Diaspora NZ with David Booth
00:59:24 · Jamie Beaton, David Booth
[00:59:24] S1: That's right. Yeah. Public company reporting, things like that. [00:59:26] S0: We can get some ideas from that for sure. And then final, this is not one I get to ask everybody, in your case, I do. What's your advice or or or for the ambitious youngsters out there? Aside from just, like, applying to be in Crimson, that's the the gimme answer, but, like, what should they be thinking about right now if they wanna be really making a dent in the world five, ten years into the future?
00:59:44 · Jamie Beaton
[00:59:44] S1: One comment I'd make, what I've seen recently, I think when I began Crimson entrepreneurship was... It wasn't as broadly loved, I would say, by high school students and university students as it is now. I think in the last five, eight years, entrepreneurship has become this almost cult like obsession. This is the number one thing people wanna do at a lot of these campuses. What I've seen during that trend is there are a lot of folks that say they wanna be entrepreneurs, and they wanna come out of college and launch the company straight away. And they aren't actually focused on any one space. I would say they're more mercenary in that they... Anything that makes money, they'll try and do, or anything they think will work, they'll try to do. They also might often hop on the hype trains. It could be an AI hype train, a crypto hype train, you know, whatever. I've seen actually now a number of students do that, struggle for literally three, four years without product market fit in a space they don't really like. They raised some capital, and it's almost like golden handcuffs where they're building in the space and they just... It doesn't... It's not really good for their, you know, mental state and and, you know, their momentum, frankly. So I would say my advice for young founders is you've got a lot of time to pull the trigger on this. If you wanna go now, go now. And I think, you know, you run at it. But taking a couple years to build some heavy duty work experience and some high growth companies and getting some reps on the board in different industries, so you've got a wider aperture in the world, I think that can be very powerful. And so, you know, I used to sort of advocate, go young, go as fast as you can, anytime, etcetera. But there are many domains for which some experience actually helps. So I would just say as a young founder, like, don't feel like there's this urgent need to go right now. Feel free to build some more skills, build specialist domain knowledge, especially in industries like health care or fintech. Yep. You know, a bit of experience that could be very helpful. Obviously, the Stripe guys are a great counterexample. They just ripped it straight out of college. But I would say don't be afraid. Don't feel like FOMO in your mind to need to, like, jump into this right now. Feel free to acquire some skills and take your shot.
01:01:31 · Jamie Beaton, David Booth
Because basically, it takes five to ten years to build a transformative company, at least to a good scale, probably twenty years or thirty years to build something momentous. But you can pull the trigger on that at many ages in life. So I would say don't don't sort of drink too much entrepreneur Kool Aid Mhmm. And then mess up your career development because of this. [01:01:48] S0: Yeah. It's a really good piece of advice, and every company you join and operate at is another pool of potential cofounders, potential talent you're gonna hire in. It's another opportunity to learn from everyone else's mistakes before having to make it yourself. So I'm excited to see more Crimson students, more Kiwis across the board starting companies at some point, but... And like you, I think, looking forward to backing a lot of them, investing along the way. Jamie, it's been fun. What a pleasure. I'm looking forward to doing this again in few years time. Ten years time, continue to see the growth. Look look forward to following on. [01:02:20] S1: Cheers, David. I appreciate it. Thank you.
01:02:20 · Jamie Beaton, David Booth
[01:02:20] S1: Cheers, David. I appreciate it. Thank you. [01:02:25] S0: That's a wrap. Thanks for listening. As a quick reminder, make sure you hit subscribe over in your favorite podcast player so you can keep getting stories like this landing your feed every Friday. They'll power you through those weekend chores. For my day job, I'm an entrepreneur in residence and an investor at Blackbird Ventures. We're back in best Kiwi and Aussie founders no matter where they are in the world, back home with global ambitions or out there building generational companies. My personal sweet spot is pre seed and seed. I'd say there's no check too early, so drop me a line anytime. It's d booth at blackbird.vc. This episode was produced by Day One, the podcast network for founders, operators, and investors, and as part of the Day One network. Thanks again. Look forward to seeing you back next week.