KP Unpacked
The Founder's Journey
In this episode, KP takes us down the unexpected paths that lead to leadership, celebrating the diverse backgrounds of founders who rise to the challenge of becoming CEOs. Understand the power of peer learning, the commitment to continuous self-improvement, and the key to anticipating the next wave of technological innovation. KP explains the irreplaceable charm of traditional media, and the mindset needed to harness the positive transformations they promise.
Want more discussions like this? You can connect with KP Reddy at https://kpreddy.co/ and follow him on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/kpreddy/!
In this episode, KP takes us down the unexpected paths that lead to leadership, celebrating the diverse backgrounds of founders who rise to the challenge of becoming CEOs. Understand the power of peer learning, the commitment to continuous self-improvement, and the key to anticipating the next wave of technological innovation. KP explains the irreplaceable charm of traditional media, and the mindset needed to harness the positive transformations they promise.
Want more discussions like this? You can connect with KP Reddy at https://kpreddy.co/ and follow him on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/kpreddy/!
You are listening to KP Unpacked with KP Ready, a weekly dose of insights for innovators and startups from the built environment and beyond. Want more discussions like this? You can connect with KP Ready today at kpreadyco that's K-P-R-E-D-D-Y dot co. And additionally follow him on LinkedIn at wwwlinkedincom. Slash I-N, slashp ready. Again, that's spelledk p r e d d y hey, welcome back to kp ready unpacked.
Speaker 2:If you have never joined us before, this is a great opportunity for you to hear from kp Ready himself about what has inspired his latest, most popular, most engaging LinkedIn post. My name is Jeff Eccles, I'm a senior advisor and head of marketing for KP Ready Company and today I am joined by KP Ready. He is the founder and CEO of Shadow Ventures and also the namesake, as you might have figured out, of KP Ready Company. Hi, kp.
Speaker 3:Hey, how's it going.
Speaker 2:It is going really well For those of you that are listening in right now. I really value this time every week because this is my time to sit down with KP and just ask him to unpack some of the things that he's posted on LinkedIn. So the first question is are you following KP Ready on LinkedIn? If not, the question is why not? He posts there one to two times a day. Usually A lot of those posts come from his experiences, his conversations, teaching, interactions with startup founders, with VCs, lps, other investors and all of the posts are insightful. Some of them stir the pot a little bit. That's kind of fun, but that's a really great place for you to go and get some real-world conversation around what's happening in terms of innovation for global assets that support humanity, and today is no different. Kp and I will unpack one of his LinkedIn posts. Actually, this was a week ago you posted this, so we'll jump into that here in just a minute Anything that you want to talk about before we dive into the post itself.
Speaker 3:It's great to talk to you. We only talk this time every week. We don't talk in between, so this is the only time you get on my calendar, make the best of it.
Speaker 2:Exactly yeah. The rumor that we were on the phone with each other six minutes ago is absolutely false.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:Allrue. All right, well, a week ago as part of your Sunday Scaries series, and so you've got a couple of different series, linkedin article series that you have, and maybe you want to talk about that for a minute, but as part of your Sunday Scaries series last Sunday so a week ago, sunday you said you will always be a founder of your own startup. You may not always be the CEO. That is up to you, and so I know, if you read the article that accompanies that post, you talk about the fact that not all founders grow into CEOs. So you talk to a lot of founders every week, also as part of our incubator, also, as you know, for Shadow Ventures, obviously in terms of scouting for investment, etc. What inspired you to write that specifically in your Sunday Scaries column?
Speaker 3:that specifically in your sunday scurries column. Well, it's also a board season, um, so I'm also have a ton of board meetings with all my portfolio portfolio companies, um, and so it's it's really tough, you know, I think, when you have founders.
Speaker 2:That you know the business is going slow.
Speaker 3:it's not, you know, it's not taking off like a rocket ship and they're just kind of pushing it along. That's one thing, one thing that I was taught. I had this mentor, this investor, mentor of mine, and he said just remember, you're an investor, you're not an entrepreneur anymore, which means an entrepreneur wakes up and fixes all the problems on any given day.
Speaker 3:And an investor ignores all the problems and focuses on their winners, like there's a law of diminishing returns, of spending time with your problem portfolio companies, and so when you know when I'm having nonstop board meetings, you know I think we've got 20 something portcos and then I've got my personal investments, so it's a busy season, so to speak. I just started seeing this pattern and I think when, in many ways, a founder can hold their company back because they lack the skills and in many ways, their startup's going to run them over and they're just like hanging on, and there's this weird kind of cadence of you know I think they talk about in the e-myth, the book e-myth, which is an old school business book. They talk about working on the business or working in the business, and so many founders don't have a choice. They're working in the business, business and so many founders don't have a choice. They're working in the business. But what I'd say is, more so than working on the business, they need to be working on themselves. And so you have to ask yourself, with every funding round, with every quarter, am I still qualified to run this company? Am I still the best CEO for this company? You'll always be a founder. Nobody will ever take founder title away from you, but it doesn't necessarily mean you're going to be the CEO for the long term, or nor should you, and I think there's.
Speaker 3:You know, back when I first started kind of personally investing in all, it was fairly common that if one, if a tech startup took off, that the Sequoias of the world at Series A would replace the founders with the CEO, and the idea was they didn't have the skills to take a company public, they didn't have the time, they couldn't be bothered with it, they didn't know how to scale organizations, and so that was kind of the common thing back in the day. And so I see it now where one, there's so much executive talent, startup executive talent out there, because there's been a lot of companies out of business and there's been a lot of companies that have been successful, and I think a founder has to look at themselves and say what skills do I need? If I look at the company hitting this next level, the next level, what skills do I need to go build? And they have to carve out time either through peer groups, either through reading, like whatnot.
Speaker 3:This is also an area where I think having great service providers like a lawyer accountant not to do the work. I mean the default standards should be they do a good job, like let's, let's repay them, they should do their job. But if you have a good relationship they also become great teachers, like my personal attorney has been with me for 30 years. He actually came from a big law firm and then has become like he's kind of personal attorney to a half dozen of us now that are all entrepreneurs. I learned so much from him. He never like looked at a term sheet, marked it up and sent it out. He'd be like hey, come by the office, I'll show you how this works. And so I think you know that's one of those invaluable things and resources for learning. So I think you know you have to work on yourself and you have to kind of think of it as like, when I'm successful, am I going to have the skills to know what to do with it when it, when it takes off and understand that you might get replaced.
Speaker 1:I mean, that's just. You know the nature of business. Are you tired of being asked what your annual construction volume is just to get software pricing? Try Jet Build for free today and enjoy free features and flat, free pricing, regardless of your annual construction volume. Visit wwwjetbuild and get started today.
Speaker 2:I think we can all understand, maybe, the emotions behind that. Right, this is my baby, right. This is the thing that I, this is my brainchild, the thing that I created, the thing that I've built. But, just like in kids, you have to let go at some point, obviously in order for those kids to lead a healthy life. And it's also not lost on so many founders in that ecosystem that were civil engineers, that were architects, that were you know, there was something other than a CEO, there was something other than a many of them, something other than a quote unquote tech person, but they had identified a problem and developed a solution for it. Identified a problem and developed a solution for it makes them a great problem solver perhaps, but doesn't necessarily mean. Like you know again, architecture school. You know you're, you're, you're recovering civil engineer, I'm recovering on the architecture side. I still teach for practice in architecture school. There's not a school in the country that I know of in their architecture program that's teaching anyone how to be a CEO.
Speaker 3:No.
Speaker 2:Or a VP or anything.
Speaker 3:Business. Architecture is a terrible business. There's that.
Speaker 2:That's why you should all be developing startups. If they gave them business skills in architecture school. They would leave architecture. Well then, that's why many do.
Speaker 3:No, I think you know when I was running you know I used to run Georgia Tech's incubator, atvc, about 10 years ago it's like wild, it's been 10 years but I printed out a job description for a CEO and I would keep it on my desk. And when founders would come to me and you know they're, you know it's it's part advice, advice, it's part therapy, right, dealing with founders and I would say why do you think you're qualified to be CEO? Like, you should just take CEO off your business card. You're a founder, You're not quite a CEO yet. And here's the job description for a CEO. Tell me which one of these things are you an expert at? And they could check like very few of the boxes. And what that means is, as you're like, like your business doesn't need all these skills yet, your business doesn't need all these skills yet your business doesn't need this job description yet. But as soon let's assume you're going to be highly successful, it will need these skills. So your choice is either you're going to go out and find someone with these skills or you should be working like this this job description is your roadmap for your own personal career development and take it seriously and carve out time every week because it can't happen.
Speaker 3:And I think one of the coolest things I think about our incubator and our community and all the stuff that we do is I've really stopped trying to give founders the answers. I've really said I've already given this one founder the answer, I'm going to introduce you to them, they can talk to you about it and because from a scale perspective, I need to teach one or two founders a concept and then they need to go to teach two or three. So the peer learning part, which we see tremendously in our incubator right, it's just so collaborative. I'd like to see more of it with my portcos I think they get a little insular sometimes, but I really think that's also a huge thing is you should have friends that are a little bit further along. I mean, I think even with incubator, you know there's mostly pre-seed companies. You do a good job of bringing in the CEOs of my port co-in that have raised a seed round or series A round to kind of pay it back Right, to say like here's what I encounter, and all the founders can ask a million questions.
Speaker 3:And I think I think never discount peer learning, especially in startup world. I think it's funny. I have one founder that started on my kitchen table. That's now a $10 billion company and I had to tell him one time I was like dude, like I can't coach you anymore. Like you, you, you have more skills around being a CEO, even though I've run two public companies. Like your, skills are way beyond mine. Now I can only help you as a father and a husband and a human. I can. That's pretty important though.
Speaker 3:Because he's 30, something Right. I was like, hey, about like life, like I can be your coach around life, but I need to maybe come to you and ask you advice on how to be a good CEO, because clearly you're doing it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, there's that famous Jim Rohn. It's collaborative and and you become the average, you have the average skill of everybody around you, but then, when you're leveling up right, you need to change those people so that you that that that average continues to go up and continues to raise you up. So that's, I think that's really good advice.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and so I think that I think it's so easy to get so myopic as a founder like, oh, I got this fire, I got that fire and 95% of startups fail. Right, that's just math. So what you're doing is maybe preparing for your next deal, like, what's the worst thing that happens? You carve out, you know four hours a week, five hours a week, to work on yourself and work on these skills and, God forbid, go get a textbook on finance, because maybe you're an architect and you don't know how finance works. And, by the way, if you have questions about what books to read, is a founder paying me? I probably had them all right, and there's so many books out there. And if you're not going to commit four to six hours a week to upskilling yourself, what's the worst case scenario? Right, the worst case scenario is your company goes out of business. You're to go do something else and you will know a lot more and be more skilled for your next thing. But you know you really got to focus on it, I think, and I get it right.
Speaker 3:I mean, my wife says all the time like I thought you're like just an investor these days. I'm like I'm never just in anything. Okay, like don't put a label on me, but you know, just wrote my book and there's so many stuff. You know I'm always working on stuff and I don't have to, but I'll tell you, it is the inertia of being a founder. I don't like, I don't. I don't know how to take a vacation, I don't know how to take time, like it's just.
Speaker 3:It comes from that and I think the growth part you know, I'm like a book or two a week, and even my kids are like Dad, like what is wrong with you, like like why don't you relax? I don't understand people that read fiction. I'm like, well, how do you have time for fiction when you have to read two business books a week? Or or you got to reread books, right, like that's one thing. You got to reread books, um. And so I think there has to be a commitment as a founder to your own personal growth, um, and and staying accountable to that. I've got a couple founders that I feel like all I'm doing is like kind of accountability, coaching them around. Like you said you wanted to learn, you said you wanted to get better. That's important. Yeah, let's, let's, let's focus on that yeah, yeah, I mean, you can't.
Speaker 2:You can't grow the thing. In this case, your, your startup. You can't grow the thing if you're not growing yourself. But this does have to work together. It's a necessity. You mentioned your book, which I know is a slight tangent here, but I think we ought to bring it up anyway. Which one? Well, okay, that's a fair question, that's a good question. So the new one, your third one, creating the Intangible Enterprise. As we're recording this, it hit bookshelves a little over a week ago. It hit bookshelves on April 30th, 2024. So when you're listening to this in 2028, this book has been out like four years now. But Creating the Intangible Enterprise is out. It's on bookshelves, it's available everywhere. What's that one about?
Speaker 3:It really is. My studies of last year really meeting with CEOs of firms and as AI was getting into the boardroom, into the C-suite and really this like hey, we know this is going to be disruptive. I don't think anyone can question that. How do we prepare ourselves and our people to thrive in it? It's really easy to be doom and gloom. Oh my God, there's going to be so many jobs lost, et cetera. And I'm like, yes, there probably will be. Right, there probably will be.
Speaker 3:But to those that are willing to once again back to the founder conversation, to grow and build new skills, they will do fantastic. I mean, I really think, as with my founder hat on, one of the biggest industries to get disrupted by AI is going to be venture capital, because if you don't need capital to go hire rooms full of programmers and marketing people and this and that and you can leverage AI, why do you want me to? Why do you want to sell part of your company to me? You should keep it all, and so it's very top of mind around and I think a lot of VCs won't admit this. Right, you have to be. This is where the VCs, the VC tourism as we talk about it. The tourists are leaving the building now and we're actually seeing funds get shut down, and because I think it's a new era for entrepreneurship. But you have to be willing to learn, right, you got to be, you got to build new skills. And it's not about using AI, it's not about any of that, it's all these other skills.
Speaker 3:It's kind of funny, you know, in my household I am the math nerd and my wife is the word nerd, and so the running joke is she handles the house, household finances, which I'm in the finance business and I write books, right. So it's like this running joke, like hey, what are we doing here? And I think it. I think that's what it takes right. It takes this idea of like I'm going to go outside of my frame of reference and what I know and get good at things, and so I think that's where the book really stemmed from was giving people a roadmap to thrive versus living in this, this construct of fear, like I mean fear is fear is just so driven by unknowns, right? Ibm coined the term fear, uncertainty and doubt. That's what I. That's the state of mind people are in with AI, and I just wanted to build something that says you know. Here's what the next steps are my book before that.
Speaker 3:What you know about startups is wrong was my experience with founders when I was at Georgia Tech and investing in startups and my own experiences that people were just like you know. There was a lot of FUD. There was a lot of fear, uncertainty and doubt with founders and I thought, if I could give them frameworks and share my own stories and my own failures, that somehow they'd feel better. They'll just feel better. They'll read my book and feel better. Right, that's my only goal we're talking about this morning my publisher's. Just every three hours I get book sales numbers and I don't respond to him and he gets mad and I'm like I'm not that vested in how many books I sell. It's just not what I. That's how I do it right now. He's highly vested in how many books I sell. I am not um motivation, I just I just want to. If I can help a few people, that's cool, you know, yeah yeah, always wanted to be a doctor.
Speaker 3:So my mom would have loved that.
Speaker 2:Well, if somehow you had just joined us and you ever heard the first part of this conversation, this is KP Ready Unpacked. My name is Jeff Eccles, I'm joined by KP Ready and every week we sit down and we unpack one of KP's LinkedIn posts. Again, if you're not following him, go to LinkedIn type in KP R-E-D-D-Y, kp Ready and follow him there. A couple posts a day, really insightful, really inspiring, really challenging sometime posts.
Speaker 2:And today, the post that we're unpacking as we're recording this, he posted about a week ago, which means he probably posted it on about April 27th or 8th or so. I suppose it's part of his Sunday Scaries series and it reads you will always be a founder of your own startup. You may not always be the CEO. That is up to you. And so the article goes on to talk about how not all founders grow into CEOs and KP, and I have been unpacking that for the last several minutes here. Um, kp, when we record this next week you'll be in Abu Dhabi, so you know, you get out your crystal ball. What do you think we're going to be talking about next week? Or maybe what are you looking forward to as you head to Abu Dhabi?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think you know, a lot of what's on my mind right now is, I would say, a little bit of macro trends, about what's going on right now. I think the job market is falsely like people think it's really good. I don't think it's as good as people think and I'm getting good signals around, a lot of signals around the jobs market kind of getting soft, especially around places like management consulting, like consulting companies, which, by the way, in my book, I think I have a chapter that's like the death of management consulting, you know. And so I think there's a lot of things happening. I'm actually going to Abu Dhabi to speak at NYU. Nyu has a big campus there, so I'm doing a fireside chat there with Sam Chandon, there with Dr Sam Chandon, to talk about AI. You know, what's happening in the Middle East right now is there's a lot of capital allocation happening both in UAE and in Saudi Arabia. In Saudi, there's just so much going on and I think they're very focused on AI.
Speaker 3:They're just extremely focused on AI kind of for good reason, you know, and I think my chat with Sam is going to be kind of around the book topic and that sort of thing, but I'm sure I'll have plenty of things to have, plenty of playing time to write about things. But I do think I really do believe this we are probably in one of the most interesting times in my lifetime. I think only before this, the dot com was a very interesting time because we were building stuff and doing things that people, even we, didn't understand the gravity of what we're building. We're just building websites, we're just setting up internet networks, we're just running fiber. Like you know, we had an idea, right, we had an idea.
Speaker 3:But I think even in our biggest ideas, what happened with the internet and internet infrastructure is beyond what any of us imagined. You know, my son was like dad, what's some good books to read about? Like the future of technology? I'm like it's called science fiction. I go read science fiction. They're much better at it than us engineering types, because we still live with boundary conditions when we think about the future. And so I think not since the dot com have I really seen what's going on right. What's happening right now is just very, very different and it feels like the dot com days. What I would tell you is everything since the internet days has really been derivative work. Right, an app is just a browser, wi-fi is just internet connection Like it's really just derivative work and form factors and functionality.
Speaker 3:Not a lot new Right, not a lot new Transformative. For sure I'm not diminishing what everyone has done. We just kind of moved, you know, the digital library from the desktop to our phone and I think we can't even imagine what's happening with AI and I think when I have to wake up every day with not enough sleep and still be energized.
Speaker 3:There's just so much, so much happening right now and it's a lot to keep up with. So I feel like many times like what we do on the pod and what my writing. It's like so much of service, because not everybody gets to do what we do Right. Other people have to go. Like you know, this is like our day job. We get I get to talk to 50 startups a week. I get to go around and talk to executives and put all that content and information together in some cogent format and deliver it via voice, video, words, carrier, pigeon, whatever.
Speaker 3:And, by the way, I do think I want to start doing a printed, a quarterly printed report. And people are like you're insane, like what I'm like. I think people still love printed things. Like it's gone full circle. Just like I listened to vinyl, I feel like there's this like recite. Like people are like oh, no, I love holding onto something.
Speaker 3:On the venture side, we do our annual report in a printed version. And Matt and Nick thought I was insane. Like what are you talking about? Print something? Like no, it's print something and we're going to mail it and I'm going to put a handwritten note in it and they're like oh my God, you're such a boomer and we did it the first year and it's a lot of work. And we did it the first year and it's a lot of work, it's a lot of work, it's a lot of work for Matt. But the feedback we got was just there's like oh my God, it's amazing. Like I keep it in my briefcase, I keep it on my kitchen table, you know, cause it's just so much to digest. You guys put a great, great content together. I just walk around with it and it's fascinating. I think like, um, you got to connect to people, kind of where they're at and, uh, you know. So, yeah, maybe we start doing printed printed stuff. Do mailers?
Speaker 2:we, we may do that and just to be clear, you're not a boomer. I am not a boomer, not that there's anything wrong with that, but but being a little bit older than kp, um, I'm adamant about the fact that he's not a boomer. So that would imply that you're a boomer, yeah, yeah, got a couple of months on you there, but, yeah, yeah, maybe printed it is. It is super interesting how things come full circle right, the, the nostalgia piece of it, the things that the tactile things that we, we feel like we're missing.
Speaker 3:Well, the reason I even bring it up is the ability to produce printed. Right now it's not hard, like we could take this entire segment, push it through the AI stuff that we use, have it write it, have it on Canva AI, autographic, design it and push print to Amazon, to a preloaded database. It just gets shipped. I mean, that's wild. We're in wild times, jeff. We just lost you.
Speaker 2:I think it is wild and I think, for those out there, like you said earlier, there is a lot of fear. There's a lot of fear mongering around it and and we probably take a lot for granted because we see things and and you more than I, but but we see things that you know a lot of the general public won't see for a while. Um, and I think that's another great argument for folks to pick up your book, the latest book on creating the intangible enterprise. Founders definitely pick up what you know about startups is wrong and probably give it to your significant other, your family members, but also in terms of following you on LinkedIn and getting involved in all of the content that we produce and the catalyst network that we have, because you can see what's happening and can understand the value of it, and maybe you can start to imagine where things are really headed and see that it's maybe not quite as dark as you might imagine it to be.
Speaker 3:I don't know, I don't know, All right.
Speaker 2:Well, I think that's a great place for us to wrap it up Again when KP and I get together again next week, wednesday at 11 am. Eastern is where we record these live. By the way, you can watch this over in the catalyst network. You can join us for the live recording of this. It's sort of like when I was a kid you go up in the in chicago, you go up in the, um, the sears tower, um, and yes, it is still called the sears tower, I don't care what you say um, there's a, there is a. Uh, there's a radio station up there, and you can watch through the glass. You know, as they recorded, that's sort of what we're doing here, without quite as much height or structural sway, for that matter, but you can join us in the Catalyst Network as we record this live.
Speaker 2:Next week, kp will be in Abu Dhabi as we do this and you'll just have to wait and see, check this out wherever you're listening to to wait and see, check this out Wherever you're listening to this now. Like it, share it, do all those things. It helps us to spread the message out to a broader audience and hopefully we can help them thrive in an AI-driven world. So, kp, thanks as always for joining me. Great conversation. Looking forward to the next one. All right, thanks, jeff.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. See everybody next week. Want more discussions like this? You can connect with KP Ready today at kpreadyco that's K-P-R-E-D-D-Yco, and additionally follow him on LinkedIn at wwwlinkedincom. Slash I-N slash KP Ready Until next time you.