Ep. 167 - Unstoppable Entrepreneurs: Lori Rosenkopf on the Many Paths to Startup Success

SHOW NOTES

This episode’s guest is someone who’s spent her career studying—and championing—entrepreneurs who don’t always fit the Silicon Valley mold.

Dr. Lori Rosenkopf is the Vice Dean of Entrepreneurship at the Wharton School and the author of the new book Unstoppable Entrepreneurs: 7 Paths for Unleashing Successful Startups and Creating Value through Innovation. In this short guide, Lori explores how success doesn’t have to mean dropping out of college to start a venture-backed unicorn in your garage. Instead, she highlights seven distinct paths that entrepreneurs can take to build impactful ventures, whether they’re bootstrapped, mission-driven, or even working within larger companies.

Drawing on her years of research and mentoring at one of the world’s top business schools, Lori introduces what she calls the “Six Rs” of entrepreneurial mindset—Reason, Relationships, Resilience, Resources, Results, and Recombination—as core principles that help explain why some founders succeed where others falter.

In this conversation, we talk about the entrepreneurs Lori profiled in her book—from disruptors and acquirers to accidental founders—and what their stories can teach us about resilience and innovation. 

If you’ve ever thought “I’m not the typical entrepreneur,” perhaps Lori will convince you that maybe there’s no such thing.

DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE

• Lori discusses the work of Spirovant Sciences and its CEO Dr. Joan Lau.

• Paul recommends reading Shoe Dog and Super Founders.

• Wharton offers curriculum in Entrepreneurship & Innovation for both undergraduates and MBAs.

• The Venture Lab is Penn’s home for student entrepreneurs. 

• Some entrepreneurs rely on SBA loans rather than equity investments. 

• The Hult Competition is a global competition that challenges university students to develop innovative social enterprises that address pressing global issues.

MORE ABOUT Lori Rosenkopf

Lori Rosenkopf is the Simon and Midge Palley Professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. As Vice Dean for Entrepreneurship, she serves as Wharton’s faculty director for Venture Lab, Penn’s home for student entrepreneurs, and also their San Francisco campus. In a prior role as Vice Dean of Wharton’s Undergraduate Division, she introduced a new curriculum and developed experiential classwork in the tech sector. For over thirty years, Rosenkopf has taught entrepreneurship and management of technology to more than 20,000 high schoolers, undergraduates, MBAs, and executives, connecting these learners to many of the most entrepreneurial alumni at Wharton and Penn through treks, panels, and classes.

Rosenkopf received her PhD in Management of Organizations from Columbia University, her MS in Operations Research from Stanford University, and her BS in Operations Research and Industrial Engineering from Cornell University. She worked as a systems engineer at AT&T Bell Laboratories and Eastman Kodak between her degrees. Rosenkopf lives in Philadelphia with her partner, Allan, and their dog, Winston.

TRANSCRIPT

 Hello, friend. Welcome to episode 167 of the Business for Good Podcast. It was great to hear from several of you about the last episode that we did on Eon with their CEO Anna Pavlovich. She is, again, the self-described crazy rock lady, is grinding up ine and spreading it all over agricultural fields to try to sequester carbon.

It's a pretty cool idea and I appreciate all the feedback on the episode. If you want to message me anytime, I always love hearing from you. So you can just go to business for good podcast.com and write me a message there. Look forward to hearing from you. Let me know if you have any suggestions on ways that you think the show could be better, things you like, things you don't like, anything that's on your mind.

Now onto this episode, this guest is someone who has spent her career studying and championing entrepreneurs who don't always fit the Silicon Valley mold. Dr. Lori op is the. Vice Dean of Entrepreneurship at the Wharton School and the author of the new book, unstoppable Entrepreneurs, seven Paths for Unleashing Successful Startups and Creating Value Through Innovation.

In this short guide, Lori Explores how success doesn't have to mean dropping out of college to start a venture backed unicorn in your garage. Instead, Shiites seven distinct paths that entrepreneurs can take to build an impactful venture, whether they're bootstrapped, mission driven, or even working within larger companies.

Drawing on her years of research and mentoring at one of the world's top business schools. Lori introduces what she calls the six R's of entrepreneurial mindset. I don't know how you remember a list of six of anything, but the six R's are reason, relationships, resilience, resources, results in recombination.

She'll talk about this, that in the interview about what all those mean, but these are what she says are the core principles that help explain why some founders succeed. While others falter. In this conversation, we talk about the entrepreneurs, Lori profiled in her book from disruptors and acquirers to accidental founders and what their stories can teach us about resilience and innovation.

If you've ever thought, I am just not the typical entrepreneur, perhaps Laura will convince you that maybe there is no such thing. I let her try to convince you.

 Lori, welcome to the Business for Good podcast. Thanks, Paul. It's great to be here. Ah, okay. So you, you've had an illustrious career so far, but I'd love to know why did you write this? You talk about unstoppable entrepreneurs, which I thought was a, a good title since most entrepreneurs do get stopped.

Right. Most of them, as you point out, fail. But there are some unstoppable entrepreneurs. And why did you write this book? I won't get into what the book is saying, but what was your motivation in the first part for writing it?

I wrote the book because role models matter. And at Penn, I'm responsible for our Student Center for entrepreneurship.

So I work with students of all sorts of interests and alumni in all sorts of industries. And the role models that we're seeing in the media are essentially of one type, right? The college dropout. A venture-backed founder who builds a unicorn, and that's not the best role model for many people who are doing incredibly important things.

So I, I wrote the book to lay out a set of people who would be inspirational across different paths and also across different demographic interests and industries.

Yeah, it definitely is a case that it's almost like now a, a badge of honor to say you're a college dropout, right? Like, you were too good for college and that you're gonna be the next Mark Zuckerberg.

But you make the argument that that's, you know, the, the college dropout who's Silicon Valley backed, is not the only type of entrepreneur out there. And you discuss and profile others who will make, who, who you think will make perhaps at least. Different if not better role models. And so what do you think, like what makes a better role model for you than the type of person you just described?

Yeah, and I'd even go further than, than saying there there are different types, these college dropout sorts of folks who are held up in the media. They're actually really quite rare. These unicorn tech bro founders that are getting much of the celebrity entrepreneur attention. This is not the norm. The average founder is actually for, for the top venture backed companies is average age 30, late thirties, early forties.

So the, these are the anomalies, but they've gotten outsized attention because they have created gigantic tech companies in most cases, that have had outsized influence. In

Indeed. And I, you know, I, I interestingly, if you, if you read the book, super Founders, the the assertion is that there is not a particular age of a most successful founder.

That you have successful founders who were in their thirties, forties, fifties, sixties, and this not. Skewed to one of them. It's not like, you know, that you have a, a skew that it's more of a personality type rather than an age or whether they're college dropout. But, you know, it's not surprising that you working as a dean as you do at a, at a prestigious institution would think that people should not drop out from school.

But tell us what they should do. So what, what are the type of people who you think will succeed as entrepreneurs? Well, in the book I profile seven different paths, and one of them is the disruptor, which is closest to the stereotype we've been talking about. But the person I, I've chosen as my exemplar, she's not a tech pro.

But I focus on a bunch of different pathways where in, in any case, people are interested in creating value by innovating, and it winds up turning into some sort of a larger. Endeavor. I don't wanna say their own venture, because sometimes they're the intrapreneur that's working inside a company and is building out a new business.

Or they might be an acquirer who says, I am going to find a way to purchase a, a small mom and pop shop, maybe several of them, and start to scale them and build them up. Many of the examples that I have are, are people who are bootstrapping. Their organization, so they're not looking for venture funding.

And of course the social entrepreneur is a key pathway as well, because I don't think that gets as much attention as it deserves.

Yeah. So you talk about these seven paths, and you also talk about these six characteristics, right? Mm-hmm. You're talking about what you call the six R, so I'm gonna enumerate them for you.

Mm-hmm. That you know, you talk about reason, relationships, resilience, resources mm-hmm. Results and recombination. But in other interviews. When asked what the most important characteristic for a successful entrepreneur is, you talk about resilience, and you think that's the, the key one here of these six.

So first, why resilience? Why, why is that more important, let's say, than reason or relationships or resources and so on?

Well, I, I call the book Unstoppable Entrepreneurs, right? That sounds sexier than resilient entrepreneurs, but to a person, everyone I interviewed for the book, not just the seven key subjects, but there are many examples that give, give variety within each of the paths to a person.

When you get them talking, they tell you about all the challenges that they face. Along the way, and some of those challenges are very much inherent in you have an idea, and at first it's not well formed enough to really meet markets where they are, are really, are willing to show some demand. So you get lots of negative feedback and have to respond to that.

But lots of the challenges that my entrepreneurs faced were also out of their control. You know, COVID happens and you're running bus tours for young women to learn about careers. You have to be able to pivot and become virtual and turn yourself into an ed tech, which is of course one of the, the great stories in my book, Caitlin Grasso and, and her company generation the now look what's going on with the economic uncertainty.

People have to be able to respond and react to that. So I think that quality is something that, that unifies across all different types. Of entrepreneurs, anyone who's trying to innovate and create value, you're going to have lots of setbacks. But frequently the stories we hear in the media tend to sanitize that part of it.

They're telling the great success and the, the, the hockey stick sort of progress instead.

Yeah. One of my favorite things about reading the book Shoe Dog by Phil Knight, the founder of Nike, was that which is of course is like really iconic in this space now, but. To the outsider, you just see Nike as this huge success.

But he talks about the numerous near death experiences mm-hmm. That the company had and the ways that he was basically like cheating and stealing to keep the company alive. You know, like he was really un, un unbelievable. Even talking about, he would tell the bank he needed a loan for one purpose, 'cause he knew they wouldn't leave him the loan for the purpose.

He really wanted it for, and all these ways that, you know, he did what he had to do in order to keep his company alive before they became successful. And

yeah.

And, and I feel like you. Often when you hear about success stories with companies, it is, you know, even if not hockey stick as you pointed out, that it's a, a, you know, a path to success as opposed to lots of near death.

In, in your experience with the companies, even the ones that you profile in the book, and I want to get into those, mm-hmm. You know, are near death experiences you think the norm for startups, or do you think that that is something that some of the more successful ones have not had?

Most companies have existential crises as they're getting started because it, it's just really incredibly difficult to be able to come up with an idea that is immediately met with great response from the market where everyone is desperate from your product.

So almost every company that I get to talk to has pivoted. From their original idea. And just to go back to, to this issue of, of, you know, what it is about these stories and the resilience. Whenever I do panels, which is very frequently in my role, will bring back several entrepreneurs at any reunion event and the like.

And, and I'll get to moderate a panel. And I always find that the audiences really stand up and take notice when people are talking about. The biggest challenges and the struggles that they had, because that's where the inspiration for anyone else to get started or keep going really comes from.

Nice.

Okay. So let's talk about some of these folks who you're profiling in the book. You mentioned one, but you know, give us a story of somebody who you view as a, what you would call a non-traditional founder, or at least not stereotypical founder, I guess would maybe be a better way to put it and what they did to succeed.

So let me give you the chance to tell any one of the stories that you've told in the book that you think may be the best one to tell.

Okay. I think I'll talk about Joan Lau and, and Joan is my representative of the technology Commercializer and Joan calls herself an accidental entrepreneur. She's now CEO of a company that's working to cure cystic fibrosis.

I. So a, a life changing sort of product, but that takes many years to develop. But Joan was trained as a neuroscientist and worked at a large pharmaceutical firm for a bunch of years. And while she knew that this was helpful to people, she would say things like, I spent a lot of time in big meetings deciding whether the pills should come in two packs or four packs.

And so she got the urge. To find a way to have more impact. And at some point joined a friend's startup and worked in that startup and then got the bug for these small companies. And she wound up not only working and becoming CEO of one small biotech, but then wound up partnering with another person to invest.

In these sorts of companies. And now, as I said, she's the CEO of a company called SPI Revant working to cure cystic fibrosis. And, and so that's, that's, she isn't someone who woke up as, as a, a youngster saying, I want to be an entrepreneur. But now if you talk to her, she says, I, I, I understood at some point that I.

Was not retaining enough of the value I was creating when I was working in this corporation. I wanted to go out on my own and be able to accrue the value for what I can do. So she's just she's just an incredible person with a very inspirational story.

Alright, so which one of these paths does Joan embody, do you think?

So like, if you think about Seventh Path come out.

Yeah, she's the technology commercializer because she didn't invent this cure for cystic fibrosis, but instead she's scouting the different patents and technologies that are being developed typically out of universities or, or adjacent to universities and looking for strong candidates that then she can apply a commercialization lens to.

All right, cool. So, you know, technology commercializer is one of them, but h how should you know, let's say there's somebody right now, or who's thinking, you know, they wanna start their own company, maybe like, how should an aspiring entrepreneur assess which of your seven paths. Might be right for him or her.

Right. Is it more about personality, circumstance, mission? Like what would you say is the way for somebody saying, I wanna start a company, I've just read Lori's book. I really liked it, but I don't know which one of these I am. Which one, which, which, which one do I fit into?

And, and, and I would say you don't have to be just one, because many of the people, I think we could argue that Joan is a technology commercializer, but she also has a strong social component.

To her mission because she is trying to cure a disease that currently has no cure. And, and many of the subjects in my book will also do one path and then go into others. I'll give you those examples later, but I think anyone, whatever stage they're at, well, two of my s are really relevant here. One reason about half of the entrepreneurs in my book have a burning passion for something, right?

So Caitlyn wanted to help young girls find great careers and be empowered and, and the like. Jared, who is the founder of Harlem Capital he is. African American and looked at the field of private equity and investing and said, there's too much being left on the table because minority entrepreneurs aren't being funded.

I want to find a way to build up a bigger community of these entrepreneurs need founded Harlem Capital. With that in mind, so lots of the entrepreneurs have this underlying purpose and reason that leads them eventually to found the firm, but the other half. They just, these are the folks that say, oh, you know what, when I was in middle school, I got suspended for selling Halloween candy because the, the principal didn't want me making a profit on my Halloween candy.

I, I got I, I got in trouble for doing that. Or they'll talk about, I was the best paper boy in the neighborhood. So they'll tell these stories, say, I just knew I was entrepreneurial. I wanted to work for myself and I had to. Find and figure out a place. So either of those could be true for people. So I, I encourage people to look back, you know, what are the things that you've been passionate about, the experiences that you've had that lead you to see particular problems that are in need of solutions.

So that's certainly one piece of it. The other r that matters. Is recombination and like, this is kind of a technical term. I use it in my own research, but the idea here is that most innovation comes from people mixing and matching disparate things and finding ways to, to have a unique insight.

Because of their own experiences. Like, like a good example, not even from the book, I just, I've been struggling with sinus and allergy issues. You know, it's that time of year and if you grow up in India, you've been using a Neti pot your whole life in order to keep your sinuses clean. And if you move to America.

At some point you say, why are people spraying all these chemicals in their nose? And indeed then? Then because of the mix of your cultural experiences and them being in a new geography, you say, we could create an Americanized version of the Neti Pot and be an entrepreneur in that sort of way. It's like that's the idea of recombination.

So I really like to encourage people to say. What have you done that's unique? What is it about you that gives you a different insight? Is it because you've lived in multiple different countries? Is it because you've had a variety of experiences across different industries? Is because you took a unique course of study when you were in, in school or you're doing an interesting hobby now, whatever those things are, the thinking about the mixing and matching starts to give people insights into the sorts of, of projects they might pursue and therefore.

The path that they might follow.

Nice. So I, I do wanna talk about some of those ideas that you're mentioning, especially I ideas that you think are underserved right now for where mm-hmm. Where some entrepreneur might be able to mm-hmm. Make a difference. Mm-hmm. But before we get into those ideas, Lori, you feature multiple entrepreneurs in the book, which I really enjoyed.

Who created value without raising any VC funding? Right. Like so often you, you think of the job of a founder. As raising capital, right? Mm-hmm. Like so many of these founders, they're, they're, it almost reminds me of like members of Congress who are just always dialing for dollars, Uhhuh. But you know, like you have these founders and they're spending a huge portion of their time just trying to raise capital from investors, whereas, mm-hmm.

You know, you talk about folks who are bootstrapping and are basically, instead of trying to sell shares to their company, they're trying to sell their product to customers, right? Mm-hmm. Right. And so let me ask you about. What you view as what you would call like the power of bootstrapping, but also the limits of it, right?

Like obviously people raise investor capital for a reason, right? So what do you view as the, the, the benefits and the drawbacks of bootstrapping? Okay. Which is, you know, a very tough thing. And, and I will note that I am married to an entrepreneur who started her own companies that she's bootstrapped, which are now very successful and profitable.

And I, I joke that she has a business model where it's a, it's a weird model. I don't think they teach us in business school anymore, but we're there. Their revenue exceeds their expenses. And there there's, there's, there's probably a word for that. I don't know what, what you would call bootstrappers are better at that than

VC backed founders.

Absolutely. Yeah. So bootstrapping is actually the most. Common path for entrepreneurs. You wouldn't know it from the attention that it, it gets, or I should say, does not get in the media. But over 80% of the enterprises that exist are, were bootstrapped. And just to give you a sense of the magnitude of enterprises in the US there are 31 million enterprises, 29 million of them are.

Sole proprietorships where people are, you know, they, they might be coming and mowing your lawn or giving you some sort of, you know personal services or they, they may be selling as a consultant accounting services and the like, but so many, many companies are bootstrapped. And only about less than 1% of all of those 31 million have ever received venture funding at, at all.

And the remainder. Are are getting some sort of debt, right? People are taking loans. They don't have equity investors, but they're taking loans in order to move their businesses forward. So what does this mean? I. If you do not have pressure from investors if you do not have to pay back your creditors, if you are in an industry that allows you to start with whatever you have and can provide, either you have some savings of your own that you're applying or you're just starting to sell your services to build that up.

You have a lot less pressure than, than someone who also has to satisfy the sources of their funding. And what that means is that after five years, a bootstrap business is. 80% likely to still be in business compared to a a funded business, which 50% is, I, I think, a generous estimate. Not bad for, for debt funding, but you know, obviously for venture funding, you're, you're going to see at best a one in 10 success rate.

And, and most of those are not gigantic successes, right? So bootstrapping really. If you are in a space where you can do, and some arenas just need too much money to, to ever bootstrap, right? If you're in commercial real estate or if you're in pharmaceuticals and of course if you're trying to disrupt an entire market and have to acquire a gigantic set of customers, you have to take that, that funding.

But there are many spaces where you don't, and we always counsel our students to go as long as they can without taking funding. You know, use the awards that you can get from the university where we don't take equity. Go as long as you can.

It. So let me press on that, Lori. If you were starting a company today and mm-hmm.

You had your choice between bootstrapping and you had an investor term sheet on the table and you know, let's say it was something that maybe you could bootstrap, but you thought it would take you a lot longer, would you bootstrap it? I realize that you're saying some, some companies, let's say you, you're in pharma.

Obviously if you're in biotech, you need money to do basic research, that you're unlikely to have the capital to fund yourself. If you were doing something that could be bootstrapped, but it would take longer, what would you advise?

Mm-hmm. I, I should tell you the story of the Bootstrapper in my book, because is the quote that we start with is basically, I could have taken a, a couple of million from investors, but I wanted to work on my own time and on my own space and keep the gains that I was able to create.

So if you're in a. Base where you're selling services, you're building software and the like. You can probably go a pretty long way. And I mean we're, we're not in a time of easy money right now, but you took around the clock back four years where every investor was throwing tons of money at people.

There are a lot of people who took on term sheets that have led them to. Have to move too quickly and can't really ever meet the, the projections that are needed in order to make their business profitable for the venture capitalist. So I would still say if, if I could do it myself, I'd rather do that.

You would still bootstrap?

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah, it is quite interesting. I know there are so many companies that are now in the position that you just discussed, Lori, which is that it's no longer 2021. It's very hard to get capital. There was money coming out of the sky. Back then. Mm-hmm. Right. And, and now, you know, it's not just that you have to dig in the ground to get it, but it's way far out of reach.

Right. You're digging a deep, deep hole mm-hmm. To get down to that source of capital. And so I think a lot more people are thinking about what businesses that they can Yeah. Bootstrap with and maybe taking, you know, small business loans or something else that would be something different for them than venture capital.

Yeah. And there and there are, particularly in the social enterprise space, there are still a lot of places where people can get. Awards of different sorts and get support and grants and the like, that aren't indebting them to not, not just loans, but actually to equity investors. So there are a variety of resources that are available.

What are some of those resources that you would suggest for somebody who wants to bootstrap their own company?

Well, just as, as an example let, let's say the university and let me tell you a little bit about what we, we do at Penn. We have a, these are mostly for our students to begin with. We will offer them grants up to $50,000 to start at $500.

So they graduate upwards which we do not take equity. They're non-dilutive grants and awards that are available. Now, obviously everyone isn't in college and doesn't have access to those sorts of resources in most communities particularly if you're looking at community type problems. There are places like in Philadelphia, we have the Enterprise Center, which is also providing all sorts of advice and mentoring and sometimes office.

Based small grants and the like. Our students at the university will also take on projects to help companies with say, a go-to market strategy. Or, or a, any sort of a, a assessment. We, we create a variety of different sorts. To projects, but our students will do consulting projects in essence. So there's that sort of support as well.

And then of course there are larger competitions, right? Like the HALT competition, of course is one of the big name brand ones. Only one person wins that each year. But those kinds of places are there, there, there's, there's SoCal there, there's echoing Green, there's lots of foundations and fellowships that are plausible.

But I, again, in the spirit of bootstrapping, you're starting small, you're looking to. Build out some solutions with your own labor and your own limited resources. Mm-hmm. And then you can start to acquire small grants. Build from there.

Sure. So if somebody is reading your book, or even if somebody doesn't read your book, but they're still interested in starting their own company, Lori, what do you think is the main takeaway for them?

Like what's the main message that you want to get across to them?

You can do it and just get started instead of looking at these role models that exist out there and saying, this is so big and so gigantic. How can I ever get there? Look at what you've done, and recognize that we are all innovative. In our lives in one way or another.

We may or may not be doing it at work, but we're probably thinking about our home life and our family and our routines and the like, and everybody's trying some different things. Find the ways that you've been innovative, celebrate them and say, I can do a little bit more of this. This isn't that hard for me to do that.

Just try some experiments and, and if you fail in something that is self-funded and that you are just devoting some of your own time to doing it. There's, there's no shame in that. And one of the things that, that people tend to point out in the us, across the east and west coast is that the West coast is more embracing of failure because they see it as a necessary part of getting to an effective solution.

Whereas the East Coast has maybe been a little more buttoned up in the past, but that's, it's incredibly important.

As somebody who lived on the east coast of most my life and then moved to California. Mm-hmm. I can assure you what you said is definitely resonant with me. I've, I've certainly noticed that.

And it's funny you talk about just starting and there's no shame in failing. You know, I'll tell you the shame that I see is in not trying. Right. The, there's no shame in trying and not succeeding. The shame is in not trying at all. And a lot of the times people ask me about what they should. Read or what they should see in order to prepare themselves.

And I always tell 'em, you know, there may be books that are useful, there may be speeches, might be inspirational or even informational for you. But you know, if somebody wants to learn how to play soccer, they don't read a book about it, right? They get on the field and they try their, their hand or their foot rather out, right?

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. They go and they try and they practice and they see if they can get the hang of it. And I think the same is, is so with entrepreneurship that yes, you, you, you try it out. Like there's very little that you can read to prepare yourself for what it is like to be the cap, to be the captain of a, of a ship, even a small ship.

Which, you know, the head with the crown is always the heaviest. But I, I, so I appreciate what you're saying very much about just starting, because that seems to me to be the problem for some people who get stuck with the paralysis by analysis and trying to figure out all of these different variables and, and, and strategic plans.

And, and, and I always think like, you know, like you, you're, you're a, a six month old company and you're coming up with like a three year strategic plan. Like you have no idea what the future holds. You know, these business plans are not gonna survive first contact with reality.

Right. We, we used to have what we called a business plan competition at the university for our student entrepreneurs.

And now we call it the startup challenge because all they do is a pitch deck. They don't come up with those incredibly detailed projections, which are a little bit imaginary. But importantly, we do have classes and, and majors in entrepreneurship and innovation. But to your point about you can't just.

Teach it and have a framework and have that happen, you have to practice and have the experience. So coming up with concepts, ideating, and then coming over to our venture lab and incubating them and playing with these different ideas. Getting the small exploratory grants to get a sense if there's any sort of market at all.

This is part of the learning experience. And you know, there are research studies that show that entrepreneurs who've done it before. Are better at doing it the next time. Yeah. Because you start to learn a set of procedures and steps that you ought to be following. And again, we can, we can tell it's not any different than parenting children.

You can tell them, but they have to learn for themselves.

And, and, and also maybe similarly, the second time you do it, you might be more proficient than the first time. And, and, and actually in the book, super Founders, which will wink in the show notes for this episode at Business for Good podcast.com they do also talk about.

What you just said, which is that somebody who has been an entrepreneur before, especially if they've succeeded, is far more likely to be successful in their second attempt and third attempt rather than people who are neophytes of this. And some of

that is because they're, they're getting better at it.

And some of that is because they have the networks and are a known quantity to people who might want to support them with either funding or advice or mentorship or the like.

Yeah. Going back to your six R's that, you know, relationships are certainly one of them. Mm-hmm. And it's, it's been very, very useful.

What you said ear earlier lawyer reminded me, you were talking about people who, you know, like had, you know, some type of entrepreneurial endeavor when they were a kid that might have helped, showcase or illustrate their personality. It reminded me of a time when I was 15 years old and I had two entrepreneurial endeavors at the time.

One, I was in a band and we sold. Mm-hmm. We had, we sold our album. Mm-hmm. And then two, i, I wrote a fan zine, like a music fanene. And ne ne, neither the band nor the zine were. Wildly popular. They had their own little following, but you know, I was 15 years old and I was trying to build, build this own brand there.

But there was a, a very popular band that was coming to town and I videotaped it, which was totally illicit. It wasn't illegal. I videotaped it. And then I, I dubbed all of these VHS tapes of their show like o like over a hundred of them. And then. I at shows would sell the, the videotape of a very popular band, and if you paid for it, you would get a free album of my band and a free zine.

Ah-huh. And it was, and it was, and, and the full cost was actually profitable. So over what, what you, if you had bought the zine or you had bought the album of my band. Plus like the, the VHS, it was actually turning a profit on these. And so it was kind, it was a fun way to po you know, package something that was less popular with something that was more popular to get people interested in it.

Yeah. Yeah. And, and this experience serves you well over time and it's, it's like a mini example of recombination when I hear that. It's like you already knew how to do these other things and now you just bundle it all together and you create something that's more valuable. You know what's incredible, Paul, is that students.

Who are applying and coming in to our program as undergraduates. So these are our youngest students, you know, age 18, how many of them are already building some sort of venture or endeavor because they've had community service requirements in high school and, and they've, they've started to push on a particular cause that they think is interesting or, you know, anyone can kind of make an app.

These days. And with ai it's getting even easier to, to brainstorm a hundred different ideas in any particular domain. Yeah. And, and try to pursue that. So whether or not those are successful, it's just really the, the let's be innovative. Let's try and do something. Let's learn a lot along the way that we really celebrate.

I.

Yeah, for sure. So speaking of being innovative and speaking of lots of different ideas, what ideas, Lori, do you want to put out into the world that somebody else might want to take up? So if you think about you know, there's, there's, you know, if somebody might be listening, they're thinking, okay, like, I'm never gonna go to Wharton.

I, I may, I may read Lori's book, but I want to do something impactful in the world. I don't know what it is. What companies should this person think about starting? What problems should they think about tackling that you think is a good opportunity?

Well, I, I think there's tremendous opportunity in the broad space of elder care, right?

The population is getting older and, you know, why do I think of this? I have parents who are in their eighties who live in, they call it independent living, where there's some help. They don't need tons of help yet, but you see the people who are in the next stage who need even more help. And it's very difficult for all those places to hire enough people because they tend to be low wage jobs in, in that sector.

And, and so there, there's just so much opportunity to monitor and, and make sense of what's going on in the aging patient's life. There, there's medical sorts of issues, you know compliance with medication regimens. Are you getting up and moving and having your exercise? How about driving?

My dad, my dad's still a pretty good driver, but again, it's just something that, you know, we wanna be paying attention to. I think in Florida they give them their licenses. For 10 years, which is where my parents live. So they're far away. And I also worry about them because I'm up here in the Northeast.

And of course there's financial monitoring, right? People have usually created some sort of nest egg if they're fortunate. And yet it's very complicated how you manage things in an electronic age if you're already in your eighties or nineties. So we have some students who are working on great sorts of, of projects.

The winner of our recent. Business plan competition is actually building out some solutions in this space. But I went to chat pt just in advance of, of this call to, to check. I, I said, gimme a hundred ideas for, for things in the elder care space. And some of them, you know, I, I would've smart medication dispensary, you know, I would've thought of.

But let me read you a couple of others here. Emergency Buddy Beacon automatic bed reer. Smart hydration reminder. So like, just these may or may not be actual great ideas, right? 'cause AI just popped 'em all out. But AI is actually way better at coming up with a hundred ideas quickly than you or I, or even a group of 10 students or so.

I am very resigned. To the fact that AI is dramatically superior to bi or to biological intelligence in many, many ways. Not, not, not always yet but in many ways for for sure. Yeah.

And you know, I have one other idea I'd like to put out there, which is the mediation space. Again, I think AI gives us the potential to, at very low cost help two opposing parties.

Start to articulate what's really important to them in a negotiation and, and start to propose some compromises that might be good solutions. Typically people get into disputes and hire attorneys and everything's contentious and you're ringing up a big bill, but really much negotiation. Well, and mediation is about.

Finding the key issues for each party, which aren't always the same, and lots of assumptions are made. I think it just gives, there's a lot of space there, there are tools that exist out there, but I think there's some real opportunity in that space as well.

Well, before you adjourn, I'll tell you a very short story.

So I I know a retired judge who now serves as a mediator and he told me that. Every case he mediates while he still is coming up with his own judgments in them. Mm-hmm. That he inputs all of the filings into Cha Bt and ask Cha Bt to give him. A ruling in favor of one side and to give him a ruling in favor of the other side.

Mm-hmm. And then he reads both. And then he asks chat, GPT, which one it thinks makes. Mm-hmm. More legal sense. Mm-hmm. And he says that nearly not, not always, what he said nearly a hundred percent of the time, he agrees with what Chacha BT has said. So, you know, here you have a case where, you know, the AI is not the mediator, but the mediator is utilizing chat, GBT.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And, and finding that it reasons in a way that he. Is in concert with, so it's it's pretty remarkable. Yeah, it's, it's pretty remarkable. So yeah, may, maybe we need like a chat, you know, chat judge or so you know something, right? If, if, if it

works well, you don't even have to go to the judge, right?

Two parties could just go to this at some point. Very low cost, very quick. Yes. Sort of articulation and solution rather than a long dragged out emotionally draining. Process. Yeah.

Right. You know, in the old days you'd have to go to like King Solomon and have him propose cutting the baby in half.

Right. You know, maybe chat judge will do a better job of of this than even Solomon. Exactly. So Lori, it, it's a really good book. I recommend it again. It's called Unstoppable Entrepreneurs. Seven Paths for Unleashing Successful Startups and Creating Value Through Innovation. Go check it out. It is now for sale.

Lori, we're wishing you great success with everything that you're doing. I hope the book rollout is fantastic and that you inspire many people to do something important in the world. And I hope that my own parents who are approaching 80 and also live in Florida may benefit from somebody starting a company with one of the elder care technologies that you're advising here.

So if they have smart hydration I'll know where this came from.

Absolutely. It's been great to be here, Paul. I've enjoyed speaking with you.