15. Mike Todasco: The creative innovators journey

Mike Todasco spends his days thinking about how AI will change how we create
Using generative tools like ChatGPT, Midjourney, and the ever-growing slate.
He used to work at PayPal, focused on innovation 
Where he evangelized creativity to employees of every nation.
At PayPal he also had many roles in the field of product 
From management to marketing to launch, which was a bit chaotic.
Previously, he founded a company, Sketch Maven 
Where long start-up nights turned his appearance to unshaven.
Prior to his career in tech, he was in finance and accounting you see
Starting his career at the company with a meatball logo, GE.
He has an MBA from Berkeley and a BS from Illinois 
And occasionally teaches leadership to mature girls and boys.
Mike has also been granted over 100 US utility patents.
And if you don't like his rhymes, you're on his list of enemy combatants.
Overall Mike tries to be a very helpful guy,
And while he uses the tools, he did not write this with AI

Brought to you by The Infinite Loop – Where Ideas Evolve, Knowledge Flows, and Innovation Never Stops.

Transcript

0:07

Welcome, friends, to the Total Innovation Show, where the seeds of innovation grow. We dive into minds both sharp and bright, exploring ideas that spark the light. In a world where change is moving fast, those who adapt will always last. From AI tools to creative trends, we'll break it down with a total innovation lens. So sit back, listen, and soon you'll find we're here to uncover the visionary mind. And speaking of visionaries, today, we've got a great guest, a leader in innovation among the very best. He's built, he's led, he's paved the way. Let's dive into his story without delay. Our guest spends his days thinking about how AI will change how we create using generative tools like ChatGPT, Midjourney, and the ever growing slate. He used to work at PayPal focused on innovation where he evangelized creativity to the employees of every nation. At PayPal, he also had many roles in the field of products from management to marketing to launch, which was a bit chaotic. Previously, he founded a company, Sketchmaven, where long startup nights turned his appearance to unshaven. Prior to his career in tech, he was in finance and accounting, you see, starting his career at the company with a meatball logo, GE. He's has he has an MBA from Berkeley and a BS from Illinois and occasionally teaches leadership to mature girls and boys. He's been granted over one hundred US utility patents. And if you don't like his rhymes, you're on his list of enemy combatants. Overall, he tries to be a very helpful guy. And while he uses the tools, neither he nor I wrote this with AI. So without further ado, let's bring him on stage, a true innovator on the pulse of the age. He's reshaped how we think with creativity and play with bold ideas that lead the way. So lean in, listen close, and we're ready to go. Mike Tedesco, welcome to the Total Innovation Show. Simon, I am here, and I'm very excited to be, okay. The the rhymes are just not gonna work for me. I just That was so impressive. I think your audience will be so disappointed if we don't continue this entire episode in some sort of rhyming scheme now. You you just set the bar very high. One of those days, Mike, to be honest with you. I did an exec meeting earlier with a bit of, bit of wrap as well. So, it's just been one of those Mondays. But I actually as you know, I borrowed most of that from your highly creative LinkedIn bio, which I thought was great. And, you know, I don't normally do a rhyming introduction, but, hey, you introduced yourself in rhyme. So maybe there's a story behind that. Maybe we can start there. There was. So when I was at PayPal, I was doing a lot of different talks. And in doing those talks, I people would introduce me all the time, and it was just a standard corporate bio that I had. And, honestly, Simon, I was just getting bored hearing people just say my my own bio for me. So at some point, I'm like, I'm just gonna write this up, and I'm just gonna send this to people. And most people, like, don't know what to do with it. Unlike you, they just kinda freak out. They freeze. They whatever. They're like but I did have one person. I remember this. On stage, she got up there. She's like, oh, cool. This is your bio. And Simon, she, like, she wrapped it. And, like, it's like you're you sounded good. You got that that soothing British accent. Like, it sounded it sounded really nice, I will say. But when she did it, it was next level. And I'm like, this is just the greatest thing ever. And and, honestly, the rest of the talk I gave was nowhere near as good as her rapping my bio, but that that's what it came from. Well, maybe I'll do a recut and see if I can wrap it for you as well. I think we'll leave it there. Well, listen, sir seriously welcome. Right? Thanks. We had a a bit of a pre chat, and I you know, you've done a lot across a portfolio of of different experiences. And and unpacking this and thinking about what might be most useful from an audience perspective to, you know, to learn from the mind and the experience of Mike, I I feel like your life has maybe they're not distinct chapters from your perspective, but, you know, the the idea of Mike the inventor, Mike the founder, Mike the in house innovator, and now Mike the educator, maybe the AI AI educator. So I think maybe we'll unpick the episode a little bit like that, but I'm sure it won't quite work that neatly as we go. So let's start there. Mike Mike the inventor, a hundred hundred US utility patents. Tell us a little bit about Mike the inventor and and the story behind that. Look. If you would have asked me, you know, fifteen years ago, would I ever have any patents, I would be like, what are you talking about? I'm not an engineer. Like, that doesn't even make any sense or anything like that. It it wouldn't. So, when I was at PayPal, my first look. A technology company started there in twenty eleven, was working on mobile products before it like, it's its own little weird team in the company. Like, mobile was weird back in twenty eleven still. So, you know, I was I was at very much, in an innovative place. I've always been up on new technology, but, again, my background's in finance and accounting. And in twenty thirteen, I happen to be working on a very revolutionary product, which I did not invent, but kinda contributed to in many different ways. And it was called PayPal beacon. And people could look up the it on YouTube or anything like that, and you could see it. It it never made it to mass markets. But, effectively, what it was was a little piece of hardware that people would your phone would be able to passively talk to it. So you could walk into a store, and it would be able to, like, check you in automatically so you could pay hands free when you walk into the store. It would just recognize you and your phone as part of it. And one day, I was the product launch manager, was my function on that product, and I had a meeting with some lawyers, lawyers from inside the company. And and I I did this all the time. I kinda got the dirty work of that from a for the perspective. I'm like, okay. No big deal. Me with lawyers, I could do that. And the lawyer I was sitting down with, he was like, okay. Tell me about the product. Okay. Okay. Did that. He's like, well, what else can it do? What else can it do? Well, that's cool. What what what else? Could you do this? Could you do this? And and, like, you know, thirty, forty five minutes into, I'm like, oh my god. This is like a brainstorm session. I'm like, what is this? And and he's like, oh, yeah. The patent, and he explained it to me. And it's, you know, like, the whole patent process of building on ideas. I'm like, so you kinda come up with an idea. And almost by definition, it's an idea that no one ever thought of before. It's useful and has all these other criteria. And, you know, and and that was, like, process. And I got, like, really intrigued by this because I love just kinda thinking about the future. And and while I'm not, you know, I'm not an engineer by trade, I kinda understood technology well and how it works and how it doesn't work and all this and can ask a lot of dumb questions without being embarrassed. And so, I took this concept from this one meeting, and I would bring other people into brainstorming meetings about our products that they were working on and doing this. And I would hold my own, and we had to submit idea submission process. So I submitted ideas. Like, over my time at PayPal, I probably submitted thousands of ideas. And, you know, some of them became real products. Some of them became patents. Some of them and most of them were junk, but that's kind of the ideation process that you go through. And, yeah, I did this for years, you know, in jobs before I was in innovation. And, of course, once I was in innovation, like, that was a big part of my job. But, like, that was a huge part of what I did. And it was so gratifying, so much fun. It's just fun to sometimes, like, when you're building product, just to think like, okay. What is possible? Just to step back and think about, like, what could be from this. And it's interesting, you know, years and years later to see, like, these products, these ideas and concepts, like, even becoming reality and and PayPal products and other companies' products and so forth today. Congratulations. And, you know, I think it's always nice to see those ideas through those much vaunted ideas schemes that, you know, actually actually produce something, I guess, credits all sides of that that that that that that machine worked to a degree. Yeah. Right? When you were when you were participating in that, you know, you're not an engineer. You've got all these different patterns to your name. What what was the what was the motivator for you? You know, I I I'm a slight patent skeptic. I believe that they Oh, we can talk about that for sure too. Is that maybe we can do that. You know? Actually, let's start there and then let's get into the motivation. Because because look. So when I was, running innovation, I actually started on the intellectual property team. Like, they were the ones who kinda create when PayPal became a separate company from eBay, it innovation was owned by IP, and that's, like, because they were willing to fund it because they wanted to rebuild the portfolio. Because at that time, especially, so patents is I would always explain it. They hate it when I explain it this way, by the way. But as I explained it, it was kinda like, nuclear weapons. Like, if you have these things, you want you're building up your stockpile just so in some ways, another country isn't firing them at you. Right. At any given time probably shouldn't be saying I'll I'll I'll make it more generic. In in any given time, tech company a is probably violating a bunch of patents of tech company b. And as long as they are both violating each other's patents, it doesn't really do them any good to go after each other Right. Generally speaking. Now sometimes that breaks and, like, you have Apple versus Samsung, which was a huge patent case and many others like that. Would the world probably be in a better place without software patents? I I actually think so. I mean but that's not the world that we live in. So for us within the company and being much smaller than a lot of the other technology companies out there, it was imperative kind of for our survival so we don't get sued out of existence to think of other things that our competitors could be doing. And, again, I see these in, competitors' products now, and I know there's been no lawsuits about those, but I see these things all the time. And that's kind of the detente, for lack of a better word, that you have in the patent world. Now what really inspired? Look. This is one thing. I'll talk to actually about what inspired others versus what inspired me. Because most of my job at PayPal wasn't coming up with ideas myself. It was getting other people to do that because I'm just one person. You got twenty thousand other smart people. You know, it's much more powerful to get them thinking about ideas. And, honestly, Simon, it was the simple stuff. When when I took on the job, on the innovation team, it was about increasing the amount of patents that PayPal was filing. Okay. How was I gonna do that? The first thing I asked my boss for was like, boss, you're gonna have to give me a bunch more money because I'm gonna have to financially compensate people to do this. She's like, we don't got more money just to go with what you got. I'm like, okay. Like, that's not possible. And it was the best advice I ever got. The things that work for people were, having a leaderboard on every campus around the globe. And I kinda talked to communications about this. And once a month, I would actually put out, like, the number of ideas submitted by person, by location, all these different cuts of, like, who's submitting the most ideas. Because I've really focused on the top of the funnel. It took takes a while for you to figure out what an patentable idea is, and it was all about just kind of the top of the funnel, the actual ideas. And so we put these out there, and people were really inspired by that. They wanted to see their name on that leaderboard and all that kind of stuff. Once you actually got patents, you got a jacket with little swag on it and all this stuff. And, you know, sometimes a hat or something like that would cost, like, twenty bucks or something. It was not a lot of money that it cost, but those things mattered. They they were credibility. They were whatever it was to people, and that was a huge lesson for me in incentives and what really motivates people. And, again, you always think it's money, but, like, honestly, for somebody who's already well off, getting a couple thousand bucks or pounds or whatever, like, it it doesn't really mean anything. Their life is not gonna be any different, but, like, their life or at least their credibility within, like, the microcosm of their job when they get a fancy jacket or a little trophy or whatever, that actually matters a lot more, and it's a fraction of the cost. Agreed. I definitely think those and I think recognition symbols is even even is Yes. Some very obscure ones have come up over over my time. You know? A carved statue of, of themselves was one that someone once requested in one of the one of the companies that we that we work with. Another one another one that I remember, someone offered a a a meal with the CEO at the top of a mountain, which was a I know. So but forget that. The meal with the CEO, great. The meal with the CEO at the top of a mountain, I was like, that's an interesting tilt. That's amazing. Yeah. So we actually did something sort of similar to that when we were at PayPal. This was in twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen. We were experimenting with some blockchain technology at that time, and we made our own internal, for lack of a better term, tokens, like, innovation token, let's call it. And we would actually give out these tokens as you come up with ideas or attend an event or whatever, but then you could cash these in. And then you could cash these in four experiences. The CEO at the time did Krav Maga, like the the Israeli fighting and all that. You could do a session with him, or you could go running with our CFO. And I got all these leaders to do things that were very personal to them, put them on there, and it was really exciting to see people do that. Like, our CTO, he actually did this. I remember the CTO at the time, Sri Sivananda, who's now at JPMorgan, a a great business mind. And, he did, he would go to people's houses and actually and and be like, IT support for them at their house. So set up their Wi Fi, make sure everything's working properly. This is the CTO of a, you know, company with you know, he's got five thousand people working for him, and he's taking on tech support at one of his employees' houses. And, like, those are the kind of things that we got out of there. Like, I would wash somebody's car or whatever. Like, it it would be all that type of stuff. It was fun and that people really it really got people excited about innovation and all this other stuff as well. How do you feel about those hundred patterns today? Is it a is it a badge of honor for you? Is it, like, what is it? Out after the fact, I guess, to a to a degree. I I to to to be completely honest, I don't think of it much. It seems like a different era, a different time. The only reminder I do have that we would give puzzle pieces. So and these puzzle pieces fit together. So I will say, I have a lot of these puzzle pieces, and my kids occasionally will just make a cool structure out of these big glass trophy puzzle pieces from that. But, yeah, it's hard to say. It it's like it's like a different life, almost a different person back then from where I am now. Let's let's stay at PayPal. Right? Let's talk a little bit about that transition from the ideas, you know, the the the inventor of of patents and the person throwing a million and one different ideas into a ideas process to the person that's starting to be an in house innovator and, as you said earlier, enable the great minds that are working across the business. Can you talk a little bit about that transition for you, but also, like, some of the key lessons that you learned in doing that? And I guess from the way you describe it, building it out as a center of enablement for innovation for for PayPal. Yeah. And and and so and and the question is really just just, like, for others who are listening to this, it's kinda how do you build that culture? I mean, like No. I think it's a bit of a, you know, like yes. What was the journey there? Because, like, you know, on the one side of it, you're, you know, you're chucking ideas in and doing something and Yeah. Was that an was that an accidental? And then, oh, this sounds interesting or a defined career path that no one, I think, would choose for themselves generally. I mean I mean, look. What I would say is the job didn't exist before, and I I remember I would work with the so this is back when I was, like, a product manager. I was doing all of these brands. I was basically doing the job. I eventually took on a PayPal for free for probably two years. Right. I was hosting all these brainstorm sessions just with other people, getting their ideas, and just sending them into the IP team. Like, this was not part of my job or anything like that. My actual bosses were kinda like, why are you doing this? Like but I'm like, oh, it's fun. I mean and I've really enjoyed it, and I enjoyed involving people in the process. So, you know, fast forward and and I remember planting seeds of, like, well, what if this was a full time job? Like, that kind of thing didn't exist. But I remember planting some seeds with the legal team. Like, hey. If you ever needed something, you know, I know we're splitting. I know you wanna rebuild this patent portfolio. Like, how about we build it from the ground up? So, like, there was a lot of, like, seed planting in that. And so I did that for some time, and then just the opportunity arose. And there was a lot of resistance for me being a non engineer and non lawyer to be joining the legal team to be doing this, but it eventually worked. I mean, the I I, you know, convinced the right people, and they took a chance on me, and things worked out with that. The thing that excited me when I was in the job, though, was, like, just without really any authority or or, like, direct, authority within the company to just kinda take on this role as a cheerleader of innovation for the entire company. And just how did we would we do that? How would we engage people and do this all with almost no money? And it was fun because it was a constant experiment. It was just trying stuff out. It was failing miserably. Like, you know, I would host events all the time in our in our innovation lab. And our innovation lab was literally I was able to get facilities to take a a conference room offline, and I just painted the walls differently, and I stole a bunch of furniture from other parts of the that wasn't being used from, like, all around the campus to just make it look different. And then, therefore, that just became the innovation lab. But I would just try things. Like, I tried bringing in authors to talk about stuff, and that proved to be really popular. And so, you know, my time, I brought in over a hundred authors to PayPal and gave out books, which was a very cheap way in hindsight to bring in speakers to an event, because some of these people would probably charge twenty five thousand dollars for speaking at a company, but they would also just come if you preorder a hundred copies of their new book while they're on tour. And so, like, that's a a much more cost effective way to bring them in, and you get to bring up in hand out the books to everybody in the audience and then have discussions about the books and all that. So it was just one thing, and it was just experimentation after experiment, like, again and again, and then trying to bring this to other places around the globe, within PayPal. And, like, that was it. And but, like, it was just a very transparent, very open journey I had. Like, it never would have succeeded without like, one thing, the PayPal is an innovative culture. Like, that is one thing that is true. If you go back to the early days of PayPal, there's a lot of things within that. So, like, at its core, like, we did have that kernel, and I think it may have been much tougher in a different type of environment to do what I had done, you know, if it didn't have that core of innovation. But all that said, the one thing that we did have, and we said this all the time, and I said this every time I gave a talk, was like a our tenant was everyone can innovate. And that was the belief. Like, we, as human beings, are all innovators, and we all have this capability to do that. This is how we got to where we are at today as a species. The important thing with that, though, is, like, you need to have the incentives and the surroundings to allow that to happen, and that's a lot of what I worked on. Yeah. I mean, that that belief of, you know, everyone has an innovative core, I think, resonates resonates very, very strongly with me. I also, obviously, firsthand see all the time this very kind of scrappy and start up approach to getting innovation started. It was a side of the job thing that I love to do, and I did it. And then I, you know, I borrowed a a room and stuck some stuff in there. And I think those stories are great. They also somewhat filled me with with, like, but more. Like, why does it have to be so hard? If you look on the other side of the incredible outcomes from doing this well and that you'd really feel like it should be the heart and soul of what it is to run a business. Right? You know? Like, the cultural piece of it, the change management piece of it, the the perpetual needs to drive growth and revenue and cost efficiency into the organization is all a part of the tilt of what an innovation mindset brings. Right? And so I I, you know, obviously, living inside this space and and pushing total innovation as this connected system, a big part of my thinking is like, great, Mike, but how do we make it to the next person next version of you doesn't really need to have to do that. Right? And if they do, then it's still, you know, it's not pushing as much water uphill, and it's not perhaps it's not as interesting, and maybe that's half the bloody problem here. But the business is missing out by having to do that. Right? Yeah. I mean, look, it's harder to do in a company of twenty thousand or something. It's easier to do in a smaller company, I think. But but, you know, even within a company that maybe doesn't have that, the one thing you as a manager or a leader potentially have power to do that is within your teams. And, you know, I'll give one example, and I and I love talking about this story because it will really show the innovation that, in in each and every person in my team before I was in that job. I was, as I mentioned before, I was in a function called product launch, which is a weird hybrid between product managements and program managements. And it's sort of like half and half if people are familiar with that in the software world. And I believe that the team had to be, like, innovative and creative to be successful. And so when I took on the team, I think I had ten people reporting to me. Half said and I literally asked them, like, straight up, like, upfront, like, do you consider yourself to be creative or innovative? And I use those words usually interchangeably. But half said yes, half said no. My goal would at the end of this job, above everything else in my mind, was, like, I wanted everyone to see themselves as being creative and innovative. So one of the things I did and and and, Simon, this is really easy thing to do. Like, I just basically took every one of our weekly meetings, and I said, okay. First five minutes of the meeting. It's not even the first five minutes. First two minutes of the weekly meeting. I'm gonna cold call on somebody, and you're gonna tell me something innovative you've done in the past week. Yep. And it would have been it could be personal. It could be professional. It didn't matter. And this was a way to you know, at first people like, oh my god. My boss is doing this. What the heck? I have all this other stuff to do. Now I have to think about this. But people and, you know, and I think I volunteered myself the first week. And then the second week, I called on somebody and called on someone else. And and, you know, and they would share things, and they would share these really cool things like how, you know, somebody wasn't showing up to a meeting, and they found and they really needed this person in the meeting. They could have gone to the boss and complained or whatever else or and they're like they did some research, and they found out that this person liked a certain type of donuts that they have here. It's very popular here in San Jose. And they're like, okay. We're gonna start, bringing those donuts to these meetings, and they put that right at the top of the invite. And you know what? Low and behold, that person starts showing up to that meeting. Like and and, like, that's brilliant. Like like, spending fifteen dollars on some donuts to get a person to do, like, versus to go like, that is innovative. That is creative. And it's and I really want to emphasize, like, we're not trying to create a rocket ship here. Like, it's the little things that that we have the power to change and to manipulate. So, like, for anybody who's listening out there, take that idea. Like, do that with your own teams. See what it is. It does take a little persistence from your side, but, you know, I I think there are ways to do this. And if you suddenly become the innovative team within your company, I think others are gonna start to recognize you, and that could really start to shift the culture overall. I think that's a brilliant piece of of advice. I really like these little these little micro things that make a big difference because, yeah, people feel like they can't innovate because, as you said up front, I'm not the engineer. I'm not the creative type. I'm not. But but, you know, as you also as you noted, rather than going with the obvious route of I need twenty five thousand dollars for this for this keynote speaker is no. You don't. You can, you know, invite them along and buy some of their books, which you would have bought anyway. And, and they and they turn up. And so lots of this creative problem solving rather than maybe the word innovation is quite a nice, nice light set for folk as well. Simon, just to build off that real quickly, just my my kids will often come to me and say, like, well, I can either do this or this. It's a or b. And I always say to them, like, well, what's c? What's d? What are the other options? Like like, I think we have some binary aspect of our brains where it has to be one or the other when it never does have to be one or other. There are many more options always in front of us, and it just takes a little bit of time to just stepping back to think about, like, what are the other creative options and solutions you could have. And that meeting for that was like, okay. I'm either gonna go complain to the boss or complain to the guy about not showing up. Well, no. He actually went to the completely different route, and that was more effective. And those are the, like, those are the innovative solutions that really start to stack up and and make, you know, just business and people in those organizations way more impactful. Exactly. You should have brought the doughnuts. Could be a good title for a podcast as well, actually. That's right. That's really gonna be your title. Let's, let's skip into Mike, the founder then, and talk to me a little bit about that journey and Yeah. How that how that adds to the the experience, but also to the lessons learned. So going back, I I think I was always entrepreneurial when I was young. A big thing when I was growing up in the eighties and nineties was collecting baseball cards. So baseball is a was a more popular sport back then, but they would have, you know, little cardboard cards and, you know, collect and trade them and all that, and it became a a business. I didn't know, but there was, like, a literally a speculative boom that I was, like, living in the middle of when I was growing up, and I would collect and trade those. I also got into comic books doing the same kind of thing when I was growing up as well. And there was one comic book, with with a character called Guy Gardner, who I think is actually going to be in the new Superman movie, in fact. Nathan Fillion is gonna be playing him. And I remember I was at a convention once. The guy who was the artist on the first issue of Guy Gardner was there, and he had the original cover art. So the hand drawn artwork that, you know, only one exists that was reproduced millions and millions of times, so, like, all that. And that's how comic book art works and worked back then when it before it was digital. Like, you would draw it and then you would reproduce it so it would become an an a comic book. And I remember it was like I don't know. It was expensive. More than whatever my teenage budget could handle. And then I remember being growing up years later and thinking about it, like, I should go buy that thing. Let me go on eBay. I I wanna buy that. I got some money now. It'd be cool to have. Like, I got a couple hundred bucks to spend. And do you know what? Like, I couldn't find it. I couldn't find anything even close to it. And the problem that I was solving was when there's only one of something in the world, it's really hard to find that one. Like, yes, if you wanna find the Mona Lisa, you know where to find that. But for most things where there's only one of them, it's super hard to come by. Because, like, what are the odds that happens to be at eBay at that very time or whatever? Like, no. So what I built was a marketplace to better serve collectors. Originally, I was starting with comic art, but I want to expand into shoes and all this other kind of stuff, and this was in two thousand and nine. And, that was it. It was called Sketch Maven, and I had all these other Maven, Shoe Maven, and all this other stuff eventually that would expand it into. And I'm like, okay. Can I serve collectibles markets better with the structured marketplace? I didn't know anything about building a website. This was before Stripe and Braintree. So, like, I was using ODesk at the time and having people build the site for me. And, like, I never remember we launched. We didn't even have a secure checkout because I didn't ask for that. So people are putting a credit card number. It's not it's not even secure out there. Like, of course, like, that doesn't happen today because of Stripe and all that. But, like, two thousand nine, I didn't even know to ask for that. So I built this site, a total passion of mine. This was after my MBA. While everyone else is getting jobs and consulting, whatever else, I'm like, I'm gonna start my own crazy company. I'm doing that. Moderate success. Site's getting hacked all the time. All this stuff I'm having to deal with. I'm having to market it. And it's a marketplace, so I'm trying to track, you know, both sellers and buyers. You know, two thou luckily, Facebook ads in two thousand and nine were ridiculously cheap. It was, like, you know, CPM, cost per thousand for some of the ads was, like, ten cents Yep. For very targeted ads, in fact. So, like, targeting Star Wars fans with a Star Wars ad and all that, but, like, you know, that doesn't exist anymore. But, like, I was doing that and having, you know, moderate success, but, like, just honestly struggling. And more money going out than coming in over two years, I didn't get to expand into other things. And finally, when, first kid comes around, I'm like, okay. I probably need to get a real job, and that's what brought me into PayPal. And then I will say, like, my PayPal interview was, like, eight hours of me talking about all the ways I screwed up with Sketchbaven. It was all the failures I had. It was all the that was basically what I talked about for eight hours. It was like, yeah. I could tell you how I screwed this thing up right real bad here. Because I actually didn't have tech experience before that. I I was actually at a paper company of all things before that. But somehow they hired me. I got the job there and kinda took me off on the trajectory I'm at today. What's your before I skip us into looking at some of the future as well, what is your reflections on what that gave you? Right? You know, some people might be listening thinking, hi. I wanna step into entrepreneurship, or should I quit my job and go and do this, or should I get a job after my MBA? And it sounds like it was kind of formative for you. Maybe the question is would you do it again? But, but what what advice would you give to people on that? Yeah. I I mean, here's like, I think a lot of people were telling me, yeah. You gotta quit your job and do this. Like, I actually don't know if I need to quit my job, especially in today where you have, like, things like, AI tools and agents. And and frankly, you have so many services out there that could do so many of the things if it is a website or whatever. Look. If you're going to open a cupcake shop or something, yeah, you probably do need to quit your job if you're going to be running that. But I would also say, like, before you open a cupcake shop, start putting them on Uber Eats at nights and selling them out of your house or whatever. I mean, there are there are ways to experiment before you have to really make the jump in something, whether it's digital or physical. So I I would say do whatever you can to experiment beforehand. You don't necessarily need to quit your job upfront. But, you know, I was young. It was before kids when I had it. And look, all of the failures that I had and, you know, the couple successes I had in those few years, I learned more from that than I did at any other two year period in my career. So, like, from that perspective, no. Don't don't regret it one bit. Yeah. I'm always super inspired and slightly, across my fingers for them. I have some good friends who are doing entrepreneurship with very young families as well. Right? I Yeah. I started before the kids, and, obviously, I have them now. But, but we were more established by them. But those early days and that just that risk appetite is is is is quite different. Maybe there's some parallels there between the risk appetite of corporates and innovation and young parent of parents and innovation as well because, you know, the the risk I think so. I I think there's probably there's probably something there. And and, look, I'm also not saying it is, like, impossible to do once you you have kids. It's just a little bit harder to do that. That's all. Just a bit risky. Harder. So you sort of touched on this a little bit, and I think, you know, there's a lot of noise now around the AI impact, particularly on transformation and innovation writ large. Right? You're now, you know, doing more educational work and, you know, hands on research, I guess, and and testing of some of these some of these tools. And you've done you know, you've spoken quite a bit on this recently. We don't have a bag of time, so maybe I can try and distill some of that thoughts from you for this last chapter of the podcast today in terms of, you know, your how you see this playing out and and what the what the opportunity is from a corporate innovation perspective. Yeah. Look. I think AI is gonna completely change how all of us work and how all of us operate. So it's it's going to be much more impactful than what the Internet actually was. And if you really stop to think about what your job was like twenty five years ago and I know you might some people might be not old enough, but whatever your job title. Like, what is that today, and what was that twenty five years ago? I think for a lot of people, like, well, it didn't exist. Like, that that wasn't that wasn't actually a real job. Or if it was, like, you know, let let's take the cupcake shop or, like, you know, a bakery or something. Like, how is that? Well, you weren't worried about Yelp and and all of these other things, you know, way back in the day. Like, there's a whole another side to this. We're posting things on Instagram or whatever else. Like so even in what seems to be the same business, it's evolved, and it's just going to change more. What AI is capable of today is astounding. And what it's gonna be capable of in five years is completely going to be unimaginable. What what we I think people haven't fully embraced, like, what what it really can do and how it does change things. Like, so I I write a lot. And when I write, it is such a darn good editor to help me out with the process throughout. I will ask it for feedback. I'll ask it for suggestions. Now there are times where I use a human editor as well. So So I'm writing some children's books. I have a human editor, and that is hugely impactful. But I actually will use AI before I get to that human editor to give me some initial feedback, to make their life easier, to, you know, do I don't want them spending their time on punctuations and commas and all that. I'd rather have Grammarly doing that for me or throwing it into Claude or whatever it might be. So even those workflows are going to total totally change. And I think if you're someone who's saying, boy, I just don't see the value of AI in my job today, you know, the only challenge I would give to those people is, like, are you really looking hard enough? Are you trying to uncover what that is? And what I would say is just make that your default. Like, if you're in the car, you're commuting to work or whatever, you should like, I do this with the kids all the time. Like, we will have on, ChatGPT's voice mode, advanced voice mode, And we'll be asking questions. We'll be having a discussion with it. I'll be quizzing the kids on homework tests that they're gonna have later that day or whatever it might be. And and it's saying if they're right or wrong answers and all this other kind of stuff. Like, you know, that that's just one little example. Like, a a lot of what I write now, I will actually write I will go for a long walk dictating and having conversation, and it basically is just keeping a transcript. And they say, hey. Can you summarize everything I have in there? Make this into an outline, which then I will sit down the computer and write from. And it will do that. And, like, this is and, again, that's just kind of a writer slash parent example. But any aspect of your life, whether it's planning things out or preparing, you know, preparing meals or or trying to do things more efficiently with your fitness goals or whatever it might be. Like, these tools are so, so helpful. What are you telling leaders around it at the moment? Because I I I'm seeing this kind of corporate tilt on it, which is pretty common of there's a hype and a fear at the same time that are that that is I described this to the to some of the team the other day as they you know, we were talking about the work that we're doing, and it's fairly progressive in a lot of areas. And that sort of ticks all the right boxes from a procurement. Can you show me what you can do? And then immediately, all of the infosec and risk people come in and say, but can you also turn it off? Right? Yeah. And and there's a big element of that happening happening right now. But what are you telling leaders? Because I think I can see the utility. And, you know, you mentioned earlier, you know, involved in blockchain projects back in the day, and I don't think it's as analogous. Although I think one day that may well have its moment in the sun as well. But the innovation drive here is probably bigger and more impactful than that. But still, there's an element of, okay, it helps to put more content out in the world. Do we need more content? Maybe yes, maybe no. It helps to you to, you know, to revise your homework better or maybe to cheat on your homework. It helps you with x y z. But from a pure business perspective, outside of maybe some of the process and operations, can I can I save on my, you know, on my OPEX bill from a from a from a salary perspective? How should leaders really be thinking about this in terms of really future focused innovation and growth, do you think? And what role does it play? So what what I would say to leaders hey, leaders. You all you leaders out there listening to me now, this is what I'm gonna tell you. Few things. First of all, you know, I hear the argument. Well, it's just gonna change in six months, so why bother doing it today? Well, like, this is an evolution. Things get better. The sooner you get on board and start to learn and start to get your organizations to be kinda AI first, if you will, the sooner you're gonna start to understand its capabilities and the benefits. So, like, it's really a three part process that I would put out for them. The first of which is to effectively take care of those infosec security, whatever, and get a corporate account. And it could be Anthropix Claude. It could be, you know, ChatGPT from OpenAI. It it doesn't matter. Or Microsoft, whatever. But, like, just say, hey, Infosec, IT, we need some solution. Like, are we already storing stuff on the cloud? Yes. Well, okay. That means we are in some way sharing stuff with Amazon or whatever it might be or, you know, of these other services. We can make a case for having this. Like, there are probably companies that have much more sensitive data than you that are using these tools, but use it in the right way, and it's good to talk about those concerns that you have. So take care of that so at least your employees aren't doing it behind your back. Because if you just say, no, you're not allowed to use this, do you know what's gonna happen? Employees are gonna use it anyway. Like, they they just are, and better to have it in a controlled way. So that's number one. Take care of that. Number two, I would not say, hey. You need to use it for x, y, and z. This has to come from the bottom up. This has to come from employees doing this. And use use my example that I gave earlier on where we were talking about how I was encouraging innovation. Like, if you are running a team, say, hey, team. We're going to at the beginning of every meeting, I'm gonna call on two people, and they're gonna talk about how they use generative AI in the past week, either personally or professionally. And we're gonna share that. And you know what? We're also gonna set up a teams or a Slack channel for everyone to share questions about this. We're just gonna call it AI or or AI for dummies or whatever it might be. And it's going to be a way to share all this across. And you keep doing this again and again and again, and you're going to start to see patterns. And somebody is going to do one thing, and that's going to inspire someone else on the team to do that. I'm like, oh my gosh. Well, well, that is going to lead to this, and you are going to start to build a, you know, AI first organization that's gonna have all these things at the center. I mean, here's the one thing I will tell you. Like, this is how we're all going to work in the future. This just is. Like, the choice for you is to say, well, are you going to wait to embrace that, or are you just going to say, okay. We're gonna embrace it now. It's gonna be a little bit messy at times. It might not always be perfect, but we're actually going to try and get ahead of the curve now. And I think the advantages are much more to just say, okay. Let's get ahead of things now versus, you know, it's two thousand and nine and we're like, yeah. Maybe we should put up a website or whatever. Like, kinda missed the boat by that time. But no. Better late than that. Hands on. Yeah. Getting hands on is the best advice, right, for any Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. There's no look. I teach AI stuff at a university and all that. I could say, yeah. You should take this and blah blah blah. Just play with the tools. Just play with the tools. See what they're capable of. If you don't even know where to start, ask them. Say, hey. This is who I am. Chat GBT, like, what should I what can I do with you? And just start from there. Yeah. And I think, you know, the risk management side of this actually, as as you were talking, I was thinking there's quite a strong analogy. It hadn't occurred to me previously between the patent analogy you raised earlier of, you know, to a degree, it's like there's a bit of pattern, armistice happening. There almost is the the AI risk side is is a little bit similar, but but quite different in that there's so much nervousness because data isn't clean and that there's a worry that I might accidentally put the wrong data out into the world or bleed sensitive data into the wrong places, that actually most of that data is useless. Right? And that actually starting from a a baseline of we don't need much of this. I I did a an open innovation project a few years ago now for a large pharmaceutical business who had hired every single specialist on planet Earth to try and figure out why one of their drugs was having the impact it was having in the market that it didn't have in testing. Right? Mhmm. There are all these amazing specialists, and they came to us and said, look. We can't figure this out. Maybe you guys can help us. The problem we've got is we also can't share much of the data with you because we it's sensitive, and it's not it's not publicly available. So what can you do? I said, well, we can try. Right? That's what we can do. And so we spun out this, you know, this this very, very fragmented dataset that was owned all that was available to a general group of people who in thirty days figured out what the experts with all the data couldn't figure out. And I think part of the benefit was all that data was out of the way. Right? That way you could rely on little bits of facts, and you could use the empirical data that was present right there and then. And and that was it. All the noise was removed, and and that got you to a solution much faster. I think we are inundated with so much information that actually a step away from it in terms of subject matter expertise and a different lens and a removal of all of it actually helps. Right? And that that isn't one simple example. It happens all of the time that that abstraction and that removal of complexity actually gets you to the conclusion faster. I I think that's right. And look, I I would say just overall, you know, with with these two like like, removal of, like, complexity and so forth, like, again, just start at, like, very basic level with with these tools. Like, the problem with AI tools in so many ways is that they have infinite possibilities, and you are stuck with the paradox of choice. Like, you literally don't know what to do. There's there's, you know, cold start problem. It's just like, oh god. What do I actually do with this thing? When ChatGPT was released, it was no different than the OpenAI Playground that was available using GPT three DaVinci. It was the exact same thing, except it just had a little bit more of a friendly text box. Yep. Like and and that's why people like me who are using this, before with the Playground saw chat gbt come out, and I'm like, I was like, why what's the big deal? Like and then all of a sudden within a week, I'm like, oh, wait a minute. Like, I I found it was just a little design tweak and so forth for that. And and that's why, it really caught on and so forth. And it was just, you know and and that's why I think OpenAI was even shocked at the success of ChatGPT because they're like, well, it's not really different than what we had before, but we just changed this. And sometimes that little thing is just all the difference in that. But, like, you know, one thing that AI has not been good at is design. And so I think there is still a a a lot that can be improved upon of just figuring out, like, how to get people started in these tools, that's we're going to see a lot of improvement in the in the coming like, you know, they haven't as a product guy, you know, spent many years in product, I will say, like, they weren't taking these are research institutions. We're focused on research, not as much on UI and design and product and all these things. They're starting to get there now. But, like, you know, they they've got a lot further to go still. But I I think there's a lot of analogy between that and the adoption of things like the PC and, you know, the work that Microsoft did to bring that out. Right? Like, the the it was actually less less capable than the than the original things that sat behind it from MS DOS perspective and previously, but it had a nicer face on it that meant that more people could use it. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. It it doesn't have to be more powerful. It it just has to be more usable, and and that's ultimately what matters. Can I just so I'm gonna start to wind the things? I know I'm a little bit over time, and I'm enjoying this conversation. I think we could probably talk all day. I'm gonna I'm gonna take you back a little bit actually. And, final question, and then I'll wrap us up, is you worked at, in your product days at PayPal at Beacon. You mentioned it earlier. And you also said, you know, people can look it up, but it never made mass market. It was a good product. So Oh, I love that. About what was it about Beacon that was, you know, the that we can that we you can look back and learn and think about that meant that it didn't have that breakout moment and and why and what. Right? From a a sort of not as successful as you'd like it to be innovation story. Or maybe it was, but it got buried somewhere in in a different feature. I mean, look. I think it was it just wasn't the right time. So so let me put in perspective for folks. So in two thousand and twelve, two thousand thirteen, when we were working on this, they were launching something called Bluetooth four dot o. So it was a new Bluetooth protocol that you no longer had to, like, actively sync devices. It was allowing a passive communication between two devices, and that was kind of the key to this. And there was a really brilliant engineer on a PayPal team who uncovered this. He's like, wow. If you can do this, you can actually do this. So this was a side project that he was working on at the time. And we were starting to build this out, and I actually remember so Apple's headquarters in Cupertino were not far away from, PayPal. He was actually driving to Cupertino to help the Apple team because they weren't understand they didn't understand well enough how Bluetooth's four zero zero would integrate into their latest iPhone. So, like, you know, like, it it was kind of amazing. Like, we he was very much at the forefront. He was in-depth in this and so forth. And look, he was solving a great technological problem. Probably helped out Apple with the iPhone, but it was also like, hey. This little piece of hardware can now talk to iPhones or Android devices. This is gonna be great for payments. Look. The the technology worked. It was cool. I mean, it could have even done things like in a Starbucks. Frankly, we talked to coffee chains about this, I will just say. Like, you could point it out the window. So when your car would come into the parking lot, it would actually know that you were there, and it could actually start making your coffee if you come between these certain hours or something. Like, there's all these parameters we could have done with it. But here's the thing. None of that mattered because it really wasn't solving a pain point for customers at the time. If you looked at so we were we had three stores on University Avenue in Palo Alto that had beacon set up. They all had relationships with PayPal. I literally helped set it up. And if you watch someone like the Bloomberg video that covered this, you could actually see one of his named Chantal Guillaume. Is this, French macaron place that they had there? And this is right next to Stanford University. So one of the, you know, the premier tech colleges in the world with all these tech savvy students. So when we started, we built this probably for six, nine months. We actually started to put it out there to the world. I was talking to these students and saying, like, hey. You know, what do you think about this? Like, we'll give you something. Just give us some feedback. And they were basically, like, why the hell would I not just use my credit card? Like, why won't I just use cash? Like, what's the point of this? Like, Like, I don't need to I don't need to use my phone to buy stuff. Mhmm. And, look, we hear that a couple times. We're like, oh, well, what do they know? And then you hear a few more customers again and again and again, and they're like, oh, crap. We're not solving any problem that people have here. People just weren't ready for it. And and the technology we had wasn't big enough of a leak for them to see, like, oh my god. It is so tedious using a credit card. Like, no. Especially in the United States, people have been habituated for the last fifty years before that to just slide a credit card. Yeah. And frankly, in the US, it took COVID to get us to the point where you don't actually wanna touch your thing on a dirty terminal. You just want to tap this within the vicinity, and that was the one behavioral change that finally got people to adopt NFC in the United States. And even then, like, it's still far credit cards are still far and away the number one use, payments in stores well, well beyond NFC payments. So, look, the one lesson from this is, yeah, technology is cool. It's fun. But if it's not actually solving people's problems, like, you're not doing anything with it. And timing has a lot to do with it. Like, if we launch that today, yeah, I think could be interesting. We might have missed our window with NFC and so forth, to be able to do that. But in the end, you just you gotta talk to customers. And and and this a lot of this is on me. I didn't talk to customers early enough with this because, frankly, I was so excited about the technology as well. I'm like, oh, yeah. Let's get this in stores, then we'll talk to people, and we'll see how much they love it. No. We talked to people and saw how much they were empathetic about it. Yeah. Listen. Thank thank you, Mike. And I'm glad I went there, actually. We hadn't we hadn't teed up any of this conversation, really, and it's been very organic and natural. So so thank you. From from Huddies to cupcakes to doughnuts to French macarons to Superman to blockchain, we've covered a lot lot in this conversation, and, it's been super interesting and a very a very honest and authentic accounts as well. So thank you thank you very much. And I'm sure that from a listener's perspective, they will they'll get they'll gauge a lot from this. I actually encourage everybody to go find Mike on LinkedIn and follow his content. He he puts out a lot a lot of interesting stuff. It's how we discovered each other as as well. And so thank you and keep that up. Keep those long walks up and those dictations and those AI summations and everything else. And I know it's all your own thinking and work. Right? As much as you might lean on those tools as we stand up front with our quirky little rhyme, like, you wrote that. Right? And I I Yeah. I mean I mean, the thing is that AI is not to the point where it's gonna be creating great original content. I mean, last thing I will say is, so I actually write AI books, write in quotes. Because I basically say, hey. AI write a book and I hit a button. And I I publish those under the name Alex Irons. So anybody can go on Amazon, type in Alex Irons, and you will see a whole bunch of books, like fifteen, written by AI. I donate all the money to charity, by the way. So I don't I don't keep any of that money because I don't feel right doing it. But you will see those books suck. And this is a little bit of an experiment with me that I've been doing since twenty twenty two of just saying, like, hey. How good is AI of just saying, like, hey, AI, just go make something funny. Make something interesting. You can't really do it. It's very mediocre in everything that it does. And so there is a very much, for now and for the foreseeable future, a place where people who are creative, who have interesting thoughts, like, you are the person building this, and the AI is just a tool to help you out in your vision. Wonderful. Well, listen. Thank you very much, Mike. And, we won't get Alex Irons on the next podcast then. I I get so you'll you'll see the picture of Alex Irons. He has a much bigger beard than I do, so I'd have to throw it out on it. But thank you very much. Thank you to everybody for listening. As always, if you've enjoyed this episode, please give us feedback. Please share it with others. Please hit subscribe because we'll keep these exciting, informative, and interesting episodes coming. And, Mike, thank you very much again. Simon, Simon, thanks for having me. It was a lot of fun.