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Discover the remarkable stories behind successful startups on 'How I Became...'.
Join me, Kelly Yefet, as we dive into the journeys of extraordinary founders, marketers, investors, and industry experts. Uncover the breakthrough moments, challenges, and strategies that propelled their ventures to greatness.
Each episode delivers inspiring narratives and practical insights for entrepreneurs of all stages. Get ready to be captivated by the untold tales of innovation, resilience, and triumph in the world of startups. Tune in now to fuel your own entrepreneurial journey.
Interested in marketing and growth support for your business? https://www.kellyyefetconsulting.com/
Kelly Yefet (00:05.006)
Today I'm really excited to have Chris Carter on the podcast, who is the executive director, office of innovation and entrepreneurship at Schulich School of Business. This is a special one for me because Chris helped me when I was just dabbling in the entrepreneurial world, I wanna say about seven years ago, which is wild. And I think around the same time you were just starting Schulich startup. So for me to see you grow this thing.
that was pretty miniscule into this really incredible community and startup space for so many entrepreneurs in Canada is mind blowing. And I'm so excited to hear about your journey and how we got here. Chris is a serial entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience in the digital and tech space, a sought after advisor, investor, and advisory board member. And you were the co -founder of Thin Data, which was Canada's largest.
marketing automation tool and exited in 2008 And today you lead what I'm going to define as all things entrepreneurship at Schulich. For example, the entrepreneurial studies, Schulich startup nights, and the list goes on and on. As could this bio go on and on, but I will cut it short and I will start off the conversation, Chris, with asking you a little bit about your journey and how you did end up here at Schulich running the Schulich startup. Well, thanks, Kelly. It's exciting to be here for me and
I was instantly drawn in by how it became as a key theme going throughout my life and my career. Well, I started off way back as a journalism graduate from Metropolitan University. And in the very beginning, everyone asks you, why did you start a business? Why did you get into entrepreneurship? Well, my story is a little bit practical, which is that...
Already back then, the media was starting to lay people off. And originally I wanted to be a reporter for a national newspaper. But the writing was quickly on the wall. And I thought to myself, well, maybe I could make my own newspaper, make my own publication. But as I went out to explore that, I quickly found that there was another problem was that I couldn't afford paper. Probably the same reason why the newspapers themselves were in such trouble.
Kelly Yefet (02:27.374)
but a friend of mine working at a small community publication, he'd always been walking around, this is back in 1995, talking about how, well, pretty soon we're not gonna need paper anymore, we're gonna put this whole thing on the internet and everyone is gonna read it around the world and it won't just be read locally and it will be amazing. And so as I was sitting here, we'd both gone our separate ways and he was off working on different things. This is now back in 95, like I said, so.
No LinkedIn or Facebook and very few people had even like cell phones or email accounts. So I sat with the phone book for four days to find him after we had parted ways because we weren't working in the same spot anymore. And sat with the phone book for four days calling Crawford, so that's his last name, until I finally got to his mom under the L's, Louise, and she picked up the phone and said, he's here. He lives with me. That's why you can't find him.
in the phone book under the seas where he was or should have been. And I talked to him, went over to his house on the streetcar that night over on Broadview. He showed me the internet for the first time, asked him a lot of questions, asked if he could make these webpage things that he was showing me. He said yes, he was doing that in his spare time. And we went into business together that night and decided we would make our first publication together. And from there, it's a long and interesting journey of entrepreneurship that we could get into.
from building that magazine, selling it to the Fan 590, the sports radio station, building a web development company, eventually wanting to have a platform that had a SaaS component to its revenue model, and seeing that many of my clients needed email marketing and marketing automation. And so we built that platform and that became what was the largest business of the different things that we worked on and eventually sold that back in 2008.
How I landed here with the Schulich School of Business is that one day I had the wonderful opportunity to come and guest lecture in Graham Dean's Mergers and Acquisitions class. And he wanted to hear the story with his students about the sale of thin data. And I was very open about like the good and the bad of that and kind of like the part of me that loved that decision, the part of me that wishes I never made that decision to sell and all of the emotional turbulence that came with.
Kelly Yefet (04:53.262)
going through that transition in life and selling the company. The students seemed to love it. I loved it. And I started coming back every once in a while to Schulich. And eventually I realized, well, there's no startup program here. And I thought that's a really interesting opportunity. I was looking for a next big challenge in life. People asked me, why did I come to an academic institution? Because they were saying, look, it's going to be slow and it's going to be harder to move in the way you'd like to compared to running a business.
But my answer was, my life has been filled with many different puzzles. I have worked on businesses, I've worked on political campaigns, I've worked on global nonprofits. And the one thing I hadn't put my hand on was the academic side of things. And I said, let's go try this puzzle next and see what that looks like. And so if you want, I'll tell you more about what happened after that. But I decided I would find a way to create a really interesting opportunity at Schulich here at the business school.
I want to hear a bit more about that. So you had the idea, I want to do something at Schulich. I'm going to conquer the academic world. What did that look like to where you are today? And maybe explain a little bit about what Schulich startups are. Yeah. Well, in the beginning, the Career Centre here at the Business School first suggested, hey, would you like to come in and just coach students once a month, come in, sit down, take over some offices at the Career Centre? And...
and share some ideas with them about the businesses that they're building. And I said, that's great, but what about if, and so what we also pitched was the idea that I would start bringing in friends of mine from the innovation ecosystem and we would take over the whole career center once a month. And up and down the road, students could go getting different insights and different perspectives from people. Like a speed dating idea? Yeah, so they can get multiple perspectives. And then I pitched the idea of having the Schulich Startup Night competition.
and said, let's do it in one of the boardrooms of one of my companies at the time. And so they loved that. And as things went along, every month, I was most excited about coming up to the business school and least excited about working on the different companies that I was invested in and set up with. And I was like, I really wish I could just do that. And one day I said that to one of my friends.
Kelly Yefet (07:18.702)
He's a leader in the ecosystem, really great guy. Barry Hillier is his name, who built Equo and Cabeanish, a new company in the coffee, tea and hot chocolate space where he's partnered up with two amazing indigenous entrepreneurs. And but back then I was talking with Barry and I was like, I really wish I could go just like work at Schulich all the time. And he said this famous one line, which I always thank him for. He said, you're never trapped, man.
And I was like, yeah, I'm never trapped. I don't have to be what I am right now. I can go and like start a whole new career and a whole new experience. And so literally within days, I told my business partners and told my family, I'm going to Schulich. I'm going to go sit in the CIBC marketplace there in the cafe. I'm going to take my laptop and I'm going to build the startup program for free. And eventually it will start to gain so much momentum. Yep.
that the dean will come down from the third floor, Dean Horvath, he will take me to lunch and he will demand to know what is happening. And when I explain everything to him, what we're building and what's taking place, he'll be so excited that he'll hire me. And that will be how I'll get my dream job and start my academic journey. And that's exactly what happened. That's what happened. It's amazing. And I want the listeners to know a little bit about what Schulich Startup is.
are now, so a few years down the line and you've had some time to really build it and build an incredible community around it. So what does it look like elevator pitch of Schulich startups? Well, the highlights now are that we have, you know, many years after sitting there with my laptop, we have 220 companies that are all Schulich students, alumni or faculty. So York University has Yspace, our big accelerator for the whole institution.
and I support with that, but I don't lead that. That's led by an amazing team there. They service the wider university. But we had so many entrepreneurs coming out of Schulich that we had the opportunity just to provide service and support for the students and the alumni exclusively. So that's now 220 companies in the last 24 months. That group has raised $60 million in funding.
Kelly Yefet (09:38.798)
And we also do all the placements for students to go to work at startups, go to work in the venture capital community, 100 plus placements that we do every year. 30 events that we run have worked together with faculty to redesign parts of the curriculum and hire new instructors to come in and teach in the program. And it's a bustling, booming community that now is being called upon and contracted by different levels of government.
to design entrepreneurial programs and accelerators, both at the federal and provincial and municipal level as well too. The real amazing part of all this in terms of what I get excited telling people is that back at that lunch when the Dean hired me, he said, well, I'll hire you and I'll give you your contract. But other than that, you have no budget. You've got a dollar. So everything that's been built now with the whole team, the space, all the programs and initiatives that we've done.
has all been bootstrapped as a startup inside the institution. And everything is paid for by sponsorships, by donations from the alumni, from government contracts where we go and get support, or ways that we provide support to different parts of the university, and then they'll pay us for our services. So we literally designed a business inside the Schulich School of Business.
that would be self -sustaining and could go out and grow and build. So that was like one key piece. And the second key piece is that because we didn't have any money, we couldn't go out and hire immediately a whole team of people to do like a programmatic based design, like you would see with other amazing programs and other institutions, even at the York level with Yspace, or when you think about different programs at different universities around the country. So we had to think,
Okay, since we have nothing to operate with in the very beginning, we're just doing this from scratch, what do we have? And let's think about this like entrepreneurs. So what we did have was a 40 ,000 plus alumni database of Schulich graduates holding positions of responsibility authority or check writing somewhere in the world. So based on that, we designed everything off a community model.
Kelly Yefet (12:01.326)
where it would be all about everybody finding ways to help each other and contribute to each other. And so now we have 4 ,000 community members that we're working with. We have 250, 300 very active alumni who are working for us. So although our department is one of the smallest in the school in terms of staff size, we literally have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of team members.
that are all working actively for us and then extended people who when we reach out on behalf of the businesses and the students and the alumni businesses and say, hey, we're trying to learn more about this particular sector or make a breakthrough into our contract or even just from the fundraising side of things. The Schulich alumni from a venture capital perspective, they came, you know, we had a major mixer event downtown at Bereskin and Parr.
last fall and we had Jack Fraser from the BBC who leads the growth fund there do an on -the -fly count of how much venture capital was amassed in the room just in that moment. And it was three billion dollars that Schulich alumni and there were big people who were missing from the room, but three billion that were there in the room that had responsibility for those funds. So realizing that that was the real power in the real magic.
the gold that was sitting here, everything has been designed around that and how to create value out of that for everybody involved in the community. From a personal lens, when I had my startup and we had an intern join us through the Schulich startups, one, you're getting this mentorship and learning from the community, and then you're actually getting support to build your business through it both ways, hopefully the interns who worked with us and myself learned so much.
and it's so powerful, but hearing you tell that it almost makes me feel emotional to what you've built over time. So I'm curious how you feel when you say the words and you hear what you've actually built from just, I'm not trapped to this now. How are you feeling? Yeah, I feel great. I feel happy. And when I think about it, you know, I was at the point originally where...
Kelly Yefet (14:27.054)
all of the introductions, they came from me. I had to make them all individually. And I still do a lot of that. Like every, every day I'm working on putting people together and like creating rapid value where it's like, I know you need this and this person and that, and I put you together and then off you go. And that might just take me like, you know, five minutes or so. I tell everybody they need to like do what are called, like I coined them as flippable emails. So you have to come to me with like the subject line flips.
the introduction flips the attachment, the link, everything that is the ask all flips. And I just write why I love you at the top of the email and forward it to the person who's going to help you out. So on an average week, I do about a hundred flippable emails for people that are in the ecosystem. And now people come to them that are like, you know, come looking for them that are like not anything to do with Shulak or even York university now. Um, but as we continue to help people out like that, then.
people will say things like, you know, when you do something to help people out and they say, um, Hey, I'll owe you, I owe you a beer. And I'll be like, no, no, no, you don't owe me a beer, but I'm going to ask you for a favor. And then, and then favor will be to help another person out in the community. And so that is what is my greatest pleasure and greatest joy is that what was like the beginning of a, like a principle on how to be generous and help people.
has now turned into like an ethos of the whole community and people are doing it on their own, right? And now when we bring these significant events together, we'll get 250 people out to some of our events, then everybody is in that kind of spirit and working together. And when I see it happening on its own, that's like, that's amazing because when, you know, when the time comes, when like,
you know, not anytime soon, because I'm having a ton of fun and loving building this. Don't these words. I don't want you to go there. Well, when I'm 80, let's say, you know, way down the road and the time comes, I want it to be really self -sustaining and there to be like deep principles and a culture and an energy inside the thing we've created that it continues to grow and move on. One of the areas that I really
Kelly Yefet (16:41.294)
now I have minimal but learning knowledge, but I had no knowledge of the VC space. And I came to one of the events downtown for the Schulich startups and met two guys there that were both in the VC space and just started peppering them with questions. I was curious. I had no clue what I was talking about. And now we have a little WhatsApp group and we're, you know, I'm, we're always chatting and asking questions and they're learning from me on the brand marketing side.
I'm learning from them on the VC side, just what's interesting. So it is really cool to see how this event with hundreds of people there, you just kind of find two people that you connect with and you take it offline and you're still part of, you know, hey, are you going to the event tonight? And it just continues to build a community. So I think it's amazing to see how you build a really successful business within Schulich, but also a community that...
will make it self -sustaining because everyone has the same values and lives and breathes what you're creating, which is special. Yeah, and we're working to design those things in new and interesting ways into different parts of what we do. So for example, now we piloted this at a recent event and it was so successful that now we've got a whole group of student ambassadors that are going to be part of this. So you know you come to an event and...
You're like, you may be like a networking machine and you're just going to go and introduce yourself to all these random people. But also there's a lot of people who get there and they're overwhelmed. There's 250 people who should they be meeting? Where to? Who should they be talking to? So at one of our last events, we assigned one of our team members, Shrey, to be like the, you know, the key networker. And so he worked the whole night. His job was to identify people in the crowd who needed to meet each other that would unlock tremendous value from both of us.
And so he's working the whole room and going and making pairs in live action, as opposed to these email introductions, he's making these live pairs. So now he's designing a whole new team of students who will do this and go into our events and be working on making sure that by the time everybody leaves the room, the right people have all met each other. That's so powerful. And for that, for Shreya as a, as a skillset themselves to actually be able to network like that is, is huge.
Kelly Yefet (19:03.95)
But I think it goes to show how I'm such a huge proponent of networking and building those relationships. I think you see that throughout all of these examples, how important that is not to bring you down, but I want to go back to the thin data story. And you mentioned that there were some things you loved about exiting and some things that you maybe reflect on more. And I'm curious to hear a little bit about that experience and.
what it was like going through an acquisition, what did you love about it, what did you struggle with, what do you think about now and wish you did maybe differently? Yeah, and this is something that I think we should talk about more within the ecosystem. And maybe like one day I'll do a special session on this or turn it into something a bit more expanded. But the thing is, is that even today, when I see certain people have sold their company,
and everybody's celebrating and they're like, you know, it's a big hooray, hurrah thing that's going on. Then I will send them a note on LinkedIn and I'll ask them if they're okay. Right. And I will check in on them and say, how are you doing with like everything after the sale? And you'd be surprised, but people will say, yes, I'd like to meet with you and talk with you and have lunch. So I go out every once in a while and I just go, I'll go downtown and I'll sit down with someone who sold their business.
and talk to them about it and I'll share my story. And then they start to say, yeah, I'm feeling some of those same things. I'm experiencing something with those same things. You know, some people will sell their company and it's just be like, there's a lot of money and that's all they want. And then they'll chase the next thing, which has a lot more money and that will be enough for them. But, you know, for some of us, there's something about that business that is, you know, tied to our identity.
and tied to our circles of friends and really can leave you wondering after you've sold it, what am I even doing now? And you heard from my journey, it took me a while to find my way to here at Schulich to what my next thing was and what I meant to be. So what if you don't wanna just go create another company? And what if it's not enough just to go invest in things now? When I sold the business, I had a series of realizations.
Kelly Yefet (21:23.31)
One was that before that, because of all the years of like not getting paid while I was building it or getting paid less than I was, I never really had much money at all while I was building the company. Then we sold it, we had a bunch of money. I grew up as a kid in Scarborough and I went back to the Scarborough town center a few days after that. And I was like, I think I could like, you know, I can buy now anything I wanted in the whole place. And then I was like,
I don't want anything in the whole place. I don't want anything. I want my company back. You know? And while, you know, while I don't know whether, you know, I would like rewind time and like keep my company and not sell it because I've enjoyed all this and this has been amazing and I never would have gotten to hear and many other things in life wouldn't have happened if the dominoes didn't fall and I hadn't sold the business. But,
You know, it was a real moment where, oh, like, what is my identity and where, who and what am I in the world now? You know, my closest friends were all people who worked for me or with me. And then I wasn't going to see them anymore because after my earn it was over with the company that I sold it to, then it was time to go home. And, you know, a year later I came back to the office and to visit someone.
and there was a new reception person and they asked me who I was here to see and if they could help me. And I may or may not have said the words, I am your creator. To which they - Like where is my photo? I will bring the painting next time. Yeah. So they were a little bit anyways, they were a little bit shocked in that moment. But it was really like, you know, disorienting. And then also a lot of people, you know, said in the space who were like,
recruiters or friends of mine who worked in that they were like well you're really gonna have a hard time because no one's gonna hire you for a job because they're all gonna think you're gonna Bolt and start another business or no one's gonna take you on as a vice president because They know that you were the CEO of the largest email marketing platform in the country, right then, you know If you're not the president, are you gonna be happy? Yeah, right. So figuring all that out thinking about all that
Kelly Yefet (23:43.982)
And then really like just missing, you know, the community that was there in my team. When I left, my team was 114 people. When I announced my resignation, there were people crying and like breaking down in the company and the in the room when I announced it. And so it was a lot that was lost that day. The day that I left, the day I sold, it started the process towards leaving. But there was a lot that was lost and.
it put me into a time in my life where also, you know, that then, you know, led to like a breakdown in my relationship and within my family. And so I became divorced and then wasn't with my kids the whole time. And so all that has led to other adventures and other things and like deep respectful relationships with everybody involved and like ton of time with my...
kids and all that, but I think that that moment in my life really like was like a tough one that led to like a lot of, a lot of, you know, hard moments. So that's why I like check in on people and like, you know, when I can and like see if they're okay and how they're doing. And I also like suggest to them as well too, that maybe they need to think about not rushing into the next thing right away and trying to like say like how many, how many people in their life,
actually get a moment to go, maybe I don't want to just be this continuous version of myself. Maybe I'd like to be a fill in the blank. Right. I said to my daughter the other day that I had a job that I was going to do. So when I retire, I'm still going to work, but I'm going to do this. And then she said, I think you should be an author. I think you should go and like write books kind of thing. Right. So, but how many times do we get a chance to like actually kind of like
rethink everything. And so when I've spent time with people who have just exited, I've encouraged them to, you know, take a moment and just really think about what is the most important thing to them here? What could they be doing in terms of spending time and leaning into their relationship or their family or other skills or talents that they have or dreams that they have or used to have? Those things are all there.
Kelly Yefet (26:00.462)
And before charging into like, just like, I'm just going to go make more money and start another company. How could they kind of like take a pause in that moment and think about it? And I think that's been valuable for people that I've had that conversation with. Well, thank you for being vulnerable and sharing that. I imagine it, that point of reflection brings a lot of other questions. And when you're in the grind of building a business from, you know,
building my own business, although it was very small, but also talking to so many founders, you don't think of anything outside the world of your baby and that baby is your business. And I'm sure it was a point of time of, wow, there's a whole world that maybe I wasn't giving enough attention to or reflecting on. So I never really thought you do from an outsider, you just see that point as a celebration, but you don't think of the person who's going through going through it.
And you can't go like you can't go to your whole staff the people around you your friends your family they've just seen this thing happen, which is miraculous and you are grateful for and But you you feel like you cannot say to anyone I'm the saddest I've ever been because they're like, what do you have to be sad about you? Just sold your right now, right? Yeah, you've got you've got all these all these resources and all this Yeah, what are you? What are you? What are you talking about that for so you the lot of it tends to be?
held inside that if there are feelings you're like, is this like, is this normal that I might be feeling this way? And some of those conversations I've gone out and had with people, then yeah, they're like, yeah, I don't feel like I can talk to anyone about how I'm feeling right now. Very lonely because you achieve this thing that every entrepreneur is working towards and yet you can't, there's not a huge community for you to relate with because it is miraculous to go through that. Um,
And I'm sure a bit of guilt of, well, I'm supposed to be really happy because I did the thing. And there's a lot of other emotions. So lead, maybe you wouldn't turn back the clocks. But if you were to be in that position again, what are maybe some of the frameworks or thought processes you would use to decide, do I want to exit or do I want to stick with this business for someone maybe in a similar position? Yeah, I think that, um,
Kelly Yefet (28:22.158)
there was some things that we did really well in terms of how we made the decision. And those things were around who we were going to sell the business to. So what I'm very like, feel happy about and proud about was that we really thought about like things like what would be the impact on the people that would, you know, that worked for us when we sold the company. So we, you know, one of my investors, advisors,
Scott Brian who used to be the CFO for grocery gateway way back in the in dot -com era and He made my partner and I sit down and write a list of ten things that We would compel us to sell the company in a deal But we could not put anything financial on the list and so that was really interesting because then it allowed us to be in a position where when some companies did come because they were
10 or 11 companies that came to bid on us when we were sold. And some of them would be in the room, basically scheming about who they were going to fire. Saying like, we have a this department, you have a this department, we can get rid of one of them. And like, that was like a gleeful conversation. So we were like, no, that's not who we're going to be. So we were able to like make decisions around that. That was really good. And in the end of the day, it turned out that the highest bidder,
was also the company that checked all the boxes along the way. So we were able to feel good about the decision. I do know that of the companies that came to us, this was the company that fit best and was kind of in a good position to fulfill what were our values. What I don't think, I wish that we had frameworks for or were better prepared for were about,
how to enter the personal transition that we just talked about. And then also how to transition from being, I some people get to exit and leave immediately. Other people, we have to stay for a while in the acquirers world. So I didn't really have any particular coaching on how to go from being an entrepreneur to being an executive inside a multi -billion dollar company. And with all the levels of like approvals and...
Kelly Yefet (30:44.398)
you know, non -entrepreneurial logic leaps that were like the way we had built everything that we had built. So that would have been helpful as well too, to have something there. And then I think a little bit of like a scorecard or some kind of framework that would say like, if we do sell, these are the things that...
Selling this is what we have to be fully eyes wide open and aware that is going to like mean for the next next steps in life both inside that larger corporation and in our personal world as well. It's a lot to think through and I'm sure each scenario is going to be different but it's I think useful for people to at least know to start asking some of those questions or find mentors within their space to help guide them if they're going through.
want to, you know, an acquisition or even thinking about what is the long -term plan for the company because I think a lot of people jump to exit but maybe that's not the right decision for everyone and just thinking through that for yourself. But there was a moment last year where we were very fortunate last spring where Rory Levine, the CEO, co -founder of Waze, the traffic application, he came to Schulich and we had a huge night. There were 250 people here.
And afterwards, we had a small room with a couple of our founders and alumni venture leaders, venture capital leaders, and for Uri to answer some of their private questions. And one of the founders asked the question, how will I know that the acquirer will follow through on what the vision is for my business and what the intention was when I started it?
and this business is a very social impact focused business. So you would hope that if someone was going to acquire it, that they would acquire it because of that. And then Uri had the most poignant and deep moment. It was very straightforward. He looked at the founder and he said, do you want the answer or do you want the real answer? Right. And the founder asked for the real answer and he said, the real answer is you don't know.
Kelly Yefet (33:05.166)
and you can't know and you won't know and you'll only know after it's all done. Yeah. And you have to be okay with that. Yeah, you have to, but even just having a really truthful, direct answer like that, as opposed to everything's going to be okay, it'll all work out. Don't worry about it. Allows you to like be emotionally prepared. Hey, you might be the kind of person that's like, you sell the company and you're like, I don't care. I got my money. Whatever happens to it. It's theirs. Now you'll hear people say this all the time. Like,
It's theirs. But there's another category of founder, which is like, Oh, my creation is being like mucked with now and messed with and maybe grown to a beautiful new thing, but maybe not. Maybe the acquirer is going to like really like distort values or change the original purpose of what it was. You have to at least be like, if you have a running head start emotionally to know that that's coming and to make the decision knowing that that is a distinct possibility as opposed to.
realizing that as you're experiencing it in the middle of it. I think those are two very different paths. Do you think it makes a difference on if you are in a position where you stay on for say a year as you transition versus at sold you are exited out of the business? I think so. Yeah, I think I've met many entrepreneurs who sold and were gone within like 30, 45 days. And I think, um,
they can look back at it and say, well, I wish they hadn't done what they done, but they don't seem as like, you know, emotionally wound up in it. Whereas the ones that I've met, and there are many of them, not all of us get instantaneously exited and they stay. And even some of them that from the outside we would all think about or know about, and actually behind the scenes, there's a lot of torment going on for the individuals.
as they've gone through it. And they may be on a board or they may be on an advisory board, they may be on like a contract, but they're still somehow tied into it. And they're watching from the inside. And I think, you know, part of it is the actual, like the thing that you created or whether that's the product or the service or the platform and seeing what's being done to it and what's being changed. But really the harder part is, is, is watching how, um, acquirers can treat the people.
Kelly Yefet (35:29.262)
you know, whether that's the clients or whether the users or the staff and the people that, you know, signed up to come work with you and had one way of living under you. You know, when we sold the business, like one of the biggest shocks was like things related to the HR department, I think. HR, finance and real estate were the three biggest ones that were hard to deal with inside a large
multi -billion dollar public company. And so you see how you could make decisions as an entrepreneur and build a community, build a family, build a way of dealing with things. And then there would be like a harshness and an absolute set of rules related to how dealing with people in certain circumstances. And you go from being like the founder and my co -founder and I, next chancellor, we could just say, what's the right thing?
What do we want to do in this circumstance? If someone, one of our staff one time got involved in like a, you know, a major motorcycle accident, well, how we handled that, right? In terms of like taking care of them and making sure they got back into the business and providing some, you know, extended financial runway and support compared to how a major company might deal with that. Not every company, but like a major company might deal with that. that they might deal with it differently.
Yeah, and the major company is just coming. Maybe it's not even like a mean -spirited way. It's just that they're realizing that they have 10 ,000 plus employees. And if they do this for one, then it's going to become an expected thing. Whereas if you had your company and your 40 people or 50, eventually we were like 114, you can make a different decision and you can just like do some things that are more grounded in humanity. Right. We would always say like that the reason why.
our staff stayed working for us for so long. Even when we sold the business, you know, one of the things that people would say is that when a company gets sold, it's highly likely there's an exodus afterwards, right? Where talented people start leaving. Well, when we sold like, you know, Fendata, two years after the sale, 90 % of the entire staff were still there, right? They were still remaining with the business.
Kelly Yefet (37:55.278)
We had a very like deep relationship with them. Recruiters would come up to me in town and say like, Chris, I don't understand. Like I offer people $30 ,000, $40 ,000 pay raises and they won't leave your company. Right. And that's how strong like the culture was. The culture was like when we sit in both our hands, we sit in one hand with money and one hand with people. Which one do we choose? No. Over and over again. And.
we would always choose people in every moment of every decision and the money took care of itself and the business just kept growing and growing and growing because of that culture that we built. But a lot of organizations are designed to choose the money first and the people second. And yeah, so that's kind of what you can run into if you're like a founder who has designed a more family -based approach. And then if you're there watching it in real time get dismantled and that can be -
Well, I'm sure, although it was hard for you going through that, knowing that there was really high retention even after, so the people who remain there continue to be happy and enjoy the company. So, hopefully a bit of light on that scenario. You obviously had a lot of success from Thin Data, and I'm sure you apply that to support the Schulich entrepreneurs that you work with, and there's a lot of them. I'm curious.
when you reflect both on your time, but also seeing so many different entrepreneurs across so many industries, if there's themes of success, whether it's in how they run the business or in a type of founder, what kind of comes to the surface of those themes that result in a successful business? Yeah, whether companies that I've invested in or companies that I'm coaching here at Schulich,
I really think that one of the fundamental things is the ability to listen. And I've seen many times, like early in my angel investing, the angel investment deals that I most wish I had a take back on were ones where I was like thinking like, I really love the idea and I love like this person's smarts, but my gut was saying they don't listen very well. And the ones that...
Kelly Yefet (40:15.982)
went, you know, became the biggest successes that I invested in are people who listen really well and reflect on what they're hearing. It doesn't mean they run off and just do the last thing that everybody said, but that they really listen and they take it and they reflect on it and they find ways to design that and they'll run the right parts of it into what they build. And yes, so the companies that I've worked with that have that kind of like in the heart of the
the founding group, because it's actually not about whether they're like listening to me in the coaching or not. And that's not that I have like every answer or they should do what I'm suggesting to them. It's more about what I've learned is that it's reflective of how they listen to their staff, to their customers, to their other investors, to their accountant, to their lawyer, to everybody. So an inability to actually like, you know, take in.
other perspectives well and wisely and design them into the business is actually something that like multiplies over and over and over again throughout the company. I learned over time as well too that as I went on with that company that acquired us, I also did some support work on the next wave of companies that they acquired, right? And so, you know, I think...
This isn't a revolutionary statement, but I think that ultimately, so many times a company is capped by the founder's ability or inability to listen and grow and change. So if you meet someone early on and they have this resistance in those conversations, I will work with everybody and my...
My mission at the school is to like help everybody to move as far as they can as far forward as they can in their in their journey But I do know when I meet people who are good at this or not good at this in the beginning The ones who really get it they're already I can see how far they're going to go And the ones that don't I've got to work really hard to help them on that particular issue before any other issue can be like figured out in the last handful of
Kelly Yefet (42:38.83)
episodes that I've done a theme that has come up from every founder is if I Look back on myself over the last six months and I recognize who I am. I'm doing something wrong. I have to be a I won the co -founder of hashtag paid Brian Gold He said I have to fire myself every six months and rehire the new Brian to take on new roles to move myself forward to move the business board and I thought And how you're saying it kind of encapsulates that it's really interesting that you have to
grow and part of that is master classes and reading. But it's also listening to the people around you and hearing how am I not the best leader that I can be? How can I change what some of that feedback that I'm getting and actually listen to and adjust? And it's interesting that that's kind of the theme that you're pointing out as well as of what you're seeing as success. Yeah, I mean, it's everywhere that you go, whether you're a founder or now in my role here. There's many times.
throughout the last like five, six years of this journey, where I've had to learn to adapt and change to how I interact with, communicate with, and provide better partnership to academics that are in the space. Because they're coming from a whole different set of worlds and opportunities and histories. And so, you know, as people have like,
offered to teach me different things or explain how different decisions get made, then one path could have been like, well, none of this makes any sense, right? Or another path could have been to like really like listen and understand it and then find ways to bridge the two worlds, bridge the entrepreneurial, you know, anarchy that is this thing that we're creating with the academic side of the institution as well, too. And so,
I try to bring that, for myself, try to bring that way of listening and learning as well. And I'm really lucky in that I have people like the Dean, Dean Dinsbrick, and President Lenton from York University as well to provide that kind of insight and guidance. So I think we should all be listening and all be learning and open along the way. Do you think if someone isn't the strongest listener that it's something that they can learn to do or?
Kelly Yefet (45:02.606)
find techniques to become a better listener or is that, have you not seen that growth? I've seen people like completely change that, you know. I think sometimes the challenge is that nobody around them knows how to break through and have that conversation. And many times when I've been able to have that conversation with people, they've thanked me for it. They've been, they want to be more...
self -aware to that and they want to work on it and they've wanted to talk about things. So for example, recently I was at a board meeting with a company that I support and work with as an observer and you know there was an interaction in the board meeting, it was a meeting of the shareholders actually and one of the co -founders leaders had a particular interaction and I thought that could be different.
And the way the conversation happened could have implications as well too for how people interpret it. And afterwards, when the meeting was done, then I got a tour of the operation and met a whole bunch of the staff and another 45 minutes have passed. And then I suggested we go and have a sit down in the boardroom for a moment. And then we just opened that up and rewound it.
and talked about different ways it could have been approached, different statements, questions that could have been asked, role played the whole thing, worked through it together. And I gave like tangible examples for how the, what the value would be of approaching this scenario in a different way. What the impact could be on other types of people who were in the room, other board members or shareholders who that particular interaction didn't involve, but they were an observation.
What kind of skills do you want to have by the time it comes to be that you're acquired and maybe you would like to remain on the board of directors for the larger organization that acquires you? What kind of skills, how will that company view your ability to handle those moments? And what I really deeply respect about that particular founder in that business is that not only in that moment are they like wide open, working through it with me, role playing.
Kelly Yefet (47:27.63)
But then they're like, I want more of that. Can you like, you know, anytime you see that, can you call that out? But you have to earn as the coach, as the advisor, as the board member, as the investor, whatever, to get through and build that connection with someone who has some of those, you know, challenges that they're working through or areas of growth that they need to tap into. You need to build like a level of trust and
a way of working with them that allows you to get inside their world and inside their heart a little bit. I'm sure it's also them seeing where you're coming from. You're not coming to attack them. You're coming because you're saying, look at all the opportunity you have in front of you. If we can maybe tweak some of these things, we'll be able to achieve those things maybe. That's why I always say when people will ask me, when you join the board or when you invest, then...
what would you say Chris is your area of like expertise, right? And I will never say my area of expertise is like around a whole bunch of technical aspects of like the particular, you know, business or some, you know, wider aspects around the fundraising. But what I will tell them is like, when you have the five biggest soulful challenges that you have in the history of the business, or when you have the five biggest opportunities, but you're not sure if they're right.
you'll come to me and you'll want me to be the one who's sitting with you talking through those things because I'm going to talk to you about like a deeper sense of purpose, humanity and impact to yourself and everyone around you. And if there's something that you need to achieve in that, I'll help you figure it out how to get there. If you need to go and have like the hardest conversation with the board that you're ever going to have, I will help you to architect that conversation and figure out how it's going to come out in a really good outcome.
So that's what I like to do. We work on all the businesses. We definitely support them with their strategies and their growth opportunities and raising money and that's all good. But this is the relationship I want with the founders within our community is that when they're completely up against the wall or they have this huge opportunity they got to decide on, they're going to ask for me to be in the room or to have a private conversation to share their thoughts and they can trust me.
Kelly Yefet (49:53.836)
Incredible. I have my final two questions for you. So typically, my second last question is a myth that the founder or person on the other side of the conversation wants to dispel. But I know you have a myth that you actually want to reinforce. So I'm curious, very curious to hear what is that myth that is actually true that you want to reinforce. And we'll get to the last question. Yeah, I think this is a is a
starts off as a myth for a lot of people because they fight against it. Okay. Right. And they want to believe that it's a myth, but then they eventually come around and figure out that it's not a myth and it's true. So why I want to talk about this one is I want people to get faster to the embracing that this is not a myth. Um, and that is that, um, as it was put to me very early on by my very first coach for my business back in 1995, uh, he said that, um,
of all the businesses that he had ever seen succeed, that the realization that every founder had to come to was that despite whatever technical or creative or culinary skill sets they had in creating the things that they were creating, that the thing that was going to separate them in the life or death of the business was whether they could turn themselves into the greatest salesperson in the history of the company.
And a lot of people fight against that and they want to hide in the background and they don't want to be the face on Instagram or they don't want to be like, you know, they want to go hire a salesperson. I'm going to get someone to do that for me. I'm going to find the co -founder who's going to, but even if you do find a co -founder, if you're a technical person and you find a co -founder, that's really amazing at telling the story, you still got to show up in the boardroom when the acquirer is there to actually communicate what's going on. You still got to be part of selling a hundred engineers to join the company. You still got to be.
et cetera, et cetera. So this one I think is very important. And when I started out, I was like, ah, that's not true. I'm just going to hire someone. I tried hiring a bunch of people that didn't work out. And then one day I was like, OK, well, he was right. So then I started off working on that and learning how to tell the story, how to pitch, how to communicate, and how to win people on board and get them to join up with what we were doing. So I think that's one that people need to understand a lot faster, not a myth.
Kelly Yefet (52:14.03)
who else to tell the story and by hearts of all the stakeholders involved than the founders. So I think that it's probably a hard one because I'm sure people are just passionate about solving the problem and don't wanna have to interact with people, but it makes total sense. And the last question, the podcast is called How I Became. And Chris, throughout the story, you have evolved.
numerous times that you've shared today. So I'm curious if you were to name this episode, How I Became, fill in the blank, what would you name today's episode? How I Became a Master Networker and Community Builder. Amazing. Thank you so much for joining me today and spending some time telling your story. Thank you for being vulnerable. I know you shared a lot about your journey and I'm so excited to share the story and Schulich Startups with the audience. Thanks, Kelly. That was a lot of fun. Thank you.