Inspired with Alexa von Tobel
00:07:47 · Ben Lamm
[00:07:47] S2: And then... And so, like, my... I think my family was like, well, he's gonna live with us forever, and this is this whole work thing. Because I I had a desire to work, but I I questioned the system quite a bit. Right? And then like I thought things like pennies and change was stupid, so I worked at a restaurant and I worked at Sonic, and I would just round up on the money or round down. It's it's silly to, like, spend extra time calculating the exact dollars and cents. Nobody really cares about that. But apparently, some people do. And so so I I just went through this, like, plethora of jobs that, like, I I wasn't qualified for. And then... But then I I I had this incredible teacher who I took a class in college called... Like, everyone took, like, woodworking and stuff. I took a class... I heard a class in high school called web mastery, and this was the time to date myself, to date my non epigenetic self. But it was that I I actually learned and taught myself macro media flash, and and this was the time of the Internet where, like, everything was moving and, like, or everything was about to move and it was like, gave everyone like motion sickness and you needed that plug in before like Steve Jobs killed Flash for a while. And so I I taught my... I thought it was really interesting. And so I taught myself Macromedia Flash before it ended up becoming Adobe, and then everything at Harvard, Adobe, and action scripting. So I loved HTML and XML, and so I just started building web pages because I could do it from a laptop, and then I could still go have fun with my friends or do whatever. And so I started just teaching myself kind of basic web coding, and I got really, really into it because I... It was kind of the right mixture of kind of like science and art where I could design stuff that was cool, and then I could also like make it animated and I could actually code it so it could, you know, do a lot of real... And this was kind of the time of the Internet where, you know, you went from like gifts to to flash to to online payments. So it's a really kinda cool time to do this. I mean, we're still working mostly on dial up, but it was a it was a pretty cool time.
00:10:04 · Alexa von Tobel, Ben Lamm
[00:10:04] S1: I love that. I'm, like, really giggling that you've been fired from so many jobs and actually were all... [00:10:11] S2: Those were all very early. [00:10:12] S1: Yeah. Those were all very early, but it really, it really charted you towards the fact that you were, like, I'm unemployable, and I should just go [00:10:21] S2: with I'm the most unemployable. I still think I'm unemployable. [00:10:26] S1: But if it makes you feel better, my husband jokes that I'm also unemployable, and... Because I always have to build things. So so may... Maybe maybe they're the same same there. I wanna, just before we get into Colossal, which I'm just epically dying to talk about, it would be, like, silly for me not to mention the fact that you've literally built five other companies, and just I'm gonna name some of them, including... And I'm sure... Sorry. Many others, but five very big ones. Hypergiant, which was acquired by Tribe Capital, Conversable, which is acquired by LivePerson, Chaotic Moon, which is acquired by Accenture. Oh, [00:11:02] S2: I I also got fired by Accenture, to be clear. I I did get fired there too. So I just wanna keep... I wanna be honest and transparent. [00:11:12] S1: I just... I I already love you, Ben. So when we think about just the fact that, like, one day the light bulb went off and you're like, I'm an entrepreneur. And by the way, just a... An incredibly successful one building many businesses that have had many successful exits. When did you know you were an entrepreneur and that you were meant to build things?
00:11:31 · Ben Lamm
[00:11:31] S2: Well, I I tried to do both at the end of college. So I studied finance and accounting in in college, and I was three hours short of having a triple major with international business. And I like I did I did fine in college, but I was also really social. And... But there was it was... There there was this interesting kind of inverse relationship towards my grade... My senior year of grades to balance sheet. So I I was doing consulting. I was using those same tools, right, that I, like, kinda developed... Started to develop in high school and started applying them to e learning. Right? Because it's like that's something people would pay for and that's what large corporations were looking for. And I had this thesis that you could change e reading to, you know, e... True true e learning versus like e reading, which is what it was. It was kinda just black text on a white screen. Right? And so I thought you could do... You could create an emotional connection to the content. And so I wanna... I got it in in a weird series of events. My first real job that I did not get fired from was Genentech, which was a biotech, but I got hired to build their online training stuff. Right? And so it's kinda weird that my newest job is biotech, my first job was biotech, even though I was doing something very, very specific for them. And I was just... And so like, I left Genentech as... I kind of negotiated a deal with my intern boss. They wanted to pay me so much money for three months of work. And I said, well, how much has someone ever done in this role, like, when you hire them? And they're like, oh, they got, like, half of a of a of an online course done. And was like, I'll do three, but as soon as I'm done, you guys have to keep paying me, and I'll just... Like, if I get done in a week, then you have to pay the rest of the summer. That's our deal. And they're like, this is... This guy's an idiot. Sure. So I did it and I just I like... I just grinded in... I was in South City, San Francisco and also in Vacaville. I was in Davis, California, I was just grinding for the first month. And then I took the next two months off because I got everything done, and they were so happy with it that I left the internship. And I left California in August of that year going back into my senior year of college with a, for me at the time, a very large mid 6 figure contract.
00:13:54 · Ben Lamm, Alexa von Tobel
And I was like, oh, I have to start a business because they wanted me to do this for them versus the San Francisco software companies. And they wanted me to help engineer a learning management system. And so I was like, I have ideas on that. So I I I I basically went back to college and stopped going to class and was really just kinda focusing on, you know, engineering. And so so I think that was the moment that I truly knew. I think before that, I was just kind of having fun. [00:14:23] S1: I love it. I I mean, also, you like... First of all, you were like, can I have two months off? I'll just grind really hard. And somehow you were so good at it that they were like, we'll fund... We'll prefund your your your start up for us. Yeah. I mean, that's that's incredible. When you think about the repeat learnings that you've had... And you built businesses in so many different sectors. What do you think you... What what do you think makes an entrepreneur exceptional? Like, now that you have been an exceptional entrepreneur, what's your take on that, Ben?
00:14:59 · Ben Lamm
[00:14:59] S2: I I wouldn't say I'm an exceptional entrepreneur, but I I think that it's a... I I think I have a series of of of... I have the right series of character flaws that come together that make, you know, like, a... Like, I'm I'm very detail oriented. I'm not... But I'm not afraid to delegate, but I'm also not afraid afraid to learn. So I'm very, very curious. So I, like, want to dive into new things. I have a really big desire for both learning new things and working with much smarter people. I've never felt... I've also... You always hear hire smarter people, but I've always felt like a lot of times people... Some people could be intimidated by that. You know, one of the things I'm I'm really good at is telling people what I don't know. Like, I I was on a call earlier today and someone said some word and I was like, I'm so sorry. I don't know what that word means. And and so I I I like to learn things and I like to surround myself with with smart people. I I think that combination and then, you know, I I do think that insatiable curiosity and and I think I know how, you know, now people love to talk about first principles and and dissecting things, but but I've always just found that I'm very curious and I know... I I feel like I'm really good at asking questions. Right? And so I don't know... Like, before we started Colossal, I didn't know how we could go about building this business, but I felt like I I could ask enough questions and probably enough of the right questions that we could figure it out if I had people that could answer those questions. So I've always just kinda taken that approach to everything that I worked on.
00:16:35 · Alexa von Tobel, Ben Lamm
[00:16:35] S1: I mean, you've literally worked in mobile apps, gaming, AI, conversational intelligence, and now biotechnology. [00:16:41] S2: Yeah. And satellites. Yeah. [00:16:42] S1: Yeah. In in satellites. Like, you truly have touched more industries than most people. Yeah. There are. But those are all... But the thing [00:16:49] S2: about them, though, right, is that all of them are, I would say, like, all of them are still somewhat of a systems design that required technology enablement. Right? And so, like, had, like, software is a small contained, you know, system. A software system that has a back end that talks to space is just another... A different type of system. For us to be successful at de extinction or even advanced species preservation and biobanking, you have to have the entire system. Right? And so I I think looking at, like, being able to take a step back and look at the forest for the trees so that you understand what you need, even if I don't understand exactly how to do this. Right? Like, people will be like, well, how do you deliver large cargo into safe harbor sites? And I was like, I don't know. Like, that... I don't know how to do that. Like, that's not my job. Right? But I know that's one of the things that's really important. So we went and found the people to do that. Right? [00:17:49] S1: It almost sounds, Ben, like you are exceptional at, knowing the hard questions to ask.