Matthew Linderman, MBA '19

Matthew Linderman, MBA '19, joins Christopher Reichert, MOT '04, to talk about his career trajectory and his new startup, Aloha, which is debugging the social planning process by providing tools and guidance to help people be more intentional about they maintain and deepen their relationships. Learn more at: www.heyaloha.app/.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:10

Welcome to Sloanies talking with Sloanies, a candid conversation with alumni and faculty about the MIT Sloan experience and how it influences what they're doing today. So what does it mean to be a Sloanie over the course of this podcast, you'll hear from guests who are making a difference in their community, including our own very important one here at MIT Sloan. I am your host Chris

Speaker 2: 0:32

record and I'm with Matt Linderman, a 2019 graduate of Sloan's MBA program. Welcome mat. Yeah, thank you very much Christopher. So how can people learn more about your app and what you're offering? Great question. Well, I'd encourage everybody to go to our website. It's www.heyaloha.app and that will give you a background about what we're building and allow you to sign up for our wait list for the product. Great. And it's also available on the Apple store. It's available on the Apple store and it will be soon available on the Android store. Excellent. So, uh, before we talk about what you, uh, what's your up to, uh, since Sloan, let's step back. Um, your background shows a strong interest in investment management and consulting, very business focused, uh, back in college. I guess you were the founder and editor in chief of the Cornell business review, which I wanna touch on in a minute. Uh, then you went to McKinsey and McKinsey global Institute, the re the business and economics research arm, uh, for four years, more or less. And then Calera capital, um, investment management, making investment decisions. Yeah. Helping with that. Um, so why did you, why did you choose loan? Yeah, so I chose Sloan because I had, um, intentionally set up my first five years of my career to really get a broad swath of business skills. Um, and I had always known that I wanted to go back and use those skills to build a company, uh, come from a big engineering and Dr. Bass family. And they've used business, um, relatively negatively and said, Hey, if you're going to do it, you might as well use it to build a product and share the things that you know, you can create in the world. Um, so that was always my aspiration and it was a good way to come back and to actually build those products later in my career. When, when you say they used it fairly negatively, what did you mean by that? You know, I think they, um, viewed the world more as, Hey, go out there and do something immediately. Go create a product, go engineer it, go treat a patient. Um, and they didn't have business people around them growing up. Um, so I don't think they realized, um, quite naturally that you could go and deploy those products to a broader audience using the business skill set. So that was something that I was always very excited to do to step one level higher and say, Hey, can we lead a team of engineers? Can we lead a team of doctors back earlier in my career, um, to actually deploy some product to the world that can be shared more broadly. So my father was an architect and I think he, his love was getting in front of a drafting board and drawing up some idea and to the creative side. He, his own practice. And I think the business side was something that he kind of looked at as something bolted on. There was a necessary evil is that that's kind of the way your upbringing, your parents thought of it, you know, that was the first reaction, you know, and especially going into something like private equity investment management, uh, the reaction was are you just doing this for the money? And I think for me it was about gaining the right skillset so that I could go and do something impactful later in my career. And that's really why I came to Sloan, which is trying to use those skills to actually build something. And really there's no better place than MIT Sloan to actually learn how do you take business skills and apply them to build a product and deploy that into the world. And you had a, where was your internship? I read about it. It was a, yeah. So I had worked at in a spark ventures, which is this right focused venture capital firm here in Boston. That was, that was for just the summer or did you stay on afterward? I actually had done that this past fall in the second year of my, uh, Sloan time. Okay. While you were at school while I was at school. Yeah. I'm doing about 20 hours a week and was able to learn about the VC investing methodology and was also working on my startup the summer before. Um, so was able to kind of do both in parallel. I want to come to your startup in a few minutes. Um, and so did you, um, I, yeah, I can see that. So the Cornell business review, uh, editor in chief and founder Cornell never had a business review before you started it. So it's surprising. We had a major publication, a student newspaper, and they've had a number of different business publications, but never one a review magazine. Uh, it was smaller publications or smaller event groups. So we decided to say, Hey, you know, there's a lot of students out there who really want to be aware of the broader things going on, but it's hard as a student to be aware of everything in the outside world when you're really focused on classes and learning. So we said, Hey, let's summarize what's going on in the broader world and let's spark a discussion on campus about those debates and issues so that students can get their head around them and really learn from each other. And you, uh, you studied applied economics and management, so this was all, and so when you went into college, uh, what did you grow up by the way? So I grew up in Rome, New York. Okay. A small town about an hour East of Syracuse. I always want to say middle of nowhere, but there was an air force research lab there and my parents both worked at the air force earlier in their careers and actually wonderful place to grow up. So Wegmans country. Exactly, exactly. Early days. Wegmans. So you, um, did you get, where did you start? You interested in business or running a business as opposed to practicing some sort of craft? I mean, all not the same business, running a business into crap, but in the traditional sense of Shoemaker, dentists or whatever it is. Yeah. So it started really early when I was 16. Um, it was either work at the local McDonald's or work at the air force research laboratory. So I was lucky. Got a job there, um, at McDonald's. Why? Because you're hungry now. Okay. Got it. And we were doing speaker identification and language identification technologies, what you today call machine learning. Back then, it was before the, the hype had really risen up. Uh, and I had seen people who had really dedicated their career to what we'd call artificial intelligence or this space in certain niches. And, uh, they had gone through the AI, um, basically downturn or the gap. And I had seen that, you know, some of these folks who dedicated their whole career and they had made slow progress, slow, steady progress. Um, and they could have launched products throughout their career, but they had stayed in the research path that really motivated me to say, Hey, there's so many applications of this technology, especially back in 2006 when I was working on it, um, to be deployed in the real world. Why can't we, why can't I build a career about taking a technology, building a team around it? And sharing it with customers who would love the technology. Interesting. And how did your time at Sloane change you? Can you came in? What did you think you were going to do there and how, and how did, how did it evolve? Yeah, so I came in really thinking, you know, I want to create a company or join a company, um, and really grow that after school. Big picture that's still the same. Um, but I had learned a lot about how you actually do that. Uh, so I have worked with three different startups throughout my time at Sloan, uh, and learned a lot about the dynamic that is required to be successful. Um, and a lot of that is about the team, uh, having a good team and a good idea paired together with the right skills. Um, and what we found is that one was a great idea with a bad team. The other was a crate team with a bad idea. And finally we've landed on one that's a good pairing of good idea with a great team. Let's cover that in a minute. So, um, you know, Sloan is talking about these three different paths. You're, you're an MBA, right? Yes. So you the two year MBA program, um, you know, they talk about the super highway, the dirt road in the jungle, and um, you know, slow and, and all of the top business schools have been very good at the superhighway for forever, right? They get you into the investment banking or the consulting or whatever it may be. Um, and I think the entrepreneurial slot side is now, um, coming to the fore as, uh, a need for students coming in. So did you, when you came to Sloan, did you know that you weren't going to go back to whether, you know the superhighway path? Yeah, so I had seen this super highway, right? I was at McKinsey for four years. I'd seen the private equity path and I could see that trajectory. And in many ways it's a great trajectory. Uh, you learn a tremendous amount, there's good pay outcomes, and there's a life that's really quite positive. Um, but when you think about what you want to achieve in life, some people want that predictable path. And for me it was always about creating something. And if you're advising and business services, whether it's financial or whether it's management consulting, uh, you're not creating something, a, you're helping to create something. And for me that distinguish that difference was a big thing to, uh, to mention kind of arms length. Exactly. Right. And for me it was about not only building a product, but also hiring people and building a team that can really deliver a product to the world. So I want to hear now about your startup. Absolutely. So we started a company called Aloha wellness last summer and it didn't start as a company. It started really as a a problem. And it was a phone call that my aunt had given me last April. And she said, Hey, Matt, you should really call your mother. Uh, apparently it had been five weeks since I had called my mom, which I was a little embarrassed by. And I started to realize, you know, I know people generally consider me a pretty social person, but I had a whole number of little issues in my personal life with my relationships. And I thought, you know, if I'm having all these problems, I wonder if other people are too. Uh, so I spent the summer asking people a relatively simple question, uh, spoke with about 80 to a hundred people and said, Hey, you know, how do you maintain your relationships and how do you deepen your relationships? Uh, and we basically found that people all have a similar process. There are a lot of pain points along it. Um, but they just weren't conscious of this process. It always runs in the background. So the general concept here is how can we help to bring that process to the forefront, help people be a little bit more intentional about how they maintain and deepen their relationships and provide some tools and guidance as to how to do that much better than you do today. Interesting. So it's, uh, I guess in the old days when the people lived in the same village all their lives, they kind of knew everybody and had that, I read a book years ago that talked about the different, um, technologies. And, and I use that word broadly, that people have at their Beck and call and, and what it means for different things. So for example, if you use email for your, your wife for example, or your girlfriend, it pushes them away. If you text, it brings them a little closer. If you use a phone call in person, obviously that's the, that that draws them in. But if you have an old college buddy that you haven't spoken to for a number of years, Facebook will draw them closer, but Facebook will push your, your girlfriend or your wife further away. Right? So this depends on the nature of the relationship. You have to pick your, your tools, uh, to, to, to, to achieve your goals. So how do you, how does Aloha wellness address those different types of, I guess, rings of relationship that you might have? Absolutely. So each medium has its own value, uh, right. And there's a lot of discussion. Is technology actually making us lonely or, or disconnecting us even though we're more connected than we've ever been before? Um, I actually think it's more nuanced and then technology is causing issues, right? There's a role for everything here. Facebook, as you mentioned, uh, and Instagram do a great job of helping you get the life ups to update about your friends and family, especially that more distant ring of people that you might not call or speak with regularly. Um, so there's a huge benefit to that. However, it also requires time, right? And you spend a lot of time actually getting that life update and we're busy people, right? We're overworked, we're burning out in many different ways. Uh, so often the people who are taking the brunt of are the people who are our closer relationships, the people who we love in life, our family, our friends, our loved ones. Um, and we're really trying to help you do a better job with those relationships. Call it the closest 50 friends and family in your life versus the 50 plus where you're going to get that update through Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, or other platforms. So from a time allocation perspective, or at least the resources that you and your new, your startup are focusing on, it's not about fixing the Facebook depersonalization, you know, Oh my God, my college friend is doing so well with[inaudible] life, beautiful college day, whatever it is. It's really about, like you said, that that 50, the zero or the one to 50. Absolutely. Yeah. It's trying to help you. Well, it's helping you actually focus on those 50 folks, um, and do a better job with them because if you're focusing your time on the other folks, a lot of times you're just not thinking about the people who are closest to you. How do you define those? 50 so let's say I sign up, which I will by the way. Yeah. Assuming I can. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. We'll send you a link after. All right. Um, so what's the process of that, uh, that I'm onboarding, so to speak. Absolutely. So you go through a process. First of all, I'm just thinking who really matters in your life. And a lot of people, um, don't really think about this. And when they do, they think it's awkward, you know, am I ranking my friends or family? And that's really not the point. It's really to think who are the people who, if I want to maintain or deepen a relationship, who are those people that I really want to keep in my life? And that process just by explicitly going through it usually leads you to have anywhere from 10 to 20, 30, 40 people, um, in this app. So that's, that's, that's the, it's pretty easy to kind of populate it with that. Yeah. It's really whoever matters to you, right? We're not forcing it. It can be family, friends, professional people. It's whoever matters to you. So it's a name, it's a contact EDM, whether it's email or phone or whatever it is. Okay. So I've got them in there. So I've got my 20 people, let's say. So then, where does Aloha wellness take me from there? Yeah. So V one of the product is really focused about helping you keep in touch with these folks and giving you a visualization of how you're doing. Uh, so the friends start essentially close to you. Uh, and they actually quite literally drift away from you over time, uh, in relation to how often you would actually like to meet up with these folks. Um, so over time if you meet up with your friend Fred, you say you click on Fred and say, Hey, I connected with Fred. Uh, and we'll reset that timer essentially. Um, that's the basic status tracker functionality in the app. Uh, and is there anything that they told you that you should follow up on later? Are they struggling with something? Are they celebrating something? Uh, and what the research says when you actually look at scientific research is that it's often the people who remember these meaningful elements in your life that you actually bond with later on because they spent the mental capacity to actually remember, remember these items that you, right. So last time we, you were having problems with blah, blah, blah, or you had just gotten a promotion or whatever, how's it going? So it makes it a meaningful chicken. So it's almost like, um, I guess like sales force for your personal life in the sense of like tracking it in a way. Right? There's actually a whole category of apps that have tried and failed. They're called personal CRMs or customer relationship management apps. And that's the basic functionality. However, when you think about using Salesforce for your friends and family, it doesn't feel natural. No, it doesn't. So you get behind on your friends and family lists and you never really want to use the app anymore because you're like, this isn't natural. It feels transactional, it feels strategic and you give up. So what we're doing is essentially taking a similar functionality but putting it in a completely different user interface that feels much more user friendly, much more gamified, actually feel like it's something that is natural to do with your friends and family. And that's really the crux of what we're trying to solve here. Yeah. Cause I would think that building the habit of updating it would be a challenge. Like yeah, change. Change is hard, right? Yeah. And the reality is we actually do a pretty poor job of maintaining our relationships versus our expectations. Right. Um, so if I had asked you how often would you like to stay in touch with any of your friends? You're probably gonna say a number that's actually more frequent than you will keep in touch with them. Um, so the reality is we often underperform and that's frustrating, but in real life we don't see that. Right. It just expires and we then say, okay, that's life. I'll meet up with them next time. If you track it, then it actually looks quite negative. So that's one of the biggest elements that we're looking into is how do you actually help people set realistic expectations with their relationships and then help them go about their lives to meet those expectations? Yeah, and I would think it would change over the course of someone's life. I remember back in my twenties I had a, a tribe as I used to call it, and we would meet pretty much every weekend, every other weekend. And it was easy to kind of maintain that relationship, those relationships. And it was, it was large, 20 to 30 people. Um, but then, you know, people get married or they moved to other jobs or lit I in that case, I literally left Australia. So now think, thank goodness, you know, Facebook came along. So that's my 51 plus. Right? So I can, that pulls that in. Um, but how do you, how do you envisage what version two or 1.1 or the app moving? Yeah. So to address your prior point, relationships do change over time, right? In your 20s you have your close groups from usually school and your first few jobs. Uh, then you get married and there's this trimming down period. It's actually in the scientific research. Um, and then it changes after that as well. So in reality, this is always changing over time and any application to follow something like this needs to also adapt over time. Um, so the way we actually see this app going forward, part of it is, you know, tracking the status, nudging you to take actions that you really want to be doing anyway. Um, but longer term we really view it as how do we completely redone, re-imagine the social planning process? How can we save you time when you're trying to plan, what am I going to do this weekend? How can we help you do more interesting and more meaningful activities? And then how can we just get you together in person or video call with the people that you care about more often? Having those joyous moments. Now I will say that you have strong, um, will you get you gave up coffee. That's true. Uh, what, six months ago or a year ago now, nine months ago, nine months ago, nine months, nine months strong. Um, do you go to the gym regularly? I do. Not always, but as of two years ago, four times a week. And I w I heard that you, your, your breakfast that you described earlier was, was, uh, the high protein berries and, and uh, and fiber. Very important. Two, four and five. Exactly. So, so for the, for the rest of us who drink coffee, you go to bed late, who eat, you know, pizza, whatever it is. Um, how do you, how do you change our habits? Absolutely. Yeah. So first of all, I was absolutely one of everyone and I still am in many ways. Um, but yeah, how do you change a habit? It's extremely hard. And I've been reading pretty much every book I can find on this scientific papers on this. Uh, and the reality is people really don't change their habits easily. Uh, they die very hard. Now there's a whole study about how can mobile apps change your habits. A lot of it actually is viewed in a negative sense about how do they get you addicted. Um, but as near y'all, the author of hook says, getting addicted to a good habit is one of the best things you can do for life. Right. Um, so that's what actually what we're building into our app is the same exact addictive habits, but addictive in a way that's actually beneficial for you instead of harming you. And what, so what's, how long have you, are you in private, um, beta at the moment? Yeah, so we have a closed beta. The app is actually on the app store, but there's limited access to it. So some people if like if I were to click and say install it would ask for an email and then you would consider whether or not you get the app and then you sign up for the wait list and we'll be opening to the public relatively soon. Um, so we encourage everybody to go sign up for the wait list and we're adding people on a weekly basis, uh, to add and test the app. And we're excited to actually launch it publicly once we've gotten that feedback to really, uh, launch it more broadly. And so you started this here at Sloan yup. With classmates or was it[inaudible] tell me about how you built the team. Well, it was interesting cause I really worked on this over the summer in between my first and my second year at Sloan. Um, so I had done much of the legwork in terms of research and the person who I needed on my team. Um, at the end of the summer was a software developer. It's a mobile app, so needed the key technology person. Uh, and I had looked all over MIT, found some great folks, but in terms of, um, just expectations on a whole number of fronts, it didn't work out with the folks I met at MIT. But through a friend of a friend, I met an individual named Luke who's a mobile app developer, um, at a cybersecurity company and he runs his own development shop. Uh, and we actually joined forces in January, uh, to build this out. He had always loved this space. He'd been looking for something that he can join full time, ideally once we raise funds. And he said, yes, let's do this. I love the idea, let's go and get it. That's great. Did you, so tell me about some of the courses you took at Sloan four and did you build the business plan as part of a course or did you, so tell me, yeah, tell me about the, the, the, the courses that you took that helped inform this business model and plan. Yeah. So there are some terrific courses at Sloan when it comes to learning about entrepreneurship. Especially if you have a startup. Um, and one of the best courses was called scaling ventures, um, led by the Martin trust center and it was led by the founders of HubSpot and PillPack. Um, so super hands on, great stories, essentially about what are the challenges you're gonna face right at the beginning. And then as you scale your venture to grow it down the road, those have scaled hugely. Yeah. Abs absolutely wasn't PillPack purchased by Amazon, was it? Or, yeah, about a billion dollars just recently. Excellent. Good for good for them. Absolutely. So, yeah. Great inspiration. Um, and then there's many other more tactical courses, um, from entrepreneurial finance, um, to entrepreneurial strategy to one course, uh, led by Kay Hickey about how do you, um, deal with founding dilemmas. So all of these courses I think really helped me, especially going through the startup experience in parallel to really process the information in a way that you might not process if you just took the course alone. Right. And some sort of framework. Did you participate in any of the business plan competitions? A hundred K and so not the competitions themselves, but we did participate in the fuse accelerator, which is led by the Martin trust center over the winter IEP session. Excellent. Yeah, that's a great time to kind of explore areas which are a little more, I guess less pressure. Right? Absolutely. Yeah. And it just gives you time to focus with resources. The EIRs are entrepreneurs and residents there to really guide you and make you, I'll help you think about the things that really matter at that moment with your startup. Yeah, and I would encourage alumni out there to, to continue to participate in IAP. I mean you can absolutely, there are online components too. And if you're in the Boston area, you know, that's just, it is a really great two, two or three day experience just to kind of dive back into the classroom. Maybe it's a subject that you're doing on a daily basis, but maybe it's something that you've been thinking about and it's a great way to kind of discover whether you want to do it more or not. So I would encourage that. So that's just a side comment. So do you have a favorite professor at Sloan that you have a memory of? That's more core question. You know, I think there's, there's a pair that has really helped me and these are the professors that teach that founding dilemmas course. Uh, so it's Hickey and Aaron Scott, uh, and been tremendous mentors for me. A kit had a background actually leading a startup out of MIT when she was an MIT Sloan Sloan student. Ministry of supply. Alright. Is now back as an EIR. I'm so very hands on. Great. A practical coach. And then Aaron Scott really comes out from an academic perspective of, you know, how do you set yourself up for success to tackle one market after another after another. Um, from a strategic point of view. And so the combination was terrific. Both were in that class and as a pair of mentors. So if you had one more year at Sloan or even a semester, is there a course that you wish you had taken that you thought? Of course I had wish I had taken to, you know, really I view it as I took the courses I wanted to take. Um, the leadership at a crossroads course was terrific. Just CEOs speaking about their experiences and their, their struggles throughout their careers. Um, and then that scaling ventures course, those were the two that, um, I was really excited to get into and they lived up to expectations. How about a do over or anything that you'd want to do over? Anything I'd want to do over, you know, maybe not go to that a C function and stay so late. Or as I went through it, I would have absolutely said that, you know, some of the startups were painful, but I think they're painful in a way that you learn, right? Because it's either a idea that really shouldn't be started around or it's a team that's just not clicking and those are painful as you go through them. But I think those are actually some of the most valuable experiences that you can get at salon. And seeing those issues really provides a list of things to avoid moving forward. So what's, uh, what's your definition of success? For me, I haven't gone Cornell business reviews, so founder, uh, and McKinsey and now starting this. Well, I mean for me, I think you have to remember, I, I grew up in the middle of nowhere in Rome, New York. Um, to no roads lead there. There are some big ones, but it's, it was always about what can I do to improve the world for everybody. You know, not just the folks who are in the business world or the folks who are in the big cities, but um, what are the problems that everybody is really struggling with, uh, that our day to day issues and how can you use technology to actually solve those problems or at least make a small difference because a lot of things are just five minutes of your day. But if it brightens up your day, that in my head is success if it's done at scale. Interesting. And a, a advice for prospective Sloanies. Absolutely. If you're interested in non entrepreneurship, I would absolutely get involved in the Martin trust center. Uh, their accelerator programs, the fundraising, uh, competitions. I think the entrepreneurial environment here is terrific and there's a bunch of people trying to decide, you know, do I want to be East coast, West coast, uh, is Boston the right place? The one thing I've learned is that Boston is a terrific place to start companies. Um, and I'd really encourage them to look into the entrepreneurial resources that MIT. Excellent. So what's, what's uh, what's next for you? You mentioned going to New York. Yeah. I will be moving to New York at the end of the month and we are trying to fundraise for the startup at the end of the year here and then really try to grow this thing and get it out there. Uh, as with any B to C, uh, business consumer product, you don't really know until it's out there, whether it will be successful and it's an iterative process. So we're about to launch here more publicly. Um, as I said, there's the wait list out there that you can sign up for. And once we launch, we're really hoping to get that traction, get people sharing the product, loving the product, and then really dedicate our lives to it for the next few years here. Is that, is that Android and iOS at the moment it's just iOS. But we should be able to deploy to Android soon as we're developing on across platform. And I'm curious why, why New York, not California or really anywhere else? You know, I think one of the things I learned at Sloan was it's about really balancing everything in life and part of my life is that my family and my fiance's family are in the New York and East coast area more broadly. And that was a big consideration. The other consideration is that New York really has had a whole number of successful consumer startups come out of it, and there's a whole number of programs that are feeding great developers, great designers into that ecosystem. So I think it's a great ecosystem to build up the app that I'm looking to build. And it's also the area that my family is around. That's, yeah, that's true. Then did your, um, partner, what role does she play in either I'm going to Sloan versus other schools? Well, she went to school across the river at HBS. Oh, the community. She, she was there a year ahead of me. So it really helped me to see what is business school, is this the right time in my life for it? Right. I, I had always known that it would make sense to go, but it was a question of when is the right time? And I, from that, um, experience I had realized that, you know, I don't necessarily need to spend more years in finance. It was the right time to take the leap to really go and start a company and try to make that work as my career after slum. That's great. So tell me what's the, uh, this is going to be a funny question cause I think you'd do a lot of this probably there a little bit, but what's the last thing you really geeked out about or maybe didn't geek out? Huh? Like attorney? Yeah. Well, I, I must say I have a bit of an addictive personality because I get so deep into so many topics and I, I think the last thing I really geeked out about, there's a few, one artificial intelligence. I was working at ne AI VC fund in high school. I was doing what's now considered machine learning AI. Um, I've loved the topic, my family's involved with it. Um, so absolutely love that. I think there's so many opportunities there. Um, and the other thing is habits. Like you said earlier, it is so hard to change someone's habit and there's a lot of research now coming out on that topic. So those are the two areas that I absolutely love and will continue to geek out on for the next few months and years. That's excellent. Well, I hope people are developing a habit to listening to Sloanies talking with Sloanies about ideas that Madison

Speaker 1: 29:42

thanks to Matlin Linderman for joining us. I'm your host Christopher record and thank you Matt. Thank you very much. Christopher. Slowly he's talking with Sloanies is produced by the office of external relations at MIT Sloan school of management. You can subscribe to this podcast by visiting our website, MIT sloan.mit.edu/alumni or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. Support for this podcast comes in part from the Sloan annual fund, which provides essential flexible funding to ensure that our community pursue excellence. Make your gift today by visiting giving.mit.edu/sloan to support this show. Or if you have an idea for a topic or a guest you think we should feature, drop us a note@sloanalumniatmit.edu.