Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
The Dreamfuel Show is a research expedition to uncover and unpack the mindsets of impactful tech founders and executives. On this show, we’re going to get real and talk about what was actually going on in their hearts and minds during the harrowing journeys that forged them and their companies! We’ll also speak with performance experts who will share the latest tips, tools, and tricks that can help us realize our own dreams, too.
As we like to say at Dreamfuel, every quarter is a hero’s journey. So be sure to hit follow to join us along the way.
Tom Trill [00:00:00]:
Business or everything in life is about people. I always say that it's about people. If you want to make a purchase, for example, it doesn't matter how you perceive the value of that purchase or the price. The deal is only the deal if the two people making the deal can get on and make it happen. So in the end, I always revert to that. The notion of everything is about how people get along.
Kevin Bailey [00:00:24]:
I'm Kevin Bailey, CEO of Dreamfuel and this show honors founders who are stepping through fire on their quests to realize their dreams. We dive into their failures and successes and the mental performance skills they're using to achieve their goals in less time and with less frustration. Enjoy The Dreamfuel Show. Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of The Dreamfuel Show. I'm really excited about today's episode. I'm here today with Tom Trill. Tom is the CEO of Qualinx B.V. which is a high tech fabless semiconductor company.
Kevin Bailey [00:01:00]:
They are solving the high power consumption problem in GNSS sensors. Tom has been in the semiconductor industry for about 30 years, starting his career at Samsung and his roles have ranged from business development to founder to CEO. Today he's got two kids who are in business school and he is actually getting his doctorate in entrepreneurship, specifically focused on negotiating and fundraising for early stage startups. So wonderful to have you on a show, Tom.
Tom Trill [00:01:29]:
Thank you very much, Kevin. So appreciate the intro and the opportunity.
Kevin Bailey [00:01:33]:
Yeah. And then Tom is out of the Netherlands. So we actually just started off before the session doing a little bit of Wim Hof breathing, a little bit of deep breath work, and Tom was unfamiliar with the practice. What'd you think of it?
Tom Trill [00:01:44]:
Oh, I found it brilliant. I'm going to use it. Kevin. I hadn't even heard of the guy. I find it somewhat ironic that a breathing aficionado comes from the Netherlands.
Kevin Bailey [00:01:54]:
Yeah, no, he's awesome. I think WIM holds over 20 world records for endurance. So he actually uses this breath work to help him be able to hold himself together physiologically in high pressure situations. So I think he's done things like swam the farthest under ice. He's done a lot of tumo breathing, which is what it's based on. Helps you deal with cold temperatures. I don't think he summited Everest, but almost in shorts. He's done some pretty, pretty wild stuff.
Kevin Bailey [00:02:21]:
He's definitely an endurance athlete, but yeah, out of the Netherlands. So you probably look him up and go hang out with him.
Tom Trill [00:02:25]:
My experience of Dutch people, I'm. I'm Irish originally And I've lived, I lived in California since 20 or since 2000, apart from the last few years that I've been here ramping up the company. But my experience with Dutch people is that they're the most chilled out people you're going to encounter. So he had a good foundation, I guess?
Kevin Bailey [00:02:44]:
Yeah, yeah, definitely. He's certainly chill. One of the cool things he does, I think he does with mostly executives. They'll climb Mount Kilimanjaro in their shorts. They're doing the breathwork the whole time. It's pretty intense. Real quick to the audience mostly. Again, founders of startups, what are fabless semiconductors?
Tom Trill [00:03:01]:
So the word fabless is you do not own your own fabrication plant. Fabrication is fab. Nvidia is probably the best example at the moment. They're in the news, their valuation is skyrocketing, the demand is incredible. But the fact is they don't manufacture their own products. They use a foundry, tsmc. In that case, these foundries cost billions of dollars in capital investment. For a startup and semiconductors, that's just insurmountable and you don't have to.
Tom Trill [00:03:32]:
So we focus, we and our peers focus on designing, refining, and then we have a fab, a foundry partner manufacture that for us. We focus then on the testing, the packaging and the software that goes on top. So that's a fairly standard model now in the industry.
Kevin Bailey [00:03:52]:
Fascinating. I wasn't aware that Nvidia didn't manufacture their own chips.
Tom Trill [00:03:55]:
Yeah, they're a testament to the business model. Semiconductors can be extremely high volume and certain versions of semiconductors generate profitability just through volume and yield. So having specialist foundries or fabs optimize that for you and it works very well.
Kevin Bailey [00:04:12]:
Where are most of these foundries located?
Tom Trill [00:04:14]:
Tymoral has a high concentration and Korea because of the Samsung investments out there. Global Foundries is another player. They're a little bit more regionally diversified. They have a large infrastructure in the Dresden area in Germany and in the Buffalo area. I think east coast US intel more recently tried to launch their own foundry business across some of their jobs. So I think in the last couple of years there's been a synthesization to de. Risking the science, the concentration of the supply chain, which was I think magnified during COVID when you had all of the publicity around the supply chain shortages. A lot of the new investment is born out of fear of that repeating itself and.
Tom Trill [00:05:00]:
And funded by the CHIPS Acts both in the US and in Europe. You see it in the news headlines all the time.
Kevin Bailey [00:05:06]:
Yeah. I did. I actually saw a story they were talking about that potentially there are certain cultural characteristics that make certain areas more likely able to produce semiconductors. It was interesting. They were, like, looking at the characteristics of societies and who has qualities that can produce. It's such a long duration. I guess it takes a long time to produce these fabrication facilities. And they're trying to explain that there's certain demographics and psychographics of cultures that make them better at producing semiconductors.
Tom Trill [00:05:39]:
I'm not aware of that, but it sparks my interest and maybe I'll get that information off you afterwards. I find that really, really fascinating. And then how do you transfer that? How do you decentralize it from the concentration in Taiwan or in the Asia Pacific area? The transferability of that competency is interesting.
Kevin Bailey [00:05:57]:
I think they were referencing high degrees of freedom as a big part of it.
Tom Trill [00:06:01]:
Also government funding. That's the other huge factor.
Kevin Bailey [00:06:05]:
Well, I want to talk about your career as a CEO in the semiconductor industry. You know, when we started off, we were talking a little bit about the PhD doctorate you're getting in entrepreneurship. I found that incredibly fascinating as it relates to mental performance. Because what you're doing is you're working on understanding how investors and entrepreneurs can create, for lack of a better phrase. You'll give me a better one. Perfect deals that are fair on both sides. And you referenced the show we have, I believe Mark Cuban runs here. Is called the Dragon's Den in Europe.
Kevin Bailey [00:06:38]:
And the Dragon's Den is a part of the Hero's Journey, Joseph Campbell's hero's journey. So the Hero's journey is a person's adventure into the unknown and the challenges they go through as they're trying to level up and do something incred. It's the framework for most movies like Star Wars. It's used extensively in movie making, but it's true for our individual journeys as well. The Dragon's Den is the hardest part of the journey. So Shark Tank is obviously what it's called in the States, but it's the Dragon's Den in Europe. So tell me a little bit about this doctorate you're getting and how you talked about some of the capabilities entrepreneurs need to do good deals with investors. I'd love to dive into that a little bit.
Tom Trill [00:07:16]:
I think everybody always asks, why are some people, some entrepreneurs, more successful than others? What's the difference? What enables one entrepreneur to raise seemingly endless amounts of capital or investments in their venture and the next guy not. When I started this journey was three years ago. When I started the doctorate program. And it was through a gap in knowledge and a gap in the academia that identified these items, these terms, and these tangential theories around investment and the capabilities of entrepreneurs. But there was really nothing pointing towards early stage investment negotiations, and there was nothing to answer that question. Along the way, in reflection, I realized that question even hits pop culture, and hence the discussion about Dragon's Den or Shark Tank. It's on tv, it's that powerful, and people are that inquisitive that there's a TV show made out of this thing. And I find that anchors my research in layman's terms.
Tom Trill [00:08:22]:
So I take a lot of solace from that because it can be quite abstract when you do that level of research. So what I'm trying to get at is what are the capabilities, specifically the dynamic, complementary capabilities that an entrepreneur has, activates, orchestrates, or compiles during an investment negotiation, and trying to understand how those, the compilation and recompilation of those capabilities, how they are correlated with the reconciliation of information asymmetries, which ultimately leads to what is theoretically called the critical value equity share in the negotiation with the investor. And how you translate that into regular English is how do you bridge the information gaps that exist between you, the entrepreneur, and an investor in a way that makes the investor comfortable with the deal so that they reach a level of comfort, awareness, knowledge and understanding that they're willing to invest in exchange for an equitable amount of equity in the company? The investment and the dilution are perfectly matched. They're in perfect harmony, perfect balance, and neither party leaves the table feeling like they left anything behind.
Kevin Bailey [00:09:38]:
So how do you get to a fair deal?
Tom Trill [00:09:40]:
The interesting thing is that the result of the negotiation is a net zero benefit because both parties are optimally aligned. Neither has more nor less than the other in the exchange.
Kevin Bailey [00:09:55]:
How often do you think negotiations between early stage founders and investors reach a fair deal?
Tom Trill [00:10:02]:
One of the core tenets of research at the doctorate level is that you mitigate bias. And by me answering that question, I'm given bias a platform. However, I will share it. I think they're very, very rare. We've activated a pilot study. There's only three, but in all three cases, it seems like there's a very adversarial relationship between entrepreneurs and their investors, particularly during the negotiation. It seems like that is very emotional. Even with entrepreneurs who are still in the business after 10 years, they still have a raw emotion when they reflect on the actual transaction.
Tom Trill [00:10:41]:
And that's not good. It's not good for two reasons. And there's theory behind this as well, that an entrepreneur will settle for an unfair outcome, but exchange that for psychological ownership. And psychological ownership results in the need for control and power and ego. And how entrepreneurs feeds the ego or the need for power is through information and control of information. And once that starts, it's a slippery slope. If information is not transparent and free flowing and if there's no trust in the relationship with your investor and with the company, it's not optimal, it's suboptimal.
Kevin Bailey [00:11:24]:
So are you telling me that entrepreneurs will get a raw financial deal, a worse financial deal, if they're willing to have a little bit more control of the way information flows between them and the investor?
Tom Trill [00:11:39]:
It's not a conscious active election by the entrepreneur. And there's theory behind this. If the entrepreneur walks away feeling like they've been treated unfairly or they've given up too much and yet do the deal, this is the premise. They do the deal, but they walk away feeling a lot of hardship. There will be the psychological ownership factor to consider. And the worst case of that, psychological ownership as a replacement for equity in the company is related to ego and power. And that manifests in their need to control information. And then they'll keep information without disseminating that and there will be a reduction in knowledge transfer.
Tom Trill [00:12:24]:
And that's how the founder will feed his soul, I suppose is a good way to put it.
Kevin Bailey [00:12:30]:
So, okay, I'm just gonna try and I'm trying to wrap my head around this because I've experienced this, I have coached and do coach now a lot of founders who've been through many rounds of capital and I've seen contention with investors, I certainly have coached people through fundraises. Mentally, I'm well versed in what you're talking about, but I am trying. I'm not well versed in the literature. A founder does a deal with a venture capitalist, they perceive, and maybe it would be factual, that they didn't get a valuation that was fair and now the VC got the best deal. They walk away from that transaction feeling a little bit burned. And the way that they fill that emotional trauma or deal with that is by being adversarial, moving forward with the vc, not sharing information, looking for approval from them, feeding their own ego.
Tom Trill [00:13:18]:
I would back it up that when there's a sub optimal negotiation and the entrepreneur or the founder walks away feeling they've given up too much, they will revert to filling that gap with psychological ownership. And that can manifest in a variety of different ways. The ugliest way it manifests is in this need to feed the ego and to have power through the control of information. That is the worst case outcome, and you don't want that. There are other manifestations of the psychological ownership effect, such as you replace it with pride, or you replace it with learning, development and education and bettering yourself and feeling like this is a fertile pasture for me to grow. And after the exit, then I'll do it differently next time. So there are many different manifestations, and what you want to avoid, obviously is the ugliest form of that. Now, my research doesn't go down that path, but it's certainly quite tangential to the overall study if I get really capitalist about it.
Tom Trill [00:14:23]:
The other impact of suboptimal deals is that it feeds this vicious cycle of value destruction where as many as 70% of investments don't deliver the expected returns. And there's this cliche which is statistically proving that perhaps only 1 in 10 deliver the types of results that are needed to continue to fund the venture capital industry. And that is neither the venture capitalist's fault nor the entrepreneur's fault. It's sort of the way the industry has just grown in this direction. And I feel like there's an opportunity to correct that into a virtuous cycle rather than a vicious circle by having a more holistic investment philosophy that avoids the inequity in the deal. And if you can get closer to an optimal deal, theoretically is called the critical value equity share, you have the potential to avoid the destruction of all that value. All that money and venture capital globally is in the hundreds of billions of dollars. So if only 10% of that is generating returns, you can imagine for a minute what the capital destruction looks like.
Tom Trill [00:15:33]:
Then those firms that don't survive, some of them shouldn't survive, but some of them probably should. And then we lose that innovation and you're trapped in this vicious cycle as a result. But my moonshot vision for my research is that an increased awareness might propagate in a way that adjusts that and shifts the cycle to become a little bit more virtuous.
Kevin Bailey [00:15:58]:
Well, let's talk about that virtuous cycle. So first from the perspective of a founder, and then from the perspective of a venture capitalist, what are some of the behaviors that a founder should employ to raise the probability that they get a net zero outcome?
Tom Trill [00:16:16]:
I think an entrepreneur really has to understand if their novelty, their invention, their new company suits the investor, does it fit the investor? Not only does it fit the investor's Portfolio strategy. But does the mission of the company resonate somehow with the actual partner in the firm you're dealing with? And if you can achieve a resonance between you and your idea with that investor and his values and his world, his mental modes per se, then you're creating familiarity for the investor himself. And once there's familiarity, there's comfort. And from there comes confidence. That's a rising tide for both sides.
Kevin Bailey [00:17:05]:
So you're kind of saying start with purpose, values, vision, alignment between you and the investor, maybe before getting into the terms of the deal.
Tom Trill [00:17:15]:
Totally, yeah. Because everything in life is about people. I always say that it's about people. If you want to make a purchase, for example, it doesn't matter how you perceive the value of that purchase or the price. The deal is only the deal if the two people making the deal can get on and make it happen. So in the end, I always revert to that. The notion of everything is about how people get along.
Kevin Bailey [00:17:40]:
Hey, it's Kevin and I hope you're enjoying the show. I know it's tough out there right now for tech leaders and we appreciate you taking the time to focus on your mental performance and well being. Speaking of time, did you know that 70 96% of tech leaders lose 20 or more hours of productivity a week due to stress, fatigue and feeling overwhelmed? To win these hours back, leaders need to learn the mental performance skills that keep you in the zone where research shows that executives are five times more productive. And that's where we come in. Dreamfuel's Octane Cohort is our flagship mental performance program built for tech leaders under pressure who want to achieve their most ambitious goals in less time and with less frustration. To learn more, go to dreamfuel.com octane or just click the link in the description to see if you qualify. All right, back to the show. Any other behaviors or qualities you would say would help an entrepreneur be better at getting a fair deal?
Tom Trill [00:18:34]:
I think the courage to be honest, the self awareness to be honest with yourself, and the courage and the conviction to not necessarily walk away from a deal, to have that conversation with your investor, to say, I don't think it's a fit. I think we're force fitting this together. And unless we can overcome that and reconcile that, then we're laying a foundation for misalignment going forward. I think having that moment is critical.
Kevin Bailey [00:19:05]:
How do you think a founder develops that kind of courage? When I mean, my understanding from the industry is that, you know, your VCs like to tout that you know, we talk to a hundred companies, we put an offer out on one, you know, and the founder knows that they've been through a fundraising series of six months, 400 conversations, and they got two or three that are expressing an interest. How do you recommend somebody has the courage to tell one of those few that are willing to do the round that they're not comfortable with the deal?
Tom Trill [00:19:37]:
It's extremely difficult. If you're a first time entrepreneur, you don't have the network, so then you're relying on warm introductions and you may not have those either. So the barriers to entry just for a conversation alone are huge, sometimes insurmountable for some entrepreneurs. And I don't really know the answer, but I have a lot of thoughts around the infrastructure and structurally, how that might be made easier. And the context, of course, is the amount of money that's been pumped into industry today. Deep tech industry in the shape of like the CHIPS act, for example, both in Europe and in the United States. I've been involved in some discussions about this and my observation is that environments and ecosystems like the Netherlands, and this is repeated around the world, do a great job in fostering and incubating startups, whether they're from university spinouts or just pure incubators or government sponsored incubators. The top level of government does a great job in providing huge billions of euros or dollars in funding.
Tom Trill [00:20:51]:
It's the trickle down effect that's missing, it's the bit in the middle, it's the distribution of that capital that's problematic. If we can address the structural issues with the deployment of all that capital and also evolve these incubators beyond seed stage into a quasi incubator infrastructure for those companies that are promoted out of seed stage and have the guardrails that avoid the pearls of venture capital, the cliche of venture capital. Not that we want to waste money, not that we want to invest in innovations that really don't deserve it, but if that infrastructure is in place somehow, then you somehow close the gap and you somehow make it a little bit safer and a little bit more virtuous for the entire industry. That's as much as I've really taught about that. Bridging that and fixing that.
Kevin Bailey [00:21:51]:
I know there's work being done on that. Actually in my state in the US we have an organization called Elevate Ventures that works largely off of state funded dollars. They deploy the most capital in the Great Lakes region, which is in the Midwest of America, and seem to do a good job at it. Yeah, they're Working on it. A lot of the companies that are in and around my location have raised from Elevate and it's a strong organization. I'm sure they'd be curious about the work that the research you're doing. Anything that you would say from the VC's perspective, like how you would talk to a VC to help them understand the merits or behaviors that create a net zero outcome.
Tom Trill [00:22:31]:
We're actually very fortunate with our VCs. We have three and they are definitely people focused and that's quite progressive. Classic due diligence is all focused on the value of the firm, which is a very quantitative analysis of potential future value. It's mathematical. But of equal importance of course is not only the team. You always hear we invest in people, not the product or the company or the idea. We invest in people. But what does that really mean? It means the people's competence.
Tom Trill [00:23:05]:
And what does competence then mean? You know, it's your ability to draw on your experience, your know how your capabilities, your own network, your team building, your creativity, everything, everything that gets rolled up into this catch all of competency is as important as the quantitative measure of the value of the firm. And I think from the investor side having a little bit more structure and a framework around understanding what the entrepreneurs competencies are and gap spotting and then understanding themselves how can they proactively fill or support those gaps in order to help improve the chances of success.
Kevin Bailey [00:23:54]:
Well said. Maybe I know whatever a biased group of VCs and private equity companies, but we do partner with a handful of them with our performance coaching for founders and I find that the ones we're partnering with are very people focused and very similar to the way you're thinking. We do part of a handful of impact VCs, even some faith driven VCs and they're very people focused. So it does seem like there's a, there's an upsurge of investors that are thinking the way you're talking.
Tom Trill [00:24:23]:
I feel that too. And you can see it with the ecosystem here in the Netherlands.
Kevin Bailey [00:24:27]:
For sure, we don't have a ton of time left, but I wanted to talk to you a little bit about being CEO of Quality and I wanted to hear a little bit about maybe a story or two about some of the challenges that you face. We talked about task switching at the beginning here, some of the challenges you face as CEO and some of the things you do to be successful in a pretty high stress environment.
Tom Trill [00:24:48]:
Task switching. I use that word every evening when I go home or when I'm on the phone to my better half or my kids or whatever. So task switching is exhausting. And in the earlier days of. Not the earlier days because the team is smaller and you're in a startup environment, you're just doing things. You're not necessarily mentally switching. But now that we're in this phase, we've operationalized every function that you can have in a company. You have a larger volume and velocity of problems to deal with.
Tom Trill [00:25:21]:
And this is also a cliche. The good news never or rarely reaches you, and you're never asked for help with the good news. The good news is delivered. You're not asked to participate in it, but you're always called upon to fix the problems. And that was a baptism of fire for me as we scaled and operationalized every function that this freight train of issues and problems and things that just need attention, they just keep coming at you. It's nonstop. As I say, it was a baptism of fire, but it's also fulfilling. I also say to the team or to anybody who talk about that, it doesn't matter how difficult the day has been, it doesn't matter how big the problem has been up to this point in time and long may this continue, but we can look back at the end of every day and say we still move the company forward at least one step forward at the end of every single day for the last three rough years.
Kevin Bailey [00:26:12]:
How do you personally get yourself in a flexible and adaptable enough headspace that you can move between so many different things in a day?
Tom Trill [00:26:24]:
So I've been told that men typically are better at compartmentalizing. I can do that. And when the meeting's over, I can instantly switch to the next thing.
Kevin Bailey [00:26:34]:
So if you have a really bad meeting, very bad news being delivered, a massive problem, and you've got another meeting coming up, say it's a meeting with an investor or you're going to raise more capital or something, you're able to completely compartmentalize that problem in your mind, move into the next meeting immediately in a good headspace, put that behind you, and then get present for the next thing.
Tom Trill [00:26:57]:
Most of the time I can. It's not an instant switch, but I can do that within minutes. And I can do it particularly effectively if I change physical locations. But if I don't, if I'm still at my desk most of the time I am. I can stand up and just physically shake myself, shake my head, shake my body.
Kevin Bailey [00:27:14]:
You do that?
Tom Trill [00:27:15]:
I do sometimes.
Kevin Bailey [00:27:16]:
And kind of like a duck, a duck flapping its wings or something.
Tom Trill [00:27:19]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Kevin Bailey [00:27:21]:
So you'll get up and physiologically shake it out.
Tom Trill [00:27:23]:
I just shake it out and I look at the person I'm meeting with next and I'll just say, give me a minute. And I go, what's this one now? And that just resets me and we're in the groove for the next topic. And most of the time I can do that effectively. Maybe I'll hear from the rest of the team. No, that's not true.
Kevin Bailey [00:27:40]:
But you at least feel, you at least feel good internally.
Tom Trill [00:27:43]:
Good, maybe. Depends. Right. But I feel like I can, I can shift my energy and hopefully I can shift into the next gear effectively with the minimal of transition time. I'll put it like that.
Kevin Bailey [00:27:55]:
Well, that's good advice. So shake it out or change location.
Tom Trill [00:27:58]:
I think the better advice is just make the next person aware of what you've just come out of.
Kevin Bailey [00:28:03]:
Transparency.
Tom Trill [00:28:03]:
Yeah, totally. I find that automatic. For me, when you ask the question I reflect on and that's what comes to mind. One thing the doctorate program has really taught me was reflection. I've spent a lot of time now reflecting on this journey and on particular instances or parts of the company. And one thing that really consumes me at the moment is if you have self awareness about what kind of person you are. And I thought about this ahead of our talk here. Kevin is, for example, I get a lot of joy out of mentoring up and coming talent.
Tom Trill [00:28:40]:
And that's okay to a certain point in time until you start to scale up where you really need experience, you need people who've been there and done it, have the balance cars. And we're at the stage now we're hiring people from industry with multiple years, decades of experience to bring us to the next level. And it's become quite apparent to me that if those hires don't share the same values, then I'm setting both those new hires with experience and the fast emerging members of the team with talent. I'm setting both up for failure and it'll be a house of cards in the end. That set of values has to percolate throughout the entire organization. It has to be part of the fabric of our company and our culture. And it doesn't matter if it's my values of mentorship or my values of whatever, unless the leader of the organization truly understands what their values are and has the ability to propagate that and have that reflected throughout the organization. I think you're creating problems.
Kevin Bailey [00:29:45]:
Interesting. So it's kind of back to values again. You talked about Values a good way to align investors with founders. Also a good way to align talent with the leader. That's fascinating. Values are pretty important. If there is an alignment, it's certainly like you said, it can create a house of cards. The last thing I wanted to ask you before we end this great conversation.
Kevin Bailey [00:30:03]:
You got two kids, you got a spouse. How do you feel about your ability to mix being a CEO of a later stage tech company with being a good dad and husband?
Tom Trill [00:30:16]:
That's a big question. So I look back and I think my son was already in college when I took on this role and my daughter was in her final year of high school. And ideally I would have had this happen a year later when she went to college. And that's the hardest part of this journey for me, missing that year with my daughter. Quite honestly, it haunts me a lot. And her and I speak about it as much as we can. She's now in her second year in college. Both my son and daughter are very entrepreneurial and that gives me a little bit of closure and a little bit of joy that I can hopefully inspire them in what to do and what not to do.
Tom Trill [00:31:02]:
Particularly what not to do. Just hope that we can grow through it and learn from it.
Kevin Bailey [00:31:07]:
Basically, though, what you're saying is with this role in particular for you, you didn't feel like you were able to really be there with your daughter her last year of high school the way you wanted to be.
Tom Trill [00:31:18]:
Totally not. And that was something I prided myself on for my entire career, that I was always there. And for my son also. He was in college, but still I wasn't physically present for either of them through very formative times and very important transitional times. Like I said, it does hang over me. It haunts me a little bit and it's a big price to pay. I'm just grateful that I have the relationship with them that makes me feel like there's an understanding and abound. I would say just protect those you love as much as you can.
Tom Trill [00:31:52]:
That's where I'm at.
Kevin Bailey [00:31:53]:
I appreciate the vulnerability, Tom. Definitely something to keep in mind. I think it's fascinating that you at least did wait until your kids were either in college or almost in college to go into leading a later stage tech company.
Tom Trill [00:32:06]:
Thanks, David.
Kevin Bailey [00:32:07]:
Something to consider, Tom. It's been a great conversation. How do you recommend people try and get a hold of you and if they want to talk about your research or something like that? Tom McWollings, you're on LinkedIn as well.
Tom Trill [00:32:16]:
Yes, indeed. Yeah, thank you. Kevin. Thank you very much. I commend you on what you do here. This is a very powerful platform you have, so thank you very much for giving Qualinx and myself an opportunity.
Kevin Bailey [00:32:27]:
I appreciate it. Tom hey everyone. Hope you enjoyed the dreamfuel show. If you'd like to continue listening to more episodes, subscribe to Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcast. We'll be here every other week. And if you want to learn more about Dreamfuel's Octane program for tech leaders, go to dreamfuel.com/octane or just click the link in the description.