In this conversation we discuss how a woman in her mid fifties with a highly successful corporate career could so completely change direction by entering the crazy and unpredictable world of startups.
In this conversation we cover what it is like to make that transition, the fears she faced, the sleepless nights and the nagging doubts.
We discuss her early involvement with angel investing and then what it was like on the other side of the fence as she jumped in to lead the electric motorbike company "UBCO" with the need to raise substantial sums of money from venture capitalists.
We cover some of the differences between the NZ and US commercial environments and she gives us her thoughts on the Kiwi startup ecosystem, as well as some great advice around when to engage a board for your early stage company and the nature of the CEO and Chairman relationship.
You can contact Katherine via her LinkedIn profile.
Coal Mine Rhythm - Short Version B by Dan Ayalon
In this conversation we discuss how a woman in her mid fifties with a highly successful corporate career could so completely change direction by entering the crazy and unpredictable world of startups.
In this conversation we cover what it is like to make that transition, the fears she faced, the sleepless nights and the nagging doubts.
We discuss her early involvement with angel investing and then what it was like on the other side of the fence as she jumped in to lead the electric motorbike company "UBCO" with the need to raise substantial sums of money from venture capitalists.
We cover some of the differences between the NZ and US commercial environments and she gives us her thoughts on the Kiwi startup ecosystem, as well as some great advice around when to engage a board for your early stage company and the nature of the CEO and Chairman relationship.
You can contact Katherine via her LinkedIn profile.
Coal Mine Rhythm - Short Version B by Dan Ayalon
My next guest today is quite an interesting one for me. Catherine Sanford is somebody who, at the age of well, let's call it somewhere in her 50s, decided that the corporate career she had had a globally successful corporate career wasn't for her. After returning to New Zealand, she became an angel investor and, as part of that process, got involved with an electric motorcycle company called UBCO. Catherine Road the highs and lows of the upco journey, and still continues to do so to this day.
Speaker 1:In this episode we get into a little bit about what's it like to be driving a electric motorcycle company out of little old New Zealand as it breaks into global markets. We talk about raising capital and the challenges of doing that at the earliest stages with angels, and we even have a look at the difference between angel investment versus venture capital investment, the pros and cons of either, and then, finally, we touch on board roles and we look at the nature of early stage businesses and at what point they should really get a board involved. I hope that you enjoy this discussion with Catherine Sanford. Hey, catherine, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2:Hey, thanks, greg, it's great to be here.
Speaker 1:It's really, really cool to have you and you and I have I've kind of loosed thing now and you over the last probably a couple of years and we've had a coffee here in Taoronga and I got to know you a little bit and I was also talking to somebody this morning in a cafe about you and they said just how impressive you are. I'll keep them yeah, I'll keep their name anonymous in case they don't want to have their names shared on the podcast but they were really impressed with how you have traversed through your career and, I guess, and the same as me, very, very interested in the story of UBCO. But before we get into that, I'd love you to just tell us a little bit about your background and how you got to be here.
Speaker 2:Sure, well, that was very kind of them to say that and I suppose I have kind of navigated my way through an interesting sort of large scale corporate career and then, you know, into the start up end of things back here in New Zealand. And you know, as a slightly older person now, you know there's a few decades of story to be told. So I guess from the beginning I was born in Taranaki, I'm the eldest of four children, I have three younger brothers and that in itself is quite defining and that I became very used to being in quite a male environment. You know, from from a very early age and I said this to a group last week to my dad was probably the first feminist I knew encouraged my mom to work. That had an impact on us as a family, but certainly as a role model. You know she was, she was amazing and fully supported by dad. So I was always encouraged to do whatever I wanted to do. So that kind of made a difference. And Taranaki in itself is, you know, an interesting place to grow up. So you know it's a bit remote but gives you a perspective on the world. You know, get out and get out and get things done Interestingly tying into Abco. The original farm bike was invented by Johnny Callender and Taranaki in 1963. So I only learnt that just a few years ago now. But you know, it's quite nice to sort of link that into my own personal story.
Speaker 2:Long, long story short. I married my childhood sweetheart Nine days after my last university exam, kind of escaped from Taranaki and went to Otago, and between us we wrote a whole heap of letters north of Nelson to potential employers and we ended up with my husband getting a job here in the Bay of Plenty. So that kind of created the connection here. And then, yeah, we sort of rolled through a few different roles, had our children really, really young, and so that was in itself defining too. We're about 10 years ahead of the game relative to our friends. So we was pioneering on how to do parenting in the 80s when all our friends were out seeing the world and having lots of fun and, you know, being really independent.
Speaker 2:But we ended up as a family and I think I was 27 at the time having my husband's company pay for us to relocate to France. And in 1990, you know, when there was no internet or you know, a laptop computer weighed a whole lot and, and you know, you had to dial in and dial up. A toll call back to New Zealand cost about 30 bucks, you know, for a few minutes. So communications back home was all you know, handwritten letters kind of on a weekly basis. But as a family and as parents, seeing Europe through the eyes of a sort of four or five year old was was pretty interesting and, you know, brought us together as a, as a foresum, and really changed my outlook on the world. Prior to landing in Paris, I'd been on a holiday for two weeks to Sydney, australia, and yeah, I didn't really know much about what was out there. But you know, here we were having someone else paying for us to see the world when our friends were out there doing it themselves. So yeah, that was the beginning of the journey.
Speaker 1:And you was this when you got involved with Trimble, or did the Trimble connection come later than that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the Trimble connection came actually after 12 months of being away.
Speaker 2:We were in Paris, as I mentioned, our visas were due to expire and in Craig my husband was, was meant to be relocated back to New Zealand, but and I hadn't been able to work during that year, so I was was kind of going a bit crazy. Trimble acquired the business my husband was working for, so he worked for a little offshoot of the what is now the Datacom Group, and it was a company that was focused on surveying and engineering software, and so Trimble acquired that business. Craig was relocated to Trimble's UK European headquarters, or UK based European headquarters, and I kind of bullied my way into a job because I was like we're going to have to stay away longer, I need to be able to work. And so they gave me a job and that was the beginning of 23 years with Trimble for me. That was an amazing journey and at that point, greg, I was about employee number 400 at Trimble. When I left there was even a half thousand people. So you know, experienced this massive growth over over a couple of decades.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that is, that is big change. And then you know you've been in a few roles, you know between Trimble and then get you getting involved with with UBCO. I think for those of the people, certainly Kiwis, that are familiar or may be only partially familiar with the UBCO story, I'd love you to sort of jump to that Like, how did you get involved in UBCO in the beginning? What was that early sort of origin story for you? A?
Speaker 2:couple of things happened. We relocated back to New Zealand after being away a decade in Europe, in the US, and I worked for Trimble for a year. The idea, being home again, was that we connected into New Zealand and kind of worked out how things worked. Working for Trimble and traveling the whole year didn't work out and so I decided to part ways. It was a big call, a couple of decades with the same company, that sort of thing but I sort of knew I had to work in order not to be bored, and so I was successful in getting a role with New Zealand Trade and Enterprise. And then about the same time we were also introduced to Enterprise Angels, the local angel investment group. We were at Craig's investment partners there on Cameron Road and the bike was there and I was just like, oh wow, this is just awesome.
Speaker 2:Here in Taoronga, where we'd chosen to settle, was a company that was developing hardware. They had global aspirations and so sort of took a punt, made an investment, so my first angel investment but could see a way where I could actually help the founding team with some of my experiences and connections offshore and that kind of thing. So it sort of started with that and a bit of an advisory role and at the same time, in parallel, I was working with at New Zealand Trade and Enterprise and was seeing these early stage companies that were not big enough, didn't have enough revenue to be part of what was called the Focus 700 portfolio, but really seeing that they were the ones that needed the most help and so I was a bit vocal, I guess, during my time with NZTE about the need for support there. But in the end, after a year working for the government, I went out on my own and really started to focus on that startup tech space and, yeah, the up-call involvement really grew from there.
Speaker 1:And for those that aren't familiar with up-call, describe what up-call is it's electric motorcycles. Is that right?
Speaker 2:That is right. Yeah, so up-call designs and develops electric motor bikes, so two wheel vehicles at this stage of our evolution. As mentioned, we've got a history of farm bike development in New Zealand. This is a farm bike designed on farm four farmers. One of the founders had grown up on a wire app, a farm, and had been tinkering with electrification of his dad's farm bikes and things over time. But yeah, that's the seed of it. The guys entered the prototype of the bike in the Field Days Innovation competition in 2014 and one, and the company was formed off the back of that. And so today, fifth generation, coming into sixth generation, of what is still a farm bike but over time has been able to be registered for road use or on road use and is used in a whole raft of applications in lots of countries around the world. But still, yeah, on farm four farmers in New Zealand for sure.
Speaker 1:So you're at an enterprise angels and, for those that don't know, as you were saying earlier, so the local angel investor group in Tolerunga, new Zealand, alteara, and you see a pitch from Abco. Was it super early days for them? And if it was, how did you get involved?
Speaker 2:So it was 2016. They'd done a friends and family kind of race earlier on to get them to a first sort of post prototype bike, but still very, very early, and they knew that they needed to go out to market for more significant investment if they were going to scale up and actually start producing product at volume. So my interest was I'd worked for a technology company that had hardware, software and lots of other strings to the bow, but it's actually the physical building of things that I really love. I used to make my own clothes Not so much now I don't have as much time but I started doing that when I was really young.
Speaker 2:My dad was a builder. We were always building things, whether it be houses or things to go in houses or whatever Pretty good with a hammer. So I just liked the idea of sourcing bits and pieces and putting them all together to make something that's pretty unique. So it was the hardware piece of it that I was really attracted to. But then, overarching all of that, it's a piece of technology that's connected through software and things as well, so that whole sort of system.
Speaker 2:I just loved the idea that in Taronga we had a bunch of people who came to make that happen? I mean, normally I would have thought Auckland or Wellington, maybe Christchurch. There was certainly some stuff going on there, but not on the beach and the bay plenty. So that was the connection. I'd never ridden a motorbike and in actual fact I still haven't ridden a motorbike that much. But I fessed up probably three years ago that I'd never actually ridden the Upcoe bike and got on it, and now I'm a proud owner of one. It sits in the garage and I write it from time to time on mostly fine days.
Speaker 1:Awesome. And so you're there. You see the pitch and you're drawn to the fact that this is pretty cool. There's people producing physical things that are quite complicated, but they're doing that here and locally. You're drawn to getting involved. How did you get involved? Was it just as an investor, or did you get involved? You know, roll your sleeves up a little bit for a while.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it started with me. As I said, it was my first angel investment and it's a member-led sort of a process to a degree. So I put my hand up to be part of the due diligence team, learned how that worked and to get to it with other angels and experience their knowledge and experiences in that process. So I think I was assigned to international distribution and marketing as my kind of piece of the DD, and so I met with one of the founders and some of the team and interviewed them about what they were thinking and actually at the end of the first conversation was asked well, you know what are you doing, would you like to help a bit more? And so I ended up doing some consulting hours and then advising the board. I joined the board in 2017.
Speaker 2:And I became the chair of the board when the founding chair stepped down to take on another role, and not too long after that, and then I held sort of part-time executive director roles, stepped into the executive chair role for about a year or so, up until late 2022. And then I've eased out. Now I'm down to half time. I'm in a business development role, beating the drum, keeping Abcoe sort of front and center and teams of the New Zealand outreach within the investment community and other things like that. I'm having conversations like this, which are really lovely to do, and I'm also working on some big sort of national distribution related things around the world, so that keeps me busy now and, yeah, I'm hot. It's been nearly a decade and so it's given away.
Speaker 1:And has it always been just plain sailing and up and to the right. Oh my God no. Tell us no.
Speaker 2:I mean any start-ups above your ride, and what you start out thinking you're going to do isn't necessarily where you land. And raising money is challenging. Raising money for hardware, I think, in New Zealand is even more challenging, and so we've ridden that roller coaster. There's been a couple of really great ones in Bringing Venture Capital in in 2019 through GD1. That had a massive impact on our ability to grow. And then, but then not, and then, but then.
Speaker 2:It was still challenging to answer the question about how we really scale from a production standpoint. And so it's about 2021, I think, that Abco bought in a Taiwanese contract manufacturer called TPK, and they are a large, multi-billion dollar listed company with thousands of employees and the ability to not only build a production line for us that was dedicated to our product, but enabling us to scale and ship product all over the world in relatively short order. So those two investments were significant. But, you know, subsequently we've had the.
Speaker 2:You know we've lived through COVID, which in some ways was really good for Abco. We had feed on the street and lots of different regions around the world so we could be close to customers. We had the team in Taiwan that was supporting supply chain. So that was great, where a lot of other New Zealand companies suffered. But you know there's been tightening of pockets. It's been tougher to gain investment, you know, over the last couple of years. And so we've lived that roller coaster and the organizations flexed up and down in terms of size in order to make sure that we're managing the right way.
Speaker 1:What's one thing that now, looking back, you know, seven or eight years into the journey that you wish you'd known about, the journey in Abco before you started, like what was, I guess, what was the hardest thing you've had to endure thus far? Certainly not over.
Speaker 2:Gosh, that's a tough question. It's a tough question, I would say, for me personally, and I was leading the organization for a period of time and we grew relatively quickly in order to chase the dream at a moment in time where we thought that that was the right thing to be doing, and I do think we grew too fast because the companies had to retract, you know, and downsize. It's really hard getting bringing people in and then you know having to let people go as a consequence of decisions that you made at the time that you know you wouldn't have made with the value of hindsight. At the same time, I think it's really important for us in New Zealand as an ecosystem to be accepting of that. I think you know being rift, as we called it in the US. You know a reduction in force is very common in whether you're a startup or a larger technology company, and you know Trimble has been up and down.
Speaker 2:I've been involved in really difficult conversations and letting you know dozens and sometimes hundreds of people go. You know when a leadership team's made a decision to, you know to make that move. But it's kind of OK in the US to have been let go from one company and then easily go and find another job somewhere. I mean, I wouldn't say it's a badge of honour, but it's very acceptable and you can very openly talk about that.
Speaker 2:Here in New Zealand there's a bit more of a negative sort of sense around all of that and I think it I don't think it's got. It's kind of like the you know, the CEO moving on. The CEO that founds the company isn't necessarily the CEO that's going to see it through to you know, 10, 20 years down the line. That's very unusual, but we don't have those conversations up front in the way that I think we should. So yeah, I mean, I think for me personally that's been the toughest thing that I've had to work through with upco, but at the same time I'm not showing away from talking about it because I think it's important again that as a startup community, we understand that that's a necessary, or sometimes just a given that that's going to happen.
Speaker 2:And ultimately, you know cash is coming. You need to protect your runway in order to survive, and so you make decisions that enable you to do that.
Speaker 1:And you had before you came into this. With various roles with upco, you had a lot of experience. It's not your first rodeo to make tough calls, so did you ever have times where you doubted yourself, or was it more just? Actually, the problem is is large, but I've got this like did you? Was there ever self doubt in there as opposed to problem?
Speaker 2:doubt, absolutely self doubt. I mean I lost a lot of sleep. I mean I lost a lot of sleep a few times in my career. So you know, thinking back to Trimble, I, you know I started out doing very low level administrative work in the company, and you know my background I started chemistry at university. I had no, no sort of business experience other than working for my father's very small construction company and kind of running back office stuff for him, which proved to be useful.
Speaker 2:My first job was in the hospital and I was a medical technician and and so you know I had had that as my background when I got the job at Trimble. I was kind of a jack of all trades and over time, as I proved to be quite good at what I did, I was offered more opportunity for growth. So I ended up, you know, running customer services first within New Zealand and then across Asia Pacific and then globally, and then I was encouraged to sort of get on to the running a business leadership pathway which meant I had to have some time in sales and I fought that for about five years, saying, you know, there's no way that I could ever sell anything, it's just not my kind of gig. But you know, the job came up in Germany. That was interesting. We'd lived in Europe before as a family and the kids who were, you know, heading towards the end of high school boy that stage, agreed to come along and so, you know, I took the chance on that with support of the family, and that was game changing because, as a consequence of doing that regional role, I became the head of worldwide sales for one of Trimble's divisions and we relocated to the States and spent a decade there. After that a few general management roles and things.
Speaker 2:But along that whole journey as often the only woman in the room and actually having two people leave the organization when I was promoted to worldwide head of sales because they just didn't want to work for a woman, was pretty, you know, was pretty jarring, pretty confronting starting out and knowing that that was what I was going to deal with.
Speaker 2:So, you know, and ultimately in the end I had completely misaligned values with my male superior and, you know, at 50-ish decided I'd had enough and just couldn't be bothered anymore. But yeah, greg, I lost sleep a lot along that corporate journey and I think to a degree intensified in New Zealand when I went into different situations because I'd had no experience in this market. I was an unknown entity and probably had a lot to prove. Didn't really think I initially needed to prove anything but in actual fact I did and I think anyone coming back into New Zealand probably has a similar experience. They may not talk about it but we're not too accepting of people from the outside and I think it would have been different if I had a corporate career in a New Zealand company and sort of worked my way up. But the fact that it had been with one that was headquartered offshore that made it different.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think and you touch on something there that's really interesting around. You know we're not particularly good at people coming in from the outside and doing things a little bit differently to the way we do things, and yet we live, you know, a pretty remote part of the world and a lot of our heritage has been around. You know, inventing, creating things because we had to, because it was going to be, you know, 100 or so years ago. It was going to be a long time before the boat arrived, and so we had to be able to be resourceful and innovative. Yet we've kind of shut some of that off when the suggestions are coming from others that are new to our market, which I think is interesting.
Speaker 1:Related to that, I want to sort of dig into a little bit around. You know fundraising, raising capital, etc. You've got experience as both an angel investor at the local level and you know that real sort of hands on earlier stage angel investment, but you've also got experience in raising venture funding. What's your thinking around venture moving into the earliest of stages versus the role that angels play? There's a lot of criticism both ways, attacking both angels for potentially lack of knowledge and and there's also attacks on venture for kind of getting involved earlier than they should. So what are your views around that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's an interesting question and I think we're at an interesting time. You know we're still relatively young as an ecosystem. It's not evolved to the degree that it has in the US or in, you know, in parts of Europe, and so we've got some way to go. I mean there's definitely room for both. We've had a lot of VC money come in to the ecosystem in the last, let's say, four or five years and so it's got quite busy and I think, to catch the, to catch the potentially bigger fish.
Speaker 2:You know there's been this movement down and so you know there is a feeling of competitiveness at the at the angel end of things.
Speaker 2:And the reality is, you know, a true angel is willing to put money in but get stuck in and actually really work with founders and and do that early mentoring and coaching and and get their fingers dirty in a way that VCs are not.
Speaker 2:So VCs are providing lots of support, but I think the true value of angels and the what I would call the real angels out there and you know, and there are lots of really good ones you don't even hear about the deals that they're involved in actually they're putting their money into. You know very early, early, early startups that you know may or may not succeed, but but yeah, they're catching them. I think they're catching them earlier than than those that end up presenting to a club or you know, which are often now at a point of series A, where, where there really is, can come Competition with those VCs that are playing in that sort of series A, series B space. So, yeah, I mean, I think, I think the the need for angels is real. The definition of an angel perhaps will become redefined, yeah, to put it, to put it back in place.
Speaker 1:It's super. Yeah, it's super interesting because we still have a very high failure rate and in some cases, that that failure is good if it happens early, like if it happens really early and it hasn't evolved much beyond an idea. I guess I'm intrigued to sort of dig into this issue a little bit more. The the issue around angels. A lot of the criticism of angels is actually they might have the ability to have put time in and roll up their sleeves, they've got the ability to write the check, but do they have the expertise in whatever it is that that needs help with? Yeah, so what's on that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, pick your angel Right. I mean, it's all about due diligence and I think you know you go to a. You go to an angel club and you know, as someone who belongs to a club and to have been quite actively involved, you know, at National Level Angel Association, I've invested through a club outside of Enterprise Angels as well. There are people within those clubs who really do a lot of their angelic work, but there are a number of people who are high net worths or you know, or who have money that they can afford to lose and are willing to put into companies, but their expectations are that it's an investment that is going to make money, but they have no time to put in and are often opinionated about you know what should and shouldn't happen, whether or not they have expertise or not, and so I think it's really important that if you're going to take money from someone, it doesn't matter whether it's an individual or a venture capitalist or a private equity firm or whatever. You've got to know who you're getting into bed with, because it's a long relationship and you know an angel investor that thinks they're going to get a return on investment of you know some 10X or whatever in three years is dreaming. It's a 10 year, at least a 10 year journey. And I mean you look at Artco it was 2016 when I invested, where eight years in, there's no return. I mean it could be another 10 years before there is let's hope not, but it's a long game. And so you know and I use the example. Two, on the VC side of things, in a way, we quartered GD1 for about a year and a half before they came in, so we really got to know them, how they worked with other companies, how they treated founders, what value they were adding and how they might add value to WAPCO. It was a long time and so when it came time to write the check, they knew as much about us as we did about them, and it was a good fit, I think.
Speaker 2:The other thing I'd mention I'm involved with KiwiNet, so I sit on the board there, and that's an organisation that supports the commercialisation of New Zealand's publicly funded research, which can end up with a company being formed around a really good idea. Often it's deep tech, so it takes a really long time, but the gap there, greg, is that has been identified and, amazing, with that, the KiwiNet team does in and around commercialisation, upskilling, and we've got a real shortage of it in New Zealand, I think. So that's one area where we need to do more, where this overseas or offshore experience can come in and really help, because there's just lots more experience in and around that piece. And then, of course, the accelerators and things do a great job too, but there's potential to leverage expertise. You've just got to make sure it's the right expertise, and people who don't have any shouldn't be offering it really.
Speaker 1:No, it's hard to turn down when it comes with the check, and the check is the temptation for the founder. You talk a bit about hardware and the challenge of that. That's probably even harder than raising for software. Why do you think that is?
Speaker 2:Hardware just by its very nature. You're building things. You have to ship physical product around the place, so if you've got a local supply chain it makes it easier. But your markets are probably on somewhere else in the world, so there's always this kind of cost of goods that's just more significant than developing a piece of code and firing it down the wire. It just makes it a lot easier to do.
Speaker 2:Depending on the complexity of your product, supply chain can be quite dispersed, and so managing that requires an extra set of capabilities that a software company wouldn't need to have.
Speaker 2:I mean, in the end it's all tech, but the fact that it's physical product, that there are bits and bobs that come together to make something, and that you're often very far removed from where the best of those bits and bobs might come from, means that you've got extra risk around quality. You've got extra risk around competition to source those things, and with electronics in particular, demand for certain things goes up and down and so you can end up with shortages and so you're having to source some years out often and then run the risk of things stuck on the shelf that you never got to use. But you were taking a bit at some point along the way and for an early stage company that's super high risk. You can have all this money tied up in inventory that you may or may not ever get to use, whether that be finished goods or componentry. So that's what makes it complex and an investor looking at that can go well, this is going to be a really capital intensive project to be involved in.
Speaker 2:So you know, and there's too much risk for me, and that's where the conversation around understanding expertise and the value that can be added becomes important and it's where, for up-code, the relationship with TPK, the contract manufacturer out of Taiwan that had experience in this area for decades, adds so much value. There's nothing like that in New Zealand, and that relationship is critical to our ongoing success.
Speaker 1:And then around your the roles that you've had, and they've been a number around governance and advisory, fiduciary boards, et cetera. You've got this really nice confluence of skills. You've got the ability to be an early stage investor. You understand early stage, but you're also an experienced director. In your view, at what point is it right for an early stage business to get external directors involved and have board meetings and governance around the project? When is that magic time, the sort of Goldilocks level of hot and cold? No-transcript.
Speaker 2:I don't think there's any one size fits all answer to that question. I think having mentors and advisors people that you trust around you at the beginning is really important. I'm having a conversation with one young founder at the moment and she's doing just a great job of asking questions and asking others and finding people who have expertise in areas where she has gaps, and it's quite impressive to see. It's too early for her to have a formal board because it's too early stage. But the idea of an advisory board I think is a good idea and the advisory is often one-to-one conversation. When you actually get a group of people in a room and whether that's just two or three in a room together to bounce off one another, to actually share experiences, and the combination of those things working together to solve a problem can be really useful. And so I'm a big fan of the early advisory board kind of idea.
Speaker 2:The minute that you take money from an organization, whether that be an Angel Group or a BC, then you need formal governance.
Speaker 2:I think that's the critical moment where it's kind of not negotiable from my perspective.
Speaker 2:Early on you might have taken money from an Angel, but you're working one-to-one with that Angel who's overseeing the use of their money, and you can have a level of comfort with that. But yeah, taking any money from an organization that's more than one person, then I think that's when you step up the trick. Then I think, greg and I don't know what your experience is but I think the trick then is to keep it as small as you can, because you can get to a point where there's just too many opinions around the table too, and then you're just not making any progress at all. I'm a big fan of terms, and so, even for a VC, my thinking is that rolling a representative from a VC firm through on some sort of timed basis would be a value, rather than having someone who sticks around for 10 years or has no term point, because I think you can get a lot of value out of just a changing of the guard, even though the same organization is being represented at the table.
Speaker 1:It's such an interesting dynamic, isn't it? But the role of the founder, particularly the founder CEO, the one who's ultimately sitting down at let's call it a board meeting, and sitting down and presenting to the board, the board keeping shareholders' interests protected, looking at risks around the business, etc. Needing to back the CEO and have her or him be well supported, but still regulating them in some way. It's a really interesting dynamic, and I know you would have seen where you've got a strong CEO and I think for an early stage business you kind of need a very strong, maybe even Maverick-like CEO, yet as a board member trying to keep them in check as needed. That's an interesting dynamic. Any thoughts around that and just making that magic work?
Speaker 2:I think it's a really interesting one. I mean, most founders are Mavericks. To actually to found a startup and to keep it going, you've got to be a particular kind of character A steel guard. A steel guard, yes, sometimes a screw loose for sure.
Speaker 2:I think having a co-founding team is quite important, and that dynamic, too, can be really interesting, but the relationship between the chair and the CEO is a crucial one, and I think you've got to develop deep trust and honesty in that relationship.
Speaker 2:If that breaks down, then that's just not good, and I think we've got some great examples in New Zealand a lot of them much more recently of CEOs that have, through the relationships and the advice that they're getting and their roles and their own self-awareness, are recognising that they're not the right person for the role and are sort of working through that, and I think, as angels, we certainly have a lot of conversations around. You're usually investing in people. The really reasonable thing to do upfront, though, is to say we're investing in you and this business and this idea now, but it's highly likely and at some point in the future it won't be you leading the company. It's not that there won't be a place for you, but the business will evolve and it will probably be time for you to move. The earlier you can have that conversation I think I said this before the better. It gets really difficult when somebody's been in a role for a long time and there's some suggestion that it's time to move.
Speaker 2:So, open ongoing conversation. Deep trust is important.
Speaker 1:And just in closing again, you've had a lot of experience in the startup world through your angel role. You see a lot of companies pitching and then you've made investments into various companies. You've also had the very close connection you have with UpGo over the years. Any sort of just really compelling and overwhelming thoughts that you have that founders need to consider when they're starting a company they're just in the process of considering doing a new venture Any thoughts that you would want them to know before they embark on a journey like this?
Speaker 2:Something that they really grapple with along the way is that they become defined by the business, and I think there's a real need for them to not see themselves as the company that they may have had the idea.
Speaker 2:They may have started things off, but a company is about a bunch of people working together to build something and take it to market and grow the business, and, while the founder may be the centerpiece of the organization, maybe the voice of the organization or the front to market, over time, when things don't go right and I think this is where it becomes important when you go through tough times the ability to be able to separate you as a human being from what's happening is a skill that we probably struggle with just by sheer nature of being human. But I think there's something in there just being able to maintain some distance between you and what's happening there and knowing that if you're building an organization that is passionate about where you want to go, then you're all in it together and it's not just about you. So I think that would be my parting thought.
Speaker 1:I think that is actually a really that's a great thought to have and it's actually certainly one that's very personal to me. I know in my first startup I certainly lost my way and lost my identity. In the startup we were really successful until we weren't, and we had lots of challenges and problems. But for anybody to attach their identity to the brand that they're building it's their baby and to receive all of the accolades and the magazine articles and the black tie dinners and the events and the panels to be a part of that, but actually when you overattach your identity to that, I think that's really dangerous, a very dangerous place to be. I think your words there are very, very wise.
Speaker 1:Just as we close this, catherine, I'll put some ways for people to be able to connect with you your LinkedIn profile, et cetera into the show notes. It's been a real privilege to be able to chat to you today. Thank you for taking the time and I wish you the very, very best success with Upco. It's a very cool company to watch. No, it hasn't been without its challenges, but what it's doing and the product it's produced, it's pretty cool. So we look forward to some continued success there. So thank you.
Speaker 2:Thanks, Greg. I really appreciate the time.