 All right. Hello everyone and thanks for coming to join in this Purdue entrepreneur panel. It's organized by John Moutinson Center, Entrepreneur Center at Purdue University. My name is Luna Lu. I'm a professor of Lio School of Civil Engineering and the director of the Center for Intelligent Infrastructure at Purdue University today. And it's my truly a great honor to host this panel with the three distinguished business leaders, Purdue Anomaly and three really distinguished panelists to share their experience with entrepreneurship. Before this panel, we actually had asked the, you know, registration. We received a 60 registration, more than hundreds of questions, literally three pages. I organized them sort of a grouped into three area and there's a lot of students, faculty and alumni who are interested to start a business or it's already in this journey. They are very interested to hear about your opinion or insights on your journey, why and what motivated you embark on the business world. Three of you all get education in engineering, right? And then also your entrepreneurship experience and the COVID. So I would like to start at the first to introduce you properly and then we will go through this three areas in general. And for the audience, I encourage you please send your questions through the chat function and at the end of the panel and we would like to take about 15 to 20 minutes to address each question. Okay, now let's dive into the panel and I will start with Leslie. So we have Leslie Bortorff. Leslie is a principal of the Bortorff advisor who, where she is a strategic and operational coach, advising CEOs and entrepreneurs, helping them to build a new products and companies and accelerated the growth. She has over 40 years experience in building companies as a venture capital investor, as a senior sales and marketing executives in both startup and large medical companies. Leslie has advised over 25 companies on strategic transformation, commercial acceleration, recruiting CEOs, successful translation, the management team through growth spaces, supporting fundraising, facilitating exit strategy, and the corporate governance compliance. Before that, Leslie was a senior manager, director of GE Venture, and she has helped many companies and during that process, Leslie holds a BS in interdisciplinary engineering with biomedical concentration from Purdue University and the MBA from Harvard Business School. Leslie has served as a guest of faculty for several universities, including Stanford, UC Berkeley, and Purdue University. She's a member of Purdue's Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering, Alumni Advisory Board, and the Spectrum NIH Grand Selection Committee at Stanford Biodesign. She's a mentor for Leslie or Torf, fellowship for clinic innovation and translation, education and research partnership between the Purdue Weldon School and the Indiana University School of the Medicine. Thank you, Leslie, for joining the panel. We are truly honored to have you. Our second panelist is Emily Liget. Emily is an engineer by training and a farm go by birth. Emily's career has been in technology, both in establishing and a startup company. Emily joined the DuPont after receiving a chemical engineer degree from Purdue University, where she enjoyed the research, manufacturing, strategic planning, and customer technical support. She then attended Stanford University, earning an MSE and the MBA degree. After graduation, Emily joined the RECAM, a high-gross materials science company completing the assignment in sales, marketing, operation, general management, including GM of RECAM telecommunications in North Carolina, CEO of Allotouch Systems and the managing director of the Tyco Venture. Emily served as a CEO of Capstone Turbine, the micro-turbine energy system products, and a startup of the CEO of Apexxon, a supply chain analytics software company, and the startup CEO of Nova Torque, a high-efficiency electric motor company. Since 2017, Emily has advised entrepreneurs and corporations on strategy, implementation, and operations. Her public company board service, including Capstone Turbines, Immersion Corporation, MTS Systems, UCT, Caser, Aluminum, and Metarin. She has served on the board of directors of the private health companies such as PanoSystem, Textronics Corporation, Nova Torque, and many other companies. Emily has also served on board for many nonprofit organizations. She also worked in Switzerland, Australia, Belgium, West Africa with very wide exposure and experience internationally. Thank you, Emily. And our last but definitely not the least of the panelists is Hemant Tarpa. Hemant Tarpa is the co-founder and the CEO of Alminitir Inc. This is his third startup. He previously co-founded and led two successful startups, the data path system and the link-a-medium device, where it was acquired by LSI Corporation and SK Phoenix, respectively. Prior to getting onto the entrepreneurship path, Hemant worked at the Bell Lab and the IBM Corporation. Hemant is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, an IEEE Fellow, and a co-recipient of three best paper awards for his work on data, storage, and communications. He is also a recipient of distinguished alumni award from both Purdue University and the Santa Clara University. Hemant serves on the board of the directors of the Asian Corporation and on the advisory boards of the School of Engineering, Santa Clara University, and the Mballa College of Engineering and Applied Science in India. Hemant holds the PhD degree in electrical engineering from Purdue University. So thanks for all of you and generously share your time and your experience with us. So let's just dive in the panel first. I would like to ask each of you take two to three minutes to talk about your journey and what made you motivated or inspired you to go to entrepreneurship and how your experience of education at Purdue University or other universities, either Stanford or in India, had helped you. What are the very important skill sets the students they need to acquire during their education? So lastly, would you like to start? Sure, yeah. So I actually didn't come to entrepreneurship or venture capital directly. Actually, I worked for initially in my career, you know, really big company, actually started my career with GE out of Purdue. And, you know, my background was that everybody, my parents and everybody I knew growing up worked for big companies. And, you know, a lot of people did that at the time that I graduated. And so I was really not exposed to the whole concept of, you know, small companies and entrepreneurship and like, you know, starting comes just, just no awareness, no exposure to that kind of thing. And so it was probably not until I went to business school at Harvard that I got exposed to a sort of broader variety of industries and types of functional jobs and types of companies and and also this whole concept of entrepreneurship. And I became very interested in that, that, that, you know, from there and sort of, you know, my career went from, you know, larger company to three, three venture backed startups. And I went back to a larger company, back to startups, did the venture business, of course, where I was heavily involved in startups. So I think that, you know, for me, it was important for me to have gotten some basic business experience with some really good entrepreneurs and really good mentors, not just entrepreneurs, but corporate leaders, so that I could learn something about business practice and what was good and what was bad and what worked and what didn't. And then over a period of time, those skill sets allowed me to be successful in an entrepreneurial environment. So that's what I would say for people that are in school, maybe, or even not in school, right now, but that, you know, you need to build your career on skill sets and exposure to different types of businesses and situations and see what works and what doesn't work. And then that's the skill set that you can bring to an entrepreneurial situation. Because then you have a, you have a, you know, a database and a reference point to work from. I'd say, you know, these entrepreneurial companies, you go in there and they want you to just go set something up from scratch. And if you have no background or references on that, it's very difficult to do. So that's what I would say is to, you know, to really look for opportunities where there are really good mentors that you can learn business skills and business best practices. And then, you know, and you'll, you can find your way into an entrepreneurial opportunity as things, you know, unveil themselves in a career opportunity. Excellent. Thank you. Okay, I'll go next. My story is similar to Leslie's in many ways. I, at the leaving Purdue, I went to a large company, as you may have heard it with DuPont. And it, I think that's the way the career planning center was sort of worked out. That's where co-op and what your summer internships were. As a farm kid, my parents never worked for anybody, but you know, that was sort of what was expected. And I had a great experience at DuPont. And the nice thing about a big diversified company is you can change jobs without changing companies, right? You can get lots of experience in different functional areas and different vertical markets. So you can see a lot in a short amount of time. So, and then when I went to grad school, you know, entrepreneurship was a big deal. And there were lots of startups in Silicon Valley. And at that time, it was really a personal decision not to do it. I was at a stage of life where we were starting a family. And, you know, even then it was pretty well known if you're an entrepreneur that you're sort of married to that company, you spend a lot of time. It's a huge commitment. And I wasn't willing to commit to that kind of time when I wanted, I knew I wanted to have time with family and to do the work life balance thing before it was called work life balance. And there was also risk associated with small companies because entrepreneurs have so many don't make it. And we had financial, we had obligations to pay back student loans and we bought a house. And so for purely personal reasons, I went with an entrepreneurial company, but it was still a publicly traded company. But like DuPont, I had a chance to change jobs without changing companies. And so I had a great experience with that learned a lot about customers and what was important to customers. We also did partnerships. So I learned a lot about other companies and how companies can work together on technologies or in markets. So it wasn't until our eldest son was in college that I ended up getting into the entrepreneur business. I was with an adventure capital group. So I learned more about entrepreneurship and funding. And then when I left that, I actually became CEO of a publicly traded company, but it was a recently IPO. Had lots of startup challenges. They went public because the window was closed and not because they were ready. So I got a lot of experience about working for a publicly traded startup, so to speak. And then once you get the bug and you can feel this, so this huge impact one person can have or pairs of people or small teams of people where you feel like you can change the world. And it's pretty fun. And so then, so I had about 20 years either in large companies or entrepreneur companies as a leader, as a CEO. And I would say my journey has been as a second CEO, not a founding CEO of technically based startups. So my interest wasn't so much the, what I'd call the science experiment, proving that the technology can work. It's a critical step, but it's not my step. And I am much more excited about getting a team to work together to accomplish something as a group that they couldn't accomplish by themselves. So it's getting manufacturing, getting marketing, getting sales, getting the funding, getting the technology all put together, making choices. Those are the things I really love. And so that's been my story. Great. Thanks for sharing with us. Hemant, would you mind to share some of your journey and why you started, not only one, but three business? Yeah, sure. Yeah, again, I'm delighted to be here. And, you know, I think just like Leslie and Emily, I also got into the entrepreneurship world somewhat after several years after I left Purdue. And I think I got into the entrepreneurship world because I was not willing to compromise on a dream that I had when I left Purdue. And that was, you know, I wanted to do very impactful research when I left Purdue with my, you know, with my PhD. And I wanted to be in a research organization and I, you know, got an offer from Bell Labs. And that was the PM in place at the time when I graduated. But little that I knew that Bell Labs was going to start getting dismantled, you know, five years after I joined it. And so as that transition was happening, I felt, you know, I should move on and because I could see the change coming. So one of the things that I think I've learned over the years is you have to be looking ahead and see where things are heading, you know. So I, you know, left one big company, which was a hundred billion dollar company at that time, AT&T, to join another big company, IBM, which was a 60 billion dollar company back in 1984. And I managed to again work on some applied research, did some interesting work. And but I felt that I wasn't having the kind of impact that I wanted to have. I wanted to see my ideas get into products. I had written about 50 papers while I was between Bell Labs and IBM. And I felt that, you know, I was not able to really feel the impact of that work very directly. And even IBM was kind of going through a difficult time in the late, late 80s, and they were looking for a new CEO and so forth. So the company was in a bit of a mess at that time. And, you know, I had written 50 papers at three best paper awards was, you know, another five papers or 10 papers one was not going to substantially change my life. So I decided to then say, Hey, I'm going to do something where I can take ideas to products, you know, and essentially create a very short distance between new ideas and commercialization. And that's what what I've been doing for the last 25 years, you know, my first company, data path systems that are very successful outcome, we grew to about 150 people. And it was acquired for about half a billion dollars at that time. The second company I stayed at LSI for about three years, and then, you know, started the second company, which got acquired in 2012, which was also around a 300 million dollar type of an exit. So a lot of the employees, a lot of the people did really well, we did shift the way the industry was moving. And, and then I took a couple of years off. And that was kind of another fork in the road, whether I go back to a big company in some executive position, or do I, you know, do something else. And here I am. This third company, which is more focused on the software appliance side of healthcare, healthcare technologies, rather than the first two companies that was doing hardware, you know, we were doing chips, you know. So, so one of the things I have done and learned in my, my career is that you're going to keep investing in yourself. You've got to keep, you know, learning new things and, you know, work with the best people around you. And it's a lot of teamwork, a lot of leadership that contributes to these kind of successes. And so I've had a wonderful career since leaving Purdue. So, and I had some very good role models when I was at Purdue. And, and, you know, those people inspired me. And so like I said, you know, I've just been very interested in doing impactful research, something that can really have make a difference in other people's lives. Thanks for your sharing this experience. And then also now three of you inspired us, and then, you know, more of Purdue faculty and students and the alumni to continue pursuing this journey. So just, you know, tag along our first discussion about sharing your journey. And then there is a lot of questions about entrepreneurship in general. And so would you please talk a little bit about your, your experience. I know three of you are all very connected with Purdue or Stanford or some other school and help nurturing, you know, the faculty or, or students entrepreneurship. As a matter of fact, Emily was the entrepreneur in residence, right, a couple years ago at Purdue University. So what has you think the common mistakes of faculty or students to start on entrepreneurship or doing their startups? What are the suggestions you're giving to them? And what are the pitfalls you typically see they're running into? And also, can you talk a little bit about your experience when you at Purdue? Well, a little bit a while ago, and now how the entrepreneurship has been changed. It did we grow a lot, or we have been very segmented, there's a large inertia and any suggestions to us to build a better ecosystem and to help the students and the faculty and alumni. Emily. Wow. Sorry, no new question. I'll pick the first one, you know, which was about, you know, any advice to students or faculty about being entrepreneurs and pitfalls and things. You know, I think there's many paths to become an entrepreneur. And, you know, I think some of the student projects are sort of local projects. It's what they can see right around campus when they can talk to customers and they can set up, you know, some service for students. I think that's perfectly fine, right? It's, it teaches a lot of the mechanics of starting a business. And while it may not take the funding piece, there's so many parts of entrepreneurship. I think those projects are great. You learn a lot going through the process, you know. So, you know, I think for faculty, there's, and I know there's a lot of training on campus, there's a lots of tools and ways to connect with other entrepreneurs and learn some things. So, I think, I think some of the challenges you've got a busy life, you're already fully occupied, and how do you find time for this, something that could take over your life, right? But you're still trying to manage it with classes and a job and relationships and all these other things. So, you know, I guess I don't have, I don't have a lot of suggestions that entrepreneurs I meet from Purdue are already fully committed and taking advantage of a lot of the resources they can. So, I think Purdue's been great. And I think the challenge now with COVID is there's less in-person and there's going to be more virtually and figuring out how to make that work, because I think that's here to stay in some way for a long time. Right. Absolutely. I guess that's the next topic that we're just going to have some general discussion. Right. Thanks, Emily. Yeah. Well, I can say a few words. I'm not as plugged into some of the research activities and entrepreneurship activities at Purdue. I've only been, I've been so swamped with my own companies in the last, you know, 25 years that I haven't had a chance to dig deeply into what's going on at Purdue. So, I'm really happy to join this forum. You know, I think the main thing I would, I believe in is that I think the faculty is in the best position to start companies. I have some friends here at Stanford and I'm on the board of one of the companies that was started by a faculty member. Because one of my experiences in these three startups is that you're dealing with a lot of uncertainty. And if you have the good research mindset, you are in the best position to be able to deal with that uncertainty, you know, with calmness. I mean, you don't, you know, because there are no guarantees in research and there are no guarantees in startups as well. You know, you have to have a very, you have to sort of have a very realistic view of what you're getting into. And then it's all about commitment and perseverance and, you know, you have to realize that it's going to be a marathon. It's not a sprint. It's not something that once you get into it, you can get out of it quickly. And so those are some of my observations that I can, I can share here. Thanks. I will say that the experiences I've been involved with at Purdue are mostly surrounding technology companies, specifically medical or healthcare technology companies. I was on the board of the Purdue, the Alman Institute at Purdue when that existed and I've still been working with the Weldon School there. And those companies generally are spin outs of a technology, you know, to, to make it a commercial entity and make it a product, that kind of thing. And I think the biggest pitfall that I've seen and not just at Purdue, but in general, with the venture capital business, it's similar, you know, it's always a doctor and engineer spinning something out quite often of a university and research. And, and that's a great, you know, way to, you know, to start a company. That's fine. But I think the thing that seems to be missing to me the most is oftentimes those are either technologists or clinicians or people that are, you know, of a highly technical skill set. And they see, you know, the invention or the product for, you know, in a very specific narrow angle. And so, and, you know, by the definition, they tend to not be people who have very much, you know, exposure or experience in business, because they're academics or because, you know, they're engineers or technology people. And that's what they focused on. And so I think what's really, really important is for them to go partner with people or entities or group support groups or whatever. And there's a lot of these through the university who do have those pieces of the experience in the business world that they don't have. Because they need to, like even, you know, the product itself, you know, researchers and engineers, they kind of tend to sort of, you know, drink their own Kool-Aid. So to speak, they tend to, you know, just, you know, be very, very narrow minded to their specific problem. And, you know, they need to seek out, well, is this a universal problem? There's a lot of different types of customers and ways they would be used. How important is this? Does everybody do it the same way? And then also, like, how do we create this as a business? What are, you know, what are even the parameters that we try to have to put together to see if it's a good business idea and not just a good technology idea? And so, and that can be done through the university's resources. There's tremendous reach there through the alumni organization and lots of stuff that produce put together to help entrepreneurship. So I would say, you know, that, and in terms of what kind of university do you do, well, all of these programs are awesome. And also, I think it's also very much an exposure, an exposure to entrepreneurship, you know, whether that be for undergraduates and, you know, like Emily said, undergraduates have an awful lot of things to focus on. I mean, it's your single time in life when you can focus almost solely on learning and exploring and not focus on all these 20 other things life brings you, you know. So I would certainly want to not cut that short, you know, as an undergraduate by starting a company necessarily as an undergraduate. It's great if you can do it, but that's a big life choice of an opportunity that is singularly distinct as a college, you know, time period, you know, to do some other things that build a foundation. So that's something everyone needs to think about. And of course, you know, go from there. But I think that the big thing here is exposure to what's even possible, what's even out there, how does that world work? Because, you know, you've got a long career ahead of you, that many opportunities will occur. And if you have that mindset of, hey, wait a minute, I could start a company or I could go with a company that's a, that's a, that's a, you know, fledgling company and help build it, then, you know, that's something that's then open to you and you can find those opportunities. So I think that's the most important thing that the university can do is give you that support, but also give you that awareness and, you know, an education about what is this world and, you know, how, you know, how does it work? What about it? All right, thank you. And I hear a common theme here is students need or faculty need to actively get involved, to be exposed to the opportunity, understand of the process. And it's important to set up priority. You know, I always do want to be a faculty or you want to get into this entrepreneurship. It's definitely not part time job. And it should be very open minded, right? Find a business partner who you can work with. And the customer discovery is very important and not only in the technology, just the technology may not drive to the end. But most important thing is be patient and be persistent and pursue that dream in this journey. And I really appreciate it. Thanks for sharing this. And also thank you for pointing out the ecosystem and the resources are important. At this point, I would like to bring your attention Purdue in the fall 2020 actually is offering a course that's called the start build my startup. So if you're interested in this course, please contact Professor Yongxiang Lu is the director of the John Martin's Entrepreneur Center. You will learn a lot from this class. Definitely. And then yeah, the third common theme I think of people raising up a lot of questions about COVID-19, right? How this pandemic has affected the business world. And, you know, you all talk about it's important to build a meaningful relationship, find the partners and how can you do that in this situation? What is your suggestion strategy? How that change your phone using yourselves? And not only the challenges, but what are the opportunities rising from pandemic, right? And then is there any suggestion you're to the students and the faculty to handle this? So who wants to start? Well, I mean, I can make a few comments here. I think, I mean, I'm coming from the startup world, so I'm, you know, I still am running a startup. So, you know, I don't have that much exposure to some of the big companies. But, but clearly, this COVID-19 has created a heightened sense of uncertainty. You know, startups always deal with uncertainty, but this one is, you know, again, special, you know, in some ways, in addition to what you normally would deal with. And the other big impact is that, you know, and very obviously, some of the startups that were looking at ways to contribute to the, you know, like the entertainment industry, restaurants, travel, those kinds of things, those startups have, you know, come to pretty much a grinding halt here because of the increase in uncertainty. On the other hand, you know, if you look at some of the areas in technology, you know, clearly broadband access is going to be a big deal and continue to become even more important and collaboration software, gaming, you know, so there's a whole bunch of areas where if you are, you know, tied into those technologies, you have a great future. And in fact, in some cases, things are getting accelerated there. And, you know, the post COVID world is definitely going to be different than what it was before. You know, for example, work from home is going to become a big part of the society, you know, I was looking at some numbers in 2017, it was about 5% of the workforce work from home. And I'm hearing that the CFOs of many companies are now preparing for 20% of the workforce working from home, you know. So now that's a mega trend and how can, you know, one develop some solutions, some technologies that can, you know, help in that direction. So there'll be a number of new opportunities that I think will emerge. The important thing with the startups is also to look at the mega trends, you know, kind of where things are heading. And, you know, some of the earlier remarks, you know, it's a you don't do a startup with just a point solution, you know, you got to have a like a long term vision, something that's evolving that there's a big mega trend and you can, you know, continue to contribute to your roadmap. You do have to start with something and then but you have to have a longer term vision when you start the company. So some changes due to COVID-19 but, you know, as an entrepreneur, you have to always be optimistic and I see that in the next year or so things will sort of start coming back to normal hopefully. Yeah, so I'll go next because I agree with so much that Hemat said but, you know, I think, you know, one way I think about it is there's something called secular trends and those are sort of small trends, right, that are happening and that I think COVID accelerated many of those secular trends. So for instance the work from home that Hemat mentioned, you know, there were people doing it a day a week or maybe some software person is starting to work from a different city because of personal need and that turned out, you know, so it's happening at a low level and COVID just accelerated it. You know, there may be strip shopping malls that were slowly going out of business, right, because of Amazon and other things but that's been accelerated. So I think if you can find those sort of small trends that would be accelerated by COVID, that's something to think about. So Hemat mentioned collaboration software, absolutely. I think anything to do with home offices, people are going to be spending more time at home. So how do they add a home office? Maybe they have more gardens, you know, maybe it's like Lulu Lemon, more comfortable clothes you can wear for working from home. I mean, I think anything you can think of that because I think this is here to stay. It won't be to this degree but I'm not sure anyone is going to go back to work in cubicles five days a week anymore in a building. You know, so I think there's always fun things to think about. I think from a startup point of view, if you're already in a startup, you have to be thinking about cash. And so I think, you know, the boards that I'm on back in March and April, we were raising money. And if it had to be an inside round, so be it, right? That there was too much uncertainty, as Hemat mentioned, that we didn't want to risk running out of money. And so of the companies, both public and private where I sit on the boards and we made sure we had enough money, they're starting to do acquisitions now because any company that was highly leveraged is not able to make it. And so we're able to, I mean, you hate to take advantage of someone else's misfortune, but it's something, right? They'll get something for their company and their employees will continue to have a job. So that we're able to think about that. I think any sort of startup that's in the area of robotics, AI, IoT, those are the kinds of technologies that big companies are going to be thinking about that they need. And so they, I think there's an opportunity for an exit for, you know, for M&A and different things like that happening. And again, those were existing startups as opposed to starting one from scratch. There may be time now if you have a great idea, but otherwise, you know, people have been working on those for years. We hear about these overnight successes. And I was CEO of one of those overnight successes for over eight years. I mean, people, because you're under the screen, people don't know. And it takes longer than overnight to build a significant value. Here's our million dollar acquisition. One thing that I would add with that is I've seen some statistics actually there from some time ago, but I know they still are valid, is that the best yield of successful startup companies from the venture capital business happened when during the formation years, during the early years, there was a huge disruption in the market. That's where the absolute best opportunities are. And things that can grow out of taking advantage of those disruptions are the things that can be the biggest successes in terms of startup companies and venture capital back companies. And I think that we're definitely in one of those times right now. And that's because, and you can, I think you can bucket this for what Hemant and Emily were saying in kind of two categories. There's the external changes, you know, how did your market target change? And how is the market changing, creating these opportunities, changing whole, you know, focuses of the market from very quickly, very quickly or quicker than if there's no disruption could even happen, you know, as to what kind of markets will develop and which ones will drop and what competitors are vulnerable. And then there's a whole internal piece of it, like, you know, you've got to really marshal your cash and manage your cash, like, you know, very, very carefully. And think about, well, how am I going to keep my employees safe? If, you know, if this thing goes along, you know, what arrangements am I going to have to run my business in this type of environment, where we can't maybe can't work in person, and that we, you know, have to, you know, to accommodate people for problems with school disruptions and all these kinds of things. So, you know, there's the external focus of the market opportunity, then there's the internal focus. But mainly this disruption means opportunity, but it's just opportunity for those who really think about all these things and are able to put it together to where they can take advantage of it. Excellent. Thank you. I hear, again, it's think positively and open-minded look ahead, like Hammond pointed out earlier again, and look for opportunities. What are the trends, right, the right stop from pandemic? Thank you all. And we have about almost 20 minutes left. And I'm going to ask the last question, which I think, you know, it's very important and also it's a little bit of selfish reason. I'm very interested in this question. We talk a lot about success, right? And then, however, we all understand as a business leader, you probably fake many times of the rejections and failures. And would you please share of, you know, generous speaking, how you face the challenge and how you cut a loss and say, okay, this is enough. This is not going to work out. And how you leverage opportunity and resources. And then, you know, and many years later, you see this is probably the best decision I have made. Although it was painful at that moment, would you please share that experience with us? Who want to start? Yeah, I can go again. That's a difficult question. I think, you know, with startups, like I said, it's a marathon. And, you know, as a founding CEO, I mean, I can speak from that vantage point. You know, you have to be committed to, you know, to when you turn off the lights, if you have to turn off the lights, you know, having done your best. And I was very fortunate to have a very, very outstanding team in my first company, second company. We chose a business model in the first company that was not that risky. It was an IP model, but, you know, it was in a very, very big area. So, so we could still make profits and, you know, build up the value of the company and use those profits to get into related areas. So it was kind of a, you know, good strategic start. The second company, we had a few ups and downs. My second company was between 2004 and 2012. And so I had to, you know, basically navigate the 2008 economic meltdown, you know, and I can still remember sitting in a board meeting with some major investors, and none of them were willing to commit to any additional investment at that time. And they had the intention, you know, we were doing some, we had developed some good technologies. We had a customer who basically was going to, we had a $10 million order, which was rescinded by the customer, you know, that fall of 2008. So, you know, the main point I want to make is that you have to keep at it, you know, and perseverance is one of the biggest thing, you know, to really recognize your vision. And so we dealt with, you know, all of the hardships, and then, you know, when we got our product into market, we had, we had this, you know, the tsunami in Japan and one of our major customers was in Japan, and they were impacted by it, which indirectly impacted us, you know, and we sort of went through that, you know, impact as well. So I think the biggest quality that one can bring to this kind of an endeavor is perseverance in my mind. And in my third company here, you know, again, it's been, you know, we'll see where we land. But, you know, the technology that we have developed, the market that we are addressing is, is it somewhat in its infancy? And sometimes when you are, you know, training, you know, new ground, basically, people don't understand sometimes, you know, and it's taken some time, and you need a lot of good luck in there too. But I think good luck and perseverance have to sort of go together, you know, and I'll let you know in a few years where we land. But in this company, for example, I mean, you know, because of the success of my other two companies, you know, we were kind of running out of investment, I was having a little harder time doing our series around. And I decided to put some of my own money because I believed in the cause, what we are doing. And so, you know, so I think the common thread in those three companies for me is have a great team that you, and you have to believe in your vision and you have to, you know, perceive it when you end up with the, you know, hardships along the way. Oh, go ahead, Leslie. Yeah, I was just saying as a venture capitalist, these are the toughest decisions I had to make and had to make a lot of them. Because, you know, the company will reach a point where some, you know, some things happen that were not expected. And they change the game. And it's like, wow, should I stick with this or not? In terms of an investor and the same, you know, and I, you know, I was an investor, but I was also an entrepreneur in some of these companies. And I think that that everybody involved in these decisions, investors and boards and management teams all need to think about, you know, what has changed since the original thesis, since the original enthusiasm investment? And is that, you know, recoverable or is it really not recoverable on time and money allowed? And just be real realistic about that. And also, it's not just the investor is investing more money. It's each employee investing more time and energy. And, you know, what is the risk of that? How risky really is that versus something else that they could be doing that is more productive? And does it make sense for all parties involved, not just the investors or not just the CEO or the entrepreneur or, you know, or whatever? So I think that's a fine line. And every single company that I've seen that's been successful, had at least one or two near death, you know, points. And I know Emily and him, you know, probably know this is true. I'll say every one of them had like, you know, a point where I think this is going to die. I don't think it's going to make it. And, you know, and so if you gave up on every one of those and every one of your companies you'd walk away from, right? So you have to, you know, it's a balance between perseverance and then being really realistic versus about what is the risk versus reward for all the parties involved, the people that are putting up the money, the people that are the employees and all that and, you know, make a call. And they're very, very tough calls. And you don't ever know whether it was a right call or the wrong call because you don't know what would have happened had you made the other decision. So I think it's one of the toughest things as an entrepreneur and anybody involved in the entrepreneurial business. But it's just really sort of weighing all those factors in the end, you have to, you know, go with a, you know, with a decision that's usually a collaborative decision with a lot of people. You know, and I would add, because I think part of Luna's question is what if the company isn't going to make it? I mean, shouldn't make it, right? The technology didn't work, the, the market changed, a competitor, whatever it is. And yeah, we talk about persevering or pivoting. And there have been times, I think as a, as an entrepreneur and a leader, you know, I get totally into my company, right? I mean, I am, I am not objective, right, about the technology or the market, because I think I have the best team or we have the best product and just around the corner, you know, and so I think it's important to have a board or advisors or someone that you trust that understands the business and will be honest with you. And one of the challenges of being a leader is if you're not careful, you might be surrounded by people who tell you what you want to hear versus what you need to hear, right? And you need to reward people who tell you things that are difficult to hear. Even though you want to scream inside, you would need to say, thank you for telling me that, right? I need to think about it. So, because as you, you've heard the data, not all startup companies make it, you know, they're not successful, they have to pivot, maybe sell before they wanted to or partner with someone else. And I've had times where we had a terrible field trial and realized that technology had to be revamped. And so you have to let a whole bunch of wonderful people go to, to conserve the cash and live to see another day. And that is incredibly difficult and heartbreaking. And, but as Leslie said, and him on too, you have to think about all the data have and what you know. And, you know, my, I guess one thing I always am looking for are significant customers that are growing that are writing you checks, right? Because that is the biggest thing. It's not enough just spending money or people telling you they're going to giving you a letter that say, if you do all these things will buy, how many people are actually giving you money? Who's getting field trial? Can you see a path to profitability, right? When the volume gets big enough or all these different things happen. And if you don't see a way to make money, you know, you can't live on grants and funding, right? You have to, you know, get through adolescence and stand on your own feet. And that's, you know, that's sometimes the tough troop that you have to deal with. And once you've dealt with it, now you can decide, okay, here's what I'm going to do. Given this now, where do we go from here? Thanks for sharing with us this experience. And we have another about 10, 15 minutes left. I would like to make the panel more interactive. So any audience, please join us. And for your questions, I already see a long list of the questions, the comments from here. And, you know, just to introduce yourself and ask for questions directly to our panelists. Hello. Can you guys mute yourself or hear me? Yeah, Fred? Yes. I have a question for the general audience. I read this book from the Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative. And they put a lot of emphasis on four requirements to be successful. I just like to get your opinion on this. One was the capabilities, need to make sure the capabilities in place, which is capabilities and experience. The second thing they mentioned was the whole area connections, connection to affluence, people who can make a difference. And the third one was access to cash. And then the fourth one was courage, have the ability to have the courage to make things change. Based on your experience, how did you implement those four Cs, if you will? Anybody? Emily? Oh, you're on mute. I know courage was one of them. What were the four Cs? The four Cs were capabilities, connections, cash, and courage. And what was the question was? The question is how did you how did you leverage those four factors to be successful going through your process? I don't think I thought of them in that way, but absolutely cash. You're always watching cash as an entrepreneur. So that goes about saying if connection means networking and getting introductions and hiring great people, then yes, that's the people. To me, when you're big enough that you can have a CFO and a head of HR, it's like one's at your right hand, one's at your left hand. It's all about the money to get the people to do the work. It's people that make the change. They develop the product. They make it happen. And so everything else is important, too, of course, your CTO and all those others. But to me, if you don't have the people and you don't have the money, then you don't have a company. So I think that's your cash and your connections. Courage, I think we talked about in terms of the courage to persevere, is not talked about finding a way forward because you believe you're on the right path or to pivot. You have to make some changes because the world has changed. And the fourth one was capabilities. Yes. Which I think is, I'm sure it's part of the people, which I took as connections. Is that what the capabilities are? Is having the technology and the resources? Yeah, it's the smarts. It's having the skills and technology and people and all that stuff, experience. Yeah. So I guess I'm agreeing. I can't, off the top of my head, and maybe him on to Leslie King. I can't think of much that I'm missing. Those four are pretty broad to capture most of the things. I would say that on things like cash and connections, well, nobody starts out with those things. You've got to go get them. But you put together the plan to be able to get those things and the plan to be able to track those things. And it's work to network to get to find the right people to hire and find the right people to partner with and all that. That's work. But you can go do that and make that happen yourself. It's not like when you start a company, it's already medically going to be there or that those are requirements for somebody to start a company. You just go get those things. So it comes down to initiative and finding the right people to help you build that whole thing. And then you can get those things. You can raise money. You can get connections. If you go put the right plan together and work at it. That's part of being an entrepreneur is bringing all those things together. I think all those, I mean, I kind of see echo the same comments as Leslie and Emily. I think as an engineer, I like to look at things in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions. I think those four items that you mentioned, I consider those as necessary conditions for success, but I don't think they're sufficient. I mean, you've got to have those and you've got to have a plan to pull those together through whatever means. So there has to be a plan to address all those four items very actively. But then there's the operational side of things that really, that nobody knows. You go in with a plan and things continue to change. And that's where some of the sufficient conditions of your character, your sort of commitment, your leadership, all those things sort of come in. And that's kind of a dynamic situation. And so, at least that's how I look at my companies, the ones that I've started is, what are the necessary conditions for success? And then you keep working on the sufficient condition. And one of the sufficient conditions is good luck also. You need a lot of good luck in these endeavors. Absolutely. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. So I'll ask a quick question. My name is Ian Ferguson. I'm an interloper and the dean of engineering at Canas on Luna for many years. And she invited me to listen in and involved on from entrepreneurial and startup companies, farming and business incubator at one point and also within companies. So my question was really that we talked about entrepreneurial activities here in the with respect to small startup companies. But we also mentioned these larger startup companies and I've set up and people sometimes use the term entrepreneurship. So you can set up a small business unit and track P&L within a larger company. And I know you both mentioned companies like the Haunting GE. So you can still be entrepreneurial and have that mindset in larger companies. And just wanting to see if you can path a little bit about that. It's not limited to startup companies per se. Yeah. I think what you mentioned is I think a very, very unique thing that some companies do very well. And I can share with you an example of a friend of mine who was the CEO of Alcatel. He is kind of responsible for ADSL getting deployed widely around the world, you know, because Alcatel was a leader. And he was the president of that division at that time. And he actually carved out a group and essentially told them to, you know, you don't have to follow the rules of Alcatel and really go out and make this thing happen. You know, so those kinds of, I think that's a very, very, could be a very important strategy within the large companies to sort of take a little bit lower risk and more predictable path by empowering, you know, some, you know, set of people within the company. So there's actually an example that I'm very familiar with, which turned out to be a huge success. Yeah. And we did, we, we did that at GE. I was with the division that was actually part of corporate. It was GE Ventures. And then we had a new business creation, whole, you know, whole unit within that and then created some tremendous opportunities that later were folded in, you know, were became part of the bigger operating businesses. But I think what's super important for corporates that have, you know, want to do that is that they put, set it up right with the right conditions and the right motivations. Because oftentimes people say, yeah, we want you folks over here in the corner to, you know, start this project and, you know, be entrepreneurs. And maybe it's just some engineers, right? But, you know, if when push comes to shove, you know, the budget gets cut, they're the first ones to get cut, you know, or, or, you know, they don't really have any incentive. They don't have incentive to take risks, if you will, to drop out of their mainline job and take this job over here on the side that may or may not be successful. They don't have incentives to do that. And so, you know, there has to be some incentives, some, you know, some resources, multifunctional capabilities, if you will, specifically set aside to make that, make that work in a big corporate environment. Otherwise, it just, it just doesn't work. Not because people aren't smart and come up, can come up with good ideas, they can. It's just they're not motivated and incented to do that. And, you know, the environment doesn't nurture that. And so, I think that's the big thing of success or failure in terms of corporate entrepreneurship is, is, is the right setup there to get the right people and the right motives and, and to actually be successful. The timeline they're going to need. Yeah, I think it's, I agree with Leslie and Hemant. I've seen it work for a short amount of time. I mean, you know, single digit years in a company where they have a strong leader and support of another strong leader, there hasn't been personnel changes, right? We sometimes see different things. I think the challenge with publicly traded companies is just quarterly earnings reports and how brutal the stock market is to them. And so, it makes it hard. And then Leslie said that's a group that might go, right? If you're having a bad quarter, things are going down someplace. They have a responsibility. It's very, it's very hard for a CEO and management team and board to continue to lose money because they got shareholders that care about the earnings and, you know, and it's, it's hard to keep losing money that way. I mean, and it's just not the way they're set up. And the other thing is entrepreneurs outside world have a much bigger upside, right? If it goes public or if it's sold and it's very difficult for a corporation to have that same kind of pay structure because they have some equity issues with other employees that are working very hard and in fact funded this startup, right? By them having profitable products, they made it possible for this company to go off and do things. And yet, how can you compensate those entrepreneurs like an entrepreneur? They're often better off financially outside in a different system. So it can be done, but it is difficult. And I think you have to keep changing the model as people change and new people come in to make it work. I think we're even approaching to the full 30. Are you guys have a hard stop or can we stretch a few more minutes? Because I get a lot of a request about questions. Maybe we can entertain one or two more. Is that okay with, okay. Excellent. I think I can go next. Thank you so much for all the information. I'm a student. I'm a senior here at Purdue and I'm planning to pursue an idea for a startup. So I just wanted to know a quick question about what kind of advice would you give students to choose to pursue a startup right after college over a corporate job? Well, I think for me, it depends on what you want to do and how you go about doing it. I think the most important thing here would be for you to get people that have experience that is relevant to work with you. And if that's the case, then you can be a part of it and you can be mentored and you can have some people who've been there done that to help you do it and that that would be a viable way to do it if possible. And if not, it may be worth it to sacrifice a sort of a corporate job or a job that's more steady. But you're also sacrificing a learning opportunity at a very early point in your career. So you need to really think if that's what you want to do. But it doesn't have to be that way if you get the right people to work with you. That's what I would say. Anybody else? The only thing I would add is that if you have a passion for what you want to do here, make sure you address those four C's that we talked about earlier because it takes a team as has been discussed before. You need the business acumen, you need the understanding of finance, you need to make sure operationally you have a strong team. So all those things are very critical to ensuring that this marathon journey that you take on is going to be fun. So that would be what I would suggest is at least make sure you meet those four necessary conditions in a very proactive way. Yeah, and I would only add the nice thing about starting at a big company or one nice thing about it is you could get some good training. They're used to developing people, they know how to train young engineers or new employees. And a lot of times, that's not a luxury that a startup has. They don't necessarily place a high value on developing people. They're trying to stay alive and change the world. So I think one benefit of, and I understand the benefits of entrepreneurship because I'm a believer, but I also got a lot of good habits from an engineering point of view, developing new products, some of the rigor and documentation that are needed. And when you're an entrepreneur, you're going to be working with those big companies. They will be your customers. They might be eventual acquirers. So knowing how they think and how they make decisions and the processes they use is very helpful. And you learn it from the inside. So you can learn it from the outside too, but I think there's positive ways. You can't go wrong. I would just say wherever you go, you want to have someone who's going to be a mentor to you and help you grow, whether it's a small, an entrepreneurial opportunity, that could be a board member or a larger company, who your supervisor is going to be. Perfect. Thank you. So I teach entrepreneurship and consulting here at Purdue. And there is some research that suggests that people who are entrepreneurs and companies have a harder time transitioning to outside. I'm wondering about your perspective on, like, if I go to an entrepreneurial company and I learn the ropes, the statistics are on your side that you will start accompanying. Now, on the other hand, that can also be self-selection. Thanks, John. Great question. Yeah. I just think it's all what you learn along the way and what, you know, what you are, even if you're at a big company, and I was big with a big company for sure, before I started on entrepreneurial ventures, yeah, how many, what skill sets did you pick up and what was your mindset, you know, and what kind of environment can you work in? I don't think there's any set rule that people can't make that transition. As a venture capitalist, I can tell you that I hired a good number of CEOs from corporate environments that hadn't been an entrepreneur yet. And some of them did incredibly well and made that transition incredibly well, and others not so much. And so I don't think it's a hard and fast rule. I think it's an individual thing and what they learned and what their skill sets are and how much of a, you know, a leader they are, and therefore how they can make that transition. Adelaide Heyman, would you like to add on or we should move on to? Adelaide I don't have anything to add to Leslie's comments. I think they're right on. Excellent. Thanks Leslie. So maybe we'll take a little ask a question from the audience if there is any sense we're actually over the time. So okay, thank you all for joining today's panel and we really appreciate it at the time. And then really, it's my great pleasure and the honor and to host to this panel is again, three distinguished business leaders and the Purdue alumni and I would like to on behalf of Purdue University College of Engineering. Thank you for your valuable time and then really a great insight and share all this advice with us. And it's such a treat and learn a lot. And I'm sure the audience will feel the same for all the audience. If you're interested in entrepreneurship, there's a couple of opportunities as Dr. Lou pointed out to the, you know, start of the field of my startup and also there is the MBA and master in science opportunity to combine MBA and a master in science opportunity from Purdue College of Engineering and the Cranett School. So if you're interested, please contact Dr. Benchin, Associate Dean and then he may have more information on that. And with that, I would like to rip up the panel again. Thanks for our panelists. I really appreciate your time and stay healthy and safe and positive in this COVID time. And I'm really looking forward to hear more this overnight about six, eight years, the story in this entrepreneurship work. Thank you all. Thank you. Bye.