered it. We
we want more people to sendreferrals. Thank you for the
folks who have been sending usreferrals, to to the podcast. We
wanna see more people on theground at these events.
That this is the life part of ofEIR Live, connecting with real
people in person and on theground beyond the audio that
you're gonna hear in the videothat you'll see on YouTube and

(01:19:20):
other channels, is making surewe bring these groups of of
folks who who are in the samearea but don't necessarily know
that the other person is up thestreet and exists and have held
the in residence role in someorganization. And, it's gonna be
our mission and duty to connectthose people and and and build a
a network around them.

Awesome. Let's leave it there. Thanks,
Terrance. Absolutely.

Thanks for joining us on EIR Live. We hope today's
episode offered you valuableinsights into the
entrepreneurial journey.Remember to subscribe so you
don't miss out on futureepisodes, and check out the
description for more details. Doyou have questions or
suggestions? Please reach out tous.
Connect with us on social media.We really value your input.
Catch us next time for moreinspiring stories and

(01:20:03):
strategies. Keep pushingboundaries and making your mark
on the world. I'm Terrance Orrwith my co-host Ilya Tabakh.
Signing off. Let's keepbuilding.

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Episode 05 - Intentional Chaos: Building a Portfolio of Impact with Musaddeq Khan (MK)

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Episode 05 - Intentional Chaos: Building a Portfolio of Impact with Musaddeq Khan (MK)