The Startup Lifecycle with Greg Shepard

george grombacher 0:01
Music. Greg Shepard is the entrepreneur’s entrepreneur. He is founder and CEO of startup science. He is an author, a speaker, a consultant, man of many varied interests. His newest book is the startup lifecycle. Back on the show. Welcome back, Greg.

Gregory Shepard 0:19
Thank you, and thank you so much for having me. Man, you’re a cool cat. I appreciate it.

george grombacher 0:24
Well, it’s it’s always great talking with you, but refresh our memory. Tell us a little about your personal lives, more about your work and what motivated you to write the new book.

Gregory Shepard 0:32
Yeah. I mean, so I am from a multi ethnic family, foster adopted family. We grew up pretty poor. In fact, we lived in Oakland, California, which, at the time, in the 80s, was like an active war zone. It was pretty I got beat up a lot, and so my mom moved us to a piece of property, and we homesteaded on the property without power, electricity, water, anything, and lived in tents for two years while we built our house. Wow. Then, you know, I started getting into the entrepreneurial concepts, selling Rubik’s, cubes, rattlesnakes, livestock, like pretty much everything. Then I tried to join the Navy, that didn’t work out, so I started, and I couldn’t get jobs, so I started building companies. And so now you fast forward 35 years. I have built and sold 12 companies. On my 13th, I’ve invested in a bunch of companies. So today, actually deal close was my 27th transaction. And then during this whole time frame, for a while, after I was done at eBay, I was sold a couple companies at eBay, and I had gold handcuffs for a little while, and so when I left, I went into politics, became the chairman for congressional candidates trying to get people of color and women into Congress, and trying to help with the opportunity equality issue. So basically, in my life, I found that becoming a founder enabled me to have success, so I want other people to experience the same, but 90% of founders failed. So what I did is I said, Okay, I’m going to do a research project to prove to the government that we can fix this issue, and then have it so that the government puts more money into startups and so that was the research I did. That’s in the book. It was five years team of five people to figure out what is the major underlying issue that has to do with founder failure. And the first thing I had to do was explain the startup lifecycle to the founders. So in this book, what we do, what I do, is talk about, you know, the the lifecycle of founder, like, what are the different stages they go through? Why founders fail during those stages, and what they should consider in order to offset the chances of failure during those different stages of the lifecycle. Sorry, I know that was a little long winded.

george grombacher 3:01
No, it’s that’s awesome, and it wasn’t free either. There’s five people that you are doing the

Gregory Shepard 3:07
research, half a million on it. It was a pretty, pretty substantial investment. But you know, like, I really am passionate about trying to fix wealth inequality, so social and environmental impact is my passion. We all live on this little world together, and whether we like it or not, any destruction that anybody does in the world affects everybody. So my focus was, my dream was, can I take people that are otherwise marginalized, they’re hungry, they have the passion, and frankly, they don’t have a lot to lose, right? And it’s risky. Can I take these people and apply them to social and environmental impact issues? And the answer is yes. So I wrote the book on that and then put out the startup science.io platform to it’s free for founders to learn, right? So you can go in there, you can take classes, there’s grants, there’s all this stuff free for founders. And can I then help? And then can I prove it with the data that’s in the platform, and go back to the government say, Hey, listen, you know, we need to put more money into this, because this is innovation. This is, you know, founders create the future, not corporates. Corporates buy the stuff that founders create, but founders are the ones that create the future. So I was like, Okay, can I get the government to believe this take a bigger risk by providing them with data that doesn’t currently exist at all,

george grombacher 4:43
and you feel like you’ve done that.

Gregory Shepard 4:46
I mean, I’m on my way, right? I mean, we have the platform’s been active for about four months. We have over 100 universities, the the Ivy League ones, down to nonprofit. We have governments, we have specific nonprofits that specialize in like the black entrepreneurs project, or startups for Africa, or women, Hispanics, you know, across the board, LGB, Qt, plus the whole deal, right? And we have 1000s and 1000s of founders in there right now taking classes and doing things. And in the book, actually, there’s QR codes for each chapter that allows them to come into a specific chapter and read all of the stuff that I couldn’t put in the book because you only have 250 pages, and I had like, 1000s of pages worth of stuff to do. So I think it’s working so far. The data is just starting to come in. But you know, soon enough, I’m thinking probably about 12 months from now, I’ll be able to open the floodgates for founders by proving to Congress and the Senate and the people in the the budgetary, economic development departments, etc, that it’s it is indeed a an investment that doesn’t have has more payoffs than the risk, I guess.

george grombacher 6:07
So you get the opportunity, you have an audience with Congress, person, a senator, and they say, You know what this is. This is why I believe that more investment should be available from the government to founders here, here, here. Are those points, what? What are they? Yeah,

Gregory Shepard 6:26
so one of them is the reason why I did the platform, which is that the early stage. So what I’m focused on is a pre a round, right? So early stage, after a round, there’s there’s metrics, right? So there’s money, there’s capped LTV numbers, there’s revenue growth, margin retention numbers. So that’s why all the investors focus on pre a round, because there’s data there and the risk is lower. So I focus on early stage. Well, in early stage, there’s no data, right? So there’s nobody can find anything that, because all of the people that have data are scraping the internet to get their data. And when it’s on the internet, it’s it means that the company is already to a certain place. The early stage ones that are, you know, like 47 something 47.1% of them fail within the first 18 months, and the rest of the failures, going up to 90% happen over the following five years, but they happen for decisions they made in the first 18 months. So really, what I need to do is focus on the first 18 months. In that first 18 months, the big thing, the the biggest, the number one reason why founders fail is because of bad decisions. So you have to ask why, and that’s based on bad advice. And then you have to ask, Who, right? The bad advice, bad advice is coming from investors, mentors and program managers and other founders, which is basically the same group of people that they’re seeking help from. So then I started digging into why are they? Because they’re not doing it maliciously, right? They’re trying to help them. So then, why are they? Why is this bad advice happening? And one of the reasons why the bad advice happens is because, if you go online to learn something, you have to understand first, whether the advice you’re getting is good advice or bad advice, which requires some knowledge. So they’re taking this advice from people. There’s a lot of talking heads out there, right? So they’re taking advice from people. And a lot of times, these people have never done a startup book in their life. They’ve failed. They’ve done one. I call them one hit heroes. And so you need somebody that actually has real experience doing this, right? So I was like, Okay, what I’m going to do in the platform is I’m going to teach them the fundamentals, not what to do with their business, but what is this thing in the first place? And I’m going to do it in eight minutes, and then I’m going to give them tools and grants and lists and resources and everything in the startup ecosystem in one place to prevent them from having to spend their whole life out there hunting for all these little details that they need to get a company for or paying for them right, and therefore decreasing the level of startups that fail due to this advice subject matter, right. And so the the second reason is I already addressed, which is the fragmentation of our industry. So if you look at early stage, you can see that the average startup assistant program will have like 12 to 15 different logins and software. The average founder has 25 so each one of these require money most of the time, and logins, and that means that the data that that it can help them with. You know, the AI that we have now is fragmented across the industry, so it’s impossible, right? So with this platform, it means that all of the data is one place. It. Means they have one login. It means that they don’t have the same expense or no expense at all, depending on what type of user you are in the platform. And it allows ultimate flexibility for the program to, you know, customize it for themselves. And so therefore, dealing with the second real big issue, which is the fragmentation of the industry, right? This, this big, big problem. The other reasons why they fail fail are usually attached to those two things. So one of them is overvaluation. And so we saw this big bubble happen, you know, right after covid, right? We saw this big, you know, valuations cut in half. You know, all these big problems. So that happened because, because of bad advice, right? Where does that bad advice come from? That bad advice is directly tied to investors, because investors, and I mean VCs, primarily VCs, micro VCs, anybody that isn’t investing their own money, but the majority of time is investing LPS money. They may make two and 20 typically, so 2% of managed funds and 20% on what they earn over the hurdle, which is just how much they invested. So these guys are making money, whether the investor make or lose money, but the size of their portfolio, the value of their portfolio is what gets them more investors. So overvaluation is actually good for them, right? And typically, the 90% failure rate doesn’t bother them because they have a spray and pray approach. So that handles that arena the rest of the investors are usually, they’re smart people, and they invest, and they have advice that’s based on looking from the outside in, right? So they’re not founders themselves, they’re not practitioners. They haven’t done it themselves. But it’s like, the analogy I use is like it’s one thing to write a book on or watch a whole bunch of people ride bikes. It’s a whole nother thing to ride a bike, right? So they’re giving advice from watching people ride bikes, not from having ridden one themselves. Does that make sense? So they unintentionally give people bad advice universities. So I co founded the Fulbright entrepreneurship initiative, which is the concept is, and it’s not just for university students. It’s open to everybody, but the concept, concept is to find big businesses and then give them money to help them get off the ground. Right? Part of this, I did a research project on university program management programs, right? So University entrepreneurship centers, innovation centers, that not right? 1% of the ones I surveyed 600 university programs, 1% of them had ever done a startup, ever even been involved in a startup, ever before. So you’re talking about the you. I’m talking about big universities, right, not just little ones. And the same thing goes across all startup assistance programs. So you have a fraction of a percentage of the people that are in the programs actually having experience. So they use mentors to help them extend well, the mentors are oftentimes this the same profile. They may be like somebody that was a co founder in a business, and they were like the head of revenue. So they’re good for that one purpose, but they’re not good for like, financials or product or the other elements of a business, you know, service, support, etc. So, you know, they typically will put them with one mentor, and that mentor usually will get over their skis and not say, Hey, listen, this isn’t me. You know, you need somebody else for this, and so what I’m trying to do with the platform is do a better job giving them the right advice at the right time, right? So there are two things that make Google search so valuable, and that is time and need, right? So you need something now and you get the timing. It’s the same thing with advice. You don’t need the advice. You don’t know when you need advice until you need it, but as soon as you need it, you need it now, right? And you need it from the right person. So time and need so that’s what I’m trying to do, is solve these variable issues, but they all connect to the same stuff, right? So, you know, if you were to to line out everything, you see all these problems in a graph, and then you see them all pointing to the same like top items. Those are the things I address in the book, and those are the things I address with the platform.

george grombacher 14:42
Well, that’s no small feat, man, so five years, give or take, yeah, wild, yeah,

Gregory Shepard 14:48
the five years of research, four years for the book and four years for the platform, and almost $5 million to do. To do it. And so it’s really cool, man. It’s like we have it’s really cool to see founders in there, really solving serious problems. You know, some of the examples are a guy who, who, who an autistic guy like me, who built a company or came up with invention the ability to see the counter indications of medication with you specifically so personalized medicine. There’s a lot of people that died because they’ll take two different medications together, and in in the documentation from the pharma companies, it’s like, yeah, it’s okay, but for your specific blood type or your specific body, it might kill you. So this guy has invented that, right? Another two women founders came up with a way to watch the emissions of greenhouse gasses from from livestock farms, because there’s like holes in the ozone above livestock farms because of the methane. And so she captured a way to see the where the methane is coming from, so they can do methane capture and then burn it for energy. So it’s stuff like that, right? Like you corporates aren’t doing anything about that, right? They’re just so that’s why I’m so passionate, man, you know, because this these founders are people, usually that are in the space, like, they’re working at the livestock space, right? And they’re and they’re seeing this, and they’re like, coming up with ideas. So it’s like, you could tell I’m pretty, pretty pumped up about this, for

george grombacher 16:32
sure, but it makes all sense in the world that people that are actually doing it know where the know where the problems are, and are actively looking for solutions, and if you can turn that into a company, it’s incredible. I just, I just finished listening to the the new Elon Musk Walter Isaacson biography, and I just thought it was extraordinary. I know you’ve got the picture of Steve Jobs behind you, and his biography was extraordinary too. What are your thoughts on musk, just as an entrepreneur,

Gregory Shepard 17:03
you know, listen, the guy’s autistic, like these, so I love him, okay? And, yeah, he makes mistakes, but everybody makes mistakes. His are just public, right? And he says some stupid shit that he shouldn’t say, right? I mean, like, you know, have you ever said something that you shouldn’t say? Yeah, have you ever engaged in something you have no business engaging into? Like what he did with Twitter? Yeah, so he’s making public mistakes, verbal public mistakes he’s making, you know, I think his stance on, like, you know, you know, social media should be free speech. I agree, except for hate speech, like you know, his, his whole comment about, you know that President being allowed to be in, in there and say whatever he wants, I said, Yeah, fine. Just not hate speech. You cannot instigate violence or hate against another human being or anything like that. Like, that’s not public. You shouldn’t be able, you shouldn’t be allowed to do that in a in a privately owned public forum, right? Like, I disagree with that, so I think you should have stayed out of Twitter, and I think it was a mistake, and we’ll see how it plays out. But I mean, the guy came up with the Hyperloop, the guy came up with the boring company, the guy came up with, I mean, NASA couldn’t even fix this rocket thing. And look at the guy’s landing rockets on on a floating barge. That’s you would get seasick on this thing, man, you know you see in the videos, and not to mention Tesla, right? I mean, the guy’s amazing. I don’t care who you are. The guy is absolutely and that was before PayPal, and before, before that, it was PayPal. I mean, the guy is, like, incredible. So anybody that trashes the Elon Musk? I’m like, yeah, he deserves all that trash talking, but you need to also what he’s done for us. We haven’t seen electric cars on the road until he came out with Tesla. Now, you see them everywhere, right? We have never had a rocket that could re land itself and reuse. So he’s saving massive amounts of natural resources and allowing us to put satellites in the air, which allow us to have GPS and all of these things. You know, it gets getting better and better, you know? You know you don’t have to love him to love what he’s done. You know,

george grombacher 19:28
that’s really well said. I just, I was, it’s staggering the risks that he’s taken and the challenges and problems that he’s overcome on so many different endeavors. It’s amazing, and it strikes me that you are, that you are going to give more people the opportunity to do that through this work, to take those risks. And that’s

Gregory Shepard 19:54
exactly I have a painting of Elon Musk over here, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, all of them, right? Right? And I call them my board of directors. And these guys have changed the world. I want to enable more people to be Steve Jobs, more people to become Elon Musk and so on and so forth, you know? And I know that most of them fall into the graveyard of you know, 90% of them fall into the graveyard of founders have failed for reason that 80% almost 80% of them, fail for the same reasons. All you gotta do is fix those reasons, and then you’re going to have an increase in success. No question like logically, it has to happen, right? How much is the question? But will you see more of them coming out and being successful? Absolutely

george grombacher 20:48
love it. Well, Greg, thanks so much for coming back. More importantly, thank you so much for making the investments and doing all of your work. Where can people learn more about you? Where can they get their copy of the startup lifestyle cycle. Give us all the places, sure.

Gregory Shepard 21:03
So my personal website is Gregory shepherd.com, and you can like all my 140 articles are in there, my TED Talk, everything I’ve done is in there. There’s even scans of my brain from being autistic in there. All my philanthropy and the startup lifecycle book is under author. It’s in Amazon. You can listen to it in audible. It’s everywhere it you can buy pre sales right now. Friday is when they start shipping books. It’s called the startup life cycle by Gregory shepherd. And then for the platform, on the startup science.io website, just go to solutions, click on founders, and you get free access, so you can go in there and knock yourself out. Incredible.

george grombacher 21:52
If you enjoyed this much as I did, show Greg your appreciation. Share today’s show with a friend who also appreciates good ideas, and with any founders or would be founders in your life. Go to Gregory shepherd.com check out all things Greg. You can even look at his brain which is which is amazing. Pick up your copy of the startup lifecycle, wherever and however you like to consume books and go to startupscience.io click on the founder section and get access to everything that Greg’s been talking about today. Thanks again, Greg.

Gregory Shepard 22:23
Thank you so much, George. Have a great weekend. You too, brother. Until next time,

george grombacher 22:28
remember, just like Greg’s doing, do your part by doing your best. You.

george grombacher 16:00
So if I want my iPhone, and my Tesla and my Bitcoin to work, we need to get the metal out of the ground.

Pierre Leveille 16:07
Absolutely. Without it, we cannot do it.

george grombacher 16:13
Why? Why is there a Why has production been going down.

Pierre Leveille 16:21
Because the large mines that are producing most of the copper in the world, the grades are going down slowly they’re going there, they’re arriving near the end of life. So and of life of mines in general means less production. And in the past, at least 15 years, the exploration expenditure for copper were pretty low, because the price of copper was low. And when the price is low, companies are tending to not invest more so much in exploration, which is what we see today. It’s it’s, it’s not the way to look at it. Because nobody 15 years ago was able to predict that there would be a so massive shortage, or it’s so massive demand coming. But in the past five years, or let’s say since the since 10 years, we have seen that more and more coming. And then the by the time you react start exploring and there’s more money than then ever that is putting in put it in expression at the moment for copper at least. And what we see is that the it takes time, it could take up to 2025 years between the time you find a deposit that it gets in production. So but but the year the time is counted. So it’s it’s very important to so you will see company reopening old mines, what it will push also, which is not bad, it will force to two, it will force to find a it will force to find ways of recalibrating customer, you know the metals, that will be more and more important.

george grombacher 18:07
So finding, okay, so for lack of a better term recycling metals that are just sitting around somewhere extremely important. Yeah. And then going and going back to historic minds that maybe for lack of technology, or just lack of will or reasons, but maybe now because there’s such a demand, there’s an appetite to go back to those.

Pierre Leveille 18:33
Yes, but there will be a lot of failures into that for many reasons. But the ones that will be in that will resume mining it’s just going to be a short term temporary solution. No it’s it’s not going to be you need to find deposit that will that will operate 50 years you know at least it’s 25 to 50 years at least and an old mind that you do in production in general it’s less than 10 years.

george grombacher 19:03
Got it. Oh there we go. Up here. People are ready for your difference making tip What do you have for them

Pierre Leveille 19:14
You mean an investment or

george grombacher 19:17
whatever you’re into, you’ve got so much life experience with raising a family and doing business all over the world and having your kids go to school in Africa so a tip on copper or whatever you’re into.

Pierre Leveille 19:34
But there’s two things I like to see and I was telling my children many times and I always said you know don’t focus on what will bring you specifically money don’t think of Getting Rich. Think of doing what you what you like, what you feel your your your your your, you know you have been born to do so use your most you skills, do what you like, do what you wet well, and good things will happen to you. And I can see them grow in their life. And I can tell you that this is what happens. And sometimes you have setback like I had recently. But if we do things properly, if we do things that we like, and we liked that project, we were very passionate about that project, not only me, all my team, and if we do things properly, if we do things correctly, good things will happen. And we will probably get the project back had to go forward or we will find another big project that will be the launch of a new era. So that’s my most important tip in life. Do what you like, do it with your best scale and do it well and good things will happen.

george grombacher 20:49
Pierre Leveille 21:03
Thank you. I was happy to be with you to today.

george grombacher 21:06
Damn, tell us the websites and where where people can connect and find you.

Pierre Leveille 21:13
The it’s Deep South resources.com. So pretty simple.

george grombacher 21:18
Perfect. Well, if you enjoyed this as much as I did show up here your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciate good ideas, go to deep south resources, calm and learn all about what they’re working on and track their progress.

Pierre Leveille 21:32
Thanks. Thanks, have a nice day.

george grombacher 21:36
And until next time, keep fighting the good fight. We’re all in this together.