Leadership, Culture & AI-Driven Teams | Final Episode | Niche Investment Strategies

Closing out the epsiodes for this mini series about Niche Investment Strategies Panel, this discussion dives into building company culture in an age of remote work and artificial intelligence.
Panelists reveal how they maintain unity across distributed teams, lead by example, and balance innovation with discipline.
Richard Wilson concludes with a warning: “AI can make you lazy or unstoppable — depending on how you use it.”
A perfect finale for founders and investors shaping the next generation of leadership.

This clip was taken from the Niche Investment Strategies Panel, filmed live at our Family Office Club Super Summit.
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Transcript

In this closing episode of the niche investment strategies panel miniseries, the
speakers discuss how to build culture and lead teams in an AI -driven remote world.
They share practical lessons on accountability, innovation, and leading by example.
Then number one,
what was a pain point or something you could get across that people should avoid?
void. Sorry.
That's a, once you hit this first and come back to me.
Well, once I went into just dirt, the pain points went away. There's not a lot you
can do to screw up dirt. So, but I would say that it's kind of echo what Ray is
saying is one thing that we have learned that's been a little painful is sometimes
thinking a project will take 12 months, and then it takes 24. So making sure you
know exactly what you're in for and that you're projecting or giving proper
timelines. Some of the mistakes I've made even recently, I get word from my
strategic partners, and I'm like, okay, this sounds good, and we all feel good about
it, and I roll that out as a rock star report, and then next week something
changed, and I'm like, oh, crap. So then I look bad. But Unfortunately, I've got a
lot of friends, and I consider all my rock star investors my friends now. So, you
know, it's like a big family, and they all forgive me. I just have to apologize.
Never be afraid to apologize.
Good one. I'll hit two points. One, I'm going to echo what my esteemed panel is
highlighted. On mine, I'll say two, one is from the perspective of building a
company, and the other is going to be from the investor perspective. On building a
company, I think one of the pain points that we learned, we started our company
right when the pandemic came into place. We had a decentralized team. And with a
decentralized team, especially when you're building deep tech, you don't have, in the
deep tech space, you have very much a culture and norm of having outside contractor
for software development work, for even building marketing materials and so on, when
that happens, it's extremely difficult to align a virtual team to mission and
culture. And business fundamentals are business fundamentals, right?
You can't ignore those instincts and you can't ignore those things and, you know,
expect to build a world -class product and a world -class company if you ignore
developing culture and focusing on leadership. And so even now, yes, I have some
team members that are virtual, but we spend a lot of daily team calls.
We do team happy hours, things like that, in order to really focus on culture
development and then regular in -person trips and even just office working sessions.
On the investor selection perspective, a pain point to avoid is going back to one
of my earlier remarks is, you know, picking the two eager investors, the ones that
do little diligence and they just invest because of the wonder and nostalgia of the
cool stuff that you're selling, right? I have learned the hard way to avoid that.
Avoid them, yeah. We're going to open it up for, we have time for maybe one
question. Does anyone in the audience have a question that they'd like to ask the
panel?
to build the culture across a remote team. We're 15, and yesterday our meeting, we
were in seven locations. Yeah.
Thank you for appreciating that point. Mine has been daily team calls, right?
Daily team calls where, you know, everybody knows their mission role. They have a
segment of a call that they know that they own and have to present, but then not
making those calls clinical, Right. Still getting on and, you know,
saying a joke or two, understanding what their personal lives are like, you know,
checking on their significant others. If they have some, the pets, the pets are key.
Right. I always love when someone asks me about my little boy. Right. And so I
absolutely love and appreciate the importance of having collegiate as well as
professional and social team calls. Great. Anyone else want to add to that?
I would just add something to what the job saying earlier about being complacent
with AI because I've seen other reports for like, oh, your brain activity just goes
down because now you just do everything with AI, you get your whole job done with
AI, you don't have to think. And I think it's definitely potentially true. But
there's a quote in the industry about how it's never been more advantageous to be
top decile or top 1 % right now and it's never been more painful to be average
because of what he said if you're average then you're lazy use AI you don't do any
work and then your brain just stops working if you're an entrepreneur founder like
probably someone in this room it's like okay I can drive a car to work I don't
have to walk now I have extra time and I'm gonna read a book and go to the gym
and start going to CrossFit or start a second business with that extra time with
the you can approach learning and use AI to make sure you only learn from the most
credible people, watch the best YouTube miniseries, go to the most credible course
offered by someone practical and do deep research on AI, and go to the right
events, et cetera, or you can be lazy and use AI. So I think that, like, the type
of people here in the room just want to turn the wheel faster by using AI, but
some people will not use it that way. And that'll be a huge advantage to those of
us who are very hungry and, you know, poor hungry driven, driven, like Michael Scott
said. Brandon, I know Rockstar has quite the culture, so. We're a family business,
so my sister -in -law's work for me, my son's worked for me. I'll probably end up
hiring my daughter, so they already invade my house often. That's where all our team
building comes from, hanging out at our pool and riding the things on the property.
So, yeah, we're kind of a family operation. But as far as our investors I mean,
Richard's been around it where we come from a few different groups. He's seeing a
lot of people and everybody that's a rock star investors just like our family.
Treat him the same. Ray, anything about culture from your family that you want to
chat at the S crosser? You know, I'll say this, that as we've continued to get out
into the world of raising capital, it is good to bring out and outside ideas.
Again, what worked in 2020 didn't work with today. So even though we do still have
a strong family culture, I mean, I finally hired my little son, who's three and a
half to help me start to tractors every other Saturday. But bringing in those
outside influences that can also share their thoughts and opinions that the investors
may not be sharing with us, but might be able to share with somebody else. So I
think also on the leadership side, just setting the example for the rest of your
team, and I know as somebody that can't be a little bit difficult, but as a leader
and a CEO, you have to just be able to stay strong and set those examples when
you can. Thank you. Absolutely. Well, hey, let's give a round of applause, please,
for panel number four.
This was the final of our niche investment strategy panel recorded live at the
Family Office Club Super Summit. To connect with thousands of investors and industry
leaders across 30 live events a year, visit us at family offices .com.