- il y a 21 heures
Founder’s Story My Best Failure
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00:00All right, good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for being here this afternoon.
00:05All right, let me ask a question. Who here wants to admit that they've had a failure in their business
00:11or life?
00:15Okay. All right, so we're going to talk about failure, but we're going to talk about it in a very
00:20productive way today.
00:21And I have the pleasure of interviewing my dear friend, Chris Purifoy. He's the CEO of Learning Economy Foundation.
00:29He's also the founder. And I've known Chris for many, many years.
00:35And during, you know, I've worked with him during the time when he founded the Learning Economy Foundation.
00:42And the reason I thought it was such an interesting session to have here together is because I actually sat
00:49with him at pitch meetings.
00:51And I was very, very interested in how he pitched to investors and partners.
00:57And I'll let him talk a little bit more about that.
00:59But one of the things he struck me is he would lead with the things he hadn't done right.
01:04And I thought that was a very bold move when you sat in a conference room in front of very
01:09successful people that were about to sign you some checks.
01:13So, you know, help me welcome him today.
01:17I'm going to start with a very, very simple question.
01:19Tell me a little bit about sort of your entrepreneurial journey.
01:22Where did it get started?
01:24How did this bug about starting a business and growing a business start with you?
01:28Yeah, it's a good question.
01:31You know, I think entrepreneurship is kind of just in your blood, though, right?
01:34So anyone that's an entrepreneur was probably an entrepreneur as a kid.
01:39You know, I was, you know, selling stuff door to door and trying to win all the contests in school,
01:44you know.
01:44So it was always a part of me to grind and to do things.
01:48But, you know, I think my first – so I was in college, you know, and, you know, you're learning
01:53in college.
01:53And I have this very strange journey, you know.
01:56I started in the music industry, actually.
01:59And I wanted to be a rock star but then eventually moved to Nashville and realized I wasn't quite as
02:04good as everyone but maybe a little better at business.
02:07And so I got my start really working in management for, you know, great artists, you know.
02:14And it was during that time that I saw problems in the industry.
02:18You know, this was in the age of Napster, you know.
02:21So for me, I was looking at that and thinking, how can we solve problems with the music industry?
02:26So really my first startup was while I was in college and the reason I didn't finish college, actually.
02:33And it was called Band Find.
02:35It was like e-harmony but where musicians would connect to build bands, you know.
02:41And it was cool, you know.
02:43It was crazy.
02:44I didn't know what I was doing.
02:45You know, this was at the time when if you had a website, you were kind of the only person
02:49that had one.
02:50Not just a website, like a platform, you know.
02:52Like if you knew a friend in 1999 who had a website, it was a really weird moment in history,
02:56you know.
02:57And so, you know, it was one of those things where we were doing something cool but we didn't really
03:03know what was going on.
03:04And this is kind of in the early days.
03:06This is when Facebook was beginning and everyone thought social networking was a business model, you know.
03:10It was before ads and before anyone actually knew what monetization even really meant in those spaces.
03:15And so, you know, it was great.
03:16We built about 30,000 bands.
03:19Didn't work out as we hoped in terms of monetization.
03:22So we pivoted and moved into music education.
03:26So let's, and at the time it was like, great, there's so much money in music education.
03:30And, you know, this was like 2008 as the financial crisis happened and the arts were the first thing to
03:35go.
03:35So, you know, another really interesting moment.
03:37But, you know, that worked out and we ended up having a good exit there and, you know, continuing on.
03:43Moving into other industries, you know, to try to solve problems.
03:47And sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
03:50You know, I had a really expensive lesson which was my next startup which we could talk about later.
03:55And then, you know, shifted into government contracts which is like, how does this happen?
04:00But, you know, you end up finding yourself in a place where you're like, I'm done with startups.
04:04You know, so you start doing something else and then you learn that that doesn't really fulfill you either.
04:10Which led me to where I met you, actually.
04:12Where I started working in the UN circuit as a, you know, helping out with technology.
04:19And on and on.
04:20And, you know, from there we had the great opportunity to take out everything we've learned and start to move
04:25into education.
04:26And, you know, I built a company in education and a foundation which has had great success.
04:31And, you know, and I would say if I can look back at all of that, your question was, why
04:35did I want to do this?
04:36You know, sometimes as an entrepreneur you don't know.
04:39You start to ask yourself a question, why in the hell am I doing this?
04:42But I think it's because you just have to.
04:45You know, I mean, you're put on the world.
04:47You know, some people, they just, your intuition is to solve problems.
04:52And you have to.
04:54And so you put yourself out there and you keep going and you keep going.
04:57And, you know, they say, you know, the only thing that is unique among all successful people are people who
05:04didn't quit.
05:05And I can definitely say that's true.
05:07Oh, I want to talk about quitting a little bit too.
05:10But before that, you said my most expensive failure was.
05:14And this is how you would start meetings with investors sometimes.
05:17I learned from my most expensive failure.
05:19What was your most expensive failure?
05:21Yeah, you know, it is interesting because that particular startup, you know, I was coming out of a exit.
05:28And so I raised a bunch of money from investors.
05:33And it was a company called Olive.
05:35And, you know, we started by building technology for media companies like, you know, CNN and, you know, NBC News
05:47to essentially manage sentiment for presidential debates, you know, which is the piece of it.
05:55And then we thought we'd shift and do this more broadly.
05:58And it was a fun company.
06:00But the valuable lesson, the expensive lesson, I like to say, is to always try to add value without changing
06:07behavior, if you can.
06:08Because, you know, this particular company, we were building a very exciting tool that would allow for people to manage
06:15their brand assets and distribute them in really exciting new ways.
06:19And, you know, we had good access.
06:20So we would sit down with Major League Baseball and with Disney and with MTV, you know, and with News
06:27Corp and, you know, all of these great brands.
06:29And we'd get all of this kind of lip service, you know, where they'd be like, wow, this is so
06:36good.
06:36Like, this is going to be so great for us.
06:39And they love it and they love it.
06:40But we couldn't really get them to adopt it.
06:42And I learned the reason is because if you come into a situation and you say, I can make your
06:48life 10 times better, but you have to change everything you're doing, right?
06:52To be honest, they're going to listen to you because people want their lives to be 10 times better, right?
06:57But the problem is that depending on the scale that you're trying to enter, it becomes hard.
07:02You know, if you're a small startup and you're agile, it's no problem.
07:05Let's change everything and let's make our lives better.
07:07But if you're dealing with a large behemoth corporation, the adoption costs to change their whole operations and their processes,
07:13it's impossible.
07:14And so no matter how much your inside, you know, champion loves the solution, you're never going to get it
07:21adopted.
07:21And so we learned that if you really want to make change, what you need to do is to be
07:25able to enter existing processes and make them better.
07:29So it's much better to say, I'm going to make your life 10 times better.
07:32And I'm going to do so by allowing you to change almost nothing.
07:35Keep doing what you're doing and we're going to add value.
07:38And, you know, that startup ended up going belly up.
07:40I lost a ton, you know, investors, lost a ton of money and relationships.
07:45And it was incredibly difficult, to be honest.
07:47There was a moment in time where you think, like, I don't know if I should be doing this, you
07:51know.
07:52But the truth is that one idea of adding value without changing behavior became kind of the throughput, kind of
07:59like superpower, which has enabled my success in the next decade, you know.
08:03And you've had huge success.
08:05And the interesting thing about all of this, especially to those of you who are thinking about starting a company
08:11or even applying for a job,
08:14one of the most vexing questions you get in a job interview usually, and we hear this from polling and
08:21from, you know, studies.
08:23People hate to be asked, what was one thing where you learned from your failure?
08:28Because it's really hard to talk about things, you know, that you didn't do well.
08:33And the reason interviewers ask this is because they want to know about your skills.
08:39How did you do when there was adversity?
08:41Did you quit and move on?
08:44So I want to talk a little bit about the quitting part of things.
08:47When you're one of the, it's paradoxical, right?
08:51One of the best things about being an entrepreneur is that you're tenacious.
08:55You're dogged about your approach to solving things.
08:58But on the other end, that tenacity could be a big problem when you don't know when to quit.
09:04So tell me a little bit about how you feel about that.
09:06Yeah, it's an interesting, it's an interesting idea.
09:08Like quitting is a certain word I'm not sure about.
09:11But knowing when to pivot, knowing when to move to the next sector, knowing when to rethink things,
09:17I think, I would say is the only thing you need to understand and truly know as an entrepreneur, right?
09:22Because, you know, they, so there's a term, an art term, I think it's a tabula rasa, right?
09:29This concept that, you know, most great masterpieces that are created, they're not created the first time.
09:34They paint something and they create it.
09:36And it's only after they've kind of processed it and figured it out,
09:40then they cover that whole canvas with white paint and they start over.
09:43And it's then when they create their masterpiece.
09:45And there's something really important about that, right?
09:48Because I think as an entrepreneur with me and my partners,
09:51we've had these moments where you're kind of moving through the process
09:54and you have an idea and you have a vision and you're very stuck on it.
09:57And it's kind of working, it's, or it's working in the time.
10:01And then you reach a point where things are kind of uncertain and you're not sure what to do.
10:04So, you know, the intuition is to double down and to work harder
10:07and to do more of what you know you were supposed to do.
10:10But what we've found is that there's that moment as an entrepreneur
10:13where you have to stop and you have to say,
10:15I'm not afraid to like rethink everything whenever I need to.
10:19I have to be willing to do that.
10:21And I think, you know, when I look back as an entrepreneur,
10:24all of the different moments when there's been kind of a catalytic step function change,
10:30it's usually been in one of these moments when it's like, you know,
10:33we sit down and you talk to your partners and you say,
10:35okay, let's look at everything.
10:38We've got all these trains and they're moving in all these different directions.
10:41Which is the right train?
10:42We don't know where they're going.
10:45And being kind of, I don't know if it's vulnerable.
10:48I don't know if it's bold or brave.
10:50I don't know what the term is, but being kind of present enough to say,
10:54I am okay starting over right now.
10:56And let's take everything we've done.
10:58And, you know, the truth is, is I have found in those moments where we've said,
11:01okay, let's start over.
11:03Starting over seems like a weird word, but it's, but again, this tabula rasa idea,
11:07you're not really starting over.
11:08What you're doing is you, you're taking everything you've learned
11:10and everything you thought you knew a year ago and you're reconfiguring it.
11:14And when you start over in that moment, you'd be surprised.
11:17Because what happens when you allow yourself to erase everything
11:20and you allow yourself to not be kind of held captive by your old ideas,
11:24what you get to do is you get to take everything you've learned
11:27and everything you've experienced and all the new data that you've gathered
11:30and you get to reconfigure it into something that is really, really powerful.
11:33And your, your version two, your V2 idea is usually way better than your first, right?
11:38Because as an entrepreneur, we kind of are, we live in reality bubbles
11:41where we think we know everything and we don't usually, but,
11:44and that's an important superpower because no one would do this
11:47if they actually knew the reality, you know,
11:49you have to get out there and just do it even though you, you know,
11:53so whether or not you're really prepared for it.
11:55But those first ideas that you had were generally all wrong, you know?
11:58And so you have to be able to listen to the data,
12:00you have to be able to iterate, you have to be able to be ready.
12:02And in that moment when you're looking at everything and you say,
12:05maybe it's time for a tabula rasa,
12:07like this is the moment where you can really do great things.
12:11And that's usually where the launch pad starts, you know?
12:14It's like, okay, we've been kind of puttering along,
12:16but in this moment, let's look at everything, let's start over.
12:19And then all of a sudden, what you realize is you have this catalytic moment
12:22or this catalytic moment where you're like,
12:25oh, like everything we were doing was close,
12:28but this tiny bit of new data lets us do it different.
12:30You start over and you rocket ship.
12:32And I've seen this happen at least five times in my life.
12:35And, you know, I love that you say tabula rasa
12:37because that actually what happened with some of the greats out there,
12:41some of the most amazing paintings we know about were painted over.
12:45Like we had masterpieces out there
12:47that were not originally the masterpiece we know now.
12:51And so just knowing that there was a journey behind that,
12:53that there was a reset moment,
12:55that it's okay to do that, right?
12:59I'm going to take you a little bit behind closed doors
13:03to some of the research I was reading recently preparing for our session.
13:06I was looking into what this generated,
13:10there's recent polling and studies about this young generation.
13:16I'm talking about the Gen Zs, but the Gen Alphas of the world.
13:20They believe in perfectionism.
13:23And this study, I'm going to read you a little bit about it.
13:25The big picture is that researchers have this special test
13:28called the multidimensional perfectionism scale.
13:32And that measures perfectionism.
13:34And they say that it's obviously paralyzing to these young people.
13:39They're striving for more perfectionism than any other generation before them.
13:44The stakes for them are much higher.
13:46What do you think about perfectionism in all of this?
13:49Especially your journey in all of this?
13:52You know, it's a tough one because I tend to have that same intuition.
13:57High-performing people do.
13:58You know, I tend, it's really hard to let things go when they're not perfect.
14:01You know, really hard, actually.
14:05And I will say, like, you know, talking about failure,
14:07let's go back to my first company, you know, with Bandfind.
14:10I didn't know, nobody knew what was going on then.
14:12Nobody knew what a tech platform was, you know.
14:15But, you know, it took us about two and a half years to launch that.
14:20We built something for two and a half years.
14:21Like, I think today, and I'm like, how absurd is this, you know?
14:25Like, you know, we, but, you know, at the time, it was harder to build things, too.
14:29I could build the same tech we did then in, you know, like three weeks now, you know.
14:34But the truth be known, it failed because we put too much in it.
14:39You know, we, truth be known, all that it needed to do,
14:42it needed to do one thing and it needed to do it perfect.
14:44It needed, you know, it needed to do it well.
14:48Which is, it needed to allow people to say what they need
14:52and it needed to allow for them to connect with other people who need what they need, you know.
14:56And to build bands.
14:57And what we did, we did that, but we also wanted to be a social network
15:00and we wanted to have messaging and we wanted to have all of these extra features
15:03and we worked for years and years and years on it.
15:05And in truth, when people got there, it worked and they were able to do it.
15:08But it was, it was too much, you know.
15:11And, you know, I found in my life, there is, you know, there's that classic, you know,
15:16you know, perfect is the enemy of good or great.
15:19You know, everybody says it, but there is truth to it, right.
15:21Because, like, failure to launch will get you killed.
15:24And, you know, there are moments where you have to balance, like,
15:28like, what is good enough, right.
15:30But I have found, I mean, this is the classic agile approach,
15:33but, I mean, you know, the truth is, even if you think it's perfect, it's not, you know.
15:37So, this is really where it breaks down.
15:38You know, you think, I can't do this until it's perfect,
15:41but it's never perfect because you don't know anything until you get it out there and you learn.
15:46And the truth is, like, any success that I've had, it's been through iterating,
15:50learning from your users.
15:51I mean, this is a classic.
15:52I'm not the first to say this, obviously.
15:53Everyone who's an entrepreneur should already know this.
15:56And if you don't, you know, learn it today.
15:57But, you know, so build quick, get it out there, learn from users, iterate, make it better.
16:03And you end up becoming perfect by actually filling problems.
16:07And I'd also add this.
16:09I think this idea of being perfect tends to come from people who are trying,
16:13who are really, really obsessed with their idea.
16:17And I think it's way more important to be obsessed with a problem, right.
16:21Because we tend to build a lot of the technologies looking for problems, you know.
16:26And I think that if we can shift that mindset and say,
16:29I'm looking to solve a problem and I want to get something out quickly
16:32so I can learn if it's helping them solve that problem,
16:36then what you do is you learn really quickly and you can iterate quickly.
16:39And perfection really never becomes a part of it anymore.
16:42It's really just about, you know, solving the problem as best you can
16:45and continuing to solve it better and better and better.
16:47Do you think a reason that people strive for this kind of perfectionism,
16:51it's obviously one reason is because they're high performing.
16:54And that's sort of a problem for all high performing people.
16:57But also our heroes out there, they seem kind of infallible.
17:01We see them at the top of their game, right.
17:03We have not seen the zigzagging that it took to get there.
17:09What can be done to kind of shift that mindset to help young people,
17:13especially when you're in the education space now,
17:15you're kind of helping shape young minds, obviously.
17:18How do we inject that productive failure into the way we're learning?
17:22I mean, it's a good question.
17:24I just think we need to know that it's okay to fail.
17:27We need to talk about this more.
17:29You know, I mean, you talked about when I, you know,
17:31we'd be in investor pitches or something.
17:33I always would lead with what I learned from a mistake.
17:36And, you know, it seems a little counterproductive.
17:38Like you don't want to let all these powerful people know that you're flawed.
17:42But I mean, they know you're flawed, they're flawed.
17:45And when you actually just try to be perfect, they actually just sense bullshit.
17:49You know, and there's actually a really good truth to just being authentic
17:53and to learning from your mistakes.
17:54And that's what people want to know.
17:56Investors want to know that, you know, they're going to learn from their mistakes.
17:59They're going to be honest when they make mistakes.
18:01They're not going to try to hide their mistakes.
18:02And that they're going to iterate to success.
18:04And I just think, you know, we need to be teaching the next generation of entrepreneurs
18:08and individuals in general just to be authentic, to be vulnerable and to be real
18:12and to not be afraid to make mistakes because we learn from our mistakes.
18:15This idea of failing upward is really so true.
18:17You know, the truth is, as an entrepreneur early on,
18:20if I hadn't made my big expensive mistake,
18:23which was learn to add value without changing behavior for me personally,
18:25I couldn't have done anything else I did because I built every company,
18:29I built every model, I built every solution on that idea
18:32and it allowed for things to scale and to grow so rapidly
18:35and I would have done it completely different.
18:37So that failure wasn't just a good thing.
18:39It was the most important thing that I could say in my life.
18:42And that's why I lead with it because it really has become a foundation for my future.
18:47So if success is not happening, the next best thing is quitting or failing quickly.
18:55Feeling quickly and, you know, being agile to keep going, you know,
19:01and to build and to learn and to iterate.
19:04I want to thank you.
19:05I always have so much fun talking to you
19:07and it's such a pleasure having this conversation with you in front of everyone.
19:11Thank you for being here today.
19:13Thanks, everyone.
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