How has the pandemic shifted the landscape for businesses in non-major markets? Lesa Mitchell, General Manager at Techstars, joined to share what new opportunities exist for entrepreneurs.
Founders in small cities have struggled with the lack of access to talent and ongoing funding. The pandemic has changed these obstacles - it’s actually created solutions.
How has the pandemic shifted the landscape for businesses in non-major markets?
Techstars General Manager Lesa Mitchell joined Scott to talk about the changes she's seen over the past year.
Watch the full session: https://bit.ly/2OQPezK
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Scott Case 0:00
Welcome to Founders Focus, a podcast made for founders by founders. I'm Scott Case, CEO and co-founder of Upside, and I created Founders Focus to help share free resources and actionable advice. Together, we're building a community for business leaders, entrepreneurs and founders to come together to tackle today's challenges. This podcast is powered by my awesome team at Upside. Please visit foundersfocus.com to join the live video sessions or to catch up on past topics.
Scott Case 0:28
I am absolutely delighted to have our co host today be Lesa Mitchell. Lesa is the general manager at Techstars. And Lesa and I worked together what feels like both an eternity ago and yesterday when she was at the Kauffman Foundation, and I was the CEO of Startup America where we traveled around the country after the last sh*t show of the financial crisis and worked on helping high growth startups all over the country get to scale. And so we're actually going to touch on that a little bit today because things have changed with the pandemic. But before we get too far ahead of ourselves, Lesa, why don't you give a little introduction of yourself?
Lesa Mitchell 1:09
Great. Hi, everybody. Lesa Mitchell. As Scott said, I grew up on a rocket ship that was run by Mr. Kaufman. He was the founder. And it was a pharmaceutical company, ended up doing m&a and licensing for years around the world. Started a electronic clinical trials company years ago, did business in India and South Africa before there were good flights and especially from Kansas City. As Scott said, joined the foundation to do some crazy and awesome things which included being the seed funder of Startup Weekend, Code for America, accelerators, Startup America and lots of amazing stuff in different sectors. And Brad Feld is a longtime friend, helped him on his first startup communities book, communities and growth, and founders have always been my passion. So joined Techstars and have been running a program here in Kansas City ever since and invest in founders solving really interesting problems.
Scott Case 2:19
So you obviously had a deep executive background, then you went to the foundation and started to work with boatloads of entrepreneurs. What was particularly attractive about taking on Techstars? And I think initially, you ran the program in Kansas City, and now you've got more of a broader purview. Why TechStars?
Lesa Mitchell 2:42
Well, I mean, frankly, and as you know, Scott, because you have also been an executive of a large not for profit, there's only so much you can do. There's too many guardrails around you, I'm tied to lots of different things. While you can do wonderful things, you can't actually invest in people that are changing the world, like entrepreneurs. And so that was my passion, I wanted to get back to it. And Techstars allowed me to do that at scale. We've invested in over 2500 companies around the world, and at the end of the day, it begins and ends with the founders. And that's where I enjoy. Founders tend to be a little crazy, which makes life much more fun. And I do it because I want to help them.
Scott Case 3:31
Awesome. Alright, well, we're gonna talk a little bit about some of the shifts in the pandemic. But before we do, why don't you just explain a little bit about Techstars? Like, what is it? What's an accelerator? What's its history? If someone wants to apply to a Techstars program, how do they do that – sort of what's the 60 seconds on Techstars?
Lesa Mitchell 3:51
And the good news is I funded a lot of research on this topic when I was at the Kauffman Foundation, so I have meta information as well as detail. So Techstars NYC and Y Combinator were essentially started at the same time, for a little bit similar reasons. Brad Feld said to me years ago, he felt like he was living in Boulder where people treated founders like a petting zoo. And I kind of helped him on the side, but not seriously. And he wanted to figure out a way in which he could seriously help them. And so over the years, we have built two different kinds of programs around the world. There are about 40 people like me, that run Techstars programs around the world. We're in Singapore. We run a program in South Africa before. We're in Berlin. We're in Korea, we're in lots of places in the US, and some of our programs are fully funded by Techstars. And what I would call horizontally focused, meaning not vertical. And in some cases, we have joined with vertically focused partners like United Healthcare who want to solve access to health, pricing and things like that. And I have a colleague Matt Miller that runs that program focused specifically on that topic. He funds companies around the world. While we look like we're a three month program, we're not. We are invested in founders for life, we're on their cap table for life, and the reason for that is that way we are incentively aligned forever to help them scale. I have a founder in the Netherlands that I talk to every Tuesday morning at 7:30am, that he went through my program in 2018. So while we have an accelerator, which is exactly what it sounds like, it is a three month program in which our focus is to build a really hardcore foundation with you for your company, and help you really achieve scale more quickly than you could on your own. We also have lots of things that we do over time beyond that accelerator, which is why we call it Techstars for life.
Scott Case 6:11
That's awesome. Techstars is one of those programs where, as you said, it has a program to it, but it really is about being part of a community. And one of the things that we had a hypothesis around and then we really validated it through our work at Startup America and what Kauffman has done and others, is that productive ecosystems for founders really are driven by the quality of the relationships around those founders. And I know that Techstars plays a big role, a big part of the program is bringing relationships that can be valuable around the company. You mentioned some big markets, but Techstars is also operating in smaller markets, from a community standpoint, helping drive that community. Now that you've been much closer to within the Techstars world, what are some of your observations around how those relationships form and what founders can do to not only take advantage of what Techstars brings, but just in general, build relationships around them?
Lesa Mitchell 7:19
And Scott, you were a mentor in my program last summer, it was the first time that really ever that Techstars had run 100% remote program. I was fearful, because a lot of the secret sauce is you guys, as individuals that are CEOs that are on this call or co-founders that are on this call, it is about you building a community of other people kind of at the same place in life in terms of your company. And many times you as founders think you're crazy, hit a problem you can't solve and you actually can't wait to talk to somebody in three weeks to solve it. And so our community is much of that is people who are at the same place at the same time. But we learned, and they come together and they establish a relationship for life. I will tell you, you know, Digital Ocean that was a Techstars company, went public last week, and I can tell you every company in the Techstars network was involved with communicating with them, their cohort was singing and dancing, and all sorts of stuff was going on around the world. And so you build that relationship. And frankly, trust is a key component of it. When you're going through a Techstars cohort, it's kind of like going probably through, I've never been, but I assume going through boot camp in the military, a little bit of it could be seen as breaking you down to build you back up, because we're questioning everything about everything, your pricing model, your revenue model, your whatever, go to market strategy, and you build a strong relationship with other founders. And clearly what we saw, even with Startup Weekend, Scott, that you've been involved with for years, is people come together for a two and a half day weekend, somewhere in the world, to pitch problems to each other and try to solve them. And that builds community right then and there. And so we are short term about building and scaling companies, long term building and scaling communities of practice. I just got off of a health care call with a bunch of healthcare CEOs that have gone through Techstars program, we have the same thing in sustainability, we have the same thing and a couple of other energy spaces. So it's building communities of practice with other CEOs and founders.
Scott Case 9:48
And so it's not only within your cohort, but it's also within your vertical across those different sectors in time. So you've got at this stage CEOs that are far along and maybe they're five or 10 years ahead, and then you've got some that are just starting out, maybe just going through a program.
Scott Case 10:06
We had a question from the audience around – What's the expectation post accelerator around investment capital? Is it the case that every Techstars graduate, they expect that they're gonna go raise whatever their next round of capital as part of it? How often does that happen? Can you share a little bit about what those expectations are?
Lesa Mitchell 10:26
Yeah, I can tell you that we looked at this a couple years ago, and on average, companies, on average, companies raise about a million and a half dollars, within 16 months of going through a program, I mean, within six months. But I also want to essentially kind of push back on the whole notion of fundraising as a goal. I mean, as Scott knows, somehow fundraising became a thing relative to PR, TechCrunch, whatever, as a signaling factor. And I would tell you that, if I have founders that come to me, and there's a couple that I'm talking to that are on here, and, we absolutely determine that there are non dilutive sources of capital that could quickly get them to revenue and scale through revenue. I mean, I'm all in on founders that want to scale through actual revenue versus spend too much time getting diluted yourself. It's not good for you to be diluted personally. And so, I hate to see fundraising as a metric. But many companies do come to us and that is something that they need to do in order to get to their goals. And so on average, it's about a million and a half.
Scott Case 11:42
Got it, and you've got some, and it's within six months. So it's not like, Hey, I graduated here is your shiny gold brick that you get to take and go run your business, you actually have to go pitch it to investors and do the work.
Lesa Mitchell 11:55
Because the reality is that some companies aren't ready. I mean, as you know, I've taken companies that were an idea when I met them, that doesn't happen a lot, but if it is possible, I would do that. And so if they need to raise money, they're probably not going to be ready to raise money in three months.
Scott Case 12:15
That's right. Okay, so I want to dive into the relationship piece of this. So, one of the things that you observed is that the pandemic has accelerated, reshaped some things, particularly for smaller communities around the country. And one of the things that was frustrating for me, in over the last decade is a lot of good stuff has happened – more startups, high growth accelerators, more programs, better language around things. But the vast majority of high growth startups are still showing up in the larger markets. They're based in either big cities, or even second tier cities. But you've had some observations that say, Hmm, maybe the game has changed. So what have you seen? And why do you think it might be different over the next 10 years?
Lesa Mitchell 13:08
I mean, it's impossible to say COVID was good, because of all of the bad. But because of COVID, the impact to a number of things, I believe are changed forever. And I put all of my massive notes over here on my wall, when I was thinking about this call with Scott. And I can tell you, there's three things that COVID changed like forever.
Lesa Mitchell 13:37
One is the notion essentially, that almost everything has to have a digital framework. Whether it be manufacturing companies that had paper based logs, whether it would be paper based receipts, whether it would be still doctor's office and hospitals who use paper records that you unfortunately have to fill out every single time that you go there. The world has become digital. I mean, the number of companies that struggled were those that are the least digital. And so that was blown open. The option to not be digital was completely removed, which of course created other problems.
Lesa Mitchell 14:23
But the second thing I think that's changed in a big way, and I don't see us going back is that a significant number of policy barriers were broken. And the most obvious ones that all of you know, and in some cases, it's policy, in some cases, it's practice. But the most obvious one is in healthcare. I mean, the ability to do telehealth. We personally have invested in a number of companies in the space that this was like setting a rocket ship underneath of them because suddenly every hospital wanted to be able to have an external entryway that was digital to get in. Every doctor's office, if at all possible, wanting to be able to do telehealth, every mental health facility as we've seen the massive rise in mental health. And I have a wonderful example, there's a woman by the name of Grace, who started this company called Kintsugi Hello, which is a voice recognition technology. And it's a voice recognition technology that does diagnostics in mental health. And as you all know, I mean, a lot of us struggled. Scott and I are extroverts and we were stuck at home for the last year. So a lot of people struggled. The idea that voice could actually tell you if there are some issues that you're having with mental health, nobody would have believed that or jumped on it a year ago, she's highly funded in terms of federal funding, but the company's a rocket ship.
Lesa Mitchell 16:05
And then I think the third thing is everything remote. Remote access to capital. Boston Techstars alumni raised $480 million in the last 12 months. I mean, that's insane. And half of those people that were funded lived in other cities or countries from the companies that were there, so they never met them in the first place in person. Remote school, remote work. And obviously, that's where we see the transformation of smaller communities, whether it be a bunch of the Techstars alumni in Boston that have moved to Portland, Maine, and plan to stay. They didn't move there, like just I'm moving here and I'm taking my entire company, they moved and said, this is where I am going to live. You can't buy a house in the Sierra Nevada right now, because so many people have moved there. And again, it's not I'm moving my company there, it's, I am moving there. And so I think those are like the three main things – Digital first, policy transformation, and much of the world can be rough.
Scott Case 17:18
So has that part of the relationship piece, I want to dive into that last bullet. Like okay, you're remote, you want to live wherever it is that you want to live, and think more investors, more potential partners have gotten comfortable with the idea of like, people are just going to be wherever they're going to be. So with that in mind, how as a founder, do you kind of leverage that if you're based in Kansas City, if you're in a market that's Kansas City size, you have sports teams, but you're not in New York, right? And if you're even in a smaller community, where you're a step off of that, what's the best way to take advantage of that?
Lesa Mitchell 18:09
Yeah, well, we're back to kind of the previous discussion, and that we all still need community, communities of practice or whatever you want to call them, peer communities. I mean, we've seen it over the years with EO and YPO, etc. And so you're right. It's like, okay, Portland, Maine, clearly, we need to create a community of practice of all of the new CEOs that are sitting here that actually don't have any of their team members here. And they're meeting each other, they're figuring out a place that they're all going to go together, half of them don't know each other. And so I don't know if I'm answering your question. But I think the skill that we're going to have to build and founders are going to have to build is, you know, that all sounds easy, I'm just gonna run a remote company, we're all going to be Git lab, I don't think it's that easy. And I think for companies who were together, and it was 1,200 people in a building and they've worked together for the last whatever, five or six years, going remote was less complicated. Because there was context, people knew each other, there was expectations already set on work and work hours and work product and stuff. And so if somebody wanted to move from spring ventures in Kansas City's 1,200 person location and go live in Cabo, they could still do that, because that was kind of a pre formed thing. I do think starting from scratch. I mean, we're hosting lots of sessions with Techstars alumni and founders about best practices in terms of managing remote teams, because you're hiring brand new people. In some cases, a lot of people were hiring new folks, and you probably did this same thing too, Scott, over the last year that you maybe never met in person. And so the skills and the capabilities that one is going to have to put in place to build a team, build context and build productive outcomes is probably going to be different. And we're going to figure it out.
Scott Case 20:24
Yeah, look, we did, we've hired a lot of people 100% remote and onboarding them and engaging them and keeping your cultural continuity going in those environments. And then there's the relationships that are external to you, the kinds of whether they're partners that you're looking for our capital partners or customer relationships or just community of other founders that you can bounce ideas off of, or sort of work through your struggles with. When you think about important relationships around a founder, what are the sort of, I guess, the personas of the two or three types of people that founders ought to be investing in cultivating around themselves and sort of around their business?
Lesa Mitchell 21:14
People who have gone before you. And I'm serious. I hope that you're looking for other founders who are farther along than you are. One of the things, I had a question this morning from somebody in my community, and he was like, Lesa, what can you do to spend more time or provide more educational resources to people to founders in Kansas City? And I said, it's not that easy because if I'm online and talking to an entire group of people that I don't know, and some of them are doing digital health, and some of them are a manufacturing company trying to go digital, and some of them are a service business, there is no such thing as generic advice. Generic advice is almost always horrible and needs context.
Lesa Mitchell 22:08
And so I would be looking for mentors and/or other founders who are farther along than you are in the process, who you have real data points of their success, not perception, because they have a whole bunch of PR, but real data points of success, which should in my mind always be tied to revenue. And so that would be my number one is find your team, find your team of people who are passionate about, and I mean, advisors, mentors, that you don't need to compensate. But, if you don't have Techstars, create your own advisory group or mentor group. It doesn't have to be in your community, but it can be in your community, but it needs to be tied specifically to the goals of your company, and they need to have an expertise in that space. Generic other expertise is not helpful. I mean, if you want to raise money, you better be talking to other people that have raised money before you because it is a dark art. I think Scott would agree that is not for anybody to just do a random walk, there's all sorts of wonderful tools that are out there relative to crowdsourcing. Brian, the former founder of wonder capital, Techstars company in Boulder, has started a company called fundboard that he wanted, I hope he doesn't mind me saying this, but his pitch to me when he told me about fundboard was, we raised a Series B, we were massively successful and it took me 160 meetings to raise my B round. And that's not productive for founders. And so I got to create a better way to support founders and support investors in meeting each other that makes it more productive. So look for those kinds of resources.
Scott Case 24:08
I think it is important to build authentic relationships along the way, and they're usually both directions. So chances are unless you unless you're 22 and you just graduated from college, which you can still start a company, you've probably got something to bring to the party, whether that's domain expertise or the types of relationships that you can support that other founder, even if they're ahead of you, maybe they're looking for customers, but it's also about investing in that overall community of connections and relationships.
Scott Case 24:43
I'm curious about, I guess, the role that the foundational relationships play. Do you have something for founders, that's like, okay, you've talked to 10 different founders, some of them are ahead of you, some are behind, What are some of the things that you would advise a founder to look for in a healthy, constructive, productive relationship that you want to keep investing in? Are there things to aim at? Not just that they're ahead of you, but are there other elements that you think are important?
Lesa Mitchell 25:16
Yeah, it all comes back down to the problem. I mean, as you well know, many of us that invest in companies, we're investing. And there's a founder on here that I'm just thinking about this with, we're investing because the founder was invested in solving a problem that they particularly understood really, really well. I mean, my guys in Chicago at Oja Express, that everybody thought was a little bit crazy when they went through Techstars mentor madness. And these are two founders from Nigeria, one of them was a healthcare executive before they started this company, the other one's an engineer. And the problem that they actually wanted to solve for is, he's a Nigerian in Chicago, and he misses his family, he misses the culture of food, finding food that is tied to the culture from which you're from is unbelievably hard. And because he's a healthcare executive, he also suddenly realized that many of these, what one would call immigrant grocery stores, are also the actual only real bright side in a food desert. Because if you go in the back of any of these stores, they have fresh fruits and vegetables. And many of them are located in all sorts of parts of the city. And he wanted to harness this and figure out how can we get the Nigerians in the country access to their food? How can we share the foods and the stories of the culture from Jamaica with other people? He's struggled and struggled to get people to buy the story, because most of the people that he was talking to weren't immigrants and didn't understand the problem. He found his people. And he is like on a big rocket ship now. But it was finding the people who understood the problem that he was trying to solve. And so I would say always that's where you start, is whether or not they're passionate about it. It's easy to find, I do a lot in the rare disease space, finding other parents that are equally frustrated about the process, technology, and the policies, and the rare disease space is not hard, and the moment you introduce them to one another, magic happens. And so I would say it's the same thing for founders – find other people who are passionate, not just founders that are ahead of you but when you talk to them and you explain to them the problem you're solving, they lean in, and they lean in because they're really interested. And they lean in the Oja Express example, because oh god, they did a delivery company in wherever, let's say Angola, and understand the problem and the opportunity there.
Scott Case 28:11
We had a few questions about how do you test for trust and authenticity, and I think your point there is a really good one, which is people who are actually curious that demonstrate real curiosity about the problem, and I probably have repeated this too much but maybe it's not even enough. I tell founders all the time, fall in love with the problem, not in your solution, because chances are the solution you end up with isn't going to be the one you started with. But the problem is still going to be there. So if you're in love with the problem and you find other people that are at least curious about the problem, they don't have to fall in love with the way that you do, but they have to be curious enough to become thoughtful about it to be able to say, Okay, I understand that and it's a big deal.
Scott Case 28:56
And I also want to point out something else you said that is so important. That is one of the greatest missed opportunities for a lot of investors of all types, not just venture investors, but whether it's banks or others is, particularly I'll just call it out non-white communities have problems that white people don't understand. And yet the white people are the ones that are making the investments. And so I encourage a lot of investors to say why don't you actually dig in and do a little customer discover yourself before you dismiss something out of hand, and I had the privilege of being part of the mentor madness with the Oja Express team. And I was like, holy sh*t, this is a giant opportunity. And you know, I'm curious about everything, so I'm one of those people that's like let's pull these threads on this, and I went this is a big deal. But you know, not everybody is that curious, so even on the investor front, finding people are authentically curious about it or creating the momentum around it is so important. And it's hard.
Lesa Mitchell 30:03
Can I give you a specific example there? And it's, I mean, don't bang your head against the wall, founders, that is stupid. Don't bang your head against the wall. So that's my advice. And I'll give you a perfect example. You met Len and Sarah, who are the co-founders of West Tenth. This is a company focused entirely on how can we help scale home based businesses with an assumption that a vast majority of the people who are running home based businesses are women, in some cases, because they don't have a choice, in some cases, because that's what they chose. But they don't necessarily know – they might want to scale it, they might want to be able to do it out of their home, and just to be able to ship everywhere or others. When they started talking to investors, I mean, people were like crossing their eyes, I'm trying to understand this, and how in the world is this scalable, and then all the COVID data started coming out about women are the most affected people in COVID. I mean, many of them were driven back home. And in many cases, they lost their jobs if they were working in manufacturing, or gift making, or whatever. And she simply realized, stop pitching men, I mean, just stop, they don't understand. And it's a little bit like the friends of mine that are in the fertility space who go out and pitch men, they understand the problem a little bit, and usually, they will say something like, I'm going to have to go and talk to my spouse about this. But it's the same thing in Oja Express, it's the same thing in Join YearOne, trying to solve diversity at the level of software engineering, if you don't have that problem, the likelihood that you really understand it is not high. And so stop wasting your time.
Scott Case 31:55
I find myself telling a lot of founders that, even when they're looking for customers, I'm like, you have to find somebody who is enlightened enough to understand this and that's okay, there'll be plenty of them, you just got to start there. Because if you try to bring somebody along who doesn't get it, you're going to spend enormous cycles trying to get to that, they have to sort of be tuned in.
Scott Case 32:16
Alright, so we're gonna go into our lightning round. This is where Lesa, you attempt to answer these questions in maybe a longish tweet. So good luck. Don't worry, they're all hard. So just to prepare yourself there. I'm going to start with some of the easier ones. What percentage of Techstars companies basically survive – profitable and scalable?
Lesa Mitchell 32:42
85%
Scott Case 32:44
All right. What do you think Techstars doesn't do particularly well or could do better? What do you think the gaps are in the Techstars program?
Lesa Mitchell 32:53
I think the gaps are supporting later stage companies. I think there are things while you know, some could say, gee, they've got venture funding or they could go join a YPO chapter. I think there's all sorts of other things that we could do to help around M&A, talents. Talent is the number one issue for everyone now, everyone.
Scott Case 33:18
A software company healthcare has sales and is growing, at what point should they seek funding?
Lesa Mitchell 33:26
When they have to. No, kind of, I want to say that. But I mean, frankly, I don't want you to seek funding when you have three months of runway left. I mean, I'm back to my soapbox of if you don't need to seek funding, don't. Use revenue, use strategic partnerships, use channel partners as other ways to not have to be diluted. I see people going like this, I like that. But the reality is it takes a while. It takes a while to learn how to pitch, it takes a while to put together the financial model to tell the story, so as soon as you even think this is an inkling, and if you have less than six months of runway left, and you think that you better start raising money, you better start doing it yesterday.
Scott Case 34:18
You can never raise money when you need it. You can only raise money when you don't need it. The only other thing I'll pile on to that is you should raise capital to accomplish something specific, like that you either prove or disprove an assumption you have about the business. But think of capital as a way of learning or proving something that you want to know. It could be I want to be able to prove I can grow or I can scale. So raising capital because you can raise capital doesn't really work either. You've got to raise capital to accomplish a thing and be really clear about what that is. What are you trying to achieve with that money and oftentimes early stage, like seed stage or even through series A, you're trying to prove some kind of assumption. Can I acquire customers for a certain amount of money? Can I retain those customers over some period of time? Can I build this software to do the X Y and Z thing that I need to be able to do? I'll just pile on there.
Scott Case 35:13
A couple of ones on experts, Lesa. When should you think about bringing in a salesperson? And then when could you think about bringing in like a CFO or a lead financial person?
Lesa Mitchell 35:28
So the salesperson is the most interesting question. The answer in tweetable form, the CEO and founder is most likely the salesperson for as long as they can be. And the reason that is so is if you as a founder can't sell whatever you've built to solve the problem, nobody else can either. And so when you have to, meaning you have no more capacity, and now there's too much work, that's when you bring in a sales guy or girl.
Lesa Mitchell 36:06
Relative to CFO, a little bit the same, I mean, people that pitch to me that are a three person company and have a CFO, I'm like, what is a full time CFO doing at a three person company? So again, yes, you at an early stage, you're probably going to need access to a really smart CFO. There's lots of ways to get that that's not necessarily full time. But the moment you start raising capital and or the moment you have, you know, X amount of revenue, you're going to have to bring in a CFO, but not too early full time.
Scott Case 36:38
We did a session with CFO Leadership Council, so whoever asked that question, feel free to look at that episode. And there's lots of ways to get a partial or fractional CFO.
Scott Case 36:48
And then I'm just gonna pile on at least I talked to founders all the time about the salesperson question, and it's not only when you've reached capacity, but set your expectations that no matter who you hire is going to be 50% as good as you are. So it's going to take a while for them to get to a place where they're productive, which is why even when you hire that person, you're probably still going to be the head of sales for a while, you'll just have some support to get you there. And it's not to do with anything about your ability to hire people. It's that you've been living this life and now you're bringing somebody in, you've got to sort of graft all the experiences you've had overcoming objections and how you navigate, and frankly, you have the authority to say things that a salesperson may not have the authority to say, because you're the CEO, so you're gonna come out of a meeting and say, we're gonna go build this. And if the salesperson does that then they might get their wrist slap, so they're going to be less flexible there.
Lesa Mitchell 37:40
And remember, as the CEO, your job is to not run out of money and to attract and retain talent. And if you can't attract talent, that's a really big problem. And so from a Techstars perspective, when we're looking at early stage companies, the question is, who have they got together around them?
Scott Case 38:01
All right, we're going to wrap up here, we'll do one final question. This is super softball, it's gonna be so easy for you. What single problem do you believe has not been solved that would impact the world in a positive way? No pressure though. Lesa.
Lesa Mitchell 38:27
Climate change. I mean, the biggest single problem is carbon capture.
Scott Case 38:34
Good answer. Yeah, cuz this happy blue and green ball that we all live on is the only one we found yet that can sustain our life that we have access to. So keeping it healthy would be a good move. Lesa, as always, you are fantastic and a force of nature. How can people connect with you if they want to connect more – LinkedIn, email address, what would be best?
Lesa Mitchell 38:57
Doesn't matter. I'm probably on Twitter more than anything else. And it's @lesamitchell all one word on Twitter. My email is lesa.mitchell@techstars.com. And happy to help but realize I have a full time job.
Scott Case 39:17
Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Founders Focus. What did you think? You got any feedback for us? Got a topic that you'd like us to discuss, or maybe a future co-host? We'd love to hear from you. Just hit me up on LinkedIn at T Scott Case. And join us at foundersfocus.com to stay up to date with the latest episodes. And join us live every week at our Founders Focus sessions. Hope to see you there.