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Ep 92: Why I Left the Big Firm Life to Feed Dogs with Tim Hirsch, GC of Mars Science and Diagnostics
90 Plays22 days ago
Can your pets inspire you and shape the direction of your career? How can practicing abroad open doors? And what personal and professional lessons can you draw from training for and completing an Ironman triathlon?
Join Tim Hirsch, General Counsel at Mars Science and Diagnostics, as he talks about making transitions: from practicing law in the EU to practicing in the US; working in-house at huge companies like Mastercard to becoming Head of Legal at Collibra, a ten-person start-up; taking the leap to co-found his own business, DoggyChef; and leveraging that experience in pet care into his current role as GC at one of the biggest names in the industry.
Listen as Tim discusses the different expectations on lawyers in the US versus Europe, how to have influence in a huge in-house legal team, what it takes to turn an idea into a company, operating a start-up while working full-time, and much more.
Read detailed summary: https://www.spotdraft.com/podcast/episode-92
Topics
Introduction 0:00
Starting a legal career in Europe: 4:27
Bringing a different perspective to in-house legal: 8:59
Becoming Head of Legal at Collibra: 11:25
Learning business skills on the job: 14:24
Developing the confidence to start a business: 20:02
Co-founding DoggyChef: 21:29
Moving into a GC role at Mars Petcare: 30:08
Switching between large and small organizations: 34:58
Training for an Ironman triathlon: 39:34
Rapid-fire questions: 49:36
Connect with us: Tim Hirsch - https://www.linkedin.com/in/timothyhirsch/ Tyler Finn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/tylerhfinn SpotDraft - https://www.linkedin.com/company/spotdraft
SpotDraft is a leading contract lifecycle management platform that solves your end-to-end contract management issues.
Visit https://www.spotdraft.com to learn more.
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Transcript
From Idea to Business: The Challenges of Entrepreneurship
00:00:00
Speaker
You there's this huge gap between having an idea and running a company. Yes. Huge. Right. And I think that a lot of people will at some point in their life probably maybe think, oh, I want to I want to run this company or I want to start a business.
00:00:15
Speaker
And And sort of the space that you need to fill to get there, even just to get started is so big. Yeah. And I will say it is much smaller in the U.S. than think it is in Europe, just because we we as a country do make it pretty easy to start a business. but But it a pretty yeah sort of staggering mountain to climb when you decide to actually go into it.
00:00:40
Speaker
And so it turned out to be incredibly difficult, incredibly rewarding, um but incredibly difficult.
Meet Tim Hirsch: A Diverse Career in Law and Business
00:00:53
Speaker
Can your pets inspire you and shape the direction of your career? How can practicing abroad open doors? And what personal and professional lessons can you draw from training for, i think it's important to note, and also completing an Ironman?
00:01:12
Speaker
Today, for this episode of The Abstract, I am joined by Tim Hirsch, who is the General Counsel of Mars Science and Diagnostics, a division of Mars Pet Care.
00:01:23
Speaker
He was previously the GC and Head of Business Development for Kinship, another division of Mars Pet Care, which included a technology company, $100 million dollars venture fund, and a startup accelerator. Pretty cool stuff I think that we'll also talk about.
00:01:38
Speaker
Before Mars, he was the GC of Castle. He has a little bit of an entrepreneurial bent or background. was a co-founder of Doggy Chef, which was a D2C dog food company here in New York City.
00:01:53
Speaker
And then earlier in his career, he had a couple other in-house roles, head of legal at Calibra, and I believe the first lawyer there as well, VP and senior counsel for public and private partnerships at MasterCard.
00:02:07
Speaker
And as we'll talk about too, you started your career working at a few notable law firms in Brussels, Paris, and then finally new York
Personal Life and European Upbringing
00:02:17
Speaker
City. So ah Tim, thanks so much for joining me today for this episode of The Abstract. Thanks for having me. That was a mouthful.
00:02:24
Speaker
and Well, it's a it's ah it's an interesting background and and fits with the sort of, we were talking about the theme before we get going in the podcast. It's with the, like, we want people on who've had winding careers, done things different, yes not just a linear line. No. um Okay, fun question for you to start. Most guests get a hard question, but you get a fun one.
00:02:45
Speaker
You seem to have a love of pets. Do you have a dog? do you have a cat? Do you have other pets? We have a dog dog. We have a 12-year-old Cavapoo. His name is Peanut. Cute. Oh, that's a good name. It is a good name. it was you know we We always joke with my wife, it was our first kid.
00:03:00
Speaker
We got him early in the relationship. ah ha The stories diverge as to whether it was a gift or not and a surprise or not. You know, i always say that I surprised her with the pup for her birthday and that she wanted a pad.
00:03:16
Speaker
And she always always says that, you know, it was just me going out on whim and getting a dog. So we'll never know for sure. But we do we do have a dog. um And yeah, it's been a great part of our life.
00:03:27
Speaker
One of those stories is more favorable to you, though. That's exactly right. Yes. I tell the story of how, you know, i went on and got this for her birthday. Yes. She just said you just showed up with a dog. ah But, you know, either way, it turned out, and you know, being a good thing for us.
00:03:41
Speaker
And your kids love the dog as well. Kids love the dog. Yeah. They didn't have to beg you for one. They did not have to beg us for one, which was definitely a bonus for them. Yeah. They, they took you know, they grew up with it.
00:03:53
Speaker
So, you know, they were always around... around him, especially, you know my son is ah is a COVID baby, just turned five. So, you know, he essentially spent the first two years of his life inside trap with, you know, yeah his parents, his sister and a dog. So he's really comfortable around iran dogs, but no, they love him.
00:04:12
Speaker
They love him. He's always been a part of um of the family and yeah, you know, brings brings a ton of energy into the house. We are going to come back to pets because it features somewhat prominently in a couple of aspects of of your career.
00:04:26
Speaker
um but you started your legal career in in Europe. yeah Tell me a little bit about how that came about. Um, well, I grew up in Europe. Um, so I was, I was born and raised in in Brussels, Belgium, uh, and, uh, you know, went through high school there. Then I left, um, to go to university and, and, um, abroad and in a couple of countries and then I came to the States for for the first time a long time ago now, but to get get my LLM.
00:04:56
Speaker
And I did that on on a Fulbright scholarship. And the way that that works is you sort of got to go back to your home country for two years to sort of preach to the rest of the world how great America is, which sounded much better then than it does today. yeah But ah it sort of, you know, it's a cultural exchange program essentially, right? So...
00:05:17
Speaker
um I went out there. And so part of the contract is you got to go back in and work for two years in your home country. um And so i ended up going back to Brussels and sort of the way that, you know, my my education was set up is i I ended up passing the bar in New York. And I i never went to to law school in Belgium.
00:05:41
Speaker
right And so that created a sort of weird situation for me because I couldn't really practice in a traditional Belgian law practice. Interesting.
Navigating Legal Careers Across Continents
00:05:49
Speaker
Because I knew nothing about Belgian law. Yeah. But I needed to be in Belgium. And so sort of what was the natural option for me was to go sort of for...
00:05:58
Speaker
go and work for an international law firm and um do antitrust, ah which is sort of, you know, the main hub for that is is in Belgium. So i sort of fell into it a little bit by accident and, you know, sort of ended up being the start of ah of a long journey.
00:06:13
Speaker
I think it's interesting that you grew up there and then came to the US for law school and then went back. i mean, I think a lot of times American lawyers even have trouble maybe navigating some of the like the cultural aspects of European law or the focus on regulation. There's just a very different lens on a very different view of an antitrust to the role that government should play. yeahp um Was that ever challenging for you? Like, did you feel like you were sort of caught between these two perspectives? not Or how did yeah did you navigate that, I guess, is my question.
00:06:47
Speaker
It's a good question. I think it was more of ah of a shock when I came back here to work versus when I ended up in in in Brussels to work. Because, you know, I do think that law school prepares you maybe not that well for the realities of working as an attorney in a firm. ah And so, you know, it all sort of felt pretty theoretical right up until the time that that I ended up starting starting work.
00:07:14
Speaker
um You know, I think that part of the interesting challenge of working in antitrust in Brussels is that you know you mostly deal with the European Commission, sure which is sort of you know huge behemoth when it comes to regulation. And so, yeah, that was a little bit of a shock um just in and of itself, not in comparison to anything else necessarily.
00:07:35
Speaker
ah you know it's just It's a big machine, um but but it was super fun. It was super fun, but I didn't necessarily feel that I was better equipped or or you know um than others or or not as well equipped as those that, for example, went to law school in Europe before before ended up there. So um what I think it did provide me little bit more is is maybe the sense of perspective um and and broader context, um especially never having studied in you know in Belgium myself.
00:08:09
Speaker
um but But it also sort of led to me feeling a little lost at times as well, right? Because you end up working in this country. It's weird, right? I was born there, raised there, end up working there, and I feel like I know nothing about the legal system.
00:08:25
Speaker
Right. ah Which I didn't, I knew nothing about it. And so, um in a way, you feel a little bit lost. um in I felt a little bit lost in that. in in that um But, you know, the antitrust sort of European law community,
00:08:41
Speaker
in brussels is mostly international as well right pan-european um it's lot lots of folks from from all around europe and and and the us s um that end up you know converging there and so in a way it's pretty pretty cosmopolitan and very international so uh felt great in that little group but yeah its it was sort of a strange dynamic at first do you feel like even today i mean you've worked for a variety of now very global companies um you bring a slightly different perspective to things than maybe folks who've went to law school in California and then practiced in New York for their entire career. um
00:09:15
Speaker
Having the benefit of having practiced a few different places. I hope so. Yeah. Right. I hope so. ah I don't really think about it that much anymore. Right. I mean, I've been I've been now working in the States for um for 15 years. Yeah. I mean, I spend more of my career working here than I have working anywhere else. But that being said, I do I do think that it hopefully shaped a little bit, you know, the way that I think and the way that I approach that I approach problems.
00:09:45
Speaker
um You know, i do think there are fundamental differences between just generally how lawyers are perceived even just, you know, in the States versus in Europe, ah you know, the way that the lawyers are trained here versus in Europe, the way that you practice, right, is very different. You know, went to university in the UK and, you know, even then there's like multiple different ways to be a lawyer, right? Whether you're a barrister or a solicitor. And and so, you know, i do I do think that having had the chance, and it's maybe not so much to have studied, you know, in these different places, but having lived um in different places right and and, you know, being exposed to different cultures um certainly helps me navigate
00:10:28
Speaker
Mars, right, which is a highly um multicultural, super matrixized, you know very large organization with presence in, you know, but most countries in the world.
00:10:38
Speaker
So I do think that I have sort of a natural ability to connect with people that are maybe not just, um you know, naturally comfortable in sort of the corporate American culture. Sure. ah But um but maybe it's easier for others to tell whether that's true or not, right? That's my perception.
00:10:58
Speaker
but But is there anything that it adds to my to my perspective? Super matrixized. I like that. I'm going to use that. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's it's sort of the way that I describe it. Yeah. It's... ah You know, I mean, it's a very, it's a huge organization. I'm sure we we'll get back to it, but yeah just have a ton of layers so um that intersect. And that's really the only way to run an organization that big. But you just just have a ton of touch points with would people all over the world.
00:11:25
Speaker
When we were preparing for this, one of the inflection points that we talked about in your career was that head of legal role, that first lawyer role at Calibra. Can you tell us a little bit about how they found you, you found them, that got started? Yeah.
Calibra Experience: The Intersection of Law and Business
00:11:41
Speaker
um You know, again, it's so, you know, the world is a very big place, but it's not.
00:11:44
Speaker
Right. yeah, you know, Calibra is now, you know, five billion sure unicorn and in in the data process. software space, you know massive company.
00:11:56
Speaker
Yeah. um You know, when i when I got in touch with them, um they were very small. Right. So they're a Belgian company. um So they were founded by a couple of researchers in university in in in Flanders in in Belgium.
00:12:11
Speaker
and they were really doing stuff around um pure sort of data, right? And really research driven. And like a lot of great inventions sort of stumbled into turning that into a business. right And you know at a time I was working in MasterCard and maybe not necessarily yet able to navigate a pretty corporate in-house environment. And yeah, it turns out that, you know, that the recruiter there um somehow knew people that that I knew and reached out to me.
00:12:46
Speaker
And said, hey, you know, you're you're here, but you're Belgian and you speak a couple of languages. And we're a very small company and we're from Belgium and we're in WeWork at, you know, 25 Broadway. But we really think that there's a there there and, you know, we'd love to talk to you.
00:13:01
Speaker
And, you know, next thing you know, I was i was working there in a very small WeWork. at 25 Broadway ah and you know sharing office space with the sales team.
00:13:13
Speaker
And yeah, it it was a transformative experience for me, for sure, in terms of of my career and even just overall my development. um you know I think that it was the first time where I felt that I could have an impact It was the first time that I felt I could really screw up yeah right in a major, major way, which I think is often the case in very small companies or at least you know ah it's startups that are really early stage where sort of a mistake can have huge cost.
00:13:43
Speaker
Sure. And yeah, I think it was it was, you know, a lot of luck that I ended up in that job. um You know, a little bit um sort of talking my way into the role, you know, maybe overselling a little bit my abilities with SaaS agreements and NDAs at the time. Oh, NDAs are easy. You know, NDA, NDA here, NDA there.
00:14:02
Speaker
But, you know, talk about it. cultural difference between the US and Europe, right? I mean, not a thing in Europe. Yeah. Or much less of a thing back then, at least, right? And yeah, it just ended up being a crazy, crazy journey, you know, going through multiple rounds of funding and and exponential growth. And, you know, now they're they're huge.
00:14:22
Speaker
I think... um With those sort of early legal hires, let's say like the first lawyer or the first head of legal or VP of legal at a company at that stage, you know, one one piece is financing that you're talking about in net growth. The other piece is sort of commercialization, yeah getting the product really ready to go to market. um The folks who make it sort of the next level with the business generally have a very good business sense. Yeah. um Do you feel like you learned that on the job?
00:14:53
Speaker
How did you try to do that actively? yeah um Because then when I look at the rest of your career, it seems like there's a very strong through line of, hey, I'm not just a lawyer here. I'm also someone who's bringing a sort of like business perspective to the table.
00:15:06
Speaker
Yeah. that's a good question. So I, so... Going back, I think for me personally, i ended up going to law school because I didn't want to do math. Right. Essentially, like a lot of lawyers.
00:15:17
Speaker
and I was not good at calculus either. So i'll see there you go ah And um and so and the reason I'm saying that is because I don't think that I was naturally driven.
00:15:28
Speaker
you know, to a legal career because that was my passion. Right. Right. know a lot of folks that, you know, ever since they were 10 years old, they wanted to be attorneys and they wanted to practice and they could tell you already, you know, want to be a litigator or what I want to do, you know, IP. Like that was never really the case for me. And, you know, it's a huge luxury to have been involved to go through that process even without that fire and that passion originally. But the reason I'm saying that is because I always sort of felt that maybe, know,
00:15:58
Speaker
My greatest a skill was not necessarily to be just straightforward attorney because right I don't think that I was naturally gifted at it, to be honest. Right. That you go to law school and you see in your class, right? There's it's a group of folks that are just amazing.
00:16:12
Speaker
Yeah. They read, they understand, they dissect. They just have a natural ability to just... Explain these concepts in a way that I i didn't feel I ever had in law school, right? And I wasn't a terrible student. Yeah, but you know, I was on top of the class and and I think that that mostly stemmed because of you know The lack of just pure passion for the topic, right? And some that I hated it, but I didn't feel and didn't feel a passion for it at least initially and certainly not when I was in law school and And the reason that I said that is because when I started my legal career, I didn't feel a passion for the pure legal work.
00:16:49
Speaker
Right. I always felt a lot more. Yeah. passionate, a lot more interest in sort of things that were tangential to the legal work. Right. And so when I worked in a law firm, you know, I love doing deals because I love to learn about new industries and yeah read through, you know, SIMs and read through business plans and understand, you know, how putting two companies together is more than just one plus one equal equals two.
00:17:14
Speaker
Right. ah and And that I always found fascinating. And so when I ended up you know working at Collibra, I loved that opportunity to just you know be able to learn everything.
00:17:28
Speaker
Learning about software, which was the first time that ever was exposed to software. And you know at the time, it was still SaaS was still sort of a new thing. right a lot of the customers were still...
00:17:40
Speaker
on-premise. yeah um And so the model was still sort of shifting slowly from on-premise to purely cloud-based, you know, SaaS offering. um And when I started, I still remember, you know, my welcome packet from the CFO was, you know, this binder of documents. It still had, you know, on-prem license agreement that was 100 pages, you know, with financial institutions like old school. Yeah. um but But I love that ability to sort of sit with the sales team and just listen to calls, right? And say, hey, this is why you need this tool.
00:18:11
Speaker
This is what it's going to do to your business. um I love to be, you know, to be sitting with with the CFO and the CEO to understand how you plan on growing this company, right? What is the path ah to product market fit? Because it was still really early on.
00:18:24
Speaker
Yeah. and weren't sure, right? I mean, we knew there was something that was working. But we, you know, it was only a handful of customers. It wasn't scaled yet. And so, you know, I think I really learned just by not talking too much, which is difficult for attorneys to do, by listening a lot and then by just, you know, trying to be in every non-legal call that I possibly could.
00:18:45
Speaker
Right. And that was for me, you know, sitting on all the product, you know, ah team calls as as much as I could. um Most of the sales team calls and really just try to soak up, you know, how how do you scale a company?
00:19:00
Speaker
What what what is what is the key to growing a company, particularly early on? And and I think that was the first time where I felt that, you know, that I belonged, you know, in a way and sort of where I was working because I felt that I could have an impact and I felt like could, you know, sort of take my background, which, you know, it's never going change. And so I'm always going to be a lawyer, but apply it in a very different way.
00:19:24
Speaker
And to me, that was sort of really eye-opening that that was a possibility, right? Because even before at MasterCard, which was a great experience and, you know, an awesome way to go from, from firm to in-house, it was still a lot, ah much more segmented, right? It was more, you're lawyer and this sort of what you need to do, which tends to be the case in larger corporations, certainly financial institutions.
00:19:45
Speaker
But that was sort of the first time where it was sort of, you know, little bit free for all, right? In early stage companies, everybody needs to do everything ah and everybody needs to sort of chip in. And if you're willing to take more, they give you more, right? And so for me, that was sort of an incredible learning opportunity.
00:20:02
Speaker
Do you feel like your time at Calibra gave you a lot more confidence when you started to think about starting your own business?
Doggy Chef: Entrepreneurship and Challenges
00:20:11
Speaker
ah Was that really formative in um in in giving you the confidence to say, I know you didn't fully quit your job to start DoggyShut, but yeah saying like, okay, I actually think I could lean into this and I could be an entrepreneur.
00:20:24
Speaker
Yeah, I think so. You know, I think it at least it gave me... and maybe a false sense of confidence, right? Because we could talk about it more, but you know, right yeah running your own company, starting your own company is so difficult.
00:20:37
Speaker
yeah But I certainly think that it gave me a false sense of confidence in terms of, all right, you know, I know ah how to do, ah you know, state filing. I know what sales tax are, you know, I've seen payroll, you know, understand these concepts from up close because, you know, we were ah really small group and I was exposed to all these topics.
00:20:56
Speaker
And I think that it gave me a sense of, okay, I've seen it. Now I can do it. Now, that was not right ah because those are two very different things. But I think it certainly sort of was a moment where when my co-founder called me and she said, hey, you know,
00:21:12
Speaker
think there's an opportunity or do you want to do this? I felt that I had cars that didn't have before to be able to do that. And that was, you know, that was certainly a moment for me where I said, okay, I can try to do this.
00:21:23
Speaker
I mean, maybe tell us a little bit about the business, but then you've almost like preempted my next question for you, which was, was this as hard, like starting a company, was it as hard or was it a lot harder than you expected? yeah yeah I think you know the answer to that now, but yeah, yeah a lot harder, a lot harder.
00:21:40
Speaker
yeah And the company was, you know, a D2C human grade fresh dog food company. And, you know, this is 10 years ago when the market was, you know, essentially um there was nothing on the market.
00:21:56
Speaker
like that right and you essentially had high-end kibble or you had sort of your supermarket type of food ah and then you had some fresh with supermarket fresh food that was starting to roll in um but the sort of that trend of you know what we now call the sort of the humanization of pets right and and treating your pet sort of like like your child um was really in its early stages um and you know my co-founder who um also had a dog who was having issues with the food that she was eating, um sort of start and notice she she started noticing this gap in the market.
00:22:35
Speaker
And, you know, she was like, oh, you know, there's not really stuff out there that I would want to feed my dog. and And so like a lot of companies, you know, we started it from sort of a need that we had. I was like, it's true. Like, I wish I could feed my dog something better.
00:22:51
Speaker
um and And so that that's where it started. and And we literally just started, you know, the two of us in her apartment, just sketching something on a piece of paper to very quickly her saying, hey, we should we should do it.
00:23:06
Speaker
We should actually start a company. ah And... you know there's like this huge gap between having an idea and running a company. Yes. Huge, right? And I think that a lot of people will at some point in their life probably maybe think, oh, I want to i want to run this company or I want to start a business.
00:23:26
Speaker
And, uh, And sort of the space that you need to fill to get there, even just to get started, is so big. yeah And I will say it is much smaller in the US s than i think it is in Europe, just because we we as a country do make it pretty easy to start a business. um but But it is a pretty yeah sort of staggering mountain to climb when you decide to actually go into it.
00:23:51
Speaker
And so it turned out to be incredibly difficult, incredibly rewarding, um um but incredibly difficult. I think that fits with what a lot of, you hear from a lot of other founders of businesses who come on.
00:24:04
Speaker
um It's also why when I see companies that are in stealth mode, sometimes I kind of laugh because I think mean I've had, you're always have steal I've had lots of ideas for businesses and I tell everybody about them and I haven't started any of them. Right. And so you're running a stealth startup. Yeah. um and Tell us a little bit about the journey. Like, you know, did you have to go out and raise capital? yeah you where Where did the business start? where Yeah, no, so we we bootstrapped it at the beginning um and got some friends and family money.
00:24:36
Speaker
And, you know, we yeah we essentially rented almost exclusively on that. And yeah, our ambition um was to get a lot bigger.
00:24:47
Speaker
um So, you know, for a long time, it was just, you know, my co-founder and I, her name is Deborah, if she's watching. And she was really sort of the ah creative um sort of operational muscle behind the company. And I was doing a lot of the sort of the more corporate-y stuff, which, you know, not shocking.
00:25:08
Speaker
yeah um And, you know, we just started started making food. in my kitchen, in her kitchen. Wow. Packing meals ourselves, you know, doing guerrilla marketing, going to to dog parks and going to trade shows. And, you know, for weekends on end, we would set up and, you know, go around and and distribute samples and parks and wherever we could go. um and um we we did that for a long time. Then, you know, we
00:25:39
Speaker
ended up at a revenue level where we could hire help. um So we hired folks for from for production and for delivery. um And um yeah, it was, you know, pretty, pretty, you know, intense experience um going from, you know, ideation to distribution, right? I mean, everything um from, you know, how do you make food, right? yeah How do you package food?
00:26:07
Speaker
um Where do you get you know your supplies? you know How do you set up a distribution route? How do you set yourself up um on e-comm to be able to manage right um that business? um you know How do you run a P&L?
00:26:22
Speaker
How do you run payroll? I mean, all that thing, you know all these things that you never really think about. are involved in running a business and less and until you actually run your own business. Right. ah And, you know, i to me, it was probably the biggest learning experience of my career in terms of getting hands on, you know, operational experience and running a business.
00:26:44
Speaker
um and um And it was a crazy ride, right? I mean, we yeah went on on on Seed Invest where we pitched oh cool in in San Francisco. ah we we We grew with the company.
00:26:58
Speaker
and um And so we ended up as sort of this inflection point where a lot of companies, I think, end up, which is either you take, you know, substantial outside capital to to grow the business, particularly D to C,
00:27:12
Speaker
particularly 10 years ago, yeah which was very much an acquisition game, um or you don't and you're sort of tall. And you know I think we were maybe a little slow to get there um because just the thought of you know getting outside capital without entail, that thing you know is is daunting. And it's it's weird because you know I had done it you know, on on the Calibra side. And sure i knew i knew that pretty well. But when it comes to yourself, it's different i'm very it's very different. And you feel a lot more exposed.
00:27:44
Speaker
You know, it's easy to sort of go and sell somebody else's P&L when it's, you know, loss making. It's very different when it's your P&L that's loss making. You got to sell that, right? But we did feel pretty good about sort of the fact that that business was going to get um disrupted massively, right? In the way that that that people were going to shop for for that sort of level of pet food was going to change. um But we got we got really, I think we got delayed in in getting to that realization. And then we did accelerate that and we were negotiating with a couple of investors and then literally, you know, a couple of weeks before
00:28:23
Speaker
um two of the largest competitors that we had closed pretty substantial funding rounds and sort of that cooled the mood a little bit and and so that was sort of the beginning of the end for our business.
00:28:36
Speaker
But yeah you know, some some some good lessons there. Not the ending that um I think we had hoped for. I think, you know, looking back, I think the other big thing for me was I was doing two jobs at once.
00:28:48
Speaker
Right. and I was to ask you about that. Yeah. And I think that You can do that for a while. i do think that a lot of founders, you know, often do that. right You have your your yourre your're you're your company that you're trying to run on the side.
00:29:03
Speaker
um I think that for me, um I was also probably little cold feet when he came to saying, okay, I'm going to jump and do this full time. Yeah. ah Which, you know, looking back was probably the ideal time for me to do it, but we didn't have kids.
00:29:18
Speaker
We're living in a small apartment. ah You know, it was, you know, the sort of the, the, the pressure that you probably have when you have, you know, a family or when you're later in your career was not there.
00:29:31
Speaker
Right. um But I don't think I was bold enough and think I did it was brave enough. I think that lawyers a bias, you know, against these types of decisions, yeah ah probably in the way that we wired. um And, you know, I thought I can manage both for probably longer than I could.
00:29:47
Speaker
ah and And that's something that I certainly have have regrets over for sure. um And, you know, looking back, I feel that I probably could have done more, should have done more, decided earlier. But, you know, these are part of of of of lessons that you learn over time and share with others. Exactly. That's exactly right.
00:30:07
Speaker
um The interesting thing to me is then, you know, at least it seems from the outside looking in, that there's kind of an obvious through line.
Joining Mars Pet Care: Merging Tech and Pet Interests
00:30:17
Speaker
Not from your like earlier work for MasterCard or the law firms or Calibra or but from the startup ye to what you're doing today.
00:30:26
Speaker
Yeah. yeah I mean, tell us a little bit about that journey. and I don't want to totally steep over your time at Castle, but... No, no, no um which was Which was great. But yeah, i mean, it is it is the thread, right? And yeah, yeah my time at Castle was great, but I ended up, um you know, sort of coming into this this company and into this role in a way that felt quite organic.
00:30:48
Speaker
and And yeah, you know, someone, some a recruiter Mars reached out to me, I think probably because They saw that I'd run a pet company. um and And at the time they were looking for, you know, first legal hire for this small from ours division that was focusing on sort of innovation and technology and sort of bringing the next thing to pet care.
00:31:12
Speaker
yeah um And, you know, I think it's easy to sort of look at my background and put, you know, tech and pet together and see that that was not a really... It can't be a huge Venn diagram, right? Exactly. I don't think it was like a million of us out there.
00:31:25
Speaker
ah So I feel like her LinkedIn search was probably pretty quick. Yeah. But, you know, we ended up getting on the phone. And um and and so two things. One, I had that conversation and I felt that This is so obvious, right? um I also ended up initially saying no because I felt that, you know, it was not the right time we're through COVID.
00:31:52
Speaker
And um I just wasn't in the mental space where I felt that I was ready for it. um And the amazing thing that happened is that the CEO at the time for for kinship said, sorry, I'll take your time.
00:32:06
Speaker
um We'll wait. And um I don't think you get too many of those in your career. And and that was a little bit of a catalyst for me to say, Okay.
00:32:17
Speaker
I think that if that's representative of the culture and of management and how they run you know the company, maybe I need to think about a little harder. um and and And I did that.
00:32:29
Speaker
yeah and um And you know ended up in probably was for me at a time, you know the dream job, right? Which was combining these passions that I had for um you know, building companies for technology for the world of pets, which by the way is a crazy world. And, you know, you go to the pets convention, ah you see some crazy things, ah but, but people, people love their pets, right? I mean, people love their cats, they love their dogs um in a very different way that they love human beings. um And, and I do think that it's a, um it's an area that,
00:33:03
Speaker
has so much passion, right? People that tend to work in the in the pet care space tend to be passionate. And whether it's vets or it's, you know, people that work in the pet food business is just, i think it's a very emotionally charged, in a good way, industry where people just are in it because they love it.
00:33:23
Speaker
um and um And so I ended up joining. I ended up joining as the first fully dedicated legal resource for freak kinship. um You know, I think that for a lawyer that likes innovation, it was also sort of the best of both worlds because it was, you know,
00:33:41
Speaker
a mandate to go and innovate and really try to bring something new to the pet space while being part of this, you know, really, really, really big company, which, you know, talking about protecting your downside, you know, it's really, really um awesome way to be able to do that. Right. To have just sort of the backing of of such a such an amazing company that Mars is.
00:34:02
Speaker
um And um yeah, I ended up taking the job. Mm hmm. And, you know, immediately, immediately loved it, you know, immediately loved the people, the work, sort of the freedom. and yeah, I went through multiple iterations of my job while at kinship, you know, took on some some business development, some corporate development, you know talking about non-legal stuff.
00:34:25
Speaker
um And yeah, ended up being an incredible, incredible venture and learning a ton more you know about just bed care generally still am. But and ah you know I realized that I knew this and then you realize that that it's that. it's that right And so, ah yeah, it ended up being...
00:34:46
Speaker
You know, i think not a lot of times in my life do I look back and and think, OK, this was meant to be. Yeah. This was sort of one of these moments where you look back and you're like, OK, like, you know, there's some there's some some common sense here.
00:34:58
Speaker
ah You said something earlier that I thought was interesting ah when you were talking about the transition from MasterCard. You said, I think, you know, now you know how to navigate a big organization, maybe better than you once did. And I raised that only because you know I think people have trouble sometimes going both directions, right? Like big organization, Google, yeah to five person startup, right?
00:35:23
Speaker
um I think sometimes people have trouble going the other way too, though. Sure. Right. You go from an org in which your responsibilities are wide ranging and you are a lot more essential and there aren't sort of like edicts from six levels up on high. Correct.
00:35:41
Speaker
and Talk to us a little bit about that. Like, what have you learned about navigating a big organization? Why do you think you're better at that today? Yeah, and listen, it's hard. And I think it's even hard for people that have been in large organizations their whole life. Sure. ah Small p politics. that That's exactly right. um i For me, I think.
00:35:59
Speaker
The biggest challenge is to sort of um framing your area of influence, right? and and And like you mentioned, when you work in 10-people startup, your area of influence is everything and everyone. Yeah. And it's reciprocal, right? Because everyone is in everyone's business.
00:36:16
Speaker
Totally. I think that the reason that people challenge to go from that to a large corporation is because they think that it's going to work the same way, right? It's good. you're going to go to a big corporation and you're going to be able to influence a million different things. um And I think that sort of one of the critical things to do is to reframe your own perception of what your area of influence should be.
00:36:39
Speaker
And it doesn't mean that you can't have influence in a very large organization. It just means that you need to influence in a different way. and And on different things. Right. And I think for me, that was certainly even though I'd been in larger organization than a startup, it was still ah learning curve.
00:36:55
Speaker
Right. When I joined Mars, because no two organizations are the same. No two cultures are the same. um and And I did have to to figure it out. Right. And to sort of relearn and and retrain.
00:37:08
Speaker
um myself, I think particularly for lawyers, it's an ego thing as well. right I think that we like to um we like to shape as much as we can and we like to impact as much as we can. yeah And yeah, when you work in a startup and you or certainly when you're in one lawyer legal department, you shape every legal decision because that's your job. right um Now you go into an organization that has 200 lawyers, you're not going to shape every legal decision and you're not going to touch every, um you know, um legal issue, that doesn't mean that what you touch is less important, right? Right. Or less impactful.
00:37:44
Speaker
um But I do think that from an ego perspective, i think we're sort of, you know, especially if you come from from a smaller company, you're sort of naturally trained to be that person, right? And to want to sort of have a very large area of influence. And so I think part of the the secret or at least part of the recipe for me was, yeah, one, you got to you got to check your ego and realize that you're not going to be in every conversation.
00:38:09
Speaker
You're not going to be in every department. You're not going to be able to influence at all. um But it doesn't mean that you can't impact. Right. And in a way, you know, you can have maybe a much larger impact than a bigger company.
00:38:21
Speaker
If you're in a much bigger scale business, you just got to figure out how you can do that in a way that focuses on sort of why you're being asked to do. um But it is hard.
00:38:32
Speaker
It's hard to retrain you know your brain. It's hard to to to put your ego in check a little bit and say, you know this this is the new normal for you. um and But but you know the flip side is that it comes with a lot of amazing other things that you don't get.
00:38:45
Speaker
rather than a smaller company, rather than resources and support and time often, which you often don't get in in a lot of smaller companies. And so, um you know, I, and and and maybe personally, i also had maybe the easiest of transitions, which was I sort of went into the startup of the big corporation because right before I went into the big corporation. Trampoline of sorts almost. Yeah, exactly. you know um But but you know I think you're you always sort of evolving as a person as well. right And so it's it's really a matter I think, founding your business.
00:39:21
Speaker
your comfort level in in the new normal and accepting that that it's different. and And then, you know, some people love it and then some people hate it. But you know for me, it ended up being an an awesome fit.
00:39:33
Speaker
That's really interesting. I have a couple more questions for you about something that I'm really interested in. and I hope my guests are too. yeah ah You recently, a few months ago, six months ago, completed an
The Ironman Journey: Discipline and Growth
00:39:46
Speaker
Ironman. Yeah, June.
00:39:47
Speaker
June, okay. I think you're my second guest who's done this. okay You're in good company because Dan Haley is the other one and he's an amazing general counsel. um What motivated you to take on a challenge yeah like that?
00:40:02
Speaker
I still don't know. I still don't know. i um So I think I am a pretty challenge-oriented person. And I find that if I don't have something specific to words, I tend to stagnate a little bit.
00:40:16
Speaker
I think I'm naturally lazy. you know That's sort of my default state. yeah And I can get out of that laziness if I have something specific to work towards. And...
00:40:29
Speaker
and um You know, I had a couple of conversations with my wife about, you know, wanting to do a physical challenge. You know, I'd done um some other stuff in the past and I got injured and then I felt like, you know, I was um stagnating a little bit fitness wise. And um I somehow started thinking about triathlon and I've.
00:40:51
Speaker
Zero triathlon experience. um Prior to that, i' had never owned a road bike. um You know the most that I had swam in ah in a pool was, you know, two laps on vacation. And I don't think that I'd ever run in a 10K before. wow um So I had no right to play in that space. And we often talk about the right to play and the right to win. Yeah.
00:41:14
Speaker
Zero right to play in triathlon. I don't think that I'm naturally, you know, built for triathlon either. um But, you know, it's start sort of started, you know,
00:41:27
Speaker
to perk a little bit in my head. And, and, and I started talking and talking about it, you know, and, and I think it was at the end of the year, at the end of 23, my wife was like, just, just do it. If you're talk about it.
00:41:40
Speaker
Right. I think she called me out during a dinner. Yeah. She said, well, cause I kept saying I'm training. she was like, you're not really training. um And I was like, okay, you know what? I'm going to sign up. Yeah. And so I signed and, um,
00:41:54
Speaker
and um paid the pay the fee. theyre not They're not cheap. They're not that expensive. It was like 300 bucks or something. But it's enough that you're like, I don't want to... It's motivating. You don't want to miss it, I guess. so You have skin in the game.
00:42:08
Speaker
um And then, you know, realized that I sort of had to train for it. um but But it really all started from just wanting to to to challenge myself. and And I do like to set sort of, you know, objective based performance and and something that works for me and something that um that that I really like to anchor around, even even my team. um and And that's how it started, you know. And so I went from having zero
00:42:40
Speaker
triathlon experience to to doing in the race. And yeah, it was an incredible journey, honestly, just super fun. Learned a lot about myself. here You can give me some tips offline. I mean, yeah so and I see it's motivating for a half, yep which I think is more reasonable given my work travel schedule. um i can I can maybe relax a little on the training, but I can imagine doing a full Ironman. Like you have to be incredibly disciplined on the training.
00:43:07
Speaker
And it's also a lot of time. um how did you find How did you find that balance? Like how did you create the time I think to yeah tackle something like that? Yeah, it's um it's Jenga little bit.
00:43:18
Speaker
yeah right So you gotta sort of reshape your days and your weeks. um you know One, my wife was super supportive and you know you have to have support from from within.
00:43:31
Speaker
right And so I was in c incredibly lucky that she said you can do this yeah and that she gave me the time the freedom um and the money to do it uh and and then you know it was a lot of waking up very very early in the morning you know uh 4 30 a.m to go and hit the pool before before the work day it was a lot of uh you know time early on on the bike before the kids woke up It was a lot of time my wife just dealing with the kids so that I could go and do a four-hour bike ride in the garage in the middle of winter.
00:44:07
Speaker
ah And so you know i do think that a lot of it is the support system. A lot of it is the people that you have around you um that um that can really provide that space for you.
00:44:19
Speaker
and then And then just discipline, right? I mean, you just... The most difficult thing is to just... stay very ah committed to the process. You know, and I do quite a bit of travel for work.
00:44:31
Speaker
um You know, I was on the road a lot. You know, we had vacations with the kids and, you know, you you just got to figure out a way to keep training. Right. And I went on, you know,
00:44:44
Speaker
18 mile treadmill runs at the Frankfurt airport Sheraton. you know, when, when I landed, uh, you know, I did laps in the pool when we went on vacation with the kids which was great.
00:44:55
Speaker
Um, you know, I went on really early morning runs, you know, in, uh, in, in the middle of nowhere when, when I was traveling, just because I had to get it done. You just, you just have to find a way. Right.
00:45:07
Speaker
Uh, and I think that that's probably the, The toughest thing is, you know, when you have ah a career and when you have a family to just not find excuses not to do it. Because I think it's easy, it's easier to find a reason not to do it versus reason to do it. um but then But then I just fell in love with the training. I just love, um you know, I'm a sucker for repetition and I'm a sucker for schedule.
00:45:31
Speaker
And I'm a sucker for knowing what I'm going to do a week. And, you know, I had a coach that was programming for me and and having that little luxury of, having somebody tell me what to do right and when to do it and how to do it ah was huge for me and worked really well.
00:45:47
Speaker
And yeah, you learn a lot through the process. And I think you know with triathlon, a lot of it is it's a lot about the training versus the race, right? Because the race is like this. But when you train for months, really, the when you look at the ratio,
00:46:03
Speaker
um It's a lot more training than it is racing. For sure. um Yeah, it was it was pretty awesome. Maybe you've already said it, um but is there like a core lesson that you feel like you took away from from the whole experience?
00:46:17
Speaker
Yeah. um Maybe two things. One is... you've got to break things in small chunks. Totally. And and i think that that really applies to work as well. you know yeah i think um when you think about doing 65 miles on the bike, that sounds...
00:46:35
Speaker
Awful. Yep. Right? And that sounds like you're never going to get through it. um If you think about doing 10 miles six times in a row, all of a sudden that becomes a lot more approachable ah and a lot more reasonable.
00:46:48
Speaker
And that's really sort of how I approached the training on on the long distances. Right? It's don't think about... How long are you going to be on that thing? Yeah. Just, you know, went through all the seasons of of Full Swing and of F1 on Netflix. i i watched a lot of shows, but you just do it, you know, one episode at a time is the way that I approach it on the bike. You know, when I had to do four hours on the bike, it was like, I'm going to watch five episodes today.
00:47:14
Speaker
Yeah. And that's how you break it up, you know. love that. And that's something that you can really apply to work as well. You know, when you have to write a super long memo or when you have to read ah ah presentation, that's 200 pages. You know, break it up in 10 pages increment.
00:47:30
Speaker
Yeah. And I think that that brings a lot more immediate satisfaction, you know, to our brain, ah which I think we crave just naturally. it also makes the task feel a lot less daunting. So I think that that's number one.
00:47:43
Speaker
And then number two is, you know, you got to work your weakness ah because I think that we all naturally tend to like to do what we're best at. And I think, you know, for me, you know, it was running, right? i love running.
00:47:56
Speaker
You don't need to be great to run, right? It's just pretty simple things. Put shoes on, you go out. um But, you know, i that that was my comfort right? I went out and, you know, could run and that was not a big deal. um But I very quickly realized because I sort of was, you know,
00:48:12
Speaker
not really investing as much time and effort into the other two, that's pretty quickly um becoming a problem. And so I sort of flipped the training, you know, and my coach was like, you need to flip the training. And so for a month, I ended up just swimming essentially.
00:48:26
Speaker
Wow. Which was miserable because I'm not a good swimmer. You're a good swimmer, but I'm not a good swimmer. I don't have a swimmer's body. I was not naturally, you know, drawn to the pool.
00:48:37
Speaker
yeah And, you know, the first time that I had to swim for more than 20 minutes, I thought, what is this? yeah Why am I this to myself? And how does anyone subject themselves to to something like that?
00:48:49
Speaker
um And I really learned a lot through that. and And I think that's something you can apply you know anywhere, which is just focus on the stuff that you're not good at.
00:49:02
Speaker
And I think that especially as as you you go through your career, I think we tend to just gravitate towards the stuff that we're the best at. the stuff that we like the most, right? Because they tend to be the same thing. You, Tim, you you know, you tend to like what you're really good at. ah and And so, you know, that was really sort of philosophy that helped me break through a lot of those plateaus when I was training. And that's something that I really took away from from that experience.
00:49:27
Speaker
A great reminder to our guests to listen all the way through the podcast because some of the best advice is
Career Reflections: Humility and Continuous Learning
00:49:32
Speaker
at the end. is at the end and Okay, I've got a few closing questions for you that I like to ask all my guests.
00:49:41
Speaker
The first one is if you have a favorite part of your day-to-day. Yeah, it's bedtime with my kids. Nice. You know, we always read a story together. and ah at night and you know they're five and seven and they still want my wife and I to read them stories. And you know for parents of young kids, you knows Bedtime can cut both ways.
00:50:03
Speaker
um you know It can be ah could be ah challenging, but but it is it is something that you know the kids look forward to every day. And I think that we both, my wife and I, look forward to every day. And you know it's it's part of these these things that you know are not going to be there forever. And and it's something that I definitely definitely love to do.
00:50:22
Speaker
Do you have a professional pet peeve? Yeah. yeah ah Yeah. For me, lack of effort. You know, I don't mind people failing. i don't mind if you don't know something.
00:50:36
Speaker
i don't care um if you need time. i mean, i nothing is a no in my book. I think not trying yeah is something that really irks me um because and anyone can try.
00:50:50
Speaker
Right. That doesn't mean that you need to you will succeed. Right. And I'm not, you know, I don't care. about success in and of itself or about about the outcome, but I think lack of effort and not trying is something that they really you um rubs me off the wrong way.
00:51:05
Speaker
Do you have a good book that you would recommend to me and to our to our audience? ah Yes. I recently read this book called 100 Saturdays. Oh, I haven't heard of that. Yeah, cool. Something new.
00:51:18
Speaker
There you go. um So it's it's a really fascinating story. Story of... This 90 year old um woman who grew up um in Rhodes, which is an island off of Greece in the Jewish community there ah in you know the late eighteen hundreds early nineteen hundreds um as part of ah of the Jewish community, which was very small.
00:51:42
Speaker
And, you know, it used to be um owned by the the island was part of Turkey. Then Italy invaded it and in the early nineteen hundreds um And she ended up um like all the other Jews on roads being deported to Auschwitz.
00:52:00
Speaker
And she ended up surviving and made her way to New York and, you know, lived a really long life. And she met this this journalist, book writer one day. They sat down at her house on a Saturday.
00:52:12
Speaker
And it led 100 Saturdays of them coming together to have him him interview her about her life in Rhodes. ah And, um you know, turned into this book, which um is fascinating. You know, yeah it's it's an incredible sort of snapshot.
00:52:31
Speaker
She sort of goes through her life as a Jew on on roads, which, you know, was a a really unique, you know, time um that we're probably never go to see again. But, you know, this this island where they went from having no electricity, no running water under the Turks to being invaded by the Italians and all of a sudden having this Renaissance um and, you know, being very prosperous um in the 1920s to, you know, in 15 years being all um essentially, um you know, massacred and exterminated wow on what was the longest journey of any Jewish population to get to Auschwitz, right? Because they went from
00:53:11
Speaker
the south of Greece, almost northeast Africa, northwest Africa too, all the way to Poland. ah and And it's a beautifully reading book. you know the story She's a beautiful storyteller and it's just a wonderful, wonderful story. And it's called 100 Saturdays.
00:53:27
Speaker
Great recommendation. Okay, ah final question for you. My traditional closing question for my guests. It's if you could look back on your days of being a young lawyer, just getting started, maybe getting your LLM or yeah in Brussels, um something that you know now that you wish that you'd known back then.
00:53:51
Speaker
Yeah. And when you sent me that question, I really to think hard because I feel like there's so much today. um But I think probably the biggest thing is, you know, nothing, you know, ah and humility, you know.
00:54:05
Speaker
And I think that. I think that's so, ah you know, for lawyers, I think particularly, right? You come out of law school and you really think you know a lot. And you do, right? You don't, maybe you just don't know a lot about what you need to know to be a practicing attorney.
00:54:21
Speaker
And I really wish that I realized that a lot quicker um because, yeah, I think there's, you know, this lack of humility. I think this, you know,
00:54:33
Speaker
massive confidence that we get when you get out of law school, you pass the bar, you know, it's it's really hard to get to that place and you feel that you've got there. um but But, you know, looking back now,
00:54:44
Speaker
two to where I was, you know, i really wish that realized how little I knew about what it actually means to be a good attorney, at least, right? And to add value, to help a business, and sort of guide decision-making in a way that's valuable to the business. And so, you know, having realized that little earlier, you know, maybe it would have been beneficial, ah but, you know, your' you are your mistakes. And so, wouldn't be here without those as well.
00:55:10
Speaker
Tim, this has ah this has been really fantastic. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of The Abstract. And to all of our listeners, thank you so much for tuning in.
00:55:20
Speaker
And we hope to see you next time. Bye.