deal architect

Burning Platform: Startup Boards

In the 76th episode of Burning Platform, we host Brad Feld of Foundry Group, a repeat guest and discuss the new book he has co-authored, Startup Boards and a whole slew of other tech industry topics

As Brad explains, the book is written in laypersons rather than in technical legal language. “What we tried to do with this book was bring out how startup boards work, and make them productive and accessible to CEOs, to existing and to prospective board members.”

The biggest change in this edition -  the first was published in 2013: “we had about 20 sidebars, from people who wrote stories of their own board experiences…of those 20, only two were women. So we refactored that and this one has 10 women.  For men, we carefully chose a bunch of new contemporary voices and have a few people of color in the mix as well. So it wasn't all just middle aged, white guys prognosticating about how boards work.”

We drift to an area Brad is always fascinating to listen to. How startups themselves keep evolving – location wise, focus/category wise, how they are capitalizing given the current state of financial markets.

Re categories he talks about “deep tech” and covers space tech, quantum computing and bio-engineering. “It is a truism that tech today is woven into every industry.”

We also talk about cleantech and EVs of course that brings up China. He also has an interesting perspective on reshoring and other global trends.

We talk about the joys and pains of writing books, how second editions allow you to see the world from a different lens. He invokes Jeff Lawson of Twilio and Steve Case of  Revolution among others

Fascinating 40 minute session. Also get a copy of the book here. It a practitioner’s guide to startups from someone who has seen them from every possible angle.

Analyst Cam: Strivr - the White Collar Metaverse

As we have moved to virtual briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short video segments (with permission) as part of my Analyst Cam series.

This time it is Derek Belch, CEO of Strivr, which positions itself as a platform to elevate employee performance through virtual reality-enabled immersive experiences. I was introduced to him by the Workday Ventures team.

Derek played football at Stanford from 2003 to 2007. He went back to Stanford as a graduate assistant for the football team in 2013 and simultaneously worked on a Master’s thesis on training football players using virtual reality. “The whole premise was here's a VR device, a headset. The quarterback puts this thing on their face. Their body is off the field, but their brain thinks they're on the field. It's a much more realistic way to see what's going on during a play. And you can get an infinite number of reps in a short amount of time.”

The quarterback simulator was their first application and he says it was reasonably successful (I think he is being modest – Tom Brady used the tool for reps when he arrived in Tampa in 2020 and went on to win his 7^th Super Bowl). Importantly, it led to an introduction at Walmart and a foray into enterprise applications. He says “six years later we have over 20,000 headsets out in the field at Walmart, Bank of America, Verizon and FedEx among others.”

Classroom and keyboard-based learning are ineffective, he says. “Goes in one ear and out the other.” “We're building a flight simulator for any job from quarterback to janitor to CEO and everyone in between…we want the VR headset to be part of every employee’s starter pack along with a phone and a laptop”

He walks through various front line and knowledge worker use cases. The ROI is pretty compelling. “we've had customers take three-hour long lectures and e-learning (content) and boil them down to 20 minutes on a headset. Some of our customers are cutting their on-boarding times in half. And the outcome is the similar in terms of proficiency. So that is a major ROI opportunity when you add up 10s of 1000s of people. Some of these are very high churn roles.” He says there may be focus on augmented reality and blue collar roles down the line. Plenty of white collar opportunities to focus on for now.    

He walks through his platform and the content creation ecosystem he is growing. Very nicely done in about 20 minutes. There is plenty of sports talk, quotes from Confucius and use cases for the white-collar Metaverse.

BTW I think I have found another recruit for my Technology and my Passion series. He has 264 golf balls and growing in his “stamp collection” from courses from around the world.

Analyst Cam: Wellthy

As we have moved to virtual briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short video segments (with permission) as part of my Analyst Cam series.

This time it is Lindsay Jurist-Rosner, Co-Founder and CEO of Wellthy, which provides a caregiving support solution. I was introduced to her by the Workday Ventures team.

Lindsay starts with her personal experience. She supported her mother through a chronic condition for 28 years (it started when she was a kid) and found the healthcare system in the US (and most other countries – they also service Canada, UK and Ireland)) assumes aging care is the responsibility of family members. She says families take on 90% of long-term care in the US.

They have since diversified beyond the focus on aging parents to also cover kids with special needs, spouses with chronic conditions, and during the COVID pandemic expanded into child care. About the last, she says “it remains a crisis. We've seen daycare shutdown, a reduction in the number of folks who are taking jobs as nannies or in-home aides. Families are really struggling to set up care as many companies have returned to more hybrid work environments, encouraging people to come into the office.”

The solution broadly consists of 3 components

• Care Dashboard – digital tools such as medication trackers, document storage
• Care Concierge – a dedicated coordinator and shared access to other team members who help advise on Medicare, insurance, other funding sources, care nuances etc.
• Wellthy Community

They started the business in 2015, supporting families and started working with employers in 2016. Business exploded through the pandemic. Today they support 1.1 million covered individuals. And expect to be closer to 2 million by the end of the year. Lots of big brand employers and 4 of the top 6 companies on the Fortune 100 Top Places to Work list.

They can show quantifiable outcomes like lowered absences and attrition at employers which offer their service as a comp benefit. The best endorsement she says comes from employees moving companies who say to their hiring person, “you know, I would like to retain access to this very important benefit”.

She says it is a  “very sticky benefit.”

Very nicely done in 20 minutes.