Episode 12 - From Entrepreneur to EIR Enabler with Mia Bennett - EIR Live

Episode Transcript
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Mia Bennett (00:00):
It was really late at night. I was kind of sitting

(00:02):
there thinking I cannot facewriting another proposal. And on
my coffee table, I had a bookcalled This Diary Will Change
Your Life. And this diary, whichwas a really old diary, was
actually by two artists. They goas a collective, Bendrick.
And as I was looking at this, Iwas thinking if I only had the
creativity that these guys have,it would be so nice. I will

(00:22):
figure out what to do. And thenI kind of thought, you know
what? I'm just gonna drop them aline and see. So I just found
their agent, dropped the agent aline, and this was like four or
five in the morning saying, Hey,like I have a mobile agency.
I would love to work with thiscreative duo. Would you guys be
interested? Really thinkingnothing will come from it. I go
to bed, wake up like eleven orwhenever it was, there is

(00:45):
already a meeting set up. That'sactually how the agency started
getting its real start becausebefore I was just really
struggling.

Ilya Tabakh (00:53):
Welcome to EIR Live, where we dive into the
lives and lessons ofentrepreneurs and residents. I'm
Ilya Tabakh, together with mycohost Terence Voor, ready to
bring you closer to theheartbeat of the innovation and
entrepreneurial spirit. Everyepisode, we explore the real
stories behind the ideas,successes, setbacks, and
everything in between. Foreveryone from aspiring EIRs to

(01:14):
seasoned pros, EIR Live is yourgateway to the depth of the
entrepreneurial journey andbringing innovative insights
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 (01:35):
Alright. Welcome to another episode of EIR Live.
And today, we have the esteemedguest, Mia Bennett, along with
my cohost, Ilya Tabakh, who'salways around hanging out with
me on on on the podcast. Andthis one is going to be a treat,
people. So I'm gonna tee it up,and I'm gonna introduce Mia to
our audience and but I'm sure Iwon't give her as much justice

(01:58):
as she's gonna give herself.
So we're gonna ask her to walkthrough her background and and
story, then we'll just dive intoit. But, you know, I've gotten a
chance to know to know Mia overover a year now, you know, sort
of approaching a year and a halfto two. It feels like yesterday
when I sort of joined the oneday group, you will, but I've
had the privilege to get to knowher, the grit that she has, the

(02:19):
inspiration that she brings tothe table, and honestly, just
getting after it like any otherentrepreneur would do and doing
that and wrangling a bunch ofother entrepreneurs, which she
will get into, you know, on onthe chat today. But Mia really
started her career, you know, inthe early days as a management
consultant, right, providingstrategic guidance and advice,
right, to some of the world's,you know, largest and sometimes

(02:42):
even slightly smallerorganizations, right, helping to
guide them to get to theoutcomes that they're looking to
achieve. And then became aserial entrepreneur in many ways
and and then sort of took thoseskills into the corporate world,
right, to help corporatesinnovate as an EIR as well.
And now she's sort of startingon this other chapter of her

(03:03):
life where she sort of did thatmultiple times and now she's
taken all of those skills torecruit other EIRs into this
very mysterious role. So Mia,that's just a little bit about
your background. Can you walk usthrough your journey for our
audience?

Well, hello everyone. I really liked that
introduction. Thanks, Terence,and you're very kind. Let me get
us back to the beginning.Absolutely, I started as a
management consultant, but Iwill confess that my actual goal
was to be an entrepreneur.
It's just that I didn't have theconfidence and I felt I had no

(03:41):
skills. And, you know, as I wasabout to graduate, I was
thinking, what would be thething that will give me a lot of
different skills that will openopportunities? I kind of
thought, finance, consulting, Ihappened to miss all the
deadlines for finance, soconsulting it was. And my
thinking was, okay, I'll do alot of different projects, I'll

(04:01):
learn a lot, I'll get to workwith people, I'll build up my
skills and eventually I'll makethe jump. This is how I ended up
in consulting.
I did that for a few years,really starting from strategy
technologies, then slowlypushing more towards the
strategy side. And theneventually at some point, and we

(04:22):
can talk about this later, atsome point, I ended up in a role
that I absolutely loved, a greatteam, great projects. And I felt
if I don't make the jump, I willnever leave. Like this is it,
like this is the perfect job. SoI just thought, that's it, I'm
just going to jump.
So pretty without a plan, I donot recommend this. I ended up

(04:44):
leaving to start a company andof course I didn't have a plan.
So I just started an agencythinking, we'll figure it out,
we'll do work for clients andeventually there will be some
product. This is how the serialentrepreneurship came to be
because I ended up building alot of different things, a lot
of trial and errors. And theneventually whenever something
would work, it would be rolledout as its own company.

(05:07):
And I, at the time, I didn'tthink this was an odd thing to
do. So we ended up building alot of companies in a relatively
short period of time. And thenonce this chapter five, six
years came to an end, I ended upgoing back to consulting, but
really with this entrepreneurialhat to be able to build a new
part of a business for them. SoI joined PwC, built a practice

(05:30):
around emerging technologies forthem. And then off the back of
that ended up getting a role,which we didn't actually call it
AIR, but it was very much an AIRnow that I look back thinking
about new directions, who topartner with, what kind of new
products to build.
And then that's when it led tothat first official EIR role

(05:50):
with Citi Ventures and then afew smaller gigs along the way,
all the way to one day, whereoriginally I joined to be an EIR
for a couple of hours a week.And then that just grew. Just
because working with founders isabsolutely incredible, one day
is a really interesting companyand I kind of ended up taking on

(06:12):
a lot more as you mentioned, Inow work with quite a large team
working with a lot of founders,lot of entrepreneurs. Yeah. And
a lot of really good days andtough days along the way.

We had a lot of stops there. Maybe if we can
kind of dig back into theinitial management consulting
piece. One of the things that Ifound from kind of career long
management consultants is thatthey start with a lot of
tactical skills and end up in alot of relationship and sort of
business development skills. Waskind of the first contact with

(06:49):
management consulting what youanticipated to be and kind of
what were your and going back alittle bit, what were your
initial impressions and maybewhat were some of the kind of
surprising things that happenedin that initial encounter?

This is such a nice question. So my only impression
of consulting was that it'sgoing to be project based, I'm
going to do a lot of differentthings. Like really, that's how
naive I was. The first role Ihad was with IBM. IBM had at the
time had just bought a part ofPwC and they really weren't

(07:25):
quite sure what to make out ofthis.
It was a really, reallyinteresting part, and this is
going back twenty five yearsago, so was quite a long time
ago. You're absolutely right,very tactical, a lot of amazing,
amazing training. Honestly, Ifeel I owe so much to this
company, to IBM because theyreally trained us up properly. I

(07:46):
think we had like two, threemonths of just all of us being
in a random city, livingtogether, working together,
learn those skills. And comingto your point, we will start
eight in the morning to go anddo a lot of training work.
And then five, six, the partnerswill turn up. And that's when
the relationship piece wouldstart. And there was a time
where we were working on aproject and I was very dedicated

(08:09):
to do a good job. Anyway, sosomebody turned up, they invited
us to dinner and I refused. Iwas like, No, no, no, I got to
finish this project.
I will see you tomorrow. Thenext day I got called into the
office with the person who wastraining us and he was like,
part of your job is inrelationship. So if you are
asked to go for a party, ifyou're asked to go for a dinner,

(08:30):
that's part of the job. There isno, I will finish the project.
And at the time I was reallyshocked by this, do you know?
Because I kind of thought youget a role, you do a good job,
that's what it is. And notreally realizing that there's a
lot more to this puzzle. Yeah,so it's really interesting. And
then after this particularperiod of time with IBM, I ended

(08:51):
up joining a much smallerconsulting firm. That was all
about relationships also.
It was really interesting, weworked with a lot of major media
companies around the world. Andeven though I was very young, I
ended up going and running a lotof these projects in different
countries. I don't really knowwhy, why they trusted me. I was

(09:13):
just this young buck knowingnothing, but the team, they were
just incredible by dividingopportunities for the younger
folks. And again, a big part ofthat was establishing
credibility, building therelationship because you're
talking to the CIO, CTOs, youknow, just getting them on that
journey and being able to pushinteresting ideas forward.

(09:35):
Yeah, so it's a really nicecombination. I really didn't
expect it. And you know what?Until you asked a question, I
hadn't appreciated how much ofthis relationship building they
had fitted in as well. Yeah,it's an interesting one.

Well, and one of the things I sort of love about
that, two things. One is on aprevious episode, we spoke with
a EIR named Jen Millard, whowent through Sears' kind of
retail training program. And shementioned that, you know, they
used to do talent development ina very different way, you know,
when she sort of was first inher career. And I love sort of

(10:12):
thinking about because, youknow, in a startup context, you
don't always have time and maybenot even resources to do that.
But it's really interesting tothink about how do you develop
your people?
How do you develop yourcapacity? I think in consulting,
generally most of the top tierconsulting folks realize that if
they want to scale, they have tosort of give their people

(10:34):
opportunities early and oftenotherwise their organization's
not going to grow. And so it'sgreat that you were kind of in a
place where, it seems like atleast from short conversation
that they bought into thatphilosophy as well.

Absolutely, because there are two pieces. One is the
training, the other piece is theculture. So there is a lot of
emphasis on, if I go back to myown experience, really
understanding the history of thecompany, the why of the company,
who are you know, thevisionaries within the company,
moving between differentdepartments to really get a

(11:10):
sense of what to do. So I workedfor that company for roughly
three years and I did all theway from requirement gathering
kind of BA type jobs to actualcoding. I actually coded a lot
of different, on differentprojects, being a developer,
doing a lot of testing,memories, doing a lot of
testing, doing a lot of themanagement of the whole process,

(11:32):
lot of strategy.
So they really, really invest.And of course, somebody green
doesn't really know how to doanything, but it's just through
this trial and error andsomebody kind of watching over
you, you'll get the experience.Yeah, they invested a huge, huge
amount. I'm so incrediblygrateful. And I really wish we
continue.
I think some of this has beenlost. Maybe a lot of companies

(11:55):
don't do it the way they usedto.

I'm probably going to double down on this because,
there's something to be saidabout we're sort of in the the
world of startups andentrepreneurship and building
things and and that's the worldwe live in today. But the world
we came from, you know, it was awas a was a world of structure
where they had training, theyoptimized for efficiency, and
sort of making people stayaround as long as possible by

(12:19):
training them and putting thingsin front of them to keep them
around for for many of many ofyears. Right? So I it's
something to be said about largecompanies and their ability to
train people, you know, to havea certain set of skills that
they can then go out into theworld and build on top of,
right? And I got that trainingfor sure at EMC, right?

(12:39):
And I had no clue at the time Iwas joining an organization that
was world class ITinfrastructure. Right? I had no
clue that it had one of the bestsales forces for training people
in the tech industry. Right?Outside of IBM who also had a
really good program for trainingsalespeople.
Right? I just didn't have thatthat context. I was I was young.
Right? But it felt like school alittle bit when when I was

(13:02):
there.
We had to pass all of our tests90% or higher on all technical
exams. You're fired if you didnot, you know? So it was very
the the the culture, and I don'twanna make it seem like EMC was
this insane culture, but it wasa culture in sales where either
you were excellent or nothingelse mattered. Right? And that
sort of really lit a fire underme for the rest of my career

(13:25):
where I sort of learned how totell stories that would move
people.
I sort of learned how to get infront of the C suite or a
systems administrator sittinginside of a data center, right?
I sort of got the ability tobuild those relationships up and
down the stack and how tocommunicate sort of with with
people even though I was liketen years younger than most of
the people that I was sort ofdoing this stuff for. So I feel

(13:46):
I feel a lot like me in thesense that why do people even
trust me to talk to people withthis level of of responsibility?
But in many ways, it it sort ofgave me the infrastructure for
the rest of my life and mycareer to go out and be good at
BD, to be good at tellingstories, to be good at pitching
when I did get into the world ofstartups. And and I sort of
forgot about all that.
Right? And we're sort of goingdown memory lane right now. So I

(14:10):
think it's something to be saidabout large companies to train
people, you know, that you haveto get that on the fly when
you're building a startup. Thereis no program. There is no
curriculum.
There there are no tests. Youknow, there's none of that. You
just you learn it today.Hopefully, you have it right by
tomorrow. Otherwise, you mightnot be in business.
Right? And so I do think thevelocity of learning in

(14:34):
startups, right, is faster thanin a corporation where you get
to take your time and they holdthey hold your hand. So talk to
us a little bit about thattransition, Mia, from the large
corporate training, you got theskills, it's technical, and now
you're moving into let's buildthis agency, right? I have this
set of skills, I know how tobuild relationships, but talk to

(14:55):
us about that transition.

Well, my good friend, I thought I did have all
of the skills. So by this point,I kind of thought, yes, I've run
a bunch of projects, I know howthings work. But of course I
knew within the context of thesereally large companies, as you
say, they have processes, theyhave structure, you know, it's
clear who's supposed to be doingwhat, they know who customers
are. So doing it is a little biteasier to plan or have ideas

(15:18):
when you know, who are youselling to? You have a budget,
you kind of know the path, youhave resources.
I don't know why I did notappreciate a lot these. So once
I started doing my agency, thereally nice thing is that
because I was in the mediaindustry and I was in the
cutting edge of media industry,so we did a lot of on demand

(15:39):
videos, this is back in thosedays, was super cutting edge.
Mobile, people were juststarting to talk about mobile,
not so much in The UK, but alot, I work in Asia quite a lot,
so people were very activelylooking into mobile delivery and
roughly around the same timeiPhone launched. So because I
had been immersed in this area,it was, I guess, a nice

(16:03):
conclusion to get to that, hey,maybe there's a trend here,
maybe I can find some sort ofniche in the mobile space. But
really it was just bycoincidence that I was in this
space, I knew the mediaindustry, I knew a few folks
there.
And that's how the agencystarted. I just reached out to
the contacts I had withindifferent media agencies,

(16:25):
different broadcasting companiesto see if we can do something
for them with mobile. And then Irealized nobody really believed
in it. And once you don't havethe big brand behind you,
sometimes it's just a differentconversation. You're suddenly
are not getting those callspicked up.
A really nice lesson to kind ofbe able to build deeper

(16:45):
relationship, really leveragewhat you have. And, you know, in
those early days, I ended updoing a lot of RFPs, you know,
responding to a lot ofproposals, because that's how
you do it in a corporate. TheRFPs will arrive, you sit down
behind your desk, you write abunch of proposals, some of them
will win. And I remember in theearly days after we did about

(17:06):
30, I didn't get anything. I waslike, that's it.
I am not doing any moreproposals. And actually, I'll
tell you the story. It wasreally late at night. I was kind
of sitting there thinking Icannot face writing another
proposal. And on my coffeetable, I had a book called This
Diary Will Change Your Life.
And this diary, which was areally old diary, was actually

(17:27):
by two artists. They go as acollective Bendrick. And as I
was looking at this, I wasthinking, if I only had the
creativity that these guys have,it would be so nice. I will
figure out what to do. And thenI kind of thought, you know
what?
I'm just going to drop them aline and see. So I just found
their agent, dropped the agent aline, this and was like four or
five in the morning saying, Hey,like I have a mobile agency, I

(17:49):
would love to work with thiscreative duo, would you guys be
interested? Really thinkingnothing will come from it. I go
to bed, wake up like eleven orwhenever it was, there is
already a meeting set up. That'sactually how the agency started
getting its real start becausebefore I was just really
struggling.
We ended up doing this reallyinteresting, really, really

(18:11):
creative project with thesefolks. It wasn't super
commercial, but it immediatelygot us so much PR, so much
attention that I never had to doany more proposals. People will
come to us because they suddenlysaw the quality of our work. And
then it clicked for me thatbecause I'm a tiny person now,
the only way to win is bypartnerships. So I ended up

(18:33):
building a lot of partnershipsto shorten that sales cycle and
effectively get projects thatway.
So really changing the path anddoing things slightly
differently and really rapidlybuilding products and testing.
So I cannot tell you how manyproducts. I think we might have
built in space of five years,possibly more than 40 products,

(18:56):
build, launch, and thenrealizing nobody cares about a
random product. I thought, okay,next time, maybe we should talk
to people first. So there were alot of these lessons that we
learned through these trial anderror, but a really new set of
skills were really requiredcompared to before.
Like things could not be tidy,things could not be structured.

(19:18):
You got to just go, there's anopportunity, go, respond, be
fast. And frankly, if it doesn'twork, not a big deal, we'll try
again. This is quite a differentpath and different attitude, I
think. But it was helpful tohave that foundation that you
knew when you needed to, how canyou do quality work, otherwise
let's be scrappy.

There's so many things I want to kind of pull
at. If you would let me jump inhere for a second, Terrance.
First of all, the RFP thing, Ispent the first chapter of my
career, you know, studying to bea professor. And so everything
was proposal, RFP, you know,publication. And then when I
broke out to go be anentrepreneur, kind of my second
chapter of my career, I found itsort of preposterous on how much

(20:00):
sort of folks were focusing onbeing good book report
generators, Because I had justbroken out of this world where
that was sort of the only wayreally of doing things formally.
But it's just interesting tosort of think about where is
your advantage? Where can yousort of operate? Larger
companies have very good andestablished processes. So So in

(20:21):
many cases, they're quite goodat being able to do that. But
it's just really interesting tosee, you know, somebody that's
used to the RFP process comingout and, you know, kind of
starting to do their own thing.
And it's just like, this is whatyou You know? Let's respond to
an RFP. And I'm like, you andwhat team? Right? You and what
army?
And against what? You know,like, just competitive bidding

(20:41):
generally in a lot of things ifit's you against a lot of large
incumbents is very, verydifficult. And so it's just
interesting that that was It's agood way of like thinking about
what do you have to dodifferently and what do you have
to have to win and sort of theasymmetry between large
established organizations or youknow, larger teams and

(21:04):
ultimately kind of smaller, moreagile teams. So I just wanted to
sort of double click on that alittle bit.

Absolutely. Because, you know, I don't know,
looking back at it is such anobvious thing. But at the time,
I felt I knew what the methodwas because he had worked
before, not realizing adifferent context. You really
need to be a lot more agile anddo things differently. It's a
really interesting lesson tolearn.

And just that part. So that was the other thing is a
lot of the time you can besuccessful at larger
organizations by sort ofrepeating and really getting
efficient at the things thathave been built to make the
company successful. In thatenvironment, it doesn't really
breed folks that sort of land ontheir feet and assess where am

(21:48):
I, you know, what do I need toget done and then put a plan
together. And so what you justdescribed is, you know, sort of
a really important and one ofthe things that I think makes
EIR as effective is by havingsort of a foot in each or in
multiple cultures, you can sortof be the bridge, be the
translator. Right?
And and Terrance and I lovetalking about the the role of

(22:10):
the EIR as a translator. Hemakes fun of me. I make fun of
him. It's you know, everythingworks out. But but I think that
translating function, you know,understanding kind of what
unique perspective perspectiveyou you have and being able to
make your resident organizationmore effective because of it is
like one of the maybe the topthing that that EIRs can

(22:31):
deliver.
So I love that you're sort ofleaning into that in your
discussion a little bit.

A 100%. And and and also you learn that velocity
and speed is your friend againstthe bigger people. But when you
when you get a shot, you have toget it right the first time.
When people give you a shot andand add that value, and Mia just
took her shot. Right?
They don't teach you to takeshots like that in big
companies. They don't teach youto send a cold email out at
night. They don't teach you,like, you can cold email the CEO

(22:57):
of a company. But when you're anentrepreneur, you need to feed
yourself. Like, that's that'sthe only shot you have.
So why not? You know? Andsomebody might just answer,
right, and and give you a shot.And and,

you know, a

lot

of times people don't answer and I think

That's right.

You know, at the same time, we need to build this
resiliency that it's okay.

That's right. That's okay.

You only need one.

That's it. You only need one person to respond.
Right? And so talking about EIRrole as a translator, let's talk
about you transitioning intoyour your first EIR role. Right?
Say taking the experience thatyou had learned along the way in
management consulting with theagency, you you did PwC, right,

(23:40):
and you led special projects andalliances there. And now there's
this little weird sort of rolethat sort of just popped up in
the world called theentrepreneur in residence at a
financial services company thatwe know as Citi and you made
that transition. Talk to usabout how you heard about the
role. Right? Did you know whatthe heck an EIR was at the time,

(24:04):
you know, and walk us throughwhat you did there at Citi.

So how did I hear about it? So in reality, the
role I had in PwC, not the firstrole, but the second role was
really an EIR role without thattitle. And because it was that
type of a role, I had a massivenetwork of investors,
entrepreneurs, people inincubators, accelerators. I was

(24:29):
very well connected within TheUK. And I was very active in the
scene, whether it was to connectpeople, run events, be in
conferences, I was very much afixture for a period of time in
London.
And as a result, I had thisreally nice network. Within this
particular role, I ended upcreating quite a lot of really

(24:51):
nice commissions, interestingprojects, really interesting new
paths to move forward forcertain startups I managed to
bring into PwC. And one of thepeople within my networks is a
really dear, dear friend of minenow, Uri, he had collaborated
with me on and off as part ofthis particular role that I had.

(25:12):
And then at some point he wasworking to set up City Ventures.
City Ventures didn't have thisprogram.
So they had an investment partthat was based in San Francisco
and they were in the process ofsetting up a venture building
side. And there were stilldiscussions happening. He was
working on the design. And thenat some point he reached out to
me to say, Hey, this is kind ofsimilar to a lot of the work

(25:35):
that you're already doing. Doyou want to have a conversation?
And that's sort of how ithappened. When I joined, I think
they had a really small team. Ithink I might have been maybe
the second or third hire intothe, I was a third AIR to join
that team. And it was a hugely,hugely exciting time because we

(25:55):
were just starting to thinkabout what does this structure
needs to be thinking, okay, howdo we And we thought about it in
two different ways. One, how dowe try to change the culture?
Because if you think about it,Citi is a beast. You know, like
a very traditional, really wellstructured, very hierarchical
business hugely. And then on theother side, we want to say,

(26:19):
okay, let's change the culture alittle bit so they will be
amiable to us. But on the otherside, how do we identify these
entrepreneurs, bring them in,figure out what the project
should be, support them throughthat process? So we had these
two sided role and really,really interesting.
It was really amazing to see howquickly you can capture people's

(26:43):
hearts and minds. We had, sorry,I'm just bringing so many good
memories. It was a reallyinteresting role. We had a lot
of different people who werejust hungry, hungry for a little
bit of interest, for innovation,for something, either just doing
whatever the day job was.Amazing, amazing talented people
apply to create these teams.

(27:05):
And I sat in the London officelooking at institutional
banking, but we had another sidein New York, which was
specifically for FinTech. Infact, some of the folks from the
FinTech team ended up joiningone day as well. Brian Mies is
actually one of my colleaguesfrom Citi Ventures. So that's
kind of how I ended up gettinginto it, but it wasn't a huge

(27:25):
shift because I was doingsimilar things in PIRBC. So I
was a sponsor for the very firstaccelerator that we ran in that
company.
I was involved with a lot ofthese relationship buildings, a
lot of commissioning fordifferent projects. So it wasn't
super far, it was just a lotmore structured and suddenly you
had your own space to experimentand do interesting thing. And

(27:47):
also, I think the difference wasthat in Citi, they do have labs
around the world where they havereally strong technical talent
and each lab will specialize ina specific thing. And we were
lucky enough to work with theselabs. So in a way you have the
business talent, you have thetechnical talent, you have the
resources, you can make thingshappen.

(28:08):
Citi, at least at thatparticular moment in time, super
keen to experiment and figurethings out. And it was just a
really wonderful place to be.

Let me ask you a question about this. So it
sounds like at Citi, you wereone of the first three in The
UK, right? Did they already haveEIRs in The US already?

So the project was, I'm not 100% sure if they
started at the same time, butthe actual project was being
effective birth by one personfrom New York, one from London
and URI. So it was still verynew everywhere.

Okay. My early exposure to City Of Finchers was
D10x, right?

That's right, that's the program.

Oh, okay. All right. So D10x, I knew about
D10x and people had told meabout it, but I think it had
legs at this point, right?Wasn't I think this was around
nineteen, twenty twenty when Iheard about it. Yeah,

so we probably started in, I want to say 2016.

Okay, Okay. Yeah. That that makes a ton of sense.
And so that sounds like anincredible ride. And and one,
you had multiple other EIRs thatyou can bounce things off of
when they got into theenvironment.
You were also what we used tocall looking for the rebels. I
used to work at a firm calledMott forty nine, right, as an
operating partner. And we usedto help people recruit these

(29:30):
EIRs in their corporateenvironments. And they used to
say, well, we don't have anyentrepreneurial people in our
company. And we used to alwaysbe like, are you sure?
Know, find

They're always there.

They're hungry. They just don't want to raise
the alarms because you're payingthem very well and they have
security. But the moment yougive them something else new to
do to sort of create anotherpath for the company, you might
find that you have a lot ofentrepreneurial people in your
company. So we used to ask them,who are the rebels in the
company? Who are the people whoare always going against people
at the all hands?
Who are the people who alwayshave new ideas? Who are the

(30:04):
people who, you know, give usthose people, they should be in
the venture building function ofthe company.

That's right. And do you know, like it's such an
amazing way to also keep talentbecause a lot of these people,
okay, they are well paid, theyhave security, but at some point
they're going to get tempted. Sothis is such a nice way to keep
talent, to keep them engaged,really get those amazing ideas
out of them. They already knowthe business, understand the
customers already connected.It's such a wonderful way to

(30:32):
leverage this group of peoplethat you're right.
Sometimes they seem like therebels.

The rebels inside the companies. And honestly,
think it's a great way forpeople to get entrepreneurial
experience on training wheels iswhat I like to call it, you
know, because now you don't leadthe corporation and you know
something called customerdiscovery, right? You know you
need to actually fall in lovewith the problems and marry the
problems and not the ideas andthe solutions that you have,

(30:57):
right?

Terrance in Citi, in Citi Ventures, you have no
idea how much customer discoverywe did.

Oh, that's good.

The really amazing luck that we have is that, of
course, part of the businessforce, at least on the
institutional banking, everyclient will have an account
manager and the account managerknows them pretty well. So it
was pretty easy to ask theaccount manager, please, we're
looking for this type. And thensuddenly your calendar is full
of meetings. And it's just suchan incredible power to have to

(31:28):
be able to have those meetingsback to back, go through it,
really check assumptions superquickly and come up with those
really, really deep problemsthat you know your client really
desperately needs, and you canbuild something really quickly
off the back of it. We did a lotof that work and had never like
customer discovery has neverbeen that smooth, I feel.

That's right. It's interesting because you go from,
you know, sort of this bigfinancial services institution
as an EIR to solving problemsfor the world. All right, so
let's talk about the transitionto you becoming an EIR again but
this time at an organizationcalled Zynq, I think I'm
pronouncing it appropriately.

That's right.

Zynq VC in London and I know them to you know do
venture building but coupledwith social problems that exist
in the world that are big andmeaty that people need to solve.
So talk to us about what isZynq? What was the role like
there? And what did you do as anEIR in that residence?

So I feel this is a rite of passage. All
entrepreneurs at some point theywill decide they need to do
something for impact. And Ithink this was my period after
City Ventures, felt, theyoffered me a permanent role
there. And as I wascontemplating, should I say or
not, I kind of felt maybe it'stime for something new. And then

(32:49):
I kind of jumped into somethingimpact driven.
So Zynq at the time, actuallyhave always been about impact,
only that every year they have aslightly different theme. And in
that particular year, theirtheme was how might we help
people who've been left behindin ex industrial cities? And I

(33:13):
was born in one of these cities,I was quite familiar with it, so
it really resonated with me. AndI kind of felt, Hey, I actually
would love to be part of thisand see how we might solve
something that's real. And Ihave always have believed that
not always, but for a lot ofsocial problems, there could be
commercial solutions for it.

(33:34):
It doesn't have to be justcommercials. There are ways that
we can actually bring these twoworlds together. It just needs a
little bit of creativity andthinking how you can align
interests. So Zynq was hugelyseductive for me. I kind of
thought, yes, I really wouldlove to learn more about cities,
how things are structured, howwe might help people.

(33:55):
And under this theme, they had alot of different dimensions. It
was actually very broad becauseyou could take this theme under
health, you can think aboutmental health, you can think
about the actual cityinfrastructure and transport and
so on. And the idea was that youwill spend some time, you'll
collaborate with a few fellows,come up with interesting ideas,

(34:17):
test them really quickly. And ifit works great, if not, you will
switch to something else. So Iended up, did a few jumps there,
eventually really focused on howcan we help young men who are
not going to university havemore opportunities for jobs or

(34:37):
their careers.
And it was an interesting thingbecause I feel I went with so
much enthusiasm to start. Andthen we did a huge amount of
customer discovery, a lot of,you know, ideal style being in
the environment and in thecontext, we spent a lot of time
in these types of cities, weconnected with a lot of people
across these communities. Andthen I feel, I came out of it

(35:00):
feeling that this was a problemthat really needed government
support, because when I lookedat the long term plan for this
particular city that we hadreally gone deep, there were a
set of strategic plans thatactually would have made things
worse and worse and worse. I'mlike, you can't really fight it.
So I eventually ended up justhelping other teams here and

(35:22):
there doing the same kind ofwork I was doing at Citi and
eventually kind of wrapped upthat chapter, probably not as,
do you know, not as the way thatI really wanted to, I felt a
little bit disillusioned towardsthe end of it.
I had this grieving period whereI felt like, Oh, but why didn't
it work? I don't know, it wasjust a little bit hard for me to

(35:43):
get over it. And then eventuallyI went back and incidentally
ended up going back to kind ofhelp on a similar theme in a
different country. And that madeit a little bit better because I
jumped from there to doing aproject in Saudi Arabia for a
while and then ended up withCity of Abu Dhabi, again, within
the same theme of how can wehelp specific cities. Yeah, so

(36:05):
it went a bit full circle.

Just to jump in real quick, from like a very
different context, I think itdoes help. Two things. One is
the impact thing and sort ofwhat drives people. I think part
of the reason that, you know,everybody gets hit by the impact
bug or, you know, sort of otherthings is they're sort of
intentional and thinking abouthow can I use my skills and my

(36:29):
capabilities to affect theworld? Right?
And sometimes that's not purelymonetarily. And so I've seen a
lot of folks get reallyinterested problems, ideas,
whatever, and dive into it. Butsort of this balance between
sort of pre commercial, earlycommercial, commercial scale, a

(36:50):
lot of folks haven't reallyspent any time outside of pure
commercial world. And Iaccidentally did just because of
sort of the academic basicresearch, some of that stuff,
and got to think a lot about howdo those functions kind of work
together, right? What is basicresearch?

(37:12):
How does it ultimately getcommercialized? Why don't
professors want to commercializetheir technology? Turns out that
a lot of them are at least arein university because they want
academic freedom and they'reinterested by some really
esoteric idea that they don'tcare if it's got a commercial
outlet. But I think there's alot of value in sort of
understanding. You mentionedaligning incentives.

(37:33):
And I think in a lot of theseconversations, it's ultimately a
question of economics, right?Looking at how do you create
kind of stakeholder ecosystemsand make them metastable over
some period of time, right? AndI think that's like that is not
an obvious thing on how thatfits into sort of your day to

(37:54):
day. But it was cool to kind ofhear you working through that
and actually came up in our lastdiscussion also on how do you
kind of make stable communities.So I just wanted to kind of
highlight that and love the factthat you were kind of digging
into that a little bit earlier.

Do you know, you said something really nice that
you want to align all of thesepeople or these stakeholders
over a period of time. And Ithink what is quite a big
difference for impact drivenprojects versus the simple
commercial ones is that itreally does need a lot of time
and a lot of patience. Do youknow? Because there is just so

(38:30):
much that's not in your control,but if you stick at it,
eventually it will cometogether. If I look back now
that it's been quite a few yearssince saying, so I have the
power of hindsight now.
When I look back, there were acouple of other ARs who ended up
doing some interesting projectsand at the time they were pretty

(38:51):
small, they didn't really seemthey will go anywhere. Do know,
they were just interestingthings to do rather than
something real, but over timewith a lot of grit, a lot of
patients just not giving up,they have managed to shape and
form and figure things out. Andnow they have both have really,
really incredible businesses whoare doing really interesting

(39:12):
stuff. And one in particular isactually pretty commercial as
well. They've raised quite a lotof money.
They're doing a really nice job,but it really required quite a
substantial amount of time andpatience, you know? And I think
I lacked it a bit.

Just to double click on that, this is sort of
the concept of the ten orfifteen year overnight success.

Right?

It's the what happened in hindsight and as
reported by the media orwhoever's kind of covering how
did it go down is never how itactually, you know, and a lot of
these, you know, startups evenor movements or whatever start
with, you know, an idea, thensome seed of, hey, this idea

(39:57):
seems to be working, but thereal realization is five years
away. And then like seven yearsafter that, they're like, oh,
this thing exploded overnight.Right? But like, I love both
successes and failures actuallytalking to the folks that were
in the trenches from day onebecause the story you get
directly and what could havegone wrong, how high were the

(40:20):
highs, how low were the lows islike completely different than
the TechCrunch article or thearticle in the whatever, right?

You know, this is why whenever I speak to
entrepreneurs, especially peoplewho are first time founders, a
lot of times they have theseaspirations that I want to be
like this person. I'm like,please don't compare yourself.
Whatever story you have heard isa PR managed story. It doesn't
happen like this. There's justso much hard work, so many
heartbreaks and you know, likeopportunities and luck that goes

(40:48):
into it.
But people don't realize it. Doyou read the article? It sounds
so easy.

I love this idea of talking about luck. And I
like to talk to people aboutthis is that you can work hard,
but you need a little bit ofluck at some point. And
sometimes I like to tell peopleI like to create my own luck,
right? So, you know, goodentrepreneurs are good at
creating their own luck. Theymight not know when it's going
to happen for them but they keeptugging at the thing in hopes
that eventually something willfall, right?

(41:16):
You know, that will that will begame changing for for you and
hopefully your family and othersto get you to the outcome. And
it's it's interesting, I wannago back just a little bit when
you said how you you landed yourfirst role, why you did the
thing at Zynq, right, The thefirst thing I want to sort of
underscore for our audience isthat usually, and I haven't seen
one person on the on the podcastyet, usually, your EIR role is

(41:39):
created for you or it finds you.You don't find it. Okay? That is
a theme with every single personthat we interview.
Usually it's just not like EIRrole just floating out there for
just anybody to just get.Usually somebody in your network
through relationships usuallywill find you to say, Hey,
there's this kind of weird thingthat we're working on that we

(42:03):
don't really know what it'sgoing to be but you're kind of
sort of the right person to doit, right? Yeah. And that's
basically how Mia's first EIRrole found her, right, at Citi.
And it just led to otherinteresting things

And later

I'll pause there. Any reactions to that?

You know, and you will see that every organization
will define the IR differentlybecause it's basically whatever
it is that they need, whateveris the magic that you bring, we
will make it work. This is areally, really interesting role.
I don't think it's everybody'scup of tea because there is so
much ambiguity and there are somany random skills you need to

(42:45):
concentrate in one person tobuild relationship, to
understand technicality, tounderstand how to build a
business. It's just a lot ofdifferent things together. But
for those who are, do you knowwho makes them tick, it's
actually really a wonderful roleto have.

Absolutely, completely agree. I think Ilya
is going to jump in withsomething. I can always tell
when Ilya's gonna jump inbecause we do this so much
together. So jump in, Ilya.

No. Absolute absolutely. The the funny thing
is this this is actually one ofthe reasons that, you know,
Terrance and I started thepodcast in the first place is
every EIR we talked to is like,I'm probably not like everybody
else, but right? And they'realmost, not almost, to the
person, say some version of thatstatement. But what we found out

(43:29):
is that by adding a couplemodifiers and helping to think
about what the residence is,they do actually start to look a
lot more similar than you wouldexpect.
So we normally say, hey, are youmore horizontal or are you more
vertical? So do you work more onthe capacity of the organization
to be entrepreneurial or connectintentionally with outside

(43:50):
world? Or do you work on kind ofspinning in or spinning out a
venture? Right? So horizontalvertical.
And then what's your residence,right? Are you enterprise? Are
you academic? Are you public?And as soon as you add those two
modifiers, it turns out thatfolks are actually a lot more
like each other than they wouldever expect.

(44:13):
I and think what's funny iswe're finding more and more sort
of examples of where somebodyhas experienced whatever
problem, executive misalignment,no investment, not being able to
transfer sort of innovationactivities into the commercial
pipelines of the company,challenging established revenue

(44:34):
streams and cannibalizing yourown business and everything that
happens around that. And like, Ican keep going, but it's really
interesting to sort of a littlebit of structure all of a sudden
creates a lot of sort ofpathways and avenues where folks
can start to relate and shareexperiences. So I definitely
hear what you're saying, but Ithink in a lot of the

(44:55):
conversations we've had, is alot of like, a lot of these sort
of really interesting gems andinsights that folks have that it
would be amazing if we couldsort of spread broadly to folks.
Hopefully conversations likethis can enable us to continue
to do that.

That's great. I really liked the way that you
categorized because suddenlykind of made sense. You can look
at the horizontal vertical.Really super interesting.

I don't want to beat this one to death, but
we're going to because thenAmiya became an EIR again. Okay.
But this time her residence wasdifferent. So the residents that
you get a chance to play thisrole of EIR in will wildly
dictate what you actually do andwhat you're working on. Okay, my

(45:41):
role as an EIR in the universitywas to mentor students.
For example, my role at Mockforty nine was to actually build
ventures that we were going tospin outside that were going to
be net new companies, with theirown separate cap tables, right?
And some of them were going tobe spin ins and be a brand new
business unit to a corporation.My role as an EIR at SAP, wildly

(46:02):
different from the one at Mottforty nine, wildly different
from the one at one day, wildlydifferent from the one at
university, right? So the samething is true from you going
from Citi to Zinc and so nowfinding this very mysterious
company that was growing at arapid rate in London, right? As
a school almost forentrepreneurs, but you can also

(46:23):
graduate with your MBA along theway.
Talk to us about you making thetransition to becoming an EIR at
One Day and what you're doingnow that's different from when
you started there.

I joined One Day before it was called One Day. So
One Day originally was calleddorm. It was supposed to be a
dorm room, people join, theywill get mentorship. So pretty
straightforward, no MBA. And atthe time, I had decided that I
said, I'm retiring.
I had moved to Spain, to alittle village, and after six

(46:55):
months of not doing anything, mypartner was, for the love of
God, you can't just stickaround, you got to find a job.
And I kind of thought, okay, I'mgoing go back to London, I'm
going try and find maybesomething in a startup role,
maybe a COO type role. Andaround the same time, somebody
reached out to me, or maybe Iapplied for dorm, they were
looking for somebody who willtake on two or three founders,
so nothing more. And I kind ofthought, well, mentoring, that's

(47:18):
not so hard. I already had abunch of clients and I kind of
thought, okay, two, three, thatsounds great.
I had a really quick interviewand immediately I had like a few
founder conversations and Iabsolutely fell in love with it.
It was just such a bizarre thingbecause I kind of thought it

(47:39):
would be a nice little thing tokeep me connected to the world
whilst I'm fighting my actualgig. And in parallel, I was
actually interviewing foranother startup, this was the
thing that I was going toactually do. And what I found
about OneNate that was verydifferent, it was basically
mentoring first time founders,but not the type of first time
founders I had worked withbefore. So before I had worked

(48:00):
with, you know, the typicalfounder, they've kind of have
some experience or are superbright, or do you know they come
from a technical background, thefounders with the original one
day, they were people who justwanted to build a business all
the way from, hey, I want to doa retail business to, I want to
do food, I want to do tech, likeall across the boundaries, but

(48:22):
also hugely diverse.
Doesn't matter how you definediversity, whether you're
talking about race, gender,race, like it doesn't matter,
like that's what it was. And Iwas just, do you know, almost
going again from kind of wantingto try impact to going back to
commercial world, then I cameback, I'm like, hold on
accidentally, this is actuallyreally nice. I feel like it

(48:43):
actually matters what I'm doing.And, you know, it made me feel
I'm sharing things that arealmost secret, like nobody knows
these. Like my clients or myfounders were just so far from
the startup universe that itfelt suddenly was super
valuable.
And it was just such a wonderfulfeeling to see them and see how
quickly they transitioned. And Ireally loved it so much. So I

(49:08):
ended up getting more and moreinvolved and because I had come
back from a venture buildingbackground and I had a lot of
structure over the years, Ibrought a lot of that structure
into one day. So back in theday, Terence, we had the group
meetings that our classes nowback in those days were spot
classes, like the first versionof those were structured by me.
You know, like I just ended upbringing a lot of these things,

(49:30):
the risk is assumptions that youcome across that was, and I
think I brought into a company.
So different concept came in andI just ended up collaborating so
much that as we ended up doingthis pivot to the MBA, I was
very involved with thecurriculum and with the
training, I ran the very, veryfirst beta test of the MBA, just
to go through end to end to seeif it actually works with some

(49:52):
test subjects. And this is kindof how I ended up getting more
and more involved. Eventually,took over the role of the head
of the faculty to look after allof the AIRs, all the way from
recruiting, training, makingsure everybody's happy,
everybody knows what they'resupposed to be doing, we're

(50:13):
delivering what we're supposedto be delivering, because now we
have this two sided thing thatwe're trying to solve. One is,
let's make sure we build a goodbusiness, also let's make sure
you're getting your MBA. Sobringing these two sides, like
the real commercial side, butalso the academic sides together
and helping our mentors andfounders so hit this particular

(50:33):
nostalgic metric.
So this is how it happened. Ithappened very organically in a
way.

It's an incredible story because, you know, I
actually heard about one day ina bar in London actually,
through one of the mentors who Ihad helped coach and train
during their mock forty ninedays as an EIR. And they were
talking about, well Terrance, ifyou wasn't doing this, what
would you be doing? I was like,well, you can't get this from my

(51:01):
LinkedIn profile, but at somepoint in my life, I actually
want to be a universitypresident, right, of of a
university. And people werelike, woah, I never saw that
one, you know, but I can seethat actually. I can actually
see you doing something inacademia.
Right? So but from the from thestandpoint of entrepreneurship,
said, but, know, haven't foundthe right thing in the
university that will make metick. The only thing that I

(51:21):
would go and do at a universityis probably lead up the
entrepreneurship center. Thatthat that's probably the closest
thing that's gonna get me insideof a university full time. And,
I said, but if there is a waywhere my background in
entrepreneurship and venturebuilding could be combined with
academia, that would beincredible.
If a venture studio and auniversity could have a kid,

(51:42):
that's the thing that I wouldwanna go and do. And he said,
have you ever heard of thisgroup called One Day? And that
is basically how I heard aboutOne Day. And this gentleman
named was Phil, Phil White. Philexposed me and taught me about
One Day.
And I said, okay, you know, I'mgoing to follow these guys for a

(52:02):
little while and see if there'ssomething there. And, over time,
I just started to to just becomea believer after having
conversations with, with Phil.And he was just like, I'm
telling you, you're gonna getsuch a high from from doing this
work. And he's right, and a yearand a half later I'm still
getting a high from from helpingpeople out who, like you said,
are so far away, so far removedfrom the world that in the

(52:25):
language that I speak everysingle day. You know, I speak
startups and term sheets andlike this stuff every single day
and they don't have a clue whathalf of those things are.
To be able to see the lightbulbs come on for some of them,
know, I think it makes it allworth it for me and why I
decided to be an EIR one day.But I gotta tell you, it's the
environment where I've seen somany incredible entrepreneurs

(52:47):
who've done incredible things intheir careers. I have no clue
what secret sauce you guys haveon us or spell you have on us to
recruiting guests, but you guysare really good at recruiting
some incredible people intohelping the founders at One Day.
So talk to us a little bit aboutthat, you know, are there
certain types of people that youguys target to become EIRs to
help support the founders at OneDay?

I think we have really been trying to focus on
people who have AIR or venturebuilding experience, but more
than that entrepreneurs. One Dayis a really funny organization
that doesn't matter who you comeacross across the business.
Doesn't really matter all theway from the top to bottom,
doesn't matter. Every singleperson has been an entrepreneur
at some point. So everybody inthe company really understands

(53:31):
how tough it is to build acompany, what it requires to
build a company, and everybodygenuinely wants to help, because
we have all gone through it,we've made our millions of
mistakes.
We want to make sure that thenext person doesn't. And so
there is this really nice energyinternally where people are
genuinely excited whenever thereis anything that could push

(53:53):
founders forward and buildinteresting ventures. And I
think some of that transmits. Onthe other side, Terrance, I
think when you joined us, we hadthis really amazing lady. I
think you worked with Rhonda.

Yeah, I correct? I did. I did.

So we had this really incredible lady who
actually did a lot of therecruitment before I took over
the recruitment. So the secretsauce is really hers because she
did a really incredible job ofjust picking amazing, not just
amazing entrepreneurs, butreally people who fit the
culture, who were really drivenby the right things. They really

(54:27):
wanted to help. They reallywanted to push these founders
forward. So she did anincredible job.
And I think I inherited a lot ofgood things she has set up and
off the back of that, we reallyhave tapped into our network. So
you're absolutely right. A lotof people in our 120, 130 group
of mentors would have heard fromsomebody else. Do you know? So

(54:48):
it's a lot of word-of-mouth, alot of connections, a lot of
people.
I think, Terence, I think youhave recommended four or five
people in at least.

At least for It even might more.

So they're all very nicely connected. And of course,
we try our very best to lookafter the mentors. Doesn't mean
it's it's all false. Like it'sstill a company that's building
and there are things that arenot as smooth as they should be,
but at least everybody isworking really hard. And
relatively speaking, there are alot of really nice changes that

(55:22):
happened very quickly.
And I feel if people knew howtiny the core team was, they
will not believe how much we'redelivering. It's actually a
really tiny team. But yeah, it'sa really interesting place to
be. And after all of it, all ofwhat I said, I think it's the
founders that keep the mentorscoming back. Do you know that

(55:43):
just the fact that they arereally so diverse or just so
wonderful, there are just somany bright people of different
backgrounds, differentaspirations, different
inspirations it's really greatto have the opportunity to work
with so many people.

I'm going to make a comment and then I'm going to
pass it over to Ilya because Ido want to underscore the
diversity that I see across oneday and from every aspect. I And
tell people this when I'm takingadmissions calls with people who
are thinking about one day,which is, you know, what tell me
the one thing that's uniqueabout this this group called one
day that I won't find anywhereelse. And I said, I'll tell you

(56:22):
something that's pretty uniquebecause I've been a part of most
of the programs that you'reprobably looking at in the
marketplace and or I've advisedto coach them or invested in
companies that went throughtheir programs. And I said, for
the most part, there's not toomany places where you can go get
experience building your companyright and learn from the people
who've already done it and theyall don't look the same and

(56:46):
don't have the same trajectoryand background and what I mean
by that is that you can be inthe classroom with somebody who
never touched a college campusor uni in their entire life, you
know, or you can be on a callwith somebody who's a medical
doctor right now in their dailylives looking to build a
business, or you can they can bea actual practicing lawyer who

(57:06):
has retired already and they'relooking to build a company for
the first time but they've neverdone it before.
I said the spectrum of people,the high school, like the
spectrum of people that you willbe in a cohort with, everybody
will get a chance to be humbledand learn from somebody, you
know, because you are literallyin people who have had eight
degrees of some people who haveno degrees yet, right? But we'll

(57:28):
get their first one and we'lllearn, right, this process of
being an entrepreneur while alsolearning how to be a good
student, while also learning howto build great relationships,
while also learning how to testthings in the wild, right? And I
just don't think you're going toget that breadth of experience
in one cohort anywhere else onthe planet. And I have three
degrees myself and I still don'thave that breadth of experience.

(57:50):
So I don't know many placeswhere you can do that where
people actually care, right?
They're here for you and not forthem. They've already done
pretty well for themselvesactually. They don't actually
need to be here. You know,they're actually here because
they get a high from helpingpeople like you build the next
great thing in the world, right?So that's something I want to
underscore about about thediversity and I know Ilya is

(58:11):
going to take us to the lookingforward, you know, for the rest
of the podcast.

Well, and and actually maybe just make a quick
observation. I can't speak toone day directly, but I will say
that one of the things thatwe've observed generally in kind
of the EIR network and then, youknow, more generally, I've
observed in my professional lifeis that having connectivity to
diverse networks is sort of ainteresting superpower. Right.

(58:37):
And even to Terrance's pointabout sitting down and talking
to a colleague mentor andlearning about, you know, one of
the more interesting ways to bea business or innovation hipster
is to have a powerful network,right? Because you always hear
about what's coming up in threeyears.
And then if you've made thatjump from, you know, research to

(58:58):
technology to sort of otherorbits of knowledge, you start
to develop the ability to bethat hipster in multiple orbits.
And so it sounds like in some ofthe things you guys are talking
through at one day, there's alittle bit of that flywheel
effect of bringing interestingdiverse people with kind of

(59:23):
robust networks, I guess, is theway that I would describe it,
and then all the magic thathappens there. And by the way,
since all of them wereentrepreneurs, I bet you they
also have that instinct that youshared earlier in the
conversation about who's thesmartest or who's the best.
Let's go talk to them. Right?
And those those two things arecombined are, you know,
unstoppable. I'll pause for asecond because I'm sure you got

(59:45):
some thoughts there and then wecan go forward.

So you're absolutely right. There is
something really quite powerfulabout having these diverse
networks. I think we are in oneday, we're at the beginning of
that journey. So we have a very,very interesting group of
founders. We absolutely have awonderful group of mentors,
which is equally as diverse withreally different backgrounds.

(01:00:08):
I don't think we have leveragedit properly yet. We're still in
the experimental period to seeactually how can we tap into it
that will naturally theseconnections will happen. We're
in that process. Think I havereally high hopes because I
think we haven't even tappedinto like more than 5% of the
power of the network. Do youknow?
So we have a better way to go,but I think at least the

(01:00:31):
foundation is there. We justneed to kind of figure out what
to do next. Because I think thisis my hypothesis, not the
company's. We all know that youcannot build a business just on
your own. Like it's just notgoing to happen.
Even if somebody wants to be asole entrepreneur, you really
need to have a few people aroundyou. And a lot of our founders
are of course, single founders,they're coming through the

(01:00:54):
program because they're gettingthe MBA, it's a very, almost
solo journey. But I really wouldlove to see if there is a way
that we can connect themtogether because I think that's
when the real magic could happenwhen you have these
complimentary skill setstogether. And if there is
nothing stopping them cometogether to build a business
together and at the same time dotheir MBA. I think that's kind

(01:01:16):
of my secret wish that we enablethis a little bit more so we can
have co founders and really bestronger together, but we'll
see, we'll see.
Tried when I had my ownfounders, I had roughly about 30
founders and I constantly triedto do matchmaking to different
degrees of success. But yeah, Ithink there is a really nice

(01:01:39):
potential here. I would love toexplore it over maybe the next
year.

Ilya Tabakh (01:01:43):
What's interesting there, this sort of touches on
another thing that I found isthat when you're young or
earlier in your professionalcareer, or at least this was the
case for me, folks don't reallyappreciate to how long term of a
game this is. Right? And andthere's some interesting folks
that talk about, you know, sortof what's the value or what's

(01:02:05):
the opportunity if you can sortof think of a lot of these
things as a long term game andwhere is the multiple, you know,
kind of the maximum leveragethat you can put forth. And I
think, you know, especiallyearly in my entrepreneurial
career, I didn't reallyappreciate sort of the long arc
of how long I was going behaving these conversations for.
And we were actually chattingwith another lady that I had

(01:02:30):
worked on on biofuel maybe amonth and a half ago, something
like that.
And we started thinking aboutit. I'm like, man, last time we
were talking about this wasfifteen years ago. Right? And
she's still in biofuel. I'm nolonger directly in biofuel, but
it's just like the networks areso dense and connected.
And getting folks to fullyappreciate who are your peers

(01:02:54):
that are really kind ofpassionate about the same set of
problems and are likely to behacking away in ten or fifteen
or twenty years and thenbuilding stuff together. Maybe
not in the same company, right?But ultimately, you're going to
end up at the same things withthe same networks and things
like that. And I think folksreally underappreciate sort of

(01:03:15):
the value and power of that overeven the medium term time
horizon, let alone twenty orforty years.

Mia Bennett (01:03:22):
Yeah, because also a lot of these relationships
last. So I give you an example.Back in the day, when I started
my company, we had an earlyclient. Eventually this early
client became a co founder onanother business we built
together that's still goingafter like twelve, fifteen
years. We ended up having anexit from that business, but
this is from a client we'restill in touch with them.

(01:03:45):
I had my very first employeewhen I was at the agency,
eventually built a bunch ofdifferent products. We built a
few businesses together. This islike fast forward fifteen years,
he's a founder of a reallyinteresting Microsoft. I'm now
working with him again. Do know?
So a lot of these relationshipscontinue and I've known him for

(01:04:06):
like, I don't know, fifteen,twenty years. We've worked with
each other for quite some time.There are a lot of these
overlaps. In fact, the story Itold you earlier about those two
artists that I wanted tocollaborate with, I ended up
working with them and then theiragent ended up becoming my co
founder for another businessthat we built to get to know. So

(01:04:26):
a lot of these relationshipsform and, you know, especially a
lot of times when it comes tofinding a co founder, people
think, okay, that's it, I'mgoing to start searching my co
founder.
Whereas actually these thingshappen organically over time, as
you get to know them, as youbuild a relationship, you build
a trust, you really understandtogether how can you fit, what
is a complimentary set, and thenit will almost naturally happen.

(01:04:49):
But it needs a lot of thatupfront investment into
relationships and doing worktogether without actually
expecting anything back. Buteventually that return will
come.

Terrance Orr (01:04:59):
And was going to say it's interesting because
it's almost like this blindtrust that becomes this unspoken
connection over time, right?With different people. You don't
really talk about you guysgetting closer. You just keep
working with each other becauseyou enjoy it. And it sort of
just becomes this unspokenconnection sort of, over time.
But it starts off as blindtrust. You don't know them from
a can of paint. We're gonna dothis thing together and then

(01:05:20):
eventually you just continue towork through it and the blind
trust sort of becomes this, youknow, unspoken connection over
time.

There there's a really good passage, actually.
There's a a book called TheAlmanac of Naval Ravankant, that
a buddy of mine wrote. And, oneof the chapters, opening
chapters talks about how to getrich. And the funniest and sort
of unexpected part was focus onlong term relationships with
high leverage. Right?
And it kind of talks throughthere's a pretty good tweet

(01:05:48):
storm that Naval did a while agothat sort of tried to bottle a
lot of this. But as we'retalking through it, I'm like,
man, we're sort of rehashingsome of that conversation. So
I'll put a link in the notes.Well, as is our tradition, we're
little bit over, but I think thediscussion was really good. As

(01:06:09):
Terrance and I joke, can Andactually, there's no joke.
We can definitely keep going. Wedo like to sort of ask We're
building a bit of a network ofEIRs and have some pretty
interesting alums of the show atthis point. What's helpful to
you and kind of what you'reworking on from that network? Is

(01:06:30):
there something that we as anetwork can kind of do to
support you?

I will say the obvious one that we are looking
for amazing, amazingentrepreneurs, people who have
this ability to mentor reallywell. So EIR is with this angle,
somebody who would have apassion for pushing our founders
forward to success. So ifanybody is willing and keen, I

(01:06:54):
would love to connect. Yeah,that would be super, super
helpful. That's really what Iwant to do.
I want to build a really amazingnetwork for our founders.

Where can they connect with you at? I mean,
what's the best way to get intouch

with you? Easiest, LinkedIn. So you can easily
search for me, Mia Bennett, findme and drop me a line.

Okay. And what's something, you know, not going
to let you go without asking youthis question, which is tell our
audience something before you gothat's not on your LinkedIn that
they would not know about you,that you enjoy doing or engaging
with.

So as part of the story of me deciding to retire
from London to a little fishingtown, I also became slightly
obsessed with renovating oldproperties. And Spain, as you
probably know, has a lot ofabandoned places. So
exclusively, I look forabandoned places that are at
least a 100 years old. And thenover time we renovate them. So

(01:07:50):
we ended up building a littlenice little portfolio of those.
That's kind of like the creativeoutlet for the weekends, which
is really quite nice. And, know,there are also a lot of really
interesting commercialopportunities in this space. I
don't want to spoil it too much,but again, if somebody was
interested, more than happy toshare more. Yeah, this is maybe
something a lot of people don'tknow.

That's super interesting. I did not know
that. So now we're going to talkmore about old historic
buildings that I know aboutpotentially. So that is very
interesting. And lastly, Mia, doyou have a dream EIR role that
if you can wave Imagine one anddo it today, what would that be?

You know, if you had asked me a few years ago, I
would have said a company who'sdoing deep tech, like I would
love to work with scientists,you know, with really super
smart people. I find it soincredibly stimulating. But now
that you're asking me today, Ifeel in a way I do have that

(01:08:52):
dream job. I think one day is areally, really interesting role
and has a lot of space to stillfigure a lot of things out is
actually pretty challenging.It's really, really hard.
And whilst it's really hard, doyou know he has the opportunity
for me to kind of learn andfigure things out? So it's super
interesting right now. So let'ssee, but after this chapter is

(01:09:13):
closed, maybe deep tech.

All right. Well, we have a very interesting guest
that you have to meet. You twowill be in the same EIR network
and he'll, you know, I'm talkingabout, but I won't say the
person's name until your episodeand their episode come out. So
thank you so much, Mia. We're sograteful for your time today.
And thank you for all theinsight. We really appreciate My

absolute pleasure. Thank you for having me on. It
was really great talking withyou and going back to past
memories. So thank you. Thankyou for the opportunity.

Of course. Great discussion. Thanks for your
time.

My absolute pleasure.

The thing that caught me about this episode was
how many and how many times Isort of had to pause and be
like, man, I want to talk moreabout that and diving in. I
actually appreciate you stoppingthe flow of conversation a
couple of times and just sayingthat, hey, I think Ilya wants to

(01:10:08):
jump in. It was just, it wasawesome. And I guess not
surprising, right? There's a lotof, the more conversation we
have like this, the more Inoticed that there are certain
personality quirks and habitsand things like that, that I
have that aren't unique, right?
That are maybe not common,right? But definitely not one of

(01:10:32):
a kind. And sort of Mia'spropensity to be like, you know,
I got to reach out to these twoartists because I think this
collaboration is going to beawesome and just say, I'm doing
it, right? It's something I doall the time. I'm like, who's
the smartest and the thing thatI'm working on, I'm going to go
talk to them, right?
And so I do it all the time. Andthen this whole idea of like
network and alignment andincentives and sort of piecing

(01:10:55):
together tactical and strategicand things like that. I'm like,
man, there's just a lot ofcommon background there. And so
it's cool being able to turnover and go through some of
these really interesting storiesand stories like Mia's because I
think it really helps folksthink about which parts do I

(01:11:18):
have, which parts don't I have,and maybe who can I learn from,
who's a little bit ahead in thegame in the direction that I
want to go? And I think that'sreally what I enjoyed about this
episode.
There's just so many moredirections we could have gone
that we had to sort of in theinterest of keeping it at only
over fifteen minutes instead ofover an hour. And it was great.

(01:11:41):
So that was mine, you know,there's there's a few other
reflections, but I think that'sthe main ones. What what's what
kind of stuck out to you?

Yeah. I'm gonna try not to be long winded on
this one because I have so many,and and I'm gonna call this the
onion episode because there's somany layers to it that we can
peel back to really we cancreate a part one, two and three
from this because there's somany layers. She got into, deep
tech, relationships, impact. Imean, many different layers to

(01:12:09):
the conversation, the diversityof her recruiting the
entrepreneurs and residents inthe current environment that
she's in right now. But whatreally, really, really is
sticking out to me about Mia isher ability to build, create and
nurture relationships overtwenty five plus years, right?
And still doing it, right? Andthis is a theme that that we're

(01:12:32):
starting to see, right, in someof the entrepreneurs in
residence is that relationshipsmatter. Relationships are key
and not just for the moment.They're they're relationships
that people have literallypoured their heart soul into and
developed over, like, decades.Right?
You know, so I I need for peopleto understand that the

(01:12:55):
importance of relationships isnot just about you being a great
entrepreneur. It's not about youjust having a great product. You
also have to be a decent human,right, and and to maintain
relationships with people. Soher underscoring the the the the
relationships was a sort of acritical theme that I saw. But
also, you know, impact.
You know, at some point, we alldo well for ourselves, but we

(01:13:17):
are thinking about how do we getback to that next generation of
entrepreneurs, the nextgeneration of people. How do we,
you know, give back to societyas as a whole? Because the more
we give that back, you know, themore good can be created in the
world, the more better companiesare created, the more people are
disciplined enough to do thethings that we know is already
hard to do, right, in buildinganything new. And, you know,

(01:13:38):
she's done that in multiplelayers of her career and that
was also a theme, you know,whether that's with One Day,
whether that's with Zinc VC orother things that she talked
about or the work she did in AbuDhabi, right, and helping
helping out there. So manylayers to this this episode, for
for Mia but it remains exposure,access, impact.

(01:14:01):
That's the thing that we sawunderscored here in the episode
with Mia and I can't wait forour audience to listen to it.
Thanks for joining us on EIRLive. We hope today's episode
offered you valuable insightsinto the entrepreneurial
journey. Remember to subscribeso you don't miss out on future
episodes and check out thedescription for more details. Do
you have questions orsuggestions?

(01:14:22):
Please reach out to us. Connectwith us on social media. We
really value your input. Catchus next time for more inspiring
stories and strategies, Keeppushing boundaries and making
your mark on the world. I'mTerrance Orr with my co-host,
Ilya Tabakh, signing off.
Let's keep building.

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Episode 12 - From Entrepreneur to EIR Enabler with Mia Bennett

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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 12 - From Entrepreneur to EIR Enabler with Mia Bennett