EIR Live

I had never really thought about the fact that big companies, need that too. I thought, surely, giant companies, fortune fifties, fortune 100, they must know how to do this because, otherwise, how could it be so big? Turns out that they're actually pretty bad at it. So that led to the founding of Relativity Sciences, a company I had for, 14 years. And we did, innovation, intrepreneurship, and customer intimacy for Fortune 5 100.

Welcome to EIR Live, where we dive into the lives and lessons of entrepreneurs in residence. I'm Ilya Tabakh, together with my co host, Terrance Orr, ready to bring you closer to the heartbeat of the innovation and entrepreneurial spirit. Every episode, we explore the real stories behind the ideas, successes, setbacks, and everything in between. For everyone from aspiring EIRs to seasoned pros, EIR Live is your gateway to the depth of the entrepreneurial journey and bringing innovative insights into the broader world. Check out the full details in the episode description.

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Man, what an incredible episode, with with Dan. Dan, the man, the Kevin Bacon of EIRs. And, and I and I think that he he really lived up to that. And, and frankly, I learned way more about the, the number of EIR opportunities that this guy had compared to what I actually thought. We brought a one that, on, on the podcast, so much wisdom, over 40 plus years, that you just can't read in books sometimes.

Right? At this level that that Dan has outlined for us. But I had many more thoughts, man. And I'm blown away. What do you think about Adelia?

Yeah, man. It's crazy. I mean, he's a he's a common node between the 2 of us. Right? You guys work together, and I kept running into him in kind of the climate tech ecosystem.

The cool thing for me is, you know, I've talked to Dan a couple times, including the episode. And we just have so many similarities. And what's cool is I saw you sort of pick it up on some of the you know, he mentioned a little bit just in passing, you know, kinda aviation and liking airplanes, and you were all over that. You know, for me, he got started you know, his first project was, getting started at 10. I I was doing stuff when I was, you know, before I was 10.

And as to your point, you know, everybody's starting stuff. Then he was in methane and, you know, kind of, biosustainability stuff, and that was kind of the first chapter of my career. And so there's this crazy, like, as you pull on all these threads, there's just like, oh, yeah. That's awesome. I've I'm interested in that.

I've done that. And, you know, I think it's it's crazy that, he's a common node between us, just there in the network.

And and and it makes it so interesting because, you know, Dan is one of those people that he's a true definition of a translator. Right? And he's a great translator because he's seen they've been exposed to multiple things, not just in climate, not seeing clean energy, but in biofuels and other things that in woodworking and chopping down things, flying planes. I mean, the, the layer sort of person you become to that sort of exposure and the different companies and ventures and the people you advise or consult, along the way. It just, it, it, it, it really shied through a lot, in, in the episode, how he can go from talking about aviation to, you know, clean energy, to a whole nother thing.

And, and honestly, what I really admire about Dan is that his ability to give back. Yes. He's talked a lot about his positions as EIRs, but if you look at the theme of those, a lot of those positions, it was helping the next generation of leaders and entrepreneurs at universities and other campuses think through how do you actually build a business when you don't come from this background. Traditionally, he talked a lot about scientists. Right?

And wanting to work with those sort of people and give them the business and commercialization skills. So, you know, for me, man, I I just think so many different gems in this episode that people can take away from. How do you give back and pay it forward, while you still build. And I think he's a good example of that.

Yeah. Absolutely. And I mean, ultimately, at the end of the day, 230 companies advised and sort of been involved in more broadly, you know, 16 companies founded or been involved from kinda the ground floor. You just you can't compete with that level of experience. And what's crazy is as to your point, he's just kinda pulling out gems left and right.

You know, you you bring up somebody's like, oh, yeah. That's like that time 25 years ago when or 30 years ago when and I'm like, yeah. Well, that's what it is. So yeah, man. Well, yeah.

Let's let's let's let's jump into it, and then let everybody else hear. But it's, it's crazy, the the the amount of, sort of knowledge and and, breadth of, vision we were able to engage in.

No doubt about it. I feel very honored, to, to do this sort of work and interview people like Dan. And, they're gonna be doing many more of them. So let's get into it and let the people hear.

Alright. Well, I'm I said super excited last time, but, I guess I gotta add a super, super excited because this this really is exciting to have Dan, Goodman on the podcast with us. Dan may just be, the Kevin Bacon of entrepreneurs in residence. And we'll we'll we'll get to we'll get to why I think that, but as as I was starting to talk to EIRs and looking at a lot of deep tech startups, Dan actually popped up a couple times in the advisor page and things like that. And I I haven't run into anybody else yet that that's sort of all over the place.

And so it'd be fun as we kinda get down the episodes here to see, you know, how many degrees of, separation folks have from Dan, to, you know, prove our our theory. But, super excited, to have Dan on the podcast. Dan has has an amazing background, so much so that we had to sort of put it in buckets a little bit. But maybe, Dan, I'd I'd ask you a little bit to to maybe give us your your early background and kinda how you got started with, innovation and entrepreneurship, and then we can kind of dive into it from there.

Great. Well, thanks for having me, guys. It's really exciting to be here with you. So I, I started my first company, I think, when I was 10 years old fixing pinball machines. Ended up, you know, doing that for about, 15 years, had federal contracts and about 500 customers in the DC, Maryland, Virginia area.

Went and got a, electrical engineering degree at University of Maryland. And, along the sort of pinball path, did some some inventing around, adaptive devices for people with disabilities. So I invented a pinball machine you could play with your breath, eyelashes, teeth, or toes that got used for, traumatic brain injury, spinal cord injury rehab around the country. And also, an intraoral computer controlled device for quadriplegics. You could move a mouse with your tongue.

Things like that. Then, you know, I ended up starting some other companies. I've now started, founded or co founded 16 companies over the last 53 years. Through my sort of interest in renewable energy, a lot of those companies were cleantech, climateech kinds of things. And I'll get back to that because that's sort of what I'm focused on now.

But after, I think, 5 or 6 companies, I started thinking about, you know, inventing and, building the company, doing the sales and marketing. It's a long road to go through that whole process. So I got the idea that maybe, licensing a technology from somebody else might be a sort of a shortcut. So I ended up taking a course at, NIH. They have the, a grad school there called the Foundation For the Advanced Education of Sciences.

Took a tech transfer course. One of the speakers was the University of Maryland, tech transfer director. So I went up to him afterwards and volunteered and said, you know, I'd love to learn about how tech commercialization works. I'd be happy to volunteer and do some, you know, industry deals for you, look at the portfolio of licensed technologies, bring a little bit of business perspective to your operations there. So I was the the founding entrepreneur in residence as it were at the, University of Maryland College of Perks tech transfer office.

That was my first, tech transfer experience.

Hey, Dan. Of your 16 companies, how many of them had you done, before kind of the first EIR? You know, kind of 50 years, 16 companies. That's really dense, but I'm curious just kind of the, you know, what what frequency, and and how much experience you had before you kind of dove into the EIR side?

I think it was 6.

Okay. And and and a follow-up question to that, Dan, I I always see a thread in serial entrepreneur's back, which is they started something when they were younger. Doesn't matter what it was. Pinball Machine Company, Lemonade Stand, they sold something with their dad, but they had some early exposure to, you know, the entrepreneurial process and journey even if they didn't know it. And I see that thread as well in your background.

Another thing that I wanna call out, is that the will to raise your hand to do something even when, you know, it wasn't money involved, right? Having the will to actually go to the event, learn something, walk up to the person afterwards because you coulda left like probably half the room did, you know? But the entrepreneurial spirit in you said, I'm gonna go raise my hand and figure out how I can get involved. And that led to your first entrepreneur in residence role as the founding EIR at the University of Maryland which I think is fascinating. So I don't wanna let that thread go from the initiating, raising your hand, doing something early stages and that exposure is also super important that led to your first sort of EIR gig.

So talk to us about you becoming the founding EIR, right, at the University of Maryland. You're in this role now, it's day 1. What what is Dan doing on on day 1 at the University of Maryland? How are you starting to build a foundation for other EIRs in the future that will come into the University of Maryland? What was your job there?

Well, let me answer that in one sec, but I want to say something about what you just mentioned, which was of volunteering. Absolutely. I coach, young folks to volunteer as much as they can in something that interests them. Because, you know, showing up every day, being competent, you know, doing what you're asked, getting the job done, makes you invaluable. So if you're looking for a job or even if you're, you know, more senior, you know, and exploring something new, just volunteering seems to be a really underused, under thought about, vector into doing something interesting that you like.

The other thing that you mentioned was an exposure to entrepreneurship, and that I was lucky in that that my family, back as far as we know, have all been entrepreneurs. So I think you grow up thinking about your work life, from what you hear around the dining room table. And, you know, my father started his own business. My grandfather started one. My great grandfather started one that we know about.

So that's that thoroughly exposure was, I think, really important in my thinking about the world and what what I could do in it. At Maryland, you know, day 1, I spent actually several months, you know, thumbing through the database of technologies because part of my rationale for taking that role was, you know, I'd like to spin something out. I'd like to find a technology that I could run with. But in the meantime, there were over a 1,000 at the time. So that took Wow.

Quite a long time. But I also was learning about, you know, how commercialization works at universities, meeting with faculty, you know, talking to the lawyers, looking at the past deals and seeing how they were structured. So I did that for for some months before I started, trying to help them reach out to industry with technologies that weren't being actively commercialized. Now one of the the secrets of, university tech commercialization is that the staff has very little time. It's often just, like, 4 or 5 days to get acquainted, accustomed to a technology, understand the market space, and then try and go out and find licensees, and before they have to move on.

Because the flow of, disclosures about innovations are so much they so much exceed the capacity of the staff to deal with them. So that I was trying to fill in and help with that.

That's incredible. And just a follow-up question to that, Dan. Can you tell people why tech transfer is even important to universities? Why why would they want to license their technology out to somebody? Can you talk to people about about that very quickly?

Yeah. There was a a congressional act called the Bayh Dole Act. I forget the date, but I think it was the early eighties, mid eighties perhaps, where, Congress decided that the federal dollars in, that were given to companies in forms of grants and sorry, universities in forms of grants should be dual use. Right? They should be, not just for academic knowledge creation, but they should help the economy and the tax base and the employment base for the US by creating companies.

So they they had a mandate if they had taken any federal money to then commercialize that technology. So that was the impetus, but it had since grown into, you know, an engine of economic development. And universities, often grow their regional economies by starting companies that then land nearby, and then, you know, create a virtual cycle of goodness in terms of more students coming in, more tax revenue for the region, more employment, more vibrancy in the in the local economy. So it's it's good all around, and it's something that is, I think MIT was one of the first to really dig into it, but it's now very, very commonplace.

Just curious. So I talk to a lot of EIRs, especially at universities, and there's sort of a whole spectrum of how much structure and how much kinda thought folks had put in, before kind of inviting an EIR. And, you know, I sort of wanna pull this on on question on on a couple of your EIR roles. But but generally, was there a lot of kind of thought on what you would do and how the university would benefit when you came in? Or was it more open ended?

And kinda how did folks think about that?

So initially, the tech transfer office at Maryland, they never had one before. And I I sort of proposed the idea, and they were like, sure. Fine. You know, we're not paying you. Extra help is great.

And it's often like that. You know, I went off and did a short stint at George Mason University as EIR, and that was helping faculty think about commercialization. Came back to Maryland and actually was EIR across different divisions of Maryland for a span of 22 years. So I went from, I licensed the technology out of the Tech Transfer Office and spun up a company, then moved over to the business school, got recruited by them to the, Dingman Center For Entrepreneurship, which is one of the initial, university entrepreneurship centers. Then moved up to the B EIR Emeritus at the Business School, Swiss School of Business across the whole enterprise, then got recruited by the vice president of research and helped him and the president sort of understand commercialization and entrepreneurship, for a few years, became the research development lead for the Lockheed Martin relationship between Lockheed and the university, which was the first sort of giant, blanket agreement that a university had done with Lockheed, Then went back to the business school and and was in the EIR for executive education doing training for companies outside the university.

After that, I actually moved to Columbia University as executive in residence helping faculty postdocs, spin companies out. And and now I'm at, MIT as an advisor for their Proto Ventures. So I've had this sort of winding path through universities. So that's been sort of one track of my my EIR experience.

So let me pull on the thread, Dan, because, you know, I love to find the the through line. You were at EIR, and I think I just wanna underscore this with people is that there is a residence for EIR when they go places. Even inside of a university, your residence is the school that you're catering to, if you will. And Dan has had the privilege to go across the school of business, engineering and almost every other division you can think of. Right?

That matters. And a lot of them matter. Right? At at Maryland. So, but I don't wanna lose the threat of he went he did a quick stint at at George Mason.

Right? And then he went to Columbia and then he's at MIT. Can you give me a quick you know, what led to you taking the EIR role at at Mason? Right? And what made you go back to Maryland?

And how did that lead to you getting the role at Columbia?

Yeah. They're pretty disjoint. There really isn't a a, you know, this

happened. No faster.

Happened then b, then c. I somehow met the director of tech transfer at George Mason, and she said, I am putting together a little group of EIRs to help advise faculty because we're just sort of starting to think about that kind of role. So So that was fairly short. I think that was a year, a year and a half. But it was concurrent with Maryland.

And then Columbia came about through a mutual connection with the executive director, there who suggested my my son was actually going to Columbia at the time. He said, next time you're up visiting your son, go see the executive director. He's a friend of mine. That guy offered me a role there, the executive in residence, which was fantastic, you know, amazing. I had the whole physical sciences portfolio,

Oh, wow.

To deal with. And,

Okay.

Yeah. Some amazing stuff coming out of there. And then, the MIT thing came just through LinkedIn. They they came looking for me.

I just love the thread of I think I I wanna pull out the themes and some of the things that I see. Then one is relationships matter. Friendships matter, and these are relationships that people build over years, you know, decades. And you know, those relationships, that is not the only thing that matters. And also how do you, you know, combine the relationship with the value you can add to an organization or a place and people will find you.

They will seek you out. They will recruit you into the role. So, you know, I don't want to lose the thread of Dan had the skill, but also the relationships matter. And that is a skill that you would need to pull on as a EIR because you're you're pulling so many threads as a translator. And Iolia, I'll pass it back to you, but I wanted to make sure we give the people that that winding road.

No. That's great. Well and and, you know, Dan's already talked about kinda being a entrepreneur, a founder, an EIR. He hasn't talked about being a innovation consultant, yet, but that's sort of an interesting perspective. Maybe spending a little bit of time on on kinda what you found out about, you know, trying to get larger organizations and things like that to be innovative because that's, you know, a lot of EIRs, especially on the corporate side, unlike, the university and things like that, have to sort of build a a new category of muscles.

You know, everybody, is is is doing their chest, then they gotta work on their back. And so, there's not nearly as much expertise there. So maybe if we could talk about that, and then I got a couple more questions after that for you.

Yeah. So at the University of Maryland, Northrop Grumman came to the University. They're one of the sponsors of various engineering things, and, one of the vice presidents came and said, hey. Yeah. We're having a lot of trouble innovating.

We're feeling very calcified. It's, you know, difficult to make decisions, and people are not taking risks. And, have you got somebody that could help us sort that out? And they sent them to me. I ended up, embedded at Northrop Grumman for 8 years as a consultant.

And, part of that time, they called me an EIR. But that, you know, I'd I'd already coached and and mentored and and consulted for dozens and dozens of startups. I had never really thought about the fact that big companies, need that too. I thought, surely, giant companies, Fortune fifties, Fortune 100, they must know how to do this because, otherwise, how could it be so big? Turns out that they're actually pretty bad at it.

So that led to the founding of Relativity Sciences, a company I had for, 14 years. And we did innovation, intrepreneurship, and customer intimacy for Fortune 5 100. I had a crew of about 10 people that worked for me, and we did workshops, training, coaching, consulting, embedding with those companies, and helping them take the the innovative ideas that they they already had and trying to get them over the finish line to get to revenue. Companies had a lot of trouble with that. You know, they'd say, well, we spent 1,000,000 of dollars on on ideation.

Maybe they had an ideation consultant come in, and they have this, this portfolio now of concepts, but, and they want to innovate at the c suite because they go, you know, there's, there's a 15 year old in their basement someplace who's going to eat our lunch if we don't start innovating. Right? You know, the world is changing. We need to we need to start getting fast and lean and thinking about innovation, and they just struggle with it. And once they did the ideation, they had a lot of trouble moving those things through to completion.

So we started doing that. I went and bid one of my staff or myself with the company. We teach them about, you know, customer discovery, about Business Model Canvas, about a lot of the skills of entrepreneurship that convey to intrapreneurship. And a lot of those were, were interpersonal skills, You know, communication, pitching, active listening, empathy, you know, things that they really need to be good at to be a successful entrepreneur. And some of the lessons there were that, the c suite wanted these things, but the middle tier and frontline would resist.

And there'd be corporate antibodies that would try and stop these kinds of innovations from happening because those levels were not incentivized, to make those things happen. Right? If it takes more time or cost resources to do those things, that's not how middle managers got paid. So, we had to work a lot with the c suite on communicating the mindset of innovation and how important it was for the success of the company for this to be successful and then getting the c suite to flow down, metrics that would make it, make folks incentivized to actually help with this rather than fight against it?

Yeah. I actually find a couple of things. I think part of it is the lack of incentives and metrics. But I think also a lot of organizations are set up to manage risk. Right?

And if you're doing something new that you don't have a idea of how it's gonna play out and your, you know, sort of scorecard is for, you know, revenue or, earnings delivery for the quarter or, you know, half year, that's just sort of a risk to execution. And so, it may be that by practicing sort of good execution discipline, right, you're kinda focusing on the things that you know and understand and and can sort of stand behind. And often, that's not the new things. The the other thing is it it sort of hits me that, you know, you're kinda describing the translator role of of an entrepreneur in residence. Right?

A lot of the things we're talking about, you know, to to me, I'm sure to Terrance are, you know, sort of, yeah, that makes sense. I did it, you know, when I did this company, when I was in this role. There's by by sort of the chaotic nature of the trajectory of the career. Right? You've seen pieces.

You've been kind of in the trenches. And so a lot of the you know, startups don't have a choice. They're always intimate with their clients and customers. Otherwise, they don't survive. Right.

And so, just some of these things are interesting to sort of see how you kinda translate. And then I think your point about, you know, organizationally thinking about if the board level wants it, the C suite wants it. You know, ultimately, you have to be aware of the organization and sort of the mechanics within a bigger company to see how do you kinda get everybody to row in the same direction. Because large companies are amazing in that they have a lot of resources and a lot of surface area in the marketplace that they're in, all kinds of other things. But it's very hard to get them to act in a coordinated fashion.

And, you know, culture, all all of these big squishy things, start to kinda be important considerations there. So it's cool that you're, you know, sort of touching at the interfaces of some of those. I think this is maybe a whole other conversation, but just wanted to kinda highlight that, you know, a lot of the things that I hear you saying in passing are really sort of the key for, you know, innovation as a function actually leading to, contributing to meaningful kinda line items on the p and l. Because going from that idea to, hey. We have a new $1,000,000,000 business or, you know, a new thing that's driving earnings for the company for the next x years, that takes a lot of these things that, you know, seem like they shouldn't be as much of an issue as they are in my experience at least.

Yes. And and I'll add on to that to go. I think it's so fascinating with with corporates. Like you said earlier that you said they manage risk. And in many ways that's what entrepreneurship is, right?

You're managing risk, right, on the least amount of capital and resources that you can find to get to the next phase, to live up, to see another day, right? And it's so fascinating to me that that large corporates or big organizations are really good at managing risk internally to their corporate sort of structure. But when it comes to building something new, right, finding their startup DNA again, right, which is how they got started, For whatever reason, they don't wanna take those risks anymore. They don't wanna manage those risks. They only wanna manage the risk that keeps the core intact, which I think is just, is very interesting.

And I think the second piece, which I've seen in every EIR role that I've been in and I've been in 3 of them which is the incentives, right? You just can't incentivize the top and not the middle and not the bottom. You need the people at the bottom to be the infrastructure to your company building the new thing. And if you don't wanna pay them or incentivize them to do so because you don't want them to make more money than you, I don't know if that's a good reason. Right?

So, you know, I just wanted to comment a little bit on those things. I don't know, you've seen it earlier. Dan, you've seen it multiple times. So just wanted to pull on that thread as well.

That's an excellent point. And I've seen that happen a lot where, you know, that salary differential that you might incentivize in a startup person inside your company with scares some of the upper management. But I think one of the major factors that I saw in limiting, big companies abilities to to be entrepreneurial is the fact that they've sort of filtered out in the HR function. They filtered out anybody that hasn't flowed through a very, sort of standard career path to fit the the job description that they're, that they're posed at. So if you've done entrepreneurial things, that doesn't look good to the HR folks.

Right?

They they

kind of screen those out, which is one of the reasons why the vacuum exists for EIRs to step into these kinds of roles because they don't have a lot of people inside who have done entrepreneurial things. So when it when they have an initiative that they want, an innovation initiative that's trying to move forward, and they're trying to find staff to lead it, they're often there's often nobody there. So, anyway, that, gives guys like us something to do.

Yeah. No. Absolutely. You know, what's funny is, like, it's so many different kind of experiences and so many different roles. I always like to and then we've kinda like to ask folks the question of, you know, what would you tell kind of your past self, now that they know knowing what you know?

Because it's amazing that you can kinda distill, insights and and experiences from from all kinds of different, touch points across your career. You were saying, you know, in more than 50 years founding companies and doing all these things. What what would you tell past Dan, from from kind of some of these insights you've gained?

There's 3 things that I that I think I might tell my younger self. 1 is, you know, what's now common practice is customer discovery. So I invented some things. I had an engineering company for about 15 years. And, yeah, some of those were products that I had dreamed up, but didn't do any customer discovery and ended up spending lots of money, lots of time making things that nobody wanted.

In part because, you know, they were technically interesting and challenging, so it was fun for me as an engineer. But that's a terrible way to decide what to build. So customer discovery would be 1. The other would be, you know, vet partners better. People that you're gonna go into business with just do a deeper dive than I did as a younger guy, in terms of their work styles, their desires, you know, what it is they really want out of that partnership, and, you know, to be a detective and figure out, you know, how they behaved and treated prior folks that they worked with.

I think that would have been useful. And then I think the third is just not to worry as much. Right? You know, and not, maybe not get so excited about the thing when things are going great and not get to get so unhappy when things are going badly because, really, it's life is both long and short. But it's hardly ever worth the worry.

Yeah. It's, you know, it's really hard. When I coach and talk to entrepreneurs, I remind them that this is probably not the last deal you're working on. Yeah. Right?

Because, in in in even in, like, university commercialization, everybody gets so laser focused on, you know, squeezing the last drop of water out of the turnip. And and some folks are personality or whatever. That's that's just kinda how they focus. But it it's it's sort of I don't know what else other than sort of the benefit of time, gives you that perspective of life as both short and long. Right?

But I think that's actually, like, a really critical, you know, part of the reason why, I've talked to some of my VC friends that they like to invest in 2nd and third time founders is, you know, some of that you can't learn or it's much harder to learn from everybody else because, you know, humans aren't, exactly the most exquisite listeners. And so when somebody tells you that this is the hardest thing I've ever had to do, you're like, oh, that sounds bad. And, you know, somebody's having a flashback in their mind, very different experience for them. Right? But I'm just curious how you how you know, you found an effective way to kind of help that message land?

Because I I've advised a couple folks with that. Like, you know, think about, obviously, this deal, this company, but don't forget this is not probably your last deal in your life. And and so you know? And some folks take that and and sort of run with it, and other folks, you know, it goes doesn't even go through or near. Just curious on kinda your experience.

Yeah. I think it's it's the same, is some people can integrate that a bit, and some can't. I mean, I have 2 adult children, and I have, you know, coached them about don't worry as much. Right? It seems like this is the most critical thing that's ever gonna happen, but it's not.

Mhmm. You know, it's, and I'll add on to that is that it's all said and done. 1st time founders don't know what they don't know until they get punched in the face. Right? And in 2nd and 3rd or 4th and 5th time founders, if you're 6th time founders, if you're a Dan.

Right? And they know the barrel of complexity that they're about to go down, in in this journey. And and they they're humbled by it and and understand that they need help and mentors and resources along the way to build the the everlasting company that they they hope to build. And and Dan, you talked about, you know, a few minutes ago about how you used to dream up things, right, in your engineering company. And and I'm gonna ask you to dream a little bit with us on the podcast today, and and talk about your dream EIR role.

You've had a bunch of them, right? But if Dan had a choice to pick the one that he wanted, the organization that he wanted, where would Dan go? What would be the dream EIR role?

Well, I think you know the answer to that, but I'll tell you anyway for for everyone's benefit. I I had, several years ago, I had some deep discussions with the, the secretary of the Smithsonian and the chief financial officer about being an EIR for the Smithsonian Institution, which is an amazing organization. Most people only sort of know about the museums, but it's it's a far flung entity with, you know, astrobiology and media companies and all kinds of other stuff. So it's an it's an incredible amalgamation of different enterprises. So, I've been coaching, actually, the the director of exhibits, head person for all the exhibits for all the museums for a couple of years, and that's how I got into the castle, as it were, to see the secretary.

But that didn't work out, unfortunately, but that that would have been great. That was, kind of, my my ideal gig. And I the other one is kinda weird, but, there's a F16 squadron that protects, the capital in DC called the Capital Guardians. And when I was at Norfolk, the vice president that I reported to was the honorary commander. And that's kind of an EIR role.

It's sort of an advisor, community liaison kind of person that can teach the squadron something or, you know, bring them new ideas from outside their bubble. And I was on deck to be that honorary commander, and they get they take you up in an F-sixteen trainer and let you fly it for about 15 minutes. And I'm I'm a big fan of flying jets. Wow. I've copiloted a few, private jets and stuff.

So I was really excited about that, but it didn't work out. The actual commander retired, so I didn't get to follow my vice president's seat.

Yeah. You're in the aviation too. We have so much more in common than I thought. Oh, we're gonna geek out one day on on planes and engines and everything else. Okay.

Fair enough. That's that's really cool. You just taught me something, by the way, so for everybody's benefit, I I did not know about the the capital, guardians. So, you know, that's what this podcast is for, knowledge and to learn different things. So, thank you for sharing that, Dan.

And who knows, you know, they might listen to the podcast and and go, hey. We we have some things over here for you to do, you know, if if you're open.

It it it's amazing how things like that sometimes come around. I'm curious, actually, just to kinda pull on the thread a little bit. So dream EIR roles, love those. First of all, I didn't know about the Capital Guardians either. How do you see kind of the the EIR role, you know, kinda transforming or, translating or whatnot developing over time?

You know, before it was sort of an interesting, you know, university role, things like that. But, how do you see this developing, you know, kind of in the future going forward, especially with sort of all of the different, at bats or so that you've you've had, in that role?

I think it's important to think about the trajectory of the role from original, VC based EIRs, you know, where somebody would cash out of a a portfolio company in VC, and the VC would then, keep them sort of in house, let them mentor, other portfolio CEOs, and then maybe slot them into a company that needed a more experienced one as the company matured. And then the universities picked it up and then government. So there are, you know, government agencies that have including Department of State, that have EIRs in them. So I think that the areas that I have not seen a lot of EIR penetration into have been sort of mid tier companies. And then, recently, I thought about private schools.

You know, my my wife just retired after 25 years at a private school. And, you know, they need to say plight businesses in order to survive in an economy where less and less people are willing to spend the kind of money that it takes to put kids through private school. So I think, an EIR role there would help them think about revenue and alternate opportunities in different ways.

Awesome. Yeah. No. That that that's great to to kind of think about.

It is. And, you know, Dan, I'm I'm sitting here, and I'm I'm thinking about all the things that that that you've done. I've I learned a ton every time I talk to you. It feels like I can talk to you for 3 hours. The the the one thing that I I love to ask people, because we're as humans, you know, we we work, you know, in the world that we work in, we also have personal lives and all the other things.

We're layered people. You know, I wondered if you can tell us something about yourself, Dan, that isn't on your resume that I just can't find on on late then, like the aviation thing, you know, or other things that you might what what is something that we can't find on your resume, Dan, that that you like to share with people?

I used to blow glass, and I was taught beginning glass blowing at the Nice. National park called Glen Haven. And, my hobby is cutting up trees. I I have a sort of industrial sawmill, and I just, you know, my wife asked me many years ago for a live edge dining room table, which she still hasn't gotten because I sort of fell in love with the process of cutting trees up into lumber and slabs. So I now have rented a number of my neighbors' garages to keep all of the slabs in.

So I apparently like to do the cutting more than I do, the making.

Okay. That is a really cool hobby. I I got a chance to see glass blowing in in Denver and I was fascinated. I was like, woah. This guy I thought the guy was gonna burn himself or something.

I didn't know what was gonna happen, but it was just a fascinating process to see, people do glass blowing. So to know that that's something that you did. And solid trees, I would have never got that. You know, dead of wood and everything else, that's that's really cool. Sounds like a really good hobby, but I I don't wanna go down the rabbit hole on that.

So I'm gonna I'm gonna let you I'm

gonna let you go. Is a good thing. The the the the rabbit hole we could go down that's maybe a little bit more relevant is, you know, what are what are you tinkering on and kinda working on recently? You kinda mentioned Climate Tech earlier in your intro. Would it be awesome to spend, you know, a few minutes, talking about what have you been kinda working on more recently and excited about, and kinda learning more about, you know, how you're using all all your experience and and background in in your current work.

Yeah. So I mentor climate tech startups for a whole a number of, incubators around the world. And for NYSERDA, New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, I've been an entrepreneur in residence for them for more than 5 years, I think. And I've been helping those companies, and now these are not all climate tech, but I'm now up to 230 companies I think I've mentored, advised, or consulted for. But over the last 5 or 6 years, it's been purely climate tech companies.

And in helping them raise funds and prep for pitching and setting up their operations, doing hiring, thinking about project management, all that stuff. I realized about 3 years ago that I should be investing in them myself. So I started something called Sandy Spring Climate Partners and we invest in deep tech climate companies. So 90% of those are PhD first time entrepreneur founders. So, that's kind of become my specialty is, you know, scientists transitioning to entrepreneurship roles because there's a sort of special mindset shift that has to happen, and some special thoughts about how you hire and staff to be successful that are a little more challenging for scientists than for, business people.

And I've been very, very fortunate to work with some fantastically smart and, you know, emotionally intelligent, very advanced, CEOs. And I think that's interesting to me anyway because, you know, 30 years ago, the faculty that I would deal with at universities who were commercializing were, you know, pretty, on the whole, fairly egocentric. I heard a lot of stuff like, you know, if you were smart, you'd be a scientist like me. Business is easy. I could read a book and do what you do.

And most of those guys did make it. But and that was in part because, academics as a whole viewed commercialization and business as defiling the ivory tower. And that has gone away. Right now, the folks that I work with are typically, you know, in their early thirties, and they have grown up in a world where commercialization makes sense because it brings the the creational knowledge to benefit the greater good, to benefit humanity through commercialization. And that that's a beautiful thing, and it makes sense to them that that it's a lot dirty.

Business is not evil. So that's that's been a really interesting transition to watch in the culture of academia.

Yeah. And it's, you know, I I benefited from spending the first chapter of my career in academia, and I did it a little later than than you, at least on the first kind of encounter. And so a lot of the things I was exposed to were things like Icore and NSF also looking at, you know, how can, you help faculty and academics at least communicate if not commercialize. For sure. And so, I'm I'm not sure that I'm in full agreement that it's completely gone from the academy, some of the things that you've described.

But I think what what's happened is it's created a whole, you know, kinda pocket and group of people that are excited about, commercializing, communicating, and definitely a more approachable and and and considerate move. But yeah. In in in my experience on the climate tech side, as you think about these folks kinda going later stage, there there's all kinds of other things that you have to do when you deliver, you know, what I call heavy metal company is ultimately when, folks put things that are metal in the ground, that, you know, it it's amazing to watch these folks that, kinda matriculate out of academia, ultimately start to understand, you know, what are some of the things that we have to do, but how their companies kind of evolve as they, you know, prove their technology through pilot, then ultimately have to go do an integrated demonstration on-site. And then start to talk about and think about project finance, and institutional capital, and bankability. And Yeah.

You know, many of the things engineers don't really, as as a normal, role, think about. And it's just it's such a, you know, symphony, such a multidisciplinary, engagement. It's interesting to sort of see how that evolves. And I am I am a little bit, you know, kind of encouraged that folks are learning to translate and spending a little bit of time in different camps. You know?

And I and I think, ultimately, that enables us to to do some really some really interesting things. I guess, maybe to pull on the on the kind of your current work thread, you know, hopefully, what we're, you know, trying to do through the podcast is connect kind of the network of EIRs together. And so, you know, one of my favorite startup questions is always, you know, what can we do to help? But, hopefully, you know, with with the kind of the podcast and some of the work that we're doing in in reaching out to EIRs, we can, you know, make that sort of an EIR live, EIR network concept. Absolutely.

So maybe what can, you know, as we kind of build the EIR network, what can that network help or do to help kind of what you're working on?

Yeah. Well, I think it's being able to make a warm introduction into, corporates that might need something that some of these portfolio companies that either mentor or invest in are producing. And we have companies that are energy storage, carbon capture and conversion, material science, you know, bio materials, bioplastics, some other things like that. So, yeah. So those introductions are really valuable and often hard to are defined through LinkedIn.

So it would be great to be able to have that network that, that I could tap into there. And then, you know, always looking for folks interested in, you know, accredited investors interested in the, in helping with climate emergency.

That's really good to know, Dan. And and I think that the the last thing we want to we want to know is how can these people connect with you? Right? How can our listeners follow you, connect with you, reach out if they wanna sort of get to know you, have an intro call and try to build that relationship?

Yeah. LinkedIn is one way.

Okay.

And the other is through Sandy Spring Climate Partners which is ssclimatemartners.com.

Okay. Dan, it's been an honor and privilege, to have you, on on on the show. Man, I I might have to bring you back for a part 2. We're gonna have to bring you back for a part 2 because I wanna hear about, you know, once you have your feet planted at MIT, the things you're working on there and the other things that you're seeing in the DTech world working with climate startups, which I think is truly a way we can deploy impact at scale in the world, working with climate companies. So thank you for the work that you do there, and thank you for joining us.

It's been a privilege.

Thank you, guys. It's been a great pleasure. And I, whenever I talk to you guys, I feel like I'm in the bosom of brothers at arms in in entrepreneurship and EIR hood.

That's right. That's right. But there you have it.

Awesome. Always a great time.

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