Episode 05 - Intentional Chaos: Building a Portfolio of Impact with Musaddeq Khan (MK)

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

Kids like me around me in college. I was really young and I remember like being really like homesick, but having to adjust sort of each time through that process gave me a little bit of grit. I think I could readjust and recalibrate anywhere from there on. And therefore, every time there was a job loss, when I'm building companies, there were, as you know, like when you're building companies, you're running out of money, your employees are leaving you, your customers are, leaving you, your product is not coming to market the time you said you thought it would. So all these challenges you're having to constantly recalibrate.

Ilya Tabakh:

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.

Ilya Tabakh:

Subscribe to stay updated, and join us as we uncover what it takes to transform visions into ventures. Welcome aboard. Let's grow together.

Terrance Orr:

Alright. Welcome to another episode of EIR Live. We're here with my co host, Ilya Tabak, and our esteemed guest, who I like to refer to as MK. Right? And you'll learn a lot more about MK on on the podcast episode today.

Terrance Orr:

It's been a long time coming, my friend. Thank you for coming on to, the show. Thank you for for coming and willing to share your journey, with our audience. And I could introduce MK, and I I can take 3 days to do it because his track record is just that long. But I won't be able to do him justice like he can do himself and introduce himself to talk about his background, his early days, right, and walking us through his career journey today from his entrepreneurship, you know, endeavors in the Wow to moving into helping out the ecosystem, helping corporates as well, and then actually moving back and taking a step back and helping people, the next generation of entrepreneurs, you know, focus on their businesses and companies and how they can scale and grow.

Terrance Orr:

MK, I won't delay the people any longer. Can you give us a brief introduction of your background and and and upbringing and how you got to where you're at today?

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

Thank you for having me, first of all, Ilya and, Terrance. Super stoked to be here. MK stands for what it doesn't stand for is Michael Kors. Not to confuse not to confuse that. But, this, stands for Musadegh Khan.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

That's my full name. When I came to the US, I came to the South and most people had a hard time pronouncing a 3 syllable name. So I decided to go by MK just to break the ice. I'll tell you a little bit about myself, a little bit about me, sort of my personal background and my professional background. My heritage is from Bangladesh.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

That's where I was born. I never really lived there long enough to really become a true sort of culturally ingrained into that culture, simply because of, the challenges within the, within the country itself, politically, economically. And so my father, who's an engineer, decided to move to Iraq, back in 1975, 76, around that time. And that's kind of where I lived for the first half, for the first few years of my life. Unfortunately, the same thing happened.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

Iraq Iran war hit, and then we had to move out again, and then we moved to Kuwait. And that's where I kind of grew up for up until about 16 years old. And then 1990, the invasion of Kuwait happened. We were again all displaced. And then we had to move there.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

I moved to Bangladesh for a little bit, and then came back and settled in the United States, went to school here for college, initially at University of South Alabama in Mobile, and then transferred to Georgia State University, where I finished my bachelor's there under the Robinson College of Business. And from there, basically, you know, I started working as a software engineer for a startup. Initially, I started actually, started working for a really big company and that, I could not really get myself acclimated to the culture, to the corporate politics, did not stay there for more than I think a few months, and then found a job at a startup, went to work there. 8 months later, that startup went belly up from the dotcom bust, and then sort of we were out of a job. And so from there, I decided to go and work for another startup, but it was a little bit of a growth stage startup and was there for 2 years.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

The 9:11, event happened, and then again, was laid off. And so then I decided that I really didn't want to keep on doing this rigmarole around this corporate, you know, lifestyle going from job to job. I wanted to sort of chart my own future. And so partnered up with some really amazing people and decided to start a company, which was in really around revenue and collections, but around the small to medium hospital systems.

Ilya Tabakh:

Hey, MK. Be be be be be before we go too far there, one of the things, you know, I so I I moved from Moscow to the US when I was 7. And so in that process, you know, a name like Ilya in Kansas City, is is is also, interesting. I sort of stuck it out a little bit. But but one of the things that I noticed is it was always helpful for me to sort of know that there's at least 2 or 3, you know, kind of cultural and geographic and sort of these different perspectives you can look at at a problem, or or at a really any situation.

Ilya Tabakh:

Right? And it seems like in your sort of upbringing, in your foundation, you know, you had a lot of different lenses you can sort of pull out. And and even in sort of the early big companies, start up, you know, there's a couple other lenses that you put in. Can you talk a little bit about, you know, how you see that kind of playing out and whether you, you know, sort of see it the same way that I do or not. I just I've noticed that's been sort of a powerful tool for me.

Ilya Tabakh:

I'm curious how it sort of has landed for you.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

Yeah. I think the there are 3 things that really played a big role in terms of my sort of personal and professional journey. One is this constant moving around and having to constantly recalibrate, and sort of like, even as a child, when you're moving around, there's a lot of like, you know, people don't see it. Of course, the adults are, you know, trying to deal with it differently, but, you know, kids are looking at it, and they're trying to reframe their mind. What are they supposed to think about it?

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

Obviously, they don't have the same pressures as an adult does, you know, in terms of how am I gonna, you know, sort of protect my family, raise my family, and raise my children, put them through school, whatever. But kids are sort of going through that same sort of recalibration each time. And so I I've had to recalibrate a number of times, but the one that I remember the most vividly is when I came to the US, pretty much on my own. My family was left behind, and it was just, you know, kids like me, around me in college. And I was pretty I was I was really young, and I remember, like, being really, like, homesick, but having to adjust sort of each time through that process sort of gave gave me a little bit of grit.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

I think I could readjust and recalibrate anywhere from there on. And therefore, every time there was a job loss or there was, when I was when I'm building companies, there were, as you know, like when you're building companies, you're running out of money, you know, your your your employees are leaving you, your customers are leaving you, your product is not coming to market the time you said you thought it would. So all these challenges you're having to constantly recalibrate, and that sort of sort of background of recalibration every time, I think gave me that sort of grit to, to be able to do it and saying that, okay. It's okay. Let's restart.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

All is not lost. Let's keep going. That was a major part of that. The other thing is, Ilya, I'll tell you is, like, I like to call myself the product of the American South, because, I am for for everyone listening now that I'm 50 years old, half a century, on this planet, and 34 years of those I have spent in in the United States, and most of them or all of them, I have lived in the South Alabama and then Georgia. And, I like to say I'm a southern boy.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

I don't know if you can tell by my accent. I love I love grits. I love Waffle House. Right? So there you go.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

I started my first company in 2002, you know, left that, exited that in 2005, then did a bunch of little roles here and there around product and rolling, commercializing product and managing product. And then started my 2nd startup in 2,008, which is around the great recession. And so took advantage at the time where everybody was leaving the job, leaving their jobs. And people think like, okay, when recessions or depressions or any kind of economic turmoil happens, is it a good time is to start a job to to start a company or look for a job? And I think those are the best times to start companies because that's where you find amazing resources that are looking for work.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

And that's the time where you kind of, and through those kind of recessions, a lot of things have come up that if you can really listen in into the market, for example, when the recession great recession happened, the ARRA act was enacted. A part of that was this $11,000,000,000 going into this energy market, and really, you know, sort of upgrading the American electric grid and rolling out the smart devices, like smart meters and in home devices and all of that. And there was a ton of things going on there. And so I decided to take advantage of that and really built this first public cloud system in the utility space where we could manage huge amounts of data that was gonna be sort of coming out of these, you know, smart meters and smart devices. That company was eventually acquired in 2014 by one of the meter manufacturers out there.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

Funny, like, we were actually the first company that was selling a product in the utility space that was used to this huge sort of enterprise products with 1,000,000 of dollars, and we were selling the 1st SaaS product, in that space through the, you know, through the through the AWS cloud back in the day, where it was not much known. And we we were selling it sort of an app you know, like an app based, system. And we were called like the Itunes of the smart grid. That was a that was a great thing that, you know, we kind of, sort of latched onto. From there, I went and started a number of other companies that was kind of like 5050 success.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

But really, I started working into within corporate innovation. Started with the first one was with Best Buy. I remember, you know, sort of when Best Buy was about to go out of business, where, you know, at the time where they were getting their, you know, sort of, lunch eaten by Amazon, Circuit City, Montgomery Ward, Sears, if you remember back in the day, it was kind of like getting, like, disrupted. And the question was, will Best Buy be around? And so they had to they had to change.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

They had to rethink. And so I was within this group of people where they're trying to bring all of Best Buy's products online in a way that could be distributed around the world by anybody. And so, basically, we build this $120,000,000 API business, you know, just by exposing, all of Best Buy's infrastructure from distribution to payments to, you know, SK, you know, product SKUs and all of that. So that was amazing. And then after that, I got this sort of, real amazing, experience around.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

Okay. This is, I guess, this is interesting.

Terrance Orr:

Let me ask you a question, MK, before you go into the to to to the next part because I have a I have a few threads, right, that I that I like to sort of grab as you're as you're walking through, which is, you know, your upbringing across, you know, 3 different places. You get to the US in in the South. Right? You go to Georgia State, you graduate from the School of Business. But to be clear for our audience, you know, MK, you know, majored in information systems, and did some work in engineering as well, right?

Terrance Orr:

Where he got his early chops, right, from from the school around, you know, building technology based and software based products, essentially. And and in that experience, talk to us about you started talking about your first company and your second company, right, which was Acquire. Talk to us about your experiences in product management. Right? And how did those experiences help you?

Terrance Orr:

Right? As you were, like, going back and forth between starting companies in the wild, right, and taking on product roles as well. Did the product management role help you sort of in is helping to form those companies a little bit better as you continue to learn more and shape yourself as an entrepreneur?

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

Yeah. I think at heart, I am a product person. I'm a product guy. And what I mean by that is sort of like, it's not the skill sets that I have that makes me that. It's my mindset of how I look at a product or a solution.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

And that is through the lens of the customer and the problem. And so most people out there are trying to build features where I'm trying, I'm focusing on what is gonna be the outcome of what I'm building and how is gonna really help my end user or my customer. And that sort of mindset when I'm starting a business and a company, going out there and having conversations with my potential users or customers, I'm not trying to sell them a product. What I'm trying to sell them on is their problem, and they're, sort of like what they're where they're trying to get to. What does that end goal look like, and then coming back from that and sort of building that the most models version of that to test out and experiment and run experimentation within the customer premise.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

And that's what I'm doing now with Nokia Ventures as well, is kind of like talking with customers, really understanding where they are, where they want to go, and how we can take them you know, on that journey through that process and solve that problem through what we're offering.

Terrance Orr:

Absolutely. And, you know, before you before you go to Nokia, we're definitely gonna circle back to, to, to to Nokia Ventures. But there's there's a few things that that you said in there. 1, I like the the thing that you being adaptable for moving around and having to reinvent yourself in different ecosystems and geos and around different people made it a lot easier for you to go out. Not that it was easy, but made it a little bit digestible to go out and have those customer conversations to to uncover deep pain that these people were facing and to try to figure out a value proposition that you can position against those pains and problems that they were that they were facing.

Terrance Orr:

Right. I believe that a lot of the folks that we start to interview, you know, on EIR Live, they have this this this this threat of being adaptable, being forced to reinvent themselves in new environments. Right. And not being afraid to take the leap and raise their hand, right, for certain things. And we've already sort of uncovered a bit of that about you.

Terrance Orr:

Hey. I could have took a job, right, in 2008, but instead, I just started to go and create them and start my own company. Right? Like, it's it's that risk taking, the appetite that you build up over time, as an entrepreneur. And I just don't wanna lose that thread, MK, in in in your background.

Terrance Orr:

But you're about to go to the next part.

Ilya Tabakh:

Hold on. I got I got one more question.

Terrance Orr:

There you go. Ilya, lean in please.

Ilya Tabakh:

No knowing something about selling to utilities, you know, and kind of taking that product mindset, I'm curious in sort of your second start up. What did you learn about, you know, the anytime you say Itunes for cloud and utility, for start up and technology folks, that's super exciting. For operations folks, that's scary. Right? It's new.

Ilya Tabakh:

It's different. My phone crashes. What happens? You know, I just wanna kinda pick at that a little bit because I'm sure there's a couple learnings that you that you were able to sort of figure out from 2008 to 2014 that I'm hoping that you can share a little bit of that with us.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

Yeah. That's great. So I I will just say so the first thing is, like, when I talk about iTunes, I'm talking about not the solution itself, but the business model. So utilities are, really big structures in in the in the United States. The utility market is really sort of big and fragmented in many ways, and there are a lot, but there are only a very, very small group of vendors that actually sell into it, but they sort of monopolize it in ways where they sell really, really big solutions, where like only 20% of that solution may be applicable to the customer at one point at at any point, but the customer has to pay upfront and, you know, spend all this budget.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

And there are reasons for that. There's CapEx and all that stuff. But what we decided to do was we decided that we wanted to go after this small segment of utilities, specifically the cooperatives, where they didn't have big budgets. They didn't have big IT departments. And and this is like this goes into sort of like, you have to sort of understand your customer segment and customer niche and how they operate in order to really sort of, you know, build a business around that, you know, ecosystem of that segment.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

And so when we said Itunes, we said, hey, these utilities, these cooperatives, they have the same problems as this other big investor owned utilities or big municipalities, but they may not have the whole budget. At the same time, they're they wanna solve the same problems of reliability and efficiency. And so we said, what if we only sold them what they needed to solve at that point in time? So for example, if they wanted to do outage management or outage analysis or blink analysis for that matter, let's sell them only that part of the solution, and then charge them only for that part of the solution, instead of trying to sell them the whole big platform and say, you have to you have to buy the whole thing whether you use it or not, but, you know, and if you when you decide to use it later, you you don't have to pay later, but you have to pay up right now. And we said, no.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

Let's not we don't wanna do that. We wanna charge for this problem that they're solving and the solution that we'll be delivering to solve that specific problem. That's how that came. The other thing, Ilya, is interesting that I've learned over the last 18 years in the utility space or regulated space or any regulated body, There's 2 things that really drive regulated bodies to really move, move and, you know, buy or make decisions. 1 is what I call the carrot and the stick, right?

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

So for example, very recently, I went and worked as a chief product officer for a company called Blue Conduit, where these 2 professors from University of Michigan, you know, built this machine learning model where you could identify the lead service lines underground. Right? Before that, you know, in the city of Flint, for example, where people were dying of lead poisoning, there were engineering firms going out there and digging everywhere. And then sometimes they would find it, sometimes they wouldn't, and that rate was about 15%. Right?

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

That means a if they dug a 100 times, they only found a lead service line or a pipe 15 of those times, and the other 85 times they didn't, but the utilities or the municipalities or the city would still have to pay up because the digging cost money. So these, these professors came up with a way where they could actually do it with predictive modeling, and that success rate was about 85 or 90%. And so, you know, we went there, you know, I was sort of helping them sort of bring bring that product to market, but what I really learned was there's 2 things that drive so one was a carrot, actually, let's let's start with a stick. So the stick was, the government said by October of 2024, we're in October 2024, amazingly, this was 2 years ago, every water municipality, which is about 56,000 of them, must come up with a inventory of all their service lines that are servicing their customers. Right?

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

Now, the challenge with that is all of these municipalities, these 56,000 municipalities, most of their records are not digitized. Right? They have paper records, and many of them, ironically, is has water damage or something like that. You know, it's in the basement somewhere.

Ilya Tabakh:

And not only that, a lot of them have, you know, when you build something, you get sort of your engineering drawings. You may be lucky that you get as builts, but then you sort of maintain and replace. And then in many cases, municipalities don't have this as much, but definitely utilities do. They merge and you sort of bring together different entities. And so, you know, that's also there's there's a bunch of other variables.

Ilya Tabakh:

But without a doubt, like, the knowing what you have in your either collection or distribution system is a huge problem, especially as folks are, you know, trying to kind of turn that that system more modern. So definitely hear you there.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

Yeah. So so that was that was a stake. Right? Like, if they don't come up with that inventory by the set time, that they will face penalties. Right?

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

That so that was a stake. Now the carrot part of that was the Biden administration through the infrastructure, jobs and investment Investment and Jobs Act, the IIJA, and then the Inflation Reduction Act, basically allocated about, I think, initially, 15 to 20,000,000,000 dollars that they said, hey. If you produce an inventory and you can show us that you have service lines to replace the poisonous lead service lines, we will give you money from that, you know, from that grant. So there was this carrot and a stick. And so in the regulated bodies, when there's these two things can sort of colliding together, you know, coming together, is where the opportunity is.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

And so in the, you know, ARRA act, like I said, there was this $11,000,000,000 going out to the utilities that, hey. There's money here. You can, you know, take advantage of this and upgrade your grid and all of that. But then the other part of that was they also said, by the way, you know, you cannot raise rates. That means you cannot just go willy nilly raise rates on your customers, so their revenue was very, very, you know, becoming sort of limited in some ways.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

And that's happening today even. Right? Like, the government is saying, hey. Climate change is happening, whether you believe it or not, do you know, carb, you know, carbon, carbonization is happening. We need to decarbonize, and therefore, you cannot just go and build more power plants.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

We're not gonna let you do that. Also, you cannot, you know, just build more wires and then charge your customers in in a through the rate plan, because we're not gonna let you do that. However, though, if you wanna go and build non wire solutions, like you wanna serve your customers through microgrids, maybe battery storage, you know, you know, through these other means of wind and solar, rooftop solar, and you wanna do it that way, we're we we'll have we're happy to give you grants to do that. And so that kind of carrot and stick is still there, and so that's where you sort of find your niche and your segment that that that wants to take advantage of that and provide solutions there.

Ilya Tabakh:

Yeah. Awesome. Thanks for letting us, kinda defer. I just didn't wanna miss, you know, that that's a really interesting and weird field, and so I didn't wanna just gloss it over. But, Terrance, I'll, toss it back over to you to take us forward here.

Terrance Orr:

I really like that story, MK, because it shows that you can do a role as a chief product officer or advising a company on product that's truly gonna deploy impact at scale, not just for the business, but for the residents and the people who was experiencing that problem on the actual ground. And and I like to think that entrepreneurs like yourself and others that we've sort of, like, engaged on the podcast, they also, like they get a high from going to solve those sort of problems, you know, in in the world, things that are gonna actually be impactful to people. And and you started to touch on something that I love to bring up when I'm talking, coaching different founders, which is there's a few reasons why people do business with you or will do business with your startup or your company. 1, you're helping them to make more money. You're helping them save money.

Terrance Orr:

You're helping meaning you're reducing costs. Or the third one that I like to say is you're helping them stay out of jail, right, or be more compliant. Right? And and, you know, the timing is also an important aspect of this because that that act that had just passed, that that made 11,000,000,000 available at the same time you were solving that problem in the company that you were doing at the time, right, made it a happy medium. Right?

Terrance Orr:

But sometimes you just have to go and get started. Right? And the the other pieces will start to fall into place around you. So I think great great on you and and your cofounders and the team, for 1, seeing that around the corner, being able to look around corners, finding a way to use a very regulated industry and and process to actually capitalize on that to solve a problem, but also move the business forward. So you just touched on a a few of those things.

Terrance Orr:

But lastly, you left off talking about the chief product role, the work you had done around building the API business up, you know, at Best Buy. Now let's talk about the bridge. Right? Talk to talk to us about your first entrepreneur in residence role, that that you took on not long after, you know, you left the Best Buy role or you've done things before that at Itron Idea Labs. Could you talk to us about that that experience?

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

Actually, that's a very special role that I will never forget, and I'll tell you the reason in a minute. But going back to what you were saying is, like, you know, being a founder, being an entrepreneur is about be willing to be uncomfortable, and willing to be okay with ambiguity and risk. And that's, that's the, that's, that's what it takes if you really want to be a founder and willing to fail, many, many times over and over again, and willing to be wrong. After I sold my second company, which was to a, one of the largest meter manufacturers, in the United States, a company called Sensus. And by the way, if you live in Georgia, and if you go in your power producer is Georgia Power, if you go outside your house and look at your smart meter, it'll say Sensus FlexNet.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

That's the that's the company that acquired my company, and all of their analytics on the back office that happens is through the product we built, and that's what they acquired. So, after I sold that, I had a little bit of, there was non compete. I couldn't I could not work with for some of their competitors. 2 years after that, I I was approached by a company called Itron, which is really the the big 800 pound gorilla in the utility space, around, smart around metering, smart metering, IoT devices, and such. And Itron said, hey, you did this.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

You sold it to sensors. We're trying to build this. Come on, join us. I said, okay. Sounds like a plan.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

I could do it. So I went into Itron corporate. And 3 months later into the into the job, I came to the realization I could not do it. I could not do it because everybody thinks, oh, that startup did it. We should be able to do it.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

What they don't realize is that most big companies cannot get out their own way to to really do something innovative. Right? Because VPs gotta keep their jobs, some, you know, directors gotta keep their budget, The technology stack, even though it's legacy, can be changed because if it's changed, then somebody's not gonna have their job anymore or not gonna be relevant anymore. And so being willing to really do the hard things, like, I think Ben Horowitz talks about it in his book about the hard things about hard things, where he faced multiple times, you know, like debt, you know, almost close to death of the company at Opsware. And then each time he came out of it, willing to do the hard thing and making tough changes is something that, you know, that I realized that they were not willing to do, and I was not going to be around.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

And so I decided to not to not to be around, But around the same time that was happening, a gentleman by the name of Roberto Aiello, and that's this is this is the person I wanna really call out, Roberto Aiello. He's no longer with us. He passed away last year. He was my coach and mentor. And, you know, he saw me for who I am and what I am and sort of how I operate.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

And he said, MK, you are here at Ituran at the right time, but you're in the wrong place. And I was like, well, I don't know what that means. And he said, well, I am building this entity within Itron. It's called Itron Idea Labs, where we will be disrupting business and finding new new business models and launching new products and solving hard problems. And I am looking for an EIR.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

And I'm I was like, what's an EIR? I don't know. I don't know what that means. Like, like, what does what do they do? Because I I really don't want to get stuck in a job where people like, what does MK do all day?

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

Like, and that's exactly if you go around in most companies that have EIRs and if you go outside the EIR ecosystem or on the broader company, I ask somebody, hey. Do you do, you guys have EIRs? They're like, yeah. We do, but we don't know what they do. Right?

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

And you'll hear that a lot all the time, like, what does an EIR do? Like

Ilya Tabakh:

I actually love leaning into that because when I introduce myself at Black and Veatch internally even, I'm like, hey, I'm an entrepreneur in residence, and that probably means you have no idea what I do. And in many cases, most of the company doesn't. But it it it it's in some ways kind of a bit of a superpower because you get to, first of all, get everybody to come out of their autopilot. Because if I was process engineer 4, you know, they're like, oh, I roughly know what you do and, you know, kinda put you in the box. But, it's always good to sort of pull folks and and be able to frame that up.

Ilya Tabakh:

And so I actually have seen that. But I I hear definitely what you're saying. I just have intentionally leaned into that in some ways, and it's been really good because it allows you to sort of talk about generally what you do, but also listen to, you know, what do you do at the organization? Or what do you do kind of in the market? And you can sort of frame up here's how I could be kind of helpful.

Ilya Tabakh:

Here's insights I can share. And so I've actually found that to be kind of, an accidental, awesome superpower, you know, as as opposed to a a a bug. But yeah. No. Definitely definitely have the same experience there.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

Yeah. I mean, you know, like, you'll see, like, you when you go into a presentation, in a room full of people and you say you're an EIR within the company, and if it's a dark room, you turn on the lights, you'll see everybody either rolling their eyes or looking like deer in a headlights. And, okay, what what does this guy do? And so it's really it's really interesting. But what I tell them is, like, look, you guys are here helping the company pays its bills, and I'm here to make sure the company sticks around long enough for you guys to keep on doing that.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

Because the only only constant in this world is change, and everyone will be disrupted. And so, therefore, I wanna make sure that this company isn't, and therefore, here I am. And they're like, okay. That kinda makes sense. They're still kind of skeptical, but over time, you know, they kinda get it.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

But I try Idealabs. That's where kind of I got my first chops as an EIR. Roberto brought me in. And Roberto, one thing about him was he told me, he's like, MK, I don't ever want you to come and ask me for permission. Come to me for apology, but not for permission.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

He said, that's it. And he he, like, let let me lose. There I was going and talking with customers, discovering problems, build you know, building sort of like a solution to sort of figure out, okay, how can utilities make sure that their delivery, their power is always balanced? You know, the power that they serve to their customers don't go off balance. Right?

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

Kind of feel like you think about it like, you know, in the North American grid, it's a 3 phase system. There are 3 wires. Right? And the idea is like when power is flowing, each of those wires are gonna be flowing equal amount of power, like 33, 33, 33%, right, around that. But most of the time, what if, you know, it goes out of whack.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

Right? Outages happen. People you know? And then what happens is one of the wires only has 80%. The other one is, like, 10%, and the other one is 5%, and the other one is losing power or something.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

And so the only way to do that is every few years, they spend 1,000,000 of dollars going out there with physical equipment and, you know, touching every wire to make sure that they're they're they're balancing the load. And, you know, some they get to some percentage of that, but most of the times, they don't. And so we were using data, like, very simple hourly voltage data and running machine learning algorithms to figure out we could do that without any hardware and just pure software. And we were getting, like, you know, amazing success rates and the same thing with, like, you know, making sure that the, you know, the transformers are balanced and they have you know, they're serving the right amount of households or so on and so forth. So that was my EIR role at Itron Idea Labs.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

I was there for 3 years. It was my favorite. Roberto got got cancer. He was hospitalized. And so when he left, what changed was the culture.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

And one thing I realized, what I learned as an EIR, it's not, again, the skillset of the individual. It's the mindset of the business for EIR to be successful, and it's the culture that's built within that little entity of of of the EIR's ecosystem that that you have to have for the EIRs or the entrepreneurs in residence to thrive and let them do what they are hired to do. Right? And really, if you think about it, like, what's the job of an EIR? Like, why or, you know, what's what's the what does entrepreneur in residence really mean?

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

And that is basically bringing their experience as an entrepreneur, which is taking risks, failing fast, trying things, and and really, really sort of moving moving without any kind of barriers, any sort of that sort of that corporate, you know, you know, backlog is kind of what an EIR is supposed to be doing. And if that culture doesn't exist or that mindset doesn't exist within the business leadership to let them do that, It doesn't work. And so Roberto kind of made sure that that was there, and he and he sort of we there was a group of EIRs. We were there, a number of us. He kind of made sure that was he blocked and tackled that.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

But when he left, that was gone, and the the culture changed. And so and so, therefore, I couldn't be there anymore, and so I had to leave as well. And so that you know, I was there for about 3 years and when he was gone, and then eventually, Roberto came back, and it it wasn't the same. He then Roberto went and worked at Meta with Reality Labs, and, he was there, and then that's where he got sick again, and then eventually passed away. But he was he was my rock, and he was my mentor and my coach, and he kind of allowed me to really develop into this EIR role and, you know, sort of this job, if you will.

Terrance Orr:

So a quick comment, MK, before we move on because, one, I appreciate you sharing that story about about Roberto and really cool how you landed your first your first opportunity, but it also shows that people, not companies, not ideas, but people keep us around doing the things that we're doing. And and I think that's an important thing to pick up on. The second thing that I wanna share with our audience who are who's listening to this podcast is that almost all the EIRs we talked to had no clue what an EIR was or what they did, even though they had already been operating in the wild as as an entrepreneur. Right? So, you know, your EIR gig or your role could come to you at any point, any time, and you might have that similar reaction like Ilya, like MK, like myself, because I sure I sure did.

Terrance Orr:

I was like, what the hell is that? What is the EIR? What do they do again? And every single person in the company, to to MK's point about culture and mindset, they need to have that mindset. Otherwise, you shouldn't probably have an EIR inside of your organization.

Terrance Orr:

And I'm gonna toss it over to Ilya now.

Ilya Tabakh:

Yeah. No. I just I'm gonna pile on. This is, this is almost like a tag team wrestling match here. You know, I'm coming in over the ropes.

Ilya Tabakh:

But, the way that I talk about this is in order to be kind of an effective entrepreneur in residence, because Terrance is completely right. You know? I dropped into my EIR role. I knew sort of what capabilities I can bring to the org. But but I think in order to be effective, you sort of have to know the org, need to be able to translate.

Ilya Tabakh:

So so the way when I talk about these things, I say, kinda what's your secret sauce? What capabilities do you have? You know, MK, you were talking about product. You were talking about sort of early stage, you know, kind of 0 to 1 being able to get these things to market. Those are all, like, important to talk about because many of the folks you're talking to don't necessarily have that background or even in some cases don't know that it's important.

Ilya Tabakh:

And so I think it's incumbent on the EIR to be able to sort of capture that and be able to kind of explain it. And I know some folks that are really good at it, and other folks that are really rock stars are not great at explaining, you know, why are they the best guitarist in the world as far as the EIR is concerned. But they are. Right? And it's it's it's really important to capture that.

Ilya Tabakh:

The second part is sort of understanding how it sort of lands on the, you know, core strategy and also how innovation enables the core strategy of the organization. In most cases, the parent organization hasn't done the work to be able to to answer that question, but I actually encourage folks that are thinking about an EIR role to sort of dig into that and spend a couple beats, understanding, you know, how much of the leadership time is spent on innovation? Is there sort of an enunciated innovation strategy? You know, budget, time, all the things that are important. Just understanding how the org thinks about it.

Ilya Tabakh:

And then kinda more recently, the third part is, in many cases, when you're in the wild and doing your own thing, you don't have to sort of do consensus building and sort of understanding organizational dynamics as much. And so I think there is, like, really kind of a bit of a rescaling part, especially if you're gonna be more on, like, the horizontal, so working on the capacity of the organization. I think the vertical so, like, if you're running a business line or spinning one out, that's easily translatable from being in the wild. Although, many of the things you described make it very frustrating. But that's that's kinda the framework I use.

Ilya Tabakh:

And I'm sorry to cut you off a second, when I was talking, but that's I found that helpful for folks to sort of wrap their head around. Okay. That makes sense. I can explain, you know, some of this experience in a different way. And then, you know, by knowing what the core strategy and how innovation enables the core strategy, you know, how the leadership team's spending time on it, what the priorities are, that gives me a lot of insight.

Ilya Tabakh:

And and I found, like, lots of folks, that kinda resonates with them. So I just wanted to share that in the discussion here.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

Yeah. No. I agree. I mean, you know, one of the things when I go into an EIR role or if if I'm interviewing for 1 or talking to some someone about it, There is the most important thing that I wanna learn and I wanna understand is that how much money they're investing into this role and when and when do they need that money back. Right?

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

Because look. At the end of the day, a big corporation coming down from board directors to CEO, somebody saying, hey, I'm gonna put this much amount of money into this initiative where I'm gonna have these group of people call them EIRs or whatever you wanna call them, innovation leaders. And the question always somebody should ask is, when are you expecting this money back? Which is the the return on investment and how much of it. And if that answer is, like, next year, I'm out because I'm, like, there's nothing happening next year or even the year after.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

Right? It's just like angel investing. Right? We all angel invest. I'm sure all of us do.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

I do. And, Aris, you do, and, Ilya, you do as well. When I'm investing as an angel in a company, that money is I'm playing with house money. I'm like, I'm not getting it back. I know.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

Like, if if it comes back, great. But I'm investing in the founder and the idea and the and the passion I have around it. And it's the same thing if you are building an EIR or an innovation organization, you're putting a 1,000,000, 2,000,000, $3,000,000, the CEO may be like, hey. This money's probably gonna go to waste, and but if something comes back, it'll be great. It's kind of like what, you know, those tier 1 venture capitalists do or, you know, in the in the Bay Area, especially, or even any VCs, like, you know, we're gonna invest on a 100 companies, and probably 50 of them are gonna fail.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

20 of them are probably gonna do the 1st base. 20 another 20 of them is gonna probably do the 2nd base, and then 9 of them will probably go to 3rd base. But then there's gonna be this one that's gonna do a home run, and that's gonna make up for the rest of the fund. And so if you look at it from a EIR investment perspective, innovation, you're saying, okay, I'm I'm gonna put a $1,000,000 in this, and 900,000 of this is gonna go to waste, but this other 100,000 could really build something, and it's gonna come back 10 times, and that's what we are banking on, and that's it. And if it doesn't happen, we'll do it again the next year, the next year after, and we'll keep on trying it because the cost of not doing it is that doing nothing.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

And then what what happens? We, you know, we become the BlackBerry of the world.

Terrance Orr:

You know what? Okay. I love that. I love how you're applying the power law of venture capital. It's just sort of the EIR role and how people should be thinking about it sort of, you know, long term, if you will.

Terrance Orr:

And it's a perfect actual segue to what I to to the other sort of part we wanna take you to, which is talk to us about your EIR role at Georgia State, right, for the mainstream fund and and investing in those entrepreneurs, right, living out sort of what on the other side of the table. Can you talk to us a little bit more about your roles at Georgia State and and, at ATDC as an entrepreneur residence?

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

Georgia State's Main Street Entrepreneur Seed Fund is a perfect example of putting money in in founders no matter where they are, who they are, what businesses they lead, and there's a reason we call it the Main Street Fund. I'll talk about that in a minute. But my role at the Main Street Fund as an EIR is really originally, they I think I like the original name. Although initially, when when they hired me for, I didn't. They called it the startup shepherd.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

And I was like, I don't like that that's I'm not sure. I'm not sounds more like a sort of like a Jesus Christy, kind of thing. And I'm not I really don't feel I don't have that mantle. So I like the EIRs. I changed it to an EIR.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

But now that I go back, I'm like, actually, I'm a startup shepherd. Right? I'm shepherding these founders and startups and trying to get them to this, making sure that they're not going off trail and going to the next into to the to that next, you know, part of the journey. But over there, I manage businesses and founders that are literally ideas in a napkin. They could be companies that are that are technology companies.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

They could be companies that are tech enabled. As a matter of fact, I I I talked with a founder yesterday from one of the, you know, from one of the cohorts. She's building this beauty care product, kind of like, you know, sort of using, you know, the the I the the new iPhone features that you could really analyze your skin and then sort of, you know, get consultation. And so basically over there, you know, with the technology companies, they could be tech enabled, or they could have nothing to do with technology. Right?

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

And you will see the, you know, the, this founder who's thriving right now, she, she came into the first cohort of the Main Street and she had a sewing school, and she was helping, found people who could not get into expensive design schools, like SCAD, for example, with helping teaching them how to design clothes, sewing, and then you know, sort of placing them into jobs. And now she's transformed into this amazing business where she's helping 100 of designers, placing them in different places. So that had nothing new technology at all, and that's why we call it the Main Street Seed Fund because it is for every company, not just a tech company, not just tech enabled, but any company. It could be a coffee shop. It could be a STEM school.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

So, and it's focused on really underrepresented women led businesses. Right? And that's, you know, we wanna focus on them. And Georgia State, if you think about it, like it's the, you know, in in the state of Georgia, it's the largest school. People don't people you hear about UGA and Georgia Tech and Emory, but Georgia State is the largest school in the in the state of Georgia right now, and it is the largest student population of minority students outside of an HBCU, one of the largest in the United States.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

And so that's what I do there. At ATDC, what I work on is on companies that have achieved at least or on their way to achieve a $1,000,000 in revenue or funding, and they get to their next level. And sort of I work as sort of a coach to really the CEOs of the businesses and the founders of the businesses to really understand the organization, their product. For example, I was talking to, talking to one of the founders the other day where, you know, their product metrics is all off. Right?

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

I'm like, what are you how are you measuring whether your product is being used? You're not getting users. Users are falling off. And I looked at them like, what are your metrics? And they're like, revenue.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

I'm like, well, that's not a metric. That's like that's a that's a that's like a trailing metric. Like, how are you getting the revenue? What are the things that are leading you to that? Right?

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

What are your leading metrics? And so I was helping them with that. Another company I work with the other day I was working with was they're everywhere. Right? I'm like, what is your segment?

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

How are you going to market? Which is your target segment? And, you know, who are you selling to? Because if you don't know who your, you know, ideal customer profile or ideal buyer profile is and why they're buying or why would they buy your stuff, it doesn't make any sense. So going back, the main street fund is basically, if you think about it like, you know, like the Techstars, of the world and a incubator had a baby.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

Right? Basically, we bring in companies through this process. We give them investment anywhere from 15 to 20,000 in realm, but we don't invest. Like, it's not a we don't take any equity in the company. We give them we give it to them as a grant.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

So they'll you know, we don't take any money back, but we also tranche the money in layers so that they can meet with certain milestones and so that we know that they're on track, and I manage those companies throughout the process. We've done about 4 cohorts. We've graduated about 60 companies through that process so far. The initial fund came from the Marcus Foundation. We also got money later on from Bank of America and Georgia Power and Coca Cola and some individual donors like Ahmed Boser.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

So, I mean, we we we continue to do that for the Main Street Seed Fund, and that's sort of my that's my happy place because I'm a Georgia State alumni, and that's my passion. I wanna help as many founders from Georgia State University as possible. And, really, you know, my goal is, like, to talk to a talk to a founder every day for the rest of my life. And that's what I do. I find some way somehow to have a conversation with a founder and help them in some way.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

And that's sort of how I wanna give back and continue to give back. And that's that's from an entrepreneur perspective, that's the best thing I can do.

Ilya Tabakh:

That's awesome. So, we we mentioned kinda your, most recent role in in Nokia Ventures and sort of how you've kinda gone back to the future in some ways. Can you talk a little bit about that and kind of what you're excited about there? And then maybe, like, the the other thing that's fun is you've sort of built a little bit of a, you know, portfolio of things that you do. And so I wanna kinda dig into that, a little bit as well.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

So let's talk about Nokia. I look so Nokia Ventures, and I'm not giving anything up here, but we all know Nokia as the failed phone company. Right? But that was a very small part of the business. Right?

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

And, it's funny, I was talking to one of the, one of the senior vice presidents who happens to be my cousin actually, at Nokia. And, you know, he's amazing. He used to work with Bell Labs, and now he's on the technology side. But he was telling me, like, you know, the original research that led to the formation of the iPhone, which is the touch screen, and and all of that was actually came out of Bell Labs and out of Nokia. Right?

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

But some executive decided that who wants that? You know? Somebody decided some guy in some ivory tower decided that, you know, I don't think anybody would wanna pay so much money for that stuff. I don't let you know what? Very nice idea.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

Let's put that on the shelf. Right? And then what happened? And and that gives me that tells me, like, if there was an EIR in that room, some founders, some entrepreneurs would be like, guys, can we at least have some conversations and discovery around this to see that, will this dog hunt? Right?

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

But there was no idea. Right? Some big board members, some chairmans, some, you know, some guys said, yep. Nope. Not worth it.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

Don't let's keep on making the small, little phones and, you know, selling those, and guess what happened? There's no more Nokia phones, right, or at least phone business. So but what no what people don't realize, Nokia's footprint is pretty much everywhere around the world because they're at the end of the day, they're telecommunications, you know, broadband provider. Their technologies from 3 gs, 4 gs, 5 gs, and now going to 6 gs, they've enabled amazing stuff around that and continue to do that. And what what's happened is through a number of different acquisitions and, you know, roll ups, they landed on Bell Labs.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

So Bell Labs, which is originally the AT and T business, was, you know, divested. Lucent Technologies bought it, then Alcatel bought Lucent, and then Nokia bought Alcatel Lucent, and it all came back to us. So full circle. Right? And Bell Labs is an amazing research business, and people don't know, like, they have Nobel Peace Prize they have Nobel Prizes attached to them.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

They were the original inventors that led to the invention of transistors that we talk about in our radio, telecommunications, and, you know, telephones, whatever you wanna call it. So they have these all these research. But at the end of the day, that research doesn't mean anything if it doesn't drive some kind of revenue in some way. And so, the CEO and the leadership at Nokia decided to start this Nokia Ventures, where basically they bring in people to commercialize some of this research. And one of that research happens to be in this energy and utility space where we are basically taking this technology of streaming data, real time data, and applying it to like, you know, non wire solutions around like battery storage and micro grids and, you know, rooftop solar and all of that, and kind of looking into them and how they can utilities and energy companies, can leverage those technologies and sort of, really save money or even make money, if you will.

Ilya Tabakh:

That's awesome. So what so what's it like kind of having a portfolio of, you know, it seems like you're super passionate about the Main Street Venture, kinda work. You know, kind of seems like you're well on your way to talking to an entrepreneur a day for the rest of time, which is amazing. I mean, I love that's like a really good way of saying that I I actually worked for a guy that, built a transportation program at Oak Ridge National Lab for 30 years and then came to the University of Kansas as kind of his second career. And I could just tell that, you know, he gained energy from just being on campus and being around, you know, kind of younger energetic folks.

Ilya Tabakh:

So I definitely hear the, connection. But how do you think about sort of this, you know, portfolio being able to choose, and and kind of, decide how you kind of deploy your time and your resources? Because that's that's something that sort of I've seen happens in, you know, maybe not the first season of an entrepreneur's life. Right? And it's kind of a cool perspective to have.

Ilya Tabakh:

So maybe if you could talk about that for, you know, a minute or 2. It seems like, you have kind of a interesting perspective there.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

My wife has a big problem with me, which is, like, my lack of sleep. Like, I don't sleep much, and she says, you know, it's gonna catch up to me at some point. Maybe it has already. I don't and and I don't know about it. But, you know, to me, every time I go to sleep, I can't wait to wake up again, and doing the things that I do.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

Whether it's working with Nokia, Nokia's business, talking with customers, I just love doing that. I love talking with, especially the customers I work with, you know, in the utility space, just listening to them and about the hard problems to solve. And then what really keeps me keeps me going the rest of the day is coaching and mentoring founders and entrepreneurs. And the thing is, like, it doesn't feel like work. It's like I feel like I'm I'm things that they're asking are so second nature to me and has been for a while that it doesn't feel like, you know, I'm I'm I'm sort of telling them, and and I feel great that I'm I'm I'm able to share that and sort of guide them in a way that they can, like, go towards, you know, a certain outcome.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

Like, for example, I was talking to this founder yesterday, and she's trying to launch this business around skincare, and she's talking about consultation, and she's talking about in dermatologists, and she's talking about compliance. I'm like, don't worry about any of that. Find a high school grad, just graduated. Tell them for every consultation do they do, you're gonna pay them 50. Your lifetime value of your each customer is probably gonna be 500, and, basically, that's 10% of the lifetime value, and that's great.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

And don't don't worry about compliance. Don't worry about all this stuff. That's it. Right? As long as they're certified dermatologist, that's that's good enough.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

And she was like, I never I never thought of it this way. Okay? I was thinking about hiring a doctor and doing all this stuff. When you hear certain things, you've you've done it I've done so many times. We all have done so many times.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

It just comes to you. Right? It's just like you're training, you know, like a Navy Seal, you know, when they're going into battle. Right? Their, you know, their training just kicks in.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

Right? You know, it doesn't matter. Like, you just you know, that the you know, your brain start working certain ways, and you're like, oh, I know the solution. I know what I know what we should be doing. Right?

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

The challenge is in that. The challenge really is is on the other side. Is whether and that's something you don't control and we can't control is, like, will the founder listen? Will the CEO listen? You know, should you know?

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

And as founders, me included, we have we have a really high ego. We think we know everything. And over the time, now that I'm 50, I've learned that I need to be in a learn it all mode all the time versus in a know it all mode. And it's sometimes hard to do because people are like, I know the answer. I already know this.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

This is my industry, and this is that, and I've done this. And you're like, no. You gotta, like, let all of that go and start from, you know, be willing to be wrong, be willing willing to start from scratch. And I think that's the hardest thing. Right?

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

I mean, the problem and that's why I'm like, it's hard for corporate employees many times to become founders. Right? Because in the corporations, you are working as a on a transaction basis. 2 weeks paycheck, 2 weeks paycheck, 2 weeks paycheck, and that's what you're working towards. Where you come to a startup or building a company, an EIR, you're working on a transformation.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

And so that transaction mindset has to go away, right? In the corporate world, you're working as a mercenary. In the startup world, you're working as a missionary. You're on a mission to make an impact, to solve a problem, to change things, to disrupt things, to to be say to be willing to be brave enough to tell people, like, the way it's being done now is wrong. It's not going to work.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

We don't need more horses. We need a better automobile. Right? So like that that kind of mindset, it's hard to acquire. Right?

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

It's it's I don't think it's something you can learn. It's something that you have to, like, intentionally, sort of, over time, train your mind and train your thought process too.

Ilya Tabakh:

Yeah. Absolutely. I I kinda wanna pick apart a couple things. You you sort of put in a bunch of knowledge into about 30 seconds of, conversation there. So I wanna pick apart a couple things.

Ilya Tabakh:

One is you sort of talked about, you know, knowing what you get really excited about and sort of curiosity mixed with, things that give you energy, mixed with kind of the things you know you enjoy is, the way that I took it is a really good way to sort of prioritize that portfolio. And sort of once you sort of have a a feel for that, I always when I'm talking to, you know, folks interested in startups, everybody says they wanna be a founder. And I always spend some time with them saying, are you sure? You know, are you sure you wanna be a founder? Are you sure you wanna be an early employee?

Ilya Tabakh:

Like, what actually brings you that energy and kinda where do you when when you really, have had the opportunity in the past to try it? Where where do you really draw energy from? And what's cool is I think you were talking about, you know, you have a clear vision of what that means for you. And it's a good way to sort of prioritize. And so that would be the the thing that I would maybe highlight from your description of of your portfolio and how you're spending your time and resources.

Ilya Tabakh:

Is it seems like you have a really good kind of feel, and an idea for what those things are, and you're doing it. So, awesome. The the the other part is you sort of talked about, you know, effective entrepreneurs are coachable, and they focus on the problem. And, you know, you almost I'm not gonna get on my soapbox here, but I love entrepreneurs that fall in love with the problem, and then just, you know, chase it to where they find the truth. Not, you know, here's my solution.

Ilya Tabakh:

You guys should all buy it. But, hey, this group of people has this idea. And and, you know, you you can't take all input from everybody about everything. But I think that coachability and the search for, you know, kind of the curiosity to be able to get to the bottom of what's going on is I think a huge thing. So I just wanted to kind of unpack those two things because I think they're related, but they sort of get into a little bit of a different view here.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

So there are 2 things I wanna say. The first thing I'll say is, I'll answer your second question, which is falling in love with the problem. And my mindset and thought process has evolved over the last, few years around that. And I think I wanna work with founders who fall in love with their customer and the audience to discover what the problem is rather than falling in love with the problem. Look, there's 2 ways to achieve it.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

Right? So let's say I wanna I wanna sell an an efficient car, and I wanna solve the problem efficiency, mileage efficiency. So I can go to an audience, and they say, well, that's great, but I really I'm not looking for efficiency. I'm looking for luxury. So that's so now I could either solve that problem, or I could stay on my problem and say, let me find another audience, and I can go to a different audience to see if they had that problem.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

And there is that but I think the best way to do it, and as I'm as I'm coaching and working with, you know, founders and entrepreneurs, I I tell them, like, a better way is to go and find the audience, and let's talk to them about it. Let's find the hero of your journey. Let's find Luke Skywalker, or let's find Obi Wan, and, or, or Darth Vader, or Anakin say, hey, what are you trying to solve? Well, I'm trying to kill Jedi, or I'm trying to kill, you know, I'm trying to defeat the empire. Okay.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

Let's see which problem I wanna solve. And then then that becomes your audience, and then you fall in love with that audience. You fall in love with Anakin, like, whatever you do, let's go kill those Jedi and get, you know, get rid of all of them. Right? Let's figure that out.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

How we would, you know, you can use the dark side of the force to do that. So that's my first thing. I think falling in love with I'm now more of that mindset of let's fall in love with the customer, because the customer is the hero of your journey and the story, let's build a story around them. And it becomes, to me, at least, it becomes an easier way of approaching that. The other part of it, Ilya, is the sort of how I kind of energize myself.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

I am not into predictability. I look for ambiguity. I look for uncomfortable situations, and I look for places where people are running around with a chicken, like a chicken with a head cut off and doesn't know where they're going, and I want to go in there in that messy environment and figure things out. That's why I'm not a good corporate player. Right?

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

Because I'm not gonna sit there 9 to 5 and do the things that I need to do in check boxes. I just can't do that where I know I'm gonna get a paycheck every 2 weeks. I'm not this is gonna happen. Of course, nothing wrong with a paycheck. You know?

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

Love that. You know? Keep them coming my way, but what I wanna be in a place is, like, I want to do the hard things about the hard things. And that's why I love that book, you know, Ben Horowitz's book, I think everybody should read that. Like, if, you know, you can't, you know, most times people keep on doing the same thing expecting different results.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

And I think willing to do hard things and, you know, making changes and willing to disrupt is what I'm looking for, and that's what gives me energy. It's like, okay. Problems have not been solved. There's a lot of unsolved, you know, things here, and that's what I look for. Nothing is predictable.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

Things could this thing could fall apart tomorrow, and that's okay. And and I'm willing to and I'm willing to take it take take a chance there. And that's what sort of, you know, drives me with energy is like this on this unpredictability, you know, this unknown, you know, of the future. And because I and maybe this is because of my own background, because never having this constant, like, lifestyle of staying in one place and building a family, always moving around and doing all of that. And but that's kind of, like, I think is built into sort of my mindset of, like, doing things.

Terrance Orr:

Those are the pieces of your background, MK, that make you unique, right, and and give you superpowers, that that have helped you build multiple businesses. Right? And I wanna be respectful of your time. So just a comment and then one final question for you. Okay?

Terrance Orr:

So a comment quick comment because I'm itching, I'm itching to go down this thread, but I know I I keep you for another hour if I do. But a quick comment. Man, I gotta tell you, I can talk to you for another hour about the whole corporate structure and how sometimes those things just don't work. And the 2 things that I see, given the work that we do here at Mach 49 and helping corporate sort of, like, think through these things is, a, aligning of incentives for the people that they're gonna bring in and 2, the governance. Right?

Terrance Orr:

Entrepreneurs are not driven by paycheck. They're driven by equity. Equity is my love language. Right? And it's most of their love languages, you know, for the for the for the most part.

Terrance Orr:

So I'll leave that as a comment. My final question for you, my friend. Tell the audience something that's not on your resume that we cannot find on LinkedIn about MK? I know a bunch of funny fun stories that you've shared with me, but is there anything that you feel comfortable sharing with the audience that's not on your resume that you like to end on?

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

Yeah. That's a great question. I will tell you something that's not on my resume, and I think that a lot of people may or may not know about it, but I tell the story every every chance I get to people that are close to me or people that that, you know, that that that I can become vulnerable with. So I'll be a little bit vulnerable here. My understanding of this process of going to market and understanding customer segmentation actually developed through an experience of selling vacuum cleaners door to door.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

And that that is not on my resume, as this vacuum cleaner salesman. But back in school, way back when when I was gonna, you know, in in in Alabama, this one summer, I had a dream. I know that sounds like very Martin Luther King esque, but I did have a dream that I was gonna make a lot of money that summer. And so there I was looking through the mobile press register, going through the classifies in this one place where it says, hey, make a lot of money this summer. And I was like, great.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

I called that number. I showed up, and I found out that basically what they're gonna do is give me a very expensive vacuum cleaner, Kirby vacuum cleaner to sell. So if you think about it, right, Kirby vacuum cleaner, if you do all the math for inflation and everything, back in that day, it was 1600. If you convert that into current monetary value, it's about $5,000. Right?

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

So this is back in 1993, and I'm doing this. And so, I was like, okay. And what basically happened was I figured out that the lead list that they gave me was these this list of very rich people. And when I ended up in one of their houses, they were like, hey, listen. You look like a good kid.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

Go out there and actually get a real job because I'm never gonna buy a vacuum cleaner, because I don't need to clean my house. I don't clean my house. I don't even know how a vacuum cleaner works. So why are you even trying to sell this to me? I'm a doctor, my wife's a lawyer, and go find somewhere, you know, someplace else.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

And so I ended up, you know, in this McDonald's, you know, trying to eat lunch, and that's where all great American stories start, at the McDonald's. And so, basically, sitting there, and there's this guy next to me, you know, like, looking at me, and I'm like, hey. You got something to say? And he was like, I'm just wondering, like, you know, like, what do you do? Who you are?

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

You know, where you're from? You know? I'm like, well so I asked, you know, I'm like, you know, I'm, you know, I'm trying to sell a vacuum cleaner. Like, I need a vacuum cleaner, and I end up in his trailer park. And lo and behold, at the end of everything, he buys a vacuum cleaner.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

And I'm like, wait a minute. This is what I need to do. So I go back. I've basically, you know, find out this list of trailer parks, and I basically the next 60 to 90 days, I just hit up every trailer park and within a 30 mile radius. And I sell a ton of those Kirbys, of course, you know, to poor people who would never probably can afford them, but they could finance them.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

And, you know, all they needed was to sign a check, and and and and that's my and that was my commission. And I did that for 1 summer, and when I figured out, I was like, that's where your segmentation and understanding of your customer comes in. Because you would think expensive expensive item like that could only be bought by really rich people, and they were not the right audience. They don't care about it. And turned out this totally unknown group of people that probably would want that.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

Of course, I would never do that again because I sold my soul that summer, and and, you know, it was I've been repenting since. But, you know, I there's a lot of Kirby vacuum cleaners somewhere in Alabama and a lot of trailer parks if you go and look for them. But, there I was. But so that's something that people don't know is how kind of like how I learn about, you know, go to market strategy and market segmentation. And I use that example a lot when I'm when I'm coaching entrepreneurs.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

I'm saying, look, tell me if I give you a vacuum cleaner, that $1600 or $5,000, what's your ideal customer profile? And they say, somebody who makes a lot of money, somebody lives in a big house, somebody who drives a big car, I'm like, wrong. And then I tell them the story and they're like, wow, wait a minute, we would never have figured that out. And that tells you that that tells you sort of that's kind of what, you know, the experience of talking with customers and doing discovery and really understanding that audience is super important before you just go and try to solve any problem and build something.

Terrance Orr:

Incredible. MK, it's been a privilege, my friend. Thank you for coming on the podcast and, thank you for being honest and vulnerable with our audience. I'm sure they're gonna get a a a nice nice listen out of all all the wisdom that you've shared today.

MK (Musaddeq Khan):

For having me, guys. Really appreciate it, Ilya. Thank you, Terrance. It's been a pleasure and an honor.

Terrance Orr:

Alright, my friend.

Ilya Tabakh:

That was an awesome episode. We say awesome all the time, but there there's some really, cool and and and specific points that came up, in the discussion for me. I I think that the first one that that really kind of rang true with me is that I just love that MK is really aware and focused on, you know, kind of what is the skill set and the capabilities that he brings to the table. And he's, like, super intentional about kinda what is his portfolio about how he spends his time.

Ilya Tabakh:

And I think, you know, if you can have that clarity, that intention, and kind of bring that to the table, it's a really, really huge thing. And so, you know, that that that really kinda ring true with me and and for myself, I've really tried to, you know, get better at that over the years. And so it's really cool to see somebody, you know, seem to do it well. And then I think the the other part is that, you know, I I'm I'm always big about different perspectives and that you can take a lot of different paths to a destination. And I think, MK's background, you know, both growing up as well as in business, really allows him to bring a bunch of different lenses, a bunch of different perspectives.

Ilya Tabakh:

And, you know, just kinda thinking about it, he's got a lot of curiosity. He kinda has that, variety of perspective. And I think, ultimately, for him, that's a that's a really strong superpower. And I think for many of our listeners, can be a pretty strong differentiator as well. So that's really what stuck out to me.

Ilya Tabakh:

What about you?

Terrance Orr:

Man, a ton stuck out to me in in this episode about about MK, plus 1 to to all the things that you said. The other thing is the threat of impact, that that MK has had throughout his career. If you really look at the the roles and the companies that he started and the roles as a chief product officer in the in the organizations that he was a part of, all of those opportunities were about at an impact, right, at scale for the world or society in some capacity, right? You think about the Smart Grid Analytics company, right, helping out. That's a, that's something that helps the world and society, like working with utility companies.

Terrance Orr:

If you think about his role in helping out, you know, as a chief product officer at a company that was gonna help supply, better sort of water and material and infrastructure, in another region, I think those things are, like, important. So the the the threat of impact continued even after he sold his companies. Right? You can hear in this episode how he got really passionate about the Main Street Fund and giving back to future generations of entrepreneurs. I can literally hear the passion, in in his voice and the energy that that gave him and how mentorship led to his first role as an entrepreneur and resident, right, at Itron.

Terrance Orr:

And if it wasn't for that mentorship and that guidance, from people who've walked the path before and saw something different in him, and that curiosity that you talked about, and how his first role as an entrepreneur in residence, you know, really came from, you know, that person trying to guide him to say, hey, maybe you're in the wrong position, you know, but not in the wrong company. Right? Let me show you another thing where you can sort of feed your curiosity, and that led to his 1st entrepreneur in residence role at Itron, and lastly, from selling vacuum cleaners to selling his first company. Just what what a journey, man. So those are the things that really stuck out stuck out to me amongst other things in in the episode.

Ilya Tabakh:

Yeah. No. Absolutely. Just to pick on the vacuum cleaner story, it's, you know, it's amazing when people sit down and talk about, you know, what's gonna happen. Everybody kinda takes their background and, perspective and have a rational discussion.

Ilya Tabakh:

It's like, this is how it's gonna play out. And I've been in so many situations where that, you know, plan sort of the expert opinion, here's how it's gonna play, just doesn't work. Right? And it's it it I think it's really valuable at an early and I think that was the point MK was making is that, look, you know, when you're out there and you're talking to people, you can know a lot, you can assume a lot, but, you know, when when your map and and the terrain don't match, you know, you gotta follow the terrain. And and I think that's, like, a really salient lesson to pick up early.

Terrance Orr:

And you guys might also pick up on that. You know, we did something a little different, in in this episode, right? More free flowing, really getting into more and more details, and and I think, you know, we're gonna experiment a little bit, like great EIRs do. We're gonna experiment, we're gonna test, and we we wanna hear from from my audit from our audience, what do you think about these new formats that we're testing out? Ilya, anything to add to that?

Ilya Tabakh:

Yeah. No. Absolutely. You know, the the we started the format by having sort of a reflection at the beginning of the episode, give you guys a summary. We got some feedback, from some of the listeners that, you know, they just wanted to jump in right into the discussion.

Ilya Tabakh:

We have really interesting people, and the synthesis was cool, but, you know, they wanted to hear from, kind of the the raw discussion first, get right into it. We took that. We're gonna try this for, you know, at least a few episodes, by putting kind of the reflection at the back, and then also, you know, giving us an opportunity to talk about kind of what's going on with the platform, what are we doing, and things like that. So, you know, this is the first episode, or or at least an early episode we're gonna try this on, and we'll see how it goes. You know?

Ilya Tabakh:

And a lot of it is about what do you think? What's good? What's not? You know, format. We'll continue to take feedback, looking for kind of the ratings and comments and things like that, and, you know, we'll build this thing together.

Terrance Orr:

Absolutely. We consider feedback to be a gift, at EIR Live. So please continue to send us feedback. That's how we make the podcast better for you all.

Ilya Tabakh:

Yeah. And then the last thing, you know, we, are also starting to do, a couple things like physical events. You know, Terrance and I recently did a event in Atlanta where we had, some folks come out and we did a little bit of a launch party and kinda an entrepreneur in residence happy hour. And so, you know, kind of flagging communities that have a good or at least a beginning density of EIRs is super helpful because, you know, both of us travel more than we'd like to admit probably. And so as as we come out, you know, kinda connecting with other EIRs, continuing to build the network, allows us to, you know, kinda make connections, but also continue to sort of expand, the foundation of of the network.

Ilya Tabakh:

And so kinda any any suggestions there are good. And then other things we're talking about is, doing kinda panels and discussions and things like that in places where folks are already aggregating. So there's a lot of, you know, amazing conferences, amazing discussions that happen, on an annual level. So kind of we're thinking about some opportunities there. So we'd love to hear that.

Ilya Tabakh:

Terrance, what am I missing?

Terrance Orr:

I think you got it, man. You you covered it. We we want more people to send referrals. Thank you for the folks who have been sending us referrals, to to the podcast. We wanna see more people on the ground at these events.

Terrance Orr:

That this is the life part of of EIR Live, connecting with real people in person and on the ground beyond the audio that you're gonna hear in the video that you'll see on YouTube and other channels, is making sure we bring these groups of of folks who who are in the same area but don't necessarily know that the other person is up the street and exists and have held the in residence role in some organization. And, it's gonna be our mission and duty to connect those people and and and build a a network around them.

Ilya Tabakh:

Awesome. Let's leave it there. Thanks, Terrance. Absolutely.

Terrance Orr:

Thanks for joining us on EIR Live. We hope today's episode offered you valuable insights into the entrepreneurial journey. Remember to subscribe so you don't miss out on future episodes, and check out the description for more details. Do you have questions or suggestions? Please reach out to us.

Terrance Orr:

Connect with us on social media. We really value your input. Catch us next time for more inspiring stories and strategies. Keep pushing boundaries and making your mark on the world. I'm Terrance Orr with my co-host Ilya Tabakh.

Terrance Orr:

Signing off. Let's keep building.

Creators and Guests

Ilya Tabakh
Host
Ilya Tabakh
Founder | Scaling #ClimateTech as Entrepreneur-in-Residence @Black_Veatch | Author | Based in #KansasCity | work = people+systems+tech (at least 2 of the 3)
Terrance Orr
Host
Terrance Orr
I’m just a guy from a small town with big dreams | Venture Builder, Investor, and Advisor
Musaddeq Khan (MK)
Guest
Musaddeq Khan (MK)
MK's journey spans from Bangladesh to becoming a cornerstone of Atlanta's tech ecosystem, where he's built multiple successful ventures including the first public cloud system for utilities. Known for embracing ambiguity and thriving in uncertainty, he now leads energy innovation at Nokia Ventures while mentoring hundreds of founders through roles at Georgia Tech ATDC and Georgia State. His philosophy centers on intentional disruption and falling in love with customers rather than solutions, as he continues to build his portfolio of impact across corporate innovation and entrepreneurship.
Episode 05 - Intentional Chaos: Building a Portfolio of Impact with Musaddeq Khan (MK)
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