S6 Ep. 268 Roger Hunt Innovation Ethics, Reframing the Investor

Today’s guest, Roger Hunt, founder of Idea Trek, Inno Ethics, Hoover Dao is interesting because he kicks off the episode strong with his five words that describe him: Open, Trusting, Cantankerous, Intense, and Governed. That last word Governed, stands out.

We discussed how none of us want to be defined by how a person sees us at that one moment in time. Roger is an author and also shares about his new book that will drop at the end of September.

The book is titled, Innovation Ethics, Reframing the Investor Thesis by Roger Hunt and he shares insight as to Destruction Theory and how founders seem to fall under collateral damage.

My words, not his. Please leave us a comment as we always appreciate when you share what you liked about the episode and reach out to our guests. 

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Episode Transcript

(00:13):
Hi, my name
is Isabella Johnstonand I am the Intern Whisperer.
Our show is brought to youby Employers for Change.
And today's tip of the week is our It'sall about our continuing series
that is focused on unconscious bias.
So as you might know, every bodyhas some type of an unconscious bias.

(00:34):
And it's importantthat we all acknowledge that.
And there are things that we can doto make sure that we're
more aware of our wordsand the impact it has on others around us.
So we also want to acknowledgebuilt in as the provider of these tips.
Thank you so much.
And today's tip is focused on height.
And I am a short person,so this is significant for me.

(00:57):
And if you're a very tall person,you will also identify with this.
So height bias is the tendency to judge
a personwho is significantly short or tall.
I am five two.
This may seem a little bit far fetched,but one study found that one's annual
earnings can increase up to 13%,

(01:20):
with an additional centimeter in height.
Another study found thattall candidates are perceived
as more competent, employable, healthy
and it explains why about 58% of male CEOsat companies are over six feet tall.
So how do we avoid unconscious biasabout height?

(01:42):
Well, we can conduct anonymous interviews,phone interviews
or video interviewsto reduce the susceptibility
to judge a person's abilityto do their work based on their height.
And we also want to make surethat we're knowing that
this bias is a common social behavior,

(02:03):
and it will help you identifyyour own bias against candidates.
So we want to welcome you to The Internwhisperer.
Our show is all about the future of work.
And today's guest is Roger Hunt,the founder of Idea Trek.
He's founder of several other companies.
He is an experienced software developer,leader, author, speaker and investor.

(02:25):
And I want to thank you, Roger,for appearing on The Intern Whisperer.
Hi. So
this is the intern Whisperer,and today's guest is Roger Hunt.
I've met this gentleman.
I don't know, it's like about I say, maybefive months ago and it was through.
Prepare for D.C..
Always a good group to hang out with.

(02:45):
And the things that
Roger's really well-known for, he'sgoing to be sharing that on the show.
So welcome to the show, Roger.
Hey, thank you so much.
The this is fantastic.
I'm very excited about this interview,
too. So one of the things in caseyou haven't
had a chance to listen toour show is we always kick off the show

(03:08):
with five wordsthat you would say, Describe
who you arewhen somebody is first meeting you.
So what do you think those five words are?
I know that we talked about a little bitoff line before we got started.
And you had said open.
But I don't know if that's the wordthat you want to open with.
I was using it because it's like open web.

(03:30):
No, I like I said, I like open.
Open is I meant it in the sense of
anybody,
as I don't want to downplaythe fact that we interacted so quickly.
But I, I didn't anybody's
welcome to walk through my proverbialdoor and say hello and

(03:56):
I'll go I'llgive you I'll give you the time of day.
Oh, no.
And much more.
I, I don't do back.
I don't know what your backgroundresearch on your project
and decide if you're going to do it and I
so what you're saying is that

(04:17):
how you meet peoplewhen they just drop into your life,
that's like you're just evaluatingat that moment?
It's very organic, you know?
And I love that you knew you went that waywith it because it actually clarifies.
What I think I meant by this iswhen I meet somebody, it's about finding,

(04:38):
finding what I can do with them ratherthan determining if I should do anything.
Yeah, that's a good way of putting that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's back to the old waysof how we would meet people at events or.
Right.
You know, it'sjust like people in the street
you have conversations is not relatedto everything that had to be social.

(04:58):
You. Yeah, that's right.
I think that's right. It's trying to.
I neverreally pictured it in terms of going.
Going back to the old ways.
But I think that's that's what elbowyou know the old ways where
we're so much open in that sense it waswho do you know.
Yeah.
And how can we band together and

(05:20):
and and defend our territory.
Yeah, exactly.
So I want to
maybe it may be a new version of openness
in that in that context,I would say that would be true.
Something else you said is trusting.
Trusting?
Yeah, I think that fallsout of the openness when I will.

(05:44):
And this is just something that I,I tend to practice is
I don't know if I practice itintentionally, but it's just
I get really excitedwhenever I meet somebody new.
And I always want to like,Oh, this is gonna be great.
And then coming up with some projectfor us to do.
And I'll always give,

(06:04):
you know, the kind of absolutebenefit of the doubt to it.
So but okay, great. I'm going to do this.You're going to do that.
You're going to do that.
I'm going to give you this.
You're going togive me that. And then I will
all kind of go all in with
what I said I'mgoing to do kind of absolutely expecting
that that'll be reciprocatedwith them doing what

(06:25):
they said they're going to do
rather than so.
So I don't sign a lot of NDAs.
Gotcha. Gotcha.
Yeah. You're like, here's all the secrets.
What do you want to do with it?
You know, it's it's
an India is only as good as you have
the money to back it up right.

(06:47):
So, you know, then it becomes, well,this is a gentleman's agreement, right.
Or just a person's agreement,a business person's agreement.
Right.
If you're going to stay genderneutral there.
Well, and, you know,
I think it's a
there's so much going the other way.

(07:09):
And with so much information out there,you can almost
you can almost spend your whole dayjust trying to figure out before
you even met someone whether you should bedoing some work with them or not.
And the likelihood of that working out.
This is actually a theme that willprobably come up a bunch of times.
The likelihood of anythingworking out is just so low
that that it almost becomes like,you know,

(07:33):
I go off and tell people when it comesto like building apps or something,
it's like, look, you could make the mostbeautiful application in the world
and it'll stillit still has a 0.01 chance of success.
That was you'd also makethe ugliest app in the world.
It took you 5 minutes and you know,it could become the biggest thing.
So there's almost, you know,what's the point of doing

(07:55):
all that background research to nudge upmaybe a percentage point or two
in the likelihood of itsucceeding when you could just
try it, just try something with somebody.
So so I think that's a good wayin the open.
It's interesting concepts. Yeah.
Yeah.
I like the way that you'reexplaining that because

(08:18):
again, old ways of doing things,
it's always about being able to say,okay, let's sit down
and think about howwe could do something together.
And that'swhere that ideation comes from, right?
And then you have to go try it.
Not everybody always wants to do it.
Some people like to be super,super planned out, which,
you know, that's a good thingto, you know, result in.

(08:41):
Make sure you don't have a lot of errorfree space for planning
Once you kind of come upwith what you're going to do.
You certainly want to be
you don't want to go build a bridgeand just kind of wing it.
Yeah, but the idea to build a bridge,right, like, Oh,
hey, we're going to build a bridgeover this, right?
You can sit there and do
a hundred different models and test them,you know, just the question of,

(09:03):
are you going to build a bridgeor are we just going to forge the river?
You know, that one just jump into oneand then
and then after that, okay,Now we've committed to doing this one.
Let's figure outhow to how to get it done.
And that's where youthat's where you need to you need to plan.
Right.
And I think actually the tryingto figure it all out

(09:24):
before you got startedcomes down to just, you know,
the fear.
I don't I don't know that it's
so wise or intentional.
I think it's just a way to allay fearor in a more structural sense to

(09:44):
to satisfy an insurance policy.
That's funny.
Maybe it could be.
So your your third word was cantankerous.
Okay, Now that is a complete one.
80. In my mind.
We go from openand trusting to cantankerous.

(10:07):
Why did we go into that direction?
Yeah.
If we were to ever get into a disagreement
over some issue, I would
I would argue my point to the
I would argue my position to the point of
silliness.

(10:29):
Okay.
I see.
And and cantankerous.
We hold the grudge
until the cows come home. So.
So you said if I were to describe you,I don't think you said
five positive words.
So that that would be whatever.
But, you know, I like your honesty.

(10:49):
I think that that's a good thing.
I think that many times peoplealways paint this picture of themselves
and it doesn't include the honestywith every single person.
There's wonderful things, but then there'salso things that are like,
do I have to deal with that?
But that's in each one of us.
What's the and I hope not.
Well, I don't want

(11:10):
maybe some of your guestssaid this before, but the person due to
that answer says honestly immediatelydistrusting of them
and very honest like, Oh, okay,
sure.
Then you have to analyze it then.
Now I'm going to get cantankerous.
I You've never told a lie.
Never once.

(11:31):
Then are you going to call yourselfhonest?
Oh, my gosh.What's it say about the rest of you?
You go in circles.
In circles and so intense.
Why did you pick in terms
similar to the cantankerous vain?
These are somewhat related.
Not thinking about it, but theythey draw in different aspects of it. Is,

(11:51):
you know, you know, when you have
a cup of tea,like you just have a cup of coffee
and then you sit down to write somethingor do some project.
And like you got about 30 minutesof like really good focus on it.
You're like in the zone,
you know?
I mean, I sort of I chase that in a sense.

(12:12):
And when I really get into things,
you know,it's like I just had a pot of coffee
that just shows mewe were added to it and that'll last,
you know, were last,you know, was last the last
as long as the
my, my sort of approach toit is reciprocated

(12:34):
by the people that I work with.
So, you know, like I'll just
I think when
the first projectthat I had sort of brought with us doing
was that the weeks training thingAnd when I first got,
you know, when I was first doing it,I was like immediately making a website,
really organizingthe entire structure of it all
and how it was going to be,where everybody's going to fit into it.

(12:57):
And luckilyI've gotten a lot of reciprocation
from folks who've,you know, either brought students in or,
you know,
they're doing other kind of businessand I've just been kind of like homed
among all the other things that I'm doing,like just really intensely
whenever I get into working on that
and any of the other projectsthat are going, I just kind of

(13:17):
and then we end up in a meeting about itand people are like, Whoa, buddy, are
chill out.
And I'mlike, No, what are you talking about?
Let's get something.
Well, you know what?
What's really funny is your last word.
It seems to bring balanceto both all four of these words.
And it shows, you know, thethe really what people would say

(13:39):
are the positive sidesand then the sides that are challenges.
Right.
But I think all of them,
when you put it togetheras your fifth word, which was governed,
I think that somebody that's governedis weighing both sides of the equation.
So you when we were just briefly talking,so we really just
briefly, you had mentioned your dad,your family man,

(14:03):
and, you know, you've got all this stuffthat you've got to do.
And I was trying to think of the right wayto put that.
It isn't like,oh, I'm a dad and I'm so happy to,
you know, like the sort of standard,
oh, I love my family and all that stuff.
There's a sort of other shade that

(14:23):
I think, Oh, I can't go outand do whatever I want to the brain
because you have other peoplethat you're responsible
for and to write precisely.
And so what's the right wordto sort of explore that?
And it comes up on the business side, too.
You know, I'm not just the

(14:44):
you know, when youI think when you start companies
and you have investors,you start to realize you're sort of
always looking for the way, okay,when can I get out from under these people
and can I be free?
But, you know,even when you do, you still are.
And so I think
governed has the has both positiveand negative shades to it.

(15:05):
And I think that captures not only the
the family aspects of it, but also the waythat shows up in business.
So yeah, I know.
Have I always been governed?
Certainly some people would say no, but I

(15:27):
that I could present the case
that even in my less governed
time of my life, I was still somewhat
governed into, say,the thing about that handout.
See, I'mgoing to have like a whole session
after this where I start writing about,
yeah, that would be a really good nameof a book too.
But here's the thing.

(15:47):
When somebody is first meetinganybody, right,
they only it's kind of like the balancesheet of a company, right?
You only have a snapshot of itat that point in time.
So it's the same here.
This is just a snapshot of.
So you had said that some people would sayno, and I went, Will,
but they're only seeing you at that onemoment.
That's just a picture.

(16:08):
That doesn't mean that they've seenit had all of the experiences
they could have with you.
So that wouldn't be a fair assessment
of anybody to say one meeting says, Oh,they're like this, No, you don't know me
at. Yeah, I think that's right.

(16:29):
Yeah, you know what?
But this might come up later too.
But you know what?
How important is it?
What other people think generally? And
some some sort of important.
It's sort of not important.
Yeah,
Well, let's talk about your career story.
How did you get started?

(16:49):
And then let's talk about dea track.
Sure. Yeah, that would be wonderful.
Start, Start.
Which I did not realize until literallythen you didn't
originallyI so we, when we came up with the name
I wanted to be called Day and Quest,like chasing after Gods

(17:12):
or and
then somebody else wanted to do.
I did track for fun.
They kind of came out on that one.
It was better and they had a better logo.
So we went with that.
But no, I started
I was hoping to go
be an academic, but I wasn't.

(17:34):
So when you
when you go to graduate school,
you get really excited that you're going
to get to study all the stuffthat you didn't get to study.
MM And then sort of doesn't do that
and again, you know, so

(17:57):
I don't want to talk badabout people in academia.
There's lots of wonder people,wonderful people in academia, but it is
what I will sayis the career path is no different
than any other career path
that you can go workfor any large corporation out there,
or you can go work for

(18:18):
a university and there's no
there's no difference,structurally speaking.
And I think I had hoped that there was.
And so for whatever reason,maybe I also just wasn't good enough.
Probably I wasn't good enough. But
you have to find a
lot of rules, you know, in academia.

(18:38):
You really do.
And I don't think that that's
you don't want to be boundthat way is what I would say.
I know that they'll give you,as I've been an academic teacher
for in higher ed for sure.
And they always gave me a syllabus
and said, here,this is what you're and here's your books.
There's only been one school.
The school
I graduated from Rollins Collegethat said, you can make up your syllabus,

(19:01):
you can do whatever you want, you know,get picked the books and all of that.
And that's cool.
That's super cool.
Academic libertiesallow you to go outside of the box
and do what you want insideof there, but you still have
accountability.
And so if you

(19:22):
want to keep your job, it's well,you got to publish, right?
And you got to do a lot of research.
So I don't know if that'swhat you're talking about. I'm not sure.
I'm I'm
along the lines of publishing,
along the lines of serving on committeesalong the line
that you're teaching this syllabus,although I was coming up in philosophy

(19:44):
and there's actuallyfrom the syllabus perspective,
you get a lot of freedomwith what you want, right?
So I went, I don't know.
I've talked about so much content,but I'm talking.
So what they dangle, right, is tenure
and once you get tenure,you can do whatever you want.
So then everybody's like,I'm going to go off at ten,
and then you sort of start to realize,you know, only

(20:07):
2% of peopleactually ever end up making it there.
It's very similar to start up with just
about everybody daybecause you're going to be Zuckerberg,
you know, you're going to be
I want to be Elon Musk.
And, you know, it might have been true

(20:27):
further backwhere like if you went into it, you know,
there was sort of more of a pathor if you were a specific
type of person instead of that of groups,
it was it was probably,
you know, sort of more straightforward.
But I didn't want to dwell on thistoo much.
But in any event, it didn't work.

(20:49):
I didn't stick with it.
It wasn't a problem at all.
It wasn't it wasn't a fit.
It wasn't totally what I but Iyeah, willing to, for whatever reason,
it didn't work outexcept for what you will.
And I can guaranteeif any of my professors for the time
hear this, they're going to be like,I'll tell you why I didn't work out.

(21:13):
Right.
So at the end of it.
So when and so I sort of leftthat track and I
trained as a therapistfor quite a while for years,
and I had always had this and I'll quicklytransition out of this one.

(21:33):
I had always had this as I was studying.
I was like, you know,this was around 2010 to 2013.
So Founder mania was goingon, Everybody was starting companies.
All you kind of read about Facebook wasexploding, Tinder was coming out,
you know, the sort of the founderlandscape
was becoming much more public.

(21:56):
And so I was sitting there like,I really want to
work with founders,so I want to have founders on the couch
and I want to dopsycho analysis for fathers.
I think
they'dbe a really interesting group to study
and while I was doing that,
I somehow or other met

(22:18):
this group of like sales people
and got really interested in all of them
and actually took on a little affiliate
gig doing some sales with them.
And actuallyI should go back a little bit.
When I was in college,I did a program over the summer

(22:39):
where you went door to door, knocked onalmost like the Mormons, actually.
There were a lot of Mormonswho were in this program.
You know,they should do a really great program.
And actually, I think everybodyshould not necessarily what I did, but
the concept of going out into the worldand having to go sell something.

(23:00):
But actually,
no, I did two thingswhen I was my freshman summer.
I went door to doorknocking on doors in Mobile, Alabama,
and trying to sell booksto these families.
And I didn't do particularly well.
I lost steam a couple of weeks to do it,but it was exciting
and there was actually a lot of
Mormons in there, and they were all very,very, very good at it.

(23:22):
They had all been trained on their their,you know, mission
and how to do thisand precisely how to knock on doors.
And so that was alwaysa really interesting experience.
I hadn't actually think about it again,this is so we're
piecing a lot of this together.

(23:42):
Right before graduate school started,I had a gig
where I was alsoknocking on doors and like
generating leads for routes
and it was likethis little marketing company.
We also used to have a go outwith a backpack and stuff and like
walk up and down the street, try to justsell stuff out of the backpack to people.

(24:02):
I wonder if I repressed all this becauseit was actually really intense and crazy.
Yeah,
so you can sort ofso I guess, you know, throughout all of,
you know, wanting to do academiaor therapy there was interlaced in
this is just calling to saleis just trying to pull me in
like go out and try to talk to people

(24:24):
and make stuff happen.
And so
this is funny.
While I was doing the academic work,
I would go to conferences all the timeand everybody did.
Why are you going to so many conferences?
Because it's so much fun.
Like you write a paper and you go outand you talk about your paper
and you know, it's a lot of fun.
And I wonder if that always did kind of

(24:44):
and actuallywhen you get to the you're doing out,
you're doing a pitch and you are answeringquestions about your pitch, Yeah,
you go and give papers at conferences.
So maybe I just like the thrill of it.
I don't know
how you're really talking somethingthat's more aligned with public speaking.
When you get to do research pitch,startup pitch,

(25:06):
just talking to customers, it sounds likeyou really enjoy being around people.
I was, you know, called to.
It is probably I wouldn't say enjoyed itin the sense of of the phones
play golfor it's like it was were a little deeper.
I think it's more of a thinkingbeing called to doing it
if we want to put it in those terms.

(25:28):
And why not so sandwich.
So I'm like, oh yeah, let's let's,let's do therapy with, with founders.
And then I end up in this kindof affiliate sales role.
While I was doing that,I got recruited into a recruiting company.
So we would it was full desk recruitingand called companies up.
And so they gave me open positions.

(25:50):
They said, Yeah, they a softwaredeveloper, Oh, I'll go find you work
and give me 30% of their first yearsalary is a fee.
You know, that was fun.
I made some I made some money doing that,and then I got recruited out of there.
I kept getting recruited at a place.
I got recruited out of there to
to a tech

(26:13):
marketing technology startupthat was doing like e-mail marketing.
And this was, again, 2014, 2015 when
it wasn't just open up
MailChimp and do it, you know,it was a little more
you actually had to sell the companies.
It was, you know what it was?
It was all retargetingads and remarketing bills.

(26:35):
So it was, you know, putting,
putting
those pixels on people's web crawlers
and getting into their cookie sheetsand then using those to,
you know, retargeting remarketing them,which nowadays,
you know, is just ubiquitous.
I mean, you say, Hey, I was thinking aboutgoing to Tahiti and you open up
Instagram, there's like Southwhere Tahiti is listening to you.

(26:57):
So, you know,this is sort of before all of that
when it was a little, you know,put your email in when you do whatever.
Anyway, so I did that and then, okay,so now this is where I actually get into
what I was doing,what I'm doing now is while I was there,
a friend and I started a little startup
and we went out and raised some moneyand the rest is kind of history.

(27:21):
So that was my there's my journey.
So what is Idea Trek?
Let's talk about that now.
So I did to Idea
was originally a holding company
where my friend and I placed our

(27:42):
it was kind of like we treated italmost like a trust it was holding.
We owned the company that we had startedand because we were part
owners of the LLC, we were thenpart owners of the equity in that company.
And then and the plan was that, you know,as we were building that company out,
we were thinking to go to acquire equityin a whole lot of other start ups.

(28:04):
And we wanted to have this niceportfolio of companies and just working.
And this kind of goes backworking with founders.
Right?
And you know,when you're an investor in a company
or you own some equity in a companyand you're not necessarily a
you don't
you have like you don't have KPIfor the company or anything like that,
you function in many ways like a therapistkind of. Woods So I sort of

(28:29):
I like to say like, you know,I wanted to be a therapist
to the founders,and then I started this little scrappy
company to own equity in other businessesso that I could be a
witch from a therapeutic perspective
was a terrible ideabecause you have all this leverage over.
So yeah, we're the founder

(28:50):
and it's really not a not a great set upfor a therapeutic relationship.
But, you know,
whenever
it kind of be
it becomes on the sessionand do some other stuff.
This is fun.
This is likeI'm on the couch right now, This is great.

(29:10):
So, so
it comes down.
So if you're going to have an investorsort of play that mentor that therapeutic,
that guidance, that advisory role,
it is it is lopsided because of the powerdynamic between you and the founders.

(29:35):
So it's really difficult thing to maintainand actually comes down to the
sort of moral character of the investorthat that ends up
determining the the, the qualityand structure of the relationship.
And so if you have, you know,
investors out there who are, you know,

(29:57):
having thought through some of this stuffor don't care to think
through some of this stuff,you can end up with a really,
really unfortunate ending.
And so so
where they so, you know,we we went through that process.
We were talking all these founders thatare bringing equity under the umbrella

(30:23):
and it's gone through ups and downs
crazy then and now it's peoplecoming going projects coming in going.
It's, you know, it'sjust kind of the way that that whole thing
evolved.
And I'm still doing it today. So
it sounds like you like it, though,but doing it

(30:46):
long enough and committed to itand not going anywhere.
I, I can't think of a better place,better place to be.
I'm very happy personnot to make other people upset.
It not being happy people,but yeah, I get to own this one.
So I'm happy for you.

(31:07):
That's good.
That's got you. Isabel. You're wonderful.
But everything's mad at mefor being happy.
Well, it sounds like what you're doing is.
Well, we'll put it
as more of a being a responsible partner.
Because you had previously saidthat, you know,
obviously, Venturecould be your deciding the fate of

(31:31):
of a company.
And it cannot always be the waythat maybe the founder wanted it go.
But it sounds like you'rebeing more thoughtful about that approach
for good and bad reasons.
Maybe that goes back to ourour five words, our words
and maybe the intensity of it right.

(31:54):
Or even the cantankerous this
because, you know, I can't take this.
I'm not satisfiedwith how I feel that way.
And I wonderwhat the dictionary definition of that is.
Use cantankerousjust because I like the sound of it.
I think a very strong word. Right?
It's a very strong, powerful word.

(32:15):
And I think itI think it can be, you know, not satisfied
with argument tive, uncooperative.
Yeah of course you get.
But I think the argumentative Ms.
in the inquiry comes from and bad temperedand is that's what it gives to me.
It gives you bad tempered,argumentative uncooperative comes from
a not being satisfied with something.

(32:36):
And so you know when you don'thave what you want, you look all right. So
if you don't have what you want,
all sorts of things come out of yourreactions to not getting what you want.
You know how you react
if you're not getting what you wantis is pretty important.
So I can take it.
And so when it comes to

(33:00):
where
I lost my train of thought, now help mehelp me get back on track here.
So what we were talking aboutis finding the balance of,
you know, how being a venture person is.
That's also a little bit more governed.
And my takewas that you're helping those individuals
that you've been fundingto have a more responsible approach to it.

(33:21):
You're being more of a
let me take your company away, but rather,let's see how we can grow this company
is a very nice way to put it.
Well, and I would put I put
I guess I put the burden on
the burden on the investorfor that end of it.
And I think generally speaking

(33:44):
and this goes into some of the book stuffand and a lot
of the other things that I talk about are
the investor playsa much more important role
than I think is currently recognized and
in the world.

(34:04):
I think a lot of times we see investors as
passive, laid back and they are
or they are not laid back, but they are.
Their role is to
maybe
here's the here's that here I am goingto go against the concept of balance.
Their role is to balance of portfolioor their role is to structure

(34:26):
a portfolio or their role is to
distribute risk across the portfolio
in a way that protects the fund
and that puts them in the position of
a kind of a manager.
And a manager almost by definition,

(34:47):
lacks responsibility that their job
is to simply manage thingsand keep things moving.
They are not ultimately responsiblefor what happens.
They're just of there
as a necessary function of the process.
And I think that's the rolethat they typically play.
And investors really want to play it.

(35:08):
They want to be out playing golfwhile somebody else,
you know, because the booksand somebody else does all the work
and they're just there to collectsome of the winnings.
At the end of the day, if it works outthere, they're gamblers in a sense. And
I think that they want it to be likepassive income.
It's making them money while they'resleeping, doing all of their fun stuff.

(35:30):
And that concept generally irritates me.
Yeah, the deck concept,whenever anybody is,
oh, I've got a passive income opportunity,I'm like, Well, I don't want that.
Get out.
I don't want your passiveincome opportunity.
I want to godo something like make something happen.
And I think and so
moving on,just from the character of a book,

(35:51):
maybe there's a lot of gamblersin the investment world, and maybe there's
a lot of people who just want to step backand get passive income
and we can criticize them personallyfor that.
Those aspects of their characterand who they are
and the functionthat they're playing there.
But structurally, it's interior.
So when you have a group of peoplein that role,

(36:13):
acting in that way is, in my view,
and as
I would argue it do arguein this little book that we just did, that
that is kind of the reason
things aren'tthe way that they should be right now.
And I realize that is a big
statement,

(36:34):
a big odd statement to make,
but I place the so if any,
I think we should be upsetat where we are right now,
given what's happened the last 20 yearsand the opportunities that we had.
And so if we should if we should be upset,
if you agree that we should be upset aboutthat,
I'm not putting you on the spotto agree or disagree with that.

(36:56):
I'm just sayingthis is not the way I have it.
But if you agree with that, then we haveto find, okay, well, what went wrong?
And so I place the what went wrong on?
The investor community,not the founder community, not well,
the investors in the service providers
who actually are kind of investorsin a similar strain, but sort of that

(37:18):
what we might otherwisecall the expert class
is it's a failure on their end.
Of course,when you listen to the expert class
and the people who are in power,they're throwing blame everywhere except,
oh, it's market dynamics.
Oh, it's global economy.
Oh, it's how labor is changing.

(37:38):
Oh, how the workplace is changing.
Oh, you know, people aren't as educatedas they should be or workers have.
They're wrong everywherewith themselves. Right.
And I think and I think that that
is exactly lies with them.
And so
if you have responsibilityon that and well,
you know what it's goingto look like to adjust it.

(37:59):
And so that's what I am spending
a lot of time thinking about recently iswhat would it look like to adjust that?
How might we do it and then tryto convince other people that I'm right,
so so that we can actually enact my plans?
Yeah, I think that there's a lot of peoplethat would view that as
being more
engaged in the processof of supporting a company,

(38:22):
because if you're giving your money,let's go to a bank or parents,
they give us money and they say, okay,I want you to be responsible with it.
We should be able to go back to that
entity or person that invested in usand say, Hey, I'm having these problems.
You know, what do you think I should do?
Because if we're not afraid ofgoing to that person

(38:45):
and seeing them as more of a
a source of wisdom, maybe a partner,then they should be able
to offer some suggestionsto keep that company moving forward
instead of saying, Oh, well, you'renot the right person to run this company,
that that's not helpful.
Yeah, well, and

(39:06):
so I would I would even.
Okay, Harry, here's a little
I would I would phrase it more as
not so much going to them as an advisor
or for help with my specific company.
I don't think the solution is so much.
Oh, not necessarily that they should bemore,

(39:29):
more engaged on a day to day basis.
What I what I'm getting atand I realize I didn't
make it totally clear when I was saying
before, but
structurally they have to be more
they have to be on the hook more.
So one way that I like to put it is

(39:56):
the investor is very, very good at
avoiding risk,
which sounds weirdbecause they're taking all these risks
and they're making all these gambles,
but they're also hedgingevery single one of those
risks and gambles in startup world,it looks like,
Well, I'm going to invest in 100 companiesand I just need one of those companies

(40:17):
to succeed to make up for all the failurefail companies that they had.
Right.
So in
that way,their structuring of the portfolio
is designed for themto benefit one of the founders,
the benefit, and the other 99 to fail
and to go nowhere.

(40:38):
So what
what I,what I think needs to happen is the
these are the investors basically likegot rid of risk right there.
And this is something that you'll hearpeople talk about is like,
you know, we don't have any riskwe have risk in
individual investments, butwe don't have risk across the portfolio.
We're a safe investment, so to speak,

(41:03):
at the same time.
And so now and so then they saythen we is say, oh, well,
now we can innovate like crazy, right?
We can do all this amazing innovationbecause all the risk that used
to be inherent in trying to innovateand trying to move things forward is gone.
So nowwe're going to have a much better world

(41:23):
because it's we havewe solved the risk problem
and we canwhich means we can take on more risky
future projects, which is going to get usinto a better future.
Okay. That's that's the line
from the investor.
And I think that's just patently wrong.
And it's wrong because they have not

(41:46):
this is athis goes like the physics they have.
They have not eliminated riskfrom the system.
They've actually just moved the risksomewhere else.
Particularly they moved it onto
the founders of the companies that fail.
So so, you know, if you start a companyand you succeed
wonderfully, you get all the riches,But if you lose,

(42:09):
you don't really lose your companyyou lose all the money,
you lose your entire career because youquit it to go and start this company.
You lose probably a lot of friends,
even some family in the USas we're mad at you for losing,
you lose.
All right.
And so, you know, when it comes to

(42:31):
and and
you just take one step further,then what did we gain out of it?
Will the company that typically succeeds
is the one that had the simplest businessmodel
goes for the money as quickly as possible,gets all the money back,
and then everything elsedries up for the rest.
And one of those, what has that look like?
Well, advertising is the fastest wayto get money is affiliate referral

(42:56):
affiliate bonuses. Right.
And what's an advertisement? Hey,go buy this thing.
Maybe it took some moneyupfront payment to the advertisement,
or maybe I'm just getting moneyof the cut of each of them.
Think the quickest wayto get a dollar out of anything.
And so, you know, what are the companiesthat have succeeded?
Companies that
make an
affiliate fee off of garbagebeing distributed

(43:17):
through the same peoplewho offered two or $3,
the same peoplewho now have no place to work
because they gave up their careertrying to sort of start a business and
here's the hellscapethat I think we live in.
Oh, my goodness.
Well, we're going to take a momentjust to acknowledge
our sponsor, Transcend Network,and we will be right back.

(43:39):
And Network helps Early stagestartup Founders Find product market fit
through weekly experiments, receivefundraising support and build a global
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The Intern Whisperer is affiliatedwith Employers for Change,
and we think Transcend Networkfor being a sponsor of our show.

(44:02):
And so we're backto the second half of our show.
And it really isn't it?
It flies by Roger.It just always flies by.
And so weare going to be talking about your book.
What is it that you're workingon? Let's talk about that.
And how do you see it workinginto the future of 2030, if possible?
I don't know for us yet.
And so I actually

(44:23):
I kind of went through parts of itjust in an organic exploration,
but I can try to do itin a more structured way here.
So the book that is coming out is called
Innovation EthicsReframing the Investor thesis.
This everything, this is it.
Again, it's innovationframework, innovation, ethics, ethics.

(44:47):
Sorry. Yeah.
And then the subtitle is Reframingthe Investor thesis.
I love it.
And it's really everything.
Everything I was just talking about.
So we start off with, look
what wherewe thought we were going to be 20 years

(45:09):
ago is absolutely notwhere we have ended up.
And, you know, why was that?
What are we doing about it?
Is that working?
What else should we be?
If not,what should we be doing about it instead?
And what's the path forward? So

(45:32):
the sections of the book are set up
to make that casethat we aren't where we should be.
And I think
a lot of that is that like, look,
all of the companies
that are, you know, extremely popularand awesome right now

(45:52):
or that I'm sorry, that are not awesome,but our highly valuable right now
all got that way by essentiallybeing affiliate marketing companies.
Google is an affiliate marketing company.
You give them some moneyand they promote your thing.
And if you make money off of that,you keep giving the more ads.
Facebook,same structure, Snapchat same structure,
such as what is valuableanymore right now. But

(46:16):
everything now.
And there are some other things,you know, some good work going on in EBS,
but those are all getting crushed.
I mean, they were popped up for a whilethere, but they're all getting crushed now
and who knows reallywhat the future of that's going to be.
There is.
There's some interesting thingsgoing on in materials sciences.

(46:38):
I'm very, very I'm not anti medicine
or anti science or anti establishmentnecessarily in that sense,
but I think big pharma is just a
con game set
that is just sucking a lot of money out ofwhat could otherwise be really

(46:59):
put towardsdeveloping really great things.
And I guess I'm not anti medicine,but just the way that we invest
in medical technologyI think is just absolute nonsense
with, you know, I think
I think a lot of people do,unless they're from Kenmore Square.
And so I get there,
they're like, we're saving livesor saving lives and making some lives.

(47:22):
I know, But like, what's
what else could we be doingwith that money compared to what's
what it's all going into right now?
It's very expensive to figure outthese new treatments and all these trials
and make sure things are going to work.I'm like, I know, I understand.
But at the same time, like how much timewhere we are into people's lives here.
And there are some caseswhere, like you're
you are saving,

(47:43):
you know, somebody
might have died in their thirties,but now they get to live to 60.
Fantastic. We want that.
I'm going to
I'm going to walk myselfinto a really bad setup here.
So I have some cantankerous views on thatthat maybe not everybody should
should hope I'm not the best personto criticize Big Pharma out there.
But the concept that's out therethat I read that does I do I do find it

(48:07):
compelling at least to think aboutand I know I shouldn't be singled out
because there's I think the advertisingI think the
Shushannah Zuboff work on
Google and surveillance capitalism
is actually far more destructive than
than anythingthat's going on in Big Pharma.
I just think it's a crutch.

(48:28):
It might crash crack my job.
The bigger a companygets, the less personal it can become.
And I'm going to go with Google.
As a matter of fact,because I used to be able to call Google
or contact Googleif I had a problem with my
anything in my Gmail, right,or my drive or anything accounts.

(48:48):
And they went from having live support
to chat, live chat.
And now you can't even hardly get that.
I mean, it's really hard.
The same applies for Facebook for
a as well. No.
So outsource to other countries.
But YouTube, YouTube and Facebook,you can't contact a human.

(49:12):
There's no way to get a human.
I have tried so hardwhen I've had problems
and it's just the innovation of people
that when I talk with people,do you know how to fix this problem?
And, you know, it was likemaybe I went through a hundred people,
but I finally found somebody whereI couldn't get to a live person there.
I think it's the same with Google.
It's the same with, you know, justany of these companies as they continue.

(49:37):
I don't
know what happened to the monopolies,but I mean, they are just going to say,
even when you get to a human,it's like you're not really talking to it.
You don't know really Well, No, no.
Even so, you know, you have a human right,you got their name,
and then maybe they had a little chatwith them.
When you get into the troubleshooting,they're just reading off a list.

(49:57):
I mean, a computercould just as easily do it.
And then when you get to any pointin the conversation where they
they can't go beyondthat list, then it's over.
Yeah.
Because is going to be due information.
Yeah, right, right, right.
And so so even when you get a human,you don't really have a human.
You have somebody who's executinga specific set of instructions

(50:20):
and with a specific goal in mind,which is to get you off the phone
and make it difficult for you to cancel
your subscription.
So, I mean,
even then, that's not to demean anybody
that works in that part of the world,but they know it.
I've got a friend who does this.

(50:41):
I would say what company they work at, but
that's what that's what it is.
And they're just they're processingthese requests as quickly as possible.
And, you know,
I should say, you know,
we don't have the worldwe had expect 20 years ago

(51:03):
and then you might will likewhat kind of world did we expect to have?
And, you know, the
classic one, it's like, oh, we should haveplaying cards by now, or oh,
we should have you know,you should be living forever or, Oh,
who wants to?
Is that too?
I know that was probablythat was a can of worms.

(51:24):
I probably should.
You don't have time for that.
Let me give you that.
I do want to go back to your book, though.
I do want to go back.
Oh, yeah?
Yeah.When is this book going to be released?
Okay. It'sit should be coming out, like any day now.
So the final proof sent back.
It's signed offand on the on the publisher's website
to be publishedby Ethics International Press

(51:48):
and it's
it should be any daythat I at least get my copies
and I think I think it's preorderright now
on the website but that should doesn'tthat switch to flip any day
so so it starts with you know
just sort of outlining that and then

(52:10):
and then it so I sort of lay the blame on
so again okay.
So it was a we're not where we thoughtwe were going to be 20 years from now.
Okay.
Why is that?And I put a lot of the response
of the moral responsibilityon the investors back.
And so then the solutionsthat I ultimately come up with,

(52:33):
how should investors adjust?
And so I put the more responsibilityonto the investors and then
try to explain like
sort of like I was just doing.
They they've figured out risk distributionacross the portfolio and imagine
that they have eliminated this riskwhen in fact they just kind of pushed it

(52:55):
somewhere else.
And because it's been pushed somewhereelse,
it's creating all these other problems.
So what can investors
do to fix the problem?
And in order to figure that out,we have to go a little bit deeper.
The problem and so I spent a lot of timecriticizing disruption theory,

(53:17):
which if anybody ever heardof the Facebook,
you know, move fast and break stuff,that is a sort of mantra for
disruption theory, which is itwhich is actually quite old,
you know, early nineties,it gets really formulated by Christians.
And there's a wonderful

(53:43):
well even so so he he he
he talks about
I'll go back just a little
a little further so
innovation in its modern
concept is

(54:03):
everybody it's this idea of new thingslike you've created a new process,
you've created a new product,you created a new something.
And innovationis really important to markets
in an economybecause you need to be stimulating growth.
And how do you get growth where you createnew sorts of things that people can
then consume, which will then continueto perpetuate growth and then and create?

(54:27):
Okay, so we've got this conceptof innovations in economic concepts,
really that late twenties, early thirties.
Joseph Schumpeter.
So that goes through a process
for a while in the 1950sit kind of hits its pinnacle
and we get thisthe golden world, the golden era,
and where you know all this new stuffcoming out all the time.

(54:49):
We have innovation left and right.
Interestingly,we have the government highly
invested in a lot of these innovations.
They're putting up a lot of the moneyto make this stuff happen.
And the world is changingblink of an eye throughout this period.
So then we get to, you know, the seventies
and into the eighties, in the nineties,and everybody starts now.

(55:12):
Talk about
computers are getting really bigand what's the shocking thing
about a computer as well?
We don't need an army of calculatorsanymore.
We just need somebodyto push couple buttons, a computer.
We've got all the numbersthat we need out of.
It's way more efficient.
So and we can optimize things.
So 78, eighties and nineties,we get into this whole
we've got to optimize everything.

(55:33):
And if we optimize everything,then we can have more room
for more new stuffso that we can then continue to grow.
So disruption theory comes alongas a theory of innovation that talks about
how does optimizing an existing structurecreate a new market,
and then what can we dowith those new markets?

(55:54):
And without going to deep into it,this just takes over.
So now everybody's out theretrying to look for problems and issues
going on in operations and
product development and throughtrying to find ways to optimize
and make these things more efficient
so that you can hopefully
then create a new market, open

(56:17):
space for new markets,
takes off, goes like crazy.
And what happens?
All this money starts pouring into
technology stocks and innovation stocksat the end of the nineties,
you know, the whole thingblows up, a whole thing blows up
and there is this meeting.

(56:41):
I'm not going to boil it downto this one meeting,
but there is the story of this meetingin Google
when the, you know, the market crashes,what are we going to do?
Are we going to continuedoing our vision research
or are we going to adjustadjust to an advertising style model?
Because what's that going?
Because it's the quickest way to get moneyout of it.

(57:04):
Crashes over, Google,
explodes,everybody follows suit and goes into it.
So you have this efficiency
structure, this disruption theory.
If you were going inand making all these things
were optimized, optimizing efficient,which then creates this massive bubble
which bursts for any number of reasons,
and then you have this companyemerging out of it

(57:26):
with this advertising model,which now everybody follows suit.
The epidemic advertising is like thethe golden egg for optimization.
Great.
It's pureadvertising is pure optimization.
How can I take this dollarand turn it into more dollars
when you have to advertise your productand you have to get better and better
and better targeting your audiencesin order to turn that $1 into $4.

(57:51):
Okay.
No, no, no.
You're you're really, really interesting.
I'm assuming that a lot of thismight be found in your book,
which going to be aI think would be a bestseller,
because first off, you openedwith this whole destruction theory.
And I don't think that many peoplehonestly
may know that unless they've gonethrough courses in economics,

(58:14):
you know,
somewhere in there, you know, thatsounds like that's where it usually falls,
because I've gone through itthrough an MBA program
and I don't remember hearing this.
And so for me, it's fascinating.
I really like this informationthat you're sharing here
because it'snothing that we had thought about.
And when you had mentioned that,you know, Zuckerberg had had used

(58:35):
that as to, you know, work fastbreak things, that's true.
And that was like summing it upin super simple terms, like, you know, a
three year old could understand that,like go through the room, break stuff.
They're going to get it, you know? Right.
We get that.
But I had no idea about all of this.
And it's very, very fascinating.
And I think that your book will dovery well.

(58:56):
I hope so.
Well, I mean, I don't know how muchhow much it will actually do.
I'll tell you, it is it is targeted.
So I'll I'll I'll skip quicklyto the end of it.
So I just destroy disruptiontheory as as as
it is not not just on the basisof its results but its structure.
I think the concept of optimization.

(59:17):
So two things I'll just say quickly,innovation is not optimization.
And so when we get into that seventiesand eighties period where people
are trying to optimize downin order to create new markets,
they stopped innovating.
So innovation literally,
quite literally stopped at that pointand we started optimizing.
But what happened?
People started using the word innovationto refer

(59:39):
to optimization,and we're stuck with that right now.
Oh, you have to innovate.Oh, what does that mean?
We've got to be more efficient.
No, it does not.
That is not what that that is.
Innovation is different than optimizationand different than efficiency.
Those are the different concepts.
They have been merged.
It is almost been a
religion formed around that merging.

(01:00:02):
So I call itthe idolization of innovation.
If you are bowing to innovation,then you are not innovating
because the whole point of innovationis not about the old thing.
It's amazing having risk.
I applied to the National ScienceFoundation for just with a I didn't apply.

(01:00:23):
I actually submittedan executive summary for feedback.
And what they wrote is they said, Well,this isn't really innovation.
What you have done is you've preparedsomething that actually is,
you know, it's it's enhanced enhancing,it's optimizing what's already out there.
Those are the key words.
So I think that what you're you'realigning
with is exactly is it really innovation?

(01:00:45):
And people you're right, they throw thatword out there like it's supposed to be.
What's the buzzword?
And so now people use itwithout having a real clear
definition of what does that word mean?
All you need to do is say itand you are it, which is
which is what I mean by thatI mean that it couldn't be more

(01:01:06):
not todownplay any religious text or anything,
but it could not be morethe word of the word.
The word has to be.
At the beginning there was the word right.
So if I say it's innovation,then it is innovation.
So anyways, and I don't want to hung uptoo much on that the
where we get

(01:01:28):
after that.
So this isn't totally unrecognizedin the world
and and the
and the result of it againis that you have investors
who are optimizing
making their portfolios more efficientby distributing risk across it.
And then imaginethen the mistake is imagine
they've eliminated riskfrom the entire thing.

(01:01:49):
So you know, this
this this conflation isn't just affectingpeople who are creating new products.
It's also affectingthe people investing them.
And I actually think it's the peopleinvesting in them
that have more of the responsibilityto adjust what's actually going on.
And so
so now this isn't totally unrecognizedand there are a couple structures

(01:02:12):
out there and I go deep into theseinto the book as well
that have come up as replacementsfor realizing the problem.
What are we going to do about it?
And the three that I go through inthe book are effective altruism,
social innovation and impact investing.
Effectivealtruism is is pretty interesting.

(01:02:35):
I won't go totally into it now.
It is is it'ssimple on the simple on the face of it,
it is Figure outwhere your money is going to be.
Most do the most good
and send all your money there.
So this comes out of the sort of newutilitarian school.

(01:02:56):
You know, if you're walking by PeterSinger,
philosopher, utilitarian philosopher,it came up with this
little thought experimentthat gets thrown around all the time.
You're walking by a pool
and a baby's drowning in it,but you're wearing really nice shoes.
Should you walk into the pool and savethe baby and think, Of course you should.
But if you do, you'll ruin your shoes.

(01:03:18):
You're very expensive. Very nice shoes.
Of course,you should go in and save the baby.
Right.
So he's saying, why are you buying$10 martinis when you should be
giving your money to peoplestarving in other countries, the world?
Something along those lines.
And so the effective altruist says,okay, well, let's let's examine.
Right.
How expensive,how how much good are my shoes and

(01:03:40):
how much good is going to buy the shoesor should I give my money somewhere else?
The thought aroundthis whole thing is like, what precisely?
Money is being invested in the wrong waysand into the wrong things
for the wrong reasons.
So how can we do it better?
And what they actually do is they kind ofapply the same efficiency thinking.

(01:04:02):
This is my criticism of it.
They apply the same efficiencythinking of disruption, that disruption
theory of disruption theory, right.
So we're going to be moreif we are more efficient with our dollars,
then we're going to bedoing the right thing. Right?
If we're more efficient,
then we're going to create more marketsand get better growth.
So I criticize them on that angle.
And the result, I think that'swhat we've seen is very much the same

(01:04:24):
that we've got the disruption theory,grand idea,
you know, going to make it more efficient,therefore it's going to be better, but
it falls flat on its face.That's my assessment of it.
They're still going and they'll bethe folks will be very mad
that I said They'll say,you're wrong about all of this.
All right.
So that's my criticism ofis they're essentially
using the same logicthat got us into this mess.

(01:04:45):
And why would we expecta difficult fault there?
I'm going to throw question at you,though.
Oh, please. Yes, sorry. Yeah.
So what ethical dilemmas do you foresee
by 2030, let's say,you know, your books out.
You know, we know it'sgoing out like in a week here.
Do you do you addressethical dilemmas in the book also?

(01:05:08):
Well, I mean, for investing in money
and in this definition, where
we're all using our own personaldefinition
of what innovation is versuslike the real definition.
Yeah. So
there's this is a slightly broader topic,
but the concept, the ethical dilemma.

(01:05:30):
So like, should I use a technologyor should I use an LLC
for my to write my paperin course in class or should I not write,
should I go into the pool to save the babyor protect my shoes?
These sort ofdilemmas, set ups and ethics.
I actually kind of think structuring
as a set of decisions like that

(01:05:52):
gets us into a lot of problems.
It's the classic trolley problem.
Should I switch the track
and save, you know,
kill five people to save one person
or, you know, or these decisions.
So treating ethics in a decision matrixor decision theory or some sort of

(01:06:14):
like I have to make the rule correctthe good the right decision.
And I think that setting it up like that
is actually getting more of the
the structurethat's got us into the problem
of trying to figure out and Isort of mentioned this at the beginning,

(01:06:34):
what's the best decision?
Let's analyze the whole thingand figure out
which one is going to be bestand then do that.
Of course, you just don't know what'sgoing to be best at the end of the day.
So anything that you're doing in the leadup to figuring out what's best,
the only service it's really providingis it's making you feel more comfortable
about the decision that you're making.

(01:06:55):
So, so what are you really doing?
Are you figuring outwhat's best in the world,
or are you just satisfying your comfortor satisfying
your your insurance box
by Butbecause this stuff is all the time, right.
Okay.
You know, we ran all these testsand we did all these things and it failed.
But you can't sue me because I didall the due diligence, right?

(01:07:18):
I it's like, what a bonkers way to handleall this like that.
And that's the way that they thinkthat they do it. So,
so it in terms of these decision,I think this is the ethics
is a much more fundamental structure
and I think it is a more fundamentaland structural concept.
It has to do with relations among peoplein a group rather than a specific decision

(01:07:41):
that one would make one way, one wayor the other on any given topic.
So what is the moral dilemmaor the ethical dilemma that we're facing
is, well, how do we move away from sortof decisions of structure to a decision,
a decision theory of ethicsto a stronger structural
understanding of our moral responsibilityin any given dynamic.

(01:08:02):
And one of theand so when it comes to technology,
what's the dynamic that we're addressing?
I call it the innovation dynamic.
And thisis sort of the big part of the book is is
how how can weand actually might sort of theory.
My tagline,my suggestion is we need to read this.
We need to

(01:08:22):
fairly redistribute
risk across the innovation dynamic.
Okay, Right nowwe don't have a fair distribution
of risk across the innovation dynamicbecause of things I talked about before.
The investors have right.
They have eliminated risk fromtheir portfolio but not from the dynamic.

(01:08:42):
Where is the risk goneall into the founders?
And the dynamic I think is composed ofthree nodes getting into the weeds here.
But why not? Let's do it. Okay.
So the three facts investors, founders,we talked about those two.
The third one are the service providersor the people who kind of like
know how to build the stuff.
So I want to build an app.

(01:09:03):
I need to get money from an investor.
I to pay it to a developer, and then I getmy my app or my my product or whatever.
Well, you have an investorwho's eliminated risk from their books.
Then you have the service provider
and they've also eliminated riskfrom their books. Why?
Well, they got paid to build something.
They had the great, they did the workand they got the money.

(01:09:25):
There you go. Well, so they have no risk.
So now so now you've got the two expertfactions of the dynamic,
the investors and the service providerssaying, I'm not feeling any risk.
Let's innovatelike crazy. Right? Of course.
Where's all that riskgoing on to the founders, one of them
succeeds, 99% fail and they fail hardand they fail devastatingly.
And and so and

(01:09:48):
there you go. You have not done it right.
So so you have this really imbalanceof risk and power structures
going throughout.
And what always happens when we havean imbalance of power structures?
Well, you end up with exactly kindof the world that we have
right now.
And it's a kind of unregulated plutocracy.

(01:10:10):
And so where, you know, a couple of people
are going to be very happy,but most people are not
and they don't have all the fun thingswhere they get all the fun things. Now.
And so why does that come about?
Because you have an imbalance in the the
the ethics of the structure are brokenbecause you have an imbalance of risk.
So how do you re restructure that risk?

(01:10:34):
Well, that's the whole thing.
And and the way I think you do it
when you're about so when we evaluatean investment rate and then this is where
it comes to reframing the investor thesiswhen we evaluate an investment rate.
Now the main thing that we're looking atis how much money
is it going to return,What is the ROI on the on the thing?

(01:10:56):
Right? And of course, if
if you're going after ROI purely,
you should put all your moneyinto drug cartels
because you are not going to makeany more money than you will.
Investing in selling drugs.
That's the most money you'll ever make.
Of course, most people don't thinkthat we really should be doing it.
Yeah, probably.

(01:11:17):
Probably. You shouldn't be doing thatwith your money.
But if you are focused thatthat's where you should go.
So what we.
So. Okay, so then what is it?
Okay, so how should we be thinkingabout the value
of these investmentsif it's not going to be ROI?
What's it going to be?

(01:11:38):
And just to go back to the effectivealtruist for a second right there,
ROI iswhat's going to create the most good.
So now we go to
the two others.
Just so briefly, social innovation, which
which is like,okay, we're going to build businesses
that don't have a on getting as much moneyout like a Google or Facebook

(01:11:59):
where we're going to focus our businesseswith the goal of doing good things,
that we're going to build good businesses,doing good things,
and unfortunately in that case,not just the too quickly,
it's relyingon the same imbalanced structure of
the innovation dynamic.
So no matter what the goal isof the company that you're investing in,

(01:12:21):
you're going to get
because the power imbalanceof the innovation dynamic is so off,
you're still going to get failuresout of that.
So, so effective altruism,social innovation fail
because they're relyingon an already imbalanced
theory of innovationand unbalanced investment structure.
And then you finally have impactinvesting.

(01:12:42):
And these are things like ESG, corporateresponsibility,
governance, environment,sustainability and governments.
Even Guy falls into this.
The whole idea in the impact investing is,well, let's just doing the same thing,
but let's put these checkboxes in place,you know,
and this is thethis falls into the drug cartel category.
Okay?

(01:13:02):
We if you want to make the most money
you invest in drug cartel,you'll make the most money back.
Except we have these checkboxesthat you have to do.
Don't you know?
Don't investin something that kills people.
There is nothing rightto make sure that it has
this thresholdof environmental sustainability.
Make sure the governance structureis structured like this,
make sure it has a diverse board,make sure it has, you know,

(01:13:25):
whatever it is.
So that's the wayyou would get rid of the drug cartel.
On the
list isthrough its impact investing structure.
We are watching that completely fall apartbefore our eyes right now.
So my thought, my my sort of suggestion
in the bookis that you have these three solutions
effective out to we know disruption theorycause all these problems.

(01:13:47):
We have three solutions to iteffective altruism, impact investing and
social innovation. They all fail.
So we need to put inand put forth a new structure.
And so the new structureis what I suggest in the book
and at the end of the end, with the resultbeing
whenever we make
investments in the companies,we need to be thinking about,
you know,does the existence of this company

(01:14:10):
lead to the fair distributionrisk across the innovation dynamic,
which is a pretty ethereal conceptto kind of it's not just,
oh, am I going to make more moneysuch as, Oh, is it going to do more good?
It's is the existence of this company going to create a better risk structure? And
then if we look at all
the companies that have come up, I thinkif you look at Facebook and Google,

(01:14:31):
they immediately lopsidedthat entire risk structure
just in virtue of how they of howthey set up the businesses that they do
and the waythat their technology is distributed.
The book going to be soldworking people. Yep.
So if you go to
ethics press,

(01:14:56):
actually, I'm sure that soI'm not the distributor, right?
The the publisher is the distributorand I'm sure
that they're going to have it all overAmazon and stuff.
But if you if you do innovation, ethics,
ethics, press into Google
here I am criticizing Googleand then relying on them to find this book

(01:15:17):
which it should bewith everything aspect of this press.
I feel it's yeah, there you go.
Okay so it's still on preorder right now,
but at any moment that'll switch.
And yeah,I'm sure that they'll have it all over
You know Amazon, they're, they're,they're, they're the distributors.
They'll figure out how to,how to do all that.

(01:15:40):
Got it. Well, so what,
what is the best mentoring advice
that you want to share with our listeners.
Sure.
So I would say understand that
anything that you're going to dohas such a slim chance of succeeding.

(01:16:03):
I'll fall back.
So, you know, don't don't hold
don't hold anything in the wings.
When you meet an investoror you meet somebody who I say investors,
somebody is going to give you money,but it's anybody's going to give you help.
When you meet somebody who's goingto give you help, just ask them to help.

(01:16:26):
You don't spend weekscoming up with a proposal.
Don't put together a pitch deck.
You know, just start with, hey,will you help me?
And they might say, no, I'm too busy.
Well, then addressthat to address that objection
and try to get through it.
Right.
Just get down to itand ask people for what you want.

(01:16:48):
Don't waste all this time with you.
Don't be afraid of trying to figure it.
Don't be afraid.
Just. Just, just, just that.
As the best thing we can do.
Well, how can our listeners contact you?
I what I'm giving them is your idea.
Direct IO website, your LinkedIn profile,the X and O ethics

(01:17:09):
and the Instagram Hoover Dao.
So is there anything else I'd say?
I'd say LinkedInis probably for a brand new outreach.
LinkedIn is the best.
If you're clever,you can find my phone number.
It is published publicly and widely.
I do get a lot of people who do calland and message me on that stuff.

(01:17:31):
So, you know, the likelihoodthat I respond on
the phone is maybe a little lower.
So just tell me what you want.
And like I said before, I'm openand I'll do everything I can to get to it.
And if you just tell me what you wantand so text me
if you find my phone and we'll make thisa little the kind of chat.
It's not that hard to find my phonenumber.

(01:17:54):
Just text me.
But if you want to connect my LinkedIn,that that that's probably
the probably the mostif you don't feel comfortable.
Well, Roger, this has been delightful.
I want to thank you so muchfor being a guest on the show.
I know we're going to havea continued conversation.
I'm predicting that you'reyour show will do very well

(01:18:15):
because when you are sharingabout your book, it's going to be amazing.
And I'm just so you know,I think I told you the wrong date.
This show will drop next week on Tuesday,so you can look for it
then and it'll be able to help supportthose book sales by the way.
That's very exciting.
Appreciate that.
And I'm going to get on my,you know, my team to distribute

(01:18:39):
widely and fairlyand try to win that in the contest. So
just soour listeners know, what he's referring to
is that whoever has the most downloadsby the end of 2023 here on audio,
they get to come back to the showas a guest again next year
and they can win a first, secondor third place prize.

(01:19:00):
And there's a press release.
But it is also the same on our YouTubechannel.
Whoever has the most views on YouTubecomes back also.
So not everybody like,you know, those that are
hearingimpaired can always hear the podcast.
So we provide it on YouTubeso people can find it.
So anyway, I'm sure I'msure you're you're very, very passionate

(01:19:24):
and what you've written aboutand I know that you've got a competitor
in you, so I'm quite sure I will see youon first, second or third place.
And who knows, I've never had themcrossover where somebody was first,
second and third,both on video as well as audio, but
it can happen.
Yeah. With three

(01:19:45):
I'll only accept one prize. How's.
That's okay.
That's fair.
Yeah. That's fair for everybody else.
Now I have to win because I just
just made it a goal.
Yeah, I made it a goal.
All right.
Yeah. Well, thanks so much.
Here's
so we want to thank our sponsor,

(01:20:06):
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