Episode 58: Taking Your Ideas to the Next Step with Ron Shigeta

Episode #58

Mike O'Neill: Welcome back to The Get Unstuck & On Target Podcast. I'm Mike O'Neill with Bench Builders and we specialize in helping owners build the teams and the processes that they need to grow their business. Joining me today from Berkeley, California is Dr. Ron Shigeta. Ron advises innovative startups, entrepreneurs, and investors through his advisory accelerator. iAccelerate. Ron is a true serial biotech entrepreneur. And he's a co-founder of Indie Bio. Having made over 85 investments and advise over a hundred startups in food tech and biotech. Now, if that's not enough in his spare time, Ron has also a guest lecture at the Leavey School of Business at Santa Clara University. Welcome Ron. 

Ron Shigeta: Thanks Mike. Great to be here. 

Mike O'Neill: Ron, let me share a little more about you from a background standpoint. And that is in four years, Indie Bio has been one of the most successful accelerators in the world. With a to date, funding rate of 70% for startups. Building a portfolio market cap of greater than $2 billion.

Ron Shigeta: Essentially. It's all, actually right now, it's close to 5 million. 

Mike O'Neill: Wow. Fantastic. All right. So five, it is. Now as the Chief Scientific Officer, Ron helped build companies that have created new consumer trends through biotechnology. Some of the names, which I'm sure will be mentioned in our time together, that you would recognize. Ron did his doctoral training at Princeton University, studying protein structure and biophysics. His postdoctoral training was at Stanford and Harvard Medical School. Where he focused on antibiotic, biosynthesis and diabetes. How did I do, did I get Most of that right. Set for the 5 million? 

Ron Shigeta: Yeah. You know, I, it was pretty good. It makes it sound pretty good. It was a lot of work, but, and I use almost not a bit now, but I, that's all very accurate.

Mike O'Neill: 5 billion, a staggering number. I had, I had 2 billion. So that gives you an idea of you got to go update. 

Ron Shigeta: Yeah, I better update my notes there. I mean, just this last summer, one of the companies, the not company actually announced the market cap of 1.5 billion just by itself. So, we it's, it's moving rapidly every few months. There's another announcement. I got to tweak it up. 

Mike O'Neill: Ron. I'd love to unpack a number of things with you is, you know, our listeners typically are decision-makers. Bench Builders as a company, we target decision-makers oftentimes business owners. And a lot of times these business owners are entrepreneurs. And that is one reason I wanted to speak to you particularly. And that is not only are you a serial entrepreneur, but you helped start not dozens, but a hundred plus businesses. When you were in school and you went on to get your PhD, did you ever envision that, is this what you wanted to be doing with that academic background?

Ron Shigeta: No, I thought I was going to be a professor. But I think that, but you know, there's part of me that always grew up sort of reading about Silicon valley and really excited about everything that's happening here. And when I started looking at the alternatives I had I realized I wanted to come back to San Francisco and try to get back into that. Unfortunately, you know, my training in biotech, you know, open doors sort of start this biotech startup movement. And the opportunity that my training actually dovetailed with an opportunity and you just have to be looking for those opportunities. You know, I didn't plan on it, but, even, even if you're just sort of getting into this now you just have to sort of look, look at what you are and what you've done, and you will find something I'm pretty sure. If you've been active through your life, there's something that you can do to create an innovative business. 

Mike O'Neill: Ron, I've been around academics and I've been around entrepreneurs. I've not been around a lot of people who are able to bridge the two. What makes you a good bridge? 

Ron Shigeta: You know, I think, I, I. A really great trait I think for entrepreneurs is the ability to step outside of your world. I think that, you know, when you're in academia and in that culture, it's very difficult to imagine yourself outward outside of that culture. It's like leaving your home, your church or your family, or, you know, any other organization you've grown up with your tied to. It's your, it's your tribe? It's your people and, and leaving that is sort of like giving up all your status. And a lot of it's very complicated. It's a little painful and it taxes the imagination. But fortunately, I, you know, I kind of felt like, oh, this is this market's very crowded. I just don't know you know, I don't, I don't see a great future for myself there. And so I just kind of had to become a refugee in a way. And that experience is stepping outside your world. Sort of helped me become a person takes initiative, and I recommend in smaller steps. I recommend that to almost anybody it's helpful for almost anything in your life.

Mike O'Neill: You know, you mentioned you had to find your tribe. Did that come quick or did your tribe, and has your tribe evolved over time? 

Ron Shigeta: It's it's still evolving. I would say that, you know, Once you sort of step outside into doing something for your self and everybody's, it's, it's very loose association, right? You know, people have a lot of things. Everybody else has a lot of things they need to do. Entrepreneurs are often sort of bailing water and patching holes in the hull and, they get busy, they disappear. So it's not a real tight knit group sometimes. Sometimes you have a few good friends, but it's great to be in touch with people and learn from them. But you have to, I think it's helpful that the tolerance for that kind of, that kind of relationship with people, you know, I think, if, if you're in real, a tight knit sort of social circles, you can get used to seeing somebody every day or every few days, and it's very comforting. But if you learn to sort of sit there and listen to yourself and sort of take, take action just based on what's happening, things are happening very quickly and you react to it. Those are, those are relatively useful skills for, you know, building a business and it's something more substantial. 

Mike O'Neill: I know speed is very important in the kind of work that you do. And, I want to make sure I'm using the proper terminology, but there's a lot of legwork that goes into starting a business, but there is also a kind of an emphasis on let's do it right, let's do it quickly. And speak to that. How do you find that balance? 

Ron Shigeta: A lot of cases is not do it right or do it quickly. Just do it quickly. Ah, I mean, I obviously you have to be competent, but I think that, you look, I mean, it's important always to sort of sit down and say, what do I have? What are my real advantages? What am I assets, what I have going for me? Sometimes you're starting a little business and you kind of understand the business very well and things aren't moving so fast. You can take more time. But generally, speed is basically the only advantage you have as a small startup. If you're working with the venture capital backed startup, you have a very limited amount of money. It may seem like a lot of money, but it goes quickly and you have to get something done before the money runs out so that you may have more money or you get to revenue and, and you're independent. But I think anybody, even if you're just like opening up a little dry cleaning outfit or any kind of business. You do want to get to understand your customers or your revenue or your business plan. You want to test it pretty quickly. You don't want to be waiting around on that. So that's, that's really the whole logic between this move fast and break things kind of attitude that people hear about it really is that if you spend time polishing something and thinking about it and writing a business plan, that's yea thick. You're going to have a, you're going to be forgetting things. There's things about your business that you won't have understood because business is essentially empirical. It comes from practice. So if you, if you have an idea, it's good just to test it. And then, and then when you find out you made a mistake, you don't have to rewrite like a 50 page business plan. I know their business plans are necessary in some cases, but, I have, I don't think I've ever actually worked with a business plan. 

Mike O'Neill: Really? 

Ron Shigeta: Yeah. I don't think I've seen people write. But by and large, it doesn't seem to correlate with, success. It's good to certain pieces are very important to have, like you, maybe you want to have a spreadsheet that talks about, let's say you were going, I don't know what kind of business let's, let's go back to the dry cleaning store. You know, you kind of want to sort of like double check. Hey, this location, I found a location. It's not too expensive. I've worked out my expenses and my overhead. And, I, I reckon I'll get this many customers and I'm going to charge them this much and I can be profitable. Like that's, but that is kind of an afternoon exercise. It could be a week long exercise to get that together in first draft, you know, you do you want to find some homework and find a location. But these are not things that are going to take months. They don't need a lot of analysis. You'll find that you make various assumptions and then you made mistakes. And you're going to have to correct your plant. So it should be a fairly simple plan so that you kind of know where your assumptions went awry for a fairly simple business. But most startups start with a fairly simple idea. One idea is better than several ideas and, and, and you just want to test whether it holds any water, because all too often, it doesn't, I would say, I don't know well, over half the business plans, I, encounter people, people email me or they contact, they send in a, fill out the contact form on the website or in the old days, I would be, you know, looking at companies for work at Indie Bio. You know, most of them just simply wouldn't be viable. I mean, not even, not with even $10 million, you just couldn't make that company profitable. And so. You know, you don't want to spend a lot of time guessing on that. It it's just, you, you need to go out there and get some new experience, some new information, and then you look at your plan, you tear it up, you write it again. 

Mike O'Neill: I know we haven't talked about the area that you tend to focus on, but let's continue this, this kind of thought process regarding entrepreneurship. You described that the nature of the relationships is you have to get in, get something done, but there may not necessarily be long-term relationships. When you're trying to assess someone's coming to you with a plan and you're assessing the plan. Are you also assessing them as an entrepreneur? 

Ron Shigeta: Yeah. You have to access actually that's also another sort of famous Silicon valley sort of startup. But, you know what I mean when you're, when you're looking for your money and you're just starting out, you may have an idea that's worth a lot of money and maybe it may be successful. It might be a YouTube or a Facebook it's possibly that, but at the moment you're pitching it it's basically you. And, people are looking really hard to see if you're the kind of person who can get that done. Because you can have, you can have a Tesla on paper there. But if you can't actually get it done, like Elon Musk, there's a good chance that the investment will just simply fail. And so you should never forget that that you're one of the most important asset. You're the only asset the company has when you start out and you need to make sure that you understand that that's valuable. And since it's you, you can actually increase your value by understanding and being aware of how important you are to your idea. I was just saying as far as the conversation goes, yeah, I'm looking at people, I'm looking at people. I I'm, I'm what I do is I think my special powers I'll listen to ideas and I'll listen to people and I will actually make bets on people. After working with me for six months or so, like I will invest in some, I will, I will bring someone in if I feel that they're close enough, that I can get them over. So, that, that sort of enlarges my ability to sort of bring in innovative companies and people. But if you're talking to me or anybody else, you want to be the kind of person who can turn into someone successful, who's open to influence, and everybody's afraid that they're going to get ripped off or that theres problems that they can't trust this person. If you're in that, if you're feeling like that and you don't really, you're trying to sort of keep this relationship at the maximum distance, then, you know, put it off and, and think about it and then come back when you're ready to engage. Because as a first time conversation, you know, you just got to understand what other people are seeing and it's best if you can accommodate that. That works really well for you. With all discussions. 

Mike O'Neill: You are an entrepreneur who is investing in entrepreneurs and you made a comment a moment ago. I want to make sure I heard correctly. You may be working with them for six months, but you're looking for something that you can, I think you said, I forget the exact word you use, but take them over something to that effect. Is that a critical point that you finding that it goes haywire? 

Ron Shigeta: Well, yeah, the, the first, the first, you know, a couple of years of a company's life is it's a big transition. You basically started off as a student, or maybe you've had run your work for other people, you know, and you, have a strong set of experience, but this is a new experience. So getting them over the hump, there is that transition to becoming an independent person who can run the company themselves, who has enough experience and sort of, enough animal instinct, that they can, they can go through negotiations they can understand where to take the company if they need to move it. And, just basically be ready for all of the crazy things that are going to happen to you or as you try to sort of grow something that hasn't ever existed before. And, that's mostly what I do. And I say, when I say six months, what I mean is we want you to be, I'd like you to be in shape, within six months to get funding get started. You might just have an idea that's written on paper. But I want, I, I mean, the goal would be to get you moving and going by six months. But actually I work with companies for two years. I will, people have access to me through iAccelerate for two years because that's just the beginning of the story. It just keeps going on and on. And, you know, I have, you know, all the experience can come in handy. 

Mike O'Neill: You have found a way to marry your academic background, which may very well have been a passion with a passion for helping others build business. And in the process, you're building your own business. We've been talking about entrepreneurialship, we're speaking to you, and you're kind of in the seat of entrepreneurship. Many of our listeners are not, in Silicon valley, they're spread across the country or kind of the world. As you've stepped back and you're, you're speaking to entrepreneurs. I know that you lecture at the collegiate level. If we've got folks listening now who see themselves as a budding entrepreneur, or they've got an idea, What are the things that you're doing to try to encourage? How, what things might you suggest that would say let's take this idea to the next step.

Ron Shigeta: I think one of the things is that, first of all, the, one of the good things that happened because of COVID is that you don't have to be living in the bay area to get entrepreneurship. Like the bay area is definitely, always been an epicenter. I still believe half of all the venture capital funding deals happen in the bay area still. However people are operating from home now. And I work with companies out of the 15 companies I work with two of them are in the bay area. This company is in Singapore, Europe. I've been Bike Ninjas in Tennessee, you know, Wisconsin, New York. So, that's one development is you don't have to be, you don't have to be here. It can be helpful to be here, but, it's not a problem if you're sitting in Boston, like one of the companies I work with. They're, you know, they're, they're doing just fine, but what they, one thing I can help with is sort of being in touch with the tempo and the pace of the bay area. You know, it is very easy to sit at home and run at the pace I used to grow. I grew up in Columbus, Ohio, so I like, it's easy to run at the pace of Columbus, Ohio. You can get, you can sort of lose your way if you sort of, sort of pick up your rhythm and your tempo from people around you. So it's good to have an external influence to come in and sort of keep that drum beat going. That's one of the things that I've found helpful. Don't yeah, don't take those cues from just whoever, like you have to kind of set that pace yourself and then, and then hold yourself to it. That that'll really help you get going. 

Mike O'Neill: How do you personally. Keep that drum beat going at the pace that it needs to be?

Ron Shigeta: You know, my days of the accelerator we used, we would meet with the companies at Indie Bio we'd meet the companies every week. And that would really, you know, that and being around the other companies, that was very helpful. One of the nice things about being in an accelerated cohort is that you see a lot of other people who you feel are peers. And then you see some of them start to move ahead and you think, well, if they can do it, I can do it. And so that regular contact is one of the vital things about what that I like to do. And, one of the things I decided I really want to do is I don't actually have a beginning and ending date that's very short. Accelerator programs are usually three or four months. I will meet with the company weekly for two years if they need to, if they need it, you know, if you don't need it and you know, we, we can make it bi-weekly or, or turn it down, but I'm always on call. So there's this feeling that, you know, I'm just a phone call away. That's that's been helpful. I think for the companies I've been working with since Indie Bio. 

Mike O'Neill: If you're just a phone call way, how do you avoid all of your investment folks all calling simultaneously and just out, just wearing Ron out?. 

Ron Shigeta: Yeah, my secret power though is I I'm not, so this is a, this is an interesting, when we were shopping for an advisor, everybody needs advisors and usually you need more than one. I think that there's, there's a couple of ways that can go in this regard. You know, I think a lot of advisors they have, they have a sort of limited amount of things that are going to help you with and they can be, those can be key and very important. Those are great people to have, but you start to understand how deep that relationship is and where that relationship is going to be helping you. And, they may, it's possible that they will only have like three months worth of help to give you, or that you don't need their advice very often. And so sometimes if someone's got kind of a light advisory relationship, they'll tend to stretch it out. And just give you a little bit, a little crumb, and then you've got to come back in a couple weeks, get another crumb, and then you'll have a sandwich and three or four months. I'm a very broad adviser because of my experience. I think it came from, at Indie Bio, the team, basically it was our first accelerator build. We were, it was, for me, it was the first few months as an investor. And I left my job I couldn't go. Which is burning that bridge is a great way to give yourself motivation. And so we basically, we're looking at these and the companies come in, they were as raw as we were. They were just as wide-eyed as anybody you can imagine. And, I'd look at them like, and you can just see, like, they need a lot of things. And so what we do is, we would try to go out and find resources to deal with any problem they had. And so after spending four years just scouring the globe, looking for help for everything and learning about people's sort of shortcomings or the typical place where people get stuck. I, you know, we, we would intervene for almost any situation if we could, and sometimes we do it better than others, but, you know, I, that's why I want to talk to people every week. There's always something new to talk about. There's always another problem that seems so strange it's outside their experience. And so I don't, I don't have to do this little handing crumbs across, like we hit something pretty hard and then something else comes along. So that's the kind of relationship I like to have. And that's kind of my specialty, which is kind of everything. I'm not super good at, at absolutely everything, but for the typical, biotech tech-related startup for. Yeah, I'm pretty, I've got a pretty good depth. 

Mike O'Neill: You mentioned the word stuck just a moment ago. And in keeping with the podcast theme, can you reflect on, and you don't have to mention the company by name or the person by name, and it may be something that applies to you, but can you share an example where either you or a client got stuck. And what did you have to do to get unstuck? 

Ron Shigeta: You one of the most typical, I mean, I have this problem too, and it's very common problem. There's this point where you're developing something and you're ready to ship it out and you need to test it. And then there's this feeling of dread that overcomes you. And you just kind of don't want to do anything because. It's, one of these existential moments, you know, you've, you've been working hard on this idea. It is the central idea. This is what you came for and you're actually ready to try it. And part of you knows like if this doesn't work, then I'm not sure what I'll do. And you know, that's that can, that can hold people up for months and just kind of have to be ready to, to push it out. You know, you want to go over everything one more time and look at all the details. But at that point, the main work's done and you just sort of have to say, I'm ready to find out. And it's usually not as bad as that. Something, sometimes things go wrong and you just have to fix things. But the company can pivot at that point. Your whole idea, your main idea can be thrown out. You may have to think of another one, but it, you know, you tackle that's what fail fast is it's basically just keep pushing those, pushing those things out, and, understanding that you can probably overcome the worst possible result, from those kinds of tests and you can still survive it. That's a great skill to learn. And so that transition, that's another level up that, that entrepreneurs have, when they go through, you know, when they go through startup experience, that's why serial entrepreneurs that's one thing they do sharing. 

Mike O'Neill: So, let me see if I heard this correct, Ron. And what you're saying is that there is a process to get ready, but it comes to a point where you basically have to kind of jump off the cliff if that's the right term. And what I'm hearing you say is you will help them prepare to take flight. But there, this is a common point that entrepreneurs sometimes kind of feel as if that they can't make that. And you are, it sounds like it's almost a paternal or maternal sense in that is you kind of help, help push them off, assuring them. They have what it's going to take to take flight. Am I hearing that correctly? 

Ron Shigeta: I think so. I want to tell you a little story actually about how I got started, how I prepared myself for this career. So this is a good one for the podcast, right? So, how I, how I became, an entrepreneur and advisor and investor. I, when I was in my job, I was a staff scientist at a biotech company here. And I really, part of me knew I had to get out and I had no idea what it was going to do. And I just, but by coincidence, you know, Netflix started streaming and I started watching, kitchen nightmares. And it's a, you know, it's, that's actually kind of what I do. You know, like Gordon Ramsey walked into a restaurant every week. It's failing and he's got like three days to turn it around. You know, I don't, I it's not, his techniques are not mine, my techniques, but I found it fascinating. I don't watch it anymore because after seeing seen two seasons, you see a pattern, right. For three seasons, maybe you watch all of it, but at some point you realize there's a pattern. 99% of the time. I can't think of, I have a hard time thinking of a time when the restaurant's not, they're all failing. Right, Mike. I mean, nobody calls a Gordon Ramsey to come in and mess thing up. Without complete crisis. Right? So almost all the time it's because of people problems. 

Mike O'Neill: Yep. 

Ron Shigeta: I mean, the restaurants always have, you know, they're always capable of getting enough customers to be viable. And that was, that was a profound, profound lesson for me because I, and that's another sort of special thing I do is I, I understand that the people problems, people's internal motivations, their psychology, their fears, their maturity, those that's primarily the problem that you need to solve. Now, I have a lot of technical abilities and resources and things like that. And I can do a lot of referrals, as well as a strong bench of advisors and this kind of thing. But most of the time I spent is just sort of getting people I mean, like if you were a student, and you have this great idea and you want to build a company and be a venture capital funded company. If the company's not going to be worth at least $500 million in market cap an investors not going to look at it, there's various economics, there's actually spreadsheet you can do a spreadsheet. You can see why like, oh, even you wouldn't do that. If it was just going to be a $50 million company. So, You have to get you you're coming from a place and you're going to end up running a billion dollar company. And there's a lot of personal growth. There's a lot of new things to get ready to do. And, and, and that's really the hardest problem actually. If someone has no technology or they really don't have a valuable business plan, well, I can't work with that after and most neither can anybody else. But once you have that idea, there's this whole nother level of problems to solve and it's all about you.

Mike O'Neill: Well, what you just said is affirming. As you know, I have a background in HR. I got into HR after getting an undergraduate degree in psychology. But inevitably when I went in and started Bench Builders, what I'm finding is you're talking about that recurring theme. It seems as if any organization in any industry, if you ask the owners, what do they struggle with most. It is those people problems. So that is the kind of the niche that we kind of focus on. And it's nice to hear you from your perspective, have concluded, the same. 

Ron Shigeta: Mike I'm gonna interview you, like give me an example of a common people problem you see. 

Mike O'Neill: I think we're recording this in early October. And so we're what, 19 - 20 months into COVID in how companies have struggled. We hear about this war for talent. And what I hear oftentimes in the quote war for talents, we can't find people. Well, everybody has that issue that I guess if I had to summarize what people problem most needs to be solved, it's not finding people, it's keeping the good people you got. So what we tend to focus on is helping the business owners, the business leaders do the things you gotta do to make sure that the employees know that they are valued, that they are treated with respect. They're able to do the things that they do best. And those types of things oftentimes are sometimes described as soft skills. Yeah. But I find that soft skill. It's hard. 

Ron Shigeta: I call that the culture problem, partly because the companies have no culture when I'm working with them. They have to sort of build this environment that the employees and the people they work with can understand and appreciate and enjoy. But yeah retention or even just like, yeah, well they haven't, they haven't even met anybody. They got to bring people on much. Let's keep them. But yeah, it's a big deal. And a lot of people, a lot of people think that culture is, they think it's just natural. You it's like, we're just doing things the way we do things. Like that's, that's really a horrible way to do things isn't it? 

Mike O'Neill: It is. Could you imagine, as you're completing your PhD from Princeton, that you'd be on a podcast talking about the importance of culture. But you're right. Culture can't just happen. It has to be built. Ron , as you kind of think about our conversation thus far, if you were to kind of look back on the things that you've shared, what might be takeaways you want to make sure that our listeners have?

Ron Shigeta: I think it is important to recognize that you need a little bit of help, and to build a vision for what, not just what you're going to do and what you want right now. But to understand the things that you're going to need further out. And that things are going to go quickly. If things go well, and you have to, you have to be sort of accumulating the help that you need in six months or a year now. Because that, that six months is gonna be gone in a shot. And, so that kind of emotional preparation and remember that, like why you're working daily on your laptop coding something up, and, and life is just running at you very fiercely that you need to spend a few minutes every day, just sort of looking up, getting the broad picture and saying, where are we going to, where are we going to have to go next? Because otherwise it'll just catch you by surprise. 

Mike O'Neill: Ron, you have a gift to explain things that are difficult to explain. I want to thank you for your willingness to share that gift with our listeners. If we have listeners who would like to reach out to even connect online, what's the best way for them to do that? 

Ron Shigeta: Yeah, you can read about, iAccelerate at my website. iaccelerate.tech. I think it'll be down here in the description somewhere as well. And I'll look or on LinkedIn, you can reach out to me and, love to hear you're your idea.

Mike O'Neill: We will include, not only that link, we'll include a link to your LinkedIn profile you and I are now, a new connections. You are probably my newest connection. And I'm looking forward to, to continue to learn from you through that connection. I've learned a lot just spending time with you, and recording this podcast.

Ron Shigeta: This was great. Enjoyed meeting you. 

Mike O'Neill: Also want to thank our listeners for joining us today. Every Thursday we upload the latest episode to all the major platforms. So if you haven't already please subscribe. But if you're an entrepreneur with big dreams, but you're tired of letting your business keep you up at night, it's time to take action. Head to bench-builders.com to schedule a quick call, to see if our growth coaching program can help. So I want to thank you for joining us, and I hope you've picked up on some tips from Ron that will help you Get Unstuck & On Target. Until next.