Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - The Process: Avoiding the Hype of Silicon Valley (Ep.2)

Episode Date: April 13, 2018

Kairos Managing Partner Alex Fiance shares they’ve made a new investment in a company called iBeat, a smartwatch that continually monitors your heart rate, oxygen levels, and blood flow for life-threatening emergencies.Topics discussed include why they chose to invest, their process for determining if a company is the right fit, what Alex believes are the most important traits for an entrepreneur to have and answers a few questions from the Finding Mastery Tribe._________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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stay present and engaged with my thinking and writing. If you wanna slow down, if you wanna work smarter, I highly encourage you to check them out. Visit remarkable.com to learn more and grab your paper pro today. All right. Welcome back to the process. And I hope you enjoyed the last conversation we had with Alex Vianz, the founding partner of Kairos. And in this episode, we're going to dive deep into the weeds to better understand what makes an entrepreneur. And these are questions that have been emerging from the tribe.

We want to better understand, like, how do you create a company? And when you strip it all down, what makes a great founder? What makes a market opportunity? And how Alex goes about developing, cultivating, and selecting companies that he thinks and his team thinks will work. So, Alex, great to be with you. Great to be here again, Mike. What's been going on? How are you doing? Yeah, I was going to ask the same thing. Bring us up to speed. And I'll go first, certainly, is that we've been in kind of a great time for our development of our company and

building. And we're working on being able to find the right opportunities and structure deals in the right way. So behind the scenes, it's been a blast. And then with Seattle Seahawks, it's been a lot of selection stuff. And we just got back from the combine recently, working on trying to better understand the right fit for our culture, the right talents. And so we're just kind of in the thick of it, if you will, from that frame. And so, yeah, a lot going on in the side. But more importantly, what's happened since last we spoke with you? Everything's good. We made an investment and we hosted a big event in New York this week that was really focused on what is the responsibility of startups and tech companies to think about the implications of what they're

building at scale before they start a company. It's a very timely and relevant topic because there's been a lot of recent backlash around some of the companies like Facebook, specifically for not thinking ahead about the implications of some of these hot topics like data security. So I guess I would say we're continuing to invest. We made an investment and we're also continuing to just evangelize this mission that entrepreneurs and startups should really be about solving important problems that benefit the masses. Okay. When you say you made an investment, that sounds like you and your team huddled. You found one that you say, you know what? We think there's a chance here.

Let's put our money, our resources, our time and a talent behind it to make this thing or to help support this thing to give it a good shot. Is that right? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Brilliant. So when you do that, how do you, how do you, what are the final hurdles that you go through to be able to make that commitment of time and money? So I'd say there's two things. The first, which I think we can touch on in much more detail, is really just, is this founder or is this team oriented to go the distance, right? We know there's going to be some major peaks and valleys starting a business. Do we think this person is oriented to be a founder and that the team is set up right? The second is, do we think this problem is worth solving and do we think it's best solved by a startup?

Okay, then. So across the board, everything goes through that lens. I'm happy to kind of go deeper into the specific company we invested in. Yeah, okay. Let's go for it. So this one was within one of our core themes, right? So one of the trends we see is the aging population is increasing in its relative percentage of the population.

And we think there's a ton of interesting products and services that could be developed to cater to that group, both on the health and wellness side, but also on the cultural, social, even spiritual side. The company we invested in is called iBeat. Their focus is really on emergency life or death situations that involve heart failure. So I would almost think of it like a home security system for your body, right? It's a watch. And if there are specific changes or fluctuations in your heart rate that spike to a level that correlates with cardiac arrest, it'll automatically call the paramedics. It'll automatically activate the volunteer EMT network so you can get help as quickly as possible because 10 seconds can be the difference between life or death. So you have stuff like the Apple Watch that'll track your heart rate, but this is

entirely geared towards high-risk patients who want to be alone. They want to maintain their independence. They don't want to be monitored 24-7, but also obviously want to have the ability to save their life if it's necessary. What are some of the challenges? You're vetting that company. What is your process to be able to say, okay, let's bet our time. Let's bet our money on this. How do you go through that? I want to get as deep in the weeds as you can because I can sit on the fence and say, okay, how did you think about solving this problem and the hardware problem and the manufacturing and will they actually wear it?

And can people afford it? And like, I could ask a lot of questions, but I'm more interested in how do you make the decision to bet? Yeah. I think the, so, so looking at the market side first, I think the first question was just, is Apple going to do this? And a lot of our research just focused on, okay, why wouldn't one of the major existing players go after this problem? Why would a startup be the one to solve this? I think specifically what we learned is the Apple Watch, it doesn't have the sensors and it isn't catering to this specific population, the people who are seriously at risk for cardiac arrest and frankly may not have the support system around them or always be around enough people to feel, you know, confident that they would be help if something went wrong, right? So from a, I guess,

competitive perspective, you know, we know the Apple Watch is not oriented or catered to the specific population. The next question is, okay, is this population actually big? And, you know, there are two trends, right? One is the aging population is growing, right, as a relative percentage of the total population. The other is just that there's staggering and incredible stats around how much the aging population does not want to enter a care home. They want to maintain independence. They want to maintain their freedom. There's a very, very strong correlation between living in a care

home and depression. And what we believe is that that just opens up a whole ecosystem of, again, products and services that can help people live independently for longer, right? And this specific product was really, you know, again, tackling that life or death situation. But there are a lot of people who have to be monitored 24 7 or be in a care home. Because, you know, if they do go into cardiac arrest, that 30 seconds, minute, two minutes can absolutely be the difference between life or death. What does that mean? can absolutely be the difference between life or death. So I guess from a macro perspective, we believe that trends are pointing the direction of the consumer

looking to buy products or services, or even their kids looking to buy products and services for their parents that help them live longer independently. Okay. So is the first pass a macro look to see if the market will hold a significant win? Is that kind of the first pass? The first pass is, does this address an unmet consumer need, right? So the unmet consumer need here is I want to live alone and, or I want to live independently as long as I can, period.

Then we look at, okay, given that this is an unmet need, what is the best path to solve it? And I think one of the things that's really important is being honest there are a lot of competitive risks of, you know, perhaps someone like an Apple going hyper specialized in these different health categories. And we just decided that, you know, we love the team too. They've cleared a lot of the manufacturing risk. Brilliant. Stop there for just a minute. I want to get into the process of how you make these decisions. Is this a team of you guys that sit around and say, break this apart, you know, pull it apart, tease it apart, find out where the weak links are or, or like how, how is, how do you guys do this? The thing that we spent the most time on was agreeing on the formula or the process for how we vet companies. That took hours of screaming at

each other, lots of debating, lots of identifying holes and learning from them. But in terms of each deal, it's easier and easier to screen as we get clear and clear on the non-negotiable criteria for a company we'll invest in. Say those again because you said it in our last episode or our last conversation. So what are a couple of the ones that are clear for you, the non-negotiables? Yeah. So first and foremost, again, is this a real felt pain or problem to consumers or to the everyday person? Tangentially, there's a lot of backlash right now that Silicon Valley is such an insular community that a lot of the startups being created are just for the 1%. The famous example is a $700 kind of an at-home Keurig-like machine for juices that sold for $700 and raised over $100 million.

People kind of took a step back and went, wow, how did this happen? How did we ever believe that so much money should ever be dedicated to solving this problem. Did we ever stop and look and say, are people really saying, wow, I wish I just had a bunch of packets in my refrigerator that could go into a $700 machine to make more juice for breakfast? Right? So we have really tried to focus on first understanding, is the consumer in pain? Does the consumer actually care? Is there something truly wrong? Over time, we're getting smarter and smarter as we learn about these specific markets, which is why we've introduced these focus areas. Because we recognize we can't be experts on all of these problem spaces. There will be blind spots.

And a lot of what we do in our diligence is ask people far outside of our team. we can't be experts on all of these problem spaces. There will be blind spots. And, you know, a lot of what we do in our diligence is, you know, ask people far outside of our team, right? You know, we don't, we're not just trying to solve problems for ourselves. So the first step is, is this a problem worth solving? Is there a real unmet consumer need? If we are bought in on that, then the question becomes, okay, should a startup solve it? Or is this perhaps better addressed by the government or better addressed by a big company? Or in this case, like Apple or somebody that already has a watch that has a huge application database to be, or not a huge suite of applications that could fit on. And some of the best advice I got from one of our mentors is you want to be right on why you were wrong.

There's always going to be risks in startup investing. That's the point. But at least you don't want to have a blind spot that you missed. So when we document our decisions, we always document the risks. And in this case, a huge risk is just, can someone else do it? I think in this specific case, we love the team. The manufacturing side of things has been taken care of. They're ready to produce it at scale.

And we think them being first to market here is a huge advantage. But look, there are significant risks. But I guess in terms of how we invest, I guess assuming we're bought in on the problem, assuming we believe a startup could solve it, not just solve it, but also deliver venture returns, which means scale quickly and become a big business in a short time horizon, right? The other thing we look at is what type of company is this? Is this a feature that perhaps could just be added onto another product or ripped off by another company? Or is this really a business that can live and thrive on its own, right? So there is a lot of activity in the Valley

where someone will build what we consider a feature and they'll sell it to Google, they'll sell it to Facebook, they'll sell it to Twitter. Perhaps a new AI-based feature that will help you better ingest voice data. Something like that. That's a feature.

You rely on a big, yeah, I'm just saying you don't control your own destiny. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. In that case, right? And that's just us. A caveat by saying there are really great funds that invest in enterprise. They invest in deep tech and that's their specialty. Where we believe we can be the most helpful is when something reaches the end consumer right that that is what i consider our sweet spot um so is do we believe in the problem do we believe a startup can solve it and is the specific startup you know set up to control their own destiny and really change the model how are you solving internally when how many of you make a decision of whether you're going to fund

a company or not? Is that three, five, seven? You know, there, there's six of us and, and, and I would say we certainly want more than half. Dissension I think is, is good. You don't want everybody just unanimously agreeing, but you know, we, we want the majority of us to be bought in because our team is also very diversified by skill set. A lot of funds choose to diversify their team by perhaps industry expertise. We have diversified by skill set. So we really want the weight of the whole team behind the companies we invest in so they can get the most value and so we could have as big of a chance as possible to control the outcome of the company. I shouldn't say control the outcome, really influence the outcome.

That's a nice adjustment in words there. I don't know what you edited, but when you said control, there's like you actually can't control. You can support, challenge, guide, impact. But ultimately, I don't know anyone that can control their business and business destiny, which sounds like a funny thing to say. But all we get to control 100% of the time that is in our capacity is our thoughts and our actions.

That's it. There's nothing else really. Some might say attitude and effort, but those are extensions and hybrids of our thoughts and our actions. And so there's very little in this world we get to have the capacity to control 100% of the time. So I think that that's where I heard you going. It's like, wait, no, I can impact and influence in hopefully a positive direction. And there'll be ways that you don't in a positive direction. But back to the question, like when you're 3-3 and your board is split on the resource

to invest, how do you guys work through that? At that point, I think it's going to be about the conviction of one person who really, really wants to get behind it to put their name on the line and essentially volunteering to be spending a disproportionate amount of time on this company. We want to be set up to account for different perspectives. And if someone really, really has conviction, I think that will be the tiebreaker. Okay. So passion can push it over. Yeah, and I think that a lot of this segues into what I think

part two of this discussion is, which is what makes a great entrepreneur independent of what industry they're tackling. You look at someone like Elon Musk, who's gone after very, very, very different industries. Payments, automotive, space exploration.

Now he's doing the Boring Company, which is essentially tunnel building. I mean, it's crazy, right? And a disproportionate amount of the returns in venture are coming from small clusters of people. I don't know if, are you familiar with the PayPal mafia? Sure. You know, it's the cluster of founders who were all familiar with the PayPal mafia? Sure. It's that cluster of founders who were all involved in the early days of PayPal and they kept investing in each other

and supporting each other. And obviously, it's an exceptionally talented group of people. So half of what we do is looking at the markets and is this a problem worth solving? The other half is very, very intangible. It's can this founder achieve a goal in the face of serious ambiguity? And you were talking about this with me in the first episode. It's like in sports, I think the end goal is clear. I think in entrepreneurship, it's a little bit more vague, right? So we certainly – like table stakes for us is it has to be a mission-driven founder. They at least have to know roughly what they're trying to accomplish or what problem they're trying to solve. But the path to get there often changes dramatically

from that first pitch deck to, you know, hopefully IPO. So we're trying to get more scientific about what are the personality traits that need to exist for a founder to go the distance. What are some of the red flags for you? Keeping in mind that we often work with a demographic of younger entrepreneurs, the biggest red flag is them not being full-time. Hedging. So's easy. There's been an explosion of entrepreneurship and a lot of people saying they're entrepreneurs. It's easier than ever to maybe apply to an accelerator or put a pitch deck together. The first red flag for sure is just any aspect of hedging. And the other thing for us is, I would call it a bias to action. So to get into our Kairos 50 program,

which again is the early stage program for companies just getting off the ground, you at least need to have a product or prototype. And some of the accelerators that are, that are the best, you know, Y Combinator, for example, all they do is have you focus on, you know, customer user acquisition over and over and over again. Every week you meet with them and they say, how many users did you acquire? So I would say no matter what it's, it's like, it's proving that you're committed and proving that you can actually execute and get something off the ground.

Do you ever hear that I've got three side hustles, this is my main project or my main mission and purpose in life, but I can't afford to live. So I've got a couple side gigs and with a first influx of cash, I'm not going to take much money, just enough to survive. Would that be a red flag for you as well? No, that's not a red flag. I think it's being honest and self-aware. So I think the question is what have you done with what you have? A founder from a wealthy background who started with a million dollars from their trust or something is very different than someone who was spending $100 a week plus managing a side hustle. How important is little intangibles like eye contact, dress, the ability to be well-groomed? How much do you wait on those?

And I'll tell you why I asked that question. Yeah, that's an interesting question. I mean, there was a good question from the tribe on this too, which is just like, should you have a co-founder? So I would say, again, it's self-awareness, right? You don't want this to screen out the introverts or the people who are much more technically oriented. I mean, there have been some amazing founders who are that way. But I think it's knowing that you need to build a team around your strengths.

So the red flag is if somebody truly doesn't care about appearance, doesn't make eye contact, is kind of abrasive, and then also says that they're going to be the head of sales and marketing and raise all the money. Red flags, please. Right. It's an interesting balance because you need to be kind of delusional to think that you can solve such a big problem with such a small team, but you also need to be self-aware enough to know how to build a team around you.

So it's this interesting blend of self-awareness and optimism, I think. I haven't met an elite athlete that doesn't squarely sit in an optimistic frame. They fundamentally believe that if they apply themselves in the right way and other people do the same, that amazing things are going to take place in life. Pessimism is not part of the path. Now, there's some cynics. Pessimism is not part of the path. Now, there's some cynics. Pessimism is interesting in the venture capital world. We'll meet a lot of people that just hate almost everything. We certainly sit on the optimist side of the fence. But I think we're working with earlier stage entrepreneurs. So perhaps it's better to be a skeptic in the

later stages or even if you're in the hedge fund world, but, uh, you know, we're certainly on the optimist side. Okay. So I've got a couple of questions from the tribe. I'd love to get your take on, this is from Denise Benatar. I work at Stanford where entrepreneur seems to be the only goal these days. What never seems to be discussed enough is what do you give up to travel this path? I'm not judging it, but I feel that it should at least be a discussion point. Can you address how choosing this way of life affects the rest of your life and the types of questions to ask yourself before you pursue entrepreneurship? Yeah, I think the topic is starting to be discussed, which is really around founder mental health.

I guess there are two questions that I think even the optimist should ask. Because you read some stories. There's a company where one of the founders was a Kairos fellow. It's called Periscope. And it sold to Twitter within 12 to 18 months of existence for a big sum, right? And you read those stories and it starts to skew the perception of what's normal, right? So I think the question you should ask is, okay, am I willing to commit 10 years of my life to this problem? Right? Because if things don't go perfectly and you don't perfectly align with the trajectory of the get-rich-quick startup, you will essentially be married to this company.

And you take on investors and you don't think about the implications of, okay, I am working with these people and I have a responsibility to them for years until there is some sort of either liquidity event, positive or negative, until we go bankrupt or until we sell or exit or until my investors decide to overthrow me as CEO and replace me. So I really think that it's being honest about looking ahead in your life and seeing if you're committed. And then I think the other question is just like, if you can look at your past and say, how have I handled situations of extreme stress? And if you just hate that version of yourself, or if you physically couldn't bear it, that will happen if you're a good founder. If you care, and if you care about your investors and if you care about the problem, you're going to encounter some rough patches and it will hit hard because it's not just hitting you, it's affecting your team, it's really their first major pressure test of a high-stress, high-stakes environment. I think that people need to run the experiment.

That's why ideally when we work with someone, they've done some sort of ambitious high-stakes project in their life. High-stakes is very different in high school or college, you know, what feels important, but the kind of physical effect on your body can be the same, right? So can you handle stress and are you willing to go the distance for 10 years to, you know, to solve this problem? What are some other characteristics? Let me give you a scenario that let's say three, four years into a business, cash positive, let's say in the $2 million range, $2, $3 million net per year. And at what point does that organization need to become more

sophisticated in processes to go from, let's just say $3 million to $30 million or $3 million to $10 million? I think there's a magic number I read somewhere that net 9 million is very different than net 3. It's not that hard to get. Yeah. I mean, I think all these questions are interconnected, right? So one question I don't think it's asked enough is like, how big do I want this startup to be? I think founders are often just kind of chasing the biggest version of something when in reality, is like, how big do I want this startup to be? I think founders are often just kind of chasing the biggest version of something when in reality, they may make as much money accounting for dilution of future funding if it's a $3 million business that sells for $40 million or if it's a $15 million a year business that sells

for $200 million. So I guess one of the questions is just like, how big should this be? How big do I want it to be? And then to your, to the point you're asking, like, am I prepared for the next version of this company, which may mean that I'm not even working on the product. It might mean I'm spending all my time managing and hiring, right? Again, going back to that self-awareness of, okay, who are you? You know, what are you best at? And how do you build a team around that? And I think what often happens is what someone's best at is different from what they want to do. And you kind of have that moment of kind of where your fiduciary shareholder responsibility can be kind of in conflict with your passion, in a sense, of where you want to spend your time.

And I don't, man, there's no rule book for that, right? That's a choice that the founder has to make. Would you, as an investor, would you rather see a founder running the business or a founder that says, my skill is very different than being a CEO and I've brought in a CEO? We're covering the CEO's costs, but we need some time and talent to be able to amplify to 10X. Would you rather see a professional CEO coming in or the founder bootstrapping? Well, I think a lot of times the quote-unquote professional CEO comes in too early or has? Or has misaligned expectations of

how far the company really is and it just doesn't work, right? So what I would say is, you know, we always want the founder DNA in the company, right? The founder is the one who came up with the creative solution to the problem. The founder is the one who really put the most on the line at the beginning. We want that DNA. So, you know, even if they aren't the CEO, we want them there constantly critically thinking about how to solve the problem. I think that, yeah, there is a point in time when it can be great to have a CEO. But I've also found that we've seen all sorts of founder CEOs, right? And The best companies we've seen are able to attract that quote-unquote professional CEO in a COO role, chief customer officer role, SVP roles. They're able to hire and attract elite talent.

Elite talent means often young hotshot engineers, but it also often means experienced senior leaders. So I don't know if that perfectly answers your question, but I would just say in terms of pattern recognition, the companies that we've seen perform the best keep their founder CEO and they just hire really well around that founder. And I would say the later stage VCs are often very good at team building and building around the founder. Cool. Cool answer. Brilliant. So one more question for you. And then this is a great update. So here's the question is how do entrepreneurs

know the difference between perseverance and just being stubborn? Is the result the only difference? If I succeed, is that resilience? If I fail, is that just being stubborn? And that's from Rui Bronco. And I hope I pronounced the first name right. R-U-I. Rui, possibly Bronco. Yeah, I like this question too. I mean, I hate to be too kitschy with the segment name, but I think it's about the process in the middle, right? You start with something you want to do, or hopefully you start with a problem you want to solve. And hopefully, the outcome is you're successful. But I think that stubbornness is when a founder is so convinced that they're right, that their solution is right,

that they aren't listening to customers, they're ignoring the data, and they fail because they essentially couldn't move quickly enough or couldn't adapt or kind of got indigestion as a company. So usually a founder comes in with an open mind and says, okay, I know the problem I want to solve. Directionally, this is the way I think we solve it, but I'm flexible on the path and there will be forks in the road and twists and turns and steps backwards, but eventually I will figure it out. But, but, you know, the, the, the most common school of thought, or I would say the only trait that there seems to be a unanimous agreement on for what makes a great entrepreneur is, is what they call grit or, you know, essentially perseverance, right. Which is just a constant refusal to let anything get in the way.

Yeah, that's cool. We talk a lot about grit, you know, the three components of it, Angela Duckworth being the architect of that concept and the three components, just for folks that aren't familiar, it's passion, perseverance for long-term goals. And that perseverance to stick with it, you know, when it's difficult is certainly a component, living with passion. If you're not, if you're not figuring that thing out, it's hard to play the long game. If you don't have clarity of long-term goals, forget about it. So, all right. You know what I want to do is I'd like to put a pin here and I'd love to get into the weeds with one of your founders that you funded and to really dive

into the mindset of an entrepreneur. And can you think of one or two or a couple of guys or gals that would have a great conversation for us on the process that are entrepreneurs that are in it and they can speak to it? Yeah. Yeah. I think there's quite a few topics we can cover. I mean, we can get into the mind of a company that's been really successful. I'd love to show you guys a founder who has successfully pivoted and nearly failed. I'd love to introduce you to some entrepreneurs who are doing this globally where there is not nearly as mature of a VC ecosystem. And we could even do one live where we're actually evaluating an investment. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Okay, good.

I have a question for you though. So from the combine, just because I feel like I need to apply your learnings to what we're doing in between the lines here, are there two or three personality traits that you think are just non-negotiable for just seeing the successful athletes and people who found mastery that you've worked with? Are there any patterns or consistent things that you always screen for and are non-negotiable to work with that person? That's a good question. I don't, I don't have a non-negotiable, but what I do have, I've got some red flags that are really clear and I do have some strong

indicators that I'd like to bet on, you know? And so here's some of the red flags. When I ask them to do something that's difficult in a, let's call it a 20-minute interview or 15-minute interview, and they look and they say, what's this got to do with football? Red flag. You'd be surprised, Alex, how many people when asked in an interview process to do something that is hard to do. Why is that a red flag? Because they don't want to do the hard and they're missing this young mind, this 24-year-old Why is that this red flag, like, will you, are you coachable? Will you do the dirty, difficult work even when you don't

fully understand it? And so it's a, it's a bit of a red flag and I'm not completely articulating it here because there's a visceral response that happens. Yeah. Like when somebody like, almost like in a defiant way. Now somebody, you know, you could also say, well, sometimes that defiance, you know, is really a good thing sometimes, but I'm not sure that in their life and they give the marketing mind responses. So getting past the marketing mind into the real soul and spirit of a person is part of the work. And, you know, at the combine, these men are well prepped and they're well prepared on how to answer questions. So figuring out how to get past the script and into the real, real deep stuff about what they're hungry for and what they're driven by. And for example, you know, many people will say that they want to win or they want to be their very best or be the best. And it's sorting out like wanting to win is an outcome. So it's an outcome based drive. Wanting to be the best is an internal drive because they love how it

feels to improve and get better. And wanting to be the best again, that's back to outcome, right? And so trying to sort out are they outcome focused or internally focused? One's not necessarily better than the other. But if I had to pick, I'd pick internally driven. They want and love the environments that will help them explore their potential. Because if that happens, it's really good for everybody. They're going to have a great time. Their family is going to have a great time. Their teammates are going to have a great time because there's a lot in them.

So I'm looking more for the internal drivers than the external. And it's a funny thing that people know that they're supposed to say what they're supposed to say, that they're internally driven. But if you ask the question three, four, five different ways from different angles, the true nature starts to reveal itself. So that's one. And so, again, that's about like, what is possible for you? What are your drivers? I'm also wanting to understand how quickly they can learn something on the fly. So intelligence is not facts. How many facts do you know? Or how much knowledge do you have? Intelligence is how quickly can you do something with information.

And so we like to ask them difficult problem-solving scenarios under moderate or relatively high-pressure environments. So those are some things we're looking for. And, you know, it's fine if a person sits across a table or experience and they're sweating. You know, that's actually not a problem. I don't care about that. I'm seeing that like they care, they're nervous because they don't know how to quite think about this setting. It's different and it's new. And if they're sweating, I don't care. But what do you do with your thoughts and your words when there is that pressure? I'm more interested in an athlete

or somebody across the table or conversation that is sweating and can maintain a sense of clarity of thought. So those are a few things that I take a look at. Cool. Yeah. Well, I think there's a separate rabbit hole we could go down for how we could apply that to our process, but I know we got to jump right now. So brilliant. Next time we talk, I'll have one of these founders with me so you could get a little

closer to the mind. Let's go, Alex. I love it. Thanks for your time, brother. Appreciate it. Likewise. Okay. Bye. Have a good one. All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with us. Our team loves creating this podcast and sharing these conversations with you. We really appreciate you being part of this community. And if you're enjoying the show, the easiest no-cost way to support is to hit the subscribe or follow button

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