IoT GUIDE

This is an episode of the "Ventures in Industrial IoT" series brought to you by GE Ventures. In the series we explore success factors and challenges in Industrial IoT markets with CEOs, investors and experts. 

IoT Spotlight Podcast introduction:

The IIoT Spotlight Podcast shines a light on Industrial IoT solutions that are impacting businesses today. Every episode we interview an expert about a specific IoT use case. Our goal is to provide insight into the planning and implementation of IIoT systems, from new business models to technology architecture selection to data ownership and security. The IIoT Spotlight is produced by IoT ONE, an information platform that provides market insight, partner development, and go-to-market support for technology providers, end users, and investors. Don't forget to follow us on twitter. You can contact me directly at erik.walenza@iotone.com.

Summary:

Many consumer-facing startups like Tinder and Snapchat soak up all the publicity and media attention while many of the Industrial startups that are truly transforming our world are deemed not "sexy" and fall under the radar. As a result, many of these startups also do not receive adequate support from corporate investors and venture capital firms that are critical to growing their businesses. 

In the eighth installment of the  "Ventures in Industrial IoT series" brought to you by GE Ventures, we are excited to have with us Ravi Belani, Managing Partner of Alchemist Accelerator who will be sharing with us about how his accelerator works with the companies in their portfolio and with corporates to develop the competence of these "unsexy" startups through collaboration. 

Learn more about Alchemist Accelerator: http://alchemistaccelerator.com/

Learn more about GE Ventures: www.geventures.com 

Links: 

Libsyn: http://directory.libsyn.com/episode/index/id/6074113

iTunes:  https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/industrial-iot-spotlight/id1228185407?mt=2​ 

Speaker Bio: 

Ravi Belani is a man who is incredibly passionate about accelerating the development of startups by fostering better collaboration between them, the corporates and Venture Capital firms. In particular, he strongly supports the work of startups that are in the industrial and enterprise space that are traditionally deemed less "sexy" because of their ability to build solutions that can create real change in our society. 

He does so in two ways. Ravi is the Managing Partner of Alchemist Accelerator, that is focused solely on accelerating enterprise companies. In addition to that, he is also an academic who teaches in the engineering school at Stanford entrepreneurship. You can reach out to his Stanford email at ravib@stanford.edu.  

Company Overview: 

The Alchemist Accelerator is a venture-backed initiative focused on accelerating startups whose revenue comes from enterprises (not consumers). The accelerator backs teams with distinctive technical founders, and provides $40K notes, a fellowship of high potential founders, highly sought after mentors, customer development, and a structured path to fundraising.

In 2016, Alchemist Accelerator topped a ranking by CB Insights of "Where Best Funded Startups Come From."

Blurbs:

"Please know that the enterprise space is indeed sexy and there's a lot of very gratifying work to be building things that create real impact." 

"Most companies aren't going to die because of a bad idea, but rather due to a limited runway which is time and cash." 

"Product development is one of these bifocal exercises where we're never done" 

"When you're starting out, how you sell and the networks that you are involved with is as important as your product" 

"In IIoT aligning your firm with the right networks is more important than any other area within enterprise because the stacks right now are controlled by key players."

Show Transcription:

[00:00:06]

Welcome back to the industrial IoT Spotlight Podcast. I'm joined today by Ravi Belani, Managing Partner at Alchemist Accelerator. Ravi is also a faculty of entrepreneurship at Stanford University and an adviser and investor to quite a few interesting startups in the industrial space Alchemist from my understanding is a venture capital firm that focuses on founders whose revenue comes from enterprises. Ravi before we kick off into our main topic today which is going to be looking at how you work with the companies in your portfolio and with corporates to develop the competence of these startups through collaboration. Let's kick off with a quick overview of who you are where you're coming from and with alchemist's accelerator focus is on. But thank you first for joining us really appreciate your time today.

[00:00:54]

Happy to Erik. It's an honor to be here. We love people that are as enthusiastic about the industrial side as we are because we oftentimes are like the unsexy accelerator doing all the enterprise and industrial companies. And so we're very happy to be a part of anybody who is part of that ecosystem. So happy to be here. Thank you for having me. Let me give you a bit of background so you guys know where I'm coming from. So as Erik mentioned I'm I have two hats. One is that I'm an academic at what I teach in the engineering school at Stanford entrepreneurship and then I also run Alchemist and Alchemist is different than other groups in a few ways one of which is that we got started by the VCs so original investors are the venture capital funds here in Silicon Valley like Khosla Ventures, DFJ Ventures, Mayfield foundation of USVP and so forth. And we only do enterprise so we accelerate companies that are all enterprise focused and within Alchemist we have about 11 corporates that have joined the VCs to create the program as well including G.E. Cisco Siemens Johnson Controls Analog Devices, Salesforce, and a whole bunch of others but especially the first three that I mentioned G.E. Siemens Cisco and others Juniper as well have also funded an industrial IoT program within Alchemist. So not only are we a VC backed accelerator. We focus on industrial and enterprise and within that we have a special also Industrial IoT program. So we now have 250 companies that are all in these unsexy industrial enterprise spaces that have gone through Alchemist or in the process of going through right now and we feel like we're the largest organization focus now on the seed stage for enterprise and industrial startups so that's a bit of background and that will color a lot of my views on how corporate startups can coexist and work together and dance. You know we call that combining elephants and unicorns the emerging startups that are disrupting and the elephants that have the wisdom and the networks to help it just to make it clear what we do is we run a six month program. We give the companies a little bit of cash literally like forty thousand dollars to pay for rent during the program and then all their other needs are generally met. And really that the focus is on intense development during that time as a structured path towards Fund-Raising towards product development towards mentorship and towards sales. So all that is part of Alchemist. So that's a quick overview. And I'm happy to go into a lot more detail and get into a lot of different things. So I'll turn it over to you from here.

[00:03:25]

Yeah I love the focus it's really the hidden part of the iceberg right the industrial side where a lot of the most interesting stuff is happening it's where you really have to go deep into the tech companies are willing to fund really cutting edge tech and a lot of areas but it doesn't get the social media exposure so I suppose. Ninety nine percent of people out there are just not aware of what these companies are doing. So I think we're in a really interesting space.

[00:03:47]

I love being in this space and it was exactly right people don't know about that but there is a lot of interest in doing things that are different. So there's a lot of these third parties that rate these programs these accelerators and Alchemist generally get the top designation but CB Insights is another third party analyst group. They rated the accelerators last year based on the amount of capital that the graduates raised and Alchemist was number one on the list, Y Combinator which is another prominent Colorado was number two and TechStars was number three. Everybody was surprised they were like all this surprise the accelerator topped the list of best accelerators and it's because all the companies are not consumer base and they're all these industrial enterprise facing companies and it's because there's a lot of capital to support companies that are actually building real businesses. So please if you're doing anything in the industrial enterprise space know that enterprise is sexy and there's a lot of it's very gratifying work actually to be building things that create real impact real change.

[00:04:42]

There's a thousand things that we can discuss but you know for the for the point of focus we're going to look at two things One is how you're helping companies accelerate product development. Second is how companies in your portfolio are building networks of strategic alliances and using those to fill competence gaps and get out to market successfully. Let's look at the first two. You've got a great network of corporates that are already invested in the program.

[00:05:05]

I'm sure also working with dozens maybe hundreds of other companies that are not necessarily strategic partners but you're engaging with the product development side.

[00:05:14]

Walk us through a little bit. When a new company comes into a new batch how do you start to get them engaged so that they're you know tapping your network to advise their R & D to identify potential new new use cases pain points should be addressing on the on the product development side.

[00:05:32]

So what we like to talk about when you're starting a company we like the analogy that we like to use is almost like being the pilot of a plane where you have limited runway to take off and most ideas aren't going to die because the ideas are bad. It's rare that you have a company that is where it is because of a bad idea. But the problem is is that you have a limited runway which is time and cash to actually have the company become a standalone concern. And if you get to the end of the runway and you don't have the customers lined up in the product detailed out or you don't have the cash from a funding source you won't be able to take off and really the main point of Alchemist is to be maniacally focused on go to market and fundraising so that we make sure that you take off. Our corporate partners get involved very early so we now have we have this network that we supposed to the founders which literally 14000 people in it that are across the enterprise space that the founders can get full access to the meetings up the different people that they need. But the real value happens in curated connections where all the founders and alchemist's are technical they are all out there all working on interesting innovations. But some of them don't know who the biggest thing that kills startups is a long sales cycle is issues especially in the enterprise or industrial space where big corporates will not move quick enough and you'll kill a startup in that way because you can drain a ton of resources from the startup scene unknowingly and the startup doesn't have any points on the board to gain the traction to get fundraising to get talent to get further customers. So we serve as the bridge between those two worlds really. There's a there's a traditional impedance mismatch between corporate startups where corporates are looking for innovation but they don't know how to work at startups and vice versa and the way that works is that in the program in the first three weeks we are doing facilitated introductions with many of our corporate partners to startups that we think are relevant based on mutual agreement. Where the startups want to meet with those partners and the partners want to be a startup then a handful of startups will be invited in for further discussion with our corporate partners to work together more closely strategically and from a product development perspective. And so from the start that we're trying to expose them to a lot of people and a lot of high powered people quicker rather than going through cold introductions or frankly going up the totem pole. They're getting directly connected into the decision makers or to the leaders in these organizations and for the corporates in exchange for getting an insight into the smartest founders that are building the coolest tech. We want them to accelerate their product development their product onboarding process. So with the corporates they're getting privileged access to the startups that are coming out of the ecosystem. And then in addition they're being asked to share insights with everybody else who's who are the other corporate partners that are in the program and also to do some procurement events so that they can be contributing back to the ecosystem so they feel some encouragement if not pressure to not waste the startup's time and to invest and to dedicate their own resources to help startups.

[00:08:31]

 Let me give you an example to make this more real. So we had three alumni from the University of Toronto which is a phenomenal university it's one of Canada's top schools. And these were two engineering alumni two computer scientists and one awesome business executioner which is what we love. That's a classic Alchemist team where you have a duo technical team flanking a business executioner and they're building a blockchain company. And these guys were awesome technologists that they'd actually mine their own cryptocurrency they'd build their own blockchain markets in the past but they're fine walking against the enterprise space and they're are phenomenally talented on their own but they benefited from it a little bit of direction. So they actually got connected to G.E. in the third week of the program and GE simultaneously we knew was looking for a block chain platform to address an issue on on their supply chain which was looking for help and it was a core issue for GE it wasn't that this isn't sort of a random project it's one of actually only four high priority projects that they're looking for this year. And so GE was able to get was able to share the requirement that would be needed to build a truly robust supply chain solution to this startup. It's called authenticity alchemist's though he was getting privileged access to being literally the first corporate partner that Authenticity was going to focus all their attention on and Authenticity was benefiting from getting huge insights in terms of how to build a robust supply chain platform from arguably one of the top 10 companies in the world in terms of understanding supply chain. So that wasn't a huge win-win and it was much more profound than just technology scouting. So the easy thing is to say hey you know we're looking for this product. And hey here's a start up that has a product that can address that need. And that's the first direction of product development. Just literally brokering connections which can be very valuable. But the second order is actually influencing each others direction. Where you get involved early and you can start to shape the strategy and how she's thinking about that. And you can shape obviously the strategy for the startup. Product development is one of these bifocal exercises where we've never done even if you listen to Marc Benioff today the CEO of sales force he'll say that sales force is just one tenth of what it's meant to be it still has so much more to do. And when you're when your enterprise and in product management the reality is that you're never done as a founder we feel that acutely feel embarrassed you say oh you know our our our technology is not good enough to the enterprise. Well the reality is that the product is never really fully there. That's always going to be 10 times more things that need to get done that are done today. And so product development in the enterprise is unique because it's much more about partnerships than it is about customers and vendors. It's about forming alliances where there's an alignment in the long term bifocal vision of where you're headed and in the end the corporate puts faith in you that you can that they agree with the vision and they agree with the team to be a long term partner and then in the short term is scoping out what are the top ten must have needs that are going to be required to get the initial deployment done within that corporate.

[00:11:45]

So for the corporate it's incredibly valuable because they're getting insights in terms of what the next generation of entrepreneurs are working on.

[00:11:54]

And frankly it's helpful to have that exercise outside of the corporate walls because the startups can iterate a lot quicker than the corporates can and they have less to lose and they can iterate literally in a week they can do a wrap on the whole platform. And that's just a huge asset for any corporate and for the startup getting GE as an endorsed customer and partner is life changing. That alone will close checks from the VCs on fantail road. They give me the capital to then continue to take off from that runway and it is also important that the VCs because as a real customer validation. So in the enterprise and industrial ecosystem the corporate players are critical role. They're not a secondary role. Their primary role. The success of any startup and corporate innovation the startups are critical to ensure that corporates know how to grow because all too often internal R&D efforts fail and they're not correlated with success. So if you look at the companies that send the most on R&D, they're not the most innovative companies list innovative companies in terms of big corporates are ones that actually have cultural differences. And so the startups are actually incredibly valuable to the corporates it's a very symbiotic relationship. Let me pause there and then it might have been a lot and I'm happy to talk about networks as well. But on product development it's that bifocal exchange it's getting line on a vision and also the near term tactical features which is where the partnership truly flourish and having that deep exchange early on as was helpful and making sure that both sides are incented to make sure that the others succeed in not screwing the other side over effectively.

[00:13:30]

Let me follow up on one tactical point of how to make this work. I was last week introducing a company called Vantiq which is based in the valley IoT application development platform to a company in China a large multinational and they were talking around howVantiq can help them develop solutions for smart buildings the company said.

[00:13:50]

I love what you're doing. Very interesting. We want to explore it. Can you give us a POC. It will take one to two years Vantiq said. Yeah we think we can get it done in a week. How do you reconcile these different timelines. Because obviously Vantiq as you said they have a limited runway they have to get projects closed. They think that they can execute very quickly and provide value. But the corporate says we have a strategic timeline. We have a bunch of internal processes. It's going to take time to make decisions. We have maybe hardware to rollout that also takes time. So you have very very different timelines. How do you work with this when you're kind of maybe in the middle making introductions and helping to structure these relationships.

[00:14:25]

Yeah that's the impedance mismatch and that's why you need to have some type of circuit which we serve the purpose of making sure that does not happen where the start ups don't get beholden to a long sales cycle. So there's a strategic way we solve that and there's a tactical tactical advice to the founders that don't have the strategic access the strategic way that we solve that is by trying to create sub-organizations within these corporates that are focused on innovation that are freer from the corporate constraints and move quicker and do procurement events quicker so you know with Cisco and with G.E. they have actually created special groups and Siemens as well. And we've influenced that as well on how we groups operate and we will not work with organizations that cannot help startups by being on a quicker time frame. That's a deeper discussion with corporates and making sure that the corporates understand the value that they get by changing their normal POC process for startups and treating startups differently than traditional vendors. If you don't have that which is and we do that through incentives they're incented to streamline their process. They get access to top companies because we feel that if you do the streamlined process you will get privileged access to our most promising technologies. But we only want to showcase them to corporates that can you know respect the startups needs. If you don't have that it's a negotiation tactic and what you need to do is the reason why the corporate partners important to the startup is that it's validation of product market fit. And there's obvious value on getting the features right on the product. But the big value is from a cash conversion cycle perspective. If the startup can close a big corporate in a compelling enough way it can lead to a venture capitalist or a VC to invest and a one to two year timeframe kill a startup. They have to wait for one to two years have validation that that procurement is real. They can get over that when the two year timeframe if they have an investor who can provide the cash that that procurement would have normally provided so what we recommend and this is about this is a much longer conversation. That is how you negotiate the sales process. So what we would normally want the founders to do is say look we're fine with a two year engagement but you know we're trying to choose three partners right now to focus on right now because we have limited resources and we want to focus our resources on over delivering. So we need to choose three partners and I want to make you one of those partners but I need to make the case for you Mr. Corporate to our internal committee and what we'd like to do is traunch out these two years into a few phases where we're mitigating the risks so that by the time we get to the end of those two years all the needs that you have have been delegated.

[00:17:08]

But can we work through and detail out what are the risks that you need to get done over the next two years. And then if they say oh well we first need to we need we need to do a security audit we need to do a technology validation phase that we need to do a scaling validation you want to then take those and traunch those as the different phases of deployment. So let's say the biggest risk right now. So we need to validate the technology and to get these three guys are if you want to scope that out to like a 12 months engagement to get that scoped out and instead of calling that instead of calling it a pilot call it technology mitigation risk mitigation phase phase 1 and so there's a fine art around this but the ideal outcome is something where you get an engagement where the corporate partner doesn't need to make any huge commitments until the end of that one to two year period but they're going to make a commitment for the initial phase of let they make 12 weeks to de-risk. One element of that bigger two year frame and at the end of each of those phases and the corporate partner can pull out and say hey I don't want to go any further. But assuming that phase goes well then you go on to the second phase and so forth and get at least that 2 year plan fleshed out and ideally some commitments against that first phase like it might be twenty five thousand dollars even though all close and it's going to be a million dollar deal if you can get the corporate partner then to sign off on that plant where they're not even committing the 2 million dollars. But they're saying if everything goes well then this will become a million dollar or 2 million document and then at the end of the two years thereafter pay any of that money and told that the end of that time and they're really just a little bit of money upfront. You can call that a thing and it's not that you need to commit all the money from the corporate partner upfront. What's critical is that you can represent the VC that instead of saying that you're doing like doing a pilot you can call that a a booking where you're doing sort of your pilots really the Phase 1 thing that you don't want to call it a pilot you want to call a one point Ultra. The key thing here is is that you need to have some engagement where you can then show the venture capitalists that you have a legitimate booking with a corporate partner and that VC is going to call up the partner and the VCs doesn't need you to be paid right now as much as they need to understand that this engagement will be a seven or a six figure deal. So that becomes a little bit more tactical on how you need to manage the language of a former partner uses for engagements with what's going to be required to convert to a fund raising event for you. And then ideally it's really about not doing pilots but doing the first phase of a five phase partnership and getting that first phase get some modest payment to get a step of being able to represent to the VC that this has a certain size feel. Then hopefully if you get two or three of those even though it's going to take two years you can raise a million and a half dollars at least bridge you until that time period lasts ideally you get the deal closed without it taking two years. And then those are other hacks because really usually to get it post rigor you need to get access the power you need to get access to an executive of the corporation that makes the mandate to go forward quicker.

[00:20:20]

Let's switch to the next topic now which is building strategic alliances. I think this is very much very much connected and you know how do you how do you actually get to the stage of being able to accelerate product development through these partnerships. First you need the partnerships I tell companies often that ecosystems are as important as technology in terms of establishing leadership. You see a lot of the companies that are successful out there don't necessarily have best of breed technology. There are people that have maybe a stronger in particular areas but they're successful because they're able to fit themselves into other people's solutions. They're able to get to market successfully. I don't know if this is true this is this is my my impression. What is your perspective on the importance of an ecosystem and maybe we can look at it through the different aspects of a business where as an ecosystem most important in terms of you know R&D, product development go to market etc. I think it's very true.

[00:21:16]

It's unfortunately sort of a truism in an enterprise startups that the best companies that succeed the most have the worst tech sometimes which is unfortunate. So if you look at the Darling enterprise you know software I don't want to mention names but the enterprise software companies of old generally there are these amazing sales teams. But the tech the products themselves are woefully and strikingly not great. So I think it is a typical thing unfortunate unfortunately. And so this this thing about networks is very important because when we get to the answer in a second but let me just give a little bit of background is that as for most technical founders when you're starting out where you need to understand is that the how you sell and the networks that you are involved with is as important as your product in determining your how much you're going to get for products so you miss a bunch of examples of this both official enterprise software but even if you looked at even if you look at things that are sort of consumer facing types of companies like WebEx that might be a good example of if you looked at Webex which looks like a sort of consumer enterprise product you're selling video conferencing technology to users and you compare that to GoToMeeting, Webex got healthy people would pay on average twice as much if not more for WebEx than GoToMeeting. And that's purely because of how they architected their sales process and where they sat in the networks of people that they were interacting with. And so getting baked into the right networks is critical. And so when you are engineering your startups you need to think about both engineering products and you need to think engineering how you're selling. So you're building your product and are also building a process of how you're selling with WebEx versus GoToMeeting. The fact that they were able to sell so much more and get such higher margins had nothing to do with the product. Not to offend Cisco who's one of our backers but the product itself unfortunately was not a correlation with their success. What they did do was they had a phenomenal sales process and they aligned themselves with the right networks in industrial IoT. This is as if not more important than any other area within enterprise because the stacks right now are controlled by key players. And if you're in bed with those players then that also is that that will put you in a much better strategic position even if technologically you deserve to be there or not in those networks can be very difficult. So getting access to those networks for better or for worse sometimes has little to do with product. Obviously you have to have a threshold of product functionality there but there's so much of it just like everything else in the enterprise space is about vision. It's about how your product how you're going to build the product out over time and getting alignment on that vision from key partners or frankly just getting the endorsement of certain of certain partners and this is particularly relevant again for enterprise versus other areas because it takes so long for products to get built and there's always more to be done. So even in this example where GE is working with an Alchemist company authenticity you know for block chain supply for supply chain Blockchain innovation. There is so much that has to still be specked out in the industry and the reality is that there's so much more that has to be done on the product. But having that strategic partner already based in automatically get to a win in many ways because it clears it shows that you have the face of an enduring partner that's going to be supporting you along the way and that can actually out-beat even technical functions that another startup might have. 

[00:24:58]

So how do you get into these networks. There's different ways to do this but as a startup your great challenge is trying to compete with corporations and sometimes these corporations especially in the industry are vertically integrated where you have G.E. or Siemens or other big players like Schneider and others that own the full stack and they're owning the sensors they're owning all the data and they have the full stack deployments and then there are networks especially we're seeing some emerge in IT see for example we have a company called Amber which is providing all the sensors for emergent SMB manufacturers. You give them a dashboard of what's happening within their factories and that's a much more horizontal play where there's a bunch of open platforms that are getting plugged into that. But even then within that ecosystem it's about distribution. How do you get access to all those different small businesses. Because having a direct sales force is non-viable. So with each of these different key partners that really are partners of distribution at the end of the day the corporate networks where you can start to get baked into standard OEMs and standard deployments leverage the sales cycles of some of the some of the behemoths.

[00:26:10]

There's going to be distribution partners that have access to a wider distribution network because these things are long term commitments. A lot of that will have to happen through business development and engaging people where there's alignment on the vision getting access to the right people.

[00:26:26]

So accelerators to be bridges for those to add the right connectors that are part of partnerships with the different corporations and there can be very few strategic ways to get that to work. Right now many of the corporates for example are trying to show. So one is that hopefully the best way to get this to work is based on merit based it's based upon. The key thing that you're solving and the need that there but unfortunately oftentimes to expedite a sales cycle or expedite a partnership the marriage channel will pay off. And so sometimes that could happen if you can find a marketing angle and for example a lot of corporates are under pressure right now the evidence that they're doing something in IoT or are doing something in AI. And if you can if you can bring up marketing points on that meeting or you can use that as currency to drive a partnership earlier. And then also there's just a lot of corporations that are having these discussions with other corporations and just being in the know of what they actually care about being available can be hugely valuable because frankly what they might most need is somebody that will actually be able to listen to them until they have everything spelt out in terms of specifications complications and they just need to have a competent company or team that can build the needs that they have. And so sometimes what's most valuable is not necessarily even peddling a product but just making them aware that you exist and that you are open especially in the early stages towards the vision of what they're trying to get done. And it has aligned with your vision. I don't want you to compromise your vision but if that does align then that can be a real opportunity.

[00:27:57]

What is your perspective on the alliances consortiums. I mean one of the hats that I'm wearing is the co-chair of the industrial Internet Consortium smart factory task group. I've seen some smaller companies have success. They're networking with larger companies you know looking at how they can they can co-innovate. And then you know building paths to market through this. You then have the you know kind of the consortiums that are more focused on specific verticals you have Sigfox and these these technical alliances that are around a specific standard or connectivity solution. Do you actively you know build relationships with these with your perspective on the value of a startup trying to carve out a leadership or a prominent position in one of these these networks.

[00:28:47]

I love consortiums as a hack for startup founders to build a network. consortiums that are pros and cons in terms of. And we work with like IEEE and a bunch of these others on panels and helping orchestrate different events. But the big value for me for consortia is that there's oftentimes a role that no none of the big corporates want to play. A lot of it can be organizational or being on the boards of these consortiums. And so that is an opportunity for a founder to do that work that nobody wants to do and build out your Rolodex or your work with the consortium themselves consortiums are hit or miss. So in terms of actually and they can be a hit but they can also be a miss in terms of setting the standards for industries. Sometimes they can work but sometimes they'll take too long and depending upon individual corporates will just move on their own. But regardless of that the big value is getting access to all the decision makers. So if you sit in one of these consortiums that can be critical roles. At alchemist's we've been we've done panels we've done different events with different consortia. For us the big values getting to the leaders within the big gorillas that are going to those consortia that we've just been very fortunate that many of us have directly backed Alchemist. And in fact we have even served as the role of in the IoT space for example we had SAP and Cisco and Johnson Controls and Salesforce they did an event together and that happened to be happening where they all came together as Alchemist backers. So we've been fortunate to play that connecting role a little bit just directly but for a founder I think consortiums are a great hack. Go find it whoever whoever is is is the thought-leading consortia or trade group where wherever ever go into work or serve or lead a committee within that group that needs to be led. And that gives you the authority to just get direct access to the people of power.

[00:30:34]

Ravi, I think you know these are kind of the points I wanted to touch on anything else that you you think it's important to share in the context of this conversation.

[00:30:41]

Just know that you're a hero if you're the founders never out there founders you guys are heroes. You're finding here go to the hero's journey and you just need to stay present to win. You just need to stay involved. So the biggest piece is timing.

[00:30:53]

And just if you stay present when the markets take off then that you will win that that that that matters so much so just stay persevere and for the corporates. There's a lot happening in innovation and if you guys and everybody is welcome to reach out to us, my Stanford e-mail is just ravib@stanford.edu. Do you just want to say or you can check out Alchemist accelerator online and just feel free to reach out.

[00:31:20]

I think for people in your position it's always also useful to kind of lay out if a company wants to engage with you.

[00:31:26]

What's the right way to approach you meaning what information would you like to see in an introductory email so that you can make a decision on how how should we go forward.

[00:31:34]

If a company wanted to contact you what should they share 

[00:31:37]

Well the best thing is just to apply.

[00:31:39]

So you can apply online. And there's the application directly online and we do interviews almost every four weeks so down the quickest way to meet up with us is just to apply and your application will be reviewed. Having said that if you know somebody who is connected to Alchemist if you know Erik you know anybody and they write an endorsement to us that will be added to your application and it can help. But it's not at all required. So if you don't have a connection and don't worry about needing to you know soft and create a warm introduction into Alchemist just apply online. And we love finding teams that are doing unsexy or things that are in areas that nobody knows about. And that's what we exist for. So literally just apply online. And if you're time-strapped the most important thing is the team and the team's background and then if you want to find other ways that you can connect into the Alchemist community you can see all of our companies on the on site and you can look for the founders of senior tech today the founders but if not don't worry too much about it just apply and .

[00:32:39]

Ravi thanks so much for taking the time today. Thank you. This is great.