Coburn Ventures Podcast

A few years ago we were doing some active consulting work with a handful of amazing not for profits. This work was so interesting and so valuable for all the reasons you can imagine: applying skillsets honed in investing that actually help real people with real problems, getting to know a whole host of new brilliant people from other sectors, but also, because, standing in these two worlds, one foot in one, one foot in the other, revealed greatly where the thinking in their industry overpronated on intentionality and goodwill, at times, and when the thinking and m.o. in our industry overpronated on exertion and knowledge building at times.  The result of being this bridge between two worlds? A lot of great insights on how to effect change. After a lot of discussions about it, Pip figured this formula out on his whiteboard one weekend. It brings each element into its own powerful place.  We have been using it ever since. It’s called the Housefly Formula.

What better way to mark our 100th episode than to spend time with one of our friends for the last 25+ years, Angie Dalton of Signum Growth Capital. Today we get to ask Angie about what’s going on in web 3 and new media technologies: specifically, what’s going right, and what is totally off-kilter. The conversation turned out to be one for me that offers loads of new breadcrumbs to track through the forest of web 3: what might be a real focal point of monumental change, where the fraud and disingenuous activity will show up, and some critical differences in mental models between the web 2 world and web 3. This is such a gift! It is ONLY through new mental models and new lenses that we can hope to accurately assess and make predictions on how these shifts will affect business, society, and the movement of capital.  Let’s, (for the 100th time), jump in!

Selling gets a bad rap, but we’re here to talk about it today because I really feel it's an underestimated power for investors for their toolkit AND an underestimated shift in society.  For investors, this tool is a double whammy of personal efficacy and investor foresight! On the first topic: understanding selling gives you a better antenna to determine signal from noise. More on that in the conversation. On the second, how selling happens and why it is or is not effective is changing dramatically, which means revenue visibility, and retention and long term cash flow visibility would also be changing, Let's jump in.

In our conversation on digital transformation, Rudy Karsan presented us with the question: "what wrong, outdated or unhelpful lenses am I using to see the world?" Today, we are here with Zak Dychtwald, Founder of The Young China Group to help bring clarity and perspective to our own (mostly) western lenses. Our goal is to improve our ability to interpret changes in China just a little more adeptly. Let's jump in. 

“Data is never the whole story…there is always a gap between the data and reality.” -- Irwin Kula Just when we think we know what we think about data, Irwin Kula is here to help us uncover the tensions and handle the polarities data brings. There are so many tensions fundamental to the role of data in our lives, just think about how the most valuable data doesn’t actually confirm what we already know … it brings us something new, probably throws us into a more uncertain rather than more certain frame of mind, and may induce change when we weren’t looking for any type of change at all.  Still, from the outset, when data is mentioned in business it's not usually about the discovery of unintended results but about certainty. But on our quest for certainty, we are often given less of it. Let's jump in.

 We have identified two sources of Rogue Waves: the Quantum Change in Connectivity and Quantum Change in Information. These are core facets of human existence and therefore a big deal. But from these comes an interesting element we will discuss today, and that is, that with connectivity and information we have an all-out war for our attention. Any tool kit to ride the rogue waves is wise to be equipped for the media rogue wave, not only how we handle it individually in terms of our time, but how we understand how it is impacting all businesses and impacting our investment processes. Let's jump in.

If you’ve listened to the series on digital transformation, you may be wondering how to pick companies that will adapt well, and avoid companies that are going to get run over! We need some new tools in our toolkit, and today, cultural anthropologist Grant McCracken is here to help us with the first potential tool to hone: today, we learn about Assumption Hunting. We begin with some revealing signals that unearth the foundational assumptions of a corporation and end with helpful questions to pose to management teams or your internal teams to gain conviction in the company's ability to weather the storm. I hope you enjoy it. 

After all that has been presented, Rudy Karsan is here to offer his perspective on digital transformation. Rudy’s lens is of a former HR software CEO and current venture investor who has an incredible ability to zoom in on operations and zoom out on strategy, technology and reflections on decision making. We are going to start with a part of the conversation that most podcasters would have edited out, but I think is probably one of the most useful portions of the conversation to guide us into the space of stepping back. And as we close out this series for now, Rudy takes us to the more fundamental questions surrounding the time and place we are in. It provides an excellent balance to the specific frameworks we have been offered by Tim, John and JP over the past month. And reminds me that as investors, our job requires this toggling between the seemingly certain prescriptions for the future that we base our investments on, as well as the aggravatingly uncertain reality that there is so much systems change happening all around us. To pick out the correct decision making tools for our time, its so helpful to get perspective from someone like Rudy, so let’s join him…as he jumps right in.

John Dillon has been a tech executive for over 40 years. When we asked him about digital transformation, he compared it to the advent of the steam engine or electrification…so that is certainly compelling. John's real-life examples put a finer print on this picture. Let's jump in.

Last week Tim Mattison helped us understand the different levels or phases an organization might go through as they experience digital transformation. Now, JP Rangaswami is going to help us understand the larger context that is required to assess whether any technology is about to be a major part of digital transformation or a real head fake. JP reminds us that digital transformation is not about the technology being ready, but also whether less talked about factors like social norms and legal infrastructure will act as barriers or tailwinds.