Microsoft and The Future of AI & Startups

Hey, welcome to another episode of Making Billions, I'm your host, Ryan Miller and today I have my dear friend Taylor Black.

Taylor is the managing partner at Fizzy Ventures and the principal program manager at Microsoft Incubation Studio. He's a seasoned entrepreneur, passionate about driving innovation and growth, his 17 years of experience and expertise in venture studios make him ideal in this industry.

So what this means is that Taylor runs one of the most elite innovation studios in the world and is about to teach you some common sense strategies on how to build your company startup or fund in the right way.

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[THE GUEST]: Taylor is the managing partner at Fizzy Ventures and the principal program manager at Microsoft Incubation Studio. He's a seasoned entrepreneur, passionate about driving innovation and growth, his 17 years of experience and expertise in venture studios make him ideal in this industry.

Transcript

Ryan Miller  

My name is Ryan Miller and for the past 15 years have helped hundreds of people to raise millions of dollars for their funds, and for their startups. If you're serious about raising money, launching your business or taking your life to the next level, this show will give you the answers, so that you too can enjoy your pursuit of Making Billions. Let's get into it. 

Ryan Miller  

If you want to win in business, or funds, AI is the way of the future and my next guest is going to tell you all about it. Tune in as we discuss starting a business and how AI is about to redefine the business model and what it means to make billions. All this and more come in right now. Here we go. 

Ryan Miller  

Hey, welcome to another episode of Making Billions, I'm your host, Ryan Miller and today I have my dear friend Taylor Black. Taylor is the managing partner at Fizzy Ventures and the principal program manager at Microsoft Incubation Studio. He's a seasoned entrepreneur, passionate about driving innovation and growth, his 17 years of experience and expertise in venture studios make him ideal in this industry. So what this means is that Taylor runs one of the most elite innovation studios in the world and is about to teach you some common sense strategies on how to build your company, startup or fund in the right way. So Taylor, welcome the show, man.

Taylor Black  

Ryan, it's so great to be here. I've learned so much from the community that you've built over the years here, both from the episodes and just from the comments on all of the different ones that I've watched and it's an honor to be here.

Ryan Miller  

Yeah, it's an honor to have you, man, we're in the top 2% in the world and it's all because of amazing guests just like you Taylor. So you know, it's an honor to have you here, I mean, Microsoft, Fizzy Ventures, 17th year, I mean, bro, you are firing on all cylinders. So I gotta ask, how did you get started in this industry?

Taylor Black  

Yeah, you know, I've kind of been entrepreneurial from the beginning, starting with a yardwork business in high school and helping start a venture studio at my business school and undergrad, and then a number of ventures along the way. It's one of those things, I think that while it definitely can be taught, there's kind of an entrepreneurial itch that you just have to go after. And you're always kind of starting something or, or even if you're in your current job, there's always a little side gig going because you have to see if there's a there there on some sort of idea you have. So yeah, it's kind of been a lifelong journey for me in that entrepreneurial and intrapreneurial space. 

Ryan Miller  

I love that. So let's jump right into it. Man, let's address the beginners, right? You and I both have been beginners and some days, I still feel like one when I'm learning new things all the time. But for someone who's starting out either launching a fund, which is a startup, launching a business, which is a startup or doing a syndication in the early days. There's a lot of common threads and so I want to really pull out a lot of your wisdom that you, you've done. So for a beginner, what would you say are some helpful tips on how to get some early points on the board when you're just launching your new venture? What would you say?

Taylor Black  

Yeah, for sure. It's all about your customer, all about your customer and what do I mean by that? So you're just starting out, maybe you have this idea in the shower, or you have had a great conversation with a couple of friends and you have something jotted down on a napkin. What are you going to do in the next hour to prove out that idea a little better? What I tell the founders in my, in venture studios that I've run is to really do something in the next hour that will help you validate that idea or invalidate that idea. This could be something as easy as calling up a friend of yours, who isn't who could be a potential customer, or knows more about the potential customer than you do. And talking with them getting a sense of what the customer pain points are, what the customer is looking to solve in their in their life, in their business, in their industry, that your potential solution that you've come up with to make, make easier for them. And keep on doing that, iterate, iterate, iterate, we try to do you know 50 of those kinds of calls a week with the founders in the programs that I've run. Because as a founder, you have a really good sense of the solution and it's important not to lose sight of that problem, because falling in love with the solution can be super problematic. What you can also do in this situation is not, don't ask the customer, you know, what is your problem. A lot of the times they might not entirely understand what their specific problem is and more they go about their daily routine and aspects of their problem might come out stand out to them were really is kind of a cohesive thing that you need to be paying attention to. So ideally, when you're asking a customer about their problem, you ask them to tell you a story about you know how, what's a day in your life looks like? What's it, what's a day working with this particular product look like? As they go through that as they illustrate it with you know, images, or even if you're able to wash them, that's even the highest bandwidth sort of feedback you can get. It's through that, that you really start to empathize with your customer and understand the customer's pain points such that you can actually hang on to that in pursuit of a good solution for them.

Ryan Miller  

Okay, perfect. So really understanding your customer and that same goes with funds, I remember you talk to me about that in other conversations we had is. Look, this principle is the same if you're addressing, if you're a fund manager launching that venture. The principle is exactly the same is you need to hit it right, so you need to bring an offer to the market that in our case we call them our LPs, our investors and people who are in the buyer services is we want to be able to make sure that we understand what it is they're looking for, and not only deliver what they want, but in the way that they want it and the time that they want all of these things that we operationalize. But really, I think the point is, if you really want to nail it, get some early points on the board, the number one point you want to get on the board is drilling down and really understanding your customer. Would you disagree? 

Taylor Black  

No, I think that's I think that's perfect and often the customer doesn't understand themselves well, necessarily. I find this particularly for LPS is what, why are they investing in your fund? Is it because somebody told them that AI was cool, and they're kind of jumping on the bandwagon, but they don't necessarily have that fire inside themselves? That, you know, you might want to be careful in that situation. But really understanding what their motivations are behind it and getting behind those motivations and help ensuring that your fund's value proposition meets those motivations. That's where you're going to find a really strong LP, who's going to be there with you through thick and thin.

Ryan Miller  

I love that, you know, it's not enough to get some points on the board, you also need a little defense as well, and how to avoid making silly or stupid mistakes. I don't know about you, but I certainly made my fair share when I was starting out in my career. What would you say same person launching a fund, launching a startup, launching, what would you say are some, you know, healthy, healthy piece of advice where you can help people starting out to not lose and not blow things up? 

Taylor Black  

In short, it's, you're not your customer. Now, there's a great example, a friend of mine from who's in some of the early cohorts of Y Combinator, he said he was lit up on stage by one of one of the mentors there, because he was noting that his product had a lot of customer service complaints. And he thought that their third hire should be a customer service person to handle all of those different customer service complaints. And the mentor said, those customer service complaints are your product. If your product isn't working for your customers, then you built a solution that you fallen in love with that you think is the solution to the customer problems, and the customers very clearly are telling you that is not the case. So this friend of mine has always had Customer Service report directly into head of product, because that feedback loop ends up disabusing you of the fact that you fell in love with your solution.

Ryan Miller  

I love that, you know, we stood up something similar reminded me, so when I was CFO of an insurance company, we have a fancy term for that called an ombudsman and that's basically the person that everybody who's pretty pissed off, you send them to that person. You know, arguably it wasn't, it was, it was well run company, but every once awhile you have that and I remember talking to this young lady, she was wonderful. She had been with the company for a long time, but that can wear you down. And I said, you know what, I made that transition instantly, I always said, you know what, there is a treasure trove of information that you are the guardian of, and I don't think you're getting the respect or the appreciation you want. Now I obviously came from a venture mindset to say, there is a ton of information that this person, it's not about vetting the complaints and trying to make things right. I mean, yes, it is that for sure. But it's also collecting and aggregating that information to help us see what we're missing and that's the important part is to say, this can go into future iterations of our product, or maybe the iteration means we need to do less, right? It's, you know, maybe we offer less than what we're offering is we're saying, look, we're offering too much. People are confused. I don't know, it could be I mean, it's insurance. It's pretty exciting industry, I'll tell you, but either way is having that and I love that he's collecting the information and it's tempting to stay away from the younger customers. Don't do that, lean in, and make sure that you understand and let them know that you are there to understand. If it's you or someone in your company, just make sure that we understand that if we're missing the mark, we need to know number one, but we also need to be able to move fast, correct those things right and break things as the saying goes and VC. But if we can move fast to aggregate that data now we've captured a bunch of information that maybe our cognitive biases are making us reject it, because they're pissed off or something and the delivery may not be as pleasant as we would prefer. But the information, if you can get past the noise and get to the signal of those things, you can really find things that are eroding value, eroding morality of your team, and just eroding just the reputation of your product or your firm. Would you disagree? 

Taylor Black  

No, that's exactly spot on and in fact, I think that's even more poignant in the era of AI because your products are well being utilized by your customers, your customers are co creating what good looks like with your products in a probabilistic way. A way that you may or may not have anticipated when you launch the product, unlike the deterministic software products we've been launching in tech for a while now. So that feedback loop becomes even faster and richer in terms of how your product needs to evolve. Because you have a new good being created between the interaction of your customer and your product.

Ryan Miller  

I love that that's one of the things that I remember you and I talking offline before, you said it's really important, I'll emphasize this, but it's not mine, it's Taylor's wisdom coming at you. He said you just you got to always make sure to check yourself especially if you're an entrepreneur or emerging fund manager, whatever it is, you got to fall in love not with your solution, but with the problem that you're trying to solve. So you stay laser focused on the problem you're solving, but be flexible on how to solve it. Is that right? 

Taylor Black  

It is, it is, I mean that's what, where we've seen a number of great pivots and companies that we love and respect now where they started out something very different, but how to how to bloodthirsty hold on the problem that they were trying to solve and knew that the company or the solution that they originally planned wasn't the way to go. Even though they might have loved that darling.

Ryan Miller  

Yeah, absolutely and I've had those investments and stuff that you're like, oh, you know the potential and you're just like, nobody wants it, but you, you're like, oh, but it's gonna be so cool. And you start throwing out these different ideas in your head and you're like, well, what if I just push a little bit harder? No man, like, read, as I say, read the tea leaves, understand the signs, time to pivot, not time to persevere. And so I think what Taylor and I are talking about if I could synthesize this is just saying, know, when it's time to pivot, and know when it's time to persevere. That is an acquired skill and I believe it was Reed Hoffman, who said, if you're not embarrassed by your first launch, you waited too long or something to that effect and so it's like, just launch, get that thing down. And I know, Y Combinator is another one of those things. Let's just launch let's get real world feedback. Maybe you get an ombudsman, maybe that's you, but either way you need to hear you need people to experience it, complain or rave. Either way, you need information and you use that information, smart entrepreneurs, they absorb it all. They see all the complaints and all the praise, as both equal data points on whether we pivot or persevere.

Taylor Black  

Even as your company grows, the best CEOs that I DNN, and fund managers for that matter, always take time for even being the first line of customer feedback, so that they're able to keep their finger on the pulse and that passion.

Ryan Miller  

Absolutely love that. I'd love to transition to the market, right, the Almighty market, there's not one but it feels like it. So I'm just curious, you know, in your sector, Microsoft, Fizzy Ventures, all of the things that you're working on and have worked on, obviously, we need to address the market. So I'm curious Taylor, what are you seeing out there right now with the market? 

Ryan Miller  

Thank you for watching, if you've made it this far, we must be friends. So don't forget to like, subscribe and click that notification button. Now, let's get back to the show.

Taylor Black  

Yeah, certainly and I might be a little biased Ryan, working where I do, but I'm super pumped about the way in which AI is going to change a number of different things. For good overall, but definitely there's going to be a little bit of a pain in the adoption process as there has been for every major technological shift in the history of humanity. The first thing, of course, is AI is going to allow us to come up with new and fantastic ways of interacting with computers, as humans, and just seeing how much we've been able to do with computers in the last 30, 40, 50 years. I'm astounded for this new modality of thought almost that we're bringing to our sides in the solving of the, of the problems that we encounter, and the problems that we face as humans. I'm also excited for the way in which it can really evolve our business model thinking, think that we've really come across a great AI business model yet? I mean, even here at Microsoft, we're doing a whole bunch of experimentation in that. But our business models around AI, you know, go back to the usual B2B SaaS Models of, you know, spinning Azure meters or making a subscription more sticky and so I'm excited to see where the market takes the landing of this business value of AI to companies and to us as kind of a global economy and really finding those those business value propositions. Because right now, a lot of that business value proposition is tied up in being more productive. And be more productive is a squirrely sort of metric to kind of trace in terms of how, you know, how do I account for that? You know, do my employees get to go home two days early because they were, you know, 30% more productive and didn't need those all five days? Or? Or how do I really measure that? I'm excited, I'm excited for those pieces of the market landing that business value of AI.

Ryan Miller  

Yeah, I love that and so we see AI, it's really good. We're still defining business models or business value propositions. I gotta ask, where do you think the market is going? Where's the smart money going? Where's the Smart businesses going? Where do we extrapolate all of this wisdom to what end?

Taylor Black  

Let me answer that in three ways, because I think there's a couple of different ways of thinking about this. First off, I think that AI has created a new kinds of startup that I've never seen before in my career. And it's the kind of startup where you don't actually take any investor money, because you're able to build almost all of your back office and most of your product, using generative AI tools. What this means is that you'll have a company that lasts three to six months, you and two other people might build it, and you sprint to an exit, which is the platform coming out with a better version of what you've built. But during that time period, you've been able to raise 10, 15 $20 million of pure revenue, and have very low cost actually to take that revenue back to. So what I'm seeing in a number of these kinds of runaway businesses that capture a good chunk of the market, there's a great example of one that you're able to upload 10 or 15 or 20 profile pictures, and it would generate 200, you know, imaginative profile pictures for you for something like 15 bucks. It's really cool. They made 10 or $15 million a month for about two months, and then all of the, but they weren't differentiated in any way. It's just a wrapper around an API out of, you know, stable diffusion. And so all of their competitors caught up and the business all you diluted. But they didn't care, there were three people who are making $10 or $15 million a month, and they had nobody else on their cap table. So this is a new kind of strange business where you can do that really quickly where that would have required too much capital and it would have had to be spread out over too many people before tax to make money, so that's, that's an interesting one there. 

Taylor Black  

There's another one where I think the money is going and notice how all of the value of that particular startup aggregated to the underlying platform. We're gonna continue seeing this right, there's, there's, there's the memes that you all seen of, you know, I'm excited to build my company until open AI produces a future that makes my company obsolete. So how do we think about that in terms of what we should invest in, in AI? I'd recommend to investors like either lean into the fact that you're gonna have to, you know, invest in 100 Different AI startups, and only one or two of them is going to make it through that trial by fire or think of AI as kind of an accelerant of whatever business model the startup has that could work without AI. I think that's a really important lens, because there's plenty of AI businesses out there that are gonna go all the way and open AI isn't going to release a consumer feature that blows you out of the water. But it's important to ensure that you have a business model outside of the fact that you happen to have a wrapper around an API delivered by one of the, you know, one of the big model builders. 

Taylor Black  

Third, and I think we can see this best in AI for science, I think that the real value that AI is going to deliver over the longer term is as a very smart companion. We're seeing, as I mentioned, we're seeing this most in AI for science, where we're discovering new molecules, we're discovering new novel scientific paradigms by combining the power of a generative AI model that knows everything, along with things like physics engines, or along with things that with just hard scientific rules that allow us to output things that are incredibly valuable. Like a new pharmaceutical, potentially, or a new way of folding a protein, and those kind of fundamental breakthroughs and we're starting in science, but that's going to be the case in any other industry that you come to. You know, think of a new material, think of a new way of producing energy, all of those sorts of things, that's the true value, that's, now that we have this really smart companion that we can think with, how do we apply that? And how do we integrate that into our business models into our business modes, to drive humanity forward?

Ryan Miller  

I love that, one of the things that we get to deal with a little bit with this AI, especially you, you're really close to being at, your at Microsoft. But one of the cool things that we get, we get to see is the new business models that and I think this is what you're saying is the new buzzword, business models that are going to evolve. And so my challenge to our listeners, I would echo mine and Taylor's challenge to our listeners out there all you carnivorous entrepreneurs or private equity folks, or whoever you are, or wherever you find yourself, think about it in this light. Is that now we're seeing we're seeing AI as a helpful tool, but essentially, I think what Taylor's saying here, and I wholeheartedly agree, is what you're actually seeing is you got to zoom out a little bit. You're to focus on the tool, if you zoom out and see it, what you're gonna see, at least I do, least Taylor does, is new business models all together and so you got to be careful maybe to not inject these new tools into old models. And in fact, you might actually just build a new model of how businesses are run. Can you see how big this opportunity is, folks? I know Taylor certainly can, I certainly can, is to say AI is more than a tool that allows you to get leads, yeah, sure it can do that. It can do it can write your essay and help you cheat on an exam, but zoom out. And what we're seeing is the entire, you go to MBA or some grad school, and they'll teach you sales revenue and P&L and your three statements, your three financial statements, yeah, sure okay, those will still apply. But what we're saying is the entire business model, how businesses are built, structured and operate is about to change. 

Ryan Miller  

So you got one of two choices, either you can wait for someone to do it. Sure someone's gonna figure it out, I think we're hearing the founder of open AI say, there will be a billion dollar or a trillion dollar company, something like that. He said, run by one person can so what he's essentially saying, you see these people who are just up to their eyeballs in this industry is they're saying this is more than a tool, folks, this is more than just, oh, we're gonna be able to automate a few things and maybe process our working capital faster. No, this is going to redefine how businesses are run, how investment funds are run, how compliance with the SEC, a little thing that I that we certainly favor over in this world. But all areas, if this goes away, we want either follow somebody else, or better yet go and figure out how to redefine the business model.

Taylor Black  

I think that's spot on and I think, I think really leaning into the fact that it's a companion in your own thinking. It's a modality of your own thought, is it's weird to think about it that wayI think and it's hard to really adopt that. Because of the interfaces that we're limited to at the moment is, it's not a companion inside our head that we can kind of reason with or dialogue with. We have to do it through at least a chatbot in or interface at the moment, but treating it as that thought companion as it as that dialogue partner I think helps put us in the mindset that is most fruitful for utilizing this technology.

Ryan Miller  

I love that, this has been good, right? We've talked about markets, we've talked about how to get some early points on the board, how to avoid blowing it up, but we're not done yet. With all of your experience and all the people that asked for your advice, I know if you hire me to be a CFO, and no, this is not I'm not applied for a job. But if you did, you pay me a ton of money, I always got a few tricks up my sleeve to really help accelerate and give people the advantages we're looking for. So with that, with that lead in, I'm curious, what are maybe two or three things competitive advantages from all your experience that you can provide for our listeners today? 

Taylor Black  

Yeah, for sure. I mean, I might start out maybe echoing a little bit of what I touched on earlier, just with regard to how to think about AI. And remember what I said first about the customer, if you're not solving the customer problem with your business model, and with your pursuit of product market fit, then the fact that you have AI in your product or AI in your company, and you have AI all over your investor deck, it's not going to help you. Using AI as an accelerant to really drive your business model forward is key and that's what we also look for, if you're investing into AI startups. So maybe that's a, that's a fast, kind of competitive advantage there. 

Taylor Black  

Second, you know, I've always thought that humility and curiosity go hand in hand. And what I mean by that is that it's really hard to be actually curious, if you're not also being humble. You're gonna you know, you can be super smart, you can know a lot about all of the things but you're going to miss that customer problem, you're going to miss kind of the, the best parts of life, if you continue to abstract away from things and don't remain, you know, open to the experiences of working with other people, of really understanding where they're coming from, you know, even appreciating nature as you walk down your sidewalk, at, you know,  during your lunch break, or what have you. And the reason for that is that it's where you're spending your attention. And if you're not humble, then you're spending a lot of your attention on yourself and that's kind of a pretty closed loop system, as cool as we all are. It's important to get that feedback from other people, from your environment, you know, from the janitor as well as from the CEO. But there's also a little bit of that humility, that allows you to, you know, listen to that the environment that the quote, that a quiet mind can bring to you. You know, in some ways, we can close ourselves off as as like pure intellects rather than listening to what our bodies are trying to tell us or what our, our lived environment is trying to tell us and so that's part of the your feedback loop too, because that ends up being other in certain ways as well.

Ryan Miller  

You know, to echo that, you've reminded me that I even did just quieting your mind, I heard about Ray Dalio, he's a big, big finance unicorn, but also someone that's pulled off some pretty impressive feats over his career in the hedge fund industry and he's a big meditator. And I remember him saying, you know, it gave me running one of the biggest hedge funds in the world, certainly one of the most successful ones. Is he said, it, it's almost like a ninja in a street fight where, if you're an observer, things are going so fast, and you're, you know, there's combat and things. But he said, when you're the Ninja, it's like, although normally things are coming fast, you have that headspace, and it almost feels like things are coming at you in slow motion where you are able to maneuver and really understand. And one of the things that I've learned about business is typically they don't fail, I mean, arguably, there's many reasons but a failed business, if you really swim upstream, and go to the origin of that it comes down to failed judgment. And if you have a failure in your judgment, that can lead to poor decisions, poor development, and so on and it's a ripple effect of second and third and fourth order effects. And so really, what Taylor's talking about, I could not agree or endorse more myself, is you got to really make sure that you cut through the noise and get to the signal and when you're running a business, if you're a CEO, or anything, even if you're aspiring to be that, I think what Taylor is saying is, it's really hard to be humble, and to not think about yourself when there's a lot of noise upstairs, if you know what I mean. And so making sure taking the steps that you need to take to clear your head, cut through the noise and get to the signal that leads to better business decisions, that leads to you maybe learning a few things because you're actually present in the moment. I'm a classic Gen Xer so I regularly turn off my phone and just go for walks. Just like the good old days were the last generation to know what it was like to not have a cell phone and then I'll stop all that old guy stuff. But one of the things that I think is important and, is just making sure that you're present in the moment, just be where you are.

Taylor Black  

It's a skill like you know, building a muscle and improving your ability to pay attention, helps you notice those things that are more salient to the questions that you are trying to solve. So it's something that if you approach it as a practice only continues to reap benefits, because you're able to apply it to everything that you do.

Ryan Miller  

I love that, do you have a third competitive advantage that you can share with us?

Taylor Black  

Yeah, you know, I do and it's maybe a corollary of, in some ways of, you know, the interplay of humility and curiosity. It can be really easy to kind of put, make snap judgments and put people into certain boxes and say, You know what, you know what that person over there is like, there, they use their cell phone all the time and so they must be a distracted person and so I'm not going to pay as much attention to what they say because, you know, I just heard from, from Ryan and Taylor that I'm supposed to be all attentive and focused and not on my phone all the time. Or can be able to even easy to kind of demonize like a group of people out there where man, all those teenagers that are suffering mental health, because of, you know, bad actors on those social media platforms and what, it would be great if we just get rid of all those bad actors, and then, then we'd be in a better place. But the thing is, like, the line between good and bad kind of runs through every person's heart, and so you can't actually paint somebody entirely red or entirely white. And I think it's important to keep that sort of mentality because as soon as you put somebody into a bucket like that, you cease being curious about them in a certain way. And I think that can lead to major mistakes with regard to assumptions around, you know, everything from, you know, the people in your PTA meeting to, you know, political parties, to that group inside your work, or, you know, the mean girls or what have you. But that limits your ability to actually authentically help drive towards a solution towards a particular problem. Or it kind of really leans into creating a cognitive bias for yourself where you're intentionally putting kind of a blinder in front of you, when it involves a petit, that particular set of people that you've put into a particular box. I try to think of things rather in more like tags, rather than boxes, where it's like, oh, this is an attribute I think that person has, or this group of people have. And I should look into that further, and not hold it necessarily as a truth for all members of that group. But something I've observed in my limited interaction thus far with them, and definitely subject to revision.

Ryan Miller  

Yeah, I love that, you reminded me of a dear friend that I have, his name's William Lamb, he runs upgrade.com and what he does is he really helps people to understand certain concepts like the universe's mental, and all of these really is some could be pretty wild things. But he really did change my life on many areas, but the one that ties into this, I always want to give credit to where credit's due. And one thing I was really struggling with, I had partnered up with someone in the past and they were very dishonest. So I was like, I kept up my end, they did not, I'm a good person, they're a bad person and he's like, hold it, let me stop you right there. And of course, right here, you're in your I'm a victim mode, and you're not realizing it and he said, you know, that good/bad, on/off, black/white type of thinking is very binary thinking, I understand where you're coming from, but sometimes it's not that simple, right? He has his way and he said, often, if you really drill down on this, and this is what at least my interpret my lens on what Taylor's talking about is he said, stop seeing people as either good or bad. And just understand that everyone just has different values, and that they have certain values that are not good or bad. And you have different values that are neither good or bad. But sometimes your values and their values aren't always a good fit. Now, does that make you bad? Well, if you're kind of not being emotionally intelligent, or intelligent at all, you might say, well, they have different values, therefore their bad, or they might say that about me. That Ryan guy has different values, therefore he's about his values aren't mine so we don't like okay, well, that is a very limited thinking and that can lead to cognitive biases, where you could discount what someone says.

Ryan Miller  

Now, what's the remedy, because on the show, we're all about how. One of the best books I've read on this area to stop from such good or bad, or labeling or objectifying really is a book that I that is called, Leadership and Self Deception by The Arbinger Institute and that one really helps to catch yourself on labeling, right? Is there an us and a them, okay, you're probably in the danger zone, there's an us and there's a them there's an insider and an outsider, instead of objectifying them as at them, or an us, it's just us. In understanding that different values sometimes blend, sometimes they don't, but neither make you good or bad, they're just different. And really understanding people and appreciating from where they're at, rather than you're not like me, so therefore, you must be bad.

Ryan Miller  

And so I love what you're talking about Taylor, and it hits near and dear to my heart and so we really want to make sure that, like we can get on and we can talk about business models, and we have the really at the end of the day, these are people working with people, and if we're going to unlock value, it's unlocking the people's values. And that will extend into your company and into the world and help you achieve those dreams. So I absolutely love all of those competitive advantages. So before we wrap things up, is there any final remarks? Is there anything else you'd like to say? Any, any people if they can reach out to you or where they can find you anything at all? 

Taylor Black  

Yeah, totally. I mean, I'm very active on LinkedIn. So feel free to reach out to me there and something you said too, about the values there, again, I'm at the risk of sounding like a broken record. Really understanding why people hold their values, means that you're understanding them more as a person. And so if you're putting up those barriers keeps you from being able to do that. And so you know, kind of, kind of leaning into that really personal approach of getting to know people better and more richly helps you understand that piece about them as well. But yeah, Ryan has been absolutely fantastic being on the show, I mean, I can see why you've built such an incredible audience, just be in the conversation with you, and grateful to be a little bit more of a part of this community as a result of being on it. And continue to look forward to learning from all of the folks you have on your show. 

Ryan Miller  

Awesome, man. Well, it's certainly been an honor to have you on and to really learn from your wisdom. So just to summarize everything that we talked about when investing in AI, if that's something that you want to do, try to redefine those business models, not just waiting for it to be redefined, but this is an opportunity where you can literally define your industry, if you're launching a fund. What does an AI fund business model look like? Right? If you're launching a business, I don't care what it is, if it's a doggy daycare, it doesn't matter. How can AI change the business model not just make you marginally effective, but truly disrupt the business model in your industry, we are on the precipice of something huge. So that's number one. The other thing that we also talked about is humility can lead to curiosity. So make sure that you do try your best to stay humble and last, but certainly not least, try not to put things in good or bad buckets. People have different values, they blend or they don't, but just make sure that you see people as people who do these things, and you too will be well on your way in your pursuit of Making Billions.

Ryan Miller  

Wow, what a show, I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I did. Now, if you haven't done so already, be sure to leave a comment and review on new ideas and guests you want me to bring on for future episodes. Plus, why don't you head over to YouTube and see extra takes while you get to know our guest even better. And make sure to come back for our next episode where we dive even deeper into the people, the process and the perspectives of both investors and founders. Until then, my friends stay hungry, focus on your goals and keep grinding towards your dream of Making Billions.