Episode 08 - From Bricks to Breakthroughs with Matthias Ørum-Hansen
You're gonna put up all these guidelines and rules for something that will never be a true entrepreneurial, as I see it, at least, founder ish kind of style of building a company, which needs, as you said, to have equity, not just equity, but also equity of mind. You need to lean into it. You need to have this boldness, this beyond the usual, oh, shit, I don't wanna go to work. Like, fuck it, I get up everywhere. That kind of emotion that founders, at least when you look at the successful ones, need to have, it doesn't fit old school companies and how they're run.
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:I think there's a massive managing expectations that need to be set up in the beginning. You need to define what are the acceptable outcomes. Is it that they all need to spin out so they are not making noises along your other product lines? Is it that they are a satellite, but they're fully funded, and these are the ways they can kind of use the organization's superpower or whatever it is?
Ilya Tabakh:Welcome to EIR Live, where we into the lives and lessons of entrepreneurs and residents. I'm Ilya Tabakh, together with my cohost, 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. Alright. Well, today, we're gonna continue our theme of talking about kind of innovation at larger companies and and really what role EIRs can play.
Ilya Tabakh:We've we've covered a little bit of, you know, kind of community. We've covered some other perspectives that EIR can play, but we're really kind of going back to, you know, the Terrance is gonna make fun of me for this, but the EIR as a translator and really bringing in perspectives that don't exist in sort of larger, more established organization as a general rule, at least. And so today for the episode, have Matthias joining us, who has an awesome background. You know, as as you've seen through a few different episodes now, EIRs don't really have linear career paths, right? I think Matthias is, you know, proudly holding up that trend.
Ilya Tabakh:Really, really awesome kind of path through the video game world, the product world, and then ending up at, you know, kind of a global design powerhouse as an EIR. I'm gonna ask him to, you know, really fill in a lot of those gaps and get us started on, you know, how he got started in the professional world, and we'll kinda kick off the conversation from there.
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:Sure. Thank you for having me. I'm really curious as well and kinda asking you some questions, but I'll I'll try to kick off. Yeah. So how I kind of ended up at the end of the path in e r r was that I created a startup called Game Analytics together with some friends, which was this software as a service analyzing games.
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:It was at a time where Zynga had popularized more metrics driven game development, made us all insane with the newsfeed on Facebook. And what that kind of made a foray into was a more professional way of developing games. And so we applied a very Google Analytics way to how to make games better and succeeded. And we kind of rode some waves of these game engines coming out, the iPhone, of course, and just mobile games becoming this behemoth. And now it's kind of something everyone does, but now it also looking back for me is definitely something where when we were making our early kind of foray into it, we were sometimes seen as like idiots or like money makers versus artists who just wanted to make beautiful games.
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:But at the end of the day, can now see that the ones who are successful in the app store or wherever are the ones who are at least making some choices based on that. So that was kind of my first product on its own, had done something before, but this was kind of the first as like a CPO and a startup and did that for like four years.
Ilya Tabakh:And before we go there, maybe I I know that that was around the time that you graduated from high school, were kinda going to college, you know. Talk us through that a little bit because in a European context, you know, everybody always says college dropout to startup thing. That's like the Silicon Valley story. That's probably not the Central European story or Northern European story as much. So I'd love to hear a little bit more about kind of how you thought about that and maybe what folks were saying at the time.
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:So actually kind of the steps before that was that my first startup was I was supposed to write my bachelor thesis and a friend of mine came back from The US having seen Facebook pre kind of world dominance. And definitely we still had to have the .edu account in The US. And he showed me this thing and it was like, we both had with this golden light in our eyes and seeing like, okay, this is the future of social networking. Before we all knew it would be bad as well. And we started to build something in Denmark and actually both of us became dropouts and never came back to school.
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:And so that kind of, after that, it just became, for me, professional jobs, technical project management and worked on the agency side for some years doing motion graphics, stuff like that, but like from a project leader perspective. And then kind of game analytic became the first thing. So I've had a, you know, massive dropout career as well. And the point you're making of is it uncommon? I think definitely popularized by kind of the Silicon Valley tropes, but also by people who have been successful in Denmark and Europe, made it visibly a path versus something you would talk about it like, you need to be in Silicon Valley, or it's only possible in The US.
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:So I think more and more are at least kind of accepting that college or uni or whatever might not be the right path. And also I think a lot of younger people are kind of more eager to do. And then this kind of slow moving university feel, at least in Northern Europe where entrepreneurship isn't taught or like that kind of, you know, actually our startup was called Campus because you don't have campuses in a lot of places in Northern Europe. The idea that you are kind of wearing, Princeton, Harvard, whatever, like that pride is not very common in Europe. We have education for free.
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:So there's a lot of that drive that comes with like your parents gave you this or you got some kind of scholarship. And I think kind of that leading into also startups is something where Europe sometimes has this kind of complacency built in because we have our social welfare systems, which are great. I wouldn't live without them. But this kind of drive that comes naturally in The US, I think more than anywhere else of like there's no ceiling or you just gotta do it yourself, definitely creates a different approach to entrepreneurship and kind of also the paths that a lot of people take. So that's probably still the case, but I'm hoping that a lot of people are just more kind of daring their I think I also just didn't fit into the university.
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:So it wasn't a very conscious thing. It was more like, I'd be shut out of this if I don't leave myself. But yeah, that's kind of how I ended up being a classical dropout.
Ilya Tabakh:And it's helpful. Like, even in The US, right, it's funny when we talk to or when I've talked to EIRs in Asia or in Europe, everybody knows sort of their local microclimate, right? They know kind of how the neighbors are, they know roughly, but they don't know sort of what's going on on the other continent for the most part. Right? Or or often what I've seen is, you know, what's normal in Silicon Valley or maybe New York, that's The US or North America.
Ilya Tabakh:And it's, you know, I'm based in Kansas City, and sort of transitioned from academic life to entrepreneurial life. And it was very different than, you know, kind of some of the stories that I know on the coast as well. And so it's really interesting to sort of introduce a little bit of that kind of context. Awesome. Well, I cut you off a little bit earlier about sort of getting that product role.
Ilya Tabakh:So let's keep going there, but I'm glad that we had an opportunity to dive in a little bit.
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:Yeah. At the end of a failed acquisition, I left game analytics and ended up in Bang and Olufsen, this old electronics maker known for beautiful, very expensive TVs and audio systems. And at the time I joined, they had kind of at least realized that they needed to look at the world differently, approach kind of other audiences with different products and definitely other price points and legal reasons made them have to create like this actual legal entity instead of just kind of a new product line. And I was hired into it, we were 40 people and my job was a basic kind of product manager thing of leading the charge on making our phones be able to connect to headphones and speakers. So very kind of, you know, locked in kind of view.
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:But quickly, I kind of just showed that I could do other things. And within nine months I was asked to join the management of this little group and definitely not only because of me, but hopefully as well a bit about me. We were then like after four years, one hundred and fifty people and doing 51% of the revenue in the company. So it was my kind of first ninety year old company struggling internal, a lot of like just resentment of like doing things differently and pride. And a lot of the things you expect from like almost like a religious group of, you know, not in this house kind of feeling.
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:Not that I've ever been in a religious group, just like the tropes that are around it. And we were known as the cowboys because we always came with new ideas, but like slowly kind of the organization where a lot of people started to kind of really get a sense that maybe we should be making things differently and maybe we didn't have to do all the things. Maybe we could have partners. And it was just a massive journey for me personally in a company that everyone has an opinion about in Denmark. And it's like in the base terms, not very big, but still is like in the MoMA, is still like was sold in Apple stores and is known to a lot of people who are kind of into design, at least when it comes to electronics.
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:So yeah, I did that for like four years and new management came in. We talked about that in the warmup a while ago, like how it changes sometimes when somebody comes in and it wasn't their project and that definitely happened here. So six out of eight of us senior managers and part of the leadership team left. I was fortunate to get like a very nice severance package, so I also spent some time not doing anything afterwards. But yeah, that was like my first kind of switch from software as a service into consumer electronics was the head of product design, so also very different than than, like, software.
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:Yeah. After that, little things into the game industry, which wasn't very good for me or for them. So I'll leave it at that. It's gonna be the beep in this podcast. And then I met some people from Switzerland who were the family that owns Ricola, this old herbal drop company and was kind of asked if I would maybe be interested in trying to help them innovate the way they were producing products with kind of Amplified by My Story and Bang and Olsen of course of understanding legacy and values and kind of throwing everything away, doing something new, but having a respect and kind of understanding of how organisations work and how people think.
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:I spent a year building a little team, analyzing, interviewing, designed a new stage gate model for them and new organization around product innovation and like a new way of work that was approved. And then I was asked to move to Switzerland with my family and lead the product innovation team for a year and then transition out again. So kind of to implement the new ways of work. Corona hit, we were only there for like three months and then moved back to Denmark. So that was like a adventure that turned into just a Zoom adventure instead for nine months, but it is what it is.
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:But it was great, again, a switch from like consumer electronics into FMCG. So for me, was also just another learning journey of like how food is regulated and OTC in The US and how much X and Y can you put into it and what are the promises you can make with products. So again, a thing that I learned and probably you guys can attest to that is like some of the patterns you see with products just are the same independent of like what it is, like do people understand it? How is it made? Is it, know, all of these kinds of parameters that turn a product into a success are at the base the same, people need to understand the value, they need to want to pay for the value.
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:There's a ton of these things that are the same, regardless if it's a screwdriver or if it's a chewing gum or herbal drop.
Terrance Orr:So you touched on a few different things there and I love to find these themes a little bit and people's journey and things that seem like they're not alike, but related, if you will. And, you know, you started your own company, raised outside funding, right? You called it a field acquisition. I want you to tell our audiences what you learned along the way. And in that acquisition, you don't have to spill all the beans, but the things you learned that you took with you to your roles as a VP of category innovation, working with a family owned brand and helping them sort of get off the ground.
Terrance Orr:And then I'm going to get into the point of how we this podcast around you making the transition into your first, you know, in residence role. But talk to me first about what did you learn from what you called a failed acquisition, right? Because in many respects, even if it's a lesson for you, right, along the way, you still took those lessons that were priceless to other things. So talk to me about the lessons you learned from that acquisition that you took with you.
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:So when I say failed, it was actually at the day of closing that the buyer decided to forego the deal, sitting on a bench on Champs Elysees in Paris with my wife, or now wife, not then, but became my wife. Buyer had decided to kind of forego the deal. So that was kind of at the end of a six, seven month period of, like, having eight potential buyers and they're narrowing it down, flying a lot to places primarily in The US and then had this, you can say marriage proposal from an American company. Everything looked fine, but they decided to forego the deal. And I think what I learned from that is, one, think you need to be naive in those situations because you need to convey a hyper positive mindset to the buyer.
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:Because otherwise, they're gonna be like, are you for real? Do you want this? At some point you have to kind of, guessing with old relationships, show like you are also willing to put something on the line. But on the other side, it's also hard to have an organization that starts to navigate based on this. Then when it fails, like how do you pick it up again?
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:I I think we manage that partly, but I do think that there's some kind of lost their, I don't know, motivation because they also thought that they would be kind of working this now successful sold company. And and I think I for sure had that feeling. I was window buying houses and stuff like that, because at some point it just feels like it's gonna happen, right? Like at some point you have to just commit to it. But I think the learning is definitely to manage expectations.
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:In a weird way, I think that's the only situation where I would have hoped I would have had a better kind of two sidedness to me of, like, one being hyper positive in the situation with these possible buyers, but then on my personal side, be super kind of just disconnected from it. I think I was really disappointed because I didn't have that kind of distance to it. So I think that's what I learned. But like introspectively, it's definitely a massive compliment to what you're building. So of course it's, you know, it felt great, but it was a bit of a punch in the face on a I drank a lot that night.
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:I could just attest to that. Like I was That bar in Paris was hemorrhaging red wine and beers, I think, me. So that was how I sold for that.
Terrance Orr:You know, the silver lining in this, Matthias, is that one, your girlfriend became your wife anyway, despite what happened. And you know, you're still happily, you know, with her today. And on top of that, you know, you learn some valuable lessons, right? That you took with you to future roles.
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:And
Terrance Orr:I think in itself, some people would call that a win and and number three, somebody wanted to buy it, which means you created some value you and your co founder and team. You guys created some value that got somebody interested, right? That they wanted to buy it, whether it's failed or not, you know, at this point, but you know, so that happened acquisition. You know, you started talking to Racola family owned brand. You became the VP of category innovation.
Terrance Orr:Talk to us about our favorite part of the podcast. Tell us about the transition and in getting your first in residence role as a founding residence at the LEGO Group and give us all the give us the details along the journey. How did you get the role? All of that good stuff.
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:As a boy growing up in Denmark, LEGO was always kind of part of play. Kind of knowing that I wanted to transition out of the role in Switzerland, I saw randomly somebody posting that, you know, the family that owns LEGO was kind of creating this LEGO innovation under their LEGO Ventures kind of brand name. What they were looking for was this entrepreneur residence or founder residence, I think they call it. And it was the first time I saw a job where I didn't have to relocate to the middle of nowhere, which is still like in The US terms, like very close. It's like three hours away, but feels like it, you know, it's a, you know, you're journeying into the unknown in Denmark.
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:And I applied for it. First job application I think I ever sent in my life. That was the first one. And started, like, I I got some replies back, and it was this back and forth, and, you you're too expensive. You might, like, you might not like this.
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:It's like maybe, you know, we want something more youthful.
Terrance Orr:They're trying to convince you not to take the job, They wanted you, but then they were like, hey, I don't know, you're too I
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:don't I don't mean too good. Probably more like the rules that we'll be applying to this might not fit somebody who's done something on their own before, the guided nature of it. Well, I mean, at the end of the day, I did convince them that I was the right one, so I got the job. And I'll get into like the nitty gritty of like what this thing was, but I think kind of zooming out, there was the idea of taking this tremendous brand Lego, you know, extracting what it is, it's learning through play, it's twenty first century skills, and then applying this to kind of new projects that wasn't brick based, that wasn't kind of what they already did, but into new fields and my field was audio with the intention of creating something new, but like stepping up kind of on the shoulders of this massive brand. And the way they sold it to me was this like, you have the Avengers, this is Lego, then you come in as the new guy on the team.
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:What they didn't tell me was like, but you don't get any powers and you can't tell anyone that you're in the group. But I think a lot of the things were very kind of positive in their nature. Like it came out of this kind of family kind of revisiting the roots of entrepreneurship. It's a company that was born out of like wooden toys and then became plastic and then through the war, like there's a lot of adversity that kind of made it what it is, which is really beautiful. But when you now have, like, a 24,000 people massive global threat, it's also very different.
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:So I think what they had was almost like a family rebirth of like the idea of it. And then they gave it, you know, a place. And that place changed pretty quickly in the sense of, you know, let's do this for five years. And then suddenly it was like, let's do it less. And you should be one and we should have many entrepreneurs.
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:I never saw any colleagues coming in on my position. On the investment side, it felt now and having been around a lot of investors, it felt like they had people who had the right intentions, but probably didn't have the right profiles to kind of really be fast at sourcing deals or have this network. And so a lot of these efforts just fell a bit short in, you know, a % intention and just not enough real experience. They didn't hire anyone from existing accelerators. They didn't have anyone who would like run a batch at YC.
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:Like they just, it was just really fun, interesting people who all wanted to be the right people. But I think in hindsight to have been successful with this as a program, as something that would be still running, they would have needed to be kind of far more kind of, to be honest, cynical in what they wanted to have, because you're not YC just because you're a huge company. Like how do you get this flow? Like it needed to be people who want to do something with kids. It needed to be people who respected like the rules.
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:Like there's a ton of these things where YC is just like this huge open net and you can get in and you need to have a great idea and all of that's kind of true, but it's still not like, it's not a value based kind of decision making, right? It's like more can this float is like the basic need that this startup needs to fulfill. And coming into it, which is like really great, but then soon I started not to see like the, you know, wasn't holes in the cheese or problems per se for me, I just could see like, they're not gonna be able to move fast with this. They're not gonna be able to like get 10 new entrepreneurs in and fail fast, a hundred speed boats in the water. Like a lot of that kind of thing that sometimes needed to get it to some kind of a volume that drives significance, I could just see that that wouldn't happen.
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:So I focused one, a lot of my own. I tried to build this sensibility to like, where can this be heading? Because when you have standups with the team, the wider team, and in the first two ones you get, like, mentioned, and then the the next and suddenly don't get mentioned. And then suddenly the group you're part of doesn't get mentioned. Like, you kinda know what where this could be heading.
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:Unless you're very naive, it just feels like, oh, it's just coincidental. A new kind of head of everything came in, and and, you know, she probably had right values for a lot of things, but she felt very much like a trophy hunter to some extent, like a big game hunter on bigger acquisitions or bigger investments. And the gap between like my tiny or potentially other tiny companies that they would be building and these massive, highly publicized deals was just it's not super sexy to have like a ton of kind of pre seed companies versus going out and saying, I just invested $2,000,000,000 in Epic Games. So I saw the writing on the wall, that's kind of when I started to work towards being able to negotiate a spinout. But I also also knew, of course, that that spinout would necessitate me being able to raise outside funding.
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:And so I wasn't allowed to, but I kind of did poke a bit around like under the right circumstances, if I can spin this out, could this idea that I'm building on and where we are be fundable? And I think I got enough kind of just pretraction that I felt it could be done. It was also before the massive cooldown of venture capital. And then started negotiating units and succeeded, and Lego Ventures went from these kind of 80% down to 2% instead through the spin out. And so I was able to raise a bit more than a million dollars from outside capital.
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:And then what I needed to do was to kind of provide at least two years of funding for me to be allowed to spin it out.
Ilya Tabakh:And before we dive into that, you sort of pointed out a couple really interesting dynamics, and I think it's pretty easy to gloss over them unless you've sort of been in the room or at the table for those discussions. But I think the sort of the expectation, you know, you mentioned sort of big game hunter, you know, moving the needle, whatever, and having maybe a different profile than somebody that's doing something earlier. One of the things in our conversations in sort of EIR is being effective in their role is is kind of that intentionality and both sides, you know, having some visibility into kind of what the perspective of the other side looks like. Would be great if you could spend a little bit more about, you know, you mentioned that you sort of saw saw the writing of the wall, if you will, you know, kind of unless, you know but but I think that that that shows that you had some, you know, understanding for kind of the larger organizational dynamics, right? Where sort of time, visibility, leadership time, those things, budget ultimately are indications of where the priorities of the organization are.
Ilya Tabakh:Are there sort of other things and kind of those perspectives that could have been helpful, maybe would have led to a different outcome. Because I think that's where a lot of the, you know, I describe an EIR and Terrance and I both have used the word translator for, you know, kind of having that role. You had that background coming in. And so you knew that, hey, some of your colleagues that you're working with weren't, you know, kind of familiar or maybe were thinking had a different thing in mind for how some of these should work. Maybe talk about that a little bit before we kind of go into the spin out piece.
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:I think you can easily fall in love with the idea of being allowed to found something or be an entrepreneur inside a, you know, possibly great organization and be this kind of new beacon of hope and light. I think it's equally important to understand the circumstances that you're part of and to at least just be mindful to the extent that you can of like, what will your place be in the system? As we've talked about and probably also have experienced, like there is this varying degree of like reality that sometimes it's very kind of outspoken that this is the new epiphany and everyone loves it. And then you start like looking at the details, oh, they're actually not getting any funding or like limited. And then like, okay, they're not allowed to express it outside of the company that they're like, and then a ton of these can just get a derivative and down to like, oh, it's actually just like a product line that might get kind of, but since it's only gonna make a fraction of the revenue that the other things in the company are doing, then probably also never gonna get launched.
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:But it's just this almost like greenwashing, I call it innovation washing. I think that's kind of the same approach sometimes. The foundation when I came in was actually that. It was that there was actually a big budget. Like it was a long term budget.
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:It was like five years horizon. Like you don't need to do in return. Like you just like be crazy, hire all these people. And it's a family office and they do a lot of investing in long term positions and real estate and offshore wind farms. You don't have to be smart, and I'm definitely not smart.
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:But I could see that that kind of complexity of having that as your mindset of where you put all your money and then putting your little tiny fraction into this, it would never feel natural for them to be a startup kind of incubator from the family office point of view. Of course, like the dynamic of like not understanding it and not really knowing what's going on in this little weird kind of cubicle and who are these weird people coming in out with their caps on and their North Face, like not wearing ties. And so there needed to be some champion and I just couldn't find that champion who would kind of protect us. And having seen it before in Bagn and Olufsen, we had a champion who was the CEO who kind of took upon him to like, everyone said this was stupid, like, don't fuck with the heritage, like we're the most expensive brand in the world, like never do this. And it just became a success, right?
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:And not that everything should be, but he took the risk. Not seeing the same person in this organization just made it at least abundantly clear to me that something else needed to kind of be in the position of that. And when it wasn't our leader and there wasn't somebody on top, I could at least pretty sensibly come to the conclusion that it would be very difficult no matter what I did. And that kind of made me make those decisions towards the spinout. And also because I just felt it was really funny what we were doing, and I just liked that.
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:So that was kind of the reason why. So I think like looking back, I don't think I could have done anything, well, could have done a ton of different things, but it wouldn't have changed the outcome of it. It would never have stayed inside of this organization. It would have been like, you know, leave us, child. You are the broken one.
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:Almost like, you know, expelled from the flock. Yeah, you have weird hair and a hat. Go out. Excommunicated.
Terrance Orr:You know, this is this is such a interesting topic because I spent a lot of time talking about this topic in the work that I do at Mott forty nine, right? And helping large organizations innovate. And we talk a lot about what does it take to recruit a Matias inside your organization and what needs to be in place once you recruit them, essentially, you know, what things move the needle for true entrepreneurs in the marketplace, right? And we've noticed a few different things, a few of the things you've already called out, which is support from one of the highest levels in the company or some champion or advocate, right? That we call growth advocates, right?
Terrance Orr:People in the organization that would champion what you do. I did not have that in my EIR role at SAP, right? Where I felt like I was a lone wolf just floating around the company. Nobody knew who the hell I was, right? And every time I would reach out to somebody, was like I have four heads, right?
Terrance Orr:It was like, who are you and why would I be sharing my road maps and stuff with you again? It was just a very weird sort of no champion, right? And you you feel that instantly when you're inside of a larger organization, whereas when you're in the wild on your own, it's sort of there is no hierarchy. You go do what the hell you want to go and do and you throw things around until you find a thing that sticks, right? That's directionally right, right?
Terrance Orr:But you keep iterating and there's nobody to tell you we're killing the budget. You're done now, right? And unless you just run out of cash, right? You own that. So I think the other thing that I'm curious to know about is the aligning of incentives inside of large organizations, which is the part where we see a lot of gaps, right?
Terrance Orr:And in the larger companies that we work with. And what I mean by that is entrepreneurs are usually motivated by equity. Sure, they want something to show up, right? So yeah, you can give them a base salary, but there are motivated by equity right in the larger outcome to grow the thing to be a rocket shipping. That's usually what you want and we don't see that often inside of inside of large organizations.
Terrance Orr:So I don't know if something like that was in place at all. You know, inside of the LEGO group at the time, considering you were the first FIR and the only one to spin out a company from this large company. And I think folks like Matthias, for everybody listening, are superhuman, okay? Or lucky. When they figure out a way, or lucky, right?
Terrance Orr:Superhuman and lucky, right place, right time, right opportunity. But he also didn't take no for an answer. He turned the no into not right now and spun the thing out anyway, convinced him and went out and raised outside capital with its own separate cap table. So talk to us about the process. You spun the thing out, you're out raising capital.
Terrance Orr:Now you're running a company that's called Audio for the folks that's listening. Can you tell people a little bit more, what is the company you spun out and that process?
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:Yeah, mean, the whole premise was to do something with audio that kids would enjoy, that would feel different than like what was already there. It was kind of the tale of COVID where audio books and podcasts had grown tremendously from near zero and definitely accept screen time as something that was needed, but also of course find alternatives. And so that has driven a lot of options for kids on the audio book and podcast side. Having worked with voice agents, mostly on speakers, like, you know, early days of like Google voice assistant and stuff, felt that there was something at least from a technology perspective that left audio in a place that felt weirdly old. Like, it was press play, skip.
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:You couldn't search. You couldn't change anything. And having seen, you know, dramatic changes in game engines gone from, like, shitty to incredible on all aspects, like our our computers, everything just felt like, has nobody invaded on audio? And and now, like, today, we're seeing a lot of these things, you know, changing languages on the fly stuff. But it felt like there was some room and definitely also some room that could kind of add some playfulness to it.
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:So we started building very handheld interactive audio, tree structures in narratives where you could go left, go right, like very choose your own adventure style and kids loved it. Where we saw it going was something that would be definitely something LEGO could pay for, but also something that would be difficult to make move fast enough in kind of the markets. And I think what we hit when we raised the outside capital was just enough of like an idea that was working, but also enough of like a founder team that had a background that they felt could maybe do something with it. Around the table also probably an acceptance of this, this is an unlikely event, but let's try it anyways. And that led to the spinout of it.
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:And then we started building and started spending the money that we had raised and had actually a fully functioning product, had a lot of produced content that worked well with the kids we tested it with. But AI kind of started knocking on the door. The first part was synthetic voices, so being able to change into other languages and clone voices and stuff like that. We were very early adopters of one of the leaders, now 11 Labs, and just seeing if we could use this kind of in an on the fly situation. GPT started kind of emerging as something useful, and the API opened up.
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:And so building kind of that context of generating text and then producing content was something we wanted to figure out, spent three months on it, and at the end of that, just decided to discard the whole product that we had actually built for about a year and a half and focus 100% on AI. Now having closed the company, was that a mistake? I have no idea. But AI definitely pointed to a path where production wasn't kind of hampered by human speed of how fast can writers write or how fast can get voice artists in the studio and how often do they have a problem with their vocal cords and then suddenly we can't produce for a month, whatever it is, all of those things suddenly kind of vanished. And we could do things where kids could be partaking in the stories and make their own narratives and with a lot of guardrails and stuff like that, still keeping in the kind of the thread of healthy entertainment, that's kind of the company that we wanted to build and we're trying to build.
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:And we hadn't built enough for that to kind of raise new round, unfortunately.
Ilya Tabakh:As it sits right now, that's my favorite thing with a lot of the AI tools that come out is that incredibly fast, like, iteration cycles, you know, where there isn't a ping pong, the pong comes back immediately. What's fun with that is in many cases, you know, if I'm sort of working something out or working with some folks that have some good experience in standing up products and doing prototypes and things like that, they're able to move, you know, one person augmented with these tools in an incredible way. Recently, I've heard kind of Anthropic and others talk about, you know, we're talking to like the most brilliant amnesiac in history. Right? And is there sort of a way to change that experience a little bit?
Ilya Tabakh:But I think as the tools sit today, that reducing the iteration cycle to zero to where you can go, you know, you still have limitations as a human, but now, you know, kind of that team syncing dynamic collapsed almost to zero. And so I really enjoy and even, you know, a little bit on the podcast, we use tools here and there. It's amazing how quickly we were able to get to here's what it is, here's what we're gonna do, you know. And then obviously focus on the human parts, right? Like the AI is not doing this part, but it's just amazing to think about how kind of changes your process a little bit.
Ilya Tabakh:So I just wanted to kind of dig into that a little bit.
Terrance Orr:Matthias, let me ask you a question. Was that the first time you ever heard of like the in residence role? Was that your first time?
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:I think I had kind of seen it floating around. And to be honest with a bit of sometimes it's like, aren't you just looking for like a business developer? Like, is it like the role kind of felt a bit hollow and more like making something SDR like sound a bit more sexy? But it was the first time I saw something that I felt really compelled by. Yeah, sure.
Terrance Orr:I mean, that's a common thing. Most people when they see the in residence role, whether it's operator in residence, founder in residence, executive in residence, they're like, this role looks interesting. What the hell is this? You know? And what is FIR?
Terrance Orr:You know, like I know what founders do. Like I know what entrepreneurs do obviously, but what does it mean for them to be in residence? And most of us find that out the hard way by taking those opportunities. And some of us find out, you know, the good way and we get a spin out in there, even if we learn hard lessons along the way. I'm really curious about, you know, what you would have done differently, right?
Terrance Orr:If you were the making it up the head of new ventures at Lego at the time and you wanted to build this FIR program. What would you have done differently, right? To recruit a portfolio of EIRs like you who would in parallel be spending at multiple companies and really make this a thing that was still going today? How would you have constructed the program differently?
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:A thread I've seen in these like, this is like the third kind of eighty year plus company I've been in is that at some point there there is this understanding of who you are as a company that becomes very embedded in the way people think and talk about the company. It sometimes is super powerful because it it keeps the company in reigns. Like we shouldn't be doing this because it would kind of not be what we should be doing. And that's great sometimes, but other times it also becomes very limiting, right? And I think when you have, if you have an idea that you wanna be entrepreneurial, I think accepting that there's a high risk that there's usually a ton of outcomes that are not predictable, that you have to have a lot of failures to succeed.
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:A lot of the things that you see playing out in these programs are very contrary to a functioning organization, product lines where you know everything about your profitability and challenges to your manufacturing or supply chain, whatever it is. And I think having that idea that you can just kind of, as a complimentary thing, add this group of insanity to this very, you know, well oiled machine, it comes at a cost. It either comes at a cost for the old ship, and somebody needs to adapt to something new, or that this new thing just is this satellite that will never be connected in reality to it. Because if you at the end of the day have freedom as an entrepreneur and you wanna create things and you will have the craziness that you see in something like YC or 500 Startups or elsewhere, the narrow, tiny little hole that things needs to fit into for that to fit in a big organization that has a lot of rules, that does things in a way, is a bit like building something that will technically never fit, right? Because the kind of the direction of these startups will be so multifaceted that if they need to hit this kind of tiny little spec, which is, you know, fits the values, fits the way we do it, fits the way we manufacture things, fits the way we run businesses, you're gonna put up all these guidelines and rules for something that will never kind of be a true kind of entrepreneurial, as I see it, at least founder ish kind of style of building a company, which needs, as you said, to have equity, not just equity, but also equity of mind, right?
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:Like you need to lean into it. You need to have this boldness, this beyond kind of the usual, ah, shit, like I don't wanna go to work, like fuck it, I get up everywhere. Like I, you know, that kind of emotion that founders, at least when you look at the successful ones need to have, it doesn't fit like old school companies and how they're run. And so I think, so a very long way to answer your question, I think there's a massive kind of managing expectations that needs to be set up in the beginning that like, you know, you need to define what are the acceptable outcomes and you need to, is it that they all need to spin out so they are not making noises, you know, along your other product lines? Is it that, you know, they are a satellite, but they're fully funded and these are the ways they can kind of use the organization's superpower or whatever it is?
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:Similar to your feelings of being an SAP, like, I did have access to everyone in LEGO. I also felt the same as you of, who's this idiot? Like, he has the real email, so there's something here, but, like, who is he? Right? And there was a lot of kind of really, you know, good natured replies of like, I think this sounds interesting, but I don't know what to do because I don't know what we can do with you.
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:Like, there's a lot of that. And not defining like, what are the rules of engagement before in reverse that needs to be there. Like, what are you and where do you want us to go? I think that's probably one of the first steps I would take would be like, what are we willing to do? Like how crazy do we want to be?
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:Like, is it just a new, in the, you know, in the language of Lego, a new red fire truck made of bricks? Or is it something completely different that we've never seen before?
Ilya Tabakh:When I talk about this topic, you know, I like to talk about it from the EIR perspective, but I think there's a couple of different perspectives. But I think in order for an EIR to really be effective, you sort of need to know what's the secret sauce you bring in. Like, what do you actually bring to the table? I actually think it's really helpful for the organization to have already done a lot of the work that you're talking about, right? So to me, that's leadership commitment, budget, spending time on this issue, and then already kind of formalizing some of this.
Ilya Tabakh:It's not always acceptable outcome and things like that, although I definitely hear what you're saying. But I think just in their own mind, what does innovation mean to them, right? And then how does it actually support their overall strategy, Right? And formalizing that a little bit from their perspective. Right?
Ilya Tabakh:Because if they don't do that, then when you show up, you're going to be telling them about all these awesome pixie dust things you can do. You know, we can make teleporting machines and all this other stuff. Right? But they haven't really figured out what role does that play in sort of all the other stuff. Right?
Ilya Tabakh:And I think that's important. And what's interesting is I think in this conversation, we've spent the most time talking about the third part, which is sort of upskilling and reskilling the EIR or the founder to sort of appreciate all the things that we're talking about, right? Because a lot of this is like organizational dynamics. It's really understanding company culture. And in many cases, that's not where entrepreneurs and founders came from.
Ilya Tabakh:For me, I spent probably too long in academia. And so that was a bit of a masterclass in organizational dynamics. You know, you had the kind of opportunity to work in a couple older established or a few older established companies and you got to sort of understand, learn and be able to compare. Terrance spent some time at larger organizations and being sort of a change agent in that context. But I think it's really important to think of this from like the EIR perspective, but also the organization perspective.
Ilya Tabakh:And I think the best roles that I've seen is sort of a peer relationship where it's kind of conversational as opposed to one side dictating to the other side. And it's interesting to sort of we've talked about it in a couple of different angles, just wanted to kind of highlight that a little bit because I think it matches with some of other conversations we've had on this topic.
Terrance Orr:Yeah, pulling on the thread of, you know, both of you guys, I think that, you know, are like, I'm having like this moment over here as you guys are talking because everything Matias just described combined with what you just said, Ilya, is literally how we try to like coach, you know, these larger organizations to be prepared to work with, right? And how do you rediscover your entrepreneur DNA, right? And try things right and experiment because you know, naturally large organizations are really good at managing things because they've gotten big dismantling things right and moving fast. Is not what they're really good at. Like learning agility, you know, if you will, is not what they're really good at.
Terrance Orr:That's the skill set that an entrepreneur will bring to their organization if, right, if and when, because they're likely going to do it anyway and ask you for forgiveness later, right? You know if they have the capacity to actually have that type of human being inside of their organization and usually what we see the most successful corporates and bringing in FIRs and spending these people out and having the right structures. Have their own separate entity like almost like you were describing. It's a separate entity. It's a separate venture studio that's attached to the corporate or affiliated, but they can go test wild ideas.
Terrance Orr:They can do a lot of crazy things. Their HR is different. Their legal is different. Everything is different, right? There's no marketing people to be the brand police.
Terrance Orr:None of that, right? You go out and you go out and test the shit out of whatever ideas you want until you find product market fit and talking to enough, you know, customers. So I feel like, you know, you started to describe that sort of thing, if you will, and the rules of engagement with the larger organization and so on and so forth, and we just need more of that. Sadly, that's not the case in most large companies that have grown to be very damn big, right? But they have to rediscover their learning agility and their entrepreneurial DNA again to be ready for guys like Matthias and so on and so forth.
Terrance Orr:So anyway, thank you for sharing your experience inside the organization and what you would do differently. Now, you gave us a little bit of time machine wisdom just now, right? I'm starting to like pick up some themes in your background. Maybe you already know them, but there's this strong affinity for somehow family owned brands being attracted to you and your skill set and helping them innovate, whether that's Ricola, whether that's the LEGO group, whether that's whatever, you've built this trend line of how do you deploy impact at scale for family owned brands that have brand equity in different ways and helping them extend that into other channels of growth. And I think that's a fascinating journey to have as a theme that I'm starting to pick up on a little bit in your background.
Terrance Orr:But I don't want to steal any more thunder from Ilya, so I'm going to pass it back over to him.
Ilya Tabakh:No, it's awesome. I mean, what's cool is we're kind of just describing a little bit of maybe what I'll editorialize as a transition point from kind of startup to more of a portfolio approach. And one of the things that we've seen a couple of times is this nonlinear career path ultimately opens up a lot of optionality after a couple stops along the way. So we'd love to kind of hear about what you're focusing on. And then, you know, one of the things that we're trying to do generally is kind of connect this broader EIR network for a couple of reasons.
Ilya Tabakh:One, a lot of what we're talking through right now, you know, I've had to think through when I showed up as an EIR. I know other EIRs I've talked to. I didn't know other people had sort of thought through this. Although normally it's like, oh, I don't know why I didn't think about sort of calling other folks. So we're hoping to change that a little bit, but maybe that networking kind of support a little bit of what you're up to kind of post audio.
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:The threat that you talk about is definitely true. It's also, I think when I concluded my work in Ricola and it was kind of started as a consultant and ended up on like the inside as a VP, I also felt that like the likelihood of me meeting somebody who's like the third generation owner family and them drinking casually coffee with me and offering me a crazy job in an industry I had never touched before is like quite unlikely. Also, I'd be curious to hear like how things are on a state side, but definitely in Denmark, the entrepreneur or the the founder residence is is an uncommon way to innovate. I think it's much more usually, like, you know, NPD people and, like, very kind of core innovation oriented. I don't know why it is.
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:We have tremendously successful companies coming out of Denmark that have been able to innovate concurrently over decades, but probably the same way you see it, sometimes it is needed to get this kind of outside weird perspective to many, at least this weird perspective of like how you could do things differently, especially in industries or in companies that kind of are facing like these supernatural changes in the landscape that they're kind of working, whether it's regulatory, environmental, or that just like AI is either going to lunch or whatever it is, right? And I think at that point, usually, like you have companies that mostly probably do things way too late, and then you have companies who are willing to take the risk. And very few, or at least I'm seeing quite few who are kind of willing to take that debt to do things differently in Denmark, at least. So I would have loved to continue and find another owner family, old school company with tremendous success, but they're just very far apart. But I mean, I'm just like, wherever I end up, it's just been super fun just to have this weird mosaic of a career with these weird brands that still have a special place in my heart.
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:I still get happy when I see somebody wearing the headphones that I was in charge of or see somebody eating a Ricola or, you know, seeing my kids love LEGO that had nothing to do with, you know, the bricks. Just wanted to make that perfectly clear, but still is a brand that I kind of hold dear to my heart. I don't know how you guys feel about the brands that you've worked for, but that's still a very great feeling to have to be able to work for these companies. Yeah.
Ilya Tabakh:The interesting thing to me about all this is sort of digging into, you know, one thing you pointed out that I didn't dig into earlier, want to highlight now is that by taking on sort of this new role and having kind of this innovation and doing new things background, it's actually an amazing way for the founder or entrepreneur to wrap their head around and sort of really get deeply immersed in kind of a new field. And as you pointed out, a lot of the things are still, you know, the basic business framework is pretty easy. Sell something to somebody that wants it for less than you paid to make it and make sure that they pay you, right? Like, it's a like the very basics are pretty straightforward, but it's really interesting to think about all the different things. And so you mentioned a couple times learning about kind of regulations and food and things like that.
Ilya Tabakh:Today in kind of the climate of infrastructure and things like that, there's all kinds of companies being built that need supply chain, that need energy generation, and a lot of innovation folks are sort of used to they move fast and break things ethos. But when things break and, you know, people get hurt, that's not really a thing that you can do. Right? And so kind of adjusting and and really translating some of those sensibilities are really important. But what what's fun is just to your point about the I won't call it sentimentality, but just sort of the connection to the spirit of the brand, right?
Ilya Tabakh:A lot of these companies that have been around for eighty years or one hundred years or one hundred and fifty years in some cases, building and delivering something that somebody wanted to buy for a really long period of time. Right? And in some cases, they were better at sort of iterating and doing different things. Sometimes they were doing very similar things. But there's always some interesting In my experience, I've actually found it really useful to understand how has kind of innovation and doing new things played a role in the history of the company, especially if the company is 80 or 100 years old, helping folks remember, right?
Ilya Tabakh:Because in many cases, they don't remember what happened in the 50s. They don't remember what happened in the 30s. But in many cases, the company was saved, new things were invented, new trends were driven. And a lot of that is if you can sort of shake a little bit of the dust off of it, can be really inspiring for folks that are kind of connected to that organization. And for me, honestly, the other part is one of the reasons I'm really excited about the EIR thing is if you can take somebody that can do the new thing and connect with folks that know how to do the current thing and have them work together, I think that potentially some of the good that comes out of kind of innovation in the technology sector and maybe avoiding some of the things that we know aren't so good could be a really big unlock well beyond the few sectors where innovation has been so prevalent.
Ilya Tabakh:So definitely, I guess that's a strong yes to I've observed kind of that sentimentality. And I still get excited about utility poles, which is something I never thought in my entire life that I would be literally pulling out my smartphone or like, man, that's a complicated double pole. I still do that after kind of supporting some innovation work in that space.
Terrance Orr:But it's funny because I wanna sort of like pull on this thread and go into the next question that we have for Matias around whether it's food or play or whatever the next thing you're gonna do, it seems to be this theme of impacting people, right? And the brands and the things that you find to be dear. And one of the favorite questions that we love to ask, one of our favorite questions on the show, right, is asking people, you know, what is your dream EIR role? If you can think about the next thing that you want to impact, right, scale, you know, or the profile of a role that would be interesting to you, what would the dream EIR role be?
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:Like, topically, I would love for whatever I end up doing to have, I almost hate myself for saying it, but have a positive impact on the world. Sometimes it feels like everyone has to say that as a precursor to whatever they wanna say next. I don't wanna sell guns or tobacco. The thing is, that I also and probably, Ilya, you have that as well. Like, when you've been in industries where things are not simple, like where things take time or like implications are really deep.
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:For example, doing something as simple as like a little heart drop, you take it, you have a sore throat, knowing that certain ingredients can have hugely adverse effects on people if they're allergic to it. Like all of those things that go into building product, like when you have software, you can change it in a matter of seconds, you can pull it down if there's a whatever, something you've written in a bad way. But when you have these things that take time to build, it takes time to set up, it takes time to run it, it necessitates a different mindset than necessarily the classical kind of software guy coming from Silicon Valley who's just angry at everything and wants to build just everything on his laptop. Like there's just things that take time. And I think the high impact on the world for positive, whether it's climate, whether it's food supply, whatever it is, I'm not sure that everything needs to be kind of with the software mindset.
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:I think there's a simplification sometimes of like, oh, break, as you said, Ilya, no, go fast and break things. I think there's tons of things that could be learned. So finding something in that space of moving the needle with like meaningful innovation in some of these hugely impactful areas, would find that incredibly interesting to work with. I have no idea if I would be the right one for it. Whether it's health care, whether it's nutrition or, you know, energy, I'm super curious.
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:Like, I live in a flat country. Like, we will be impacted by the rising seas, whether we like it or not, whether it's humans or not doing it. Like, there is just a rise in the seas and, you know, bigger storms. And like, I think being able to just feel at least that I'm pushing a bit against it with some business decisions or things that are being built, I would love to be able to do that. That's kind of the dream to be able to be in that space.
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:But looking back at where I've worked and what I've done, I don't really care where it is. It's just like, that's the feeling I get that I'm curious every day about like what I'm working on, I'm learning, I'm around people who are smarter than me in the topics that they kind of need to be smart with, but I can apply my logic and my way of thinking to move them forward, I think that would be just tremendous. And that has kind of led me to where I am, but also not led me anywhere in the sense of like, it's not a very, like backtracking just would look like a weird, like Google Maps going completely awry, right?
Terrance Orr:No, that's fair. I think that's fair. And, you know, you're not alone, my friend, in saying, I want to have a positive impact on the world. Almost every guest we interview on the show, they're in the era of their life where they're looking to build something, sure, but give something that gives back to society and not just, you know, themselves. So I I think you're spot on with that.
Terrance Orr:Thanks for sharing, man.
Ilya Tabakh:And honestly, the the thing that I love about it is just that the intention. Right? You kind of by sort of having that crazy Google Map, right, the rerouting and you just decided to go with it path, right, which I've had, Terrance has had. It's sort of the funny thing is it connects where you are today going backwards, but it would have made absolutely no sense, you know, if you would have went back with your past self and is like, here's the road map. It's like, there's there's no road there.
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:Right? Career counselor would have said like, no way. You're never like, stay in school. Like, read your stuff. Go to uni.
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:That's the way to get ahead.
Ilya Tabakh:Yeah. No. Absolutely. But but but I think what's what's cool is that the folks that have actually have had lots of different passes and lots of different experiences are very intentional. Couple things.
Ilya Tabakh:One is you know what you're good at and what you're not good at and what you wanna get better at and what you don't wanna get better at. And two, sort of understanding kinda what role do you play in the organization and what role do you wanna play and then what impact it has on the world. Right? That actually takes a lot of kinda context and perspective to appreciate and then further be intentional about. And that was kinda my point about pointing out that little bit of a portfolio view that, you know, you're kinda doing a couple different things.
Ilya Tabakh:But I think that intentionality and sort of being able to have a first person experience in these wildly different settings is what makes you kind of a good translator. Right? Because if you if you speak tech, but don't speak operations or speak tech, don't speak big company, right? You're bound to have a learning curve encounter at some point in the near future, right? And having encountered that before a little bit is super helpful.
Ilya Tabakh:I just love the intentionality. Generally, I love intentionality and investors love intentionality from founders, right? Because you want somebody with a plan that they're executing. We've gotten as we as is our tradition a little bit over. But I always and we've made a tradition of asking the question of what can kind of the EIR network do to be helpful to what you're working on.
Ilya Tabakh:So maybe in the last kind of few minutes, you can tell us a little bit about what you've been up to most recently and then maybe how we can help.
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:I had a long summer break and now kind of just leaning into figuring out what to do next. Have a look at corporate jobs. You know, they're kind of far and apart, the ones that sound really interesting and don't have a thousand applicants. So I'm thinking kind of the whole swath of it. Like the founder residency would be great again.
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:I would love that. Or entrepreneur in residence. And also looking at just considering, like, should I start up something myself again? So that's kind of where I am. If I had intention in my career, like right now, I'm trying to find intention again.
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:But like I have three kids, so I also have a ton of intention there.
Terrance Orr:Absolutely, man. So I think it's the reality of us having the itch or the urge to want to do something, but the reality of, yeah, I kind of sort of have a family now and all of these other things going on. So finding what's the middle ground between stretching the itch that you have of wanting to do something interesting and innovative, but also where there's also security. But it's not rigid like some massive corporation with all the red tape because that's just gonna kill us all on this screen because we all that is not something that we like. So, I mean, I get it, man, but at least you're honest about that in your journey and what you want to do next.
Terrance Orr:So, man, have a week of support you.
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:I mean, I think the weird mapping to where I am also gives me a bit of confidence that like, I'll probably find something that I find fun and it doesn't like have to pop up right now. But yeah, that's kind of where I am. And then to the question of like what you guys can do, I think it's just super beneficial, especially for companies to understand like what value these roles can have in companies. And also the circumstances that needs to be kind of there for this to also be meaningful, not only for them kind of top line or bottom line at some point, internally, as well as like for us as entrepreneurs or founders of residence. So I think highlighting these kind of paths and the people that we are and like why we're going into this, I think it's just hopefully something that inspires one or two companies to do these bets, because I do think that for some, if not many, at least challenging the way that they do things and with innovation, thinking a bit outside of just like the next product on the shelf, I do think that is like, when we all talk about Tesla being great and Elon and like whoever we kind of put up as like the greatness, it's usually very far from these old companies and the way they do things.
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:So I think committing to it sometimes probably is the right, is the needed path for lot of these companies. And so I hope that's kind of what you guys get inspired to do.
Terrance Orr:Well, you're helping us do it, my friend. Thank you for coming on the podcast.
Ilya Tabakh:Of course,
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:it was great. Thank you.
Ilya Tabakh:Absolutely. Thanks for a great conversation and look forward to getting this out into the world.
Matthias Ørum-Hansen:Cool, thanks so much.
Terrance Orr:What another incredible episode. This time looking at an entrepreneur who's been in a while, went to go do this inside of a corporation and talking about the process, right? Of spinning his company out and raising outside capital. This is a fascinating discussion and a story that we don't get to hear quite often from folks who've worked inside of a larger company or a larger brand. But there's a few things that stick out about Matthias in this episode in general.
Terrance Orr:One is adaptability and taking the leap, moved his entire family, not just himself, but his entire family all the way to Switzerland for one year, right? Only to come back and to get into the FIR role. I mean, it's sort of that sort of risk taking and things that you need to be willing to do, right? To go for interesting opportunities to help different brands and different companies innovate and taking that leap and not knowing what's going to be on the other side. So looking at his risk taking, you know, his adaptability and frankly, the family being all in with him and going, let's do this together.
Terrance Orr:I think it was just a great, great thing to hear. The other thing is this sort of training in organizational dynamics, right? And navigating the large organizational culture and structures, right? And things that exist, you know, long before you got there, legacy processes, systems, how people think and trying to navigate that to get to the outcome that's desirable. And lastly, is this theme of him impacting people through family owned enterprises or brands, whether that's through food, through play with Lego, through the children, entertainment company audio.
Terrance Orr:I think there's multiple threads that Matteis has been able to sort of like lean into in his background. And I'm really, really excited for our audience to hear this next one. What do you think, Yoyu?
Ilya Tabakh:For me, it was sort of almost an extension of your, you know, the places where you learned about organizational dynamics. He also got infected with their, you know, kind of culture and brand and, a little bit of nostalgia and attachment to some of the bigger brands in definitely Denmark, but in Europe. And so that was really interesting to sort of see him still kind of having attachment years after spending time there. I get that a little bit as well. But it was just interesting to sort of once you spend some time at maybe a family, but generally like 8,100 year old organizations, there's some texture and some richness and some history there.
Ilya Tabakh:And so it's funny how you get sort of attached and entangled in that in some way. So I thought that was kind of an interesting thing that both of us share. But yeah, no, lots of what's fun is many of these episodes we're having to not cut off, but ultimately there's so much more that we can kind of dig into. I think we scratched the surface, you know, dove a foot or two under the water. I think there's a lot more depth with Matthias for sure.
Ilya Tabakh:It's gonna be exciting to, you know, sort of bring together other kind of European, other kind of hardware EIRs, other kind of more traditional industry EIRs and continue to kind of pull some of the threads that we started to pull on. That was pretty exciting for me.
Terrance Orr:Absolutely. And people are starting to see the variety that in residence people can hold, whether you're expert in residence, entrepreneur in residence, or a founder in residence thus far, you've heard on the show. And there's gonna be many more that we're gonna expose our audience to. And don't be shy about giving us consenting in to give us feedback people, never get a chance.
Ilya Tabakh:Give us the feedback. And then also, you know, if you have folks in your network that you think should be on the podcast and that we can learn from and connect to the community, send them our way. And, you know, we actually have a few episodes out now. There's some really good stuff out there. So if you haven't had a chance to check out some of the earlier episodes, some of the awesome EIRs and XIRs and all IRs out there.
Ilya Tabakh:Take a listen and let us know what you think.
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 cohost Ilya Tabakh signing off.
Terrance Orr:Let's keep building.
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