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SPEAKERS

Matthew Grimes, Jeff York, Brad Werner

 

Jeff York  00:14

Welcome to creative distillation where we distill entrepreneurship research into actionable insights. And if Jeff York serve entrepreneurship at the University of Colorado in lovely Boulder, Colorado, I'm here with my guest host, as always,

 

Brad Werner  00:28

yeah, I'm Brad Warner. And I've worked with Jeff at the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship. And I think we have a great show today actually. Very, very excited. I see this a couple really cool beers sitting next to me, Jeff, that showed up on my front porch. So I thank you for that.

 

00:43

Yeah.

 

Brad Werner  00:45

We're going to talk about your wife what why today and why London pride and Newcastle. We're doing

 

Jeff York  00:50

something a little different today. We are not tasting a Colorado beverage for the first time in the entire history of our podcast, all 10 episodes, whatever it is. We're going international. You know, we kind of had international guests last, last podcast, and this time we're gonna go English ale. So Brad is really excited because he doesn't have to drink any more pumpkin beer. I personally, am still lamenting the end of Halloween and the pumpkin beers my wife says pumpkin beer ends at Halloween. I totally disagree. I think it goes well up until Thanksgiving at least.

 

Brad Werner  01:28

I think it ends when they put it in the bottle. No way don't guys don't waste your time on pumpkin beer.

 

Jeff York  01:35

good ones out there. Good beers. Excellent this year for noses, has a great pumpkin beer and go

 

Brad Werner  01:40

to Starbucks pick up your latte.

 

Jeff York  01:44

So my supervisor for my PhD Sarah saraswathy. moved to Germany at one point in her she thought of things. And to make money she would stand outside at one point. She told me a story. I don't know how to get around here sometime. But she was a see the woman eat hot peppers. And she would have like a bucket out. She's in the desert. And she would stand and eat hot peppers. And the Germans would be so amazed by this they would like to actually give her so so maybe I could stand outside and just be like, see them and drink pumpkin beer and enjoy it and like what you think

 

Brad Werner  02:17

it reminds me a story of my father who went to the dentist a couple weeks ago and my dad's an Old Navy guy and he had his Navy hat on. And he was sitting on a bench outside the store waiting for his wife to get out there, takes his hat off, rubs his head, his head is sitting in his lap and a guy comes by and drops a buck in his hand. A story forever. I'm surprising that out there again today he's because his dollars.

 

Jeff York  02:43

Very cool. Well, so now we thought great busking ideas, I'm sure inspired entrepreneurs around the world to take up these wonderful ideas we have. today. Our guest is Matthew G. Grimes who I want to call him a professor. But they have these fancier titles over in the UK where he is he's University of Cambridge, which I was lucky enough to visit during my sabbatical a few years ago. If you've never been there. It is amazing. Wonderful town. wonderful university. Thanks for joining us, Matthew. Welcome.

 

Matthew Grimes  03:12

Yeah, thank you both for having me. Looking forward to the conversation.

 

Jeff York  03:16

Yeah, it's gonna be fun. And so what is your actual title?

 

Matthew Grimes  03:20

So at the moment, at the moment, its reader, which has a very strange title, it apparently has history in in the UK. So a lot of the universities here used to abide by this kind of, you know, lecturer, senior lecturer, reader, then then full professor. So here, you're not, you're not even allowed to call yourself a professor until you reach that full professor status. But it's been been quite confusing and people have debated in terms of as the profession is globalized. Right. So there's some confusion over, you know, is a reader and Associate Professor equivalent, or is it a full professor equivalent? Or is it just somebody who can read? Well, you know, so there's, there's a lot of confusion over what over what exactly it means.

 

Jeff York  04:05

And for those of you that might be listening, you have no idea what the hell we're talking about. So when you're a professor, this is fascinating to Brad, I'm sure he felt like I

 

Brad Werner  04:12

know what I'm thinking is every entrepreneur listening to this looking for tips right now is just passing out saying, Are you fucking kidding? Me? First of all, we have a reader talking to us today. What the hell is that? You know, that the British, the British titling system, as we all feel in America maybe is a little overdone.

 

Jeff York  04:30

Let me explain this in more depth because it's really fascinating. Basically, real quick, so when you start off being a professor, your assistant professor, associate professor, then professor, and in the US, that just means assistant professors don't have tenure yet. And after that, you become associate professor and then you want to become a professor for you can make 1% more money a year, I guess, and you can hold your title or something like that. Anyway, so that's how it works. But it is confusing when you go to the UK and someone or do something So that someone's getting an addiction, this person is a reader. And you're just like, most of the people in this PhD seminar probably are, you know, read.

 

Matthew Grimes  05:08

Are you a reader? Do you like to read?

 

Brad Werner  05:10

I do enjoy reading, but mainly fishing books, though and magazines about boating and I'm really, really happy. They're so sure you read all sorts of I read, you know what, actually, I'm an avid reader reader. I get up at four in the morning and I start reading probably for four hours before I even start my day.

 

Jeff York  05:26

That's awesome. I don't do that. I mean to and I don't. Anyway, so we're really stoked to have Matthew with us here. today. We're going to talk about paper he wrote a few years ago actually, called the pivot. But first we're going to taste beer. Yes. Because that's what we do. Yeah. So Matthew, you're drinking the the London pride, right? That's correct. Yeah. And so London pride is made by Fuller's. Its original London ale. So I know that I know that a lot of British beers use obviously, British hops. And British hops have a different flavor profile than American hops. And so people are always like, it used to be like, well, we Americans are, you know, making unique interpretations of the world's beers when the microbrewery movement start and British beers pale ales in particular, were a big influence in that. But the basic thing is British hops are really expensive. So American breweries started to grow their own the cascade region up in Washington, Oregon, that whole area, and American hops tend to have them much more assertive, and fruity estery kind of flavor wears British hops are more floral and have more of an herbal flavor to them. So anyway, Folgers prides a great example that and British beers are brewed with harder water, the water is generally harder in the UK, to say is to me, this beer tastes awesome. I love it and then coming for me, that's actually a hell of a compliment. So I went to college for a year in England, the University of London. So it makes me feel that people are so nice, went through my college years former there, and then a lot, a lot of traveling there with my family afterwards. That's,

 

Brad Werner  07:04

maybe this just takes me home a little bit. So I really I think that this is a fantastic there.

 

Jeff York  07:09

So Matthew, tell us about your experience with British beer as an expat. Yeah, well, and maybe a little background, so you didn't do your schooling or grow up in the UK, right,

 

Matthew Grimes  07:19

I did my master's work at Oxford, that was my one year abroad, but then returned to the US to do my PhD. And after, after finishing the PhD, moved up to Canada, three years back to the States, where I was a professor at Indiana University and then moved over to Cambridge, just a couple years ago. And we've loved that sense. I mean, it's been a strange place to, to spend the last year of, you know, COVID, the COVID situation kind of removed and distance from the family and from everything going on back back at home. But, you know, it's also been a kind of a magical place to be Cambridge, in particular, as a very rural kind of picture as kind of pastoral landscapes. So, you know, the river floating through the center of the city, and a lot of history and innovation kind of intersect in this at this place. And so, you know, all the students actually left in March. And so it was basically I mean, it was a, it was kind of the city emptied out, so we lost the tourists who lost the students. And so it was just really the residents, faculty, I mean, you know, so it really became more of a college town that was owned by, by essentially, the, the faculty at that point. And, and, and a lot, I mean, there's a, there's a number of technology startups here. So, you know, a lot of the workers are still here. AstraZeneca, you know, you know, a lot of people might have heard of, I mean, they're the one of the entities behind the UK vaccine. That's, that's coming out around around COVID. So anyways, yeah, that's, that's kind of the the short story of how we ended up here and what it's been like, since I've been here in terms of British beer. I mean, I try to avoid it as much as possible to tell you the truth. But yeah, there's, I mean, there's a number of craft beers coming out, you know, around here, you know, following the trend of the US, but, I mean, I think, actually, I mean, I don't mind this, this beer, though, London pride is pretty, pretty solid beer. And I would say, like, in general, they tend to serve it kind of warm, which is, which is a strange decision. I feel like at least from American palate,

 

Jeff York  09:26

I think, I mean, but there's a reason they do that. So the reason they serve Well, the reason traditionally British sales were served was because they didn't have a refrigeration. They just have an American beers too, and so naturally carbonated. And the interesting thing about British beers is you can go when you go to a pub, you go on the cask, and the cask means that they're not using injected co2 to push the beer out. It's being instead hand pumped. So if you go in place, and that's why I'll take a minute for it to settle because the beer gets stirred up and that sells and to Americans. They go and get And they're like, Oh, great. You just gave me this flat, warm beer. Thanks. Yeah, and by the way, there's not much alcohol and either so for Americans are like, Oh no, but this is the beauty of British yet when it served warm like that. Even a beer that's like three, three and a half percent alcohol like basically a Coors Light and alcohol has flavor profiles and a richness to it that many American you know, American ales tend to be kind of one note, not all of them, but I'm being very beer nerds would get very angry with me, but there's the reason they serve warms tradition and also allows us flavor profiles to come through. Now. take some getting used to for sure, but I love it. I mean, well, Mito, I like I love pumpkin beer too. So yeah, that's your guy. So anyway, this is fantastic, though. I really like the malt flavor of it. You know, it's got like, almost like a biscuit. Like a toasted cracker like flavor. It's a toasted malt. It's a British style of malting. And really nice.

 

Brad Werner  11:01

You know, when your beer judge days, Jeff, are there any American craft breweries that are putting out kind of this English style?

 

Jeff York  11:08

It's interesting bread. They're really I'm sure there are. I mean, there's 1000s of craft breweries in America now. But I I don't know of any. There's one brewery called Firestone Walker in California that kind of has a British branding to it. But you know, it's real. And I remember there was a brewery in Virginia that did just ratios. They don't tend to be popular with Americans. Yeah, maybe we're still like, you know, against the red coats. And but uh, yeah, this one's a good one. And then the other one we got, I got finished this first I'm trying to drink as quickly as I can. But this real quick. That really is good. The other one we got today. And by the way, if you go to the UK, like don't drink any of these beers, like like Matthew saying, like, there's there's so many brewdog is one of my favorite British microbreweries out there. They're getting huge now I think they might have gotten acquired by somebody. But this is Newcastle brown ale. And okay, so I was an exchange student to Scotland when I was like a senior in high school. And my parents are like, yeah, you this educational quote, unquote, experience. You came back with a beer gut. And I guess I've kept it ever since. But this was my favorite beer when I lived in hike in the borders of Scotland. That Scottish beer it's obviously from Newcastle and Trent. Most approachable British beer possible. One of the most approachable

 

Matthew Grimes  12:38

craft beers period pretzels again, a good word for it. Yeah.

 

Jeff York  12:42

Good training, training wheels beer.

 

Brad Werner  12:45

I would say for me, I liked a lot of pride better than the Newcastle.

 

Jeff York  12:48

Better about the London frog.

 

Brad Werner  12:50

Just Just to make it the flavor profile. To me. It's more I think it's more of a neutral flavor. flavor profile.

 

12:56

Yeah, I like that. It's cleaner.

 

Brad Werner  12:58

Yeah. So I mean, I don't know how else to describe it. I mean, they're both good. But I think that, for me, a lot of pride stands out.

 

Jeff York  13:05

I'm a big brown ale guy anyway. And probably because you alluded to, I used to be a beer judge. And like the first time so he gets a homebrew kit. The first thing they brew is a brown ale

 

Brad Werner  13:15

really isn't the easiest one to make.

 

Jeff York  13:17

It's just what people brew, I don't know. I mean, it is easy, relatively, but it's really easy to make a crappy one. I can assure you that because because I drank like 500 of them when I was judging beer contests. Like when you're judging a beer contest. You judge a category. It's like, hey, Jeff, you're gonna judge brown ales. And then you judge all the beers in that category. So if you're doing like, Belgian triples, like, you know, weirder beer more advanced beer to brew, you'll probably judge like three of them, right? brownhill like a flight of 28 beers, like and they're all horrible. And even the best ones like not that exciting. Okay, you managed to make a brown ale, great. Kudos to you. Because Yeah, like you said, it's not exciting, right? Right. So um, great beers, obviously good stuff. But if you go to the UK, just walk into a local and just ask him what's good and just, you'll be fine. You know, it

 

Brad Werner  14:15

is so much fun. I mean, just the selection, how everything's different, and how the communities actually kind of revolve around the pubs right? So you can find great food in pubs now. And yeah, it's just it's an experience and it's just really fun.

 

Jeff York  14:30

I agree. I love it. I think I love Cambridge more than anywhere else I've ever been. Yeah, Cambridge is fantastic. wonderful city. We should do this live. Post COVID will we'll just come over and do our European tour Brad Yeah,

 

Brad Werner  14:42

we can we can bring some bucks if you can read ours ourselves. Is everything so spell mat is

 

Jeff York  14:49

just getting rising. When

 

Matthew Grimes  14:49

is it one shutdown? We so we just went into our second lockdown as of yesterday. However it is it's a fairly A precise and slightly moderated version of the lockdown, in some ways, a similar version to what I think I was reading that the White House health advisors is suggesting, at this stage, given, given the rates that I noticed in the US last couple days, but the there's no gatherings that are allowed you but you know, they encourage exercise, the children are still in school. And and if you if you have to work, if you have to get out of the house to work, there are certain exceptions that get made. But ultimately, they're, you know, they're trying to take the next four weeks, and really stave off a massive exponential. And they're also trying to prepare for the holidays. So that, you know, as the university students prepare to go back home, that they're not, they're not carrying with them, massive rates of infection back back to the, you know, individuals who are most susceptible. So, in general, I think everyone over here has reacted relatively positively. I mean, there's there's outliers, of course, but I would say, you know, the fact that children are still in schools and in daycares for the most part, and it still feels like people are able to to function in this kind of virtual world that we're all having to live in. But yeah,

 

Jeff York  16:23

from your perspective, what's been the impact on on entrepreneurs and small business over there? I mean, is it just been devastation, or people pivoting and doing different things? Or what's going on? Yeah,

 

Matthew Grimes  16:33

I mean, it's been really devastating. I mean, in some ways, the UK is been hit harder than then, than most in Europe. I mean, in the sense that like, not only in terms of case rates, I mean, we just had an explosion in London during the during the first wave. But then in addition, you know, the economy has suffered in some of the hardest ways in Europe. And so, you know, they're they're certainly they're putting an effort the government's putting an effort to, to try to assist small businesses, but I mean, the ends, it's not, it's not insight. I mean, you know, politicians like to claim that it's right around the corner, but it doesn't, it doesn't seem like it's, it's anywhere close to being, you know, to returning to a sense of normality. And so economically, I think that there's a lot of pain right now. And I think increasingly, so particularly as we go into the holiday season, and retail shopping is just dropping, like, you know. And so, in terms of entrepreneurs in general, I mean, if you if you look at the sort of the high tech startups, of course, there's there's a lot more room to to maneuver, and pivot. And so that's, that's where you're seeing a lot of conversations about innovation, a lot of conversations about resilience, and how you how you reorganize your business around, you know, both in order to help the current moment, but also think about what it means to to build up something resilience into the future. And pivoting is definitely a part of the conversation. But I think I think there's also entrepreneurs are also grappling with whether or not they should pivot at this moment in time, you know, whether it's just kind of following a particular crisis that then if tomorrow, things return to normal, and all of a sudden, I've switched my business model to cater to a killer moment, that becomes a real question. And so there's a there's a bigger question here of how do you respond to this? How do you respond to crises to use you respond acutely? Or do you respond with kind of a long term vision?

 

Brad Werner  18:35

Totally, totally agree. And I think it just depends, right? Which is such a cop out answer, but it's true. But I do think that if we if we jump ahead and have this conversation, get together for another zoom beer in four years, we're gonna see some really massive, interesting companies come out of this crisis. I don't exist right now. And I'm really excited to see where that goes. And it gives entrepreneurs a chance to assess to really shape the future. It doesn't mean we need to go back to normal. What do you want the new normal to look like?

 

Jeff York  19:00

Yeah, I mean, I think that's, that's gonna be true of almost every every industry and society in general. I mean, it's just, it's changed everything. I mean, and so I mean, this is, this is still a pertinent one of the smoothest transitions we've ever had on Creative distillation into a paper. Because the paper we were going to talk about, Matthew wrote a few years ago is called the pivot. How founders respond to feedback through idea and identity work. Well, simpler title than last time, Brad,

 

Brad Werner  19:27

you know, actually understood this title. So that's a good thing. And I'm a total advocate of feedback and creating feedback loops and all those types of things. So I'm gonna love today. And I have to actually tell you, any entrepreneur, I work with both whether they're big companies or startups, wherever they are, it's all about the customers and getting customer feedback. Understanding the pulse of your customer through the life of your businesses is vital. And so I'm going to read be really curious to see where you're gonna go with us. Your findings about feedback and action items for entrepreneurs on the street.

 

Jeff York  20:00

This paper was published in Academy Management Journal and 2018 level link on the on the website for the podcast. But I remember reading this paper and I've always been a fan of Matthew's work and known him for a while. But I was just like, this is so cool, because it's actually about something entrepreneurs deal with. I don't mean to be facetious, but that's a little bit of a rarity. Unfortunately, as Brad, you've been finding out,

 

Brad Werner  20:25

yeah, well, here's the other thing is some entrepreneurs deal with feedback better than others. You know, you have those entrepreneurs that are coachable that they think that they've solved the world's problems, and they can have all the feedback in the world that they're heading for a cliff, and they don't care that and by the way, in future news, they're off the fucking Cliff in about a year. So other you know, and everybody's the one argument that the pushback that I get is, well, what about Steve Jobs? And Steve Jobs is the outlier. But but that's the only case that I can really find that people point back and push back about, you know, Steve didn't listen, anybody's feedback, he created a new path for people. But other than that, I would say that's a unique a unique positioning, we could talk about that. Now. You could

 

Jeff York  21:05

also say, you know, Jimmy Page revolutionized electric guitar. So I'll do the same and, and, you know, he wasn't right. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's the idea of like, no, Michael Jordan, you know, he played like, just by himself, and he did really well. Yeah, that's because he's Michael Jordan. And that Steve Jobs, buddy. Sorry, Matthew, tell us a little about? Well, I mean, it's

 

Matthew Grimes  21:30

interesting that you bring up Steve Jobs, because I mean, I think this is actually a dilemma that, that I was noticed. So so this is this is based on my dissertation. So I was I was basically going through my PhD while I also was launching a company at the same time, and I was interacting in this world of incubators and accelerators and talking with a lot of entrepreneurs. And I was trying to figure out okay, what, what is the angle here? What, what's the story? What's interesting. And it was through the process of just talking with my peers that I started to realize that like, there were these two mythologies that every entrepreneur was grappling with, and a one one was kind of represented by the Steve Jobs and the Walt Disney's the mythology of the sort of the outlier on entrepreneur who has this kind of creative vision, and who persist through rejection, right? Like, they're just hearing No, no, no 300 times. And it's that it's the 300. And first time that they break through, and in some ways, you know, that is disruptive innovation, right? That if if you really want to be a disruptive entrepreneur, somebody who is going to disrupt existing professions or, you know, disintermediate value chains, you have to be thinking outside the box. And that means that that investors are going to have a hard time categorizing you that feedback providers are probably going to reject your your ideas. And so a lot of entrepreneurs are like, well, that's, that's why I'm getting rejected. I'm getting rejected, because I My idea is so great. That that ultimately, by definition, thinking outside the box, means that I'm pointing Yeah.

 

Brad Werner  23:06

Is Elan Musk, one of those falls.

 

Matthew Grimes  23:09

You know, I mean, I think we could speculate, right? I mean, we and right,

 

Brad Werner  23:13

but what do you think, though, just just kind of just as a side?

 

Matthew Grimes  23:18

Certainly, I think that he was about a year and a half ago, he started tweeting about nuking Mars, it was hashtag new Mars, right. And, you know, and he got a lot of flack for that. But part of why he was getting a lot of flack is that a lot of people were thinking, they were using conventional thought processes to understand what he was trying to say. So they were saying, Okay, so what do I know about nuclear nuclear bombs? Right? I know that they are the state planets, right? He's now talking about dropping a nuclear bomb in order to in order to create a habitable planet. This makes no sense. But you're drawing on history, you're drawing on probabilities, as opposed to thinking, I think, possible mystically, and and ultimately thinking counterfactually. Right, and, and trying to strip down to what he would call like, first principles, first principles. Sure. And then, and then working through those assumptions, to try to build back out something that is different from that, and that and that possibly conflicts with, you know, conventional understandings of how the world works. And in some ways that that is precisely what we would encourage entrepreneurs to do. But in doing so, we also have to recognize that those entrepreneurs to the extent that were causing you were asking them to be innovative, are probably going to experience a fair amount of rejection along the way. But there's this other myth that I think is increasingly popular. And it was like it was really starting to come into into its own around the time that I was doing my dissertation, which was between, you know, the years of 2010 2012, where the whole Lean Startup movements and and the idea do fail fast and break things and like, go and, you know, don't care about your ideas, right? Your ideas are really just hypotheses that you're just trying to test. And and so you know, it's the difference between the entrepreneur is artist and the entrepreneur is scientist, right? The entrepreneur. Yeah, that's cool as somebody who's just kind of taking an idea, getting feedback, responding to that feedback, just listening to it. And then, you know, moving forward, I saw I went to as I was doing this dissertation, I went to this talk, and the title of the talk was something like, how 17 pivots turned into a $35 million acquisition by a

 

Jeff York  25:43

pivot pivot weekly. Right, right. And

 

Matthew Grimes  25:46

daily. So even at around the same time, Steve Blank had come out with an article, Steve Blank, the professor at Stanford, had talked about the the number of pivots, you know, that that's going to lead to the greatest, you know, in terms of exit rate or acquisition. And I think that there's this kind of, we're caught up in this idea that, that entrepreneurs have to pivot in order to be successful. And so it's how many times do you pivot or when you pivot or, and, and it's clearly true that our first ideas are rarely our best ideas. But at the same time, we also I think, have to recognize that, to the extent that we've come up with an innovative idea, it's also likely that investors, audiences are initially going to have a difficult time putting that into a box, and properly evaluating it. And so that that was what I saw every entrepreneur wrestling with, as they were going through this kind of accelerator process and incubator process. And the constant feedback they were getting, were mentors, and experts were coming in and saying, like, No, your ideas, shit, or whatever it is, and, and they're taking that very personally. And they're trying to figure out, Okay, do I act as a scientist? And just iterate on this? Or do I do I see myself as the artist, and I have something really true and worth and worth pursuing. And I just have to keep iterating on it in my garage, or whatever it is, right? Like, remove myself from the noise of feedback in order to create something beautiful, and then and then introduce it to the world. So that was attention that I saw a lot of entrepreneurs wrestling with, and that kind of gave rise to what what I studied. That's really, really interesting, actually. And maybe there's a hybrid, right, maybe there's a way to balance both. And I'm not saying that personality types matter, or personality types would actually matter in that

 

Brad Werner  27:45

in that case, but I think that if you understand and maybe are aware of both approaches, and you can it, first of all, will help you deal with negative feedback easier. Also listening to potential customers, but staying true to yourself right there. Maybe there's this balance of this tightrope that you have to walk.

 

Matthew Grimes  28:01

I think that's right, I mean that so there's the the epigraph, the opening quote, in this paper is from Alexis ohanian, this was this came out of a podcast with Tim Ferriss, I believe, and and he says something to the effect of you know, that, you know, the entrepreneurs that do the best are those that are stubborn and flexible simultaneously. And it's like,

 

28:22

Yeah, what does that right there, I've

 

Jeff York  28:23

got right in front of me, I've got the paper here out, every founder has to be determined and stubborn, but a great founder, she also realizes that she can be very stubborn and determined, but also adaptive and flexible.

 

Matthew Grimes  28:36

Yeah. So there's this, there's this interesting paradox there. Because it's like, what does that even mean? Like? How are you? How are you? How are you, you know, stubborn and flexible at the same time, but it is that capacity to, to recognize what is core and recognize what is peripheral, that I think every entrepreneur has to really think about and, and also, I think that there's a process of abstracting out to the problem, as opposed to thinking really specifically about your solution, that I've tried to encourage a lot of entrepreneurs that I interact with, you know, because it's if you can think about owning a problem, then that becomes what you anchor yourself to, it becomes what you you know, your anchor your sense of self to, and you even anchor your idea to that that big, big problem or mission. And then where you start iterating is around the various solutions to that problem. And I think that that that process of abstraction is what I tried to pull out in this paper a lot. Hope that my students are listening because that's what I preach to them. I think that that that is core and truthfully, working with lots and lots of entrepreneurs, even beyond the university, identifying the problem, sometimes it's so totally off that they think that the problem they're attacking is actually the problem. trying to solve and it doesn't turn out to be the same. And that's actually interesting, too. So problem discovery, and validation is a whole art form in itself. It's true. And it's particularly true for I think, for students who come out of a, an educational system that I think orient people toward developing solutions. So you know, I, I interact with a lot of engineering students, which I find to be absolutely, like, I love working with engineering students, because, you know, they're coming in with just such passion and such such knowledge and deep insight into their technologies. And, and yet, at the same time, it's like, holding them back from their from the solution that they've that they've attached themselves to, to that bigger problem becomes precisely the journey. That's exciting, I think, for them, and for me as well.

 

Brad Werner  30:52

Right? In engineers, though, the feedback loop is actually very difficult. I found that if you give an engineer if you pay him $80,000 a year, provide a world class laboratory and awesome pizza, once a day, you'll never have a product come out of your lab. Because it's never good enough, right? They always want to tinker and make it better, instead of launch the product, get feedback. And that's been a real struggle, I think, with engineers, and they love designing, right? They love it, they live for it. And they can always make something better, and it cracks me up. But if you're working with them, it can be very, very expensive.

 

Jeff York  31:22

Well, and this is, this is where I think what I love about Matthews paper is that it helps us understand why the hell is that? Is it just because engineers are some different type of person? And, and therefore, you know, I mean, I see the same thing I teach engineers, engineers, getting ready to launch a class where we try to put engineers and MBAs together. Oh, my God, just getting the two groups, you would think they'd be eager to collaborate? No, no, they don't like talking to each other very much. At first, it's like, you're speaking the same language. And I love that Matthew's paper points out is is much of this is tied up in in our identity, like, not necessarily identity in the sake of like, who the world thinks we are. But who we think we are.

 

Brad Werner  32:10

That's right. And so that self awareness component, then comes becomes critical as well, right? If you're actually, if you're, if you're open minded enough to validate and attack a problem and search for solutions, you also need to be open minded enough about to understand how you're approaching this as a human being, and align yourself. Hopefully, you find people that you can work with the kind of fill those personality traits, that you get this much better outcome,

 

Jeff York  32:33

I think, but that's almost impossible for us to do. Like, as humans, we are, we're in I mean, I'd like to hear what Matthew thinks about this. But But our identity is so encompassing, and so important. And the thing that makes us, you know, if you follow philosophy, believe we have a self. It's hard to change. I mean, that's the paper talks about? Well, I mean, I, you know,

 

Matthew Grimes  32:55

so the one thing I'll say there is that I do think that context matters a lot here and for, for example, so what I found is that, fair enough, the roles that we assume, so as an entrepreneur, you're stepping into these accelerators, and then you're, you're receiving feedback from these investors, and or experts. So you, you feel like you, you're in a position of defensiveness. And, and but what happens is, as is what I observed is that these entrepreneurs would then go and talk to their peers. And the ones that did that the ones that sat down with, with the people who, who they they did not feel threatened by because these are, this is part of my community, it's part of who I believe myself to be. Now I can collectively make sense of that feedback in a way that is non threatening, and work through it in a in a more kind of pragmatic way. So this is one of the challenges that that I think solo entrepreneurs face in particular, right, if you're if you're an individual founder, or if you're finding yourself in kind of an isolated setting, that is very challenging to work through. Because you don't have the peer network to help you sense make around what you're hearing. And then in addition, I think this goes back to what we were talking about in terms of engineering, it's like, what in the the process of becoming an engineering expert encourages you to do is to specialize

 

34:19

deeply,

 

Matthew Grimes  34:20

but how you get narrow or narrow, narrow, narrow your expertise in a way that makes that makes your identity connected to that deep, deep form of expertise. Whereas for those individuals who I observed that had this have managed this kind of broader creative portfolio, where they were involved in so many different things across their careers. You know, for them, their their sense of self was not necessarily tied to a specific set of solutions. They can more more easily, you know, detach the couple themselves from a particular idea that they had, and think what to do. Don't worry about the problem. And and also transcending that kind of dynamic.

 

Brad Werner  35:05

I would also say that the training for engineers is substantially different than the training for business students or liberal arts students. And they're used to getting challenged and challenged very tough about designs and their process. And I've actually been in engineering meetings. I'm a co founder of an optical engineering company. And I'm not an engineer. And I remember going to like our first meeting, I think in was Samsung, in South Korea. And my engineers and the Korean engineers started arguing and like yelling at each other, and but it's kind of like a normal process for them. But this was people would never ever, you know, do that. And I was like, I've just about stood up and started yelling at these guys. And, you know, my engineering team said, Just chill out. This is how we do it. It's like,

 

35:49

okay,

 

Brad Werner  35:50

so it's really the process is fascinating to watch them when they talk about the designs. And especially if you're talking about something novel that never been done before,

 

Jeff York  35:58

this is actually really, really meaningful insight for me right now, actually, because last year, I taught a class, we had a local Foundation, the intuitive foundation that sponsored and gave a gift to the school to found a class that would try to get collaboration between engineers and business students, not just engineers, non business students, but you know, really, their passion is around engineers. And so I did that. And the thing about the class, I set up all these world class mentors, we're lucky enough to have here in Boulder, every session again, basically set up an accelerator within the school. And I was like, this is awesome, these people are gonna love this, it's gonna be great. And they did. But the thing that emerged, especially after the pandemic hit, we were online, the students and all the feedback was, I want more time to talk to the other teams, the student teams want to talk to each other. And what Matthew is telling me is, I think critical. And what was happening is every week, I mean, every week I was making them. I mean, I set up an accelerator like they're competing against each other. Some of them had, you know, they'll be generous, less developed ideas, and experienced a lot of emotional turmoil from being told that weekend week out and they didn't take action. To solve it, they kept doing the same thing over and over. And one thing I noticed, actually, honestly, this is just coming to me, that group never really engaged with the other groups and providing meaningful feedback or collaborating. Whereas we had other teams that would get very similar feedback, but they would, they wouldn't leave the freaking zoom calls. I mean, it'd be like 1030 at night, the class was supposed to end at 930. And I don't want to be the guy that's like, Hey, I gotta go, right? I'm supposed to be the professor and be more committed to anybody. But I was like, Guys, I'm gonna go, I'll leave the Xoom call up, and they're just talking to each other. And I wonder to what extent that's the I mean, I didn't really get it, because I'm like, they aren't that helpful to each other. Really, they none of them. But I think it was the emotional, emotional side of it, of getting comfortable, like, Hey, we all just got kind of reamed by this person. But it's okay. We'll work through it. And, man, that's awesome insight. Thank you for that. And thought about I was dealing with right now as I planned. Yeah. Yeah. I

 

Matthew Grimes  38:13

mean, I think that I think that a lot of times we think about our identities as something that we form on our own, or to the extent that if it if it if it is socially formed, it's something that it's formed in, in the communities that we have. But we also form our identities in opposition to something or somebody else. And so as a nurse, we go in, and we're getting feedback from investors. And so there's this kind of hierarchical kind of dynamic that plays out that can be problematic, I think, in the same way that for example, you know,

 

38:46

I was

 

Matthew Grimes  38:46

just reading about how a lot of American politics is formed, not necessarily around partisanship, but actually around like, anti party, your, your, your so opposed to the other side,

 

Jeff York  38:57

not what I'm for, so it gets

 

Matthew Grimes  38:59

Yeah, it's not that you're it's not that you're deeply connected to the, you know, Democratic or Republican Party, it's that you just hate the other side so much. And, and I think that, I think that a lot of times, that's how we form our identities. And that can become really problematic, because it becomes very divisive. So as entrepreneurs go in and receive feedback, and they see themselves as sitting across the table from a negotiator that can undermine the feedback process. And so, if you have this kind of diffusion where, you know, amongst the peers, they can collect, we come together and view, okay, this is this is pragmatic, we're not, we're not talking about who you are. And whether you're, you're a creative person or not, we're not attacking your activity, your expertise,

 

Jeff York  39:44

or your idea or your business. Honestly,

 

Matthew Grimes  39:46

we're not we're not we're not taking your baby. And you know,

 

Brad Werner  39:50

and I would also say that it's important to note that all feedback is not the same. You can you can have people that say that they're investors and provide feedback that may be the dumbest fucking thing you've ever heard. So often. Yeah, so entrepreneurs out there just because you get feedback, also run it through your filter, because there are a lot of people that are pretending to be experts that are certainly not. And I think it's really dangerous for young entrepreneurs, when they run into that. I went to a curated investor events last year, and you had to talk about the types of investing you did to get invited. And so I go to the bar was my first step. And then I, there's a woman there about maybe seven years old, and she goes, I introduced myself and I said, Are you an angel investor? And she goes, yeah. And I said, Well, tell me about what you've done. And she said, Well, my bridge club puts $5,000 ahead in and we go, and we invest $25,000, with these young entrepreneurs, and I'm thinking, I don't want feedback from this woman. And I really feel bad people are I mean, her hearts in a great place, right? So it's a really nice thing that she's doing. But she's not, she's not a value add investor. And so got to really, really be careful about where you're getting feedback, and then what you do with it and kind of be able to, like I said, filter that.

 

Jeff York  40:59

So I think what we could take from today, try to distill it down. Sure. You know, it's this idea of, there's this tension, and all entrepreneurs probably experienced it. Yeah, you got to be, you got to be focused on your idea and your concept and what you know, to be true and what you care about. But you also gotta be open to other paths. And how do you learn to do that?

 

Brad Werner  41:18

Brad, like me, you have to be self aware. All right, part of part of being a good entrepreneur, is you really need to understand yourself. And it's, it's a really difficult task. And it's certainly not the first thing that entrepreneurs want to do, hey, I've got this great idea. Let me figure myself out. Right? That doesn't make any sense. But in a sense, you actually do need to figure yourself out, you need to understand truthfully, where your strengths are, and where your weaknesses are, and build that team around you to fill those holes to then collectively be able to filter the feedback I think we've been referring to.

 

Jeff York  41:48

Right, right. And so I'm wondering like, so I'll get a little academic here since we lost Matthew, I'll try to keep you on. But just just real quick. So identity theory, the theory he's talking about here has this basic concept that we have multiple identities we hold within the self. And at the very core of what we believe in is something we call personal identity. So values, what I think is important across every situation doesn't matter. If I'm acting in my role as a father, I'm acting in my role as an entrepreneur, I'm acting my role as a professor, there's certain things that I hold important. And I think maybe that's a way that entrepreneurs can think about this, if you understand those things, it might take a day or longer. I mean, oftentimes, it just takes people honestly 30 minutes a reflection write down, no matter what you're doing, what are the things you hold to anything, that that's not the thing to be flexible about, right? That's the thing to be determined about. But then the other things about, like what I do for a living? Who are the groups I'm part of? Who is my friend set and who's outside of my friend set, especially pay attention? There's points where you think about who are the people that are opposed to me, like, Who are the people that are, you know, I'm against, or these investors or whomever that I feel like, think trying to let go of that is really powerful. So maybe, I don't know, maybe that's what

 

Brad Werner  43:14

you're talking about that value component of a person's personality that goes directly to problem selection?

 

Jeff York  43:20

Yes. Like, what are you gonna what space? Do you really care about your technology solution? Or do you care about the problem you're trying to solve?

 

Brad Werner  43:29

That's right. And I actually think that that's, that's a really great distinction. And I think that that that certainly warrants self exploration. I think it's, I think that's great. I think that that's actually a really good takeaway from today.

 

Jeff York  43:42

Cool. I actually feel better because I make my students do that. Yeah, they don't like it.

 

Brad Werner  43:50

No, because I

 

Jeff York  43:50

don't like to stand up and make them tell everybody else. Like, here's what's really important to me. Here's what I care about. Here's where I come from. Here's how I develop these beliefs. I have them do a five minute presentation on themselves. And yeah, that's not something we asked us to do.

 

Brad Werner  44:05

What about information based on beliefs and that skill sets? Right, that that you put people together with common beliefs, and then they go out and they fill the holes and whatever skill sets they need. Oh,

 

Jeff York  44:15

this is great. Matthew. I think Matthew is back.

 

44:18

He's back. Awesome.

 

Matthew Grimes  44:20

I'm back.

 

Jeff York  44:20

Great. Well, Byron and I are just, you know, like we said, if we lost you, we would just keep talking because that's what we keep drinking and talking, especially after after enjoying our London, fried and close or Newcastle Brown. Anything else you want to add or talk about with this paper or the conversation Matthew or Matthew? Actually,

 

Brad Werner  44:39

my question to you would be, if so through all of your research, what is one piece of advice that you could give to young entrepreneurs?

 

Matthew Grimes  44:47

So what one piece of advice I drink pumpkin beer. So

 

Jeff York  44:58

that will make brilliant And will love the parties. And if you drink pumpkin beer when you go to a party, nobody takes your beer. It's great. No one

 

Brad Werner  45:06

will say,

 

Matthew Grimes  45:07

I mean, I think I, I do think that it's, it's critical to to understand what is core to the business idea, and what is peripheral, and work through that process in a way that that allows you to be authentic, and responsive. Because I think that, that tension between wanting to be true to yourself or true to your your conception of who you need to be that kind of process of authenticity is critical. It is important for an entrepreneur. But at the same time, you have to be responsive, your your stakeholders, your investors need you to be thoughtful about how you are going to take their feedback and act on it. And so that process of authentic responsiveness is ultimately what so much of my research is interested in. And I think it's what, what entrepreneurs really need to hear.

 

Brad Werner  46:02

Yeah, I did that. I think that that's fabulous. Jeff, don't

 

Jeff York  46:05

you think that's great, I actually, it's actually inspiring me. I'm getting ready to teach all my classes, and I'm talking to potential students now. And it's making me feel better about the the path I'm gonna send them down and what I try to do, but I think I'm gonna dive into it a little more this semester. Because I think that's a really valuable lesson. How do you, how do you keep what's at the core, but remain flexible towards exactly how you're going to execute on I think, yeah, man, that's and bread Holy cow. I mean, that's a, that's a tough thing to teach. And if you can actually teach someone that or at least have them, I don't know how you teach someone that other than putting them through a scenario, a series of choices that forced them to think about it. Yeah. That's probably way more valuable than anything else who would teach in the class,

 

Brad Werner  46:51

I think what else on the culture of the organization that you start that you embrace people, and you reward people for that type of understanding and moving forward to that way. And if there was a way to frame it within an organization, I think that's, that's where it needs to start needs to start day one. And it definitely takes an enlightened founder to be able to put this into practice. But I also think that it's gonna create great value for people that

 

Jeff York  47:14

do. Great. Well, Matthew, man, it is great to see you. I look forward to someday doing this in person and getting there. Hopefully, it won't be too far away

 

47:26

next time we were calling to you.

 

Jeff York  47:29

Well, well, one thing I didn't mention, you know, Matthew, and in Cambridge, as well as the Darden School at University of Virginia, and the lead school, we all co host entrepreneurship research conference together. Yep.

 

Brad Werner  47:42

It's coming to Colorado soon, right, Jeff?

 

Jeff York  47:44

Yeah, well, I'm not sure we had of course COVID wrench in the works. As we speak, but uh, I'm super excited about that. I can't we can't wait to host it here in Boulder. And even more, I can't wait for you guys to host it in Cambridge, because that's gonna be fantastic.

 

Brad Werner  48:03

Man. Thank you. That was that was really, really Yeah. Thanks.

 

Matthew Grimes  48:06

Thanks for having me. I enjoyed I enjoyed the conversation. I enjoyed the beer.

 

Jeff York  48:10

Hello, thanks for hanging out with us on your on your Friday night. All right. Well, that's it for creative distillation for this, this podcast. Thank you so much for joining us, please reach out to us. You can reach me at Jeffrey dot York at colorado. edu. Or just reach out to Brad or I the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Colorado Boulder. We'd love your feedback. And if you know if you feel like it, hit the little subscribe button on wherever you listen to this podcast. And you'll automatically hear we've got a bunch of exciting episodes coming out. People talking about micro finance. We've got PhD students talking about their emergent research. We've got editors of major journals coming in talking about the field of entrepreneurship and and what uses it to anyone anyway. So it's gonna be an exciting season. We look forward to it and hope you enjoyed our show.

 

Brad Werner  48:59

And the other thing is anybody has any negative comments, please sign up for our producer and friend Joel. He does all that for us. Right? Yeah,

 

Jeff York  49:06

absolutely. So to him that madness. All right. Fantastic. Thank you very much for joining us. We'll, we'll see you. Well, guess what? See you. We'll talk to you next time. Thanks, Jeff. Thank you for having us. Awesome. Thanks again.