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Since graduating in 2007, Nicole Verkindt has had quite the ride. From her first job as the ‘hot walker’ at the Woodbine Racetrack, to learning sales on the fly with a Belgium firm, Verkindt founded OMX (Offset Market Exchange), a powerful procurement platform for various complex supply chain industries.
Working with major International players like Lockheed Martin and British Aerospace, Verkindt became a prominent fixture in major boards, and government discussions, as a major proponent for innovation across Canadian industries.
In this episode, Verkindt speaks candidly about her journey out of business school, her view of innovation, and why it is vital to Canada’s place in the global economy.
The Ivey Entrepreneur Podcast is sponsored by Connie Clerici, QS ’08, and Closing the Gap Healthcare Group, Inc.
Transcript
On this new series of the Ivey Entrepreneur Podcasts you're invited to listen in on the guest visits my Hustle and Grit class taking place virtually at the Ivey Business School. Hustle and Grit is a course that we created to teach you everything that you didn't learn in business school, in Business School. In it, we invite world class innovators and entrepreneurs to talk about topics like motivation, how to learn what to prioritize, and even how to be happier. In these episodes, you'll hear live audio from my classes because honestly, there's just something different about the energy, excitement and honesty taking place in a live classroom environment. So get comfortable. Grab a seat, and don't worry, unlike my real class, I won't cold call you. Enjoy.
Introduction/Outro
Nicole has also been a dragon on CBC's Next Gen Den. She was also named Woman Entrepreneur of the Year by startup Canada in 2017. Nicole sits on the board of the Canadian crown Corporation, Canadian commercial Corporation and the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. Nicole is a true Canadian champion for entrepreneurship, hustle and grit class of 2020, please welcome Nicole Verkindt. *Applause*
Eric Janssen
Thanks for the call. Welcome. What do you think?
Nicole Verkindt
I love this fake applause at the end. I was awesome.
Eric Janssen
Yeah, they did an awesome job. Nice team, they set a high bar. So you're the first you're the first one that the team had to actually do an intro for. And so I don't know, that's a pretty high bar for other groups living up to those expectations.
Nicole Verkindt
Yeah, no kidding. You know, it's a really high bar though. Like the color your jacket and the background calm a lot.
Eric Janssen
I'm a lot, I know it. I'm, a lot, a lot.
Nicole Verkindt
It's so... it's so... it's happening.
Eric Janssen
Yeah, well, you know, my wife, Jessie, and I went to go downstairs to the studio today to teach, she said "you're gonna wear you're wearing that today?" Yeah, this is what I'm going with it's innovation day, it's about being different. I'm going for it.
Nicole Verkindt
I've been sitting at this desk since seven o'clock this morning. So like, I'm hoping you guys can wake me up a little bit. Because I'm far away from the coffee machine.
Oh, they will, they will for sure they're gonna bring it back, tons of questions rolling in. But I wanted to start with, so a handful, maybe two or three people have heard the story on opening day, Nicole, but I loved it, you're opening a speech to the HBA ones coming in. And the reason I thought it was so cool is because you were just open and honest about frankly being lost and not really knowing exactly what to do out of HBA. And a lot of the people take here in the room, digital, take this course because this is a course that allows them to work on themselves and try to figure out what they want to do, what they're all about. And what's next. So I thought you sharing your story on how you chose a little bit of a non traditional path would be a nice way to start if you don't mind.
Nicole Verkindt
Sure. I mean, good on Ivey and kudos to Ivey and I'm sure you're influencing this Eric on having these different types of courses, because I remember, we were the first year to go through the entrepreneurship certificate. And I specifically remember it being a little more stuffy than it is now in terms of the classes were very structured around kind of these three tiers, accounting, management, consulting, and investment banking. And those are three really great careers. But the thing that those three careers tend to have in common is that you get on a treadmill, right? So in the sense that, you know, if you haven't done your summer internship at an accounting firm, and then you're going to recruit for that out of school, it can be very difficult. And so those were sort of the three paths that I remember thinking were my options at Ivey and the whole time, I just felt really uncomfortable with them. I did put on a horrible suit and interviewed twice at Ivey both of which just went really badly. And so I had no idea to do my life. I ended up but I think the Ivey leader program is still happening. But I went to Moldova and Russia for the summer in between to do this entrepreneurship program which was set up right after the fall of the Berlin Wall to teach communists what capitalism was. So really out there definitely not a direct path to a career by any stretch of the imagination. But I was graduating Ivey everyone kind of had a job or an idea what they wanted to do lined up. And you know, somebody asked me what I did and when I when I look back, because I was in between and didn't know what to do. I ended up working at the racetrack at Woodbine being the exercise Walker and my title was Hot Walker. So that was the first job I had and that was my official title. And my job was to walk quickly with the race horses on the way to the track, from the warm up area, and so like a we're big number of my head and I delivered the racehorse to the jockey. And I had my little Ivey business cards and I was a Hot Walker. So all to say you can be a Hot Walker and then move on from there. But I did that I did a bunch of kind of weird things. I ended up taking a job commissioned only working in sales for a company out of Belgium that I got linked up with through an Ivey MBA. So he told me what this company he said, You know, there wasn't a big base salary, but it'll allow you to travel, which I loved doing at the time. And so I took this job, the job didn't pay anything, but they gave me a $30 per diem, and a percentage of sales and kind of hooked around Europe in the Caribbean selling these advertorials that were inserted into the center of the economist and The New York Daily News. And they were like advertisements on countries. And so I did that for about a year. And it was a really fascinating experience. And I actually did quite well at it. But it it really taught me how to sell, which I almost feel like, or felt at the time that some of the other Ivey grads I was going through with it was almost like, if you were out making no base salary, and you were, you know, calling 100 people a day, it was almost, it was almost like, I was almost slumming it, right? Which I was in a sense. But when I look back, and then you know, I guess the intro video tells the story of what I did from there, worked in a family business to start up as a subcontractor offshore manufacturing and company and then eight years ago started OMX. And I actually sold OMX in March. I don't know if I told you that, Eric, but you know, when I kind of go through that whole trajectory, the number one most important thing, when I look back, for me, the most important skill was was knowing how to sell and knowing what works and doesn't work. And so, I mean, obviously, things make sense, backwards, but I left Ivey kind of willing to do anything, and then took on that sales job. And it seemed like it didn't make sense. But when I look back, now, I was thrown off the deep end and was forced to learn how to sell. And so I'm really grateful for that for that opportunity. And I just think, you know, I end up now talking a lot about diversity, and some of these other things that are innovation and big companies that are going to talk about that a little bit today. But a lot of big companies now, you know, want to understand how to innovate. And when you look at the data points that contribute to innovation, you know, one of the most important elements is this notion of diversity of opinions, not necessarily diversity in terms of what you're born with, but also experiences. And so I think that's an I think it's important to remind everyone on the call today, or in class today, that I think that taking on these kind of strange, unusual experiences that might not have a direct path into a career can really help contribute to an organization's way of thinking outside the box, way of you know, growing into new markets, they wouldn't have thought that they would have grown into etc. So it ends up being a direct correlation between an organization's ability to grow and expand into new markets, new sectors, etc. and having a team of people that have very, very different backgrounds, it could be because of the qualities that they were born with, you know, race, gender, etc. but could also just be the different experiences that you you took on and different things that you learned and did. So including being being taught by a teacher with a purple jacket in front of a purple wall, is not entirely, you know, it's not entirely what everyone else would be doing in that scenario with a wall that purple, but it's all about this idea of just thinking a little bit differently about things. And so I can get into my background a lot more as we chat. But I think that's what came out in my HBA one talk was just that, like, if you just look at what I went through, I mean, the whole time I, I was telling myself that my life was a shit show. And when I look back now, I think we'll actually some of those things were really key building blocks too, for me to learn some of these, you know, out there skills and gain these experiences that were different. And then I ended up building an entire company and selling it kind of based around these idea of doing these Country Reports. So we automated a lot of the the data intake that was required to to estimate impacts to GDP. And so that kind of translates back to that very first sales job I had. So there's lots of ways to go about this. And I just think that it's really critical for anyone kind of in school now to be to be open to learning all sorts of new things.
Eric Janssen
So people, this is I'm scanning some questions and I want to relate it to what you said. They build up, the first thing out of Ivey is like the thing, right? It's like the the first thing on your resume, it's your first justification to your parents that this was the right decision that it was worth spending this much money on that it was worth their investment, whatever, like, should they be building up, the first thing is the first thing matter as much to you who would technically be hiring these people out of school, if someone if someone was the hot the horse, Hot Walker, and then you know traveled for six months, you're going to hire that to kind of profile?
Nicole Verkindt
I mean, you can spin your background into anything, you could say that, you know, while I traveled, I learned all about this country. And that's why I should be an account manager selling to that country. It does and it doesn't like, it's really hard to judge someone when you're hiring them based on what they've done in the summer in between a few years of school. So I would say no, but also, of course, it does, to the extent that if the folks today, if you want to get into a startup, you know, I think that interview process, they're going to be looking for something very different than obviously a larger, more established company. And so I would just say that joining a startup, the number one thing that people hiring are looking for, is is the ability to be a self starter more than anything. And so, like, I've hired some students who did the camera, that's all for you. It's like the franchise painting company, where you're running around painting houses, and you get a percentage. And, you know, but they spent the whole interview talking to me about how they had to knock on doors and pitch, why your house needs to be repainted. And I thought that was fantastic. So I mean, you can spend anything, like to answer your question yes or no. And the other thing that I think is important is a lot of people are in a big rush, you know, which is good, because you don't want to be slow about things, but in a big rush to make things happen quickly. And you know, a lot of the data is coming out that the best entrepreneurs are in their mid 40s. And they've done a bunch of things, they've got some battle scars, and they've made a bunch of mistakes. And so you don't you know, you don't have to be hitting it right at school year after, it's okay to be doing different things.
Eric Janssen
So that was one of the questions actually did did you always know that eventually, you'd be doing something entrepreneurial. I know, it was in your family a bit because you didn't right out of school, say I'm gonna go work for myself, you you were pursuing wanting to work somewhere else. So did you eventually know that you wanted to? Or?
I had no, let me be, I don't know how to be more clear, I had no idea what I was going to do with my life like absolutely zero, no idea. It was like this, I'm just gonna push this decision, just kick that can down the road and, and put it off. And I had absolutely no idea and it terrified me. And I think it's important for people to hear that, that that it absolutely terrified me that I, you know, people knew what they wanted to do. And I had no idea. And the idea of joining my family business was was not at all what I wanted to do, I ended up doing a startup in the sector. And then our family business actually got into some pretty some pretty big trouble. And I joined the business just to help with a restructuring effort. So I didn't join it, because I was going to take over in this thing was going to be huge, you know, we were going from 900 to 200 employees under, you know, some stress of contract changes. And that's a whole nother class that could be taught on what happened there. But it was kind of just me reacting to okay, I think that I'm going to go put my effort here now. And then I don't know, things go on I, I can say that I never was able to sit still very long. And even within OMX, every three years, we were kind of dramatically reinventing ourselves. We are now now we're owned by Morningstar, one of the world's largest sort of data firms, and we're completely reinventing ourselves and use of our technology again. So I can say that that was definitely a quality that I've seen in a lot of people that are entrepreneurial is just every couple of years, every two or three years, I say you have a Seven Year Itch, just always wanting to continue to iterate and change things.
Eric Janssen
So there's a lot of questions that are coming in about sort of the personal figuring yourself out side of things. So I want to I'm gonna come back to those I want to lump those into a piece. But first, I wanted to get your perspective broadly on innovation because you see innovation from a bunch of different perspective, you see it from as an entrepreneur, involved in some policy on the government side sitting on boards. As an employer, how are we doing? How's the country doing in terms of innovation?
So, the country is doing horribly. I don't know how else to say that. But so there's kind of two conversations. I have changed my definition of innovation Dramatically. Now, I think my definition is that it's an attitude. So I am now I am actually working in a big company, the company that acquired OMX. I'm working for them for a little bit. And it's so interesting to see the different the different dynamics of startup versus larger company. So to answer your question, your first question on what is innovation? Obviously, it's a lot of things. There's lots of ways to define it, and you can Google it, there's definitions, but I've come down to this notion that is, it is an attitude, it is a way of thinking about things. And it's a little bit of what I described earlier about, you know, breaking the box, making a bigger box, you know, look, looking outside the box at different ways to do things. It's a lot of tiny activities, it's small pivots, it's a lot of grinding away making small changes and experimenting so that that's kind of how I would define innovation. You're saying much about how Canada is doing. So I co chaired this task force last year called the Canada's Task Force on Oh, gosh, economic, like kind of where we were adding Canada, it was led by the Business Council of Canada 100 biggest companies, they put me on as the token small business. And we looked at all the macro economic data of what is happening with businesses in Canada and the economy. And, you know, our economy has done well over the last little while. But when you really dig in and look at the root drivers of an economy, a lot of the fear around why we've done well is because we've had a bull market in the US, you know, Donald Trump has done a lot of bad things. But he did a lot of good things for the stock market and for GDP in general growth. And just some of those drivers were not some of those drivers that drove our GDP, it was scary to look at them, because they were not the things, you know, IP, IP exports had never been lower. And in relation to other countries, we were the worst. By far, the regulatory burden that we face in trying to get new ideas implemented in startups going and businesses in Canada was higher than most of our peers. So there was five or six metrics that kind of are there to tell the story of what we're going to see 10 years from now. And and they were they were quite poor and getting worse, with regulatory burden being being very, very poor. And definitely the IP export, which we see as something that kind of can tell a story, a longer term story, right? So how do we build the next Nortel and the next Rim? And how do we how do we really generate new IP and not just be selling oil and commodities that don't, they have a big impact in the economy. So I don't think we should ignore them. But they don't have, they don't drive these really high margins and really high paying jobs. So through that study, we kind of discovered that it is a problem in Canada, we've got a bit of a branch plant mentality. We have, you know, branch plants of large brands here. And so they don't typically have big innovation budgets, here in Canada, their innovations happening in the US or Germany or wherever their headquarters are. But on the other side of things, I've been a part of the startup community for a decade, and I've seen a huge change. And I'm sure you've noticed it, too, Eric, you and your wife, like the vibe and the startup community in the last six, seven, even five years, has changed dramatically. There's a lot more capital for early stage, there's a lot more interest in the space. Like there was no early stage seed seed funds eight years ago. So I'm enthused by that I'm enthused by, you know, Shopify, and some of these other champions that we've seen and done really well. So there's, there's good and bad sides to the whole conversation. But we cannot rest on our laurels. And just think like we've always had a good in Canada. And I think that's part of our problem is that we don't, we aren't experiencing this, this urgency of we need to innovate now. And we need to do it in big ways to kind of ensure that we do well as a country, 10 years, 20 years, 50 years from now.
Eric Janssen
Yeah, we had this big versus small innovation sort of debate in the first half of class. So talking about all the time probably a tired example, but there's a baseball team and in Savannah called the Savannah Bananas, and this guy named Jesse Cole bought the baseball team. Baseball is boring. It's a long game to watch. Beer is expensive, and Jesse came in and said, This isn't a baseball game. Let's make it entertainment. Let's put 70 year old people breakdancing on the field. Let's make beer $2 Let's make the first base coach line dance all the baseball players are going to wear kilts and suddenly ticket sales skyrocketed. So we talked about like soft innovation versus you know, more like industry changing innovation and maybe not the best example right now but we talked about Electric cars and Elon Musk like that's, you know what he's doing in multiple ways is changing industries. And the debate was is there is one better than the other like then and it came down to this conversation was around impact and it was one has impact more than the other that it seemed like the class was sort of gravitating towards. As much as you may not like him as a person that Musk type innovation is more helpful for the country. Agree, disagree, comment on that soft versus like the monumental game changing innovation.
Nicole Verkindt
I love Elon musk. And I want to agree that the second one has a much bigger impact in the long term, it probably does, you know, building another Nortel or RAM like I gave as an example. But we cannot ignore the first innovation. I mean, that is where I think that we could almost do more, because we've already got all these businesses here that just need to make these little changes to be more relevant internationally. And that's really, if we're talking about growing the country and GDP, that's the game is exporting. Like I went over to Germany on this Economic Council and we were interviewed by the Minister of I don't know if anyone's heard this terminology, but you could do a whole class on this called the middle stad. And there's an entire economy in Germany of these medium sized family owned businesses. And the middle shad in Germany, they're like $100 million businesses, right. But they have a very interesting story, you know, they're privately held, usually by one, one founder. And they're incredibly innovative. And what they like to say in Germany is that the middle shad is, is actually gaining more margin from China than some Chinese companies because they're powering automation in factories in China. And they're powering areas where Chinese factories are gaining more and more margin. And so the German IP driven machinery from the middle shad is, is gaining a big piece of that, but I bring that up because it's not sexy. It's not reinventing an entire industry like electric cars, but you can be damn sure that the entire EU is funded by Germany, which is a lot of their growth has been driven by this very, very successful middle stad, which is, you know, boring industrial businesses led by founders that are willing to take risks, because they're not big corporates that are publicly traded and taking less risk. And they're there they are innovating, but they're not, they're doing more of the the seven year old line dancing in the in the in the example of just these small pivots to gain more market share, as opposed to reinvention. I think a lot of people don't do innovation, because they feel like they have to be an engineer. And they have to completely invent something. And innovation is not a variant of the word invention, like they're very different words, right? Invention is to is to be a scientist. And innovation is a different thing. It's to pivot and change and, and change something and experiment. And that can happen in a world where you could be generating revenue quickly, and where you could be having a huge impact. So an impact not meeting. Like I just mean, kind of just back to straight business driving more margin and that example, you know, if you're just making one tooling device more automated for a factory that spits out 20 million t shirts a year, I mean, again, not sexy, but but you can make a lot of money.
Eric Janssen
Yeah, so my suggestion on like, I want to wrap up the company talking and I want to get to more on the personal innovation side. So what can we actually be doing, and then we can attack it from two ways, either the company level, so like processes or steps that maybe you've used in your own companies to be more innovative. And then I want to tackle it from an education perspective. So there was a question about, I'll get to the specific question from Matt, about what we can be doing, frankly, as educators who teach entrepreneurship to be teaching it, you know, better and more effectively, but start from a company perspective, like, what did you do at OMX to be innovative? Just stay sharp?
Nicole Verkindt
Well, I mean, we were so different, becausewe were starting up. So we were, we were all innovative from the beginning, I would say the smartest thing I did was just hire people that were also entrepreneurs. And it's kind of a different example. But I think the solution is I'm saying it's a different example only because if you're venturing out and doing a startup, like you are innovating, you just are like your there's just no way out of that. I mean, but there's a book that I'm going to force or you can force everyone to read. I'm sure I think you have enough power to do that. There's a book I read about a year ago, called Loonshots. And it starts about talking about the history of radar and trying to get radar introduced into the military. And, you know, you read the story of them trying to get radar into the military. And we're like 20 years before the Second World War, and then they should have had it in but everything that happens to these people is what happens to innovation in large corporations, you can see the corporate bureaucracy of of, of trying to get some funding and all the things that go wrong and trying to get innovation in a big company. So you see this story, and then it starts to talk about models that actually work. And I'll give you the punch line. So actually, now you guys don't have to read the book, the punch line is that you need a dedicated team completely walled away from all of that corporate bureaucracy, because that stuff will kill you. So dedicated team walled away. And the absolute most important thing is whoever leaves the team needs a straight shot to the CEO to the leader with money and authority. And so they tried to innovate in the US military, they couldn't make it happen. Finally, people are dying. And we're in 1943, you know, you know, we all know what happened then during the Second World War. And finally, Franklin Roosevelt wrote a letter and authorize this guy gave him straight money, straight authorization from the president of the country. And then he got his own people, and he was able to finally make things happen. But you know, you can't bury them, they can't be within the organization, you can't scatter them. It needs to be a dedicated team, completely walled away with authority. That's, that's, I think, the model for encouraging innovation in large companies. Of course, what we see more often is just acquisition. So large companies realize they're not being innovative, they're losing market share to competitor, they don't have their tech solution or whatever, they just just acquire it. And I guess that's okay, too. We see that a lot as well.
Eric Janssen
Yeah, on the boring tactical side, what we did, when I was in the thick of it was he literally we literally said, like, when it was budget time, like if we were to break it down into a piece of the pie, what percentage goes to current maintaining our current payment system, what percentage of our budget time people whatever goes towards working on stuff that we don't currently sell. And at some point, we just made a call, then we're gonna have our dev team is this big, we're gonna have 10 people working on maintaining what we have today. And if we don't work on what's coming in, what's next, then we're screwed. So we're literally gonna say 50% of our people, resources, time are walled off, and they're going to work on net new, super tactical stuff. On the personal side,
Nicole Verkindt
That can be hard because especially if you're publicly traded, there's so much pressure to be here every quarter delivering more margin, and it's expensive to be innovative.
Eric Janssen
Yeah, yeah. Okay. On the personal side, well, let's go to the education side. So the question is, and forgive me that I don't see who the original question was from about entrepreneurship education. I'm scrolling here, there's many questions, you could come off mute and ask it if you, Matt, go for it.
Matt
Basically, the observation was that Canada has the highest post secondary rate, but my impression is that you wouldn't see it as an entrepreneurial hub. So I'm wondering, do you think there's a connection there? And if so, how can we improve the education on a scaled level so that we can build more of a pipeline for entrepreneurs in Canada?
Nicole Verkindt
Yeah, it's a great, great question. I think that we are missing the practical piece in this. So what I'm seeing out of schools like Ivey is amazing, because they didn't they weren't offering that content before. So I think that's a huge improvement in the last 10-15 years. Um, but to me, I think it's the things like, it's the practical side of bringing students into startups, you know, maybe during the summer, or just connecting those dots a little bit more, I think would be really, really key. Even just fostering startups, like, I remember going through the entrepreneur certificate ID and there was a guy, I don't know if you remember him, Eric, or what year you were, but he was a professional baseball player had always been a professional baseball player. And he always had this idea for these underwear that would be better for professional baseball players. And so we were taking entrepreneurial finance in school. And it was theoretical, as you can imagine, we're learning how to raise capital and equity, kind of basic building blocks. But he actually had his startup in his mind the whole time. And the teacher at the time said, well, let's actually use his startup. And we're going to teach the class in a more practical way, let's actually take that and figure out how to help him raise capital and walk through all that. Well, fast forward a few years, you know, he sold the company a little early in my opinion, but he did very, very well. And it's a brand you guys probably all know, socks, socks, underwear. So I sat next to him in my entrepreneur, finance class, and we use that as the example kind of throughout. And that's to me, that's great education, because it's practical, and it's, it's real, and then you can actually apply it in the real world. You could have been raising money at the same time. I mean, I think he did a few years later, but I think that that is the solution. The other piece of the coin, you know, as we started studying the Canadian economy, and what's needed is there's a there's a direct correlation between attracting people from other countries. So having a very proactive immigration policy, the government introduced the startup visa, they've introduced other measures to bring people from other countries who want to live in Canada, but are also very entrepreneurial. And they tend to go through the Canadian schools, before they come, come to Canada kind of full time. And there's a much higher percentage the data is showing people that are coming to Canada started, they're coming here and starting businesses. And so there's, there's that correlation that we need to be mindful of as well, which I think is really interesting, because they come through the schools first. So now that is a broad stroke, I'm just going off the data that we found in the Economic Council. But anyways, it's obviously not an easy answer. But I think that the, I think the answer lives in the word practical, right, like so get out of the textbooks. And that's what the case study is, which is great. But the more we can use the real examples, and work on them in school, I think the better.
Eric Janssen
So, now to the personal side of innovation. Having gone through, I did the same thing as you I think my beginning was like bunch of stutter steps and screw ups. And I had no idea what I wanted to do. I still don't I think it will be teaching in some respects for the rest of my life, but who knows in what capacity? Any advice that you might offer to help people navigate that early those early phases like self work they can do? You know travel, personal development, like journaling? strengths assessment, like what can they do to help make that process less painful?
Nicole Verkindt
Well, I think if people are interested in a startup, something I see a lot is people saying I really want to do a startup, I don't have an idea. So I see that a lot. And then I also see a lot of spending a year or two brainstorming and coming up with the concepts and kind of going through that process, which is, which is interesting, but you see a lot of those two things. And so I think with those two things, I would just say that, the more and more people get an appreciation for the fact that the process to find out what you want to do is actually the process of being on the field and making mistakes and doing your screw ups. Like you have to do those things, like sitting in your basement coming up with the idea for six months and, and working on the idea, you know, in your mind, or, you know, a lot of technical people, that's where they go wrong is they develop a product, you know, in their basement, and they're not sitting next to a customer. So I think the answer, unfortunately, because it's messy, lives in, in doing these very, very cheap experiments as often as possible. And knowing that all the mistakes are critical for the process. If you're wanting to be an entrepreneur, that's, that's to me, I think it's important for people to hear is that, like you, but you never hear those those mistakes. That's why I try to highlight them, although I've forgotten most of them. But, you know, I, I'll call up a client and say I have this this product that I want to deliver and I won't have it built yet. This is what I would have done early on and said, you know, would you give me $1,000 to go and run this procurement for you? And then you know, boom, I crash, they say no, then they explain to me why it's No. And then I know, Oh, don't build that technology. So you know, it might have been embarrassing. It might have been a stupid phone call, I might have gotten a big fat no, it might have been embarrassing when I saw the guy at a conference a month later. But I found out quickly, you know, by asking I did it before I invested in technology. It was free. And it's just this notion of I mean, we're in Canada, so we can say it although I hate hockey, but like you just have to be on the ice. You can't You can't go to Bali and find yourself with a journal and think that that's going to be how you come up with your idea. Right? Like you've got to be on the ice just doing things in an industry you have an interest in?
Eric Janssen
Yeah, we got to be in it. And it like it is inherently messy to you know, you want to I wish there was shortcuts to figure it out. And like we've arrived. Here's the playbook. But I think it just isn't inherently messy process for better or worse. So a bunch of questions that I'm going to start to moderate here, but Tierney, yours is getting upvoted quite a bit. So I'll let you ask your question to Nicole. Sure.
Tierney
So in my question, Nicole, I kind of referenced a bunch a bunch of statistics that prove that women entrepreneurs potentially have the odds stacked against them, or something like they're less likely to reach a million dollars in revenue. I think companies with male founders receive funding after their first round close to 35% of the times. But for female founders, that's around 2%. So my question for you is why do you think that is? Perhaps it is an innovation issue? Perhaps not, and what can we do to kind of shift that those patterns.
Nicole Verkindt
Really, really good question. I feel bad given the answer, because the answer kind of sucks. But I'm going to give it on based on as much data as I remember, you are right, that the data shows that it's mostly an innovation problem, that what gets lost in those stats is that a lot of women, entrepreneurs are starting businesses for products that only women want that are inherently like VCs cannot invest in those companies, not all of them. But, you know, if you're opening up a waxing shop downtown, and if there's one shop, you know, it's not scalable, unless it's a brand, obviously, but a lot of the data shows and a lot of women are doing, you know, starting companies while they're having kids as well. And so it's a little bit part time it can be, again, this is based on data not seen, not beating them up for doing that, I'm just saying that what gets lost in some of these numbers is that on a whole, there just tends to be less innovation happening. And so it's very hard to they're not venture bankable. Like there's a, there's a model for providing venture capital to a company. And it's based on unique IP, it's based on something that's extremely scalable. And you just look at the stats there. There's more women than than men and university. But there's a hell of a lot more men in engineering. And most technically backed startups are founded by men who have an engineering background because they understand the technology. And so those are, are way bigger things to get over than just saying, well, we need more funding set aside for just women. Another big reason at the early stage. And I've seen it because I'm an early stage angel investor, I've invested in about a dozen companies. And what happened to the early stage is you don't have a lot of data, right? You can't look at a lot of sales or or churn or the key inputs on what you would decide on if to invest in a company. So what investors do is they invest entirely based on the entrepreneur, you know, they back the jockey, not the horse, so they back the entrepreneur, not the idea. And it they don't realize they're doing it, but a lot of investors like to invest in people that remind them of themselves when they were younger, right? And I've even seen it with myself, I'll come across a woman that's excited and hyper and kind of like me, and I'll go, o``h, yeah, I think I think this, this could work. And I don't do it on purpose. I'm not sexist towards men at all. But I can see there's something in there. And the studies are starting to unravel that. Because you know, 97%, of big Angel and VC investors are men, that is a real stat that 97% of startups that get backed at an early stage, and you have to do the early stage for you late stage. So you know, you have to get through that, that that step. They tend to be men, maybe for that reason. But there's you know, this is a this is not a problem that we can solve right away. Because again, it's it's rooted in culture. And if you're a little girl, and your parents are telling you to play with the Barbie, and not something I'm not giving you the same, the same. I don't know. I have nieces nephews that play Minecraft, like obsessively. And it's great, because now the girl is playing the same game so that that's great. But you know, if I just think it's a very, very complicated answer, and I'm sorry that I don't have an easy answer, you are right on the data. But a bunch of those things all contribute to it. But even even just growing your business and getting sales, if you can't raise money till you have sales, and half the time I was selling to men in positions of power, they would be CEOs, and they'd be in their late 50s. And I'd be 20 I'd be a young woman, and I'm less likely to go out for dinner with them until one in the morning to close the sale. I mean, I did anyways, but it's more intimidating, you know. So there's all these little factors that build up, that all contribute to it. But we are having a moment, I think, like I've never seen I'm on an investment committee for a VC fund called disruption ventures. And we're raising lots of funding, we're only investing in women led startups. And we're seeing a lot of that type of momentum happening now the government stepped in and set aside funding just for women led companies. So we're gonna see more and more and then we're going to see more women entrepreneurs be successful and then mentor the next generation, and it's only going to get better. So I know it's a long winded answer, but it's it's a fascinating answer. And to just go right back to the reason you guys are in this class, one of the contributing factors is that there the data is showing that there's less innovation in women led businesses than male led businesses. And I think it's a bunch of reasons but but that is that is what I've understood is on the most part, one of the reasons and you don't have to be technical to be innovative, right. We've talked about this you can you can have 70 year olds doing the splits on first base that can be an innovation. So I think the more women start to see that you don't have to be an engineer, or your innovation could be reaching the customer in a different way or the business model, not just the technology. I think the more that we see that, the more we're gonna see more companies.
Eric Janssen
You're talking about sales in the beginning, Nicole, so I don't want to I don't want to pump your tires too much Tierney she's gonna blush but Tierney was one of the finalists for the Great Canadian Sales Challenge had started with 2200 students across Canada, and she made it to the final 16 no big deal. No big deal. You're looking for a salesperson may want to connect with her.
Nicole Verkindt
I am right now I am looking for a salesperson. I need a salesperson who wants to sell wine racks.
Eric Janssen
Oh.
Tierney
We'll be in touch.
Eric Janssen
She'll be on it. She'll follow up with you. Be careful.
Nicole Verkindt
Check it out. I actually do need, we actually do need somebody.
Cyrus
Cyrus had a question about superpowers. Go for it. Cyrus. Um, yeah, so my question was, so last week, our speaker Alan Gertner talked about how his superpower was not having FOMO. Hitting a quick definition of this is kind of like, what do you think differentiates you or makes you like, unique around from those around you? So my question is, like, what do you think your superpower is?
Nicole Verkindt
Gosh, Oh, wow. I have to think about this, I think it's changed a lot to my superpower now is like cutting to the crux of something like very quickly trying to get to the, to the to figure out, I know, that's not like a sexy, like, a straightforward one. But, like, very quickly, being able to see, like what needs to happen. Like, I was just listening to pitches here, right before the class and, you know, very quickly being able to see what their issue was.
Eric Janssen
That's a great, great superpower
Nicole Verkindt
that can be that's the worst superpower ever. I can't think of a better one. No. I was the worst actor. He said, I was like, that was awful.
Eric Janssen
No, it's it's a great one. I think you share it with my, it can be annoying, because my wife, Justine, who you know, she just sees it faster than me all the time. And so there's so many times where I'll be like, long as I do, it's trying to explain things in a long winded way. And she's the one who's like, now I got it. It's this, like, just let me I just want to. But she's so quick. She's always so quick to get to the root of something. And she's she's always there faster than I am, because she's smarter than Michael to build on that you. Go ahead, ask your question.
Michael
Hi, Nicole. So my question is, what is your opinion on striking a balance between pursuing a pre existing talent and working to acquire a new one?
Nicole Verkindt
Okay, this, this is a really good question. I have gone back and forth on this, because when I was starting my business, I needed to be better at accounting. So I obviously had to learn enough skills to be to be good enough at accounting. I am a firm believer now that I think that you shouldn't care about the things that you're not good at. And that you should just double down on all the stuff that you are. And if you're an entrepreneur hire, hire the skills around you that you're not good at. So like I truly tried to work on being more detail oriented, being more, you know, all the things that I'm not known for. And I had to do it in early days, and our team was small, but then I just prioritized hiring an incredible Ops person, an incredible CFO, and then I got to do more of the sales, the growth, the other stuff. So I would say just keep doubling down on what you are good at.
Michael
Would you still would that still apply to somebody who's very young? Like, like a 21 year old?
Eric Janssen
Hypothetically, right Michael? /s
Nicole Verkindt
Yeah, no, that's a good point. Because you know, if a 21 year old came into the company, and they're really good at selling, but then they didn't, I don't know, fill in the CRM. And so they were like, totally lacking any detail, or diligence then like it would it would it could be a fault. I guess it I guess it depends. I think that for the most part. That one's hard. I kind of need more specifics about like, what the talent is, and what you're not sure about. But I think the general rule is, is to spend more time doubling down on what you're really good at and then own it right. So you're going in for an interview you say like these, this is what I'm really really strong at and it would do well in this environment, right? So maybe you need more structure or less structure or you want to work commissioned only or or maybe you're you are detail oriented and you will you know what I mean like it's kind of hard to say but it sucks because big companies, from what I've seen, tend to like very well rounded people. Whereas I'm the opposite.
Eric Janssen
Let's go to Will, you had a good question about COVID, actually.
Will
Oh, yeah, for sure. First off, thanks, Nicole. This has been super, super awesome so far. And my question is, this time of COVID has really shone a spotlight on the fact that we need to be able to be nimble in both our businesses and in our personal lives. And that ability to pivot and innovate has really been magnified as a skill necessary to to survive these days. And so I was wondering if there are any leaders you admire and draw inspiration from for the way that they innovate?
Nicole Verkindt
Are there any leaders I draw inspiration from? Oh, man? Oh, my gosh, I have no idea. It is true that COVID has shone a spotlight. But I will, I'll just say, I'm not answering your question at all. But I will say about COVID, that I think that the opportunity for all of you has, has become even bigger in the sense that we have accelerated the economy by a decade in one year in this notion of digitization and innovation and, and all of the skills that all of you I'm sure are very strong at. And so the number of companies that are being forced with without, you know, like I was selling enterprise cloud based supply chain software for the last decade, and the number of my clients that were still on on premise, so that they couldn't access any of their data, if they were not in the office at the exact location was unbelievable, some of the largest companies, it would shock you. Well, they're all being shaken into this notion that they have to digitize and do all these things to be ready for, you know, global pandemics and many other potential crises. So I think that's a big opportunity for you guys. I'm a leader I admire. I don't know, maybe I'll have to get back to Eric on that. But I, there's so many I can't think of them right now.
I feel like a lot of people look to Tobias lately, at Shopify, I just feel like he's just way ahead of a lot of things. Like a very future like forward looking person. And I just love we talked about putting yourself out there and having the courage to be disliked. We were talking about that earlier. He just doesn't, he's just him, you know, like, he does not care. He puts his opinions out there and doesn't care if they're contrary to popular opinion. These are, you know, the prime Canadian example right now, but he has the courage to be disliked, I think.
Nicole Verkindt
And he's a German that immigrated to Canada, because he met a girl in Germany. So there's another example of driving in immigrants to Canada to, you know, here living in his girlfriend's basement trying to make payroll. And it's just that struggle. That combination of that struggles can be really good. Can be can be really it kind of forces entrepreneurship. But yeah, I know, there's that he's a great example. Because, you know, he hasn't changed from what I know about him in the last decade at all, in the sense that he hasn't gotten really it's very Canadian hasn't gotten to ego. You know, ego hasn't gotten too big, etc. But yeah, hasn't settled down, like their latest innovation is in fulfillment, which is, which is brilliant taking on Amazon. So I love it. I mean, they are a really good example.
Eric Janssen
Yeah, yeah. Nicole, how can we help you? You've been so generous with your time at Ivey this year, you came back almost in back to back sessions weeks later, after you had checked off the Ivey list and you thought we weren't gonna bug you for a while. And then little did you know, I'd come right back and ask you to come speak in class. So how can we be helpful for you?
Nicole Verkindt
Oh, my gosh, I don't know. You guys aren't bugging me at all. This is fun. And it's easy, especially becaue I don't have to drive to London. I remember coming to Ivey and it was like, do you mind coming out of the class? Yeah, no problem. And there's this huge snowstorm that only hit London. And I had the wrong car for that snow storm. And I was like, yeah, but no, this is easy. This is just a one hour zoom call between the other zoom calls.
Eric Janssen
Yeah, pop on. I love your your backgrounds, legit mines all made up and fabricated. Where? Where is this your office?
Nicole Verkindt
Yeah, so I bought a place in Caledon an hour north of Toronto. And it's like an old, built in 1830 or something stone house and this is the new attic. So I turned it into an office because there is an office in the house. But this is like I have ADHD, and so like I need to be secluded in an attic. Where to get out of this office. There's a ladder. That's like rickety, and so it's like you don't just get up and go and sit at the kitchen tables are eating so it's been it's been very critical the last six months. Cinderella in the attic.
Eric Janssen
That's awesome. That's awesome. Anything you want. wish I would have asked Nicole like, Look, these are these are the probably the most entrepreneurial people at Ivey right now, these are people that give a shit about personal development. And they're just trying to figure it out any advice to your, I don't know, 21 year old self or anything that you wish I would have covered that I didn't?
Nicole Verkindt
Well, the advice I'd have for my 21 year old self is just to like, just try things and not care so much about the perception and how they look. So yeah, for anyone in the class who wants to reach out to me. Go ahead. And I think Tierney already promised to come work for free to have good sales experience. Genius.
Eric Janssen
That's awesome. That's awesome. Nicole, you've been super generously. I appreciate you coming in. Thank you so much. Good to reconnect with you. And we'll see you I don't know, hopefully in person at some point in the future. Yeah.
Nicole Verkindt
See you later. Thanks, guys.
Eric Janssen
Take care.
Introduction/Outro
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