The Entrepreneurship & Innovation Studio

Vision and Transformation in the Central Valley: Danny Bernstein’s Biotech Approach

• Stanislaus State • Season 3 • Episode 4

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Join Dr. Pablo Paredes Romero and guest Danny Bernstein as they delve into the untapped potential that is the Central Valley bioeconomy and plans to leverage innovation to revitalize the region. The founder and Managing Partner of HawkTower, Danny emphasizes the importance of equitable opportunities, accessible partnerships, and community outcomes integral to his investment strategy.

The Central Valley's agricultural legacy provides fertile ground for transformative technological solutions. With less than 1% of venture capital flowing to areas like Davis, Fresno, and Modesto, Danny's efforts to spur innovation and create lasting opportunities for under-leveraged regions are highlighted in this episode. 

Co-produced by the Warrior Entrepreneurship and Innovation program and the Office of Strategic Communications and Marketing at Stanislaus State. The E&I Studio is edited and recorded in the KCSS studios on the campus of Stanislaus State.
The views expressed by guests on this podcast are not necessarily those of the University.

Danny Bernstein's wanderlust is its own call to action in both word and sentiment. As managing partner of HawkTower, whose mission is to invest in startups supplying breakthrough technological solutions to solve industrial and environmental challenges in under leveraged regions like the Central Valley, Danny leverages his former career in tech with such stalwarts as Google, Microsoft and Meebo to spur the creation of visionary founders who stand to quite literally transform their region. With less than 1% of California's venture capital flowing to places like Davis, Fresno, Merced, Salina, Bakersfield, Santa Cruz and Modesto, the opportunities are abundant and the sense of urgency could not be greater. The man himself is thoughtful, visionary and deeply committed to his work. Danny shared with us the manner in which he continually strives to harmonize intentionality, the consistency of an intellectual edification regimen to serve community before self impactful and deliberate action, and the passionate pursuit of what could be, but hasn't yet. I want to know a little bit more about the background of all the great work you're doing through Hog Tower and to that I'd like to know a little bit more about your foundations and community and your sense of your career and the direction that Hog Tower is going. Can you share some of the memories of the community where you grew up? I grew up in San Francisco in a really foggy kind of middle class part of San Francisco called Diamond Heights. And both my parents are Brandon, San Francisco. My mom was first generation. So kind of the big memories of my childhood feel like kind of a mix of a more kind of urban upbringing with what felt like a transitional cultural upbringing. But it definitely gave me a really strong, you know, love of California and a love of entrepreneurship and feeling like I was lucky. I was born into a place that mean California that everyone wants to get to and I felt really fortunate about that and that that's part of, I think a driver for me is how to be able to clear that path for others and make kind of that, that work to allow you to, you know, have opportunities to be able to settle and where you want to settle. How does that translate to the mission that I sense? Every conversation we've had, I've sensed a very powerful and prevalent sense of mission for you. What is the word community come to mean to you in the context of that life's work? Community in this case means partnership, it means accessibility, it means collaboration, it means really shared opportunity. And you know, that's something that hasn't always existed in entrepreneurship and is something I do, we really care about. I really care about. And part of the opportunity to build something of my own is to be able to shape something kind of in the image of some of the things I care about. And so we've always really thought about Hock Tower being a. An investor that is thinking about community outcomes and thinking about equitable outcomes. How would you describe the business and nonprofit communities evolutions in the Central Valley? Broadly, The Central Valley is really the agricultural heartland, not just of California, but, you know, of the United States. So there's been a legacy, extraordinary legacy of innovation here around agriculture, around specialty crops, around crop diversity, around infrastructure projects, massive infrastructure projects, and a rising population, a growing population. It's one of the few parts of California that are really, truly growing. Lathrop, which of course is in the 209, is, I believe, one of the fastest growing cities in the United States. And it's provided this option for many people of sort of a new fulfillment of kind of the California dream. And so it represents a lot. Central Valley is really, I think, one of California's most critical areas of opportunity, but also represents critical imperatives as well. Environmental, climate and sort of quality of job creation, of opportunity creation. So a lot of, I think the future of California will be written in the Central Valley. And I think a lot of ultimately, like how we're judged or able to judge the sort of leadership of California will be on how much we're able to fulfill a promise around the Central Valley in terms of community and opportunity. It's inspiring. To that end, if you could give a piece of advice to someone looking to start an innovative, let's say, in the bioeconomy business or venture in the Central Valley, what would you share with them? Yeah, I would really be thinking about what are the core strengths of the Central Valley, and really thinking about how you're leveraging the core strengths of the region. There are many types of businesses, of course, that could be started here. The question I would pose to that entrepreneur or that team is how are you uniquely positioned to address that opportunity, being that you're situated in the Central Valley? And I think part of why the bioeconomy and why ag byproduct sort of innovation is considered such a clear opportunity is because of the resources, the natural resources or the working lands, resources that are available in the Central Valley. So that's not to say that other businesses cannot be started here and that they don't have an opportunity, but it's just such a clear and obvious one when it comes to the bioeconomy opportunity. Both in terms of the resources available, the Runway, the academic kind of network that's here, and actually a bunch of other factors. What can we learn in this exciting new space in the Central Valley about barriers to entry that could be helpful to those startups? There are a bunch of challenges in terms of execution that the bioeconomy is going to see, and I think it's an area that I'm really still learning. Our journey was we wanted to try to address new entrepreneurial communities in California. We wanted to bring innovation to rural regions of California to spur economic development. And in that study, we began to see that there was a lot of opportunity and a lot of discussion around the bioeconomy in California and in these regions of California where I talk about this idea around what will be the Olympic host city for the bioeconomy? What will be the Olympic host region for the bioeconomy? And for someone who's kind of followed how Olympics, the Olympics works, is that there might be a country like Japan that hosts an Olympics, but is it in Osaka, is it in Tokyo, is it in Kyoto? What is the. What is the city? Or what is the specific area that is going to drive the most economic benefit? And that's a, I think, a great example of like, of capitalism, of marketing of opportunity, and really about the pursuit of opportunity. So the question, I think, for the Central Valley and ultimately for this part of California will be what are the steps that it needs to take to really become the Olympic host city for the bioeconomy? And I think if you were to drill down a little bit further, you'd be specifically talking about bioeconomy as it relates to feedstock from our specialty crops or our working lands. And that's an area where there's still going to be a lot more exploration in terms of logistics, in terms of workforce training, in terms of academic research and application, in terms of industry participation. I think these are all actually unanswered questions and really important ones. And so this is something that I think we're going to see. We're going to see more and more entrepreneurial energy, more and more innovation kind of flow into answering some of these questions over time. Here at the Wii, we've identified several core values as any other worthy enterprise would have, in this case, community, learning, research, innovation, application. In terms of learning. And this sounds just like such a profound learning experience in space for all of us. What has been your most profound learning experience as your work with Hock Tower is evolving? I feel like I've gotten To know California in a way that I never expected. And the idea about California, it's really. It means so many different things, so many different people. You would go around the world and you think about what is California. Someone would think about Hollywood, Another person might think about Silicon Valley, another person might think about Yosemite. And this version of California to me has been more of the. I don't call it the have nots of California. I call it the not yets of California. There are a lot of not yets. There was a time when the film industry didn't exist. There was a time when Silicon Valley was a lot of farmland. And so there's a question around, how does this area become the next sort of great opportunity in California? And that's been an amazing learning opportunity to feel like I really am getting to know the state and getting to know people, being able to sit in community events, which I did on Saturday with my son, for example. And we heard about two young men, one of which is a raspberry picker and is about to lose his job for the winter and is thinking about how he can make ends meet. As someone who is a farm worker with rising rents and the Salinas Valley, I met another person who. A young man who's a construction worker who has kids about the same age as mine, who has to drive three hours to San Francisco because that's the only place where he can find work in commercial real estate construction. And it kind of hits home around sort of the not yet opportunities in our state and our country and how we can kind of be thinking about these things moving forward, understanding those things, really learning about those things and. And being afforded the chance to kind of open my eyes to new parts of the community that I haven't able to personally experience has been really extraordinary learning experience. It's amazing how something so seemingly under the radar as a commute, as the search for work in one's space profession. Industry drives culture, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it drives culture. It can drive a feeling of displacement. It can drive a lot of things. So, you know, simple motivations like more resilient local jobs. I think at the core of Hocktower is an economic development mission. And we're not the first venture capital fund to do it. I would say that we are an earlier version of it when it comes to California in the sense that a lot of people think that economic development in California is a solved problem because it is the world's fifth largest economy by gdp. And even in California, we have Significant? Not yet. So yeah, I think there's a huge amount of opportunity. And if you pair that with opportunities like the bioeconomy or opportunities like agricultural technology and innovation and natural resources, you can see actually the potential for these things to come together in a way that they historically haven't. That there will be massive waves of technology adoption from working lands, from agriculture, from agricultural technology. Those technologies will be developed. That's inevitable. We've seen that based on how technology is developed, it's somewhat inevitable. And the question is, is not who's going to be adopting the technology, but ultimately who's going to be originating it. And that's really where the wealth creation will occur. So the big question for the Central Valley is can it not just be an adopter of technology, which is something it historically actually has been. Can it also be an originator of technology? Can it be an innovator and something that there's significant kind of follow on and shared wealth creation? That's the big question for the Central Valley. It must have been a powerful moment to take all these different elements and see them so coalescing, coming together in terms of putting together Hawk Tower, the mission, the vision. And I have to thank you as an educator because I've been lucky. I've been able to travel through the States, an amazing state, though I'm not from here originally, to see and understand the different types of people, the social psychology, the different regions of California, from the classroom level. I have to thank you and people like you who do this work because it brings a renewed sense of possibility to my students and what they think they can do with their careers. Yeah, I appreciate that. We're not trying to sell, I would say. I think what we're trying to see is can we piece together the right strategy, the right partnerships, the right opportunities, and can we bring those ingredients together to build sort of new opportunities, new businesses, new pathways? These are some of the questions that we're asking. Sometimes people ask me, if it hasn't been done, what makes you all the ones to do it? We do hear that. I hear that maybe once a week. The other thing we hear is, you know, smart capital will find great businesses regardless of where it is. So what, what makes you believe that you need to be in the Central Valley or that coming to the Central Valley will actually allow you to sort of discover and cultivate these opportunities. So we do get hard questions. I think the reality of it is a lot of the underpinnings of startups and entrepreneurship have not yet come to The Central Valley, we don't have major mentor networks or investor networks or customer networks and things like that. That's something we call entrepreneurial infrastructure. How do we build up the entrepreneurial infrastructure of the Central Valley so that we can facilitate opportunities for more entrepreneurs to kind of be coming here and investing here? It's a lifelong learning journey that we all find ourselves in and the skepticism that comes with it. I salute your resilience and I salute the questions that you're asking in terms of yourself personally. How would you define lifelong learning? It's about following your curiosity and really, you know, kind of indulging that curiosity and I think, as much as possible, kind of tuning some things out that might kind of get in the way of it. And that can be different things for different people that could be sort of indulging with, I don't know, video games or reality TV or whatever some of those, like, impediments can be. It's not to say that I don't play Nintendo with my kids sometimes or watch Love and Love Is Blind with my wife, which is our. Our reality show of choice. But. But then. But not letting kind of those ch. Those things which might be impediments to learning get in the way of pursuing what's your curiosity. And I think curiosity creates energy. Curiosity also reduces anxiety. Something I've learned along the way is when I'm feeling a certain amount of anxiety or if I'm asking myself certain questions, I'll actually lean into anxiety with curiosity. Why am I feeling this way? What do I need to learn that's going to make me feel better? Have I already learned it and I'm just forgetting it because anxiety is sort of clouding it. A lot of this can be addressed by kind of following curiosity, reading, asking more questions, connecting with experts. So that's my approach. It ebbs and flows based on. Based on my energy, based on the energy of those around us. But that's my current, you know, personal philosophy, is really following curiosity, following passion. You've had a remarkable career to this point, right. And to say nothing of the directions you're heading in. Was there a moment where you sort of saw the spark of everything that you could do to design your career the way that you wanted it? There were moments in time when I put myself out there and where I put myself in positions to be able to absorb learning. And I never regret those sorts of opportunities. I'm someone who. I went to UC Davis. I was working the entire time I was there. I was working in Sacramento I was working in offices and just absorbing as much as I could. It never felt like there was sort of one moment that sort of everything sort of clicked. But I think this idea that very willing to work, to be in offices, to learn office culture, to learn how to behave in an office, to not necessarily shy away from hard things. I got to Google in 2012. There were so many things I had to learn to adapt to Google. How to do strategies, how to do decks, how to do annual planning, how to work with global teams, how to work across different teams, how to work at scale. And I just basically kind of said, yeah, I'm just going to try to learn it as fast as I can. And so that's been something I've relied on is sort of that like, yeah, curiosity, you know, a certain amount of fearlessness, maybe overconfidence at times, just to kind of like get out there and learn. But I think that's something I would encourage folks to do, is just sort of get out, learn, work. Don't be afraid to put the time in, don't be afraid to be curious. I think good things will happen. Who or what has been your greatest teacher, would you say? I had a mentor really early on named Martin. At my second job, this is someone I felt like was an extraordinary operator, a philosopher, a real intellect, but you could ask him absolutely anything. And I remember sitting him down and saying, can you explain this Ackerman acronym to me? Can you explain this concept to me? Can you explain why you've priced this the way you have? Why have you started with this industry versus that one? All those sorts of questions that he just sort of knew. He would say things like, well, we price this based on market demand. And I have to go talk to customers to kind of understand how they value our products. And I'm starting with this industry because they are most likely to experiment with new formats and new and new product. Just that sort of exchange between someone who was curious and then he also really received my curiosity. And there was a time when he ultimately had a team of whatever it was, 200 people at the company. But I was the first person that that was underneath him. And that was very lucky because I had this opportunity basically to have really focused learning. But there's sort of like a willingness to, to share his knowledge and that his knowledge wasn't proprietary, that it wasn't a information advantage. And I feel that now. And so I, I like to be able to say that if people are asking me questions or if they're looking for me to explain things that I'm very, very open to it. So that's something that sticks out in my mind is, is the kind of easy mentorship that he provided. We thank Martin and we send a shout out. It's. It's amazing when that, that person or persons come along early in our careers. It really does drive a lot of. Yeah, absolutely, you're absolutely right. Curiosity is a theme. It drives research. What role do you believe research plays in your everyday life? Research is critical and we all know that there are so many incredible opportunities for learning and research now at our disposal. What I wouldn't discount would be the benefits of just getting out and talking to people, especially because individuals now with applied experience are going to have massive, massive information advantages. And we recently spoke to a top industry player in agriculture who was doing things around bioeconomy or had been doing things around bioeconomy for years. And it beat basically every article you could read about the space because they were in it, they were learning it. The freshness of their terminology, the freshness of their experience, their kind of real battle scars. And we were humbled by them because we've just begun investing in the space and at this point have not personally managed biomass or biochar or bio oil projects. And so to be able to talk to a team, not only that is doing it, but doing it at scale, doing it profitably. I think that there's a overemphasis now on what you can learn from the web and of course what you can learn from AI tools. Then when you end up actually talking to someone who's out and doing it, or spoken to someone who's spoken to someone who's out and doing it, you really see this sort of like visceral and almost exponential information advantage versus someone who's clearly just pulled a lot of information from ChatGPT. There you go. I read this so much. I remember where I read it, the difference between times when information scarcity abounded and how knowledge became very specialized versus an overabundance of information and be able to kind of connect the dots and synthesize information and how different that is now, obviously with the advances in AI. But there really is no substitute for the authenticity of having actually been in those spaces and worked in those spaces. No, that's right. There's really nothing to replace an experience. It could be one deal, it could be one project. All of that sort of opportunity is really indispensable. But I think it's not just working on it. I would say it's also just getting out and talking to people because there won't always necessarily be opportunities to work on it. But can you actually go and talk to someone? And that's something that I'm trying to encourage folks around me to do as much as I can versus, let's say, only leveraging information they can get from the web, which I would just say, like, I, I generally feel like if, if you can get it, I've probably already got. So I don't really value secondhand transmittal of what you might have found online. And so get out, do it, talk to people, show up, knock on doors, go to events. All that is really, really indispensable, I think in a job hunt. Very similarly, get out network, show up at events, show up at mixers. In Salinas Valley, which is closer to where I live, we have a monthly meetup. We have 60 or 70 people. And if I had a certain level of regularity with which I was in Central Valley, I'd do the same thing. But it's really valuable just to see some people who are early in their career just getting out and going and doing. And I think that's very, very valuable. What are you finding now through the valuable work of networking and making those human connections do you find to be the most intriguing research you're doing right now? I'm very interested in the future of how farming is done, the future of how we're growing our food. That's been an area of interest to me for about the last six months or so. I think the other is we're also very interested in how startups form in rural environments. How are we forming startups that are addressing rural imperatives, whether those are industrial imperatives or environmental imperatives. That's been of significant interest because there aren't as many sort of dense startup hubs for rural innovation as you'd expect. What you see with rural innovation very often are entities that are pretty spread out. It can be a little bit of a lonelier version of entrepreneurship than what you see might see in an urban environment. And that's something that we, that we talk about and that we study and we study the formation of startup communities. That's been an area of interest of mine really for the last year is how do startup communities form? Why do they form in certain areas and not others? And then very often people have an answer like, well, there's a university there. I'm like, well, yeah, but there's a university here as well. So an example would be in. In Boulder, Colorado, which has A really a flourishing startup community. And it's multiple, multi billion dollar companies that have come from Boulder. But why don't we have a similar startup community in Davis, California? We have some companies that come from Davis, we have some research that's licensed there, we have corporate research partnerships. But there isn't like this flourishing, breathing, pulsating startup ecosystem in Davis. And if we have one, that could actually have a secondary benefit throughout the entire Central Valley. And it's not to say that there aren't startups there, but it's. But it has, it maximized its full potential. I think that there's more opportunity, I think there's more Runway, especially in agriculture, just kind of understanding why things are the way they are. Not putting people down along the way, not making people feel like there's a missed opportunity or that you're pointing fingers, but trying to study and learn and trying to study what's there and what isn't. Getting people to a state where they're comfortable kind of sharing that context, that's been an area of significant interest for us and an area where I've spent a huge amount of time over the last year and, and that's been, that's been really exciting. I've learned. I've learned a huge amount. What would you say is the secretly or now not so secretly coolest part of what you get to do? There's a few things. That's a great question. I mean, I think I love being able to meet and engage with universities. I feel like I learn something every time I do it. Another thing that just pops in my mind, I wanted to make sure to mention is I see a lot of superpowers from community colleges and from CSUs, and I'm astounded by. I think one of the best deals in our state is the community college system. There was the data that just came out looking at the community college system across the United States, and it was very clear that the best economic value for a single system was California system, our community college system. And you never hear that about California. You never hear best economic value of anything in California. So it really actually underscores, at least right now, the success of our community college system, the potential of our community college system. And that's an area where I feel like I've been really fortunate to learn about and fortunate to kind of be able to dig into. It's felt like an. An undiscovered kind of gem. And I feel really fortunate to develop these relationships across that ecosystem and hope to learn more and Then I'm just kind of learning about areas that we barely knew existed. And I think that my hope more and more is that there are entrepreneurs from around the world who get switched on to the opportunity in the Central Valley and that we see more and more entrepreneurs coming here to pursue opportunities and to create value. What does the word innovation mean to you personally? It's a broad word, it's a huge word. But what does it mean to you personally? Innovation is a great word and it's a word of course that really, you know, is a big part of our kind of our lexicon. Ultimately it's newness, it's new ideas, new products, new approaches. It's beyond the incremental. It goes beyond the idea of small change. It's a step function change. It's a significant derivative of how we look or feel about something. You know, it's taking shoes and removing laces and getting vans. I think is a classic example of innovation. Suddenly we get slides, we don't have to worry about tying our shoes. That's pretty cool. Little things like that, Southwest Airlines allowing you to line up, first come, first serve for your seat. Like little things that really are new ideas, bring new energy, bring new methods and that's innovation. How does innovation in the bio economy or how have you seen it change the tone of the conversations within the Central Valley, within the areas in which you work about the future of business? What's really striking is the amount of bio based innovation that is possible in this biomanufacturing moment that is going to come before pharma. Pharma has such long life cycles of innovation given all the regulation around it. And then you have all these other fields, whether it's consumer products or land repurposing or biomass that will allow for faster pace of commercialization innovation. It could be two or three year cycles, it could be three or five year cycles. We're really interested in those. And I think that's one thing that's really fascinating. I think the other opportunity is around just sort of the amount of we're going to see a new biomanufacturing wave that's very local. The pressure of kind of value creation there will lead to a lot of new opportunity, new innovation. And that's something that we're very excited to see. Throughout your career you've been involved in scaling innovative products and services. How does scaling a product to a billion users actually happening? Well, it's a combination of a few things. I mean one of them is having a really clear distribution point or set of distribution points. So if we think about something like Google Search, which, you know, famously and now quite provocatively has significant distribution, it's getting distribution through the web browser, through a personal computer, through your iPhone, through your tablet, through your Android phones. We think about all these points of distribution. Netflix is another highly distributed product at this point. It's on our remote control button, it's on our Google tv, our Samsung tv, our Sony tv, it's on our phone, it's on our tablet, it's in a lot of different places. So I think we have to think about one side of it, which is what is the distribution, and really thinking about distribution as a product in and of itself. And then the other one would be on product value. And Netflix, as an example, began as a, as of course, a DVD in that format. And then it adapted to streaming, it adapted its delivery mechanism, it adapted its recommendation, it adapted its content mix. And it continued to not only innovate on its product, which is content, which is discovery, which is recommendations, but it also innovated on distribution. It was the first time we saw like a branded remote control button, and they were one of the first to open up their catalog in such a way that allowed you to resume watching. So there was a certain stickiness to your Netflix experience and that it became indexable and that it became rediscoverable. Being able to innovate kind of on both sides of the coin around distribution and product is something that you can allow kind of to get to a billion user opportunity and think you have to also think about the generalizability of a solution. So something like Netflix, I mean, it's content, it's streaming content that was already a massive market. There was already, you know, massive amounts of sort of video consumption and even long form video consumption that was occurring by way of television. So they basically innovated around an existing, you know, very large market. You can also have something that is a sort of a version of new market creation. You could say maybe Airbnb is a version of that where they took a latent amount of supply, a huge amount of supply, which is people's homes, their extra rooms, their vacation homes. And they basically brought an innovation layer to what essentially is a new or very disorganized or very fragmented market. So that is a, you know, ultimately, I think, a billion user opportunity. Because if you look at the supply around something like Airbnb, it really is, you know, a near, what feels like a near endless supply, which is basically just renting space. So those are a Couple of factors. And then there are a lot of sort of, those are macro factors, there are a lot of internal factors. Culture. I mean, you could argue that Blockbuster had every opportunity to be Netflix and squandered it, you know, arguably because of culture, because of innovation dilemmas, things like that. You know, startups really are a way to counter that innovation dilemma. You know, Google had every opportunity to launch something like ChatGPT and try and try it again and try it again and try it again. But ultimately what it would mean is disrupting the core search business and offering a new interface. So startups can play a really significant role in being sort of those drivers of innovation. What do you believe our students would be best served to know about applying what they learn here with us? I think the number one thing I would be thinking about is how to seek those opportunities that really get you as applied experience as possible and the closer and closer you can get to applied. And an example would be try to walk through the bio labs at Sonoma Community College in Vacaville and see the hands on sort of lab opportunities. And not to say that they don't exist in North San Joaquin Valley, I'm sure they do. That's just one that I'm personally familiar with. And I was inspired by this kind of like the amount, the accessibility of opportunity in those contexts. And that is really in this moment in time, that hands on learning, that applied learning is going to be more and more valuable than ever before. I think just like relationships are going to be more and more valuable than ever before. So I think that practice of, and it's another version of a lab is a relationship and being able to get out of that comfort zone, get into new networks, new relationships, different demographics, you know, different backgrounds, really becoming a master at relationship building in addition to applied sorts of opportunities and learning, those are, those two things coming together are going to be very valuable. What do you yourself wish to one day learn and apply? That's a great question. I would like to see the hands on learning of lots and lots and lots of new value created in new parts of California. That would be an extraordinary kind of legacy to look back on and something that we could really hang our hat on and say, hey, we did this. Being able to stabilize and create a more resilient California economy, a more resilient Central Valley economy. That's something that I think about every single day. What are the moves we need to make? What are the relationships we need to build? What do I need to learn in order for that to be possible. What meetings do I need to take? How do I need to design my week? How do I need to redesign my week to be able to consider some of these things? And so that's the big one for me right now. Is there a practice, a way that you manage to compartmentalize the importance of legacy while still prioritizing the vision for the future? My feeling right now is that these things are quite intertwined. And, you know, life's work kind of feeling or work is life. Life is work. I feel like these things are very intertwined. I think that's a big part of what it means to explore and pursue curiosity, those sorts of experiences. And so that's something that we, you know, we continue to. I continue to feel like is just part of one and the same, rather than being kind of separate kind of concepts or notions. So that continues to be a, you know, feel very comfortable to me rather than feeling like a separate pursuit. I feel very fortunate in that respect that they are quite unified and that they. I don't have to, at this point, make a choice. So I think those ended up being the highest value sorts of opportunities. We were sort of brought up in a very dichotomous sort of way of looking at our life and our work, where it's like you had to achieve work, life, balance. That was the, you know, the holy Grail, right? Does it seem more like harmony now, especially from a startup space? I was sitting down with a new mentor the other day, and I asked him, you know, in this case, hey, when you had kids, you know, how did it work? How did you find ways to balance those challenges and the fact that, you know, your kids had certain, you know, requests of you, or you had certain obligations and you had certain things that you really wanted to be involved in. And. And he said to me, well, gosh, I just started bringing my kids to more things. And of course, that doesn't. That doesn't work if you're a nurse. I acknowledge that. Doesn't work if you're a surgeon. Doesn't work if you're in construction. It's not safe. But it just gave me a kind of a way to. Way to look at things. Like maybe I was. Maybe I was feeling a little too. It was a little too disharmonious for me, and actually I could. And so I ended up, in this case, bringing my son to a community event on Sunday, and that was great. Or on Saturday, and that was great. And he got a lot out of it. He was listening and he was able to have Some exposure to some of the community work that I'm doing. And he asked me, is this, you know, is this everything for you at work? Is this what's always going on? I said, no, it's a little different today. Here's some of the ways it's different, here's some of the ways it's similar, but it was a great opportunity to experience kind of how. How to start to think about bringing these things together better. Who is Danny Bernstein? I'm a leader, a learner, a dad, husband, a friend, a son. Someone who I think feels really lucky about, you know, the environment I was born into, the time when I was born, and just the opportunity to now be able to give back. I mean, that's. That's what I get up every day thinking about, doing and. And thinking about, you know, the impact I can have and the value we can potentially create. So I think that's me when I'm not in a podcast talking about serious things like, you know, really love to have fun, love sports, big Giants fan, big Niners fan, and just a, you know, pretty devoted dad. I want to go back to early career Danny. What was he like? Not so different. High energy, hard charging, very high bar of excellence. Sometimes a driver of people, sometimes really, you know, pushing others around me to be better. You know, I always took things, took things very seriously. That's me. And I think it's. There's not too much different now, except I'm sort of able to do it outside the confines of sort of the everyday sort of challenges and of a corporate America. So I feel really lucky. Where did he see himself now then? That's a good question. It's hard to really be able to fully imagine those things. I do think that in corporate America, it's not the most straightforward place to grow old in. You end up seeing more and more young people in corporate America, except in a couple of different environments. So I always actually imagined imagine entrepreneurship more later, later on in my career, because it's a place where I can now, I've learned a lot, and I feel like I can now kind of, you know, be a leader and give back and reflect and be a mentor and things like that. So that's something that would have always been something I've thought of, which is like, I would say I'm just not ready to be an entrepreneur. I'm not ready to be an entrepreneur yet. And so that's an opportunity where I. Where I've kind of thought through. And so, you know, early in career, Danny would Say, yep, this makes sense. I think I was always looking at something that would impact California, something impact my kind of more local surroundings in the second half of my career. So the idea that I'm focused on California and focused on emerging regions of California, that also feels quite natural and does not feel like a betrayal of the path that I never thought I would be, let's say, at Google or at Microsoft for 20 or 25 years, like some of my wonderful colleagues are. And it's just something that I'm really comfortable kind of with that arc and where things have gone. Who were your earliest allies and employees, supporters, mentors? I've had a bunch. You know, I remember my first boss, my first job, you know, already holding me to a really high standard. I remember my first business conference. I screwed up the a.m. p.m. On the alarm clock in the hotel and I overslept to go to a conference. And he was hard on me, justifiably so. I remember that really distinctly. I remember future bosses, future colleagues pushing me, pointing things out, telling to me straight. All those things are extraordinarily valuable. Just the people who hold you to a really high standard. You know, I also have a stud of a wife who does that as well. And she really, you know, brings out the best in me, which I love and appreciate those sorts of people around you. My mom is a very entrepreneurial spirit. She's always cooking up something new and cooking up a new idea, new kind of concept, and I've always been very inspired by that. When I work with my students in entrepreneurship classes, we talk about entrepreneurship and life by extension, being an act of bricolage. What elements from your journey through UC Davis? You studied political science and moving into the tech world and eventually founding Hocktower. What elements from your journey at UC Davis still resonate with you? There are a few things, I think that I was involved in various student groups in leadership capacities. So it was almost like practice leadership and being able to go through some of those experiences. Sometimes they were elected, sometimes they were appointed, sometimes they were just volunteer. That's number one. Number two, I think seeking a variety of experiences like doing mock trials or some activism and even some creative writing, some poetry readings, things like that was really valuable. And then the third is Davis, with its proximity to Sacramento. And really any university has some kind of proximity to industry. In the case of Davis, its closest industry is the political industry. So in some ways for me, being a political science major was just like a pragmatic decision because it offered the most proximity to industry and so getting on that track allowed me to have opportunities for paid internships. And this was at a time when I'm not as familiar now, but at a time when paid internships were not really a thing yet. I sort of said I want to be in a position where I can get paid internships. So I was very focused on orienting around those sorts of opportunities, what it would take. So, you know, I looked at things like, well, if I can work for a temp agency, that would give me a paid experience and I could even be just like a, essentially a paper pusher or receptionist or whatever it is. And that would be a paid internship and that would be a springboard to something else. And so that's how I got a job at a law firm, essentially, which was just, you know, $10 an hour, $8 an hour or something like that, but sort of an emphasis on that and really just utilizing what was nearby to get jobs. Like, I was just very focused on getting jobs, you know, that was not what all my friends were focused on. They were maybe focused on other things, but I was really focused on like, how could I get jobs? And that was my North Star. Was there ever a major that you were curious about that you didn't end up pursuing? I had some friends who did agricultural economics, which is one of these monster majors, like 180 units. Nobody was working harder. And I was like, I have no idea, guys, or how you guys are doing it. But most of those folks who did that have done really well because they just pushed themselves and they learned a huge amount. You know, they're doing finance, doing Aggie Con, they're doing, you know, agribusiness, things like that. Those folks have done super well. So I was just kind of blown away by their dedication on the academic side. But they couldn't work. Like, there's no way you could do an 180 unit major and also do, do like the work I was doing. I was working 20 hours a week for three and a half years in college. So there was just no way to balance those two things. So it was a trade off. And I knew that just wasn't for me. So I gave him a lot of kudos and, and tip my cap to them. But it was just like, it was, it was. That was never going to be my path. It's all different journeys, right? Like, working your way through college provides you with a totally different experience through college. Yep, exactly. No, it totally does. And that was really valuable. What inspired your early career decisions and how did your time in Meebo shape your approach to business development and partnerships. The relationships we've talked about early in. Career, I mean, I was very focused on first employment and really where I could be employable with the skills I had. So I was always very pragmatic about that mix until just now, until I decided to do something really, really different and new and more challenging. But I was always very practical about being employable. And then business development offered a broader remit that was sort of somewhere in between product and sales. And it allowed me to learn and to do deals and to learn how to work with lawyers and learn how to structure agreements, learn how to build businesses, learn how to work with various partners. It was a way to knock on the door of really any business and to take a meeting and to get a meeting that was really valuable and something that I felt like was a really wonderful kind of experience and something to be able to do and to think about. You were an early hire there at Meebo, which you helped to grow over to 100 million monthly active users. What do you feel were some of the key moments, decisions or approaches that contributed to that success? Some of them were product development decisions to be able to make our products more flexible, to be adopted. We always had a very sort of close ear to the market, Very, very customer focus, very iterative, very connected into our base of partners. That was always something that we were very, very, you know, clued into, clued into opportunity, clued into different segments like publishers and social networks and things like that. So I think that that was something we did. We had a very strong culture. I would say there was a, you know, kind of a unique and in depth cultural element that people felt like they were respected in the office, that there was connectivity, transparency. There was not sort of huge space between management and the team, which I thought was always something that was, you know, very special and very unique. And that's something that I think they leveraged toward really positive outcomes and ultimately toward, you know, the state of acquisition. And now we come to the part we affectionately call the 11. Stolen from Proust, stolen from James Lipton, and now shamelessly appropriated for our purposes. What is your favorite part of starting something new? I love the iteration. I love the tinkering, the development process, the turning and the shifting, the changing. What is your least favorite part of starting something new? The day to day kind of existential uncertainty. Will this work? Will it not? It's also, I think the other would be needing to rely on sort of others so much. I mean, that's part of it. You need a customer. You need a client. That sort of not being as sort of self reliant as you'd hope to be. What interests you most? New things. Innovation. New relationships, Discovery. What interests you least? The opposite. Stagnation. Inertia. The way things are. This is a radio station after all. What music artist, genre or song reminds you most of your early days in entrepreneurship and innovation? I'm a classic rock head, you know, I learned how to play guitar on classic rock so that just completely tied in with me with learning, with understanding. It's all very tight in what did. You enjoy most about the early days on that vocation? The calluses. What food or beverage reminds you most of your memories of your first startup? It's going to be a latte from the corner coffee shop where we basically lived at Nice. What profession non entrepreneurial do you admire the most? I always wanted to be a sports broadcaster. What profession, what job rather prior to entrepreneurship did you like the most? I respect big companies, the scale they're operating at and a really, really, you know, kind of exciting be able to operate globally. Those are all really interesting things. What job prior to entrepreneurship did you dislike the most and why? I've worked in retail and I that that's definitely in my in the rearview mirror. And lastly, if heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the pearly gates, all. Your loved ones are here. Immediately thereafter, what idea or innovation would you like to pitch him? Her they it for humanity. Sustainable energy. Renewable energy. Danny Bernstein, thank you so much for visiting us at the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Studio. Thank you guys. Take care. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Studio. This podcast is part of the Warrior Entrepreneurship and Innovation program, affectionately known as the WEI. Our series is recorded on the campus of Stanislaus State at the KCSS radio station and produced by Frankie Tovar. Follow and subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform. I'm Dr. Pablo Paredes Romero. Wishing you the best of everything. Always.