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Insights on Founder Curiosity and Authenticity with Frank Wooten, Vence Founder and CEO image

Insights on Founder Curiosity and Authenticity with Frank Wooten, Vence Founder and CEO

S1 E10 ยท The Kickstart Podcast
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4 Plays4 years ago

While nothing fully prepares you to run a startup, there are a few things that can help. Like having a strong understanding of your customer base and passion for the problem you're solving. Even better if you have a deep understanding and experience with the industry. But what if you come to the table without that experience? Is it possible to still be successful at solving the problem? And maybe the bigger question is, can you still get funding? If you're wondering what it looks like to forge ahead despite a huge learning curve, this conversation is for you. Today we're talking with founder Frank Wooten of Vence, a California-based startup and venture capital investor Curt Roberts of Kickstart to bring you both sides of a Perfect Pitch. This episode will explore:

Why every CEO's toolkit should include curiosity and open-mindedness

Gleaning deep insights from your hobbies

Why the objects in your rearview mirror are a competitive advantage

Connecting with your customers

Recommended
Transcript

Can you run a startup without experience?

00:00:00
Speaker
While nothing fully prepares you to run a startup, there are a few things that can help, like having a strong understanding of your customer base and a passion for the problem you're solving.
00:00:09
Speaker
But what if you come to the table without that experience?
00:00:12
Speaker
Is it possible to still be successful at solving the problem?
00:00:15
Speaker
And maybe the bigger question is, can you still get funding?
00:00:19
Speaker
If you're wondering what it looks like to forge ahead despite a huge learning curve, this conversation is for you.

Introduction to 'Perfect Pitch' Podcast

00:00:24
Speaker
Today, we're talking with founder Frank Wooten Events and investor Kurt Roberts of Kickstart to bring you both sides of A Perfect Pitch.
00:00:40
Speaker
What is Perfect Pitch?
00:00:42
Speaker
It's a podcast from Kickstart that reveals the minds of both investors and entrepreneurs throughout a startup's journey.
00:00:48
Speaker
So whether that's uncovering what everyone's really thinking during a startup pitch or learning how entrepreneurs like you have managed your first major roadblock, Perfect Pitch offers an honest, quick, and tactical guide to help you on your startup journey.

Meet the Guests: Frank & Kurt

00:01:04
Speaker
I'm your host, Karen Zelnick.
00:01:06
Speaker
Frank and Kurt, thank you so much for being here today.
00:01:09
Speaker
Thanks a lot for having me, Karen.
00:01:11
Speaker
Frank, I want to tell everybody a little bit about you.
00:01:14
Speaker
You're a former New York-based investment banker.
00:01:16
Speaker
And before you started, Vince, you were consulting for startups in Brazil, correct?
00:01:22
Speaker
It doesn't always come off as something that people say positively when they put me in that characterization.
00:01:27
Speaker
So yeah, I was a double major in accounting and finance.
00:01:30
Speaker
I happened to like nerding out on numbers.
00:01:33
Speaker
Spent the first 6 years in New York, 6 years in Boston after that, and then...
00:01:38
Speaker
I was working at a health tech startup in Sao Paulo when I was first approached with this crazy idea of virtually fencing cattle that has taken me on a pretty wild journey over the last four years.
00:01:50
Speaker
I can't wait to dive into some insights.
00:01:52
Speaker
Kurt, it's great to have you back on the podcast.
00:01:55
Speaker
For everyone who wants to know a little bit more about his bio, we're going to have a link to that in our show notes.
00:02:00
Speaker
Kurt, as is our tradition, I'd love to know one thing that return listeners don't yet know about you.
00:02:06
Speaker
Okay, well, I played the drums in a band that was booked to play the Las Vegas Hilton.
00:02:13
Speaker
Nice.
00:02:15
Speaker
How's that?
00:02:16
Speaker
I love it.
00:02:16
Speaker
This is probably one of my favorite parts of the podcast is learning all of Kurt's many talents and interests.
00:02:22
Speaker
Do you still play the drums?
00:02:24
Speaker
I do.
00:02:25
Speaker
I have a drum set in the basement.
00:02:26
Speaker
I don't play them nearly as much as I used to.
00:02:29
Speaker
It's a time problem, right?
00:02:30
Speaker
We make our choices.
00:02:32
Speaker
So, but I love them.
00:02:34
Speaker
That was even better than I was anticipating.
00:02:37
Speaker
I mean, I loved the McDonald's discussion that time we had it, but this was even better.
00:02:41
Speaker
But with that, let's jump right into

Frank's Transition to Entrepreneurship

00:02:44
Speaker
the conversation.
00:02:44
Speaker
And Frank, I just, I have to start with the elephant in the room and ask, how does one with no agricultural background or experience get roped in, pun intended, get roped into founding a livestock production and autonomous animal control company?
00:03:00
Speaker
Yeah.
00:03:01
Speaker
From my background, it seems logical.
00:03:03
Speaker
I know that it may come off as illogical, but my background being in finance, it's always about looking at size of market and looking at size of opportunity.
00:03:11
Speaker
And when I first got pitched events, and I was actually pitched on this idea as kind of an angel investor to start with, is I started looking at the size of the opportunity.
00:03:22
Speaker
And there's more livestock on the planet when you add in cows, sheep, goats, and all of the other animals that manage for protein than there are cars on the road.
00:03:31
Speaker
So for me, it was this really opportunity size that sucked me in.
00:03:36
Speaker
Since then, I've had to go out and buy cowboy boots and a belt buckle and really figure out what the heck I'm doing on a ranch.
00:03:44
Speaker
Did anyone try to talk you out of it?
00:03:46
Speaker
Everyone I know.
00:03:50
Speaker
My girlfriend at the time was now my wife, my best friend, my parents, anybody with some logical sense is like, this seems odd that this would be your next career choice.
00:04:02
Speaker
But sometimes those are the right decisions.
00:04:05
Speaker
Sometimes they're the wrong decisions.
00:04:06
Speaker
But for me, it's been absolutely the right call.
00:04:10
Speaker
Last year, I spent two months living on customers' farms, actually living in their houses, having breakfast with them and dinner with them.
00:04:19
Speaker
That type of customer relationship exists in very small places in the world, very few industries.
00:04:25
Speaker
And it's one of the
00:04:27
Speaker
Probably greatest gifts that has been unexpected about following that path for me.
00:04:33
Speaker
Definitely quite a shift from investment banking.
00:04:36
Speaker
So that's magical.

Investing in Inexperienced Founders

00:04:38
Speaker
And Kurt, I just want to know, as an investor, is it cause for concern when a founder doesn't have direct experience in the industry?
00:04:45
Speaker
Yes, it can be.
00:04:47
Speaker
It certainly means that you're expecting for that founder to make up for that lack of experience in other significant ways.
00:04:55
Speaker
And in Frank's case, it was interesting because not only did he not have anything in his background that would suggest he was ready for this opportunity, but neither did his co-founders.
00:05:08
Speaker
There wasn't a team either, right?
00:05:11
Speaker
So there were a number of leaps, kind of logical risk leaps that we had to make as an investor to decide to back this.
00:05:20
Speaker
But I think if anything, that's a testament to Frank's credibility as a CEO and the level of effort he put into understanding the opportunity and the business he was pursuing.
00:05:33
Speaker
How did that come out in the diligence process?
00:05:36
Speaker
What allowed you to take that leap and fund Vince?
00:05:40
Speaker
We spent a lot of time in various dimensions of diligence.
00:05:45
Speaker
Not only did we need to understand what was going on in a more macro environment with beef production and meat consumption around the world, which I think a lot of people believe is going to decline.
00:05:58
Speaker
We also had to understand things as trivial as animal behavior.
00:06:03
Speaker
Is it possible to stimulate in some fashion a cow and get it to move in a predictable way?
00:06:10
Speaker
We needed to understand things about the technological approach they were going to take and the risks in that approach.
00:06:18
Speaker
Sensors, wireless communications, power management, weatherproofing, shockproofing, all those kinds of things.
00:06:26
Speaker
And so the breadth of due diligence was high.
00:06:31
Speaker
And what was confidence inspiring with Frank is that there really weren't any questions we asked that he hadn't already thought about.
00:06:42
Speaker
Because we couldn't surprise him, we knew he had done his homework.
00:06:47
Speaker
Okay.
00:06:48
Speaker
So the takeaway for listeners is, obviously, do your homework.
00:06:52
Speaker
If you don't have direct experience, make sure you're able to answer any questions and establish that

Building Trust with Investors

00:06:57
Speaker
credibility.
00:06:57
Speaker
So Frank, was there anything else that I missed in that?
00:07:00
Speaker
What else did you do to help Kickstart and other funders be confident in investing in you and your startup?
00:07:07
Speaker
I think addressing the elephant in the room probably helped too.
00:07:10
Speaker
Kurt and I have this great relationship, but we're pretty transparent guys.
00:07:15
Speaker
Rather than being like...
00:07:16
Speaker
you're showing up to his office in a pair of cowboy boots with a hat on, trying to pretend I was something that I wasn't.
00:07:23
Speaker
I love cattle!
00:07:24
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:25
Speaker
It was an interesting experience where I had actually just come from a cattle conference on a ranch to learn more about the industry and process.
00:07:35
Speaker
So it was apparent.
00:07:36
Speaker
There was no hiding the fact that I was still on the information and learning curve.
00:07:42
Speaker
And I think
00:07:46
Speaker
I know what I don't know, but here are the things that I think I can solve.
00:07:50
Speaker
I think also helped him get to a point where he's like, yeah, okay.
00:07:55
Speaker
Yeah, I agree with you.
00:07:55
Speaker
You don't know these things.
00:07:57
Speaker
And that's part of the risk that we're incorporating in our investment.
00:08:00
Speaker
But these things you seem to have at least a logical answer to, and you've thought through now we can price that risk.
00:08:07
Speaker
I would like to reinforce what Frank is saying.
00:08:10
Speaker
Frank never tried to fake it.
00:08:13
Speaker
I think a lot of founders may believe that faking it can work.
00:08:18
Speaker
My experience has been that it almost never does.
00:08:22
Speaker
And if Frank didn't know something, he would just say so.
00:08:26
Speaker
His transparency and his willingness to admit what he knew and didn't know significantly increased the trust and confidence that I had, not just
00:08:37
Speaker
in what he had learned to that point, but that he would continue to learn along the way.
00:08:43
Speaker
And that's critical to the success of any founder, I think, even if that founder comes from the industry in which he or she is trying to build a business.
00:08:53
Speaker
Yeah, so that appreciation of transparency is something that we highly value and see a lot at Kickstart and something that we actually use a lot when we're considering founders and companies to fund.
00:09:02
Speaker
Frank, was that important to you when selecting your investor and who you partnered with?
00:09:08
Speaker
My first meeting was a conversation that was with no pretenses.
00:09:13
Speaker
And their desire was really interested in who was I?
00:09:17
Speaker
What was I proposing to them?
00:09:19
Speaker
And could they get their arms around that?
00:09:22
Speaker
And they were curious, but willing to be honest about what they were looking for as well.
00:09:26
Speaker
So for me, later on in the process, when we had different offers that at times potentially had better terms and were at better terms,
00:09:36
Speaker
It was no question in my mind about where the company should go because of the relationship that I built and the type of people I wanted around the table for the next... It's been three years that Kurt and I have sat around the table and talked to each other on at least a monthly or bi-monthly basis.
00:09:53
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:54
Speaker
Kurt, any response to that?
00:09:57
Speaker
I don't think it should be all that unique for investors to expect transparency from companies.
00:10:05
Speaker
And I don't think it is.
00:10:06
Speaker
I don't think this is particular to Kickstart in any unique way.
00:10:12
Speaker
I think funders do want to see authenticity in the founder

Staying True to Your Startup

00:10:17
Speaker
that they're backing in the founding team.
00:10:19
Speaker
They want to make sure that the team knows what they know and that they're honest about what they don't.
00:10:24
Speaker
that they're willing to learn, and that there's some humility there.
00:10:28
Speaker
And what I loved about our conversations with Frank, I expected humility would have to be there because he was an investment banker that grew up on coastal Maryland and he was an expert sailor.
00:10:42
Speaker
And I had this image of this guy that would be standing on the deck of a sailboat with fluted champagne glasses in his hand, right?
00:10:48
Speaker
I said, what?
00:10:49
Speaker
And so I'm trying to imagine him out in front of cattle ranchers kicking dust around and watching cows move.
00:10:58
Speaker
Every time I would test for that in the conversations we had together, I had a sense that Frank was on the journey to learn.
00:11:07
Speaker
His confidence was what it needed to be, but it was never overconfidence.
00:11:14
Speaker
That was big for me.
00:11:16
Speaker
I just wrote that down, never overconfidence.
00:11:19
Speaker
And that just reiterates the importance of... I love what you said about humility.
00:11:23
Speaker
And you want founders to be confident, but you don't want them to be overconfident or oversell their confidence.
00:11:28
Speaker
And I love that insight.
00:11:29
Speaker
So thank you both so much for that.
00:11:32
Speaker
One of the things that ends up being challenging is at times you get told that you need to meet a certain criteria for funders to fund you.
00:11:42
Speaker
So...
00:11:43
Speaker
You find as a founder that you turn into a contortionist to try and find a way to get into that box that meets those criteria that the investors will actually put money behind you.
00:11:57
Speaker
And I think that in our conversations, in where we were as a company, it was obvious what we had.
00:12:05
Speaker
There was no way for me to try and contort it into something else.
00:12:08
Speaker
It was like, here, this is what we have.
00:12:10
Speaker
And I think that as a founder, you also need to look across the table.
00:12:15
Speaker
Certain funds, a really hard and fast criteria.
00:12:19
Speaker
If you're not at XARR, we don't care.
00:12:22
Speaker
If you're not at a certain level of product, sorry, not interested.
00:12:28
Speaker
Don't try and make yourself into something that isn't where you are because you're going to waste your time.
00:12:34
Speaker
You're going to waste time across the table.
00:12:36
Speaker
And in the end, they're never going to invest in you.
00:12:38
Speaker
It's just not going to happen.
00:12:41
Speaker
Kurt, I can tell you have something to say.
00:12:42
Speaker
I'd love to hear it.
00:12:44
Speaker
Yes, I do agree with Frank.
00:12:47
Speaker
It really isn't uncommon at all for founders to be trying to read too much into what the Venture Capital Fund is going to be interested in seeing.
00:12:58
Speaker
I think we saw over 600 companies last year for first meetings.
00:13:03
Speaker
You can tell when someone has looked at your website or talked to other founders about what you like to see and they're trying to spin their story in a way that will make it more attractive.
00:13:13
Speaker
It really does become obvious when that's happening.
00:13:16
Speaker
And for the founder, I think fundraising is hard enough.
00:13:21
Speaker
Don't waste your time on people that are highly unlikely to fund you.
00:13:26
Speaker
if it's clear that there are criteria they use and you don't meet them.
00:13:30
Speaker
It's not a good use of your time.
00:13:33
Speaker
This is really great.
00:13:35
Speaker
And I want to shift the conversation just

Curiosity as a Tool for Success

00:13:37
Speaker
a little bit here.
00:13:37
Speaker
We've been talking around it, but Frank, I'm going to ask you to address it directly.
00:13:41
Speaker
I think it's safe to say that curiosity and cultivating an open mindset was a huge part of getting around your lack of knowledge.
00:13:47
Speaker
How have you continued to cultivate that curiosity and how has it helped you as a CEO?
00:13:52
Speaker
I think one of the things that certainly happens after
00:13:56
Speaker
And for repeated times, a lot of the cultivation practices that you have start to fade a little bit because work takes over absolutely every free spot of open air that exists in my life.
00:14:10
Speaker
And so it's funny, Kurt's earlier analogy about this guy who likes to sit on the deck with a champagne cup.
00:14:21
Speaker
I've had many broken fingers and bruises that involved absolutely no champagne flutes, unfortunately.
00:14:27
Speaker
But competitive sailing is about reading the wind changing, taking a tack, and following that through strategically.
00:14:39
Speaker
spend a decent amount of time thinking through that from a business strategy and from a startup cultivation mentality where I'm constantly thinking, okay, what's the wind actually doing?
00:14:51
Speaker
What type of weather are we sailing in?
00:14:53
Speaker
That kind of practice that previously existed in my life is something that I utilize almost unconsciously in how I navigate the business.
00:15:03
Speaker
And my real answer to you is that it's taking a look at my
00:15:14
Speaker
and applying them elsewhere in my life is what I think certainly helps me from time to time.
00:15:22
Speaker
I really love that.
00:15:23
Speaker
I think that's an amazing insight and something that's actually very valuable, taking your hobbies and applying them to life and the lessons that you can learn there.
00:15:30
Speaker
I've mentioned on the podcast before that I'm a painter and watercolor can get messy.
00:15:35
Speaker
Startups can be messy.
00:15:37
Speaker
And just with watercolor, sometimes you need to let things kind of settle for a little bit and then pick up and move on and then make it something really great and beautiful.
00:15:45
Speaker
And so thank you.
00:15:46
Speaker
I really appreciate that insight.
00:15:48
Speaker
Kurt, over to you.
00:15:49
Speaker
I'd love to hear what you have to say.
00:15:51
Speaker
I think to some degree, Karen, the curiosity that we like to see in people is fairly innate.
00:16:00
Speaker
I think there's something about just having a broad interest in learning that some people are naturally born with and they cultivate throughout their lives and others not quite so much.
00:16:11
Speaker
For someone like Frank pursuing a business opportunity that was so disconnected from things he'd done in his past,
00:16:18
Speaker
That innate tendency is certainly significantly more important.
00:16:23
Speaker
It's important from every dimension of the business because the technology can be disorienting in this space.
00:16:30
Speaker
A lot of it is fairly complex and a lot of interdependencies between hardware and software and weather conditions and those kinds of things.
00:16:39
Speaker
And then he's got a customer set that he's never worked with before.
00:16:42
Speaker
in the form of these big and small cattle ranches around the world, a supply chain to manage, salespeople to deal with, financing, which was going to be pretty tricky because it's a hardware-heavy business.
00:16:55
Speaker
Those were all things that were pieces of the equation that, for Frank, would not have been part of his background.

Frank's Entrepreneurial Journey

00:17:01
Speaker
So for us, seeing some indication of his curiosity and willingness to learn, not just for his business, but as a more general attribute, I think was going to be and is a positive indicator of how well he would do in running the business.
00:17:16
Speaker
And Frank, knowing what you know now, what would you go back and do differently?
00:17:21
Speaker
There were steps along the way where we've certainly made best steps.
00:17:25
Speaker
But if you've gotten to where...
00:17:29
Speaker
You need to be as a company, which for us is get a certain level of product market fit and adoption, enough of that to move forward and start to move through the next investment round.
00:17:40
Speaker
then everything that's in your rearview mirror is actually potentially a competitive advantage.
00:17:45
Speaker
All the mistakes that you made, your competitors will make or will likely run into.
00:17:51
Speaker
And so what would I do different?
00:17:54
Speaker
First year, I would have understood a lot more about what it was that I needed for a CTO.
00:17:59
Speaker
This is pre-EvenCurred Investing.
00:18:01
Speaker
I had a different person on board and it was simply understanding the personality around the table, players versus coaches.
00:18:09
Speaker
I think that...
00:18:10
Speaker
There are a couple opportunities where we were attracted by a really large carrot and spent a lot of time and energy and resources running after those.
00:18:20
Speaker
And in the end, what we found was, yeah, it's a large carrot, but you got to dig 500 feet down to get to that carrot.
00:18:28
Speaker
And we don't have the resources or ability as a team to actually execute on that.
00:18:33
Speaker
So I think that there are examples, but
00:18:36
Speaker
When I look back, most of them now, I think, make me a stronger leader and make us a stronger team in terms of how we think about what we're building, who we're building it for, and who we need around the table to help us build it.
00:18:53
Speaker
Yeah, it's fun to kind of look back on this investment because I see where we are now.
00:18:58
Speaker
And it's so gratifying to see what this team has been able to accomplish.
00:19:03
Speaker
And yet, in the same thought, I can imagine how high the probability would be that we would be nowhere near where we are right now.
00:19:13
Speaker
And that I would be looking back saying, what were you thinking?
00:19:17
Speaker
This is a business that just involves an enormous amount of executional and engineering and product risk.
00:19:26
Speaker
And it's a real testament, I think, to Frank and Frank's team that they have been able to spend as little money as they have to reach a point where
00:19:39
Speaker
where they are far in excess of the accomplishments of any of their competitors that have been in the market quite a bit longer with double the amount of funding or more and have ranchers around the world using the product and it doing exactly what they claimed it would do.
00:19:58
Speaker
It's incredibly impressive.
00:20:00
Speaker
So kudos to Frank, Patrick Singler, his CTO.

Overcoming Startup Challenges

00:20:04
Speaker
It's been an amazing journey to see what they've been able to do.
00:20:10
Speaker
Frank, that's got to feel so gratifying.
00:20:12
Speaker
What a long journey.
00:20:13
Speaker
So congratulations.
00:20:14
Speaker
That's amazing.
00:20:15
Speaker
Yeah, we're on a podcast, but you can see me smiling.
00:20:22
Speaker
Patrick and I are probably in a pretty similar mentality.
00:20:27
Speaker
And one of our things that we constantly say, well, if it's not hard, then why are we bothering doing it?
00:20:33
Speaker
That's probably not what investors always want to hear.
00:20:36
Speaker
Is it, Kurt?
00:20:40
Speaker
I think that some of these hard and tractable problems, as Kurt said, they have layered risk, not just singular point risk.
00:20:48
Speaker
And I really think more kudos to Patrick and the team on the technical side of de-risking many of those things.
00:20:57
Speaker
I would say when Frank says layered risk, we're talking every layer you could imagine.
00:21:05
Speaker
When we funded then, there was no product.
00:21:08
Speaker
So this was an idea.
00:21:11
Speaker
Frank was walking around with this little plastic mold of a cow's ear, right, with this thing that would attach to it.
00:21:18
Speaker
And that was kind of enticing to see that there was at least a model of what might be possible, but there was essentially nothing.
00:21:27
Speaker
So not only did you have market risk, but you had customer risk.
00:21:33
Speaker
You had animal behavior risk, which we don't see every day.
00:21:37
Speaker
You had significant technical risk from a number of different dimensions.
00:21:42
Speaker
You had team risk because much of the hiring that Frank would need to do to build his team had not yet happened.
00:21:48
Speaker
And so of all the investments I've done since I've started at Kickstart, I think it had the most significant complex risk profile of any I've ever done.
00:21:59
Speaker
But I believe it's a testament, again, to Frank and the amount of work Frank did to prepare himself to start this company, that he was able to inspire confidence not only from us, but from some co-investors, including the largest agricultural bank in the world,
00:22:17
Speaker
to put their money behind him to go out and solve this problem.
00:22:22
Speaker
That's no mean feat.
00:22:23
Speaker
Even very sophisticated engineers in Internet of Things devices would not be able to get that done.
00:22:32
Speaker
So Frank prepared himself to raise money for this company, and it's proven to be a very good bet.
00:22:39
Speaker
And now I'm just picturing Frank walking around with a briefcase with a model of a cow's ears in it, just like, just a second, popping it open and being like, let me tell you about.
00:22:48
Speaker
You have no idea what that looks like at an airport security when people go through and they pull out a model cow here.
00:22:55
Speaker
I've been to that many times.
00:22:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:59
Speaker
Oh, it's the best.
00:22:59
Speaker
That's the best visual.
00:23:00
Speaker
And I also love too that that just comes full circle.
00:23:02
Speaker
Just a reminder that, Frank, you didn't know anything about this when you started out.
00:23:07
Speaker
And it's so, so impressive.
00:23:09
Speaker
And I have one final question for you.
00:23:11
Speaker
And that is, what's an effective practice that you've implemented in your work or personal life that's had a great impact on your success?

Understanding Customer Needs

00:23:20
Speaker
I need to fully immerse in things.
00:23:22
Speaker
I can't take a single slide
00:23:28
Speaker
I think that I have the whole picture.
00:23:28
Speaker
I'm more of a systems understanding guy.
00:23:31
Speaker
And so for me, the problem that I needed to solve is that I had no time on a ranch.
00:23:37
Speaker
So solving for that really is spending time with your customers.
00:23:43
Speaker
So for me, it served multiple purposes.
00:23:45
Speaker
But the short answer to your question is immersion.
00:23:49
Speaker
I happen to be in an industry where the customer welcomes you into their dining room table.
00:23:54
Speaker
So you don't just understand what their work life is like for 2 hours of the day, but you understand what's going on with them and the problems that they're facing throughout their entire life.
00:24:06
Speaker
And that paints a really vivid picture of what you're solving.
00:24:15
Speaker
Kurt, thoughts on that?
00:24:17
Speaker
There is no substitute for immersing yourself in the environment of the problem you're trying to understand.
00:24:25
Speaker
When I was working in the healthcare business, it was frequently the case that we would have to make significant budgetary decisions regarding large capital investments.
00:24:34
Speaker
And there were plenty of times when it would have been very easy for me to think that by
00:24:40
Speaker
looking at very thoughtful analyses of those investments and the spreadsheets associated with them and what the costs and returns would be that I could make an intelligent decision.
00:24:51
Speaker
What I've always found is that there simply is no substitute for going to the location and into the environment where the work is going to happen that you need to understand and visualizing what it is that you're trying to do.
00:25:06
Speaker
Watch how people behave and how work gets done and how flows work.
00:25:11
Speaker
of people and information go.
00:25:14
Speaker
And you can start, if you do that, to see where the holes are in your thinking and your logic and how you should think about things differently.
00:25:21
Speaker
And I have always admired Frank's willingness so many times that he and I have tried to schedule phone calls.
00:25:30
Speaker
He'll be in the middle of the Australian outback with no cell phone service.
00:25:34
Speaker
And that's just a testament to me that he is living his customer's life
00:25:41
Speaker
And by doing that, he's going to understand what they need in ways that few CEOs, I think, would be able to understand without doing that.
00:25:53
Speaker
Gentlemen, this has been such a rich, wonderful conversation.
00:25:56
Speaker
I really appreciate you both spending time today.
00:25:59
Speaker
My biggest aha moments, I wrote down, don't be a contortionist.
00:26:03
Speaker
And so thank you both so much for your time.
00:26:06
Speaker
It's been a wonderful discussion.
00:26:08
Speaker
Thank you, Karen.
00:26:09
Speaker
Thanks again, Karen.

Conclusion & Further Resources

00:26:10
Speaker
And of course, thank you for listening as we dive deep into what it takes to create the perfect pitch.
00:26:15
Speaker
If you want to learn more about our investor, Kurt Roberts from Kickstart and our founder, Frank Wooten and his team at Vince, we'll have a link to the company and a longer bio in our show notes at kickstartfund.com slash perfect pitch.
00:26:27
Speaker
You can listen to more episodes of perfect pitch wherever you listen to your podcast.
00:26:30
Speaker
And if you like what you're learning, leave us a reviewer rating.
00:26:33
Speaker
We'll be back next time with more insights from entrepreneurs and the investors who fund them.
00:26:37
Speaker
So be sure to subscribe so you don't miss a thing.
00:26:40
Speaker
We'll catch you next time.