A Founder's Life
Join me as I explore the powerful intersection of entrepreneurship, health & wellness, and parenthood. In each episode, I’ll be interviewing inspiring individuals who excel in one or more of these areas, sharing their stories, insights, and lessons. My goal is to provide valuable takeaways that can help you thrive both personally and professionally.
A Founder's Life
The Secret to Outlier Success - Steve Spear - S3 - E15
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Why do some founders thrive while others burn out?
In this episode of A Founder’s Life, MIT’s Steve Spear reveals the hidden keys to outlier success — and how founders can stay curious, resilient, and fully human in the process.
💡 What you’ll learn in this conversation:
- Why fast learning & problem-solving beats culture or tech
- How to protect your initial spark of curiosity as a founder
- Lessons from Toyota, MIT, and world-class organizations
- The role of humility and nurturing leadership in long-term success
- How to integrate business, health, and family without trade-offs
👉 Subscribe now for more real founder stories and practical lessons.
⏱️ Timestamps
0:00 – Intro & sponsor (Thankz)
0:31 – Steve Spear’s journey: MIT & C2 Solve
1:34 – What Japan taught the world about business
3:56 – Applying curiosity & humility to family life
6:01 – Health as energy & presence, not performance
7:14 – Cooking, travel & everyday curiosity
8:44 – Pivotal career moment: balance vs. integration
11:15 – Advice to founders: protect your spark of curiosity
13:01 – Closing: Why optimism is contagious
👉 Don’t miss an episode — subscribe & join our community of purpose-driven founders.
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I mean otherwise, why would you even start an enterprise of any type? You know, whether it's a commercial or or non-commercial, why would you start? Because you looked at something and said, Wow, there's a need out there which no one else is satisfying, and I've got an idea about how to meet that need. And so it sparks the initial inspiration as one of uh curiosity, a sense of optimism that the problem is r it's a resolvable problem, a certain amount of self-confidence that uh you have the wherewithal to solve that. And and what I would suggest is for someone who's uh starting up, don't lose sight, don't lose sense, don't lose grasp of that initial activation energy.
SPEAKER_00Welcome to a founder's life. I'm your host, Leo Gastetna. On this show, we dive into the real stories behind the highs and lows of entrepreneurship and how we pursue a more balanced and meaningful life along the way. This podcast is sponsored by Thanks, helping founders like us scale with reliable remote talent. Email founders at Thanks.com. That's T-H-A-N-K-Z.com with the subject line of founders life, and you'll get a thousand dollars off your first month. Now I'm excited to be joined today by Steve Speer. Steve, thanks for joining. Would you like to introduce yourself?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, hey, Leo, thanks so much. Uh I try to keep the introduction kind of short. Um, in terms of institutional affiliation, I am uh a senior lecturer at MIT, a founder of a software company, a business process software company called uh C2Solve. And uh my work has uh really been motivated over many, many years, first by the question of, you know, why is life unfair? I I mean that competitively, uh, in terms of you have folks in uh different sectors, different industries playing on level playing field with all their counterparts and getting similar results. Again, level playing field, yet there were those small number of outliers who their ability to generate value and get rewarded uh extravagantly for it is just off the charts. And so I've invested a lot of time trying to understand how those what those outliers do that's so different from everybody else, and uh help others uh replicate that outlier behavior.
SPEAKER_00Excellent. So talk a little more about your career and what led you to where you are today, and then what you're actively helping people do right now. So what what what is the what's a typical customer look like and and how you'll actively help?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So the the motivation on this goes back to uh the late 1980s, and the uh why is life unfair question came out of uh you know one-storied American enterprises like uh General Motors, US Steel, RCA, et cetera, where uh it seem seemingly all of a sudden they were getting this existential threat, sometimes a death blow, from uh Japanese industrials, Mitsubishi, Toyota, Honda, Sony, et cetera. And uh their first reaction was it must be unfair because how could we be the leaders and then all of a sudden be the trailing followers? I I was one of a very large group at that time who were motivated to go figure out what was going on in Japan, bring lessons back, and put it in a sort of uh karass fashion, beat Japan. And um what we discovered, well, I I think when we first went there, we went with the preconceived notion that there must be some sort of cultural difference or there must be some uh governmental regulatory difference uh in the Japanese system versus the American system. And uh, or maybe maybe there was a technological difference. They just had better algorithms for production control. Fundamentally, what we found is that the leaders, and it wasn't all of Japanese uh uh industry, it was just the leaders, they had figured out that if they were gonna um come from behind, catch up and win, they had to be um figuring out better uh what to do and how to get it done. And back in the 60s and 70s, when this was motivated in Japan, figure out how to do it with less capability and fewer resources. And so way back then, they realized the um source of uh sustainable competitive advantage was creating uh an internal dynamic of exceptionally fast learning, exceptionally fast seeing problems, solving problems, and bringing those solutions into practice so that they could uh have a better ability to express value. So anyway, that was that was the motivation and the discovery. And uh over the years, I guess I've split my time in two ways. One is look for other exemplar organizations, which I was just looking for exemplar organizations, but it turned out it wasn't uh necessarily confirmation bias, it was just confirmation that they too were competing on their ability to see and solve really hard problems better, faster than anybody else. And then the flip side is trying to bring those lessons learned into sectors or to individual enterprises that would have benefited from such a lesson.
SPEAKER_00So quite a journey and and uh certainly uh pretty uh high-level information that that uh you're able to help with. And uh talk to me a little bit about what family looks like and means to you.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so uh great question. And I'll just say this stuff uh professionally spills over into the family, right? Because uh professionally, what what was the lesson out of these great companies? It was all about um one, helping develop people and their ability to uh be really creative problem solvers and doing it in such a way that is uh much more of a nurturing model. And I know this sounds funny, right? Because we typically don't think of uh industry and manufacturing as a place of uh nurturing leadership and helping people find full expression for their uh truest self. In fact, that's what we were finding. Anyway, so you start thinking about how that carries over to person one's personal life is uh you know, the hours you spend on the job, you spend um practicing this type of doing where you're you yourself have to exhibit a tremendous amount of curiosity. And then um, and curious uh curiosity starts with a certain humility to say, look, here's a situation which uh I don't know that much about, which is why I have to immerse in it. So you start by that, and then um another part of your doing is uh you try to bring other people along to uh give help them give fullest expression to their own curiosity and creativity. Well, if you act that way on the job, and um that's what you do, it really if it influences how you think. And then once that's how you think, then it gets uh amplified in how you do, and of course you try to bring that home too. And at first you try to bring it home consciously, but then you bring it home um sort of unconsciously because it's becoming more and more habit. And I'd like to think that uh the way you engage with my family and the uh the community of which we're part is you know, look, I I teach at MIT and so the stereotype when people are teasing me, and I think in uh good humor is oh, you know, you know, doctor know it all or something like that. But I I think, you know, in terms of personal reputation and how I'm perceived by my uh my wife Miriam and our kids, uh, they perceive me more as, you know, sort of a curious person and who who encourages them to have liberty to explore their own curiosity as well.
SPEAKER_00Love that. And how does health look for you? Well, say that how how does health look for you? What does health mean in terms of physical health, mental health, nutrition? How does what's what's important?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so uh great, great question. And um I think fundamentally, you know, particularly as you get older, you know, when you're younger, you know, health is uh how fast can I run a distance or swim something or how much can I lift? And when you get older, it's just uh do I have uh the energy and the attitude to um do the things I want to do and behave in the way I want to behave? And uh I I have I'm really fortunate I've not had personally uh serious health issues, but there was you know the injury here and then COVID was really disruptive. And there was a period of feeling not quite as capable. And again, you know, we're not talking triathlon capable, we're talking about capable of just getting up and about and engaging and uh being uh you know persistently present in the things that matter, and it really impacts you. It does really get to the effect that you do have like I know it sounds so new age or whatever the term is now. No, I've got to take me time and this and that. It's true you do. You have to do self-maintenance, and then part of it, part of it's selfish because you just feel better, but part of it is uh you gotta do it so that when you're engaging with others around you, you're engaging uh fully, positively, and without the distractions of not being the fullest self you can be.
SPEAKER_00And what about uh that all makes sense? Well, what about for fun? What do you like to do? So uh yeah, it's a good question.
SPEAKER_01So there's stuff I like to do, just stuff around the house. I like to cook. And I'm not a particularly good cook. I mean, my food's not bad, but this is not like uh, you know, no one's putting me on TV. You know, say, oh, look at the amateur at home. We should um I like to cook, and uh a couple of reasons for that. One is very physical cooking. And you know, a lot of my work is sitting and thinking and writing and communicating like everyone else these days. You have that uh very non-physical part of your life, and cooking is nothing but uh chopping things up with knives and then exposing them to heat and flame. You know, so there's a lot of vicarious uh physicality to it. The nice thing about cooking also is that uh there's a uh a beginning, a middle, and an end. And the beginning is you know the conceptual stuff of you know, what are we gonna serve and uh how's people gonna react to it, and then sort of the nitty-gritty planning of the sort of the operations of it, of where do I get the ingredients, how am I gonna prepare the meal and put it out. And there's a satisfaction at the end that people actually had a meal. You can even close it out, is that uh when you're all done and uh you cook as you go, that you started with a clean kitchen, you ended with a clean kitchen, but in between there was happiness to it. So I'd say that's uh you know, day to day, this kind of thing I like to do. And the other thing is um my wife and I uh, you know, we like to go places and um when we get there, yeah, you i i if there's sort of the landmark you gotta see, you gotta see it, right? You know, the museum or whatever else. But we just like to wander around, you know, getting back to this curiosity thing and just say, huh, never been here, never done that. Let's go take a look.
SPEAKER_00And what's been in your life a pivotal moment?
SPEAKER_01Oh, well, there's certainly been a bunch. In terms of uh look, there's all all the stuff that happens as you're growing and developing and maturing as a child, and that's like a whole long list. Credit to my family on that. Professionally, I'd say uh I had uh uh a couple of things. One, when I was uh a graduate school school, I'm sorry, when I started as a graduate student, I was coming out of a j job where a career path there was, you know, the hundred-hour weeks. Uh, that was good work. I mean, I I found the work interesting. Uh certainly the remuneration, you know, fitted with a hundred-hour week work week, but uh it wasn't a lot of balance. And I got to graduate school, I started meet meeting a bunch of uh faculty who they were leaders in their field. They certainly were. They couldn't have been teaching what they were teaching, where they were teaching, without being leaders in their field. The other thing is they were very good people because not only was their commitment into the laboratory to make discovery, it was to the uh the graduate students they had in the laboratory, into the classroom on and developing them. I became very aware very early about the human connection that was so important um in their professional identification. Let me just say that wasn't unique. I had previous jobs where I had great people who uh took very personal interest in developing me as a young person then. There was another element, Dawn, this gets to the 100-hour week thing, is that um I had one um advisor, a guy named Dave, who was fantastic, accessible, nurturing all of that, except on Thursday afternoons. And why was that? It's because Thursday afternoons is when he had to pick up Molly, his daughter, from soccer practice, or maybe ballet rehearsal, what one of the others. And it really struck me how um he had created this uh very rewarding and impactful role for himself professionally, and also had ability to uh have this very integrated role in his family and they in their life and they in his. And so uh I probably was in my mid to late 20s then and thinking about what I was gonna do as my next step. And uh it didn't give me necessarily direction into what field that emerged later on, but it certainly established tone that whichever vector I was gonna follow, it had to be a vector that qualified in terms of um that sort of very rich integrated balance. Actually, I'm not even gonna use the word balance. Sorry for the philosophical digression. Balance implies trade-off, that I have A or B. What he was having, he was having the integration, the synthesis, the synergy of A and B. And I thought that was a beautiful thing. Yeah, I mean there were others, but I'll stop at that one for now. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Lovely. And what is one snippet of advice that you would give from a sparring entrepreneur?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so for someone starting, look, if you start thinking about what uh motivated you in the first place, I'm willing to guess is that you looked at something and said, huh, that is not nearly as good as it could be. I mean, otherwise, why would you even start an enterprise of any type? You know, whether it's a commercial or or non-commercial, why would you start? Because you looked at something and said, wow, there's a need out there which no one else is satisfying, and I've got an idea about how to meet that need. And so it sparks the initial inspiration as one of uh curiosity, a sense of optimism that the problem is it's a resolvable problem, a certain amount of self-confidence that uh you have the wherewithal to solve that. And what I would suggest is for someone who's uh starting up, don't lose sight, don't lose sense, don't lose grasp of that initial activation energy. And Leo, here's why I bring that up, and here's the risk, right? Which is we have that initial moment of inspiring curiosity, energy optimism, and it's infectious, right? And the reason we know it's infectious is because we get other people to believe us, whether they believe us because they uh join us as co-founders, they join us as employees, they join us as funders. Somehow they're willing to join us because of that initial curious optimism. You know, what's the risk? And we see it all the time as uh something starts getting more established. People lose that curiosity, lose that humility, lose that optimism, and either because they're under pressure or they've acquired a certainty that they have the way. And uh, I think you know, you and I, and I'm sure you know other folks are participating in this, they've had the experience of being with someone who's like, what happened to the old guy? Where'd he go? You know, I I signed up for that old guy, and and now why am I with this person who's uh you know so demanding, so uncompromising, so unforgiving. So, anyway, that would be my advice. That initial moment, that initial spark, don't lose.
SPEAKER_00Love it. So thank you, and thank you for joining us today and sharing your pearls of wisdom.
SPEAKER_01Oh, Leo, well, I don't know. It's what I think is wise. We'll we'll we'll let the uh the listeners uh find out. But uh I appreciate the invitation. You know, back to this issue of curiosity and uh humility and optimism, the world is uh wildly imperfect, and uh the people who are uh the uh the force for uh moving closer, and like Toyota used to say or Lexus, the relentless pursuit of perfection is the people who look at something and the moment they see it not quite right, they don't say, Ah, well, you know, what can one do? They they they instead say they look at it and say, I wonder what can I do. And so anyway, being invited to uh converse with this community, and hopefully this is the start of a longer conversation. That's fantastic, a privilege, and an honor. Thank you.
SPEAKER_00Well, thank you. And thanks for listening to today's episode. If you enjoyed this conversation, don't forget to subscribe to the channel, tell your friends, and please leave a review.