173 - "Build $#!t That Matters" - Marius Ursache

Speaker A: The startup fails when the founders quit. It doesn't matter if you know, it can be one year, it can be five years, it can be 10 years, it can be 15 years. In some cases that I know companies that have been for 15 years in this kind of like third way quit. I don't know, like maybe we should quit. The problem is that, yeah, this thing like when the decision, the individual decision, like when you quit, that's very, very difficult because you can work for 10 years and be two days from a breakthrough, but you don't know that. So I think that's the really hard part of this.

Speaker B: Our featured speaker today is a serial founder with 25 years plus of experience across healthcare, fintech, VC acceleration, HR, tech, B2B software, E commerce and consumer apps. As an MIT teaching fellow, he also helped launch the MIT Bootcamps program and taught there for over 10 years. Marius, it's a great pleasure to have you. We have a lot to catch up on, but I was wondering if you might kick us off and just talk to us about some of your experience growing up and if you feel like there were any early life influences, either events or people that came into your life that really kind of shaped the direction you've taken.

Speaker A: Yeah, I grew in communist Romania. I was born in 1977. Now looking back in time, it feels very, very odd, very, very different. But at that point that was um, what normal life, uh, looked like. So the fact that we were not really allowed to talk freely, to make jokes, uh, we had Russian food that seemed, you know, like everybody was in that same situation back then. I liked school, I liked a lot of stuff, maths, uh, chemistry. The other thing I started doing at some point it was like doing computers. Back then computers were these kind of uh, Spectrum ZX80 machines that you would plug in a TV and you would have a tape setup with uh, games and other stuff. We're just like trading games with kids, uh, probably. That was like very, very similar to what ah, kids in computing in the 80s were uh, doing across the world. So that was not so different. I think that's where my love for computers started. I think that was like one of the definitory things also this kind of Olympics and competition, uh, really liking these kind of things. Uh, I didn't do anything on chemistry side, uh, eventually, but uh, uh, yeah, it was good. And I think I had a lot of uh, teachers that I'm grateful for probably pushing me to learn more than I was willing to because of course I wanted to play, I wanted Anything but, uh, homework, uh, that ended up being very useful and uh, influential. And of course, you know, my parents, whom I have to think, first of all, besides, you know, taking care of me and everything else, for just making me a very positive and optimistic, uh,

Speaker C: person, it's quite a like, dramatic difference between what you've experienced very young to now, what you've done. You've explored healthcare, you've explored fintech. I mean, Nancy went through all of the different spaces that you've worked in before. It's incredible. We obviously know you from your mentorship in the MIT boot camps program that we went through. What have you found to be rewarding moments as a mentor? And what sort of motivates you to keep doing the things you're doing, uh, in mentorship?

Speaker A: Most important part, I think is like this kind of connection that or uh, relationship that uh, establishes, which is sometimes, you know, at the border of friendship and uh, professional relationship. I found out that uh, if that connection doesn't build, it doesn't matter how great the context, how good the match it is, it's not just going to keep up. Because being a mentor to someone, like, often means not criticizing but telling things like very straight forward. And that's, you know, when you're, I understand the other perspective when you're a founder, when everything, nothing works around you, when you're dealing only with uncertainty and with a lot of stress. Having someone, uh, tell you that, yeah, you know, I can confirm that you're doing this, uh, and it's bad, it's not what you want to hear. So it takes someone who's like really, really resilient on this front to be able to accept this and do something about it. And I think the other thing is persistence. I've had probably hundreds, if not more of one instance mentorship relations where we talked, advice, uh, the person shared what I had uh, to say and that was it. Uh, but it's much harder to, I would say like, not for, not for the mentor, for the mentee to keep the relationship going long term. And to your point, like, what I found like most rewarding out of that is to see them succeed. The reason why I do mentorship is that I don't know, like, if I start a company, uh, if I work on my business, the leverage is one to one. I can do as many things as I can do in 24 hours a day minus sleep, that's probably on average 12 active hours per day. But when you mentor people, and even beyond mentoring, what I'm done with You. Because, uh, that was sort of like one time coaching. You never know, uh, that in any of these programs, like an MIT Bootcamp or any other type of training or accelerator program, you stay in something that seems very stupid to you. Uh, but for another person just clicks with something else they know and they put it together, and maybe it influences a major decision they have to make at some point in their professional career. And that has an impact. And, uh, especially when you're talking about businesses where you start hiring people, you create products that serve hundreds, uh, thousands, tens of thousands, maybe millions of people. Something like this, it's a drop in the ocean, but I think it's, uh, it's worth a lot more than the time that you, uh, allocate for this as a mentor.

Speaker B: I was wondering if you could just talk to us about how the opportunity came about for you to become involved with MIT boot camps. But also, did it open any unexpected doors for you?

Speaker A: I was in my first company, uh, it's like 11 or 12 years in. And that was a company that I started at 22, where I was a medical student, and it was a software and design company. And of course, like, I had absolutely no idea about how to build a company. And it took me a lot of time and a lot of mistakes to. To learn that. And at some point, I think it was like 2011 or 12, a friend told me, like, hey, this, uh, these two professors from MIT and they come, uh, to Romania to do some sort of, uh, workshops. You know, I think this would be very interesting, uh, for someone like you. I was like, oh, wow, yeah, sure, let me do that. So I went there and there were two professors with Bill Olette, uh, from mit, and another guy who was also a former director of the MIT Entrepreneurship Center. And I remember they were very interesting. So I learned a lot. But in one of Bill's sessions, I don't know, I was just partially, uh, bored. And I was not paying attention to what he was saying. So I was just doodling on a notebook. And at some point I noticed, like, Bill is peeking over my shoulder. And I'm like, oh, my God. You know, I'm like, fully ashamed. And Bill sees one of the illustrations, the cartoons I was doing. He's like, oh, my God, this is so great. Oh, you're so talented. Can I have this? Uh, you know, can you scan this or take a photo of this and send it to me so I can use it in, uh, uh, my presentation? And I'm like, yeah, of course.

Speaker B: I get.

Speaker A: So two weeks Later, Bill emails me and says, like, marius, hey, I'm thinking of writing, uh, a book about, you know, based on the courses that I'm, uh, teaching at mit. Based on the workshop that you attended. I didn't know exactly how I wanted to do, but, you know, seeing your cartoons, I realized I don't want it to be a business book. I want it to be something that's, uh, more different in terms of how it's presented. So what, uh, do you say? Would you want to help me with, uh, designing these, uh, illustrations? Creating this illustration, like, oh my God, yes, of course. And then the next question is like, okay, so how much should I pay you? And I said, bill, I'm not doing this as a, uh, paid project. I'm the CEO of a company. We can do this if it's a side thing for me, like a fun project. And he's like, no, no, no, but I have to pay me. No, if you pay me, then it's a job and I don't want it as a job. You're going to advise me, you're going to mentor me. So he seated eventually, because I'm a stubborn Romanian. It was the start of a great friendship and great collaboration because I helped him with that, uh, and then with other ST stuff in the book. The book came out, uh, it was very successful. And they also like, okay, you didn't want to get paid for this, that's fine, I understand. But, uh, I feel linked up to you. So what I want to do, I'm going to give you the opportunity to come at one, uh, of the, um, MIT entrepreneurship courses, which was the entrepreneurship development program was like a one week program, pretty similar to the Bootcamps, but dedicated mostly to executives. They said, okay, sure, uh, I'm going to do that. Uh, thank you. That's, you know, that's nice. Uh, it's not payment, uh, and that's a great learning opportunity for me. I went there basically, like, we had to start with an idea that was, uh, completely new. And my craziest idea at that point was what if you could create, um, sort of an AI avatar based on someone's digital footprint that would, uh, basically live on after the person dies so their, you know, children, grandchildren could talk. This, uh, avatar send us, uh, they would have a chat, a video chat, um, facetime Call or Skype or Zoom with, uh, uh, the deceased person. And of course I thought like, hey, you know, that's crazy. It's just an exercise. So we started applying the methodology and one of the Things that we had to do is like primary market research, find people to talk to. And I said, okay, let's build a landing page. We built a landing page. We went to sleep. Next day, we probably got like 50 signups up to that point. And one of guys like the Saturday says, like, uh, hey guys, I saw something about your idea or something similar, I'm not very sure in Boston Globe. And we're like, oh, let's look online. Maybe there's a startup already doing this. Like, we still. And we see an article in Boston Globe, the online edition. Uh, these guys during this program at mit and was a photo with us. The photo from the landing page are building this thing called Digital Study Mortality. And we're like, what? Like, you know, how can this happen? So, long story short, after that experience, I decided actually, hey, that proved to me that there's a need for something like this. I have no idea how to build it, but I know that people want something like this. So I decided to exit my previous company and start working on this. Because of this experience, I met Erdin, who was, uh, working at that point also at uh, some other, uh, projects at mit. And he emailed and say, like, Marius, why don't we start this, uh, program? I have this idea of a program that's similar but, you know, more dedicated to younger founders, not to executives. Uh, it's going to be called MIT Bootcamp. So do you want to be a teaching fellow for mit, uh, and help me, uh, kick off this program?

Speaker C: Uh, now you have a, uh, new book coming up, I believe, called Disciplined Entrepreneurship Finance for Founders. Do you have any sort of hints or treats from it that you'd be willing to share at this point? Obviously, if you're not, that's totally fine. Yeah.

Speaker A: The story is that Bill, uh, had this draft sitting in his, uh, you know, his kind of like blog post series and some PDFs, uh, that I have played it a couple of years ago. But he was like, yeah, I don't know. And then he said, okay, you know, I'm going to start on this, like, more seriously. But again, other things happen. So he had his draft and I said, okay, you know, let me try and help you. Uh, initially the process was just like, hey, I was going to just edit and give him some feedback, like, same with the other books. But I ended up, uh, you know, Bill has his perspective, uh, of uh, teaching at mit. I have, I think, like a different perspective also coming from Europe, where the fundraising environment and the funding, uh, and the finance, uh, is Seen a bit different. So I started learning how I could build. Not what I thought up to that point that finance was, which was accounting and bookkeeping, but how I actually look at numbers and have them tell a story about what you're trying to build. Because I think you need more than, you know, vision, mission, inspiration, this kind of, uh, unicorn madness. You also need to be grounded, uh, in those numbers. So I created a point of financial model, was like, very successful for my company. That investor got it and started using it with, uh, other companies, uh, in the group. And then like all my experiences after that for my companies and working with other founders, this has been like a central part. So, you know, I've started like really, uh, writing some of the chapters. And Bill said, okay, uh, you know, that's actually co authoring the book. And the other thing that I've done is, and that was the most difficult part was to try to illustrate the whole, uh, all the concepts in all the chapters, from, you know, financial statements to financial modeling and uh, fundraising with a hypothetical case studies. Because we couldn't get our hands on any case study to be relevant. Right. Like some companies are SaaS, some are the hardware, some are, you know, services. So basically like built a hypothetical startup that does both, uh, you know, hardware. So Basically it's an IoT startup that has a thermostat, sells hardware and then also sells subscriptions for, uh, the smart features of the hardware and also has some service component for, uh, you know, providing installation and stuff like that. So that was very, very hard to make, to invent basically numbers that make sense. But I think, you know, I'm happy with how it came out. I'm not going to say it's a great job. Uh, that's your job. When the book comes out, say, like, Marius, this is complete nonsense. Like, we don't get it. Like, yeah, we like the COVID or, oh, you know, actually this helped me understand something I never imagined, uh, it would be easy to understand.

Speaker B: Well, I love knowing too, that it pushed you outside your comfort zone. Now I want to read it even more. Can you tell us from your perspective about some meaningful friendships that have come out of business for you?

Speaker A: Oh, yeah. So I stayed friends with, uh, all the people who I had, those, uh, co founders. And I think that, uh, you know, it's good to start business with friends because you, uh, you know them, you trust them, uh, you know, also their bad sides. So you are less likely to be surprised. And again, my experience of doing that, uh, have been positive, but I think I know a lot of other people and I see around me, and especially maybe even in startups, but also in small businesses where this is not the case. People think that friendship is enough when you start a company, but it's not. Because even in friendships, you are not very upfront with, uh, what you want, and you don't want what you like what you don't like. So if you're not aligned, this will implode the company and the company will suffer, uh, and the friendship will suffer as well. The other thing is, if you start doing the business with someone and the business relationship stays on, I think it turns into a friendship because for a very good business relationship, it means there's a lot of common stuff. You have a lot of stuff they have in common. So other times when you do business with someone, you have a lot more things to talk than with, uh, someone who is your best friend in high school or in college. And you have a lot more. Your, uh, shared reality is a lot richer when you share all this experience for the person you work with.

Speaker C: Absolutely. How do you feel about founders that are seeking sort of outside funding versus bootstrapping? Is there advice that you give to founders for making the decision about where to go at what time?

Speaker A: Yeah, like, the first thing was, can you survive? Can you start the company and make it successful without external money, even if it's slow? If that's, yeah, I can tell you how I can do this, then maybe it's worth going and get money to speed this up. Uh, and of course, there are situations where you can't do. If you're doing hardware or serious R and D, there's no way. Or biotech, there's no way you can do this without external money. So that's absolutely. Yes. But if you could bootstrap. So if it's like, should I bootstrap or should I do this, I would say bootstrap it. And then even if it's more painful, and raise money when you need actually money to grow the company, because early money in will completely shift how you build a business. You're gonna say, hey, we have money. We don't need customers right now, and we can work more on the product, polish more on the product, and that's usually a very, very bad decision. And probably 90% of the founders that I talked to, and this is like, one of the reasons I wanted to write that finance book, and I hope they're going to read it, we cut it down from almost 100,000 words to 65,000 words to just you know, make it more accessible. But I think that's the most important part because I have this thing. A startup is not an app, it's not a platform, it's not an um, AI, it's not a SaaS. A startup needs to be a business, right? So if you don't know how to make money, if you're not able to sell and get it off the ground around, then the fact that you are able to raise angel money or VC money is not really going to help you. It might help you if you learn how to, you know, build a business with other people's money. But uh, yeah, I, I would every encourage everyone like no, get you think that getting money is the easy way. First of all, it's not because it's a very painful uh, journey for six to nine months usually. And uh, you need to be focused full time on that. And there's absolutely like, you know, if you are not able to explain and you know, be able to build this as ah, without money it's very unlikely that you're going to be able to raise money anyway.

Speaker B: So I do have a question from uh, a listener. Are there assessments out there that you feel make a great team?

Speaker A: It's hard because there's all sorts of, you know, profiling and things like this. And I think you can have two people who own paper developer will, you know, slash their thoughts and actually they will work very well together because they respect each other, they're very different but everybody is a very good professional in what they do. Uh, I think what's critical is this thing of uh, common values like value alignment. And I've seen this so often in my companies and also outside, uh, people who start working together but they do not have the same culture. Right? There's no culture fit. And by culture, I don't know that crap, you know, mission, vision, values. Culture for me is a set of common behaviors that you go into a group of people or a team and you see some common behaviors and everybody's behaving the same when it comes to work, when it comes to going out and partying, when it comes to helping each other, when it comes to learning and so on. So that's culture fit. And of course like when someone doesn't fit in such a culture, it's going to be very, very obvious and it's going to create friction and it's going to create uh, chaos. So I think that assessment is very important and I think what I encourage every founder up to probably the first 20 people you have to recruit themselves. And the first filter is Culture Fit because you can teach a person, you know, JavaScript or Java or Sales, but you can't teach them to have the same principles and shared reality, uh, as you have. So I think that's the most important. But I'm going to give you it's not hard to do this in an interview because basically you're asking questions that help you figure out if those behaviors are also uh, common with uh, the other person. So for me one of the non negotiables in this is uh, passion like for all the people I work with, doesn't matter where they work because if you're not passionate about what you're going to do, we're not going to get along. I know this like you know for 25 plus years. So how do I find out that you're passionate? Like for me it's a very simple question. How do you learn new things? That can be a 30 second conversation or a two hour conversation and you can do this like on different other uh, dimensions to really learn about people. But I think like that's the most important assessment if you want to uh, build a team for uh, a company.

Speaker C: So we like to wrap up with this question and I want you to interpret it in the way that makes the most sense for you. But the question is basically what words of wisdom or piece of advice do you want to leave us with today?

Speaker A: So I would say that probably one of the most useful advices or wise things that I've heard as well is when does a startup fail? My perspective is that the start it used to be up to some point I don't have an answer right now. So you know, it's only half wise is the startup fails when the founders quit. It doesn't matter if you know, it can be one year, it can be five years, it can be 10 years, it can be 15 years in some cases that I know companies that have been for 15 years in this kind of like should we quit? I don't know, like maybe we should quit. The problem is that, yeah, this thing like when the decision, the individual decision, like when you quit, that's very, very difficult because you can work for 10 years and be two days from a breakthrough, but you don't know that. So I think that's the really uh, hard part of um, this.

Speaker B: Well said. Well thank you for taking so much time with us today. We really appreciate everything you've shared with us and taught us. If people want to get in touch with you, if they want to, um, know what you're up to. How would you like them to get in touch with you?

Speaker A: LinkedIn is the easiest way.

Speaker B: All right, well, thank you so much again, Marius, and thank you to our listening audience. All right, we wish you a great rest of your day and a great weekend.

Speaker A: Take care, guys. You've just finished another episode of Founders Voyage, the podcast for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs. The team at Founders Voyage wants to thank you from the bottom of our hearts. We hope you enjoyed your time with us, and if so, please share this with someone else who might enjoy this podcast. You can also support us by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and by donating to our Patreon outro. Music Today is Something for Nothing by Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band.