Speaker 1: 0:00

And I always said if you're not failing, if you're not falling, you're not trying hard enough because you're not, you're comfortable. And I think the same thing's true in life.

Speaker 2: 0:13

Welcome to Sell Me this Podcast, the show where we explore the bold moves, smart strategies and big ideas that shape the business world. Today's guest is Lindsay Smiley, director at Plug and Play Alberta, one of the world's most active seed stage investors and innovation platforms. With a background that spans from corporate strategy to craft distilling, lindsay brings a unique lens to entrepreneurship, innovation and ecosystem building. From jumping into startups headfirst to helping tech scale-ups connect with enterprise giants, lindsay shares what it takes to grow a business and an entire ecosystem. We'll dive into how Calgary became a top innovation hub, why failing fast is a leadership trait and how corporations and startups can truly innovate together. If you're an entrepreneur, corporate leader or just curious about the future of business, you do not want to miss this one. Let's dive in, lindsay. Thank you so much for joining us today. It is a pleasure to have you on the show. We're going to dive right into things. Why don't you introduce yourself to our audience and tell us a little bit about who you are?

Speaker 1: 1:17

Thanks for having me today. I'm Lindsay Smiley, the director with Plug Play in Alberta, and yeah, I think I'm always happy to join you, have a conversation and share a little bit more about what we're doing. My background's really diverse so I won't dive too deep into it, but I think, coming from a really cushy, corporate, sustainable job working on strategies, performance, a lot of governance stuff all across the province, I decided to jump out on my own and do something really bold and start a company with my husband. So we went into making booze for a bit and becoming an entrepreneur and figuring out what that world was all about. That kind of opened up my eyes to the startup world and I was part of the ecosystem in Calgary right when it was getting going. I think startup Calgary was just under Calgary Economic Development and I was pitching on stages for the ATB booster alongside like local laundry and the Skip the Dishes founders, and so it was a small little ecosystem at that time and I fell in love with being an entrepreneur, had a lot of great time with it Fast forward.

Speaker 1: 2:27

When I left there, all of a sudden I realized that distilling grain made me something to do with agriculture and this world called agri-food. An opportunity came up with Calgary Economic Development to help others come into Calgary and launch here in the agri-food space in particular, and so with my CPG kind of background it was a really nice fit and that opened the door to economic development, which was crazy, and through that I actually helped attract Plug and Play into Alberta. Ideally it was going to be in the egg space. It didn't happen that way, but later on we did get a food and beverage program up and running. So when we launched they stole me, they scooped me up, along actually with Niall Kerrigan from our life sciences side. So the two of us have been hand in hand over the last three years building up Plug Play.

Speaker 2: 3:11

Amazing. So I feel like there's a ton to unpack in there and I have infinity questions, but one of the things that stands out right off the bat is that jump from big corporation you talked about to the startup lifecycle, and so that is a jump that I think a lot of people are contemplating right now. There's a lot of people that are, I would say, changing their mind about the way that they want the next X amount of time of their career to look. How did you find that transition? Was it exciting, terrifying, exhilarating, all of the above?

Speaker 1: 3:38

All of the above. Yeah, I owed all to actually Jen Lofgren from Enzito and Brene Brown.

Speaker 1: 3:46

So I went to a leadership retreat and it was all about jumping into the arena and doing something that scares you. And if you're not doing something that scares you, then what are you doing? And you can't judge other people if you're not in there doing it yourself. And I really looked like we had been mapping out this business plan for what a brewery would look like. There was only 30 at the time. There's only three distilleries in the whole province and now I don't even know what the numbers are. It's like hundreds.

Speaker 1: 4:12

And we just kind of went home and was like, why don't we just do it, rip the bandaid off and get this done? And we had a solid business plan and that was the difference is we really could make it work. But through that planning process we actually flipped it up on its head. So we were originally starting with a brewery and then expanding in the distillery. Because there was only three distilleries. It was really smart to do it the other way around. So we flipped it, started with a distillery and our business model was such that my husband's a firefighter, so in his four days off we could make, optimize the operations for a four-day production cycle and that allowed him to almost do both jobs, which, hindsight's 20-20.

Speaker 2: 4:51

Eight days in a row, he was like a poor guy.

Speaker 1: 4:55

He was sleeping in the bays and stuff, so not smart. But, yeah, it's a terrifying jump. It's a terrifying like I had the stable career, a really solid salary. I had the luxury. My husband has a stable career.

Speaker 2: 5:08

But that's. I love what you said, too, about the idea of chasing the uncomfortability. And if you're in, if you're in a spot where you're feeling safe, I feel like that you're not growing, you're not doing the right things. Do you still have that mentality? Is there, chasing your different challenges and everything like that?

Speaker 1: 5:23

Yeah, it's actually something I've instilled in my kids. So they've been competitive gymnasts all their lives and I always said if you're not failing, if you're not falling, you're not trying hard enough because you're not, you're comfortable. And I think the same thing's true in life.

Speaker 2: 5:37

I love that, and so you take this entrepreneur journey. The brands, the names you're talking about I feel like those are some of the core of the Calgary ecosystem today, including yourself. What was the Calgary ecosystem like then versus now?

Speaker 1: 5:49

I thought it was amazing. I was like this is great, We've got peers. Craig Elias was around doing lots of these startup things. I was part of a little cohort with Brett Wilson, darlene Dickinson had one going at the same time and we were like competing.

Speaker 1: 6:04

A Dragon's Den style competition it was like a Dragon's Den style coaching for startups. So we thought we were all pretty cool and ATB was very active at that time, so there was lots going on, but nothing like it is today. Yeah, like it's just incredible what's happening in Calgary today.

Speaker 2: 6:20

And for people that aren't in Calgary and I know this is going to be a challenging question to describe, but how would you describe the Calgary ecosystem right now? Because it is something really special. It is electric and it is a lot of fun, but, like from your perspective, you get to live in that world every day. How would you describe it versus?

Speaker 1: 6:36

Yeah, I think everybody talks about it like something what's this magic? And if I put it into VC terms, Alberta as a whole is in the fourth position across Canada for ecosystems and dollars and numbers of deals. But 90% of that happens in Calgary. 90% of the whole province's impact is out of Calgary.

Speaker 2: 6:55

That's incredible. Yeah, I didn't know it was that significant it is.

Speaker 1: 6:58

Take it in perspective. It's usually a couple deals that are big that make that, but those big deals are what every VC are looking for. You don't get 90% of your portfolio being unicorns making massive rounds and stuff like that. Like it's usually a one to two percent if you're lucky and so that those numbers coming out of Calgary are really impactful and so I read a really interesting article that kind of talked about that VC arithmetic.

Speaker 2: 7:23

That said you're chasing the unicorn and then hoping that enough of the other stuff supports it in the interim. Is there something special in Calgary that's creating some of those unicorns? Because there's some really strong brands here that are really taking the world by storm right now.

Speaker 1: 7:37

What's the model of doubling down on your winners and it's a love-hate thing for me, because I want everybody to succeed but in the VC world in particular, you identify those that have the strongest potential to scale and then you put everything you have behind them. Calgary is really good at doing that. So those ones that they're recognizing as being really strong. You've got organizations like Alberta, innovates, osef, ced they're phenomenal. You've got the Tech Thursdays. You're getting a lot of airtime. We've got trade missions. We've got all sorts of stuff, and we're really good at putting our best out on display and connecting them.

Speaker 2: 8:12

And that's one thing I have noticed is it does seem the province does do an incredible job of showcasing those stars, lifting them up and putting them on a little bigger stage than just the municipal one.

Speaker 1: 8:22

You have to. And here's the thing it's like I always hear you don't want to pick winners and losers, and it's not about picking winners and letting everybody else lose. You have to double down on those ones. Make those stars really good, scale them, do everything you can. Those are the ones that are going to trickle down and help the other ecosystem. The ecosystem is going to benefit.

Speaker 2: 8:45

Everything follows after that 100% and it attracts the talent, it attracts the stories, the investment, and so, all of a sudden, you start to create this more, better round and it becomes really exciting.

Speaker 1: 8:56

And we want to keep them here. I do like to say plug and play really plays that global connective role. We have massive network but grow locally, scale globally. That's the thing.

Speaker 2: 9:08

So I haven't really given you an opportunity yet to even mention what Plug and Play does, and obviously you're fairly familiar with it. But if you were to describe to someone the work that Plug and Play embarks on, how would you do that?

Speaker 1: 9:20

We do three things really well, and I like it because it's simple. So, yes, we're a VC family office, one of the most active seed stage investors in the world, deploying 30 to 60 million dollars every year in 250 companies. So very active small stage or small checks, early stage. That's all run out of our founder's family office and separate from what we do as corporate partners. So very early on we realized that it's not just capital, it's not just connection, it's actually growing a network that helps these companies scale, and so we've spent the last I'd say, 18 to 20 years now building the largest open innovation platform in the world. So we're in 65 locations around the world.

Speaker 1: 10:04

We started in Silicon Valley, in the heart of it. In Silicon Valley, in the heart of it, saeed was named this year as the top 100 founders in that ecosystem, alongside Peter Thiel and some of the big names, which is phenomenal. But essentially, the large corporate partners pay us to help filter through the noise of technologies and solutions that are out there to either get in a competitive advantage, stay ahead of the trends and the disruption coming, or to solve problems, save costs, find efficiencies. That's what we do. We put entrepreneurs and technology startups in front of those corporate partners. We don't charge the startups, we don't take equity, we don't take finder's fees or success fees. So it's pretty founder-friendly.

Speaker 2: 10:45

So you're trying to find those winners, build them up to a stage and then not even just give them money, which is also important, but also connect them with their potential customers, which solve a very real challenge for them as well.

Speaker 1: 10:56

Yeah, we invest in very few, like they have to really match our thesis and things If we're not investing. Sometimes we're helping them find investment. We co-invest with a lot of VCs. So, yes, a lot of founders that are looking to raise come to us and we help with that process. But more importantly I think we help make sure they're good companies and we help open doors to help them scale.

Speaker 2: 11:19

That makes sense, and so you have a really interesting lens then, working with both the agile startups along with some of these larger established enterprises which I think are struggling for innovation, and this is a very situational question. But if you were to look at some of the themes that you see across the enterprise versus startup landscape, what are some of the key differences of just what that's creating the challenges from an innovation standpoint at the large enterprise scale?

Speaker 1: 11:46

That's like such a big question because there's not one challenge, there's a lot and there's different differences that I'm starting to really see. Like the word startup, first of all, I have to go back and define that because it scares any large enterprise. Startup means risk. Startup means unproven Startup means two guys in a garage. Startup means it's a lot of work for me to connect with. They don't understand big industry. That's not always the case. When we say startup, it can be any scale. So, yes, the early ones are the ones we invest in, so they're on our radar early, whether that's through universities and so on. We like to make sure we're following them. But the companies that we're usually putting in front of our enterprise partners are like 100 million revenue they're bigger, they can scale. Million revenue they're bigger, they can scale, they're ready to make things grow. But one big challenge or difference between large enterprise and startups is just the ability for them to adapt to change. We've seen lots of companies. Did you know Slack started out as a gaming company?

Speaker 2: 12:45

I did not know that.

Speaker 1: 12:46

It was called a game called Glitch, and the developers, while they were developing this game, actually had created an internal platform so they could communicate. And then the game actually flopped and it was completely useless. But they're like, hey, this was really helpful, maybe others could use this communication tool. And now Slack is what it is.

Speaker 2: 13:04

That is insane. Okay, I did not know that.

Speaker 1: 13:06

Yeah, and there's like tons of examples like that where startups can pivot quickly.

Speaker 1: 13:09

I think YouTube started out as a video dating game or a dating platform and people weren't using the video platform for dating so much as they were to store videos and share them, and so that's where YouTube came out of today, which kind of is a little bit more in line with what they were doing. But just the concept of startups being able to pivot and change and adapt is something that can be a huge value add to the enterprises that are like big, massive ships, I think you like this analogy.

Speaker 2: 13:37

I've used it before. I love this analogy.

Speaker 1: 13:39

But enterprise and corporations are like those big Titanic ships they steady, they hold the way, they have the resources to go the distance. And the startups are like these little speed boats that go alongside and they check out little directions and they go and get little resources, bring it back to the ship. But together is how you get farther ahead, because the ship, big ships, are needed to get those small little speedboats the distance.

Speaker 2: 14:02

So what do you think right now of that state of the? We'll call it enterprise, startup or enterprise scale up collaboration. Do you feel like there's it's flour collaboration? Do you feel like it's flourishing? Do you feel like there's room to grow still? What do you think of the current state? We're so far behind in Canada.

Speaker 1: 14:14

Yeah, one example we work with companies all around the world over the last 20 years and from all innovation maturity levels, right from the beginning, where they're thinking what should we do to having active corporate venture capital arms spinning out, or having an internal venture builder capacity, where they're building startups inside of them. Those are the really mature companies. Everything in between. And in Canada, I think we have 6% of corporations that have a CVC in Canada, compared to 40% in the US, or like almost half.

Speaker 2: 14:48

And just for our listeners. So what's a CVC?

Speaker 1: 14:50

It's a corporate venture capital arm, so they're investing in startups, they're putting equity behind and usually where they see they can add value or they can, if they purchase that product or through their network or their applications they can take it and go farther. So therefore they can raise a lot of money.

Speaker 1: 15:06

So we have a lot of work to do on that. We have Canada's built a lot on traditional industries, so you've got like the oil and gas mining agriculture. Those industries are still very traditional. There's so much technology going on in there. You have this gap between IT and the technologies and the applications, and even where that's going is so rapid advancement but operations are so far behind and the two of them are. That's a huge challenge right now to get the technologies and the operations functioning, to get all those old traditional processes and equipment connected in and having the sensors that are giving you data and analytics to drive decision-making real time. It's crazy.

Speaker 2: 15:50

I know that we were at an and analytics to drive decision making real time. It's crazy. I know that we were at an event yesterday that talked about this exact thing, and one of the things that I find so alarming is that disparate nature between what the business needs technology for to grow, to deliver value to their customers, to deliver value to their shareholders and, on the flip side, what corporate technology teams are really focused on right now, and I think that the role of IT has changed so rapidly that some of these technology teams are just being left behind. And I'm probably not going to be very popular for saying this, but I think there are a lot of the bottlenecks sometimes in these organizations. Because something has an IP address, all of a sudden it becomes domain of the IT group versus some of the more nimble parts of the organization. Are you seeing that as something that's true, or am I being the grumpy old person on their porch?

Speaker 1: 16:38

There's a lot of validity behind the hesitation of operations. I think yesterday what we heard was the language gap. So if you have somebody that's a technology expert not necessarily understanding the operations and one of the things that caught my attention in particular was the fact that if IT suggests something in a way to secure technology and operation says that's going to kill it, and IT goes well, I don't actually know if that will or not, so I have to take their word for it. Then it becomes a learned pattern where, in order to get IT to go away, I just tell them it's going to kill it. And so I think there needs to be a level of operational people that are trained and have skill sets in the IT space that better understand the true world and the implications in operations. And until that happens, where we have more of our more talent and more workforce trained in these digital technologies and securities required in the solutions, I think there's going to continue to be that learning process and that language barrier between the two.

Speaker 2: 17:44

Yeah, and I think the theme that I love as well as curiosity, because, to your point, sometimes things are just taken at face value and one of the skills that I see becoming more and more relevant and more and more important is just even the desire to ask the next question and the follow-up question and the third and just to try to unpack the puzzle a little bit, because I think a lot of people take things at face value and it doesn't serve anyone well.

Speaker 1: 18:05

Yeah, and I think you hit it on the nail on the head with the fact that you have to ask questions. I think anything in life, anything we do, we have to better understand and we have to seek to understand. That's the same with innovation, like when we go to find a technology or a solution for a big enterprise corporation. There's a lot of back and forth and it's an iterative process on really defining what it is we're looking for, and that's true to pilots and validations. That's why there's a whole process. It's iterative. Hopefully you fail fast, but you have to have the processes to fail in a safe, secure environment, in a way that will get you to the quick no, or these are the things I have to change in order to make it successful. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 18:46

So you talked about going to find some of these technologies for these large enterprise organizations. Are you usually starting with kind of the use case in mind, like large corporation says I have this challenge, can you help me solve it? Or are you starting more representing the technologies and then finding the fit afterwards?

Speaker 1: 19:02

100%. We go with a challenge and we're actively sourcing for that specific challenge. That's what makes us special. So when we make an introduction to a founder and a corporation, there's already an interest there and a solution that's a possible fit. So it starts the conversation really well.

Speaker 2: 19:21

So you're finding real challenges for enterprise and saying, okay, what is the new emerging startup that can actually solve these specific challenges? And then how do we put our bite behind it to help solve that specific challenge? But then add a whole bunch of horse power to keep going.

Speaker 1: 19:34

Yeah, and we don't necessarily put our money behind each of those. So we do it both publicly and privately. So we'll source for either one or multiple different industries that have a challenge and we bring a list of solutions that could be a fit and those are global solutions. From there, that's when that partner gets to decide what's relevant or not, what they want to explore more, and they can either go into a cohort program where we then wrap our arms around that startup, make sure they're ready to raise, they have the avenue to scale, make sure their business is sound and all those kinds of things. And that means that if an enterprise partner actually does continue to work with the startup, that they're going to be a successful company and they're going to still be there tomorrow.

Speaker 1: 20:16

That's how we work with that side of it.

Speaker 2: 20:19

And so how much if you were to coach a startup on the best way to be appealing to some of these larger enterprises to kind of reduce the risk and I'm sure this is a lot of the conversation you have are there things that you can share to some of these larger enterprises to kind of reduce the risk and I'm sure this is a lot of the conversation you have Are there things that you can share to some of these founders or these early stage companies that will help them position themselves differently or better to large enterprise?

Speaker 1: 20:42

It's a different audience than raising capital. So a lot of what we do is get them ready to talk to venture capital or to raise money. To get ready for industry means you have to listen, you have to look for how you can adapt and you have to talk about the ROI and its lead. With the ROI we're going to save this much. We're going to demonstrate how this can adjust your operations for whatever way. They're either looking to reduce costs or redundancies or whatever. So the impact of the solution needs to be the driver in that conversation With VCs. It's very different conversation.

Speaker 2: 21:23

So what if we flip that around? So if we think about getting ready for the industry, what would you say to those organizations?

Speaker 1: 21:29

if we think about getting ready for the industry.

Speaker 1: 21:33

What would you say to those organizations?

Speaker 1: 21:37

It depends on what, how the industry is for sure, because there's actually a framework for innovation that we start with, and it involves strategy, capabilities and culture, and so working with companies to get them better prepared, a if they don't have a strategy, there's a lot of work we can do to help them actually understand what their innovation strategy is.

Speaker 1: 21:51

Capabilities are really your processes, your resources, the ability to quickly identify those areas of interest, and then the culture is the big one, and it's not just an innovation team running on its own in on a silo. It really needs to start at the C-suite, it needs to be in operations with IT and become part of that whole organization. Then there's a whole side of execution, and that execution side for innovation teams can include those corporate venture capital investment arms can include the venture building or what we call venture clienting, which is doing pilots, proof of concepts, validations, and so to prepare our industry partners to talk with startups, they have to have the internal system and framework in place to better work with them, and that's not an easy thing, and so this is where it's not an easy conversation.

Speaker 2: 22:48

And I feel like this is where some of the roadblocks come, because you have these organizations that say hey, we want to innovate, we know we need to innovate, we know we need to change and start something today. So, even if that is window shopping, in what?

Speaker 1: 23:02

it could look like and involving a few other people, maybe doing an innovation day, getting people excited about what could happen. That's fine. Get started. Get used to meeting startups, looking at the potential. It could be a simple step like that, and that's many of our partners do that right now, like they're curious, they're getting curious. And that's many of our partners do that right now, like they're curious, they're getting curious. So that curiosity is step one. You're already there. Get started, look for more. Take those initial baby steps and it'll all start rolling into place. And try to find the quick little wins when you can.

Speaker 2: 23:43

Yeah, and so you mentioned innovation teams as well, so I feel like that's a really interesting concept, because I think there's some organizations that have done it well. There's some that have this innovation team that essentially becomes this sequestered arm of their business that never sees the light of day. What are some of the things that you've seen work really well for enterprises when building out some of these innovation teams, and what are some of the roadblocks or traps that you've seen organizations fall into when building these out?

Speaker 1: 24:12

I think one trap is they will create an innovation team and leave them out to dry and they get treated like the IT team.

Speaker 1: 24:20

Don't come talk to me. You're just going to create more work on the side of my desk. That you're going to bring me solutions I have no desire for and that doesn't work. I think you need both. You need a centralized innovation team as well as innovation people in the field in operations, and they do different things. So the innovation people in the field in operations are constantly looking for process efficiencies or gaps or opportunities to challenges that they're seeing, and those guys are looking at what we call. We call it like horizon one, two and three.

Speaker 1: 24:53

When it comes to innovation. Horizon one is really core to your business. It's the things that you're doing. So how do I improve my efficiencies? How do I improve what I'm currently doing? Those really sit with those local innovation people, teams close to operations. Horizon two is like the adjacent stuff that you would do that might start you in a direction of changing your path or offering a new service or so on. Those one can sit in either centralized innovation teams or in the localized size.

Speaker 1: 25:22

But then there's these things called Horizon 3. These are like, if you think about they'll be the highest risk type initiatives. Think about what caused Blockbuster to go obsolete. They completely missed looking at anything Horizon 3, like what is going to disrupt us? How are we going to actually pivot completely? Where can our business go in a completely different direction? They completely missed the boat and did not look at these Horizon 3 opportunities. They take the most time, resources, money and they have the most risk, but they'll have the biggest rewards when they pay off and I think organizations need to understand that 10% of their innovation efforts need to be focused on horizon three and those need to sit in a centralized innovation team.

Speaker 2: 26:07

Right, and the horizon three is all the exciting stuff, right. These are the big moonshots. These are the things that really require thinking outside the box. Are these technical discussions, or who are the right people to be having these kinds of innovation discussions?

Speaker 1: 26:22

So they're less technical actually. So it's like where it's more looking at like economic drivers and trends, and right now it's, I think, it's more important than ever with the pace of innovation and technology rapidly scaling, with AI and quantum around the corner.

Speaker 1: 26:38

So if they're not thinking about horizon threes. I think industry is really set to be disrupted and that's not always a technical conversation. I think it's more higher level C-suite, really close to the top executives. Like where are we going If there's a complete change in energy or let's say, uranium is not politically acceptable and that gets shut off? Where is the mining industry? Where are we going to go?

Speaker 2: 27:05

Do you think so? This is going to be a little bit of a loaded question, but do you think executives are prepared to have these Horizon 3 discussions right now, or do you think that it's intimidating just because of the huge technology component to it at the moment?

Speaker 1: 27:19

It's a really big challenge because there's shareholder expectations and it's not my business today and, if you think about it, almost like politicians have four-year terms, like big executives have a responsibility to the current shareholders and the price today and commodity priced industries really are challenged with horizon three and thinking completely different in the future. I think they're in a hard spot but I think if they're not thinking that way, they're doing a disservice to that company.

Speaker 2: 27:53

That makes sense and I feel and I don't know if these things are connected, but we know we've seen a drop of IPOs. We've seen, actually, a bunch of large companies that have started that process to become private again, and there seems to be huge advantages from an R&D, from an innovation perspective to being private companies, because you can make some of those long-term events differently. Is that a trend that you're seeing or is that something that is still to be determined in the market?

Speaker 1: 28:20

I don't have a crystal ball. I think things are changing drastically and even the amount of capital that's required for startups to build massive companies is so much less. I think it's changing the need for venture capital. I think we're going to see IPOs not necessarily be the thing that people are going to, or the opposite. They can go there a lot faster with a lot less people and a lot less capital going in. So the landscape's really different and I don't think anybody has the answer and I think everybody is really watching closely.

Speaker 1: 28:55

This could go in different directions, but we all agree that there is massive change. It's rapidly going like we've never seen before and I think it's really important for companies of all sizes, even the small mom and pop shops, like I'm seeing record numbers of businesses not there and it's sad like you drive by or you go to your favorite place and it's no longer there, and it's sad like you drive by and you go to your favorite place and it's no longer there, and so these companies are getting disrupted by technologies, by people getting access to things online faster, or it's just incredible what's happening and I can't understate the amount that people need to be taking or like dedicating the amount of time that's required to dedicate to innovation and technologies should be something at the forefront of everybody's strategy planning and thinking right now.

Speaker 2: 29:44

I couldn't agree more, and I know you and I have had this conversation before, but I think there's a tremendous opportunity too, even especially for the small organizations. They don't have some of the red tape, they don't have some of the way they've always done things, and they can make decisions right here and they don't have to go offer approval for four other layers, wait for the next budget cycle. They can do them now and I think that, with the speed of everything that's innovating right now, that has to be the way things are done.

Speaker 1: 30:09

Yeah, exactly, and I think those organizations or companies have a competitive advantage from that standpoint because they can really look and adapt and do something really differently that other organizations can't. And those big industry players can use smaller organizations and startups to test out markets, solutions, business models and things like that in a fairly risk adverse way. And that's that model of having a ship and a speedboat. Use those entrepreneurs in that startup structure to test out where that can go and that will set you up for success in the future.

Speaker 2: 30:47

Definitely so. You mentioned technologies, and we've gone this far without mentioning AI. Bingo, I think. But from your perspective, you probably get to looking glass into some really innovative and cool things that are coming out. What are some of the technologies that you're seeing that are really shaping everything right now? Obviously, ai is one of them, but is there anything else that's on the horizon that people should be considering and thinking about?

Speaker 1: 31:10

I think, just the level of personalization and customization of everything.

Speaker 2: 31:13

From healthcare.

Speaker 1: 31:15

we're seeing hyper-individualized modalities and treatments, food items, diets. Ai is incredibly applicable and there's this one technology. It still sticks in my mind. But we understand facial recognition and that's been around for a while, but I saw facial recognition for a steak. It's like literally yeah.

Speaker 2: 31:41

Like a piece of meat.

Speaker 1: 31:42

Yeah, it can identify which cow or which animal that came from, based on the ligament structure within that cut of meat. And so if you can imagine the world of traceability in our food from right at the time of processing, if they have the technology in place to identify and trace that animal to the store and the grocery when a consumer picks up a steak from the store, you literally can trace that right back to an animal. And in the world of today where we've had massive recalls and things like that kind of technology can really change a lot. It's just one example. There's tons, there's new materials that are exciting. The stuff that we're exposed to is incredible, even in the carbon capture space.

Speaker 2: 32:31

I'm not sure if I want a picture of my cow looking back at me as I pick up the steak at the grocery store, but it is incredible and I think you're right. It is changing everything. So how does a sorry, I'm being thrown off by this image of the steak cow. Yeah, don't think about it in the purpose of you knowing. No, I totally understand.

Speaker 1: 32:54

Or in the purpose of recall. So if you need to recall, if there's a problem or an issue, it's one animal or one herd as opposed to all from a country. And we've had that before in Canada, so it's a very important thing.

Speaker 2: 33:08

No, and I think you're correct and even from a traceability. We had Kalaya on the show a couple of weeks ago who was just talking about some of the power of some of the different blockchain technologies and quantum and everything, and the world is definitely speeding up at a very rapid pace on that front. If someone is, I think there's never been a better time to start an organization as well. So if someone's in Calgary, they have an idea, what are some of the things that you would recommend to them? To kind of start to surround themselves with the community to test out that idea, to kind of see what's out there and start to prove out if that actually makes sense for them to build a business out of it.

Speaker 1: 33:44

Network 100%. Get out there, start meeting people, find out the areas that you feel less confident in and that are weaker, and seek out mentors that have been there. Done that. Find other founders and other mentors that have been there. Done that. Find other founders and other people that have done it before as your mentors not necessarily people who have a lot of advice to give that haven't lived that path.

Speaker 1: 34:08

I think that's one key thing. There's a lot of advice out there and it's not always good advice. And I would also say get out of our ecosystem as well and try to spend some time in these ecosystems that are ahead of us and then bring that knowledge back and bring that drive back here and test out and validate your idea. Ask questions, get to know what real people think about what you're doing, and that can't be underrated. People think about what you're doing and that can't be underrated, and I think we often hear of founders that ask their friends and family or those that they know for advice on what their product is or their solution, and they get really good feedback because they're close friends and family. So you need to find people who will give you harsh feedback and authentic feedback, and so I guess just network, get out and really seek to understand what that customer is looking for.

Speaker 2: 34:59

And I like that idea a lot of, kind of almost like trying to find a way to chase out the negative. It's really easy to ask your partner, to ask your parents is my art project cool? But I think that if you find someone that can really find the holes because it's only going to make that idea better prove it out or save you from some hardship down the line as well.

Speaker 1: 35:16

Yeah, how fast can you get to 10 iterations?

Speaker 2: 35:22

Yeah, and even when I know we've talked about this, as we've grown our business, I feel like what we, the idea we started with, is miles different than what we're, the work we're doing today, and I feel like in another year it'll probably be another 10 iterations away and it'll continue to evolve and change and it becomes a really fun journey of experimentation and seeing what works and what fails and getting there as fast as possible there.

Speaker 1: 35:38

I often wonder what that next chapter is really going to look like.

Speaker 2: 35:41

It's exciting, that's the fun part right, and I feel like that's the part that keeps it on the entrepreneurial side of things. It keeps you on your toes and keeps you excited and curious and I think a lot of people probably get a little bit addicted to it's true.

Speaker 2: 35:54

Yeah, on the flip side. So enterprise leaders listening today. What's some things that they should be doing? If they're looking across their org they're saying, hey, we're a little bit stale. What are a couple actions that they can take tomorrow that will practically start to make change in their organization?

Speaker 1: 36:13

I think don't think about innovation as a make work project or a standalone, so embedded in everything you do. And innovation isn't robots and technology and AI for your stake. It's process improvement, it's efficiencies, it's thinking about saving costs and so really looking for those areas where you have a lot of time, redundancies, repetitive work what are those tasks? And then look to technology to try to reduce those and start there. And that's for the smaller, obviously, the enterprises. The big level it's start making that plan. Get curious about innovation. And how can your organization build the culture internally of failure of bringing their ideas up? Your people on the ground already have the top hundred ideas and priorities to get going on. If you don't know what they are, then you don't have the internal culture to get it to you.

Speaker 2: 37:09

Yeah, and that's one thing that we haven't really touched on but the power of people's teams and being on the front line, and a lot of those ideas exist, and a lot of those people that are doing the work every day have a laundry list of things that they wish would be different, that they hate doing, that are really autonomous or could be autonomous, and that's where some of the gold actually is.

Speaker 1: 37:31

Yeah, I think one of my. I think you're successful. It's not in what you've built, it's who you've empowered. That's truly the outcome, that you're successful.

Speaker 2: 37:42

It's not in what you've built, it's who you've empowered. That's truly the outcome that you're looking for. I love it. What's one myth?

Speaker 1: 37:51

that you wish didn't exist around the work that you do. The term accelerator and the term startups so I guess just the perception that startups are all really small, haven't been proven technologies and don't know how to work with enterprise, and that's one I wish we could overcome. And the other is this word accelerator. It's not necessarily like a time sink for entrepreneurs. I think it's really hard for their time to compete and they shouldn't always be looking at joining these accelerators, because they should be focused on building their businesses. We have an accelerator, but it really is a business development type focus where we're truly trying to help these startups scale and get to the next growth stage.

Speaker 2: 38:33

So I know the DNA would be different for the right fit for each of these types of organizations. But what would make a good fit for someone for the accelerator programs?

Speaker 1: 38:43

So there's incubators and accelerators in the traditional sense that help validate, prove out, build out business plans, help make sure all that foundational stuff is in place, and those are absolutely super important for building up early stage startups. So when you have that idea, ideation, there's different groups at different phases that offer the skill sets that the entrepreneurs need. At that time For plug and play we're really at the scalings phase. So it's like you've got a product or a service that's proven out, validated. Maybe you need that industry validation. That's something we really help with. So if we get a customer that says I'm actually really interested in this, that sometimes is all you need and you get a huge check mark in front of those VCs, that validation can go a long way to quickly scaling that company. I think don't quote me on this, I guess I'm on the air but this is all quoted.

Speaker 1: 39:34

Yeah, I know this is all quoted, but what I'm seeing is it can take five, maybe five, six years for a company from when we invest to go into being a unicorn. Like it's that fast in this.

Speaker 2: 39:44

That's really rapid.

Speaker 1: 39:46

Super rapid.

Speaker 2: 39:47

Yeah, and I saw a stat and I'm going to butcher whatever the stat is, but it talked about even the how quickly technology platforms got to 100 million users and it showed the Instagram, the Facebook, the WhatsApp and ChatGPT accumulated in like weeks.

Speaker 1: 40:05

It was ChatGPT for sure.

Speaker 2: 40:05

Yeah, and things are moving so quickly on that front and so you're saying the company's valuations and their growth is also happening. I don't want to say five or six years is overnight, but five or six years is a really quick time.

Speaker 1: 40:16

It's a really quick time and these companies don't need the amount of talent they used to, and that has pros and cons to it, but technology companies that were starting before can now use AI to replace a lot of those bodies.

Speaker 2: 40:29

So how do we have such good energy and synchronicity?

Speaker 1: 40:32

Synchronicity. Why do we banter so well together?

Speaker 2: 40:36

I don't know. I feel like we do banter well together. We do banter well together.

Speaker 1: 40:38

But it's not because we've known each other forever.

Speaker 2: 40:40

No, I feel, because we met on the panel.

Speaker 1: 40:43

It's a symptom of Calgary.

Speaker 2: 40:44

Yeah, I think so.

Speaker 1: 40:46

We were asked to go on a panel for the chamber?

Speaker 2: 40:50

Yeah, it was for the chamber.

Speaker 1: 40:58

It was about small, medium, medium business innovation and we had a beer and we tried to figure out how to use the robotics arm and then I challenged you on everything you said.

Speaker 2: 41:01

It's true, I've never I was, I've never been challenged on a panel like that before, and I remember one of the moments off mic where you put the mic down. You were like I hope you don't mind, I'm actually going to call you out on the next question I'm going to disagree with that yes, okay. So that's how. Yeah, and then we fast friends.

Speaker 1: 41:16

I think it's because you focused on the strategy side a lot more and I was like no, just get out there and get going. Yeah, I think so, yeah.

Speaker 2: 41:24

I think that for the first time ever, because I feel like I'm a person that runs out and just zooms into things and I like to fail really quickly and so and I feel like I found someone that fail likes to fail way more quickly- Thanks, I appreciate that I have failed lots. Yes, hopefully that didn't come across wrong. No, I think it came across perfect.

Speaker 1: 41:43

It's true, yeah, but I don't believe that it's failing. I believe it's a sign of leadership, so understanding when you can make bold moves and keep going forward. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 41:53

Yeah, so obviously things are moving incredibly quickly. We've talked about that a lot. What does the next 12 months look like for you and the Plug and Play team?

Speaker 1: 42:01

We always have these incredible events, so I encourage anybody who is interested in getting involved to follow us, for we have an expo around in Ventures. It's a really great time for entrepreneurs and anybody in the startup ecosystem to connect. We'll be hosting our expo May 22nd at the SAM Center and then we always have our big one annual summit, and this year it's going to be back in Kanaskis in the mountains in November, so that's really exciting. There's also opportunities to come down to our headquarters in Silicon Valley. We do summits twice a year to reach out to Plug and Play team, obviously to get involved in that, and as far as like growth and stuff, we have lots of plans across Canada, so hopefully you'll see Plug and Play starting to branch out a few more tentacles in very purposeful areas.

Speaker 2: 42:48

And I imagine you're already a fairly popular person in your inbox. But if someone wanted to connect with you, if they had more questions, what's the best way to connect with you, Lindsay?

Speaker 1: 42:57

You can find me on LinkedIn. That's probably the best way. Alberta at PMPTCcom goes to a few different people, so you'll get a response if you need a direct connection. Other than that, the website's great and we are moving and opening up a brand new office, and so we'll be, hosting probably some networking mixers and different innovation events throughout the year in our new space, which is on 11th Ave.

Speaker 2: 43:24

I'm excited to see the new building. Thank you so much for coming on the show. This has been an absolute pleasure, Lindsay. It's been a lot of fun and I'm excited to see the new building and continue to chat about cool things.

Speaker 1: 43:36

Yeah, thanks for having me on.

Speaker 2: 43:40

Super fun to talk, awesome. Thanks a bunch.