Episode 02 - Navigating Entrepreneurial Journeys and Insights with Luis Rincon
Episode 02 - Navigating Entrepreneurial Journeys and Insights with Luis RinconEpisode 02 - Navigating Entrepreneurial Journeys and Insights with Luis Rincon
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Episode 02 - Navigating Entrepreneurial Journeys and Insights with Luis Rincon
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EIR LiveTrailerBonusEpisode 3Season 1
Episode 02 - Navigating Entrepreneurial Journeys and Insights with Luis Rincon
In this episode of EIR Live, Ilya Tabakh and Terrance Orr engage in a deep conversation with Luis Rincon about his journey from law school to becoming an entrepreneur in residence (EIR) and ultimately founding Acadeum. They discuss the importance of exposure, mentorship, and networking in entrepreneurship, as well as the evolving role of EIRs in the startup ecosystem. Luis shares insights on adaptability, empathy, and the significance of keeping personal burn low while navigating career transitions. The conversation also touches on the impact of AI on innovation and the need for a supportive EIR community to foster growth and collaboration.
Takeaways:
Work for a startup to gain valuable experience.
Exposure through mentors can lead to significant opportunities.
Maintaining a low personal burn is crucial for entrepreneurs.
Empathy and adaptability are key traits for success.
The EIR role provides a unique opportunity to launch businesses.
Networking is essential for accessing resources and support.
AI is transforming the entrepreneurial landscape.
Creating a community for EIRs can enhance collaboration.
Iterative learning is vital in entrepreneurship.
Unfulfilled potential is a significant frustration in the entrepreneurial journey.
Sound Bites:
"This is awesome. Like everyone's working their tail off."
"Exposure leads to you taking the leap."
"Entrepreneurship is really an apprentice exercise."
In this episode of EIR Live, Ilya Tabakh and Terrance Orr engage in a deep conversation with Luis Rincon about his journey from law school to becoming an entrepreneur in residence (EIR) and ultimately founding Acadeum. They discuss the importance of exposure, mentorship, and networking in entrepreneurship, as well as the evolving role of EIRs in the startup ecosystem. Luis shares insights on adaptability, empathy, and the significance of keeping personal burn low while navigating career transitions. The conversation also touches on the impact of AI on innovation and the need for a supportive EIR community to foster growth and collaboration.
Takeaways:
Work for a startup to gain valuable experience.
Exposure through mentors can lead to significant opportunities.
Maintaining a low personal burn is crucial for entrepreneurs.
Empathy and adaptability are key traits for success.
The EIR role provides a unique opportunity to launch businesses.
Networking is essential for accessing resources and support.
AI is transforming the entrepreneurial landscape.
Creating a community for EIRs can enhance collaboration.
Iterative learning is vital in entrepreneurship.
Unfulfilled potential is a significant frustration in the entrepreneurial journey.
Sound Bites:
"This is awesome. Like everyone's working their tail off."
"Exposure leads to you taking the leap."
"Entrepreneurship is really an apprentice exercise."
Founder | Scaling #ClimateTech as Entrepreneur-in-Residence @Black_Veatch | Author | Based in #KansasCity | work = people+systems+tech (at least 2 of the 3)
Host
Terrance Orr
I’m just a guy from a small town with big dreams | Venture Builder, Investor, and Advisor
Guest
Luis Felipe Rincon
Luis Felipe Rincon is an accomplished entrepreneur and business leader with expertise in corporate development, venture capital, and the education technology sector. As co-founder of Acadeum, he has grown the platform into the largest connected payments network in U.S. higher education, securing significant venture capital backing and helping build a compelling operating business. Rincon's career is marked by his ability to scale innovative solutions and navigate the complexities in the startup ecosystems.
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.
Luis Rincon:
And that was probably still the most enjoyable or, you know, kind of, like, most energetic portion of my career that I've ever experienced because it was my first time being in a start up, and I was like, this is awesome. Like, everyone's working their tail off. The culture there was phenomenal. And so, like, big kind of takeaways for folks who wanna be in the hour are just gonna is, 1, go work for a startup. If you can, if you're looking for a VC fund or one, go post series a if you're not sure what you wanna do, that'll give you a little bit more stability.
Luis Rincon:
And then 2 is, you know, keep your personal burn low, for as long as you can.
Ilya Tabakh:
Welcome to EIR Live, where we dive into the lives and lessons of entrepreneurs in residence. I'm Ilya Tabak, together with my cohost, Terrence Orr, ready to bring you closer to the heartbeat of the innovation and entrepreneurial spirit. Every episode, we explore the real stories behind the ideas, successes, setbacks, and everything in between. For everyone from aspiring EIRs to seasoned pros, EIR Live is your gateway to the depth of the entrepreneurial journey and bringing innovative insights into the broader world. Check out the full details in the episode description.
Ilya Tabakh:
Subscribe to stay updated, and join us as we uncover what it takes to transform visions into ventures. Welcome aboard. Let's grow together. Man, that was, that was quite an episode. I really love the energy, and I love kind of the back and forth.
Ilya Tabakh:
And and, actually, I'm really getting to, like, as we kind of prepare for these episodes and have conversations around them, that turns out to be, you know, a lot of fun as well. What what caught your ear in this episode?
Terrance Orr:
Oh, man. This was a very fruitful conversation, and and really, honestly, the big takeaway for me from Louise was really about, you know, exposure, you know, leads to you taking the leap, and that leads to access along the way. These things are very interesting when you think about the entrepreneur and resident's journey, at any residence you're you're at. And he talked a lot about that exposure to through early mentors and coaches and people who actually, you know, inspired him actually to take the leap at some point and took a shot on him. And that access is paramount when it comes to, you know, thinking about, you know, taking the leap on your own in the wild as an entrepreneur.
Terrance Orr:
I needed those mentors and coaches because you don't know what you don't know until you get punched in the face in this journey. Right? And, La'Vie's story around being exposed, taking the leap, you know, essentially, and having that access, I think, is critical for everybody to listen to and learn.
Ilya Tabakh:
You know, I violently agree here. The the whole idea of kinda entrepreneurship and a lot of these things being apprentice sports, is something that I I believe pretty thoroughly. And then I think, you know, one of the things we got into is kinda maintaining optionality and taking advantage of the opportunity. And I think, you know, kinda Luis did that in droves throughout, you know, multiple stops across his career. So I just love the fact that, you know, he showed up, did cool stuff, and, kept the people that he was working with, super excited and engaged and, you know, continues to do that.
Ilya Tabakh:
So, yeah. Let's let's jump into it. I really love this one.
Terrance Orr:
Absolutely, man. Let's do it.
Ilya Tabakh:
Alright. Well, I'm always excited. I've been really excited, but this is a conversation that's been, coming for, actually, more than 2 years. 1st time Luis and I sat down in person was a little over 2 years ago, in Austin, Texas when I was first starting to reach out to, I guess, not just first, but was very early in my journey of kinda reaching out to EIRs. And what was cool about Luis is Luis, like, immediately got the idea, had all kinds of sort of insights as well as talking about, man, if I was a kind of a new a EIR, you know, I'd be I'd be super excited about this network and and meeting other people.
Ilya Tabakh:
And, you know, Luis just generally is an energetic and infectious guy as you guys will find out here in a second as well. That's right. But yeah, Luis. Maybe a good way to kick this thing off is just kinda take it back to the beginning and and talk about, you know, how you got and really how you kicked your career off, and and then we can kinda walk through it, and and talk about how you got to be in EIR.
Luis Rincon:
Sure. Absolutely. Thanks for having me, Terrence and Ilya. Yeah. It's been a really great journey getting to meet Ilya a few years ago.
Luis Rincon:
And as you guys can probably attest or anyone listening to this, you put cofounder or any sort of c suite role in your LinkedIn profile, and your LinkedIn DMs just become garbage. Like, it's just all inbound sales stuff. And somehow Ilya managed to kind of cut through that and sent me a LinkedIn message. And I was like, Yeah, absolutely. This is a great idea.
Luis Rincon:
You know, more than anything, I would have benefited from this when I first became an EIR because I'd heard of the role, but I and the title, but I never actually done it. Didn't really know anyone else who had done it. And so just having access to someone else saying, hey, I'm an ER or 2. You want you want to grab a coffee? It's like, absolutely.
Luis Rincon:
So as Ilya mentioned, my name is Louis Rincon. I am a, I guess, technically former entrepreneur in residence. I am now, you know, transitioned into a a cofounder and operator role, with a a small venture fund called Socratic Ventures that focuses on education and workforce, businesses, primarily technology businesses. I'm based in Austin, Texas. I I went to grad school here at the University of Texas.
Luis Rincon:
I went to law school like Terrence. I'm a reformed or recovering JD, didn't actually become an attorney, didn't practice law. But it was actually through the law school experience that I ended up where I am now, in the technology space, in the startup space, in the venture space, and actually led to the EIR role. Moved around a lot growing up, 3 different countries and many different locations, but principally between Southern California and Texas. Went to college at Pepperdine in Los Angeles, worked in in principally real estate.
Luis Rincon:
My first job ever was in construction growing up, and I always thought I was just gonna be in real estate. And then I graduated in 2007 into, one of the worst real estate markets you could have found. Right? And, I did that for about a year or 2 and then decided to bury my nose in some books for a while to let that pass and, went to law school at the University of Texas in 2009, which is how I ended up here at, in Austin. And through that, it took me all of probably 1 semester to realize I didn't wanna be an attorney, which I probably should have done that homework, before going to law school.
Luis Rincon:
But I'd done well on the LSAT, and so I had a good scholarship. And, you know, the only jobs I was really getting offered were a 100% sales commission roles. And so I guess maybe that says a little bit more about me and the type of people that become EIRs, you know, is sort of like a shoot first, aim later kind of personality. But, you know, through that, I got exposed to a course by an alumni of the law school, Adam Dell, who is a multi exited founder. He's the current current founder of a company called Domain Money in New York.
Luis Rincon:
He's also been a VC a few times over, And he had, graduated from law school, become an attorney, become a VC, become a founder, and came back to law school to teach a course. I took the course and was just blown away by I'd always been, flexing some sort of entrepreneurial muscle since I was a little kid, but it was really the first time I was truly exposed to, like, structured entrepreneurship, VC funds, getting exposure to VCs. A lot of that course was based around having Adams Network come in and talk to, basically MBA engineering and law students. And so I got to meet a ton of VCs. I got to meet a ton of entrepreneurs.
Luis Rincon:
I met my first EIR, and I ended up becoming the teacher's assistant, the TA for Adam for that course for the remainder of my law school experience for the next 2 years. And through that, actually, I remember having a conversation with with Adam, and, you know, I was telling him, I was like, hey. You know, Adam, I don't think I wanna be a lawyer. I think I wanna do what you do, which at the time he was a venture partner. And I'll never forget the guy just looks me dead in the eyes and goes, oh, I'd never hire you.
Luis Rincon:
And I was blown away. I was like, I'd been working my ass off for the guy you know, for 2 years, and I thought doing a great job. He he spoke very highly of me.
Terrance Orr:
And I
Luis Rincon:
was like, Adam, what the hell, man? And he he was like, no. No. No. I I think you're great.
Luis Rincon:
I think the work you do is great, but just philosophically, I think the only people who should be investing in startups are, you know, former operators, entrepreneurs, people who have really been in the trenches. And I was like, well, you know, I can get behind that, I think, philosophically. And, you know, but I didn't wanna start a company for the sake of shutting it down a year later and saying, great. Will you give me a job now? Right?
Luis Rincon:
And, so I was, you know, I'm sort of thinking, alright. I'm 27, 28 years old at the time. And I said, you know, you know me. You know my skill set. You're in Austin.
Luis Rincon:
You're 28 year old Luis. What what do you do? And his response was something along the lines of, you know, I've I've got my portfolio. I'm more than happy to introduce you to any any one of the companies you like there. Let me know, and and you'll get a direct intro to the CEO.
Luis Rincon:
Or I can tell you all the companies that I wish had taken my money. You know, and I was like, well, that sounds like a much more interesting group. Right? Like, he's like, oh, yeah. That's those are the hot deals.
Luis Rincon:
Right? Those are the ones that everyone wants to get in on. And he's like, I want some of them, but not all of them. And he happened to mention one, which was, coincidentally enough, started by another alumni of the law school, a guy named Dan Graham. And the company was called buildasign.com.
Luis Rincon:
It was an ecommerce custom printing solution, focused mainly in in 2 areas, b to b, so selling signage directly to businesses, and b to c selling principally, like, home decor custom print. And, I was like, oh, is that that's Dan's company. Right? And he's like, yeah. You know Dan?
Luis Rincon:
I was like, yeah. We got connected through the law school, and he's like, oh, man. Like, I would go work for Dan. Like, that's a you know, that's what I would do if I was you. And so I I reached out to Dan, and, coincidentally enough, I had already accepted a role back in Los Angeles to go work for a startup that was gonna be basically going through the corp dev process of getting acquired by, I forget if it was HP or Symantec.
Luis Rincon:
This was, you know, about 15 years ago. And I met Dan. It was subrevenue 10,000,000, so it was still in the in the 7 figure range, not in the 8 figure range. And I met at the office. It was just like this infectious environment.
Luis Rincon:
I had already become a an associate and then a principal at the University of Texas Startup Accelerator, what's called the Brumley Texas Venture Labs. And so I've been exposed to a few VC investors and startups, but I'd never formally worked within 1. And so, you know, Dan, who's still one of my great friends and certainly someone I consider a mentor, was like, dude, Luis, just come come work for me. Like, we are so so so, like, booked. We're just trying to keep up with demand, but I've got all these fun ideas, and I don't wanna I don't wanna put the pressure on my existing team.
Luis Rincon:
I don't wanna take them off, you know, the keeping the main thing the main thing. But, like, you and I can just test stuff. If it works, we'll, you know, put a bow on it and pass along to the right group. If it doesn't, we'll just throw it away. And I thought, well, that sounds like a great opportunity.
Luis Rincon:
And so I did that and just fell in love with it. And it's just Hey, Luis.
Ilya Tabakh:
Be before we kinda jump into that part, you mentioned a couple of things in your background on kind of having traveled and lived in some places, did law. I I think that's a theme that I've seen in a couple of conversations where I've had. Can you talk just a little bit about, you know, to your point, you know, shoot first, aim later? I think there's actually some value in in getting that experience and having the context that, you know, there's half a dozen or more ways to do a thing. And and and a lot of folks kinda gloss that over when they talk about their background.
Ilya Tabakh:
But could you spend just another beat, you know, kinda talking about that a little bit?
Luis Rincon:
Yeah. Happily. And, you know, interestingly enough, if you guys listen to, Harry Stebbings and and the 20 minute VC, he's got an interesting, post that he put out. I I can't recall how how long ago saying, you know, here's some, like, 3, characteristics that I've identified just repeat themselves over and over with founders or VCs that I've talked to. And, having moved around a lot as a child is actually one of them.
Luis Rincon:
And that's not saying that I was sort of predisposed or pre you know, kind of destined to be an entrepreneur, but I do think it absolutely, creates value. I think for 1, you know, I ended up, through the ecommerce company, really falling into the product role. And I like to say I'm built like a T, right, so I can walk across just about any department in an organization. I can certainly talk to all of them, but I can really only go deep in one. And if I were to go deep in 1, it'd be the fact that I've spent the last decade really working in product, and it's mainly because of of my work at that start up, and and working with those folks to to learn, you know, SQL, learn front end development, back end development, working with engineers.
Luis Rincon:
And one of the most important things to product, and I think ultimately every EIR, every entrepreneur is essentially focused on a market pain and a product to start, is empathy. And to put it into perspective, so my dad was a, irrigation systems engineer. Everyone thinks I was military growing up. I wasn't, and we had to move to where the projects were. Right.
Luis Rincon:
And so my dad did his part of his PhD dissertation in the Netherlands. And so my parents, both my parents are originally from Mexico. My mom's born in the US but raised entirely in Mexico. And my dad was kind of the inverse. He was born in Mexico, moved to Southern California when he was in high school.
Luis Rincon:
And, we we lived in Mexico. I'm born in the US, but we lived in Mexico. We lived in the Netherlands, and we moved to California. And if you think about the traditional, California. And if you think about the traditional US students kinda growth, they go one elementary school, one middle school, one high school.
Luis Rincon:
Right? You're gonna if you don't move, you've got 3, schools, but they might all be really the same community because the way that the school districts work in United States is based off your home address. I I went to 7 schools before I started college. And to put it, like, the the most acute of that was middle school, which is 6th, 7th, and 8th grade in the United States, I went to a different middle school every year, including one in a different country. And what that created for me was I was essentially the new kid over and over and over and over again.
Luis Rincon:
And the reason I think that built up an empathy muscle for me is I was pretty darn dependent on people being nice to me. Right? Like, that sort of cliche kinda teen movie stuff where a kid walks into the the cafeteria with his lunch tray and is just like, where the hell do I sit? Right? Like, I remember having vivid memories of that, like, on the 1st or second day and and just praying somebody would raise their hands and be like, oh, you know, come sit with me.
Luis Rincon:
Right? And and and I still remember, in fact, the name of the kids who did even as far back as 6th grade because it was so nice. And even if they didn't become my friend long term, like, the fact that they just extended an an olive branch for that first time around is is huge. But, additionally, I think it forces people to get out of their shell. I'm I'm a big believer.
Luis Rincon:
So I work in EdTech now. The company that I cofounded as an EIR is called Acadium, acadeum.com. You can check it out. And one of the things I I really value about, you know, sort of education and and certainly, my educational experience was studying abroad. So I did a 4th country when I was in college.
Luis Rincon:
I I spent my my entire sophomore year living in Italy. But forcing you to get out of your shell, you you just it's really hard, I think, to be introverted a 100% of the time as an entrepreneur. You can be an introvert and be a very successful entrepreneur. I know some very, very successful introverted entrepreneurs, but they have to flex their extrovert muscle to really get out there, talk to customers, understand a pain point. And I certainly believe that that I'm I'm a capital e extrovert.
Luis Rincon:
Not to say that I don't like being alone and recharging, but, like, this sort of stuff, talking to guys like you, being in a room with people, like, that I I feel the energy. Right? Like, that is what what really gets me going. But you have to be able to just get out of your comfort zone and talk to people and constantly having to switch coats and be in different rooms. You know, one minute I'm talking to a customer, I gotta wear a certain coat for that.
Luis Rincon:
1 minute I'm talking to our internal team, I gotta wear a coat for that. 1 minute I'm talking to a VC firm, I gotta talk wear a different coat for that. And moving around a lot certainly helped helped there.
Terrance Orr:
I'm gonna pull on this thread a little bit more. Okay, Luis? Because there's a few things that I I love to I love to pull threads and themes. We have these discussions with people like you and and people like you and me and, like, builders, serial entrepreneurs, and people who are not afraid to jump out of the plane and figure out how to fly it on the way down. Right?
Terrance Orr:
And there's a few things you mentioned. 1, you know, Ilya already touched on the moving in different countries, which I think creates a a an adaptable mindset, adaptability, which you need as a skill, you know, as an entrepreneur. And it creates this translated disability to switch coats in different rooms and being a translator for different people. Right? That's the second thing.
Terrance Orr:
And but I think for every, conversation that we've had, everything in somebody's background starts with some sort of spark, right? There's the spark, there's exposure, and then there's the example, right? And for you, you had the spark and the exposure through, you know, Adam, right? You got that, you took the class, then you got inspired. Like I can do this too.
Terrance Orr:
I wanna do what you do, right? And then you started seeing more examples of people who've done it, right? You saw Dan, you saw Adam, you saw others. So for me, it always starts in this sort of spark, exposure, example, leap. People take that leap because they've seen it, right?
Terrance Orr:
They've seen examples, they've been exposed. And now they've had like a network of people around them that would feel comfortable to take the leap, right? Talk to me about taking that leap, right? You're about to go there, right? From sort of, you know, I think I wanna do this.
Terrance Orr:
I wanna do what you do. I have the examples. Forget it. I'm going to go and do it. Talk to me about transitioning into the world of being an operator and entrepreneur.
Luis Rincon:
Yeah. Yeah. I I agree with everything you said, Terrence. You know, the the jump for me was actually very easy. And, you know, it's interesting.
Luis Rincon:
I want to like you, Terrence, I went to law school, which is filled with super type a people, very high achievers, and generally very risk averse people. And my friends from law school, some of my dearest friends, they're like, you know, Luis is crazy. That guy just loves risk. When in reality, I think a key part of being an entrepreneur or being in the entrepreneurial ecosystem, even as a VC, is actually to reduce risk. And the way that I view it is, like, I'm actually quite risk averse.
Luis Rincon:
I might not be as risk averse as the typical law school student, but in the way that I go have gone about my career, I've actually been very, very specific around how can I reduce the risk here? And I actually think that's one of the values of an EIR rule. And and one of the benefits is, you know, maybe a fund identifies someone like Terrence and says, like, man, Dan, Terrence is really good. Like, we want him to start something. And they talk to Terrence, and Terrence is like, well, you know, I've got this financial obligation or something.
Luis Rincon:
It just starts hearing, oh, I'm I'm risk averse. Risk averse is like, well, hey. We'll we'll pay you. Like, don't worry. Like, what?
Luis Rincon:
And you'll have access to all our resources. And it's like, oh, that helps you make the jump. It was a pretty similar story for me to kind of going back to the conversation around starting to work for Dan. So I ended up working full time for Dan during my entire 3rd year of law school while still teeing Adam's class. I was basically working 2 jobs.
Luis Rincon:
Let's call it 1 and a half jobs. And so, you know, my GPA just went backwards, which at that point I didn't care. Right. It's like, well, I'm not going to go get a law job anyway. At that point, it was definitely the C's get degrees kind of mentality and which is not a mentality that I'd ever really had.
Luis Rincon:
One of the things that also, you know, going back to Ilya's question of me moving around a lot was before I got my JD, I was the only person in my family, which is just I have one sibling and my two parents that didn't have a postgraduate degree. Like education is very big for my family. My dad was a college professor at a point in time. He has a PhD. My mom has an MBA.
Luis Rincon:
My brother had a master's degree. He's a double Ivy League grad. I was like the one slacker with a college degree from Pepperdine. Like I had I wasn't like my parents. Like, hey, you know, come on.
Luis Rincon:
When when's the next one coming? And when I worked full time for Dan, it was very clear to me, like, this gives me energy and I'm very big on identifying, like, what drains me of energy and what gives me energy. And I would be at the law school, and I was it was intellectually stimulated, certainly, and and I I love the people that some of my closest friends there. But, man, I was just like, gosh, get me out of here. Like, where where do I sign to just, like, what's I'm done.
Luis Rincon:
I'm good. Whereas even the most minute kind of problem that we were trying to solve at that startup, and that was a true rocketship. It so just to put it in perspective, I joined, sub revenue 10,000,000. And 3 and a half years later, when I left, we were doing just shy of 75,000,000. And it ended up breaking the 9 figure revenue threshold and eventually selling for nearly 300,000,000 to Vistaprint, which that's all public data at this point.
Luis Rincon:
And so having worked full time, you know, Dan was, as you've used, pretty cavalier, just be like, hey, if you wanna quit law school, just like the job, it's permanent. And I said, oh, you know, like, I've made a commitment to my parents, I made a commitment to myself. So he was like, look, cool. I'll just tell people here that they've got to be understanding that sometimes you've got to be down at the campus. Sometimes you got to be here.
Luis Rincon:
And it was phenomenal to have a guy like Dan, because he had completed law school even though he had started his company, his 3rd year of law school, to really help me do that. And the truth is, like, I graduated law school on a Saturday, and Monday, I was back at work. Like, there was no you know what I mean? Like, there's just another weekend for me. I had a ceremony.
Luis Rincon:
My family flew in. Friends flew in. We had a great dinner. Had a great party that night. And then, like, Monday, I'm back at work.
Luis Rincon:
There was no real change. I still went on the bar trip, which is like for those of you guys who don't know law school, you basically graduate. You spent 2 months just killing yourself studying for a bar exam. You take a bar exam and because you haven't seen sunlight in 8 weeks, you know, then you go out on a bar trip is what they call it. You know, you take a trip with your friends who had all been just to let loose.
Luis Rincon:
So I still did that because I wanted to go have fun with my friends, but I never even took the bar. Like, I was working full time at that point. And the transition so there, I was jack of all trades again, which has led to me being built like a T. I was working on some things for marketing. I was working on some things.
Luis Rincon:
I have, you know, a business degree undergraduate plus a law degree. The CFO there at Buildsign, he's still there, in fact. He was a former Wall Street attorney. And so he and I worked very well together. We were doing small m and a, kind of like buying up smaller print companies, so I would help him with that.
Luis Rincon:
And that's really where I learned the product role. And I remember, Dan and and and the CIO, CMO there, a guy named Jerry, who's still one of my closest friends and also a mentor, came up to me one day and they're like, hey, Luis, we we lost, you know, a product manager and, we want you to take over his products. And I was like, well, what do you mean guys? And they're like, well, you're going to be the product manager. And I, my exact response was, I know what product means and I know what manager means so I can like deduce what they mean together.
Luis Rincon:
But you know, this was 2011 before the product manager role had really kind of like now. I think you can even get an undergraduate degree in product management. I was like, guys, what the hell does that mean? And, you know, Jerry laughed and he was like, look, I've seen your work in Excel. I've seen the way that you can float across the different departments.
Luis Rincon:
That's all I need. I can teach you the rest. And so that's where I really started to learn digital tools, right? So like SQL databases, how to query on my own. Now I'm fully SQL literate.
Luis Rincon:
HTML, CSS, very basic, so I could have conversations with designers, with engineers, how to write a PRD, and and the rest really just came through through doing. And about three and a half years in, I was wrapping up a project, and I kinda felt like I'd learned what I was gonna learn in in my role. And the company was founded by 3 guys, and 2 of them are are very, very close friends of mine. I have a ton of respect for the 3rd guy. He was just gone already, at the time that I joined.
Luis Rincon:
And I said, you know what, guys? Hey. This isn't my 2 week notice. I'll stay here for 6 months, 12 months, however long you need, but, like, I'm I'm ready to move on. And they asked me, like, well, what are you gonna do?
Luis Rincon:
And one of the things so just kind of for the EIRs or or folks who wanna be EIRs out there, huge recommendation is just keep your burn low. I had kept my burn very low. Like, I didn't have a car payment. I had a cell phone payment. You know, I, like, I had very minimal at that time student loans.
Luis Rincon:
And so I was like, you know, honestly, I I wanna go back to where we were when we started, maybe even earlier. You know, a bunch of people in a cramped little office, maybe be a founder. And so Dan and JR, the 2 founders 2 of the 3 founders of that company said, you know, hey. Well, we bought this asset, and we'd love to commercialize it. It was a premium domain called wearables.com.
Luis Rincon:
And they're like, but we're so focused here. We're heads down here. We're not gonna have the time. What if you become the operating partner for that? We'll be the investment partners.
Luis Rincon:
Let's go launch this thing. Which candidly, guys, that I later I have now realized that's actually the first time I became an EIR. It just wasn't called an EIR. Like, it wasn't my idea. They said, hey.
Luis Rincon:
We have this thing. We need to commercialize it, and we will be these guys at this point were, you know, independently, well, speaking. We're like, hey. We'll we'll fund it. And if it works, we're happy to take this to market and help you raise capital and build a team.
Luis Rincon:
And so I was like, hell yeah. Let's do that. And and so before I get into wearables, I think, Terrence, you know, hopefully, that answered your question. It was I I've I've built those bridges to do the next thing by just actively working and getting in there. And one of the things that I cannot understate is the value of having people I've never, you know, called these guys a mentor to my face, but I certainly call consider them mentors.
Luis Rincon:
But guys who are willing to take a chance, you know, get into the startup space, start working for a startup. It doesn't even matter. Like, I had no passion for custom printing. I still candidly don't really have much passion for custom printing, and that was probably still the most enjoyable or, you know, kind of like most energetic portion of my career that I've ever experienced because it was my first time being in a startup, and I was like, this is awesome. Like, everyone's working their tail off.
Luis Rincon:
The culture there was phenomenal. And so, like, big kind of takeaways for folks who wanna be in the hour are just gonna is, 1, go work for a startup. If you can, if you're looking for a VC fund or one, go post series a if you're not sure what you wanna do. They'll give you a little bit more stability. And then 2 is, you know, keep your keep your personal burn low for as long as you can.
Ilya Tabakh:
Just quickly to add to that. I always think that I realized maybe a little later than I should in my entrepreneurial journey that, entrepreneurship's really an apprentice exercise, and that, I met some, you know, awesome entrepreneurs over my entrepreneurial career, and realize that, you know, there's a lot of sort of knowledge, you know, tribal knowledge or whatever that that folks had gone through this experience, knew how to deal with these things, but it's just very hard to understand, a, what are these things that you've been needing to learn, and 2, then how to sort of think about them. And I think, you know, extending that into sort of the EIR world, there's a lot of sort of ancillary and additional things on top of just pure play entrepreneur skills that are needed to be successful there. And so I think that general, you know, understand that it's an apprentice exercise and really think about who are the masters, how can you get in the room. Right?
Ilya Tabakh:
And then that low burn thing, whether it's intentional or unintentional, I I had a pretty low burn as well because I had been in academia for so long. And so that was actually really helpful to keep a lot of options open. And so just kind of a a strong second to that, Luis.
Terrance Orr:
And I wanna layer on top of that as as well because I you know, Luis said a few things that I I don't want people to to to get lost because the becoming an EIR gave me the shot as well to take the the leap, right, to become an entrepreneur and and do different things. And I didn't know there was a such opportunity, right, that, you know, a field of founder without an exit yet, right, could actually go off and and do this. And, somebody saw value in that, the war wounds, right, the scars that you already had and knew that you would make those same mistakes again. And I think that's important. The other thing so that's access.
Terrance Orr:
The other thing is Luis never let off talking about solutions, ever. He talking about pain, market, right, and a risk. Right? Literally. This is the the thing that I see a lot of first time founders that I coach.
Terrance Orr:
They make a mistake around wanting to idea everything and be this and go to solutions, but they don't know deeply the pain that they're trying to solve. Right? And this process of EIR ing, right, instead of a role of being an EIR, you learn deeply about customer discovery and, like, discovering customer pain to the point where it's acute, it's widespread, it's emotional. You know it's something that you can go off and build on top of, or build a business around it. The last thing is risk reduction factory, right?
Terrance Orr:
I consider all stars to be a risk reduction factory. And I think there's something about whether you're type A or you've gone to law school or not, there's something intuitive about graduating from a law program in school and learning how to control risk, okay? Like making sure you stay out of jail, but you control risk enough that way you can break the rules and actually build something, you know, that's viable. And I think it's a skill that very few people have out of the gate in their 1st entrepreneur experience that I see a lot of people who've gone to law school and graduated with a JD or any law degree, frankly, you know, they understand the process of controlling risk. Right?
Terrance Orr:
And I think that's a very, very important point that I don't wanna get lost, you know, and and all the incredible things that you just said.
Luis Rincon:
Well, yeah. So, a couple of things. You know, one, Terrence, I I I firmly agree about reducing risk and then sort of the the legal training there. Law school, unfortunately, in my opinion, in the United States, doesn't actually teach you how to become a lawyer. It does teach you how to think very, very critically.
Luis Rincon:
I actually think it's a shame that not all loss law programs in the United States by, let's say, the Bar Association or any accrediting body don't actually require you to, graduate with your your license. Right? I think that's one, sort of, opportunity for for the legal education community. But, my, my property law professor summed up, for for those of you thinking to go to law school, this is besides learning how to think really critically and building a great network, he summed up law school perfectly for me. 2 things.
Luis Rincon:
Never miss a golden opportunity to shut the hell up and always get it in writing. Like, that's that's what you learn. Right? Like, that's
Terrance Orr:
That's right.
Luis Rincon:
That's what law school that's what a good loyalty is. That's right. I think secondly, you know, Ilya, going back to your point, you you used the word that's actually one of my favorite words in the world, which is optionality. I actually tried to buy the domain optionality.com, not because I have an idea for what I do with it. I just really love that word, and I wanna own it.
Luis Rincon:
It's allowing yourself to have multiple opportunities, multiple different avenues where you can go. I think a lot of people, not just people who are prone to entrepreneurship, hate the feeling of of being stuck. Right? And so what is the opposite of being stuck? It's always having options.
Luis Rincon:
So that word optionality is something that one that I I take very seriously. But there is a way that anyone can, I I think, really increase their optionality? Right? And it it starts with you you gotta get out there. You gotta build a network, find out where you can add value.
Luis Rincon:
I took unequivocally the lowest paying full time job coming out of law school compared to my friends. Right? And, they're also making a lot more money than me, by the way. So if if money is your motivating factor, like, don't don't don't listen to to me on this, at least not from a salary perspective. You know, I think as entrepreneurs, we're all driven to that kind of asymmetrical outcome where it's just all of a sudden there's an exit and then, you don't have to worry about the salary.
Luis Rincon:
But it's creating an opportunity for yourself through maybe taking a lower salary, but going to a place where you're gonna learn a lot. Dan, for example, has he funded wearables. And then when I started Acadium, he's now an investor in Acadium. Right? And he gave me my first job in the startup world.
Luis Rincon:
And, you know, JR has also been very important in that. And by the way, so the first time I actually got the title of entrepreneur in residence, it's through my my now cofounder at Acadium, Josh Pierce. He's the founder of Socratic Ventures, and he and I had met volunteering for an education nonprofit that put on basically business hackathons, not like tech hackathons, but business hackathons called 3 Day Startup. And it was specific to education or excuse me, universities. And he and I met at the Texas a and m, program and just became good friends.
Luis Rincon:
And so he was off building his fund and working with different companies in his portfolio. I was still at BuildASign. We would meet up for beers and have conversations and, hey, here's the problems I'm facing. How are you? Here's how I'm thinking about it.
Luis Rincon:
Please, like, tear this apart and vice versa. And that was very useful for me. He was one of the guys that I went to a lot when I was building wearables. And so when we decided to wind down wearables, which was about 2 years into the journey, and we still had money in the bank, but it was just every test we had run had said, you're going back, Terrence, to your word, like, we were iterating quickly and trying to figure out what the right model was. And there's a great quote, and I don't wanna misattribute it to to someone, so I don't exactly remember who it came from.
Luis Rincon:
But, being wrong on the timing of a market is still being wrong on a market. And that's where I think we were with wearable tech. We launched this before the Apple Watch had even come out as an example, and we just couldn't scale revenue to anything meaningful. I I like to say wearables.com was really good at getting press and really bad at generating revenue. We you know, I was on Fox News.
Luis Rincon:
I was on CNBC. We made the cover of USA Today. I was getting invited to because, you know, Terrence, like, you know, SEO, like, people would just search, like, media outlets would be like, oh, what what is wearable? We have wearable tech, like, oh, wearables.com. Oh, who's this guy, Luis?
Luis Rincon:
He's the CEO. Let's call. And they would reach out to me. Sure. Let's do this.
Luis Rincon:
And, of course, we had a hired PR group too, and she did a lot of great work as well. But when we wound that down, you know, Josh is one of the first guys that I reach out to and, amidst other people just let them know, like, hey, I'm going to be available. I'm going to go take a 2, 3 month break because I need to breathe. But anybody working on anything interesting? And he was the one who had come up with this concept for what is now Acadium, which if you guys are unfamiliar with Acadium, we're a b to b marketplace in higher education.
Luis Rincon:
But essentially, we power networks of colleges and universities that can share access to each other's courses, certificates, and degrees. So if Terrence is a student at Ilia University and he can't get a course that he needs to graduate for scheduling reasons or maybe it's not offered that semester, he can take it at Luis University, which Ilia University has said, yeah, that's a peer institution of ours, and we handle all of the data passing, registration, and most importantly, payment between the universities. We just do this to the tunes of now thousands and thousands of times on an annual basis. And Josh had been the CFO of an online university and had experienced that pain. And he was like, well, you know, he was trying to originally, if I recall correctly, he was trying to recruit me to be the COO for another one of his portfolio companies.
Luis Rincon:
And I was like, oh, that's interesting. Cool. Like, introduce me to the CEO and let's see where that goes. And he's like, oh, by the way, I also I have this concept for this b to b marketplace, but I don't know how to talk to a software engineer, so I wouldn't even know how to build it. And so he starts explaining it.
Luis Rincon:
And unbeknownst to him, he's telling me this, and I was one of those students in college who had suffered from that problem massively. So I was very financially dependent. I had to be at full time, which is 12 credit hours in the United States to hit my financial aid package, get my financial aid reimbursement, pay for school, pay for my living expenses. And in kind of like the an example of the height of irony in in US, post secondary education, I was a business major at Pepperdine, but I had tested out of my foreign language requirement because I Spanish is my first language, English was my second language. So I tested out of that really quickly, and my advisor was like, well, you know, you already tested out of, like, one of the major requirements of international business.
Luis Rincon:
Would you wanna be an international business major? And I was like, yeah, that sounds a lot better because maybe I go work in Latin America because I'm fluent in Spanish or I've lived in Europe already. And he's like, well, the other requirement is you go study abroad. And I was like, well, I've already applied to the Italy program. He's like, awesome.
Luis Rincon:
And so I extended my program by a semester. I was gonna do one semester. I was like, I did it for 2. And the 1st semester, everything counts towards my degree. It's awesome.
Luis Rincon:
2nd semester, I go to register and only one course counts towards my degree. Maybe 2. I forgot exactly. And so I email my advisor thinking, okay. This is they've seen this problem before, I'm sure.
Luis Rincon:
And I basically get one of these and email back, like, you know, I'm sorry. Don't know what to do. And I was, like, I'm I'm basically here because you told me I have to be here for my degree, yet it doesn't work towards my degree. So long story short, I ended up taking additional courses that were throwaway elective credit. They were very fun, very interesting, but, you know, Pepperdine is not a cheap school.
Luis Rincon:
They were very expensive. I did it just so I could hit the full time status, get my reimbursement check, pay for school, and instead of spending that summer doing what I wanna do, which candidly, which is vagabonding across Europe with a backpack, I had to fly back to Los Angeles. This was, you know, really before the advent of online learning, or what it is now. I had to pay to live on campus, I had to take 2 courses to play catch up in the summer, so I took out additional loans for that. And, you know, I'd signed an oath in blood to my parents that I would graduate in 4 years.
Luis Rincon:
So I did graduate in 4 years, but it was at an expense. And so Josh has explained this concept to me, and I was like, damn. That would have been amazing when I was a sophomore. But then fast forward, we're 15 years later. I don't have any kids yet, but I was about to have my first kid.
Luis Rincon:
And I thought, there's no way this is a problem. Right? Like, we've all got supercomputers in our pockets. Like, online learner at that point Coursera existed, and and he's like, oh, no. This is a massive problem.
Luis Rincon:
And so I was like, hey. That COO role, that's cool. Introduce me to COO. That's super interesting. And so I began helping him just kinda think through that.
Luis Rincon:
And then he eventually just said, why don't you just come work with me on this? And I was like, in what capacity? And he's like, well, how about EIR at First Credit Ventures? And I was like, sure. And we drew up a contract between the 2 of us.
Luis Rincon:
It was a 6 month engagement. I did a ton of customer discovery just cold calling universities. We flew across the country, you know, talking to universities. I helped him write the investment thesis for his investors. We were looking at different models at that point in time, and the the short version is, say, at the end of 6 months, you know, he said, do do you wanna found this company with me instead?
Luis Rincon:
Right? And so, like, it was almost like a EIR role, but neither of us really had had the EIR. I'd never had the EIR experience. He'd never had an EIR work for him, so we were kinda figuring it out as we go. And, and I was like, yeah.
Luis Rincon:
Absolutely. Like, let's do this. And so that was 2016, about 8a half, a little over 8 years ago now. And, let
Terrance Orr:
me ask you a question, Luis. Was that the first time you ever heard the term EIR?
Luis Rincon:
No. No. Let me actually, I'll I'll answer that question in a second. So, you know, sort of fast forward to where we are now, we we raise a a small seed round from his principally his investors, his LPs to kick the company off, spent the next few months recruiting the rest of the founding team. And fast forward now, eight and a half years later, we've raised, you know, just shy of about 25,000,000 in in capital.
Luis Rincon:
We we're post series b. We've got 500 enterprise clients on the platform. We're the largest core sharing network or platform, in the industry. We cover 49 out of 50 states, every accrediting body, 2 year, 4 year, private, public. We're in 6 countries outside the United States.
Luis Rincon:
We power online dual credit consortium networks for, k 12, so the college bound population. And we also work in in workforce education. So people who are taking what are called 5250 education benefits or tuition reimbursement from their employers, they're also using our platform for education. And so that's sort of fast forward to where we are now. We've got a great team, a fantastic board, fantastic group of investors.
Luis Rincon:
And, yeah, that's sort of the journey of how I officially became one, so shout out to Scrattic Ventures for for actually giving me the official title. In terms of the first time that I'd ever heard of Terrence, it was actually in Adam's class when I was in law school. I remember the, one of the guest speakers had come, and I asked Adam, I was like, hey. So how do I introduce this guy? He's like, oh, well, he's an entrepreneur in residence at this fund or whatever.
Luis Rincon:
And I said I was like, hey. What what's an entrepreneur in residence? And he said, it's someone who gets paid to launch businesses. And this was 2,009, 2010, something like that. And I just remember being blown away by what I was like, they pay you to launch businesses like, you know, again, being someone who's trying to reduce risk, I was like, well, that sounds like a dream.
Luis Rincon:
That's right. I was just blown away that this existed, and I remember I told Adam, I was like, how do I get that job? And it ended up being kind of the same answer, like, well, go work for a startup. Go learn how to actually build like, you're not just just because you're some, you know, successful law student, no one's gonna offer you money to go build a company. Right?
Luis Rincon:
Like, go help a company get built and prove that you can operate and scale and then go from there. And, that was the first time I ever heard it. I still think that explanation, right, of someone who gets paid to launch businesses is the most simplistic way to say it. It's it's how I would explain it to, you know, or how I have explained it to people who ask me, like, wait. Wait.
Luis Rincon:
What exactly do you do? Right. But it's much more nuanced than that as you guys know.
Terrance Orr:
Of course. Of course. You know Oh, yeah. I'll give it over to you, man.
Ilya Tabakh:
Yeah. No. It's it's interesting. So this is kinda digging into I've actually thought a lot about this question, how do you explain it, partially because my fiance and my family make fun of me. And so I, you know, have tried to explain it in a couple of different ways.
Ilya Tabakh:
I found it sort of helpful to differentiate between kind of the vertical entrepreneur in residence. So somebody that's whose job it is to run a business line, spin one out, you know, start something up, and then somebody, kinda more like myself who's translating some of that innovation and entrepreneurial expertise and finding opportunities to sort of expand the broader team and the capabilities of the organization. I think at the end of the day, the goal is the same. Right? You have to create value, and you have to do new things to, actually make money, and and sort of contain you know, continue to be competitive in a tumultuous marketplace.
Ilya Tabakh:
And so those are all important. But but I've I've sort of when I explain it, I I think about the, you know, translating relevant experience into a new context. And then depending kinda who I'm talking to, I expand it or whatnot. How how would you expand it or explain it to, say, your grandma or your family? Because that's that's one where I've had you know, I've I've talked to a bunch of folks about it and the the I haven't seen the settled, you know, here's what it is.
Luis Rincon:
Yeah. And, you know, Kenny, I I think that's one of the beauties of of the EIR role is that is, one of the things that I see happening is actually some form of standardization. We've already started to see that in venture studios. Like, venture studios didn't really exist when I got into VCs and start ups. Now there's some groups that are exclusively venture studios.
Luis Rincon:
But in terms of the EIR role, I still think the most simplistic way and certainly the way that I've explained to people is like, oh, well, I work for, investor groups who wanna launch new businesses. I help them launch new businesses. Oh, okay. Cool. I understand that.
Luis Rincon:
But the more nuanced way I think so one, we need to, it's not just sort of the verticalized EIR like you mentioned, Ilya. There's also the executive in residence, which is called an EIR, or the entrepreneur in residence. And then there's the fact that some can operate at a at a fund, an investment fund, and the goal there is to spin up a net new venture that can hopefully raise capital on its own or at the very least be, you know, self sustaining from a cash flow standpoint. And then there's the kind of corporate innovation, EIR, which I've not yet been I I have a question for you on that, Ilya, at the end and and you as well, Terrence. And that one's a little different.
Luis Rincon:
Right? Because a lot of times, the corporate EIR isn't necessarily gonna get equity ownership in whatever new venture it is, but in in the fund model, they absolutely are. And so I think generally how I would explain the more nuanced role is, 1, it is an experienced entrepreneur or executive, let's call them an operator, who is temporarily embedded within an organization, whether that be, an investment firm, corporation. It could be a university. Right?
Luis Rincon:
There's academic, EIRs. As Terrence just let us know before we started recording, apparently, there's trust in the states EIRs now. Right? But whatever that organization is, their responsibility as an EIR is to identify market opportunities for new business ventures or to help accelerate the growth of existing ventures or existing business units through innovation. And part of that process, absolutely, Ilya, is what you're talking about is translating, well, here's what it's coming at.
Luis Rincon:
I think there's just people who are naturally predisposed from a personality and character standpoint to really drive towards innovation, drive towards, entrepreneurship. And by the way, I'm not I'm not saying they're the best. Right? Like, you need very good operators. I've certainly benefited from from having people who say, oh, no.
Luis Rincon:
I don't want risk. But once you guys stabilize, once you guys are series b, series a, like, I'll go work there. That sounds awesome. And we need those people, the yin to the yang. Right?
Luis Rincon:
But to start off, you need those folks who are really entrepreneurially driven. So, generally, you're brought into either incubate new ideas, maybe even mentor other, operators, executives internally who, hey. We know we need to innovate. We just don't really know how, and then navigate the specific business challenges after that.
Terrance Orr:
I really like how you've gone through, you know, what I end up explaining to people, a lot, which is your your role as a as a entrepreneur or ex in residence, and your ex could be anything. It can be an executive in residence, an operator in residence, a founder in residence, operator in residence. I I I know people who've held all those titles, you know, and they've been doing something similar or very different depending on what their residence is. Right? Some people's residence is a law firm.
Terrance Orr:
Some people's residence is a museum, you know, which will those people, we will try to get them on the file later on. Some people's residence is a trust and a stake. Some people's residence is a family office. It's a university. So many that I've seen EIRs across the spectrum and that in some places they actually pair EIRs with a FIR.
Terrance Orr:
Right? They're actually not the same sort of role. Right? It's it's a operator in residence with a founder in residence, so an entrepreneur in residence with a founder in residence, and they see those roles very differently. And and that's just in the context of thinking about North America.
Terrance Orr:
Don't get me started think talking about, like, Europe and Asia and in other parts of the world where, you know, the EIR could be called a venture builder and that's seen as more acceptable and so on and so forth. So I I think it's important for people to understand that your residence will sometimes dictate what you do, you know, as as the person that's in the residence at that organization. If you anything to add to that, Ilya?
Ilya Tabakh:
No. I mean, I I think what's cool is we sort of laid a little bit of the surface of what's possible. I think at the very basic level, you know, even to Luis' point where a lot of the time you sort of know what the secret sauce of the person is and you know what the need for the organization is. And, you know, you don't try to do too much structure, because I've seen some folks say, we need an EIR. Here are the job requirements for the EIR.
Ilya Tabakh:
Here's exactly what they do. And they have, like, no idea what the differentiating you know, like, what this person brings to the table, and and how it could help. And so I think that's pretty cool to sort of say, you know, secret sauce meets need. And then last thing I've kinda realized a little bit is you normally have to reskill a little bit, you know, not in, like, the founder operator role because, you know, whether you're doing it with a partner or without, that's a lot more similar than not. But in, like, a corporate innovation setting, there's a lot of, you know, soft power and influence and other things that you have to sort of do and that's not necessarily everybody's background.
Ilya Tabakh:
But I I think that's good. I I think what's what's fun to to think about is, you know, how does that role evolve and and and what happens? And there there's just a lot of different ways that it can kinda develop. But, you know, what what are we we actually chatted a little bit before we started recording here, that that there's a lot of opportunities of transferring expertise as, you know, kind of markets and business models and things like that are, evolving. Maybe, Luis, I'll toss it back over to you to sort of talk about some of the things you're excited about and and, you know, kind of what EIRs could do and how the role could evolve.
Luis Rincon:
Yeah. Absolutely. So in terms of how I I see this space evolving, I would start with more definition, but I wanna be careful with that because, again, one of the beauties of the EIR role, and I think why people like the 2 of you and myself and and, candidly, entrepreneurs are are drawn to it is it it it's not rigid. It get it allows you a certain amount of opportunity to operate in the gray. But I do think we are starting to see more definition, and we would benefit from seeing even a little further definition.
Luis Rincon:
And it it can still it still feels a little bit like the Wild, Wild West. Like, Ilya, as I mentioned, when you reached out to me, I was like, yes. Absolutely. And I can't tell you how many times people had asked me, so how did you become an EIR? How do I become an EIR?
Luis Rincon:
And I just gave the same response that I give, like, go work at a start up and go get exposed to investors. Prove to those investors that you can bring value, and and then candidly just hope that they tap you on the shoulder. And I'm like, man, that's that's a poor way to go about giving advice on career. Right? Like, I just gotta hope someone taps me on the shoulder.
Luis Rincon:
And so I think, you know, the what you guys are building here in terms of community is part of that definition. Right? It's I start I saw this early on right after the 2010, 2011 area where I became a product manager. I when Dan and and Jerry told me to become a product guy, you will become a product manager, I said, well, can you introduce me to other product managers? And they're like, well, yeah.
Luis Rincon:
You know you know the guys here. And I'm like, no. No. No. Not at our company because I know what they do.
Luis Rincon:
I want people outside. And, Dan was like, just name a company in Austin, a start up, and I'll email the CEO. And so I was like, well, here's 3 that I think are cool. He emailed the CEO. The CEO said, oh, yeah.
Luis Rincon:
Sure. Here's, you know, here's Terrence. Here's Ilya. Like, they're our senior product manager. And I went and offered to buy these people coffee.
Luis Rincon:
And I was like, so so how do you do it, and why are you doing it that way? And and now you can take certificates online on how to be a product manager. That just didn't exist back then. Right? You and let alone a AI can help you write, yeah, as a copilot, like PRDs and our product requirement docs.
Luis Rincon:
Right? But, like, back then, it didn't exist. I think we're gonna start seeing more definition in the EIR role. You know, I think an example is, there's huge value in what I'll call, like, corporate innovation partners, and that is almost like going back to your point of verticalize, Ilya, if you can, as a fund or as an EIR, say, you know what? We believe that in this industry, there's going to be massive opportunity over the next 10 to 20 years.
Luis Rincon:
But we're not just exact we're not quite sure where or what or how, but we wanna go fish in that pond. Creating a a council that allows you to ask them questions like, what are your current pain points? Like, why are you guys doing it this way? Because, again, a lot of the time, these are people who, a, don't really know technology, or, b, don't know innovation, or maybe, c, don't know both. Right?
Luis Rincon:
And if you can say, oh, hey. Cool. What if we just offer you a title, you know, Terrence is a senior vice president of whatever at corporation x, and you say, look. We're gonna offer you an advisory role at Rincon Ventures, and your job is really just to accept coffees every now and then or maybe hop on some Zooms with Ilia, who's our EIR. And we've tapped Ilia with saying, look, the industry of corporation x, we want you to help us build something there, and we've got Terrence alongside, you know, Susan and and Amy and Jack who are part of this innovation council, and you can start interviewing them.
Luis Rincon:
We've already started to see this happen with a few funds, that have built corporate innovation councils. I think the good ones are are not they're they're not just providing lip service to that. They're like, yeah. Look at it. All our corporate innovation councils are like, no.
Luis Rincon:
Like, actually, we build alongside them to the point where those are your MVP customers. They will say, look. We will sign LOIs, nonbinding LOIs that if this product exists, we're willing to test it out. Right? So I think that's one evolution.
Luis Rincon:
I think, additionally, AI's impact artificial intelligence, and I know that can be somewhat of a buzzword, but, yeah, it's not, to me, something, it's genuine. Like, it's real. I've I think I'm sure all of us have been using some form of AI over the last, at least, 6 months, if not 12 months. I began messing around. I think like most people, when, when ChatGPT came out and we're all blown away by it, and now I use it on a daily basis, multiple times a day to help me with my work.
Luis Rincon:
Right? Well, I think it cannot be understated as how it works towards innovation. Right? So at the very least, having improved data driven decisions. One of the things that I love the most about generative AI and the way that I use it is to just help me brainstorm.
Luis Rincon:
And sometimes I've I have a nugget of an idea, you know, like, for a a panel I'm gonna be on or a concept I wanna propose, and I'll like, one of my favorite prompts is to basically ask it to tear apart my concept. Like, hey. Here's my concept, and you are a skilled executive in x space. Like, poke holes in this, and it'll tell you, like, you're a little okay. Now help me.
Luis Rincon:
Like, then I start thinking through it and then so, like, not just ideating around innovation. So certainly having AI almost as, like, a cocreator influencer in the EIR role, But I think also one of the areas where I think funds or corporations or both are gonna be able to distinguish themselves is in proprietary datasets. So as we know with AI machine learning, bad data in, bad output, you know, good data in, good output, great data, proprietary data, data that not everybody can get in, hopefully, the better results. Right? And so you're I I think there's an opportunity.
Luis Rincon:
We've heard, for example, that Andreessen Horowitz has been buying up GPUs as a means to get them to win deals in the AI space. Hey. You know, Terrence, you you guys are an AI startup. We've got a whole stash of GPUs. We'll give you access to them at a discounted rate.
Luis Rincon:
But, also, what if funds or corporations are saying, well, wait a second. We have the biggest proprietary database around x. It might not be super clean, but if we combine it with other organizations, then all of a sudden having access to that proprietary data certainly is is of value. And I think that's just a couple of ways that I think AI is gonna massively, influence the way that EIRs work and and develop concepts. And then lastly, I'll I'll say one other thing is and this is one of my hopes for the community that you guys are are are building that I'm I hope to be a positive contributor to building as well is getting exposure to other types of EIRs.
Luis Rincon:
I will tell you is I've met very few EIRs, but I've not so, you know, it's very anecdotal, but I've not met a single female EIR as an example. And I'm sure the 2 the 3 of us here have worked with some world class female operators, entrepreneurs. I'm like, well, wait a second. Like, if I had a fund, if I had a $100,000,000, like, I'd go tap Megan or text Sarah or, you know, and say, like, you should be in the IR. So I'm sure they're out there.
Luis Rincon:
I just haven't met them, but that's candidly because there's no there's no meetup for EIRs. You guys are starting to build
Terrance Orr:
that. Sure.
Luis Rincon:
So I I hope the evolution will also show, one, there is more people. Right? Like, I'm I'm a Hispanic EIR. I've not met another Hispanic EIR, but I'm sure they're out there. Right?
Luis Rincon:
And so it's like 1 at the very least, getting exposure to the different kinds of EIRs and then hopefully bringing in more people into the EIR, space and EIR role.
Terrance Orr:
I like this a lot, man, because it it goes to access. Right? I I think, you know, education and entrepreneurship was the equalizer for me. Right? I I came from a small town.
Terrance Orr:
Right? Nobody was, you know, doing this sort of stuff. I'm a first generation college student. I had no examples. You know, it it was sort of a very interesting path, right, for me.
Terrance Orr:
And like I said, the EIR role gave me the opportunity, right, to actually take the leap because I couldn't sleep on my friend's couch. I was too old to do that at that time, you know, and and so on and so forth. Right? So I I think that's really important. But I think the other thing is that people are looking for people, examples of people who who look like them, who walk the path that they've walked, and so on and so forth.
Terrance Orr:
In every organization I've joined, I I've been the 1st black entrepreneur in residence, right, for the most part, you know. And that's no knock to the organization or or anybody else, but it's like, it would have been nice for me to talk to another EIR who had done this role before in the type of organization like this before, to tell me what landmines I was gonna potentially step on and and to avoid. And and I think that community, that ecosystem, that network is something that I think about constantly. And most people in the ecosystem know me for being an ecosystem builder and wanting to solve sort of this problem, around it shouldn't be hard for another EIR to find another one to ask questions to, you know. And today, there's no channel.
Terrance Orr:
There's no mechanism, right, for them to be able to do that. So I I I do think and this this this advent sort of, this explosion of AI into the world of how people perform their role as the entrepreneur in residence. And whatever their residence might be, I think is gonna be a big, big, big deal with AI. We're seeing the people that that we talk to and we we do things for as entrepreneurs in residence in my organization, talk about how we're bringing AI into venture building. Right?
Terrance Orr:
And we actually have proprietary tools where we have synthetic personas that we can interview doing customer discovery that gets us like 90% of the way there. Right? From real interviews that we've done, 2, 300 of them for every venture we build. Right?
Luis Rincon:
That's so cool.
Terrance Orr:
It's just the data is there. We can do AI's be based synthesis. We can do things that we couldn't do before, but we need to be able to evolve. And and and that's important. And I think having a network or organization full of these sort of people with the DNA that will want to pivot and want to evolve is important.
Terrance Orr:
And, curious to know your reactions to that, Luis.
Luis Rincon:
Completely agree. We there needs to be an avenue for EIRs to ask other EIRs, you know, questions, suggestions. I I for better or worse, I like to operate on a huge level of candor. I think for the most part, that's good, but sometimes it's bitten me in the butt. Sometimes maybe I can be a little too direct with people, right, where I should maybe soften the blow a little bit or something.
Luis Rincon:
But, the ability to just be like, look, I'm I, for example, with Acadium, I'd never once operated in the ed tech space. And I got very lucky in that I had a friend in Josh who was like, dad, don't worry about that. I can teach you education. And, you know, he handed me, the BMO report, which essentially became my bible to to learn the industry. And, you know, with the ability to just say, guys, I I don't actually know what I'm doing right here, right now.
Luis Rincon:
Can does somebody else has somebody else done this? Can you help me? And having a community to say, oh, yeah. No. I've done that.
Luis Rincon:
Right? Like, that's one of the things that I'm most interested in in in being a member of this community is being able to, one, ask those questions because I did EdTech, but I might do or, you know, EdTech, workforce tech, I might do prop tech next. Right? Or I I'm not quite sure. And I might be like, hey, guys, who who the hell knows what this word means.
Luis Rincon:
Right? And can you guys help me? I'm trying to figure out something around it. And then additionally, on the AI, piece, I I love what you said. Terrence, around, and and after the the recording here, I wanna follow-up with you on it around this sort of synthetic customer discovery work.
Luis Rincon:
We're also like and I know, Terrence, you and I talked about this a couple weeks ago. It's a model that I think is really cool, and a group that you and I both know and I've talked to is AI Fund. And what they're doing, which for those, you know, folks who will listen, if you're unfamiliar, they're, Andrew Ng, who's the founder of Coursera, essentially really one of the creators of what we call MOOCs, massively open online courses, and one of the preeminent machine learning professors, engineers, developers in the world created this fund, and I'm gonna completely simplify what it is. And I'm sure the people at IAI who will maybe kick me in the shin for making it too simple. But the way that I understood it is they're saying, look, we just know AI is gonna have massive disruption on a ton of different industries.
Luis Rincon:
So we wanna create a fund around identifying opportunities, market opportunities by applying AI into a venture, into an industry. Like, that's it. They're almost like industry agnostic, but they just say, like, what is an opportunity for AI in x industry, in y industry, in z industry? And if it's not AI first or AI specific, they they don't operate there. Right?
Luis Rincon:
And that to me shows I I've not seen another fund get launched that is just around, hey. We're just gonna do application of this technology into this vertical. It's typically we're gonna do an application of technology. Like, if you guys have heard of 5th Wall Ventures, they do some really cool stuff. Just saying, like, look, the the real estate sector is super lagging on technology.
Luis Rincon:
We know technology. What if we created a fund that helps technology get into in the the real estate sector in different verticals? Right? But that's technology broad. This is just AI.
Luis Rincon:
Right? It's not like anyone said, hey, we're just going to do quantum computing, and then we're just gonna apply it to every industry or we're gonna do, you know, blockchain or cryptocurrency and just apply to every at least I haven't seen those. They might exist. So, no offense meant to those organizations that do exist. But it's the first time where I and I firmly agree, by the way.
Luis Rincon:
I think it's a fantastic model that the AI Fund Group is taking, which is just a massively disruptive technology. Let's go apply it to different industries, and some of these are gonna hit. I think AI is again, going back to my prior statement, Terrence, dovetailing with what you said. I just think its impact cannot be understated.
Ilya Tabakh:
That's awesome. I we've we've taken a a few minutes longer than we typically take for these conversations, but mostly because everybody was excited and there's a lot of, you know, background and things like that to cover. I I we always do like to ask, you know, we we sort of were just digging in on, you know, what does the kinda EIR network look like and how it can be helpful to what you're working on. So we'll ask that question. And then also it's always helpful to sort of think through how can our listeners kinda connect and follow your work, Luis.
Ilya Tabakh:
So maybe if we can button up those 2. I think, otherwise, you know, we've covered a lot of ground and look forward to sort of doing the, the live session afterwards because I I know there's gonna be a lot of both questions, and and we'll go through and grab links to a lot of the things that we talked about as far as, you know, kinda AI fund and some of the other models that that we covered. So we'll be sure to sort of grab that from the conversation as well.
Luis Rincon:
Yeah. Absolutely. So in terms of, you know, what, I wanna make sure I got the questions correct. So one, what can the EI what what am I looking to get out of the EIR network, EIR live? And then secondly is how can folks, keep in touch with me?
Luis Rincon:
So one, on on the EIR network, you know, so I I would joke when people like ask me like, oh, well, you know, what do you do? I I like to say, like, I'm a startup masochist. This is my 3rd startup. 2nd is a founder, 3rd as an operator. And for those people who have been in a startup, they know, like, 2 years in it's like dog years.
Luis Rincon:
Right? Like, 2 years in a startup is, like, you know, 14 years in in in a regular corporate role. And I've only ever worked one for one true corporate role, but I I can certainly attest to that. So, you know, if nothing else we can maybe we call it like masochist anonymous, you know, like an AA group where we can all get together and and then just vent about, about what we're trying to build. But generally, I think, you know, Terrence and I have talked about, like, what he was looking for, what I was looking for in the community.
Luis Rincon:
That's still very real professional learning and development. And I don't mean that just in, like, the sense of, like, here's an official certificate that you can take to prove that UER which, by the way, I love certificates. I just finished another one on AI, by the way. So it's not knocking the certification space, but it's just the ability to Q and A with people who have been vetted as as having been there before. Right.
Luis Rincon:
And one of the things that I don't have a good answer for, Terrence and Elia, but I'd love to help you guys think through it and help the community think through is how do we ensure that there is a hurdle to get into the group so that we've all been there? But then additionally, how do we help more people get into this space? And at the very least, I think creating awareness through things like the podcast will help. But for folks who are wanting to become an EIR, I certainly wanna help. But where I'm gonna derive more value, that that's gonna drive me more kind of personal fulfillment.
Luis Rincon:
But where I'm gonna derive more value is going to someone like a Terrence or someone like Nelia, who have been an EIR for an extended period of time now and be like, hey, guys. I've got this going on. Do you guys, you know, have any resources around it? Do you have any thoughts? Maybe even saying, can I buy you a coffee?
Luis Rincon:
Can I can we hop on Zoom? That level of professional learning and development. And then certainly, I think opportunity sharing. You know, what's interesting is I'm a 2 time founder, and and neither time has the concept the the initial concept been my idea. I I actually personally devalue, not entirely, but I I don't overvalue industry specific experience and having the idea.
Luis Rincon:
Right? Like, people like, oh, man. That guy, that girl, they have the the $1,000,000 idea. It's like, no. Like, if you've ever been in a startup, you know, the idea looks like a square when you start and you iterate and you iterate, and by the end, it looks like a hexagon.
Luis Rincon:
And you're like, well, the hexagon has kind of a little bit of a square in there, but it, you know, it started there and where it evolved. So I'm more concerned. And where I've really spent my time in trying to hone my skills is how can I iterate to help get to the hexagon as fast as possible? And that said, what I do like doing, this goes back to the industry council, kinda corporate innovation group, is surrounding myself with people who are very familiar and hopefully currently in the industry with the pain point that we're trying to solve. There is nothing that will ever be the still the we can talk about AI all we want.
Luis Rincon:
This is the most powerful tool that an entrepreneur has. It's the phone. It's get on the phone with somebody, talk to them who's who could be a potential customer and get it to get to understand that. As long as you surround yourself, in my opinion, with folks who do know the industry and you have to make a commitment to ramp up your learning curve as fastly as possible in that industry, I would overweigh the ability for someone to be iterative and an entrepreneur than having the idea. Right?
Luis Rincon:
Like, I I have buddies who work in real estate because I worked in real estate and construction who don't have the most basic idea of how an app works, of how a website works. But they come to me and say, hey, wouldn't it be cool if, like, if this could happen? Because and I'm like, well, wait. Wait. Why do you want it to happen that day?
Luis Rincon:
It's like, oh, because we spend, like, 20 hours a week doing it. I'm like, that is the problem.
Terrance Orr:
There you go.
Luis Rincon:
Forget about the website. Like, that's the pro let's talk more about that thing. But then they need to be paired with someone. So if that person tried to launch a venture around this, they have no idea how to build technology. Right?
Luis Rincon:
And so it's like, don't hey. Don't worry about that. We can pair you. There's really great software engineers that we work with or product managers. We'll we'll pair you with them.
Luis Rincon:
But, like, really knowing that industry pain point is important and then being able to iterate. And so I I think where I've spent most of my time and honing my skills is being a person who can iterate. And I like, I love the workforce tech edtech space. I certainly see myself staying involved there for a long time, maybe only continuously operating there. I I don't know about that, but it's it is certainly one of the spaces that I have learned a lot on.
Luis Rincon:
I've got a lot of scar tissue there. But more more importantly, I've I pride myself on learning how to iterate quickly to build something of value.
Ilya Tabakh:
Awesome. And where can people follow your work and connect with you?
Luis Rincon:
Yeah. So for the most part, LinkedIn, and I'm sure Terrence and Ilya will put up my my LinkedIn there. I used to have a a a personal website. Candidly, I shut it down because as you guys know, once you get post that you know, once we launched the venture, I just didn't have time to update my website as often as possible. Also, when we started, when my cofounder and I cofounders, pardon me, and I started the company, I I wasn't married, didn't have any kids.
Luis Rincon:
I'm now married. I have 3 kids, one dog, mortgage. Like, you know, I coached little league baseball and soccer. You know, just stuff that takes up your time. So, unfortunately, I don't have a a public website anymore.
Luis Rincon:
I might revive that. I'm also on Twitter. I'll provide you guys with my, my Twitter handle as well or, excuse me, x. Just be warned, it's probably gonna be filled with a lot of Dodgers, Lakers, Longhorns, reposts. So probably more so than start up stuff, because it it's where I go to kinda scratch my, sports fanatic itch.
Luis Rincon:
Awesome. Well, I
Terrance Orr:
Man, that's awesome.
Ilya Tabakh:
Yeah. I I think we probably need to leave it at that. I know there's a lot of meat here, and so we're we'll sort of, pull on those threads in the follow-up and then kinda see what questions folks have. But really appreciate you coming on and taking the time and, you know, enjoyed the conversations over the years. But more importantly, I I love the sort of continued engagement and and willingness both to even in your answer to what the EIR network could do for you, you answered with how what you could do for it.
Ilya Tabakh:
So, I mean, I think that says volumes about the way you think about the world. So always kind of appreciate the time and the conversation.
Terrance Orr:
Massive plus one. And, I know you have to run, man, but just wanted to extend that as well. Thank you for for gracing us with your presence. I can talk to you for another hour about about this topic. But I'm gonna let you go today, and and and the guest will likely ask for a part 2.
Terrance Orr:
So thank you.
Luis Rincon:
Thank you, guys. Thank you, guys, for what you're doing. Thank you for having me on here. I I enjoyed it. I could talk to 2 of you guys, you know, for way more than another hour.
Luis Rincon:
You know, I think one of the things that I wanna end on this is, for me, being industry specific is less important than kinda knowing generally where I wanna go. And I think one of the most frustrating, if not the most frustrating thing in this world, is unfulfilled human potential. I that's one of the things I love about the EIR role is, like, Terrence, you said, you you didn't wanna sleep on someone's couch, but you got a bridge, and that bridge was the EIR role, and it helped you reach your potential. And so I like to operate in spaces that I I hope helps people reach their potential. You know, my motto is as long as I'm making things that make people happy, healthy, wealthy, and wise, I'm gonna be happy.
Luis Rincon:
And I think what the EIR community could do, certainly for someone like myself, is gonna help me reach my potential as an EIR. And I wanna make sure that I give back to it so that people can also reach their potential that are currently EIRs and folks who wanna become an EIR as well. So count me in, and count me in for a part 2, whatever whatever that means. But, yeah, whatever's coming, I'm I wanna be part of it, guys. So thanks a lot for what you're doing.
Luis Rincon:
Awesome. Thank you.
Terrance Orr:
Thank you for the time. Thanks for joining us on EIR Live. We hope today's episode offered you valuable insights into the entrepreneurial journey. Remember to subscribe so you don't miss out on future episodes, and check out the description for more details. Do you have questions or suggestions?
Terrance Orr:
Please reach out to us. Connect with us on social media. We really value your input. Catch us next time for more inspiring stories and strategies. Keep pushing boundaries and making your mark on the world.
Terrance Orr:
I'm Terrance Orr with my co-host Ilya Tabakh, signing off. Let's keep building.
