#32 Lisa Long - Serial entrepreneur and executive manager - Win Building Podcast

Hot off the back of winning a place in the "Top 50 women in Tech in Norway" I interviewed Lisa about her path, her insights into the startup world and investment.
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Video version of podcast is here:
Transcript is here: https://tinyurl.com/5ejt3skk

About Lisa: Serial entrepreneur, executive manager, and experienced international non-executive board member now crossing into the investment world to advise startups to get the right kind of capital to grow their companies. Her expertise is in scaling international software product development for B2B and B2C.

Her experience spans large, complex, international technology projects that bring together business leaders, engineers, product teams and others, to rapidly implement best in class solutions. She has worked on products built for the North American, European, and Asian markets, with on the ground experience in Southeast and South Asia.
Key moments:
@5:20 – What is product management?
@10:30 – what are start-ups actually doing?
@16:30 – Lisa’s pathway – what part did luck play and what was deliberate?
@35:00 – testing out Kickstarter at its early days and some great kickstarter advice
@41:40 – How to handle the pressure of start-ups
@47:00 - European start-up and entrepreneur scene versus silicon valley
@51:00 - Has Silicon Valley lost its edge?
@59:44 – Lisa outs herself as not a ‘fail’ believer 😉
@01:07:00 Lisa talks about women in tech
@01:17:22 – Yet more great advice regarding an early stage company from Lisa
Transcript here:

Transcript

Nick Gray  0:00  
Hi everyone today is Lisa long stay on the podcast. This is actually a long time coming. I thought I'd lost the audio for this because the microphones didn't work very well. And poor Lisa was a little bit sick when we recorded so there was a few coughs I've tried to cut the coughs out. So I hope you enjoy the podcast. She is an expert in all things tech and the tech world. So startups, she has some really interesting things to say around Kickstarter projects, things like that. I really hope you'll enjoy it if you're interested at all in the startup world and I'm sure you'll enjoy it. All right. With no further ado, I will pass you over to me with Lisa. Hi, you're listening to Win Building hosted by me Nick gray.

Hi, everyone. Welcome back to the podcast. today. I'm not going to say how excited I am. I have a very good friend of mine from Insead business school who I went to Insead business school with and she is an incredible woman, Lisa long, I'm going to pass over to Lisa to introduce herself. But what I want to do is get a bit about at least his background. And also, I'm going to talk to you, Lisa, because you're here with me in the room. So this is why I wanted to do podcasts, I got all this set up crazy amounts of wires on the table, I'm going to try and edit them out of the podcasts to make sure that people can't see them. But unfortunately, so you can see the sorry, state of affairs on the table. So Lisa, I'm gonna throw over to you to introduce yourself, if you can give me a bit about your background, kind of where you're from, how you got to be where you are now in Oslo in Norway and and a bit about your life path along the way.

Lisa  1:41  
Well, thanks very much Nick, for actually having on my podcast. I was really excited a few years ago, when you moved to Norway, I thought it'd be fun. But of course, then COVID Hit strangely, and then we haven't been able to see each other as much as I would have liked. But, uh, thanks for inviting me on. And this is a great project I think that you're doing and you've interviewed some really interesting people. So I'm very pleased to be among this group. Yeah. So a little background on me. So my name is Lisa long. I am a Canadian American Brit. And I moved to Norway about seven years ago. So my path has been a little torturous. I started off as a chemical engineer, I studied in upstate New York, and then went out to Silicon Valley where I had to learn how to program. I was there for a few years, and then got into a really, really bad car accident. And so that was one of the kind of defining moments in my life is thanks to the American healthcare system, I was gonna go bankrupt. So I ended up getting a job to transfer me to Europe where there is fabulous socialized health care, which then allows you to actually not go bankrupt just because you've been in a car accident. So I then actually came to Insead as well. And we had a fabulous road trip in the fall of my time at Insead. And I'm actually not sure you know how important that road trip was for me because I hated Insead. At that point. I was having a terrible time. And you were so kind because we were having fall break and you said hey, I'm gonna go down to France to road trip, like, come along, and you're so outgoing. You're so engaging, you're so fun. So I came along for the ride. And it really made a difference. We just had a really kind of calm Good trip, we got to see the goats on the mountain side. And it made a real difference for me and that Insead that like maybe I wasn't in the wrong place at the wrong time. Things got better at Insead, fortunately, went off to Singapore met my kind of core group of friends. And after in Seattle, moved back to England and started a games company called six to start. So we made a game called zombies run. But it's kind of a torturous path from there because I ended up running afoul of the immigration authorities in the UK about a few years after we'd started the company. So I actually had to quit the company. So I can stay on the board, but I couldn't work at the company full time. So I went to work for another friend of mine at her company. And then kind of when things got cleared up, I actually met in with some other people and ended up starting a new company called Sonic play. Sonic play ran and it was a much different experience. We went out to Silicon Valley, we raised funds, we kind of did all the crazy Silicon Valley checklist things. And unfortunately, the company blew up. So I ended up working at Skype and Microsoft. I worked there for a few years kind of you know, reentered regained, then moved to where I worked with a group called a period, which is a videoconferencing system now known as whereby that's gone on to great success, which is fantastic for them. And after a few years, Telenor, I became the VP of Product Management and innovation. So I was helping run the internal accelerator and I was also overseeing the, all the different products that were actually Intel it or for all the different business units and helping them figure out how to allocate resources to the different products. I left Telenor in 2017. And then for the last five years, what I've been doing is working kind of an executive level with the boards, the senior management of various startup companies around Norway and to Estonia and England, and Switzerland, helping them understand how to actually set up their product operations. And also just a lot of kind of the startup things like when you're scaling a company, how do you actually make this work? When you go from 30 people to 200 people in two years? What are the things you have to worry of out when you suddenly go to the United States, and that's a different market, you have to accommodate your product. So that's pretty much it. That's how I got here. And I apologize for the coughing, which I hope you will. I'm still recovering from COVID

Nick Gray  5:11  
I haven't got a cough button. So I'm gonna have to, I'm gonna have to do some, some crazy editing later. But the poor Lisa is not very, not very well. So I'm extra appreciative. Now. So as you've probably noticed, and those of you who love to play podcasts in one and a half speed or two speed like me, that's not going to work for you in this in this episode because Lisa dogs very quickly. And and she is she is an extremely smart woman and has a lot of big brain activity going on in there. She might be humble about that. But that is absolutely I've never heard about this the first time I met her. So I just gonna back up a little bit and ask you some clarifying questions. Because also not everyone who's listening to this is going to be the tech world with startups, and how that all works and some of the terminology. So product management when it when you're talking about tech, don't talk me through that. What does that mean?

Lisa  6:03  
So product management is the idea that you're finding a problem out in the world. And this could be for technology, it could be something concrete, like, how are you going to make marks on a piece of paper? Because you want to make art? Okay, well, how do you make colorful marks? How do you make colorful marks that actually go together? So whatever the problem is, what product management does, It studies the problem, and it tries to understand what are the things you need to know about that problem to actually make a really good solution for it. And then once you actually have this idea of, you might test different things out to figure out like along the way, okay, this will be a better solution than that. So to make marks on paper, maybe it's easier for me to use a pencil if I want to write a sentence. But if I want to make a colorful drawing, then maybe it's better for me to use pastels. So you have to really think about what the use cases so that you can make a solution that's going to work best for the person who's actually trying to use it.

Nick Gray  6:49  
And so when you're talking to people about product management, and you're going into advice on that, presumably they've already got an idea, but they're like, I kind of know, we have an idea for this cool tech, we're going to develop where do you step in there? Are you sort of saying, Whoa, whoa, whoa, back up looking fundamental fundamentals? Or are you kind of joining in and trying to help them guide a bit more sort of defined on where their product product management comes in?

Lisa  7:17  
It's kind of all the steps along the process. So I've come in places where it's a group of engineers who liked to build something, they built something and they said, We need to find some people who will buy this thing. And I say, oh, yeah, we need to pull back a lot and start saying, Hey, what the problem is, and then understand, Okay, does your solution even make sense. And so a lot of I think there's a fair chunk. This is one of the problems in Norwegian startups, I would say, one of the biggest problems is that, and I understand I'm an engineer myself, I like to build shiny things. And you have the ability to build shiny things. And Norway has amazing engineers who can build really shiny things. But the problem may be, you don't necessarily need that shiny thing to fix your problem. So for example, if you need to fix a writing problem, and you're like, hey, I can use this pencil to write things down, and someone comes to you and they have this jet awesome pen that, you know, has Cooper colors and has lasers coming on top of it, so on. And you're saying, Well, I just I just need to write it like thank you on this card, your jet laser pen is amazing, but I probably don't need it. And then they get really sad because they made this amazing jet laser pen. So that's kind of like the worst case scenario is when they've already built something. And then they're sad because they don't have a market. And that is a place I come into. And if I can get them early enough. So essentially, they haven't you know, hired a bunch of people or done things, then I can usually help them fix kind of redirect what they've got to get a better understanding the problem and then start building something that's actually valid for the market. In other cases, what's happened is, the company has actually already built a product, and they're moving towards a portfolio approach. So they've realized, hey, there's one problem area, and we need to actually understand how do we address these other problems, which are close and related to what we have to do. So then they have to start thinking more like a portfolio approach, rather than a particular singular approach. And how does that look? Also, there are companies that are working in thing in more complicated spaces, so enterprise spaces where you can't just solve, you know, it's not as simple as, okay, I need to like, write this thing down on this particular piece of paper, it's like, well, so I need to come up with a system that I can actually send this piece of paper to another place anywhere on Earth, and it will get to that person, even though I don't necessarily know who that person is. So you've got to think a lot more about, okay, what's the system that's going to exist for this information to be able to be shared displayed given to the right person directed in the right way, etc. So these are all the kinds of different places that come in places where they have a product, and they have to redirect it in places where they have one product that's really successful, and they need to start building out other products around it. And the last one, which is essentially this idea of building into a system, so understanding that they're the kinds of systems are going to actually build a relatively complicated one. So what are the pieces they need to have in order for that product to work in that enterprise environment?

Nick Gray  9:57  
Okay. So, in that case, is when when, because I guess in my head, my naive brain startup startup world is always about, you know, it's kind of these group, small group of people looking at some, usually technology nowadays, you know, it's usually a tech related thing in my head, at least for the startup world. And they're kind of doing something that's brand new, innovative, kind of some thing that hasn't been around before. But I guess based on what you've just said, is there's a lot of startups who are sort of solving issues for businesses, the big businesses and enterprises that are perhaps not as innovative but have a new tool or a new sort of opportunity to just change the way things are done. Is that would that be fair? Or is it? Is it always innovation? Was that your favorite?

Lisa  10:56  
Sorry, I'm trying to figure out where to start to kind of address that. So the question, I think, if I rephrase it is the Yes, please, startup companies?

Nick Gray  11:04  
Can you make it sound really smart?

Lisa  11:08  
So the question I think, is around the perception is startup companies are all about, like bleeding edge innovation. So it's some crazy new breakthrough technology that's gonna solve COVID Or do this, whatever. Whereas the reality I may have portrayed is a little more prosaic, like, Oh, these guys are only making an incremental change on something. And I guess the answer to that is, when you are a startup company, your solution definitely has to be 10x better than what else is out there in the market. Because if it's not 10x, better, then you won't be able to replace what's out there. But some of the companies I work with, like I said, they already have really successful product lines. And so those people don't need to have a product that's 10x better, because they have a product that, you know, that did unseat the other things that is really solving it. And so they only need to make incremental changes to their product. So it's kind of to ask two places on the spectrum. So like, there are products that are pulling together. I mean, like, because honestly, even if we'd kind of look at things like, you know, the iPhone, and it was created, I mean, really, that was just pulling together a lot of technology that already existed into a particular packaging. And so a lot of the people like Oh, but it was so innovative for its time, well, was it because you'd already had handspring, which was another set of phones that had existed on the Symbian operating system that you already had the, you already had a number of other kinds of, you know, smart tech phones that existed, but they just pulled things together in a different way than what the iPhone decided to pull them together for. And so that's the thing with the solutions is that it may bring together a bunch of stuff that is kind of normal and prosaic, and blockchain has been around for 10 years. And yet people are still really excited about this. Nobody knows what blockchain can actually be used for. But boy, they are trying. Whereas like artificial intelligence, machine learning, I mean, the first job I had in Silicon Valley was using artificial intelligence to help program recommendation engines. We are still having companies that are new companies that are creating new recommendation engine technology, because this is a hard problem. And so people were working on this for more than two decades, and still don't have a really good answer for this. So I'm not I guess the thing is that the answer your question is if a startup company is going to survive it solution better be 10x better, but it doesn't necessarily have to be a technology change that makes them 10x. Better, it could just be bringing together things that already existed in a way that nobody else has done.

Nick Gray  13:26  
represents that talent. So again, just a quick clarification, for anyone out there who feels a little behind a 10x is 10 times sorry, I went to business school. I went to business school not knowing that and everyone talks about 10x. And I felt extremely stupid, because I thought it was some math problem that I didn't know about. It's just me, it's 10 times.

Lisa  13:46  
I apologize. I live in my own little technology world. No,

Nick Gray  13:49  
no, no, no, don't apologize. But I just feel like I need to clarify for anyone who, you know, is out there. And I mean, I'm always the one who will ask the quasi dumb question.

Lisa  14:00  
As I say, I'm not sure there any like when it comes to coming from a such a jargon, heavy industry like, like, I think it is way better to ask and clarify. Because even within the industry, people are like, oh, yeah, that LCA and the CCB. It's like, Oh, are we really talking about the same acronyms or not? Is that carbon capture? Are you talking about customer valuation? Like, better to ask the questions better to get those answers? And especially like in meetings and things like that fit in when I'm coming in from the outside into whatever the product is? And, you know, those companies are in their own world of jargon, that I'm coming in and saying, Well, I don't understand. Can you explain what this is? Can you explain what that is? And sometimes there are people in the meeting who come afterwards, they're like, thank you. So I didn't know what that was either. And I've been here three months or two months. And a lot of what I tell product managers when they start any job, I was like, this is the best point for you to like, really break a lot of the jargon in the company to have those outside reasons like ask all the questions, because in about two or three months, you're gonna be an insider, insider again, and then then you're you're just like I'm so fresh eyes, ask those questions, figure out what the stuff is because otherwise there's just going to be an assumption. It's too late.

Nick Gray  15:09  
Yeah, and I think that's always that's that's, that's a thing everywhere in business is that you know that you spend the first three to six months in a new business, that's your opportunity to really see what things you know, you can make a big difference with because once you're in, you're you're in with all the politics, you're in with all the issues, you've got a bit tired of the system that doesn't work, or whatever that everyone was moaning about at the beginning, and you've now worked out how to get around it. But yeah, if you manage to keep in mind what you learned in that first few months and, and perhaps address those things, it's always useful. So Lisa, a bit more back to your background as well, because you blazed through it. And I love that that. And just to be clear, as well. One thing I love about Lisa and I did tell her this in advance, so I don't think she's gonna be offended is she's she's one of the most sort of blunt, she's ready to say exactly what she thinks, and she will pull no punches in how she says it. So she is she's very ready to call out BS and very ready to be, you know, not suffer fools is that I think the right expression. So I absolutely love that about you. But you also blaze through your your sort of your background, and I think I want to understand, you set your you were telling me just before about your school, high school, and you know, you weren't a top performer, there was what you said just beforehand. But then you went on to do chemical engineering, you said, right. Yep. So yeah. And but then you end up being extremely talented with computer stuff. And I just want to see that. Where does that? How does that line? Go? What? And I guess what the reason I'm asking is is kind of one of the questions I sort of said to you beforehand, what I might ask you sort of also linked to that what moves in your life have been sort of deliberate? And what have been circumstance and maybe an element of luck? And what both or neither, you know, where do you see like, how do you see your pathway when you reflect back on it?

Lisa  17:14  
So luck has more to do with anything in anybody's life than anyone wants to give it credit for? I think that's the first thing to say,

Nick Gray  17:20  
I totally agree. Like some people get offended.

Lisa  17:25  
I mean, there's There's a wonderful book by a guy named Richard Wiseman. And it's, and it's about luck. And the whole idea is that how do you increase your luck? Because it is actually possible to do it. And what it comes down to is what are your how many chance encounters do you have with people who are not in your regular daily life, that's basically what it comes down to. So it's walk a different path to work, it's roll the dice and go to a new coffee shop, it's try a different food, it's, you know, put yourself in a slightly uncomfortable situation and see what happens. And one of the other pieces of advice that he has about the luck side is this idea of get a friend to do it with you, because then it's easier, because then also it's a shared new experience. And so it's reinforcing the bonds of your friendship. To have this like, wow, we tried that coffee that was bad. We now know don't go there for coffee, and you have a story now that you can tell with a friend. And so then that may become the thing you do with your friends. So for I can think of one example were a friend of mine came to visit me here in Oslo. And he and his wife were like, Okay, we're here to test all of the burgers. And I'm like the burgers. You came to Oslo to test the burgers. I mean, we do actually have some pretty good hamburgers in in Oslo, I'll say but I was like, it seems strange because they're coming from London. And London has some really amazing burgers. So I was quite afraid that essentially these burgers were not going to stack up in Oslo. Guess what? They had their expectation set in London. But we did we spent the entire weekend going to like we literally ate do two or three meals a day that were just burgers in all the different burger places in Oslo. So that way we had enough data to go back and say okay, you know, we approved for the burgers and Oslo good place to come if you want have a good burger

Nick Gray  19:03  
isn't that thing, it's another thing when they go to a city it was just it was just a thing for Roseland

Lisa  19:08  
for whatever reason when they came, they told me they're like, we want to do burgers. And I'm like, okay, and like I've traveled with them to other places. And they you know, it's never been burgers. And so I was and in fact, is the first time ever on a trip where they kind of had a specific food that they were chasing. So I'm not entirely sure where this came from. They just came up and had burgers anyway. So back to your actual question, because about having not good performance, like high school was fine. But and so that's what got me into university. But in university, I was a terrible student like terrible, terrible student chemical engineering, and chemical engineering. But actually, I was even worst student in computer science because we had to take computer science as part of our chemical engineering thing. And the thing I was good at and chemical engineering is I could run equipment so I could run plants I could run so we had like a test plant, a pilot plant we had to run in our senior year, and I was really good at running the equipment to get good data. And I was really good at labs and things Get that. But in general, I was not a great student. So I was as, as President Rhodes from my university said, I was part of the students that made the upper 50%. Possible.

Nick Gray  20:14  
All right. Yeah, so pulling no punches.

Lisa  20:19  
Somebody's got to do it. So I served my part. So when I graduated, my like, my expectation was I was supposed to go to grad school, but obviously not with those grades. And so the good thing about chemical engineering is that it's a path where essentially you can do your undergrad, go out for a few years into industry, and then come back and do do your PhD. And whatever it is, you're going to do fluid mechanics, or you know, biomedical stuff. Vapor Deposition, all the fun stuff that you can do chemical engineering. So when I had when I was a senior, and clearly seeing that, like, grad student grad school is not going to happen for me, I went around to the grad students, and I said, Okay, what's the best thing for me to do in the next few years while I'm out in the industry? You know, so should I go work at a biotech firm? Should I go work at like, big menu, like a big facility like a Dupont or Monsanto or something like that? Where should I go? And they said, Well, you need to learn how to program. And I was like, what? So like, the class that I did even worse than I did. So they're like theoretical classes. You're telling me I need to go to a program? And they're like, Yeah, but it's fine. Because it's the late 90s. It's Silicon Valley, they're just gonna hold a mirror up to your mouth and see if you can fog it, and then they'll teach you everything you need to know. And I thought, This is ridiculous. It's like, how could they possibly hire a chemical engineer who's you know, terrible at this like this is I'm not gonna get a job. And they're like, no, no, really, we're not kidding. Just go to Silicon Valley. And you'll sort this. So one of my classmates had actually transferred to Stanford. And so I went to go visit him. And when I saw I flew out there for spring break. And, again, this is where the luck stuff comes in. Right? So this is a person who I met in university who had been with me for two years, and then flew up, like transferred to Stanford. So I went to go see him for and the day I came there, he was like, Hey, he's like, do you have your CV and I was like, Well, I have like a copy on like you at that time, my remote mail server. He's like, great, he's like, print out a bunch of copies. There's a job fair going on right now for the bunch of computer startups. He's like, so go, he's like, so just print it out. He's like, and just tell them, you're an engineer, and just leave off the fact your chemical engineer, he's like, I'm gonna see what happens. And it was from that job fair, that I actually ended up getting my first job with the artificial intelligence company that the recommendation engine stuff. So I mean, but that's luck. It was luck that I knew that guy was luck, the fair happened to be that day that I happened to be on a campus with him, you know, and, like, so it's, it's happenstance that I was able to actually get that. And then once I started working in it, then I figured out how to program I figured out how the systems worked. And you know, over time, like, several years later, I was at somebody's wedding. And they hadn't seen me for a few years, because, you know, graduated, go your separate ways. And so the guys were asking me, they're like, Hey, so what did you end up? You know, you're out here in Silicon Valley? Are you working for one of the biotechs? And I said, No, I'm working in this company that says, like, this artificial intelligence stuff uses this like language called Kate, which is used by NASA for the satellites. And they're like, Yeah, we know, Kate, how are you programming and Kate, because like, you're incompetent when she comes to computers. And I'm like, I know. But like, I figured it out. Like now they're paying me and this works. And, you know, so now I have this career in computers. And it's also having worked in startup companies like so the very first company I worked for it went public, during the.com, boom. So it went through like a whole thing of all the excitement leading up to the IPO, and the big parties, and all the weird trips to Napa Valley. All the kind of like.com stories you've heard and the things that were repeated in 2010. And the things that are painted now, like, all true, and it's probably worse than you think it is, is probably the better way to put it. So, you know, it was it was very successful thing. But again, I there were kind of the other parts of this, which is I had been that really bad car accident. And so I was also struggling. When

Nick Gray  24:01  
did that happen? Like six months after I moved to stem to Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley? Yeah.

Lisa  24:07  
So six months after I moved, I got in a really bad car accident. And so then what was really tricky is, I was in rehabilitation, and so and then the United States, obviously, you have to pay for your own health care. So even though I was insured, the problem was it because it was a car accident. It was litigious activity. Therefore, my insurance company would not cover any of my medical bills. So I had to pay for my medical bills out of pocket while I was waiting for the other insurance company to show up. What ensued was like a bunch of lawsuits. And at the end of the day, so I was in rehab to try to like rehabilitation, so like physio, three times a week, like scads of painkillers and anti inflammatories and things like that trying to keep keep things in manageable. Like it was just unbelievable pain, like waking up every day and unbelievable pain, trying all these different kinds of drugs to kind of manage The pain to try to manage the rebuilding. So anyway, this is like several years in process. And then about three years after two years after the accident, this case goes to arbitration. And in arbitration, they award me $45,000. And the outstanding medical bills at that time were $69,000 15,000 of the 45,000 went to my lawyer, and then 30,000 was left over to pay the 69,000. But like I said, I was really lucky, again, luck, that my company had gone public. So I was able to use the money the proceeds from the IPO to actually pay the medical bills. And that was the problem is it six to $9,000, it still wasn't done, there was still more like it was ongoing treatment. So I, I got the second company I worked for it got sold. And so I was able to actually pay, you know, since it got sold that my shares vested that I had another chunk of cash to be able to pay another chunk of medical bills, but it was you know, you can't you know, when you're when your medical bills are fast becoming more than your annual income, you realize this is not a sustainable situation.

Nick Gray  26:01  
So Well, I remember when we met as well like eating in Insead, you were in a lot of pain still. And you know, it's what you mentioned actually recently that you're still going regularly to

Lisa  26:11  
Yeah, I mean, it's a chronic thing. Like it's not a not a Get Out of Jail Free card, it says your condition, you have to manage it. So how

Nick Gray  26:18  
did you sort of manage that alongside having to learn to code having to learn to you know, you wasn't, it wasn't just coding, it was also like learning how to work and be a sort of contributing member of the team and everything, you know, is your first sort of proper job? Well, I mean, how did you? How did you pull that together? Like that must have been really tough, but most

Lisa  26:40  
like, so in university, I'd had to work through university as well. So it wasn't really my first job. And it was also a supportive job

Nick Gray  26:46  
Korea job or whatever. Yeah,

Lisa  26:48  
I guess? Well, I mean, part of it, I think, again, I was super lucky. So when I. So the, the, like, so the group I was working with, we were all in doing kind of like developer support. So like, people go out and make systems, the systems break, we'd have to actually fly out on site and try to fix their servers standing in server rooms that were very, very cold for very, very long periods of time trying to get the server's back online. But the guys that were also on the team, they were really supportive, like they were really helpful in and I mean, like, helpful in a way of like, there was one of the treatments that I had to go through, and it would take a week, to go through the treatment. And so they would like to, they would give me the treatment. And then essentially, it took about seven to 10 days to recover from thing to then kind of reset me to try to go on to the next level of rehabilitation. And so during that time, it was very important that I actually eat a particular diet and make sure I eat because otherwise, then the drug treatments they were giving me we're going to have more of an effect, right? Because it's the whole thing of like, you have to worry about all the biology and things like that. What's getting used. So anyway, so these guys actually, so I was like really worried because I'm like, wow, like they have this like your, your dietary requirements, you have to do this, can you actually sort this out? So sitting at home, before the procedure happened, I was like, man, what are we gonna do about this? And one of my housemates came home. He's like, Hey, what are you looking at? And I was like, Well, this is the thing for my treatment that I'm gonna have. And this is what I have to do. And so he's like, Oh, he's like, Oh, well, I'm happy to like, cook all the food you need for that week, because like, that's not a problem. And so he actually cooked an amazing set of meals that week, and we're talking like breakfast, lunch dinner, so he like made little packets like so he would make the food and like, like for dinner, then he and my other housemate we would like all have dinner together. And they were like, you know, you know, we're gonna try to encourage you to eat and try to do these things, whatever. And then several years later, I actually had to have same procedure again. And I was living with different housemates at that point in time. And another guy who had actually been on that team before, he's like, Hey, I heard you're having that procedure. He's like, I he's like, I'm happy to come and cook you all the meals. And just so we're clear on this. This is not like guys who are trying to date me. These are just guys who are really good soul. Yeah. So they, yeah, so like, he came to my house. And he would like cook all the foods. And like for either two housemates, like, because these guys just really, really love to cook. And suddenly, it was like a captive audience. I definitely had to eat, they're like, great, this is an excuse for me to come and like make all this food and then these people have it so. So I was really super lucky that those guys were there at that time to help support that kind of thing. And then in terms of learning stuff, I guess the thing is that it's it's always interesting, like, the core engineering thing, I think, is that it's always interesting to figure out how to solve a problem. And a lot of coding is just that, how do you actually solve this problem? How do you think about it? What are the aspects around it? How do you like what happened? Why did things break? How do you actually Unbreak them? So learning that kind of stuff and computers and like this happens parts in the service structure and so on, definitely leads into the product management side of things, which is you know, worry about the problem and worry a lot about the problem because this once you actually understand how the problem works, it's much easier to actually find solution. So that kind of made me reflect a lot of my engineering experience was, Wow, I built a lot of really stupid stuff. Because I didn't actually spend the time to actually really understand the problem. So no wonder I built it, it broke, I built it, it broke, I built it, it broke. And I was just like, man, like, like, my users are so stupid, right? That was always, for us to say it was like, oh, yeah, they just don't understand. And it's like, that's, that's ridiculous. Like, these are people who are running multimillion dollar systems. They surely are not stupid people. But it took me a long time to kind of come to that. I honestly, like the way I came to that realization was, when you're doing play testing for games, it doesn't matter how much time you spent building something. It only matters that it's fun. And so my very first kind of user testing for game design. That was like, the cold water was like, oh, man, I made these really great puzzles, people are gonna like, this is gonna be amazing. They love it whenever I got totally, like, killed on all of them and everything. And I was like, but I worked so hard. And you know, my co founders, like, it doesn't matter. Like, it wasn't fun. Yeah. And that's all that matters is if the users can use it, if the users think it's fun. If the you know, our players enjoy it, then it's good. But if it's not, you know, who cares?

Nick Gray  31:08  
Yeah, you can't you can't remember your exact quote, but you're I know that you've been quoted as that listening to your customers, you know, the, the main thing you need to do is listen to the customers as well, what do they need? What do they actually want.

Lisa  31:23  
But actually, this gives me a wonderful opportunity to put to death. One of the things I keep hearing, which is the Henry Ford thing, which is Henry Ford says, Oh, if I listen to my customers, I get faster horses. That means Henry Ford was a really, really crappy user researcher. Because if he was a good user researcher, and I'm going to cite my friend, Erica Gibson on this, then he would have understood that the problem was people want to get from point A to point B faster. And maybe now we'd have flying cars, maybe now we'd have like transport devices, where we just like, you know, immediately trend view go from one place to another place immediately, right? But no, he was like, I'm making my customer solve the problem by saying, What do you want? What you need to do is say, what's your issue? So tell me about your day. Tell me what's you know, what's not working? What's frustrating you what makes you irritated? Because a lot of times when you're doing these user researchers and things like that, and you're listening to somebody's day, no one's gonna say like, oh, it's really terrible, that I have to spend 20 minutes stressing my kid, it's like, you can't say that it's supposed to be a wonderful bonding time, trying to get the socks onto your child, right? Like, this is how it goes. But if people listen to and you're like, Well, do you really want to spend 20 minutes of your quality time dressing your kid or if we had a different way of actually having the kid dress themselves or do this so that the time you can spend with their kid is actually now playing and blowing bubbles and putting playdough rather than them screaming while you're trying to actually put on the shirt that they said was their favorite shirt? And now they've decided is not their favorite shirt? Because you've cut their cheese in half? Like,

Nick Gray  32:48  
you sound like you've been around a little bit. That's exactly right. I think one thing I wanted to mention as well was good with LinkedIn, too, that you mentioned, very quickly, about six to start and run zombies run right, which was a very successful, I think, as I understand it, very successful app that you built right app. And, well, I think I know what it is. I used it once a long time ago now. But if you want to talk me through that, because that is a good example, in my mind of like fun and solving a different is solving a problem in a very different way.

Lisa  33:25  
Yeah, so. So the company I had six to start, what our company was known for was essentially Trent, combining the digital world and the real world. So doing things like we would have a digital treasure hunts where essentially, you'd have to go to a particular place, get some information from that, and then use it online to actually fill out some additional information. So we built games for people like us. And their thing was, you know, the bad news, the bad news? Yeah, so we made a game for them called the United States of Eurasia, we also made a game for Death Cab for Cutie, around the video transportation that was all about like QR codes. So we used to build games that would kind of combine this online and offline world. So when we actually wanted to create our own game that was part of the thing that was really important is we wanted to create a game where people were going to do things in the real world and be rewarded in the virtual world. So where the zombies run thing came from, and I have zero credit for this. So just so we're clear, like I'm one of the cofounders of the company, but in when it comes to zombies run, I had nothing to do with this. I did all the boring stuff like read the legal contracts and workout like the logistics of how we actually transfer money from the United States on a Kickstarter to like the UK. Like, I do all the boring operational things. I am not creative. I am not. Yeah, I have zero to do with the actual game creation, but I can tell you the game creation story, so it went like this. My co founder, Adrian was working on trying to figure out like fitness stuff. So we've been researching a lot are in the fitness space and trying to get people to move and thinking about this kind of idea of like how do we change and he'd been trying some ideas, and kind of nothing was really sticking. And so he's a bit frustrated. And then Naomi alderman, who is a very famous author, now, she had joined a running group in London to kind of get fit. That was kind of her thing. She's like, I'm gonna try running and see how this goes. And in the introductory, like, run, different people were saying, like, Oh, why are you here. And so one person was like, oh, I want to get fit. And one person's like, oh, I want to lose weight. And then one person said, Well, when the zombie apocalypse comes, I want to be able to outrun all of you. And say, Naomi heard that and said, That's a great idea. So Naomi, called Adrienne and said, like, I got this, like, like, we're gonna make this game. And we're gonna make this game where essentially, people are running away from zombies, because zombies aren't like hard to run away from, like, you just have to kind of keep ahead of the shuffling order to like, everybody can run away from zombies, you don't have to be like a super sprinting person. And it's gonna be the zombie apocalypse story. So like, you're gonna have a role to like be, you know, what ended up being the supply Runner Runner five, to go get supplies for this. And it'll be like a, like a person's story of like, how they're actually helping this township survive. And so there's like, this whole thing. So that was kind of where it came from. And so then what happened is, we needed money, as usual, to actually do the game development. And so we had to test a bunch of stuff out. So like I mentioned, one of the things we had to test was, okay, how are we going to get the money to do this. And at that point, Kickstarter had just started. So Kickstarter is its websites, where you can actually raise money for independent art projects, things like that. And at that point, in time, Kickstarter had just been used for kind of relatively small things, people, you know, raising a couple $1,000 us to do, like, you know, art, really, kind of simple art projects. And Adrian, and I saw it and said, Hey, wait a minute, what if we use this to try to raise money? So we tested it out by basically, Adrian said, he was going to write a book called The History of the Future and 100 objects. So this is a takeoff of the British Museum, which at that time, was doing a display called the history, you know, history of the world and 100 objects. Because God knows the British Museum has definitely more than 100 objects in the entire history of the world. So So yeah, so he said, Okay, I'm gonna write this book. It's a history of the future and 100 objects. And then we went on Kickstarter, we wrote a profile forum, we did the whole thing, I figured out again, this is this is my contribution, I figured out like the back end stuff, like, Okay, we need a US account to do this, we need this. I'm an American, I can sort this data. And we ran the campaign, and it worked, like we had raised over $3,000. And we're like, okay, so unknown British dude able to raise money from Americans with an idea. So we're pretty sure we can like, sort something out. Now we understand a lot more about how to run this campaign, we can then do something for

zombies run. And so that summer, then Adrian, and Naomi kind of like cashed it out as to like, how the gameplay would actually work. And we also thought through like, Okay, how does the, how do we actually run the campaign for Kickstarter. And so then the Kickstarter campaign, we ran the fall. And again, we were like, luck comes in here, because we ran the campaign. And it, we knew, like, for example, you have to have 50% of your money pledged upfront. So you, we kind of knew we had to line up the people to pledge the money for the first day so that we would have the momentum to actually show up on the page, that way, you would have more people be like, Oh, I've already gotten 50%, well, then it's easy for me to go ahead and put in the $10, whatever. And so that's like a really important thing to know about Kickstarter campaigns, or Indiegogo, or any of these is that if you don't have all of your, at least half the money, you want to raise lined up before the actual thing starts. And you really need to be on top of these people make sure that like, Hey, you are giving this money and you're gonna get in between these hours at this time, we're going to do this kickoff, etc. So that way, you can actually have the momentum you need to actually get onto the front page to then have other people kind of trickle in. So yeah, so that's something else I've worked on over the years is helping other people get their Kickstarter campaign sorted. So yeah, so we got the cache in, we got the people coming. And then we got lucky because essentially, we got picked up by several places that were like, Hey, look at this weird thing. These people are doing this zombie game, but you're actually having to physically run while you play the zombie game. And so we ended up in Forbes, which is amazing, because I think I was the first NCR to have anything show up in Forbes. Because about four years after he graduated, and so I was happy that we were in Forbes because I was like, Look zombies in Forbes. I don't think anybody else in our class did. And so what also so the luck thing is like, okay, so we got picked up. And so we ended up being we had the most number of backers ever in the history of Kickstarter. So we had 3000 backers for that project. And we raised way more money than we'd planned on so we raised $72,000. And so Kickstarter was thrilled with us, they're like, Oh, my goodness, thank you so much. You have totally validated this idea that we have Boston you're now a great story. So we have a wonderful relationship Kickstarter, the great people and so then the so the luck kind of continued essentially having this press you know, really helped them He kind of like got things launched, and got it out the door. But around the time that we were about to launch to kind of January, February, there was like a big push in the United States about how video games were, like terrible for people. And so then suddenly, we got to be the opposite story, which is Oh, but look, there's this app that makes people run. And so is that, like, how that video games are bad. And so again, we enjoyed all of this press coverage that had nothing to do with us. It was just lucky that at some point, somebody decided they wanted to go bash on video games, and then we ended up being the counter example for this.

Nick Gray  40:32  
So yeah, so that was that must have come up in sort of the product management type of men like thought process when you're when you're discussing zombies run, you know, like, there must have been a thing there is like, we can play to that, right? Or is it not really in your mind? Well,

Lisa  40:50  
I mean, we certainly weren't, like, how could we know that that was going to be a thing that happened in the United States, right, like, so once it happens, then you're like, hey, let's take advantage of this awesome sauce. But also, we were a skeleton crew of people. So in terms of the things that we were prioritizing at that time, it wasn't so much press coverage, as it was, Oh, God, we have to get this thing out the door. I mean, like, isn't it we had Jupiter recordings, it was our first version of the app. And like, you know, it had like a deadline to get out there for people to actually use it. So, you know, in certain ways, sometimes this stuff happens. And like, if we had had more resources, yeah, maybe we could have made a bigger splash, because we would have been able to use that. But the reality was, at the time, I will tell you like, it was much more hand to mouth, like we'd given up our office at that point, we were doing the record recordings, and our director of audio is bedroom. So like it was better mattresses around the walls, like it was, you know, it was a scrappy operation at that point. So, I mean, it worked. But I think that they're just chunks of luck that we got really lucky with.

Nick Gray  41:47  
So where do you think now? What like where's six to start? Now? You said you had to wrap it up. And yeah, so we sold

Lisa  41:54  
last year, to all of x. So, and all of x is like a big consortium company that actually works in all kinds of fitness applications, they have like, fitness mirrors, and they have other applications that are also like promoting health and fitness. So that's awesome. So I am now officially not part of the business anymore. So I'm not a spokesperson, like, you know, things are going great. So you know, we get updates, we see what's happening in the press, and you know, things are going well, like, I wanted to change tack

Nick Gray  42:23  
slightly, but here's the the world you work in, as far as I understand it, and then you can correct me if I'm wrong on my base assumption, but it's pretty stressful. Because of you know, it's a lot of pressure, especially in startup world, there's, you know, people are cash strapped. They are, it's scary, I guess, because you don't know if it's gonna get picked up, you don't know if the company's ever gonna make it an even if you've got a great product, that solving exactly the problem that the customers need solved, that is very much in demand. If the worlds don't come together in the right way, if you can't get the product out the door before someone else comes along and start solving it a different way. Or if you can't get the cash to market it in the right way, or you can't get it, you know, distributed in the right way. All of those factors can sort of cause it to disaster, right. And so I guess that's sitting heavy on a lot of people who run startups shoulders, they're sitting there saying, this is a lot of pressure. And the reason I'm framing like all of this is, I can imagine that high pressure, very intense. And stressful environment causes a lot of people to kind of struggle with their mental health and with their, with their mindset of how to how to keep holding on to this, how do I you know, how long can we really suffer this for? Like, how long can I live on my mom's couch? How long can I you know, how long can we literally bootstrap this for?

Lisa  43:52  
So I mean, I think the canonical example of this is when there's a suicide in the startup world. So normally, that hits the headlines and such and such a person who is leading this company that seems you know, be all the tech press darling. And now the founders dead. Or, like the one I kind of think of that's the the turning point, in many ways, was I think it was maybe 2012 or 2013, I'm not sure. But a founder of a company that was there was in the midst of raising its next round. And apparently things were worse than what he had pitched. And so he had a lot of crushing pressure about this, and he killed himself. And because the company was so high profile, he then at that point, there was a lot of discussion around this idea of like mental health and founders and people not spending enough time paying attention to the stresses and strains and not taking care of themselves and so on. And that's pretty, like certainly when I started off in Silicon Valley, I slipped under my desk. I didn't take vacation for two years. You know, they have this like worrier mentality of like rah we're going through this however, I will also tell you You. And again, this is Anik data, not like real data, but probably a third of the people, I knew were taking illicit drugs because they were trying to manage their health situation. And they were too afraid to actually go seek actual help, because they didn't want to increase their insurance premiums of their company. And if they went to go seek mental health, then it was going to cost their company money, because that meant that they were actually seeking more medical attention. If they were actually diagnosed with something like depression, or bipolar, or something that actually was like, Oh, this is going to take us a while to fix and it's not just okay, you know, yeah, your whatever, like, oh, this, you broke your leg, fine, we can fix your broken leg. And in six weeks, we'll be out of your cast and on your merry way, oh, you have depression, well, this isn't going to be something we can put a cast on you and hope for the best in six weeks, right. So a lot of them wouldn't, even though they knew that they had these mental illnesses, from like their parent's insurance or whatever. They wouldn't seek treatment through official channels, because they didn't want to actually have it on their record, that potentially would increase the insurance premiums of their companies. Apparently, things are better now, because with Obamacare that has actually changed some of this. But at the same time, there is still a, there's still a stigma of going out and seeking the help when, when there is so much crushing pressure on for you as a founder or even just the people who are working in the startup companies, because your life is also very, very unstable, even as an employee in a startup company. And this is one of the lessons I think that from early Silicon Valley was look, any company you join, you won't be there, it's not very likely, you'll be there in five years, because it's not very likely the company will be there in five years. So your insurance and startup land is that you look around and say, who are the good people that I'm working with? And do I want to work with them again, and then you follow them to the other companies. And so more than half the jobs I've ever gotten, have always been because oh, it was somebody I worked with before I really liked them. And so they pulled me into the company. And when I similarly had to like build my team at Telenor or other places, then I would say, Okay, I'm bringing this person in this person. So I've worked with them, and they can do exactly this job, they can fix this thing, they can do these things. And so it's your network, that is your safety net. But even your network is very stressful. Because if you're having mental health issues, and you're not able to maintain your network, because you don't go and have the coffees and the group beers and whatever else, then you're losing even more security. So it's, it's a pretty vicious cycle.

Nick Gray  47:20  
Yeah. Yeah, it's brutal. It's brutal. No, I think, well, then the advice is probably seek help, I guess. So we're like, don't be afraid to.

Lisa  47:32  
I guess the big difference for me was when I came to Europe, and I was starting six to start, one of the things that kind of it was, it was an unusual realization for me to have, because everybody else in Britain was like, That's the dumbest. Like, that's the dumbest thing we've ever heard, which is I looked around and I said, Wait a minute, I can hire anybody. And they're like, What do you mean? And I was like, well, like in Silicon Valley, like, when you're a really early stage startup company, you can hire people who are like, less than 25. Because you need somebody who has an astronomical risk profile, who's willing to go, like without health insurance without like, treatment without this, whatever, whatever, whatever I was like, but in Britain, nobody's worried about breaking your arm. And like not getting treatment. Like that's not a thing. Whereas like, in Silicon Valley, it is. Anti so like, it just opened this idea like, wow, this universal health care thing now makes my life better as an entrepreneur, because I can hire somebody who has kids, because they won't be so worried about health insurance, I can hire somebody who's like, a super senior architect. And so that, really, so it was an interesting realization that it's like, well, this healthcare thing, yeah, sure. It drove me out of the United States, because I couldn't afford the health care bills. But it also made a huge difference for me as an entrepreneur, because it meant that I suddenly had a whole range of people I could, so the only thing that they were willing to risk was Yeah, okay. I may not make as much money here as I would somewhere else. And I believe in your company believe in the upside. So therefore, I'll come and I'll do this. But suddenly, these people weren't basically tying in their health care and saying, Well, it's okay, because my wife has a really good job x y Zed, so therefore, we'll use her health care to do this. Or, you know, my husband has a really good job, therefore, we'll use his health care to do this suddenly was like, oh, healthcare is not a consideration anymore. Now, unfortunately, as you know, being British, the mental health services in Britain are still not perfect. But they are better than nothing. And so, over time, like they're we're definitely working, I think, in the creative world, with games and so on so forth. I think people are much more free about talking about like, oh, yeah, you know, I'm not 100% All there I am bipolar. I have this issue I am you know, I've had manic depression and I've had you know, these issues, behavioral disorders, ADHD to that, like people are just much more open about this, I feel in the creative industry. So when we actually worked with these people, it was not it was not as much of a stigma it felt like and working with them. Whereas the engineering side and the technology side, it was still very much like Well, yes, he's got a thing. He's like, okay, so he has depression, like, but he can code. So who cares? Yeah, like, and he's actually under treatment, which means that he's functional. And I guess that would be the really, the kind of sad thing that happened, or I saw happen in Silicon Valley is there are people who are really, really bright, really bright, but also really not stable. And so the problem would be like, literally, I remember times when there would be people who would call me and they'd be in tears, and they'd be flipping out because they were having an incident. And they were like, I can't go to seek professional help. I am calling on my friends to try to be that blanket to support me while I'm actually having this incident. So can you guys help cobble this together? So we can figure out how to do this. And so like, literally, we were calling like, one of my housemates had one of his friends was in med school. And so when people would have an episode, we'd call the guy who was in med school and be like, okay, this person is having an episode. What are our options? How do we do this without actually using real medical access? And like, that's a messed up situation. And also, like in Britain, like if there was something wrong with one of my employees, like somebody was sick or whatever, like we had this really horrible week where everybody got norovirus. It's a terrible, terrible week for everybody. But the thing is, like, as management, we could be like, dude, go to your doctor go get treatment. And it wasn't like a very politically loaded thing. Whereas in the United States, if, if you know, everybody got norovirus, we could never say that, you could never say that, because you had no idea what was going on, like, maybe these people were not, you know, it was too expensive. It was too out of the way, they couldn't do it for their kids, like whatever it was. So it makes a huge difference. So

Nick Gray  51:40  
do you think then the world is sort of changing more in terms of innovation, tech space, like cities? Has Silicon Valley lost a bit of its edge because of those sorts of things as well, or? I mean, because I know that there's a lot of hotspots around the world. I mean, I lived in Bangalore, Bangalore, and Hyderabad are the two places where so much Indian tech talent is sort of just sent centering on. And there's other countries as well. I mean, you know, there's other countries as well, which having lots of innovation tech centers, the UK has made a real push for that. Is it? In your mind? Is there is there something changing or shifting in that? Or is still Silicon Valley, kind of the pinnacle? I mean,

Lisa  52:26  
at the end of the day, honestly, He who has the gold makes the rules. So most of the money is still sitting in Silicon Valley. And so this is kind of where the diversity of things like the people who are the ones who have the money. So the more people who have money in places like India, or in places like China, or in like, Malaysia, Australia, Chad, wherever I mean, if there is more capital than there can be more stuff that happens, because the reality of innovation is that a lot of the reason why Silicon Valley can be Silicon Valley is because there are a lot of really wealthy people who graduate from university without debt because their parents paid for it. So they can actually afford to take the risk, which is why you see so many white male founders or people who are upper middle class, we're doing this I mean, no, Mark Zuckerberg didn't come from a very poor origins. Neither did Bill Gates, while Steve Jobs may have dropped out of university, at the same time, he still actually had a much better support system than, you know, the Homebrew club that Wozniak had, like, they're just they're a lot more resources available to a certain class of people. And so you tend to get that certain class of startup people in Silicon Valley, who actually have more people they can call on for more resources, like this idea of like friends, family and fools. The very first round you ever raise in a startup company is people who around you in order for that to happen, they have to have money in the first place. Yeah, you know, Bezos didn't get money from like, wow, my long dead uncle gave me his inheritance. No, his parents gave him a few 100,000 Just a few 100. Like, here you go, kids. Here's 100,000. That's a very different world to live in. And I know like we went to Insead. And so we know, we have classmates who are certainly in that world where, you know, and, you know, shout out to Marwan and Dan, who are running the venture fund

Nick Gray  54:13  
coming on my podcast, okay.

Lisa  54:15  
So shout out to them for the work that they're doing, in terms of actually trying to get more capital from our class, because we're the people who have this cash to then redirect it to more diverse founders and more places. And that's, that's the kind of, like generational thing you need to have happen is essentially more money has to get out there into more places to do it. But without that cash, it's very difficult because a lot of what Silicon Valley is, is people throwing money in a suitcase and burning it. And that's the reality of startup land is that most of this stuff isn't gonna work. Most of it's going to fail. Most of it's going to be like a complete and utter, like, lack of success, but the thing is what it does teach us people so like, the startup companies I went to, um, In terms of like, you know, who doesn't make it, there's, there's a very different idea of who doesn't make it, if you're a lone person who's like sitting in a place coding something up by yourself trying to do it, and you're a person who I mean, okay, so I can, I can tell you a founder story. Once upon a time, there was a really big company, and they decided, and they had a change of CEO. And so the new CEO, chucked out all the product people, one of those product people was sitting on a couch playing Arkham Asylum, another friend of mine. And a number of VCs had approached that person and said, Hey, here's $2 million, just let us know, whatever you're going to do. So they he had nothing, he was playing Arkham. And so they kind of like so he kind of went pitching, but it was more kind of like having chats because he had this really, really strong network. And from this, he was able to get a chunk of cash. And so they then started this company and kind of worked on this particular technology. And the person who had given them the cash and the end of the the one, they actually ended up taking it from when things weren't working out, then they ended up getting swept up into some of the companies that basically when Marissa Meyer took over Yahoo, and then went on to spin on a buying spree of a bunch of different companies. So their company got bought as one of those things in the buying spree because of who their investor was. Now, the reality was, the founders kind of walked away with nothing, because the investors were like, we're just recouping our cash. And we see that we don't really believe in you anymore, we don't think this is actually happening. And so, you know, but at the same time, they get to say they had an exit, and they had an exit to Yahoo, in the Marissa Meyer bank. So it's like, Hey, this is a great story to tell

Nick Gray  56:35  
somebody to add to your portfolio.

Lisa  56:37  
Yeah. And so and the thing is they do, they still have those connections for that cash. And the investors didn't get burned, because they actually got their cash back. So there's a lot of waste in the Silicon Valley system. And the thing is, I think a lot of what the rest of the world doesn't understand is that that is a necessary part of this game, because the things they learned from that, from running that particular thing, have gone on to another company, and made a significant difference in how they do this. But they never would have had that other functionality. That other company, if these guys hadn't done their startup company here, to burn through a lot of money, cash and education to actually get there. So there's a ton of waste, but it's a lot of education.

Nick Gray  57:18  
So there's an interesting segue there to actually talk about the theme of my podcast, which is Win Building. But I think one thing that's been interesting, talk to a lot of people about about the different themes that I, I perceive that to be involved in constructing something that is successful or building an achievement for yourself or for a team or for business. And one of the things I have in there is fail, right is fail and learn, learn from your failures. And you know, be prepared, be prepared to fail, because you've got to design the right strategy, to be able to execute a strategy to win in whatever it is you've defined as the game you're in. And whatever it is, you've defined as a win. So to get there, you've got to design a strategy, that's the best one for being able to win. And then you've got to work out how you execute that strategy and what skills and talents and everything you need to execute the strategy in the best way possible. But then you've got to learn how to do that, right. And that's the fail bit is like, then you got to iterate and work out, okay, we got to build towards that. We've got to learn from the mistakes we make and adjust and adjust the strategy. And that fail element. A lot of people get to the point there and say, we're not how can you fail in business? You know, you don't fail, we don't do don't allow ourselves to fail. And I feel very strongly that will you do, you just don't pin the entire the entire survival of your company and your business on failing once? Right, you fail in parts of the strategy that you're you're building out. So you test things out on the market, you test out a new product, or you test out a new marketing strategy, or you test out a new digital, you know, paid search, campaign, whatever it is, but and those things you can fail in, but then you learn a new adjust and you so you take small fails, I suppose it should probably be. But what you've just described in the startup world is exactly what I would classify as sort of, you know, okay, so maybe it's not fail, and maybe maybe failure is the wrong word. It's too strong, but that they didn't achieve exactly what they would have set out to do in terms of building a company but but they got an excerpt and they got they got a lot of things out of it. And then they learned from that and could build on. So the negatives of the fact that it didn't develop into some, you know, multimillion dollar business is contrasted with what they then took on to the next next adventure. You're looking next venture, you're looking very suspicious. So

Lisa  59:53  
trying to work out where you're going.

Nick Gray  59:55  
I just think it's interesting because because that's sort of that, for me, it's interesting because That's sort of the, because I've had a lot of people push back on this fail thing I've had a lot of people push back on the wind thing as well, like people that are talking about when they talk about winning, they get the people get upset because they think well, then there's got to be a loser and things. I have a whole spiel about that, which I won't go into right now.

Lisa  1:00:18  
So we want to talk about failure. I think this is actually I think this is a misnomer. So the the fail fail fail thing that people keep going off on. So I don't know if I'm becoming a difficult guest because of this now. But I don't. So the idea of fail is not really. Like, I wasn't the fail cat before I was like, Yeah, you gotta try it. And if it doesn't work, so be it. Because like, in playtesting, you test something, your users hate it, you're like, oh, no, the users hate it. They hate me. This is all horrible, blah, blah, blah. And you have to be like, no grow up, like you did a thing. They didn't like that puzzle. Now, what did you learn from that puzzle? So I was at a talk, I think in Cambridge, actually, and the person there said, Yeah, we have to stop using fail, because failure is very scary language to large companies. And every time we say fail, then people have adverse reactions in their gut from when they were eight years old. And they got picked last for the football team. And they have adverse reactions, their gut from when, you know, Tommy beat them in the math competition, or, you know, and so fail is has makes a visceral reaction. However, if you use the word learn, so we have to learn faster, not we have to fail faster, but we have to learn faster than people, you know, they may have differing things about learning, because they may also, you know, have very unfortunate expense with learning, but a lot of people had relatively positive experience with learning. And so they're like, Okay, yeah, I remember when I first started trying to speak Spanish, and it did not go well. And then I got to the point where I could read books, and I could watch movies and Spanish. And like, I really felt so much cooler when I was like, I just watched that whole movie in Spanish. And I didn't have to turn subtitles on. And I can tell you what actually happened in it. Like, it was a real sense of accomplishment. So if you can kind of translate that and say, look, it's the same thing in business, it's like, you just have to learn and you have to learn faster. And there was a very funny talk that was given a few years ago with my the product conference. I wish I remember the lady's name, I think it was Janet Frazier, but I'm not sure. And she said, I have good news and bad news. Bad news is today is the least amount of change you're gonna face for the rest of your life, she's like, but the good news is that you can 156 billionths of a second added to every day to help you deal with more change. Because the rotation of the Earth is like slowing slightly. And so therefore, the days are going to be slightly longer. So you get 156 billionths of a second to like help you deal with the additional change. So you have more time to deal with all the changes is going to be happening to you. So that's the thing is, I think it's really much more about learning. Because certainly, that's the thing that's important is, it's that idea of like testing failing, I think what you were trying to say is this idea of, they shouldn't bet the farm on doing this in the startup company world, you are betting the farm, you're betting the farm, this is going to work or not, because your success has to be bet the farm success, if it's not bet the farm success, it's not the kind of success that investors want. And so this is also a reason when, even if you're just not growing enough, you can be a bad investment for an investor because they need that 10x, right, they invest in 20, companies 19, you know, it's like whatever one will succeed and do your 10x or 100x, you know, two or three will zombie and the rest will die. And they may be active and killing some of those companies, because they're like, We don't want to tie up any more of our time and effort, we need to actually spend more time on the things that are actually growing like our rocket. And so this is something that has to be kind of understood is that if you're going to take investment, then you are in a very different trajectory than somebody who says, Okay, we're going to organically grow our company. So like, since the start was an organic company, we took the very little chunk of money from a government organization at the beginning. And the rest of it was organic growth. Whereas with Sonic play, we went out and we did investors, and it was a very, you know, we probably could have survived. If we had decided, okay, we're going to flip back, and we're going to grow organically now. But the investors wouldn't have it, they were like, No, you have to meet these targets. And since you're not we're, you know, we're forcing you basically into suicide, like you have to, like this is no longer a company because you're not meeting the growth targets that we need. And I understand like, now I work with more. Now, I've kind of been on both sides of kind of working with the investors on this and working with startups on this. So I, I understand better, and I'm trying to help more entrepreneurs understand that, like, Hey, if you're going to go after investment, you're going to build a very different business, and so understand what the expectations are of you, and also understand, like, what they're going to give you for this money, because it's not, you know, you don't have a say in running your company in the same way as you did before you took this money. Yeah. And so you may be pushed into different directions because, again, they look at the risk at a portfolio level. They don't look at the risk and individual company levels, they will push you to actually do more risky things, because it's the smart thing for them to do. And 20 sets of risks they're taking They need each one of these things to be as risky as possible because that's The biggest payoff as possible.

Nick Gray  1:05:01  
Yeah. And they don't care about your product in the same way you do they care about the way they exit and whether or not it's going to be a success. Yeah. So it's a, you're automatically on a different to a different scale with them at that point. Yeah, it's interesting. It's very interesting. I think you're right, actually. So I'm you're not difficult. Yes. At all. And you're absolutely right. There's probably what I should probably change the chapter actually. Because I said, fail. I think you're right. I think you're right learn I'll attribute you you're you're

Lisa  1:05:31  
not me something like agile Cambridge, that was a conference where it came from, and I wish I could remember.

Nick Gray  1:05:39  
It's okay, you'll get all the credit. And then then I'll get someone coming after me for it. Another thing I wanted to ask you about, which was, and I don't, maybe it's not something that you feel is really relevant. But I'm interested by you mentioned all these guys. And you mentioned white, white male, blah, blah, blah, certain certain background and things. You're a woman in tech, that is not common? I don't think I mean, there are more now, but it's still predominantly a male driven world. I think I'm right on that.

Lisa  1:06:14  
So far, as I can tell, the stats are still in the favor of more men than women in tech. Right. So

Nick Gray  1:06:19  
so how, like, I guess I just want to ask you generally about that. What's your experience there? Is there a way in which we can get more women into tech? Why aren't women picking tech as a career? Is it because men dominating and it's a weird vibe to go into? What's your sort of experience of coming into tech as a woman? Is there any things which you felt are relevant, that might be useful advice for women looking to get into tech or, I mean, I definitely don't want you to sit here and have to be an ambassador. Because wasn't why I invited you onto the podcast. But obviously, you're not but your experience. And you just want that that accolade is one of the 50 top 50 Women in Tech in Norway, which is amazing. Congratulations, by the way. That's amazing. But I think it's it's, it's just interesting to me that still, it seems to be that, you know, there's not a real shift in the statistics. And I feel like there's been an especially here in Norway, for example, and I don't know what the stats are in Norway, they're very different. But feels like there's been a concerted effort to try to get more girls into STEM more girls into kind of engineering and math and, and, obviously, by association, coding and engineering, development and stuff. And it's probably working to some extent, but it doesn't seem to be really changing things. I mean, that's my impression. Is that right? Or is it Are you hopeful? Like, I'm just gonna throw you that word salad? Well, podcast host ever, I'm just gonna throw word salad at you and expect you to respond.

Lisa  1:08:06  
So we've been in tech, what do you think? Yeah, well,

Nick Gray  1:08:08  
no, I must have come up. It must be something you get asked about, I guess.

Lisa  1:08:16  
So I'm going to tell the same story to lots of people about when I first came to Norway. So I've worked in tech for a bazillion years, like you said, it's mostly guys. So I'll be in a room and it's me. And it's 20. Guys, and that's normal. And that. They know that's the world they live in. And occasionally I run across other women were like, Oh, my God, like a Spider Man comic. Yeah.

Nick Gray  1:08:38  
So of course, we must be exactly the same.

Lisa  1:08:40  
I mean, as far as the guys are concerned, yeah. So no, but it's. Yeah. So anyway, let me let me tell the story of like coming Norway. So I've been in tech for a bazillion years, I've worked in different countries, and I've worked in different groups and different sizes of companies. And here, I came to Norway in 2015. And I was going to be the product manager for a period. And one of the first things I had to do was sit down the holy engineers be like, Hi. Explain to me like, what you're working on? What it looks like, what technology using, like, how does this go? And I was learning a new technology, which is called WebRTC. And I was shocked by these meetings I was having with the engineers, because I was like, Man, this is like these, like these, these Norwegians like, man, they're just like, right to the point. They like, just get on with it. It's crazy. Like they're super focused. Because what was happening is that I said, hi. Like, I'm least I'm the product manager. So explain to me what you're working on what the problems are, what do you think he's done, etc. And the guys would turn around to the whiteboard and start explaining to be like, Okay, I'm working on this and I'm working on okay. Do you understand how this WebRTC technology works? Okay, you don't understand the packet stuff. Okay. So it works like this. Are you familiar with this system? They're not. And they were just explained to me it was actually happening. So about two months later, I'm I went back to London and I was having lunch with my friend Harpreet. And I was telling heartbeat like all these crazy nerds In engineers, there's really nothing I had ever experienced before. Because like, they're like, so focused and so on task and like, we would just, you know, I'd ask them a question. They just answer it. And like, it was amazing. And she said, you know, at least I hate to burst your bubble. But um, do you think actually that that is actually how it's supposed to work? And the way you've actually had your experience up to this point, is how it's not supposed to work. And I was like, what? So she and I both. Exactly. So it was very, like, unfortunate moment, in some ways, or I was like, Oh, my God, how much time have I wasted but like, like, yeah, anyway, so I was like, I can't be that it can't be like, I'm not that stupid, right? Yes, I am. Spoiler alert. I'm really that stupid, really stupid. And I'm very amused, because I'm sure in 10 years time, I'm gonna look back on this and be like, Oh, I was so stupid. Because I think this is what you learn is every decade or so you look back on your life. And you're like, wow, I was really stupid. I'm really stupid. So I'm looking forward to how much smarter I'm totally going to be in the future. Because I think I've learned so much. And there's still so much more for me to learn. So, in order to test this theory of Oh, engineers, just answering your questions, I went to my nice white male friend who was also a coder. And I said, Hey, tell me when you go and ask engineers, these basic questions when you get started, like, how does this conversation go? And he said, I ask the questions, and they answer them. And I was like, so they don't ask you questions about your background, or the since you worked on or any of this, he's like, sometimes it comes up like in the course of the conversation he's like, but no, they just answer my questions. So that was my aha moment. I was like, wow, I've been experiencing like gender discrimination for like, 20 years. And I was too stupid to figure it out. Yeah, it's so interesting. This is the thing is that because I never like if you're the only woman and basically every time you deal with another engineer, and the engineer says to you, like, Well, tell me what your background is, and what systems have you worked on, and you end up in a mini interview, even with people who interviewed me for the job to do it would do this to me. So it's this kind of small thing. And so looking back on it, I'm like, no wonder so many. I was like, I'm too stupid to have gotten annoyed, because I was like, Well, this is just like the last company I was at where they asked me this. And so okay, I'll answer your questions. But of course, all the other smart women were like, this sucks. These people don't trust me. They don't think I'm actually competent. Therefore, I'm out. Because what you're actually seeing now is, they've actually fixed a lot of the pipeline, like, you know, 50% of MIT is, is female 50%. But then what happens is they go out into the industry for five to seven years, and then suddenly, they're not doing it anymore. And so what's happening is that essentially, people are getting discouraged. And I can say, like, even from, you know, it's, there's a lot of discouragement along the way. Because it's like, well, you're not supposed to do that. Right. So one of the things I think that's good about Norway, is the fact that like people like men and women parents here, so I remember being in a meeting at Telenor. And it was like, 230. And again, a bunch of guys. The guys are like, hey, so we're starting this meeting at 230. But who has to pick up their kids from Barna Hagia, and again, that was like a flooring experience for me, because it was like, Wow, these guys actually know they have kids, they actually are, are doing, like they're concerned about their work schedule, so that they can actually go and pick up their children from like school. Like, in all my years in England and France, the United States and ever, I'd never been in a meeting where like, children are raised as much more than like, oh, yeah, my wife just had our second kid this morning. But you know, it's okay. I'm still on the call. So,

Nick Gray  1:13:37  
no, it is it is a great country for that. And I think it's interesting. I don't I sort of in in third, from what you're saying that the reason those Norwegian engineers might have talked to you in that way was because culturally, they're just they're looking at you as an as an normal person, not agenda. And so their talk, I'm guessing, I mean, because that is certainly my experience here is, you know, it is a very much equal society in that way. And people tend to, obviously, there's exceptions in what I'm saying here, but they tend to be much less gender oriented in the in the way that they are sex oriented in the way that they approach. They're still treating one another.

Lisa  1:14:23  
Yeah, I would say like, there's still expectations, they're still like, you know, no place is perfect. It's just that Norway was so much different than where I'd been previously, that it was a step change. And the other thing I would say is that there is like, even if you have this, even if you have a more supportive environment for people to do this, in order for people to stay in this industry, remember a lot of like, if you're going to be really successful in technology in Norway, where you're gonna go, Microsoft, Google, who runs that bunch of Americans. And so what's the American culture doing for this? So when it comes to like, you kind of run up against these things which Yeah, I mean, I think it's just the nature of any company is that whoever, wherever your headquarters is, that tends to be what your management is like. And so, you know, there's a friend of mine who is of. So he's Norwegian, but his family is from Pakistan. And so he moved here and grew up in Norway and was very frustrated growing up in Norway. And he's, I mean, he's, I think he's born. I think he was born here. But um, anyhow, he's, his parents are from Pakistan. He moved here, grew up in Norway. And then he moved to the United States, worked there for a while, moved to France lived there for a while. And as his kids were growing up, he realized he like he loves France. He's like, this is the best place ever. He's like, I love living in Europe. This is so fantastic. And he was looking around and kind of French culture. And he was like, Yeah, but the problem is, is that here, I can't, in France point to any kind of business leaders or people who look like my kids, and are in charge of things he's like, but if I go to the United States, I can point to the CEO of PepsiCo, I can point to the CEO of Microsoft, I can point to the CEO of Google, and show that there are people who look like my kids who have made it. And so he moved to the United States, ironically enough, from France, because he's like, I need to move to a place where my kids can see that they can actually have a future and be at the top of their game and the top of the, you know, the top of the food chain. And if we stayed in France, he's like, they would not have that. Understanding. So yeah, I kind of get the rest of

Nick Gray  1:16:31  
the way. Yeah. It's interesting, isn't it, it's there's so many different challenges that you've, you've kind of touched upon. And I think your thing about luck, a lot of what you've talked about, is linked to like, whether it's about your own luck, but also about the way that startup founders, you know, if they've got some, some rich family or some some people who they know with cash to burn, then that is an extremely lucky situation to be in. I mean, I started my own company, and I tried to do it without any investment. And it was a very naive thing for me is part of the reason I decided to go to business school because I wanted to learn what I've done wrong, basically everything, but especially related to finance, because I was like, I was clueless. And I pretty much still am completely honest. But we're right at the end of the podcasts are the true hardcore are still willing to hear that little brutal honesty for me. No, but I started that company. And I realized, in hindsight, I'm like, you know, getting investors getting people bought in, there's like, there were people around that I could have asked, I just My family wasn't wealthy about time. So they weren't the ones I could ask. And I felt terrible, I would have felt terrible asking anyone else. But you know, the thing is, if you have an idea, you believe in it, and you believe you can sell it, there are lots of people wanting to invest it, especially if they've got that extra cash, they want to invest it to get some return on their investment, you know, they will be willing to take risks with extra cash, if they believe in your ability to deliver, you know, something of value in return.

Lisa  1:18:06  
But then remember why the first round is called friends, family, and fools. Because the early stage company is very much putting your money in a suitcase and setting it on fire. Yeah, and that is happening with most of the money that's in Silicon Valley is people setting their suitcases on fire with this cash in it. But what it does is it creates this area with all these people who have all this information and know how to do this stuff that then goes and benefits other companies. I mean, the people like the touchscreen stuff you have on the iPhone, and the iPad, and all that kind of stuff. That company went bankrupt and Apple bought the parts. That's where that technology comes from, for that touchscreen for that really good interface. So wasn't apple that came up with it. It was this company that they were able to actually go and buy the spare parts from.

Nick Gray  1:18:53  
That's amazing. I didn't know that. One more reason to be cynical about Apple.

Lisa  1:18:59  
But be cynical about all of these companies. Because the idea is that, you know, again, this idea of like, oh, that's super innovative tech, like look, honestly the bleeding edge stuff. It doesn't work. It's like a nightmare. It's really scary like moderna for the vaccine stuff. We look at them. They've been working on this mRNA platform for a long time. And nobody really believed that this was actually going to work. So when they finally actually proved this Coronavirus thing. This is a game changer for them. That guy went from like whatever is $8 billion company to like an $800 billion company, because they were finally able to prove that one thing where this technology really worked. And there's so much of technology, which is like yeah, there's a reason why IBM has just a lab of people testing out random things and new technology and trying to actually make this stuff work because at some point, a product manager is going to come in I like literally IBM actually has or had this building in Basingstoke, and it was the most amazing mi six looking building in the Basingstoke in the UK, and this was like an old manor they'd converted and the basement of this place was like It had all the lasers and like all this kind of crazy tech in there. And essentially, those are the people who are the boffins, which is like scientists the term. They just try out new technology things try, like they play with Second Life, they play with like different virtual world things, whatever. And they're just testing different things out to see like how things work, how they work together, how they can actually take real world information and use it in some sort of simulation to like change the weather in Second Life based on what the weather was in Basingstoke that day, like what kinds of mood integrations and things. And what would happen is that the people who were like a business development in IBM upstairs, would like run into a problem that they found at a customer site or whatever, and they come downstairs to the basement be like, so we're gonna explain this problem to you, is there anything that you actually have in your bag of magic tricks that would actually work on this kind of thing. And so then that would become a consulting project for IBM. And they would take this one technology, that kind of this guy had been poking with a stick, and this weather woman had been like, you know, hooking up to some other generator. And they were like, Okay, let's take this thing with like some chicken wire and duct tape. And we're gonna give it to this customer as it's consulting project. And then if it works, hmm, this might actually be the basis for something for us to patent and use. And then suddenly, that becomes the basis somebody else, maybe Google or Apple will actually pay for that patent, to then use it and license that technology to actually, you know, or Huawei, or somebody would actually build all this stuff out

Nick Gray  1:21:18  
ideas is the future of ideas. I just, I just listened to that book by Max Tegmark, is it life 3.0 or something? It's quite an old book now I just listened to I was like five years old or something, of course, with the with all the concepts about what's going to happen in the future. And we're five years in the future. So a lot of things have come true now. But yeah, they talk about they talk about the sort of currency of ideas and what what's going to be the things that still are worth pursuing in the future. Lisa, I'm going to wrap up there. Thank you so so much for coming in joining me I think it's been a great conversation. And I want to say hi to anyone that knows me and Lisa, any indeed friends and things you've kept with us all the way. Anyone else who's kept with us all the way. Thank you so much. I always appreciate the people who stick with it and listen through, like, subscribe, do all that jazz review, but also feel free to get in touch. I'm going to leave throw over to Lisa does sort of say the last parting words. Any advice anything you want to promote anything you want to kind of cheerlead? Or do you just want to say goodbye?

Lisa  1:22:30  
Thank you very much, Nick, for having me on your podcast, Hello to all the instructors out there. And I would say if you have a chance to give somebody who is not like your background, it opened a door for them or, you know, be at an internship or you know, a grant or you know, funding anything like that. Take the chance because they need help to get that education to get those opportunities. And a lot of people who are probably gonna be listening to this podcast are the people who can open those doors. So I would say take the risk open the door because you have no idea what wonderful things can happen and how much better your life will be because the door has been open to someone who can help solve your problem.

Nick Gray  1:23:06  
Awesome. Lisa long. Thank you so much.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai