This episode of #TBNE features a long-time friend of the show and 2x guest Matt Hooper as we get tactical on the opportunities for HOW startups and corporates can collaborate. Many founders, either don’t realize that many corporate orgs have teams whose whole job is to identify and partner with great tech companies that could partner with that either fill their gaps or who they could acquire to improve. For many why build, when they could buy? But, for most where, or how to start?We talk about where to start, who to look for, and how to map out orgs to get the conversation started. We get a first-hand look at how corporates look and evaluate as this was Matt’s former life. Tune it to learn more about the opportunities at hand for startups and corporates to partner up. Check out the previous episodes with Matt Hooper to hear his entrepreneurial background and journey. Episode 53 // Episode 54 // Episode 73 Don't forget to subscribe and leave a review.
This episode of #TBNE features a long-time friend of the show and 2x guest Matt Hooper as we get tactical on the opportunities for HOW startups and corporates can collaborate.
Many founders, either don’t realize that many corporate orgs have teams whose whole job is to identify and partner with great tech companies that could partner with that either fill their gaps or who they could acquire to improve. For many why build, when they could buy?
But, for most where, or how to start?
We talk about where to start, who to look for, and how to map out orgs to get the conversation started. We get a first-hand look at how corporates look and evaluate as this was Matt’s former life.
Tune it to learn more about the opportunities at hand for startups and corporates to partner up.
Check out the previous episodes with Matt Hooper to hear his entrepreneurial background and journey. Episode 53 // Episode 54 // Episode 73
Don't forget to subscribe and leave a review.
Connect with Matt Hooper:
Connect with Rob:
Show Produced by: Niranjan Deshpande (Nick), Broken Frames Studio, www.brokenframesstudio.com
Creative Director: Maxim Sokolov, www.maximsokolov.com
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We have teamed up with Phin, a social impact company, to give back for each episode to the communities that we serve. To learn more or get involved with Phin for your company, visit:
EPISODE 76: MATT HOOPER
00:00:07:10 - 00:00:31:19
Matt Hooper
All right, folks, welcome to another very exciting edition of the 2030 Leadership Newsletter, which will also be a really exciting episode of one of my favorite podcast, The Bear Necessities of Entrepreneurship, with our incredible friend. And for the purposes of this interview, co-host and coconspirator Rob Napoli. Rob, thank you so much for being with us here today.
00:00:32:01 - 00:01:00:01
Rob Napoli
You bet that I love it and I'm really excited for this part two We had a great part, one conversation about open innovation. And I'm really I couldn't wait to get back into this. So I'm really excited. I appreciate being here. And, you know, I just want to say that I love the fact that we have spaces in places like this to have these conversations that are very much needed to create the kind of change you want to see.
00:01:00:01 - 00:01:10:07
Rob Napoli
And it's the conversation and the discourse that's going to, in my opinion, really make things pop, especially this episode being very tactical with our topic today.
00:01:10:17 - 00:01:41:01
Matt Hooper
Yeah, I know. I was going to say I was going to say part of the challenge of this is, is that it can get a little abstract. But I think, yeah, and this in this episode we'll talk about actual, actual actual things, actual tactical ways in which corporates and startups can engage. I also want to say that, you know, for anyone who did watch or hear the previous conversation, you know, we covered what started as a conversation about open innovation.
00:01:41:01 - 00:02:07:05
Matt Hooper
Requiring leadership, I think, flourished into a very interesting conversation about how open innovation kind of came to be and again, why leadership matters underneath that, why leadership can power forward the ways in which corporates and startups can engage. And part of that felt tied to a generational story. At least that's how I see it, that over the last 10 or 15 years, our generation of founders and corporate executives have made possible.
00:02:08:08 - 00:02:49:15
Matt Hooper
They have even created the playing field, I should say, where corporates and startups can really engage right outside of like your traditional R&D shops or, you know, sort of one off laboratories. There are repeatable processes finally in play that folks can consult and use and and build upon. And I frequently joke that the first tactical thing to consider, if you're a startup looking to work with with an innovation team right now, any business unit in a large organization, but specifically an innovation team that has come to you, wants to work with you or you've tried to sell on to them or to think about your three P's procurement proof of concept and pilot.
00:02:50:11 - 00:03:04:15
Matt Hooper
And I'm happy to jump in all of those. But Rob, I should probably at this moment actually ask, you know, what have your experiences in the trenches of corporate procurement been because and they're not always fun surprises.
00:03:04:15 - 00:03:42:06
Rob Napoli
Yeah. And I love this I love this idea that three PS, you know, one of the things that having worked with over 500 founders in the last 3 to 5 years, you know, they always come to me for a lot of different things. And usually it's around getting funding, closing a client lots of time around funding. Right. And they don't they always a lot of them want to work with these big corporate partnerships and like we, you know, we're looking for a consultant to introduce us to the VP of this or that or C-level here, do this so we can show them what we can do and like get them to pay for our partnership and on the.
00:03:42:11 - 00:03:55:18
Matt Hooper
Way to a startup. So a startup is looking for a way to get access to a corporate budget to accelerate their business. And they would take either consulting group or or. But but have you also found that they would go to someone directly in the institution where they would just go to an executive in the first place?
00:03:55:18 - 00:04:06:24
Rob Napoli
That's that's kind of the thing. Right. So I was looking for this one venture as they're trying to sell into first is approaching directly from an I from an ideation and conversation of a partnership.
00:04:07:07 - 00:04:12:22
Matt Hooper
Where a candidate is ready to collaborate versus I got I got, I got good zoning to peddle to you.
00:04:12:22 - 00:04:24:06
Rob Napoli
Yeah yeah. And like they don't understand. Well one, they don't always understand where to go because they initially are going to think, oh, I'm going to go sell to my ICP and that person is going to pump me in the right direction when that's not where to go.
00:04:24:12 - 00:04:31:00
Matt Hooper
Sure. For anyone who's curious or maybe if they're maybe they've already dropped out. But can you just quickly. Sorry, I want to go back. You just define what an ICP is.
00:04:31:00 - 00:05:08:04
Rob Napoli
Yeah. So your ICP has an ideal customer persona that is, and it sells, you know, kind of jargon is it's the person that buys from you. Right. And this person is going to buy your product. But in this potential partnership, as people are asking me, you're not necessarily saying to the person I can buy to you, because there's teams that corporates that are specifically looking for amazing tech and ecosystems and products to accelerate as part of their one, their current line of business, a new line of business or their ecosystem or innovation, which we've seen happen before.
00:05:08:19 - 00:05:24:05
Rob Napoli
But so many startups don't think this is a that and a natural progression or even an opportunity. So it's like I'm going to go get funding and a great way to get funding is so traction. And then the best way to show traction is to incubate partnership with a big enterprise corporate. I'm going to do that in the next 60 days.
00:05:24:05 - 00:05:44:13
Rob Napoli
So that takes a long time to sell on to a large enterprise, corporate. And in this kind of thing, you're not really selling to them to buy your product. It's a totally different conversation and partnership, and it's something that I've now been able to start better verbalizing of. Having thought about going to the Innovation Department, have you thought about talking about what a partnership looks like?
00:05:44:13 - 00:05:56:03
Rob Napoli
Have you approached these different organizations that could exponential to speed up your time to market? And people look at me with like blank faces, like, where do I even start?
00:05:57:14 - 00:06:16:17
Matt Hooper
Right. Well, yeah, because you're presenting like, well, in their defense and I've been on both sides of this, you're saying to them like, this is going to be really fun and incredibly lucrative and here's a maze. But you need to navigate like they're with you. They're excited. All of a sudden you show them a picture of the most complicated path ever.
00:06:16:22 - 00:06:38:21
Matt Hooper
Yeah. And, you know, it becomes like survival of the fittest, right? It's like, how long? How long can you tread water? How long can you endure? How much pain can you take? Yeah. And my experience just so just to be clear, when I came out of entrepreneurship, I had actually I had never sold into a corporate. A lot of what I was doing was consumer facing.
00:06:38:21 - 00:07:04:12
Matt Hooper
And I was especially focused on the products that I first started. When it failed, I realize I didn't know anything. It's been three years developing a way to be a product person. And then I started to work with other founders and recognize their pain points. And my dream was to build products, particularly in the media space, that were sort of advancing the creative economy, which meant that maybe there would be distributors for things I made down the line.
00:07:04:15 - 00:07:24:00
Matt Hooper
Yeah, but in the earliest stages it was private financing, making sure that you had the right team, you know, knowing how to like, like I could tell you, you know, I could recite the lean canvas to you backwards and forwards. I could talk to you about the actual development process. But I didn't come from a pro corporate space or pro institutional space, I should say, necessarily.
00:07:24:06 - 00:07:48:09
Matt Hooper
I had no experience with it. I also and this is the generational piece I think is really important. You know, like it was really hard to get a job at a large institution and the failure of the banks essentially at the end of the 2000 has created deep financial instability for the whole world. Yeah. So the punchline here is that my first corporate job was at a bank working with startups.
00:07:48:15 - 00:08:13:03
Matt Hooper
Yeah. And so that propelled me. And then for four years after that, my experience was working with corporate clients to build ecosystems through media and build audiences for different products, for companies looking to reach new developer communities, new startup communities and so on. And so this was a this was like a pure abstraction for me when I was starting out.
00:08:13:03 - 00:08:34:24
Matt Hooper
And then it became something that I understood as you would see a little more tactically. Yeah, something it was a little so so that that idea of like identifying your ideal customer persona, like I didn't have one in a business and what I saw so if I saw that maze, right, if someone presented me with the complicated information, the pattern I couldn't quite discern, I'd say, you know, wash my hands.
00:08:35:00 - 00:08:37:02
Matt Hooper
I'm good. Good luck. Someone else needs to do that.
00:08:37:11 - 00:08:37:19
Rob Napoli
I mean.
00:08:37:20 - 00:08:50:12
Matt Hooper
There's something razer's going into an institution, learning their problems. Yeah. I mean, trying to match your solution to them. It's. It's not quite rocket science, but it's not, you know, it's not easy.
00:08:50:19 - 00:09:17:19
Rob Napoli
You know, it's not, you know, my, my, my technically my first job out of college was only like four months for a cup of coffee. My second job out of college was working for a large global corporate Wells Fargo, doing hyperise for after the bubble burst. Yes, I did that for ten months as a processor. And then my experience of like starting to be in a large corporate and see that internal maze's is something that I think helped me when I went into my first real job as a recruiter.
00:09:17:19 - 00:09:37:03
Rob Napoli
Okay, for us, I was selling into Wells Fargo, nationwide principal, these large global corporates and I had to use a methodology called account based marketing, an account based selling. So understanding who is in the organization, building on an org map, what titles mean what? Because depending on what bank and what like no offense to Wells Fargo, what they fucking throw around AVP like it's nothing.
00:09:37:03 - 00:09:52:04
Rob Napoli
So like people can be a VP in like three years, but they have no decision making power. And so it's like, how do you discern what titles are, what, who does what? So I, I was lucky enough in my early career to see that and kind of go through that. So I've been able to help people map that out.
00:09:52:04 - 00:10:23:04
Rob Napoli
But it's not easy and understanding which departments do what and who to talk to and where to even go is a is a big problem. But I think that when we talked about in the first conversation innovation and why I really think this is so huge is that there is a ton of movement in large organizations understanding that they've done the same thing year over year and they've grown and there is a sense of comfortable ness inside.
00:10:23:15 - 00:10:43:05
Matt Hooper
Right you're right and not incentivized necessarily to take those risks. So the comfort the comfort that you're describing is like it's maybe sort of akin to a finish line, right? Like, oh, I can I can park here for a while. I ran this race. I don't have to necessarily worry about doing anything new or risky.
00:10:43:05 - 00:11:02:19
Rob Napoli
But I think that slowly, large corporates are starting to realize, well, we have to innovate, we have to do some things, but maybe we don't have to build it ourselves. Let's look at those that are from outside of organization who are coming out into this world with big ideas, ready to make changes. And let's see if we can help FOSTER that.
00:11:03:06 - 00:11:19:14
Rob Napoli
And that was something that I didn't even know really existed until I moved to New York. Yeah, right. Like if you ask me if that's been a possibility, I mean, if you ask me what a startup was in 2013, I probably wouldn't be able to find it to you very well. You know, then I moved to Italy in 2015 and that's where I got my first startup.
00:11:19:14 - 00:11:52:00
Rob Napoli
And this whole world of entrepreneurship that I came to New York and went through the whole ecosystem. And that's when I started realizing, Holy shit, there's organizations built to do these things and offer opportunities for startups. How does Time's get access to that? And first, is there a question from for me to you as CEO who worked in open innovation at a large financial institution and somebody who also created a whole space dedicated to this, where does startups even attempt to look for those type of conversations?
00:11:52:00 - 00:12:07:19
Rob Napoli
Yeah. Two on this opportunity for startups and corporates to collaborate, because that's something that I think is something that I still don't. I understand. I know who now and certain ecosystems, but it's still hard to really figure out where to start if you're a startup trying to navigate those waters.
00:12:08:22 - 00:12:26:20
Matt Hooper
Sure. So I'm going to go back to the three P's also, which is worth recognizing. That's the that's that's the process you have to start. So procurement is going to take a long time. That's right. That's what I threw to you. It's it's going to be hard to be onboarded into a corporate system to get paid for something.
00:12:27:21 - 00:12:52:02
Matt Hooper
In my experience, the proof of concept is not paid. That's what they call a P.O.C. in the corporate world these days. And that is some sort of definitional proof that that the product, it's the equivalent of product market fit, right? It's going to work in within the walls of this labyrinthine organization. And then the pilot, the best of those are paid.
00:12:52:22 - 00:13:17:02
Matt Hooper
And that's when you have some sort of scope of work with the institution you're looking to engage, that you're going to do, that you're going to actually deploy your technology, that you're going to launch it beyond this, some sort of demo equivalent, right? That that is the P.O.C.. And that's like a very loose, sort of caffeinated Friday morning at the end of a long week coming off of having COVID definition.
00:13:17:16 - 00:13:42:22
Matt Hooper
But that's why I wanted to go back to that, really define that. That should be the clip, Rob, that you use in all your socials because that's pretty clear. So but I think that the reason I bring it up again is I don't know that I would point startups in any specific direction. So they knew those things. Yeah, because that's the foundational base you need to understand if you're going to go engage any business unit leader.
00:13:42:22 - 00:14:04:06
Matt Hooper
Now you've called it an innovation department a couple of times, and I know what you mean. There's no innovation department, there's no back room of innovation. No one's sprinkling a little innovation on anything. It like it's a decent, generally speaking, as decentralized and complicated as any business unit in a large firm. And so there are some ways of engaging that make sense.
00:14:04:06 - 00:14:26:04
Matt Hooper
Like you go on LinkedIn and you find there's a director of open innovation or there's an EVP of Startup Incubation or there's, you know, there are job titles, of course, hit those people up, but understand their what their incentives are by asking them questions. And if you can, then and this is an exercise that I learned via an intensive I helped facilitate at the site center for Innovative Thinking at Yale.
00:14:26:16 - 00:14:44:00
Matt Hooper
I knew it at a high level. Well, during my actual corporate experience, and particularly when I had corporate clients when I was running a lot of media, but in the form of the intensive, it helped because I got to go broader than I usually think. Yeah, stakeholder mapping. Sorry, that was a very long intro to stakeholder mapping map.
00:14:44:00 - 00:15:05:04
Matt Hooper
All the given stakeholders in the either proof of concept or the pilot you want to engage in, which will also give you that third period, will tell you how long the procurement cycle is going to take. That's the most tactical way I could think about it. What incentivizes someone, you know, within within the firm you're looking to engage, right?
00:15:05:04 - 00:15:19:04
Matt Hooper
If you're looking if you're engaging the MD of open innovation, that's a real job somewhere. Oh, my goodness. Does that mean that they have the budget, that they have the decision making power, that invariably there will be a chief of open innovation or something that they're also.
00:15:19:14 - 00:15:20:13
Rob Napoli
Is always somebody else?
00:15:20:19 - 00:15:41:20
Matt Hooper
Yeah. And so it's worth understanding that hierarchy first and then and then selecting the scope of work you want to choose. Now you and that executive might become best friends, go out for millions of drinks and dinners and decide that you want to engage in a longer process. But at the very least, if you could say, look, I want to go through a proof of concept with you because I'm looking for a paid pilot over the next year.
00:15:42:06 - 00:15:59:12
Matt Hooper
You got to get in there and get the budget now. And I know that you are not the budget holder who is, but, you know, you're asking and then obviously polite, a polite way I am looking for this amount of money to do it. It's not dissimilar from raising private capital. It's not dissimilar for those founders out there building venture backed startups.
00:15:59:12 - 00:16:00:02
Rob Napoli
It's not for.
00:16:00:02 - 00:16:00:21
Matt Hooper
Some reason.
00:16:00:21 - 00:16:07:20
Rob Napoli
Just doing sales. Exact call coming to me that's exact stakeholder mapping. And that whole process that you just laid out is what we call the company selling, right?
00:16:07:20 - 00:16:19:05
Matt Hooper
That's that's that's the abs you were talking about. And that's that's something that you are, by the way, that is something that you were often trained to do as a sales person and not. As a founder.
00:16:19:05 - 00:16:20:10
Rob Napoli
Exactly.
00:16:20:18 - 00:16:34:06
Matt Hooper
And the same way we talked in the last half hour of the conversation about leadership, like the same way that most founders are not offered leadership methodologies, frameworks or best practices. They're definitely not offered sales best practices. I mean, and I just.
00:16:34:08 - 00:16:46:24
Rob Napoli
That in there but that's what I that's why I make my living off of right like I actually get paid to go into accelerators and organizations and I have a whole course on how to do founder based self foundation, which is.
00:16:46:24 - 00:16:56:16
Matt Hooper
Right. So you're exactly you're looking at organizations that provide cohorts of founders, right. Excel resources and then you can actually work with those founders and teach them how to sell because no one else has.
00:16:57:10 - 00:17:01:02
Rob Napoli
And it's also not like traditional selling. And I'm not trying to teach them to be a salesperson.
00:17:01:15 - 00:17:18:23
Rob Napoli
I'm trying to teach them how to do sales as a part of their founder job. That makes sense. And one of the things that I what I love that you brought up, let's keep cutting you off. But you said when you know, one of the best things is to find like that title out of open innovation or whatever on LinkedIn and ask questions.
00:17:19:08 - 00:17:35:10
Rob Napoli
Right, instead of going in and pitch that thing. This is I do is saying, hey, what type of innovation are you looking to do? What are the challenges that you're trying to solve? And then it's like, This is what I'm doing, this is what I'm looking for. This is the timeline. I know that it takes X amount for this and I want to start mapping this out with you
00:17:36:01 - 00:18:00:09
Rob Napoli
But like if you get really good at not pitch slapping innovators, just like with VCs and asking what are some of the challenges that you're trying to solve? And this also takes place in instead of trying to sell into to large organizations, you know, if your solution could help a certain division of Barclays, I'm going to call everybody barclays and say, hey, I'm looking at launching a new product, the market I don't want to sell you.
00:18:00:11 - 00:18:12:18
Rob Napoli
I would giving your position and the work that you do. I would love to ask you five questions and get some market feedback. Would you take 20 minutes to answer five questions? Right, right. Because you could say, well, I've done my work.
00:18:13:03 - 00:18:43:24
Matt Hooper
I like that phrase pitch slapping. That's funny. The like this again goes back to leadership. I know the first part of the conversation was leadership in the abstract and now we're talking tactical. But like it really is about leadership. When I was 23, I went to a he's a friend, a friend of mine actually, who runs the Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator that came out of the ERA meet up series still exists, still awesome.
00:18:43:24 - 00:19:02:12
Matt Hooper
And I went to ERA pitch night and I pitched to the VC, David Pacman I believe is his name. And it was like early 2011. And I remember my pitch was like tight I was ready. I spent the day rehearsing.
00:19:04:14 - 00:19:28:16
Matt Hooper
And I left no room for questions. Like there was no curiosity. It was just like, Yeah, good job, kid. Good luck. The worst feeling I ever had. Like, you know what I mean? Like, because I needed help, I needed advice. We were going to go fundraise, like it was just not the right thing to do. So leaving yourself open, that was not only a sales mistake, that was a leadership mistake.
00:19:28:16 - 00:19:51:17
Matt Hooper
Like I shouldn't have been so worried about being buttoned up and ready. I should have been like wanting to ask questions. I should have been curious in a different way. I know it's a weird example, but I find that the focus on like strength and professionalism or whatever I imagine those to be at 23, you know, I was like nine months out of college.
00:19:51:24 - 00:20:11:04
Matt Hooper
Yeah. It didn't leave room for curiosity and discussion. And what I guess I'm really getting at is there wasn't a tremendous amount of humility in that presentation, in that experience, right? Like I was like, I'm doing this, we're doing this, we're raising money at this, this is going to be the best product ever, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:20:12:09 - 00:20:32:22
Matt Hooper
Thank you. Good Night. And yeah, I probably did really good, you know, in like the Stopwatch Olympics and, you know, like, like, you know, like, like, you know, do I get the gold for fastest pitch? Uh, who cares? You know? I mean, it's like. It's like the spreadsheet Olympics. It's like these meaningless, you know, how how how tidy is your excel?
00:20:33:14 - 00:20:55:11
Matt Hooper
Meaningless. How fast is your pitch meaningless? Like I. I felt that I was grading myself on a weird curve that was based on a lack of awareness and humility. And I'm not beating myself up. I'm not saying it was just a it was a it was a lesson. You know, it was a teachable moment, as they say. And all these years later, I think about the fact that the best meetings I had had or me saying, what does that mean?
00:20:55:11 - 00:21:11:02
Matt Hooper
Or I don't really know that. And that's the kind of humility founders need to have. It's funny, you know, we've been talking a lot about what founders need to do without talking a lot about what corporate executives need to do. And we can't in the moment. But I think it's clear also that like, boy, if you want to be a founder, good luck.
00:21:11:13 - 00:21:46:13
Matt Hooper
It is just the hardest, hardest job, because we have now said that you need to really consider leadership, think about becoming a full time salesperson and check your ego at the door every chance you get, while also being confident enough to have everyone believe in your vision. I mean, that is such a difficult job. It's a job full of contradictions in it's and and I just think that's a I just wanted to take a minute to say that also that my have I'm a two time founder and it's a tough I don't I don't feel any so I was having a conversation with this and it was like, well, this is a startup and, you
00:21:46:13 - 00:22:04:11
Matt Hooper
know, life is like a startup and whatever they're talking about rules on a team at a startup in a hard is and I was like Yeah very few people actually do know like don't like you know startups is sort of shorthand for it's hard but it's worth really digging into what makes it hard to that shorthand doesn't quite do it justice is maybe yeah.
00:22:05:01 - 00:22:48:04
Rob Napoli
I mean that's again that's why I started The Bear Neccessities and it's that this is being a founder starting a company, being entrepreneurs is it's fucking hard and the the big piece to to get there is if you really want to whether it's funding VC, private funding, investor funding accelerator funding our corporate innovation and teaming up. You have to be a good leader in the fact that you have a vision and you're not afraid to take risks and put yourself out there and you go and share your vision and you ask great questions and show, Hey, this is what we're looking to do.
00:22:48:09 - 00:23:06:11
Rob Napoli
This is how we think we can help and try to really get them on board. And if you can present it in a way where it's it's a two way conversation and not a one way meaning, I'm not pitching you, I'm asking questions. And then showing you what I'm doing and be a good leader about it. Then conversations will happen.
00:23:07:02 - 00:23:21:22
Rob Napoli
And you also have to show them, right? Talk is cheap. It's really easy to be a good picture. It's easy to say all the right things. And you know, as you have mentioned, you start using all the right buzzwords and things. But it doesn't mean that's not where the rubber meets the road.
00:23:22:04 - 00:23:42:12
Matt Hooper
No, and it doesn't. And no one and it often confuses people. I find like my if I'm allowed to be self-conscious for a moment, my biggest concern about the two conversations we're having here is that they're appealing to twenty people who speak our language. And the whole problem with the industry reinvention is that everyone needs to understand this stuff, like everyone is interested.
00:23:42:12 - 00:24:13:13
Matt Hooper
You need to be able to go home on thanksgiving and tell your grandma what the hell open innovation is. Why requires leadership and how without institution and insurgent collaborations in common, insurgent collaborations, you know, you're not going to be able to actually achieve the big goals that we're facing societally, whether that's racial and gender equity, whether that's the rapid automation in the workforce and addressing that in industry after industry or, you know, climate change, which is the thing that sort of drives me the most.
00:24:13:18 - 00:24:46:10
Matt Hooper
But I, I mean, me drive business professionally right now. I should, I should clarify if there's a problem in the world, I'm generally panicking about it. I just just to be clear, know, I don't I don't select I'm not selective about what keeps me up at night and where I think the world is unfair. But I, I think that the I guess one of the goals we're not going to solve all the world's problems this morning, but one of the goals of these conversations, I also think and any innovation conversation is can you make this stuff less jargony?
00:24:46:18 - 00:25:11:09
Matt Hooper
Can you make it more accessible? Can you democratize access to this knowledge? And you're right, that's also incumbent on a founder and any conversation about their business. Yeah, it's again, one more thing in the life of the founder I'm selling into, you know, Disney or Microsoft or Starbucks. And I have a, you know, like and I don't know it did with Disney.
00:25:11:09 - 00:25:46:05
Matt Hooper
It's an NFT business that's looking to align with Starbucks. It's a I have an incredible, magical coffee bean with Microsoft. It's, you know, do I have the missing piece of your enterprise solution you never even considered? And whatever that pitch is, whatever that product is, it's worth considering those corporates as customers and partners and not as sort of hurdles to reaching your goal as platforms a top, which you can can continue to build.
00:25:46:05 - 00:26:05:05
Matt Hooper
And that's why these conversations are so important, because that scale is magnificent. It can launch your business into the stratosphere and anything else. Yes, it's shop talk, but I worry that it sometimes is just so dull that it clouds the ultimate mission, which is launching your innovation so that it changes people's lives.
00:26:05:09 - 00:26:29:19
Rob Napoli
Yeah, and I love that you say that because I'm actually working with a wearable device company and we're actually engaging in a large corporate conversation about how we could collaborate to create a wearable solution that could help with a very real problem that many people have. I'll save that pitch for another day, but the reason we're even in this conversation is we we show them, hey, this is what our technology does.
00:26:29:19 - 00:26:45:18
Rob Napoli
This is why we're really excited about it. And we think we could help you solve this problem while providing a really cool opportunity for your users to do better and that functional posture state. So.
00:26:46:05 - 00:27:00:20
Matt Hooper
Right, well that's a can I just add I want to add one more thing about that because I think it's a good transition to the executive role eventually. But but I and I but I want to say something about that. Like to be aware of what the corporate needs are, include recognizing and you've said this to me before, right?
00:27:00:20 - 00:27:20:22
Matt Hooper
Like that they have a day job, that they have a business. And this is something that I didn't were very, very serious about, which is you need to be able to keep the business going while moving into the future. Like, yeah, it's, it's not a situation where you stop work as it is to try something new. You can't pause.
00:27:20:22 - 00:27:34:06
Matt Hooper
That's what makes, honestly, the process of corporate innovation so hard and so exciting. It's not just the scale, it's you're balancing the deep complexities of maintaining a business. Yeah. While moving into a new frontier.
00:27:34:20 - 00:28:01:17
Rob Napoli
Yeah. And I want to share this example as we close this one out is when the company I was a company I was working on AIML a company they do data monitoring and they are looking to do P.O.C proof of concepts with some really big organizations. And the founder had a really great idea to just say, send an email to say, hey, this is, you know, reaching out to you because we're assuming that you probably have this problem.
00:28:02:02 - 00:28:11:22
Rob Napoli
This is what we started the company to solve. We're looking for a few key organizations that want to engage in a proof of concept. What you get out of this is X, Y and Z.
00:28:13:02 - 00:28:32:04
Rob Napoli
What we get is feedback, data, and if you feel generous, they put a price tag on it. Think of it as a tip jar so that we can dedicate the time, energy and effort to run the proof of concept that would allow us to actually then scale into a paid pilot. And the response they got back from that.
00:28:32:23 - 00:29:00:12
Rob Napoli
Using that though, that language of POC with the tip jar, it's about paid pilot and then kind of that purchasing and like using the terminology use worked really well. They were able to close three POC in eight months and that's huge. And they made like $8,000, which is absolutely nothing. And to be honest, the large companies they were working with like that was like I was like throwing out like a dollar on the floor, right.
00:29:00:12 - 00:29:08:06
Rob Napoli
For them in terms of like if this works amazing and if we get that paid pilot stage, like that's awesome. If not thousand bucks.
00:29:08:06 - 00:29:27:12
Matt Hooper
But it's validation. And when you're a startup founder, you know, a dollar is validation. Eight thousand dollars from a potential enterprise partner, client, acquirer, investor, whatever that relationship is, down the line is validation. I, I think you're right and hey you're welcome three P's they matter at it works are bedrock.
00:29:27:12 - 00:29:52:11
Rob Napoli
That needs to you need to but you need to frame it and this kind of goes back to the initial part. You map out and organization stakeholders. You start reaching out and in you you have to make conversations and you're very clear about, you know, what value can be had and how this opportunity could open doors. And it is a starting point to further collaboration to really grow something that could be beneficial for all parties involved.
00:29:53:04 - 00:30:18:00
Rob Napoli
When you start using that language to executives and innovator open innovation departments that organizations, you start having real conversations and people start showing interest in responding. If you just pitch that it into like, hey, we're, we're the most amazing company since sliced bread doing this. Like, they're like, who are you and what are you doing? Like we're a multi-million billion dollar business, and you're telling us you're the best thing since sliced bread like, have a cup of coffee first, right?
00:30:18:01 - 00:30:19:23
Rob Napoli
But if you're like, hey, this is what we aim to do, right?
00:30:19:23 - 00:30:45:19
Matt Hooper
Well, that's another thing, is the difference between ambition and hubris. You know what I mean? I think and a lot of founders can they're on the wrong side. I'm really curious to see how this is going to work. In particular, like the Web three space where so much is built from like confidence and vision and it's there seems to be a sort of social belief in a lot of the entrepreneurship I see there.
00:30:45:19 - 00:31:08:20
Matt Hooper
Right, which is not necessarily built on institutional reformation. It's built on, you know, a really good example would obviously be like we need to be able to create frictionless payments. That system is broken. Let's build it here. Yeah. And that impetus is not always the same impetus that is, you know, within the halls of a bank. What motivates them?
00:31:08:20 - 00:31:33:06
Matt Hooper
So they might see it as a problem. They might be looking for a solution, but I don't think they're going to necessarily think that something's broken, like they still have a business where they're sending money and so that sort of patience that's required in that, that's really hard. And I find that the more you like, the more popular and sort of frontier based technologies, it'll be really interesting to see how and where they can integrate with institutions for scale, too.
00:31:33:12 - 00:32:13:05
Matt Hooper
Because we're way past the idea of like, does your big company need a website? Like we're now in a we're now in a much more complicated technological stage of things, and we're going to see it in the next few years with like AI applications and cybersecurity applications. And, you know, my sort of I the thing I get particularly excited because I happen to work on an audio documentary with the brilliant folks at IBM Quantum from 2020 to 2021 is like over the next 15 years, are we going to start to see quantum computing begin to scale, in which case all the rules of modern history are going to be rewritten?
00:32:13:15 - 00:32:25:12
Matt Hooper
And and I don't know that any business leaders are considering that kind of systemic and tectonic change right now. I don't know if they're considering that the plates are moving as quickly as they are.
00:32:26:01 - 00:33:03:24
Rob Napoli
I don't know. I mean, interesting to see and it's going to be interesting even more so when we talk about not like the technological technological issues are changes that are coming, but also impact changes. Right. And as our unit young generations are standing up to be more impact focused on wanting to work in more impact driven companies, whether that's, you know, fighting climate change, the decarbonization, whether that's through being more charitable giving causes and giving back to the communities they serve, to solving really large problems around where we go from here.
00:33:03:24 - 00:33:19:01
Rob Napoli
In terms of what is the future of life look like through technology advancements and services, there are some big conversations that are moving quickly that not always sure if people are paying attention to how fast that could come.
00:33:19:01 - 00:33:43:20
Matt Hooper
For sure. And and and and the punch of that. And this is probably the good place to end. The second conversation, as you were saying, is like those are all open innovation problems and projects and they all require a leadership methodology. And the process by which a new company can work with a heritage company and a legacy company involves understanding those same three P's.
00:33:43:20 - 00:34:03:12
Matt Hooper
Like, I don't think the things we're talking about change, even if the technology does. And that's why knowing how to how to put forward reinvent, how to stay reinvented. Yeah, it's never going to go out of style. Like there's always the dynamic change of season once again.
00:34:03:19 - 00:34:21:06
Rob Napoli
And that's also they're changing to be in answer to this day that startups incorporate can and should be part partner together to drive real change in the orgs, not only in the technology but in the organization itself through what it can accomplish together.
00:34:21:11 - 00:34:27:12
Matt Hooper
Yeah, for sure. I mean, you're not. You're not going to get a fight out of me. That's that. That's how I live my life.
00:34:27:12 - 00:34:40:20
Rob Napoli
Appreciate you letting me be on and chat this up with you for part two. This is a lot of fun. And for those out there listening on the Bear Necessities podcast, you want to check out part three and I promise you.
00:34:40:20 - 00:34:45:24
Matt Hooper
This is going to see you on check out part three 2030. Leadership consumers. This is a blast. Rob, thanks me.
00:34:46:18 - 00:34:49:08
Rob Napoli
Thank you. And to my audience. Stay well and rise up.
OUTRO
00:34:52:06 - 00:35:00:16
Rob Napoli
Bear Nation. Thanks for listening to the bare necessities of entrepreneurship. If you enjoyed this episode. Please subscribe and leave us a review.