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Episode Description
In this episode of Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) Live, hosts Ilya Tabakh and Terrance Orr introduce themselves and the podcast's mission. They discuss the origin story of their collaboration and the goals they aim to achieve through this series. Ilya and Terrance explore the roles and definitions of Entrepreneurs in Residence, sharing personal journeys and insights from their diverse backgrounds. This episode sets the stage for future discussions, aiming to connect EIRs globally and provide valuable content for current and aspiring EIRs.
Key Points From This Episode:
- Discussion on the origin story of the podcast.
- Explanation of the term "Entrepreneur in Residence" and its variations.
- The role of an EIR in different contexts: corporate, academic, nonprofit, and more.
- Importance of connecting EIRs globally and building a community.
- The impact of EIRs on organizations and the value they bring.
- Goals and future plans for the podcast, including audience engagement and content delivery.
- Personal stories and experiences from Ilya and Terrence's careers as EIRs.
Links
- (00:00) - Introduction to EIR Live
- (03:19) - EIRs as Translators and Diverse Perspectives
- (07:43) - Terrance Orr Backgroud
- (14:13) - Ilya Tabakh Background
- (24:44) - Types of EIRs
- (27:31) - Transforming Hearts and Minds: Changing Organizational Culture
- (32:52) - EIR Live: The Podcast for EIRs and Aspiring EIRs
- (43:19) - Actionable Advice and Inspiration for EIRs
Creators & Guests
What is EIR Live?
EIR Live brings you invaluable lessons straight from Entrepreneurs in Residence (EIRs) who have been in the trenches. Hosted by seasoned EIRs Terrance Orr and Ilya Tabakh, each episode offers actionable insights and real-world strategies as guests share their personal journeys, successes, and hard-earned lessons. Whether you're an aspiring entrepreneur in residence, venture builder, or innovation leader, you'll gain practical knowledge from those actively shaping industries. Tune in to learn directly from the experts and empower your own entrepreneurial journey.
Welcome to EIR Live, the podcast where the entrepreneurial spirit shines through stories and insights from entrepreneurs in residence from across the ecosystem. I'm your host, Lili Tabak, joined by my co host, Terence Moore. Each episode, we dive into the unique journeys of innovators and disruptors, from the first sparks of inspiration to the challenges and triumphs along the way. This podcast is for the self starters, for venture creators, for the translators who can connect the dots. Whether you're aspiring to be an EIR, have been in the game for a while, or work with an EIR, EIR Live offers you a front row seat to the highs and lows of the innovation journey.
Ilya Tabakh:Our conversations are filled with actionable advice, deep dives into stories of EIRs that are redefining the role, and live q and a sessions, all designed to engage, inform, and inspire. Tune in, join the conversation, and let's explore what it takes to turn ideas into reality, and connect your expertise to accelerate organizations who aspire to build the future. Welcome to EIR Live, where entrepreneurs speak, we listen, and communities grow. Alright. So I'm I'm super excited to to be here with you, Terrence, because, this has been sort of coming for a while.
Ilya Tabakh:But what's exciting, is, you know, in in this first episode or episode 0 as we're calling it, it it's really interesting for me to to talk about how we got here. You know? And and for the reason that 2 of us are are on the screen here today was, I've been reaching out to EIRs. You know, what's crazy is for years now, I've been I've been talking to some folks recently, and I sort of retell the story. And I'm like, you know, I started at, like, the end of 2020, early 2021.
Ilya Tabakh:And and then I, like, stopped for a second. I'm like, man. It's 2024. I'm like, that's it's it's been years since I've been talking to people. And and what's funny is, normally, when I talk to people, I'm one of the first EIRs that they talk to.
Ilya Tabakh:You know, a a a common reaction is like, oh, man. That's awesome. I've you know, I wanted to see what other people are doing, but I just I've never I've, you know, I wanted to see what other people are doing, but I just I've never reached out. Or or, you know, they're like, hey. I have an awesome group of EIRs in my company.
Ilya Tabakh:We're pretty close. Or, you know, we're we have a great, group of EIRs at the university and really good exchange, but people don't really reach out beyond sort of that, kind of gate, that fence for whatever reason. You know? And and what's what's great is you actually reached out to me. That's right.
Ilya Tabakh:You know? And through some kind of force in the universe, I get this, you know, awesome message that popped up in my inbox. And you're like, hey, man. You're doing some cool things. I love the EIR thing.
Ilya Tabakh:Let's talk. And I'm like, man. That has not happened to me.
Terrance Orr:That's right.
Ilya Tabakh:That's right. That that's like a a a super meta game. So it's super awesome that, you know, we were able to connect. And then, you know, also just, in that conversation, kind of our original conversations, we were both pretty pretty excited about, you know, that kind of connecting the network and and and building those bridges. And so I think that's a pretty cool, origin story for, you know, kind of a conversation or a a set of conversations.
Ilya Tabakh:So you know? And and as we were kicking around, you know, and ultimately decided to do a podcast, we decided to call we decided to call it EIR live. What's your take on that? Why why do you think that's a good kinda name for for what we're going for here?
Terrance Orr:I mean, honestly, you know, EIRs, we sort of, we live in that moment, right? We get things done sort of on the fly and I think having a dialogue and a conversation with EIRs live, right, I think sort of was a natural step for the name to get here and because we plan on hosting these conversations to share insights with people from different walls of life, from different residents, which Ilya will talk about later on, in different actual aspects of how do you actually do this? And talking about it live, there's a live aspect to this versus just a recorded aspect of it. You know, to like most other podcasts is we want to engage our audience and the people who are gonna be engaging with the podcast. So, you know, that's what I believe, you know.
Terrance Orr:Do you have another definition?
Ilya Tabakh:No, I think that's great. I think the, I like the live part because I really do want it to be more interactive. And in a lot of these conversations with EIRs, they're really excited about kinda connecting with other folks. I'm hoping that part of the live piece can be, you know, kind of including that audience, really having them be part of the conversation before the show. And I think over time, we'll we'll evolve it, and we can build some mechanisms into where, they can be, involved during, potentially, the recording of the show.
Ilya Tabakh:But definitely, after we do the episode, also kind of join, on a live session, afterwards. And so we have we have some ideas today on how to make it live, but what's cool is I think we can kinda continue to extend and and then think about how else we can add to that live experience. And so we have some ideas, but I'm excited to you know, part of the interesting thing about a conversation is people get to sort of add and contribute to that. So I'm excited to see how it develops over time.
Terrance Orr:Absolutely.
Ilya Tabakh:And I think, you know, it it sort of builds a little bit on the goals of the podcast as well. I I think part of it, you know, even in the name, it's kinda connecting people and creating a forum, a platform, a live conversation. What are some of the other goals you're thinking about kind of or hoping that we'll be able to achieve in some of these conversations?
Terrance Orr:You know, me, for me, it's all about ecosystem building. Right? How do you add value to a ecosystem of EIRs who probably do not know each other today, but who need to know each other, who are experiencing a problem that another EIR is sort of experiencing right now, but they haven't encountered yet. How do you avoid those land mines? I'm hoping that when we build this ecosystem of EIR led companies or ventures or the things that they're working on in their residence, that people have a community now, that they can go to that in my mind doesn't exist today in a tangible way.
Ilya Tabakh:Yeah. That that's awesome. For me, I think as we've been kinda preparing for some of the episodes, I think really the getting in the weeds with the folks that were there and and really capturing their insights
Terrance Orr:and Right.
Ilya Tabakh:Maybe even capturing a little bit of the background and kind of what were they thinking, what were they feeling. You know? A lot of these things are pretty transferable. In some ways, talking to other EIRs is almost like a counseling session. It should be done.
Ilya Tabakh:The experiences are very similar. They can kinda relate to similar stories, some of the struggles, things like that. So I think for me, that's kind of, at least off the bat, the exciting part, you know, connecting with folks that are doing it, in some cases, that maybe have expanded the role, and and really capturing that.
Terrance Orr:That's right. Yeah.
Ilya Tabakh:And, you know, a a lot of other kinda things as well. I think, one of the fun things that I've I've been asking recently, and it was kinda Terrence's idea, but asking EIRs kinda what's their dream EIR role. Right? Right. As as we've been kinda continuing to to dialogue on this topic, it's sort of expanded my thinking a little bit, and and also talking to other people, just seeing what they get excited about.
Ilya Tabakh:And so this idea of of kinda manifesting, helping folks find the places that they wanna end up, you know, having a career as an EIR isn't necessarily a thing for everybody, but there's definitely folks that have had, you know, multiple, and and continue to have EIR roles. You know, Terrence is one of them. And so maybe it's it's helpful to to jump into your background, Terrence, and and and really dig in Absolutely. And give folks a little bit of an idea why you're so excited about this topic.
Terrance Orr:I'm really excited about this topic and I think very few people that you meet in the world, like the origin story that Ilya shared earlier, have the same passion about this topic as me because I think like most EIRs in the world when they first got their first opportunity, they had no clue what the role was or they never even heard of the thing. Right, and they had to go figure out what is an EIR. They started going to their good friend Google, right, to figure out what is this role and this mysterious title, right? But my background didn't start in this place. It started in the world of corporate America, working for a company called EMC, had a few roles before that, but at the formative part of my career, I worked for a data storage IT infrastructure company called EMC where we built data storage products and solutions.
Terrance Orr:But not just data storage products and solutions, right? You know, obviously software security services, things that actually make those solutions function, in the marketplace. And usually when people refer to the cloud, technically it's gonna end up on some piece of hardware somewhere, in somebody's data center. And for me before I started working in that field, I actually wasn't that experienced in that space. Right.
Terrance Orr:But that's sort of where I cut my teeth and got my background and my infrastructure to what I do today, working at that company. And I've done everything in that company from product to business development, to strategy and ops, to building new ventures all the way up until the company got acquired by Dell and now the 2nd largest acquisition in technology history for 67,000,000,000. I think the largest one today is now Activation Blizzard, I believe, and another transaction that went through. So I went through that whole sort of transition and became a part of Dell EMC, the new combined entity. And in that capacity, I was doing strategy and new ventures, and helping take new programs and projects and initiatives from 0 to 1, bringing these 2 massive companies together.
Terrance Orr:And that was super interesting work for me, but it's what sparked that alongside a few other things, sparked my interest in the world of entrepreneurship, startups and venture capital. And that interest sort of led me to leave the company, not long after, maybe a year or 2 later to go on to study law of all things because I had a background in business, had a background in information systems and this legal piece will help round out my background in a 360 point of view. But I wanted to not go to law school to become a lawyer, right? Or to practice law per se. I actually wanted to be an investor.
Terrance Orr:So long story short, I went off to law school, I studied venture capital law and entrepreneurship, a program designed specifically for STEM professionals. I had the privilege to get into Northwestern law school. So I moved to Chicago and really from that point on, I started to cut my teeth in the world of entrepreneurship, started mentoring founders at some of the world's largest and most renowned accelerators and incubator programs. I was trying my hand in my first startup, which failed by the way, which is focused on DVT, deep vein thrombosis, which is essentially blood clocks, right? There's really no effective way for physicians to monitor their patients post care, in real time, for those who have DVT, right?
Terrance Orr:And trying to find a solution to how do you actually do that? We learned a lot along the way, failed miserably, but that's okay because one of the things that you'll see as a thread in a lot of EIRs that we've done a lot of different things and we've failed a lot, but we've also had a lot of successes along the way. And over time you build a skill of taking things from 0 to 1 in a very effective way. And doing those things sort of after those failures landed an opportunity at Techstars, helping a portfolio of 10 startups do business development and growth. Shout out to my good friend, Neil Sales, who took a shout on me at the time and saw something in me and the potential.
Terrance Orr:There's also a piece of that that mounts back to the role of the EIR, but I left Techstars and started to work for a family office to start up studio of an NBA player. Started to cut my teeth in the world of sports tech, and gaming and e sports and other things that surrounded that ecosystem. While I was doing the opportunity at Techstars, I started to start my second venture focused on the world of supply chain and logistics. And that's what ended up getting me folded into SAP and me landing my first mysterious role as an entrepreneur in residence, right? But I had to give you that long winding path to sort of how did I get the opportunity?
Terrance Orr:Because it was a mix of, you know, working as an accelerator, having a few failures, going out in the ecosystem, having some experience already in infrastructure under me, right? From my previous corporate career that led me to my first opportunity in Silicon Valley to be an EIR for SAP, in a multi $1,000,000,000 software company in their studio called sap. Io. And in that studio, I was responsible for incubating solutions, enterprise software, pains and solutions, from SAP. I went out to my next EIR role, which is at a company called Mach 49, which is a venture builder that partners with the world's largest corporations to spin out new venture capital firms and new ventures from scratch.
Terrance Orr:And I became a EIR there, partnering with our corporate partners to help them build new ventures in construction and healthcare, in food ingredients, a lot of different things under the spectrum. But my role at Mach 49 was very different from my role, at SAP. Then I went on to do some more work supporting a growth stage company as an entrepreneur in residence. So I've done this call one day. So I've done this so many different times, as an entrepreneur in residence and every single time my residence was different and the work that I did was different.
Terrance Orr:So I won't bore the audience, but that's my background journey to being a EIR and along the way I became a venture partner, a scout, an advisor to multiple venture capital firms and startup studios. But I wanna pass it back to Ilya to talk about his background because he's equally as impressive, in in this space. So Ilya, talk to the people.
Ilya Tabakh:Yeah. No. Absolutely. And before I jump into that, you know, I I believe EIRs really are translators. And and what's cool is, you know, every time we talk about backgrounds, there's always, like, a a new layer to the onion.
Ilya Tabakh:Right? But but I think it's really important to sorta have a a collection of languages. Right? Because if you're gonna translate, it's not just the words. It's kinda the cultural understanding, you know, sort of the expectations in the market.
Ilya Tabakh:And as you were sort of walking through your background, first of all, kinda funny because there there's a couple more similarities I picked up on this time than last time, and I'm sure next time we'll talk about it same. But the other thing, you know, that kinda struck me was the operations background, the business, the legal, the building piece. There's a lot of kinda complementary, but also different perspectives there. And and I think to your point about it's important to to fail, and you learn a lot through that. I think it's also important to sort of have the the the viewpoint and and be able to bring a little bit of that perspective
Terrance Orr:Absolutely.
Ilya Tabakh:From all these disparate markets, roles, things like that. I think that really kinda steps you up. And, you know, it's funny because because in my background, there there's a lot of that too.
Terrance Orr:Right.
Ilya Tabakh:And so when you look at I I, just like most of the rest of the EIRs, that I talk to, think I'm a little weird. Right? A lot of those conversations start with, I'm probably different than the other EIRs you talk to, but right? And so, I I've sort of embraced that, having a nontraditional weird, you know, maybe not not clear line career path is is actually a feature, not a bug. And so for me for me, that's kinda how it's turned out.
Ilya Tabakh:You know? The the I'm, right now, pretty much on the 3rd chapter of my professional career. The first chapter was mostly academic and research. So I was, got a couple degrees in computer engineering and was working on my PhD in environmental engineering, at the University of Kansas when I got a pretty awesome opportunity to help, stand up a university wide transportation research institute. And what was amazing about that is, the gentleman that came in to run it had spent 30 years running the transportation program at Oker Jascha lab.
Ilya Tabakh:And so he was sort of, you know, on his second or third career at that point, and, came to the University of Kansas to try to grow this program. And and his approach was really to be kind of expansive and inclusive in looking at different disciplines, bringing in perspectives from the, you know, kind of administrative federal side, from the academic side, from industry, and and really creating a conversation and a really interesting ecosystem where there really wasn't one before.
Terrance Orr:Yeah.
Ilya Tabakh:And so in that, I got to help build biofuel, sort of algae to biofuel program. Did a lot of work in, first, kinda waste, oil to biodiesel and then played around, a little bit with inductive charging of transit buses. Now keep in mind, this is, like, the late 2000, early 20 tens. So
Terrance Orr:Early days.
Ilya Tabakh:Probably. Yeah. Climate or not even Climate. It was CleanTech 1.0 or 2.0 depending who you listen to. But that was pretty awesome.
Ilya Tabakh:Also, I I was a NSF fellow, and, you know, did some things in kind of interdisciplinary development for looking at how do you develop biomedical products, did some of the I Corps curriculum. So I was really lucky in some ways that, the academic establishment realized that, hey. We need our folks that are gonna be faculty members to be able to communicate, properly, to be able to think about how do some of these inventions and IP get commercialized. And so, I I got a lot of exposure pretty early in my education, and and really in kind of building that that first chapter. Ultimately, I ended up, taking a leave of absence for my PhD to do a program with the Kauffman Foundation.
Ilya Tabakh:And that program was initially designed to teach, oh, funny enough, British PhDs how to commercialize technology. Fortunately, by the time I got into the Kauffman Global Scholars Program, I had been opened up beyond British PhDs because I'm clearly not British. But it was awesome because it was a combination of kind of an EMBA in entrepreneurship if such a thing exists. Okay. And so some really good curriculum and the latest thinking.
Ilya Tabakh:And, you know, a lot of it I'd seen in pieces, but it was great to kind of see it as more of a complete thought. Yeah. Then the second part of the program was, going to some of the stronger entrepreneurial ecosystems in the US, and really interacting with some of the kinda key structural pieces of each one of those ecosystems. So we went to kinda the Boston ecosystem, Chicago, Silicon Valley, and got to sit down with some of the folks that really were structurally crucial to each one of those. And it was really interesting to see, you know, companies integrating m and a transactions and thinking about how do you kinda create a big forum.
Ilya Tabakh:For example, in in Cambridge, the, you know, Cambridge Innovation, Center and and kind of that that that whole area was was sort of the, a place where, folks started first connecting, and then there's all kinds of crazy stories that happened afterwards. And so that was a really important perspective. And and because I got to see sort of all these places next to each other, it was great to start to see how are they different, how are they similar, what's an what is an ecosystem. Right? Everybody uses the word ecosystem.
Ilya Tabakh:But it's really interesting to think about stakeholders. Why do they show up? Why is it good? You know? Who is it good for?
Ilya Tabakh:And so I got to see a lot of that. And then, ultimately, the the third part of the program was to create an opportunity for, the fellow to kinda get an experience to expand their expand their capabilities. And for me, I that was the first time I ended up being in residence. I was the Kauffman Global Scholar in residence, at Cisco. And so I was sitting in Cisco Systems, like the network company.
Ilya Tabakh:I was sitting in their intellectual property group, and that was pretty important to me because I was interested in seeing how large tech organizations use intellectual property to go to market and kind of maintain proprietary advantage. And what was cool about Cisco is at the time they had issued their 10,000 patent, and they were also completing or kind of executing their 100 85th M and A transaction in the history of the company. And so it was really interesting to sort of see how do you had a reason about creating value. How do you ultimately kind of think about IP? What is prior art?
Ilya Tabakh:Right? A lot of the time Right. People have patents. At the end of the day, patents are like a a whole different animal. And so it was really interesting for, you know, somebody that has spent most of their time in kind of research academic settings to really think about that in more of an industrial way.
Ilya Tabakh:That ultimately ended up being kind of an off ramp from my, chapter 1. After that, I was saying, you know, became an entrepreneur in the wild, as I say. And so, started doing startups. I did a few different startups in kinda related fields. I did one on human reactions, so capturing kind of facial expressions and things like that from video.
Ilya Tabakh:The second one I did was kinda taking some of those insights into sports analytics. We actually ended up building the, first, sports app powered by IBM Watson. So that was kind of a crazy time. Ultimately, that was also the year where FanDuel and DraftKings put, quarter of a $1,000,000,000 into advertising, to change the fantasy football market from sort of the traditional to daily. So that was kind of a crazy time.
Ilya Tabakh:We ultimately ended up pivoting a few times, try to do some athlete health stuff. And that's I've learned a lot about, kinda, the health care system at that point. And then, ultimately, the the most recent startup I did was, we built a distributed data center in the Midwest that had about 40,000 CPU cores. So pretty significant, data center infrastructure. And that got me super excited about, you know, what does infrastructure look like if it's kinda meshed and connected and all that stuff.
Ilya Tabakh:And so, as we're bringing that startup in for landing, I started to support a little bit of, innovation work over at, Black and Veatch, which is a large global engineering procurement construction company, and and got to know their innovation team, got to know the company. It actually turns out, you know, I'm convinced that the world is a small village. But but, definitely, the Midwest of the US is is a small village. And it turned out that my graduate advisor was actually the N. T.
Ilya Tabakh:Veach, chaired professor of civil environmental architectural engineering at the University of Kansas, and N. T. Veach was one of the founders of Black and Veach. So I it it never sort of occurred to me that, you know, I I had kind of a lot of exposure, but I got to learn what they were working on. They got to learn about sort of what I was good at, and and and, ultimately, I became, kind of the first, what I call, corporate horizontal entrepreneur in residence.
Ilya Tabakh:I'll jump into some of what that means a little bit later. But that got me to kinda chapter 3 where I'm at today is thinking about how can you bring in some of that perspective and some of my past experience into this entrepreneur in residence role. And I, you know, jokingly call call it the entrepreneur in captivity, chapter of my career, but, you know, it's just very different than than being in the wild and doing your own thing. And I think kinda knowing what that difference is and thinking about what you need to be successful is pretty important. I see.
Ilya Tabakh:But, you know, backgrounds are are are really fun and sort of diving in because you can start to kind of take some of those modifiers and and really talk about, hey. In this other world, you know, this is different and things like that. And and so I think, you know, having kind of that that background and and that, perspective has actually been helpful in in talking to other EIRs and and starting to sort of think about them and kinda codify them and things like that. And so, you know, I think it's important when when you say EIR, there's a lot of ways that that term gets used. There there is the kind of academic.
Ilya Tabakh:So so I found I found it helpful to add, essentially, 2 modifiers. 1 is what's the residence, and 2, what's kind of the function? Right? And and I like to describe the function as either horizontal or vertical. And and to me, vertical is if you're brought in to run a business line internally or potentially spin one out.
Ilya Tabakh:And then horizontal is if you're there to work on the kind of innovation capacity of the organization. You know, are you there to help them think about, what skills the team needs and how to kind of build muscle to do it? Or potentially connect with the outside world as well. I see I see sort of EIRs as as being at the interface of the outside world and inside the company. And so, most of the time, I even when I'm talking about functions, I'm saying there's a role that you can play inside, but there's also a role that you can play outside, and I think it's important to keep an eye on both.
Ilya Tabakh:And and, yeah, what I found is that by looking at what's the residence and then what's the functional role and realistically, by the way, I say everybody's diagonal. Nobody's, like, completely vertical or horizontal. In some cases, there's there's people that are very, very focused on running their business line, but they're still having to kinda communicate and align across a broader standpoint. And and there, you can't be completely vertical, because otherwise, you're gonna get orphaned. But but once you sorta have those 2 motor modifiers figured out, you you can sort of really start to understand how how folks are similar.
Ilya Tabakh:And what's cool is this EIR concept is being spread to many more residences. So, you know, I've I've talked to folks that, have been in EIR in in kind of a federal defense context. I've talked to folks, that are EIRs at some of the bigger corporates, and, you know, the this whole idea of a a corporate EIR is is relatively new. And then, ultimately, you know, even nonprofits and and kinda public entities are starting to get this kinda role. And so it's gonna be exciting in these conversations to to really dive in and think about what kind of roles and and continue to expand.
Ilya Tabakh:And, hopefully, you know, our our audience, you guys, the listeners, will will will work with us to to continue to sort of peel back that onion and discover other people that's out there. Terrence, you you obviously have a lot of insight and background here too. Would love to sort of hear about your your thoughts on kind of the role, of an entrepreneur in residence and kind of what what they do in an organization.
Terrance Orr:No, absolutely. And you actually, you did something that I was about to do because I think we've been in EIR land for so long that I think we've been using the term EIR in the podcast, but we never introduced it as entrepreneur in residence per se. But that term could also mean executive in residence, right? As I start to think about the role of the EIR, depending on what your E or your X is at the beginning of that term, right? Entrepreneur, executive in residence, you can be an operator in residence, which we will extend this opportunity to on the podcast.
Terrance Orr:You can also sort of be an investor in residence. There's multiple different types of residence or multiple different types of names like a founder in residence, right? Some of them there are slightly different roles, but that in residence piece is very consistent, right? And the role of a EIR will differ depending on what your resonance will be, right? What organization are you going to support?
Terrance Orr:And usually I've seen that they all have some sort of organization to go to, right? It's a question I get often, which is, is there a role of a EIR at all types of organizations? Sure. The organization could be a venture capital firm. It could be a museum.
Terrance Orr:It could be an association. It could be a nonprofit, right? It could be an academic institution as Ilya described earlier. But your role will differ depending on what your residence is as he started to, you know, dive into this many different types of residences that you can actually go into, right? So my role as a EIR, if I'm in residence as a university, might be to mentor students and help them with their startups, right?
Terrance Orr:My role as an EIR at a museum might be to help them digitize things that used to be physical for people, right? To bring more digital initiatives into the museum, right? Which is what I'm reading and seeing about another EIR currently, right? That you could be an EIR for a corporation, right? Where you're helping them actually spin up brand new net new ventures that will be a brand new business line, or it's gonna be a brand new venture, completely a company that they're gonna spin out separately and have its own separate cap tables, own separate investors.
Terrance Orr:I've seen entrepreneurs and residents, you know, do this role in a nonprofit, right? Like United Way. Actually they have multiple EIRs at United Way and multiple other nonprofits as well. So we're seeing this role, you know, be used in a different residence because people see the value of it, right? So what exactly is the baseline sort of foundational things you need to do as an EIR and what are you actually doing on a day to day, right?
Terrance Orr:Being an EIR and being in that role is really an opportunity for you to connect dots, right? Not only for the broader organization, but for the outside world, right? Because the outside world doesn't know what the organization is doing and what they care about. As an EIR, your job is to be a translator, right? Your job is to be bilingual in the world of startups and whatever else you're focused on in the ecosystem.
Terrance Orr:And I think understanding that, you being bilingual would be affluent in the languages that you speak or the things that you're translating, You're usually translating experiences into your residence context, right? That I started to give examples of, earlier. You bring the outside in perspective. I get to bring in perspective. So working at an IT infrastructure company, right?
Terrance Orr:That's supporting multiple industries. I get to bring in the expertise from the world of sports, for the world of gaming, right? From the world of entertainment and fitness, for the world of food, for the world of construction, right? When you bring in all of these different perspectives and you apply it to a new residence or a new context, right? That is a superpower, right, of an entrepreneur in residence, right?
Terrance Orr:For them to be able to translate that experience into value, tangible value, right? That organizations can actually leverage and use, but that's not it. I think that my most favorite thing about working with early stage team, if I'm doing it in a corporate environment or a team of students, which is gonna be our next generation of leaders trying to build their businesses, that I get to transform the hearts and minds of people. I get to transform the culture of whatever my residence is at the time, right? How do you take the library from being physical and manual and and doing things not as effectively as they could have done to being more efficient and see people reap the benefits of that, right?
Terrance Orr:How do you see these things inside of a corporation or a mothership or whatever that enterprise might be and see people change, right? You see people leave sometime and go spit out their old companies and raise a lot of capital. You know, you had a piece of influence of doing that from changing their hearts and minds of taking risks, but tangible risks that you think you can add value to in an organization. So when I think about the role of the EIR, it's highly dependent on the residents, but using those as examples that I just described as some of the ways that people could actually perform the role of the EIR, Right?
Ilya Tabakh:We're we're gonna have to jump into that one. I I love, like, a lot of the meat and potatoes
Terrance Orr:of Absolutely.
Ilya Tabakh:You know, sort of inspiring and changing hearted minds is where sort of successful and not successful roles, You know? There's just so much texture there that I as soon as you said sort of transform hearts and minds, seeing people do stuff, I I've seen definitely a lot of those things. I've also seen some counterexamples where, you know, generally, folks know what they know. They don't know what they don't know, and it it's a lot easier to be comfortable in the things that you've built your career on. So we'll we'll table that for now, but but I love this this is one of my favorite topics on really thinking about how do you take the individual, partner them with the residents in a way that's sort of strategically impactful, meaningful, and then kind of help everybody reskill and really collaborate and work together well.
Ilya Tabakh:Absolutely. So we'll be talking about this more anyway. I didn't wanna didn't wanna interrupt you there, but you got you got me pretty excited about
Terrance Orr:that topic. 100%. I I mean, because when it when it's all said and done, right, ideas don't build companies only. Right? You know, and we can work 80 hours a day, but we need people, we need actual human capital to build new companies, new ventures, new value, right?
Terrance Orr:And then we can automate, we can start to streamline, and then we can repurpose the value of those people to do other new things and innovative things. So I think there's a unique opportunity and probably my favorite part of being a, what people call, some people call me a serial EIR, right? Sort of doing this sort of work is because depending on my resonance, I get to deploy empathy and impact that skill in a very different way. And I think, as you think about that and what we are looking to accomplish in the near term for EIR Live. We're gonna be bringing you this sort of content from people who've had experience in different residences, right?
Terrance Orr:We're gonna have the 1 on 1 convos, right, to start, but as with all things that are EIR led and created, we're gonna co create and we're gonna co create with you, the listeners in our audience, right? We're gonna learn from the audience and bring in some things that you wanna see. Those 1 on 1 conversations might evolve over time to be a panel of EIRs, maybe at the request of people who are listening, or maybe people that we've just identified in the ecosystem that we think would have a good dialogue about this topic. We're certainly not gonna do it every single day as a cadence, but we're not gonna do, we're not gonna make you wait a whole 2 months either, okay? So, you know, we're gonna try to find the appropriate cadence, somewhere between, hey, not a month and not every week, but a cadence that's gonna be appropriate to bring to the audience with great content that we think would add value to what you wanna do and learn from and learn about the people that we hope can get value from this as current EIRs, people who wanna get their 1st EIR role and wanna know what is it like doing this day to day.
Terrance Orr:I've met all sorts of people who want experience in doing this. The other thing that we love for you to do is to like it, right? Share with people, participate in the conversation, recommend people that you like to see on the podcast, please, subscribe and share it. If you see value, if there's a clip of value that you found from the podcast, we would encourage you to share with people. The other thing is that let other EIRs know in your network, there's other people in the world building right now, EIR like companies that are happening right now and people doing interesting things that we don't know about, right?
Terrance Orr:We want to meet those people. We want to meet those entrepreneurs and residents that are out really building and operating in the wild and doing different things and to learn how is it different from their resident standpoint versus others that we might bring on the show. We love for people to join a live discussion. There's a live LinkedIn group right now that you can go request to join and we'd love for you to join and we want to share opportunities there, value, things that's gonna help people, and hopefully start to share opportunities, right? That other EIRs can start to look at and take advantage of.
Terrance Orr:And, hey, drop some questions. You want questions for, you know, future shows, future episodes that probably wasn't addressed on the first few episodes, but you wanna see it addressed on the other episodes. So I think those are the things that we are really, really interested in, engaging with our listeners. We don't wanna just be another podcast. We want people to get tangible value, which is where that live piece really starts to kick in.
Terrance Orr:And we're gonna have some really, really, really fun, conversations, to to really do this. So and maybe we'll get into, the fun conversation around future roles and things that we wanna do as an EIR. And I almost wanna ask Ilya that right now, you know, that if he had a dream role, you know, to be at EIR somewhere, where would it be?
Ilya Tabakh:Yeah. You know, it's a I won't dive into this too much because we're gonna steal our own thunder here.
Terrance Orr:But That's right.
Ilya Tabakh:For me, I mean, the the reason that I'm EIR at a company that's really excited and focused on climate tech, is is it gives me an opportunity to sort of, you know, add another couple languages. And and these languages are probably gonna be critical in the scaling of climate tech, if we're gonna sort of be able to accomplish the audacious goals that the world has, and then also solve a lot of the the problems with deferred maintenance and and all these other things in infrastructure. And so, in many ways, actually, I am in in in a pretty impactful role for me today. That's right. Generally, as as I've been thinking about it more, I I see it as kind of a two way street.
Ilya Tabakh:Right? There there's roles where I can bring a lot of value to as an individual, and then there is roles that can be very enriching for me, my capabilities, and so on and so forth. For sure. And so when I think about kind of that and and, you know, ever since we started talking about it in a real way, those are kind of the themes that I think about. But but in many ways, I'm I'm I'm in a great place.
Ilya Tabakh:Absolutely. And, you know, where where it's a good combination of, you know, languages and skills and things that I possess, and a problem space vertical where I can also learn and and grow from. And so That's awesome. Great question, and and it's one of those things where I could probably come up with a couple other things too because there's a lot of amazing organizations in the world. But, I I I think those are kind of the 2 themes.
Ilya Tabakh:And and then, generally, you know, like, today, we've already talked about it's funny because we could we could probably spend another hour talking about the overlap of backgrounds. You know? Both of us, some data center background. Both of us sports tech background.
Terrance Orr:There we go.
Ilya Tabakh:Completely, like, unrelated. Right? And so you get a lot of muscle memory and sort of market norms and things like that. And and, also, depending on what time it was, Right? There's also kind of the period of time, what was going on in the broader world that's fun.
Ilya Tabakh:You know, we've we talked about building a community and and and sort of connecting EIRs together. I found in the past few years, you know, sort of doing that more as as opportunities presented themselves for me to connect people that definitely should talk. Lots of interesting things happened from from that. And so I'm excited in in kinda growing that. And, ultimately, there's just so much, you know, kind of opportunity to learn from each other, connect the dots.
Ilya Tabakh:And and and for me, you know, one of my hopes is kinda bring some of the insights that that that have contributed to the world from tech, from health care, from kind of places that have been relatively innovative, in the last couple decades out into the broader world. Because I think that's a pretty big opportunity, kind of a large lever to to scale some of the change that we need. So those are the things I'm excited about. What are you excited about in the conversation that we wrap up here?
Terrance Orr:Man, I'm super excited about a lot of different things and thanks for sharing. I think you're in a great place too. And I would also argue that there's a legal overlap to our background as well when you worked in the IP group at Cisco as well. And like you said, there's so many different types of patents, which again, there's so much breadth when you're at EIR, you can get into utility patents, design patents and so on and so forth. But what I'm super excited about to actually do in the podcast is honestly, you know, I think people who want to connect and engage with actual technical content, you know, that they can actually use about a subject that's not a lot is written about on a day to day.
Terrance Orr:There's high level articles. There's very few people that you get the privilege to see who's been a former EIR and they spill everything that they've learned, all the roadblocks, all the war rules, the things that they've been battle tested on, right? In their different roles and their different residences. And I think I'm really excited about this because we're building the podcast that I was looking for when I became an entrepreneur in residence. I was looking for a place to go and find different EIRs who had done different things in different places that I could learn from.
Terrance Orr:And I'm incredibly excited about learning from the people that we're gonna bring on the show. I'm incredibly excited about contributing to that conversation. I'm excited about trying to create pathways for the roles that they wanna manifest, as an entrepreneur resident in some other organization in the future, as outside of what they're doing today. And I'm excited to see the light bulb, come on for people who wanna go after their 1st entrepreneur in residence role and wanna take their 1st swing and to know that it's gonna be hard, but it's gonna be worth it. And to have the privilege to be a translator and be bilingual in these environments to become fluent in another language and to sort of sharpen up your your pencils and to put more tools in your toolbox.
Terrance Orr:Those are the things that I think people are gonna get from the podcast, and those are the things that that I'm really excited about.
Ilya Tabakh:That's awesome. Well, I mean, I could add, but it's not worth it. I I I think you got 99% of the things I'm excited about too. So I say we just leave it there. And excited to have folks join us in the future.
Terrance Orr:Alright. Well, looking forward to people joining us in the future, and please share, subscribe, participate. We're looking forward to engaging with you. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of EIR Live. We hope you found today's conversation enlightening and inspiring as we journey through the highs and lows of entrepreneurship with our incredible guests.
Terrance Orr:Be sure to join us next time for more stories, strategies, and insights from the entrepreneurial front line. Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform on YouTube and share the inspiration with your network. Do you have a EIR in mind that'll make a great guest? Drop us a line. Engage with us and fellow listeners in the EIR live LinkedIn group and join the conversation.
Terrance Orr:Plus, get your questions ready for our LinkedIn live sessions following future episodes. Your insights help us shape our journey. Let's co create and innovate together. Until then, let's keep innovating, striving, and exploring ways to make our mark on the world. I'm Terence Soar, alongside my co host, Ilya Tabak, and we're signing off.
Terrance Orr:Let's keep building, everyone.