Embarking on Purpose
Embarc Collective CEO Lakshmi Shenoy on her creative approach to driving growth for brands and communities—including Tampa, Florida, where she’s leading the charge to build the country’s next big hub for tech innovation.
Episode Notes
Despite her years of experience consulting for venerable brands, and her celebrated successes leading business development at 1871 in her native Chicago, Lakshmi Shenoy describes herself as a “Starter CEO,” with a propensity to come to the table with as much acknowledgement of the things she doesn’t know, as the things she does. And it’s that growth mindset that makes her, and the organization she leads, Embarc Collective, perfect partners for aspiring entrepreneurs in the fast-growing tech hub of Tampa, Florida.
In her talk with Jesse, Lakshmi discusses the extraordinarily creative paths she’s taken—from her first scrappy campaigns to save the earth’s rainforests, to turning a sociology degree into a coveted advertising role at Leo Burnett, to finding ways to keep Chicago’s graduating business talent from breezing out of the Windy City. You’ll hear why she left Chicago to come to Tampa Bay at the invitation of Jeff Vinik, and learn the unique approaches she’s taking now as she helps put Tampa on the map as a rising hub for top entrepreneurs in tech.
Guest Bio
Lakshmi Shenoy is the CEO of Embarc Collective, where she leads the mission to make Tampa Bay a prime destination for diverse startup talent. Before moving to Tampa, Lakshmi lived in Chicago and served as the Vice President of Strategy & Business Development at 1871, the top university-affiliated business incubator in the world.
Prior to 1871, Lakshmi focused on growth strategies for a variety of businesses through previous roles at Prophet Brand Strategy, Time Inc., Procter & Gamble, and Leo Burnett. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in sociology from the University of Chicago, and a Masters of Business Administration from Harvard Business School. Lakshmi was recognized in 2017 as one of Chicago’s “20 Rising Brand Stars” by Ad Age.
Helpful Links
Embarc Collective website
Lakshmi on St. Pete X podcast
Article: Jeff Vinik’s Embarc Collective innovation hub opens in Tampa
+ Episode Transcript
Jesse Purewal [00:00:00] This episode of Breakthrough Builders is dedicated to [Elikse Han]
Lakshmi Shenoy [00:00:04] It was very high level. It was build a hub, create the level of impact that we need our early stage startup community to have, and you can figure out the details. And so in many ways it was a vision, it was more of a mandate. I was then tasked with figuring out how are we going to do it? And that is perfect for somebody like me and definitely one of those opportunities where if you take a person like me that doesn't like a plan, that doesn't want to be told what to do, but wants to be told, "Here's what we're trying to achieve, help us figure out how to get there," that's a once in a career opportunity and something that is for me, a dream opportunity. So you jump on it and figure out how to make it happen.
Jesse Purewal [00:01:05] From Qualtrics Studios, this is Breakthrough Builders, a series of conversations with people whose passions, perspectives, instincts and ideas fuel some of the world's most amazing products, brands, and experiences. Hello builders, I'm Jesse Purewal. That was the voice of my guest today, Lakshmi Shenoy. Lakshmi is the CEO of Embarc Collective, an organization that serves the entrepreneurial community of the Tampa, Florida region. A native of Chicago, Lakshmi decamped from the Midwest for Florida to build Embarc in 2018 on the invitation of Jeff Vinik.
At Embarc, Lakshmi led strategy and business development at 1871, Chicago, one of the top business incubators in the world, but she held roles in strategic marketing in Prophet brand strategy, Time Inc., Procter & Gamble, and as an account manager at Leo Burnett in Chicago. Lakshmi is a graduate of the University of Chicago and the Harvard Business School and was recognized in 2017 as one of Chicago's 20 rising brand stars by ad age.
In the show Lakshmi and I talk about creative paths she's taken and inventive hacks she's devised to succeed in her career and discover her true purpose. We talked about the opportunity and risk she took in moving her life and her family from Chicago to Florida to become in her words, a starter CEO, and about how being in listen mode early and very often helped set the stage for the breakout growth of the organization that she leads, Embarc Collective. Enjoy Breakthrough Builder, Lakshmi Shenoy. I am here with Lakshmi Shenoy, Lakshmi, thank you for joining me on the podcast.
Lakshmi Shenoy [00:02:54] Jesse, thanks so much for having me.
Jesse Purewal [00:02:57] And I know you're joining me from the Tampa area. How are things on the west coast of Florida these days? Are you all staying safe down there?
Lakshmi Shenoy [00:03:05] We're staying safe, we're staying sunny and warm down here, but all is good.
Jesse Purewal [00:03:11] Nice, nice. So Lakshmi, you have not been down in Florida long. Tell me where you grew up and where home was for you at the start.
Lakshmi Shenoy [00:03:19] I grew up outside of Chicago and so for me, Chicago is home. And I was really excited to be able to live in other places, butI will admit, even though Tampa right now is where I live, Chicago is home for me.
Jesse Purewal [00:03:34] And if I had run into you at 11 or 12 years old, who's the person I would have met in the Chicago land area back then?
Lakshmi Shenoy [00:03:42] I was somebody who was hustling at a pretty early age. And I'm a little bit unique in that I was always hustling for other causes. So likely at age 11, I would've hit you up for a donation to conserve the rainforest. I believe that there is hopefully still some acreage in Paraguay where the nature conservancy has allowed some rainforest to be conserved in my name.
Jesse Purewal [00:04:09] So you had a hustle for the good guys. You weren't just trying to turn 25 cents into a dollar via combining Snickers and Twix, you were doing some real stuff.
Lakshmi Shenoy [00:04:20] I wish I was more of a capitalist, I wish... And instead what I did was I asked for these donations and then me and my friends would write a newsletter. In theory, it was quarterly, but I don't think at age 11 I knew what quarterly meant, so I did it every few months. And we would write this newsletter about how our neighbors, because that's who we hit up for cash, could help save the earth. I think that was the name of the newsletter, Save the Earth, it was very creative. And we would hand write it on recycled paper, but then we would ask our friend's dad to go photocopy it. He photocopied it on regular paper. So we took the originals that were written on recycled paper and then we printed out copies on regular papers. So we might've been hypocrites, but our intention was good.
Jesse Purewal [00:05:05] Did you have entrepreneurial or ecologically minded people in your household growing up or did this come out of nowhere?
Lakshmi Shenoy [00:05:13] I think I had curious people in my household. I think curiosity is the core of entrepreneurship. So I have a father who was a scientist, he was a physicist for his whole career and then a mother whowas a writer/librarian/astrologer. So I don't know if you could have more curiosity in the household, but they caused me to want to solve problems and be intrigued by everything in the world.
Jesse Purewal [00:05:47] So what happened between the years where you were doing an entrepreneurial hustle to save the earth and your decision to jump on board at Leo Burnett in Chicago? Where did you get the bug around creativity, advertising, marketing, that whole world? Because you spent a good portion of the early part of your career on the agency side and in some pretty amazing kind of brand management roles.
Lakshmi Shenoy [00:06:13] Yeah. I think I've always realized that creativity was a way for me to stand out. I was the type of person in school who realized that it was easier for me to, if we had a school project, instead of writing a report, I would write a parody song and perform it or do a puppet show with an original score. And just the novelty of it all secured a really good grade, even if it wasn't as good of an understanding of the topic as would have happened if I had written something out.
And so I figured out that I have this ability to hack by being creative because you just can stand out. And when I went to college at the University of Chicago, ultimately I ended up studying sociology, which was really cool and fascinating, but my projects were again, trying to figure out how not to do something that was standard. So I would sit in the library and listen to the conversations happening around me in the library and talk about social network theory through that avenue.
But really, I wasn't necessarily in the book studying, I was just at the library listening to the conversations around me. So it was just another angle of how do you be creative to get the job done? And when it was time to graduate, I knew that I didn't fit into the traditional paths that were normal for students at the University of Chicago, I needed to find my own path. And it was my sister who said, "Well, you're really creative and you still have an analytical mind, maybe you should consider going into advertising." So that's what caused the impetus.
And once again, I had to be creative on how do I get that job? Because I had no credibility to my name. The University of Chicago does not have an advertising major, at least it didn't when I was in school and I was competing with all these students who had advertising degrees and these portfolios. So my senior year of college, I just hacked my way into an advertising career by starting an advertising club at the University of Chicago. Basically what we did is we did advertising for free for other student clubs. And that's how I built a portfolio of things that I had done that got me in the door at Leo Burnett first as an intern and then eventually as an employee there.
Jesse Purewal [00:08:43] What did you do that persuaded people about that approach though? I want to contrast what you're talking about with an interview I heard this past weekend. I don't know if you know Daniel Humm, he's the executive chef at Eleven Madison Park.
Lakshmi Shenoy [00:08:59] Yes.
Jesse Purewal [00:09:00] And he was talking through how the restaurant is going completely plant-based starting after the pandemic. And he tells this really interesting story to Guy Raz where he says, "We were asked when I was in elementary school one year to draw a house on a piece of paper. And so I can't draw the house on the piece of paper because the one I have in mind is so much bigger than the paper you've given me." And so the teacher's like, "Oh, smart ass, draw the thing."
So he takes the paper, puts it on the table and it's one fourth of the total drawing, three- fourths of the drawing is on his table. And I viewed that as a cool creative hack. He got sent to the principal's office, got taken to therapy, all these things. You seem to have not gotten taken to the proverbial principal's office or run into therapy, but rather have found a really cool path forward in the way that you have hacked creativity. So what is it about the personal brand that you bring to your whimsy and to your hacking that seems to work with your audiences?
Lakshmi Shenoy [00:09:59] What I would have done in that same situation, I probably would have said to the teacher, instead of breaking the rules and drawing on the table, I might've just drawn one room and said, "If you give me five more pieces of paper, I can show you what the rest of the vision is about." Maybe it's just humor. And I've always tried to bring a lot of humor to... And I think humor is human and so I've just tried to be very authentic to who I am.
And I think I'm nice about my approach and never coming to thetable with any sort of ego or... well, I'm sure there is some sort of ego, but it's not to the level of just arrogance. I'm sort of saying like, "This is who I am. This is what I have to offer. This is my approach. What do you think?" And so hopefully that charm and that genuineness comes through and I think that's been pretty helpful in helping me navigate sometimes when I like to go my own way rather than following the assignment as it's written.
Jesse Purewal [00:11:01] So you spent time at Procter & Gamble, at Time Inc., at Prophet brand strategy, you find your way to 1871 Chicago. Talk about what 1871 is for those who might not be as familiar with the intersection of entrepreneurship and what's happening in Chicago and what you got out of the four or five years you were there leading strategy and business development.
Lakshmi Shenoy [00:11:23] Yes. So 1871, if you're not from Chicago, those numbers may not mean much, but if you are from Chicago, you know that that'sthe year of the Chicago fire. So while it is the year of a tragedy, it's also a signal of rebirth because the city burned down. And so following that fire, a lot of innovation happened because the city was able to get a fresh start in what it was doing. And so a lot of innovations and things like architecture emerged and other really great fields that Chicago has been known for.
And so 1871, the organization took its namesake from a time of rebirth for the city. And the organization today is a startup hub, a nonprofit startup hub that is really the central landing zone for early stage technology companies in the city of Chicago. The organization is still relatively new. It launched in 2012 and it went from serving about 50 startups and has grown to serve as many as 500 startups.
So it's one of the largest startup hubs in the country, and it brings together not only startups, but also a tremendous amount of knowledge and access, whether it's through venture capital, through corporations, through talent pipelines of universities and other training programs. So it's really just this nexus that comes together and brings the right people together within the Chicago area to make startups happen.
Jesse Purewal [00:12:56] And say a little about what you were accountable for there and about your growth journey. Because you spent quite a bit of time there and it was also a little bit of a departure from some of the roles that you'd had going in.
Lakshmi Shenoy [00:13:07] Prior to 1871, from a professional standpoint, all of the work that I was doing would be considered very corporate. I had a lot of side projects along the ways that were my own entrepreneurial endeavors, but if you looked at my resume, you would say like, "Wow, this girl is pretty corporate." And 1871 in a lot of ways really allowed me to shine in terms of what were my natural abilities, what were the skills that I could authentically come to the table with? And that job allowed me to really flex them.
And my role there was a right hand to the CEO who was there at the time, his name is Howard Tullman, great serial entrepreneur, amazing mentor to me and somebody that I still consider a great guide in what I'm doing today in Tampa. We worked so well together because we were really different. He was a really great promoter and I'm a really good doer. And so together we were able to really make a lot happen. The one I'm most proud of is a program called Wisdom that still exists, that is a women's entrepreneurial pre accelerator.
So for women who are just getting their businesses off the ground, it's a cohort model that gives them a curriculum and support and mentorship to be successful. And you'll see that that's an area of continued focus for me, is making sure that we are really addressing women entrepreneurs' needs as it relates to building their businesses. So it was just so fun to be a part of all of it. It was a fast moving team. I got to be creative, I got to figure out solutions that didn't exist. So really loved the team, loved the organization and loved my time at 1871.
Jesse Purewal [00:15:00] Talk a little bit for me about the challenges of standing up the organization in Chicago. From the outside looking in, it can be a hard place to think about securing capital finding mentors just because of the preponderance of some other parts of GDP, right? Like manufacturing and retail that have kind of populated Chicago for a long time. Did you feel like you were working against a lot of history and against a lot of established ways of working, or did you feel like you were in there at a moment where the city was ready to pull forward with a lot of the work that you were focusing on?
Lakshmi Shenoy [00:15:39] I was there at the start of a transition, but you're right, and Chicago is known for large entities. It's very much dominated by large corporates. And 1871 was built in the first place to combat brain drain. If you thought about the students that were either coming from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana or the University of Illinois at Chicago, or the University of Chicago, anybody with a technical degree by and large was departing for the coasts post-graduation.
And so Chicago at that time was really not known as a place for building a new technology company. And there's many, many chips on the collective shoulders of Chicagoans of companies that should have been born in Chicago that weren't, and I know lots of regions have this. And so that's the impetus of what became 1871 and the brain child of 1871 is J. B. Pritzker who is now governor of Illinois. And with this idea of, well, if we want to combat the brain drain that's happening here, we have to give people a reason to stay.
We have to be able to convene a community that can come together to help people grow their companies and be able to stay. And we have to be able to convene the right investors, the right customers, the right talent pipelines to be able to do so. So that was the start of it all. And in the time that I was there, I think we really started to hit our stride. I mean, when I left, actually my last month at 1871, we were ranked as the number one university affiliated business incubator in the world, is a nice way to depart. It was sort of leaving on top.
And so going from a new organization in 2012, I joined the team in 2014 and then at the beginning of 2018, being ranked number one in the world, even though it was the beginning stages of the startup growth in Chicago, the momentum, the acceleration was happening fast. And now you have companies like Cameo that are becoming household names that were born out of 1871. Those are exciting proof points. And I know that Chicago will continue to churn out those kinds of proof points as the ecosystem there continues to develop.
Jesse Purewal [00:18:09] Well, I know people outside of Chicago also were taking notice at some of the accomplishments that you and the team had started to churn out. So Jeff Vinik was one of those people. And for those who follow the National Hockey League or who live in and around Tampa, he's a household name. But for those who don't, Lakshmi talk about who Jeff is and how you got to know him and what offer he was able to persuade you with to take the next step in your career.
Lakshmi Shenoy [00:18:36] Yes, absolutely. So Jeff Vinik, if you're in the finance world, he's also a household name having an entire career in finance prior to becoming a sports team owner. But he about 10 years ago bought the Tampa Bay Lightning hockey team, NHL hockey team Stanley Cup champions in 2020. And he really saw in Tampa this potential when he moved down here to take over the team and really invest in the team and he saw that we, in some ways in Tampa had more potential than we even saw in ourselves and decided to invest in a project called Water Street Tampa which will double the size of downtown Tampa.
It's a really tremendous, very wellness and environmental focused real estate project that is... I think it's one of the more innovative real estate projects that I have seen. And he was investing in building a great place and understood that great places need great people. And he was traveling around the country looking at different models for jump starting a resurgence and innovative talent in a region.
And in his travels, he came to Chicago, he came to 1871 and that's where we met. And so there wasn't any objective when we were meeting, it was really about information sharing. And so I shared, here's what we did in Chicago, here's what we achieved, here's how far we still have to go, but it was intriguing enough for him to remember me and eventually reached back out. And that's the call that led me to Tampa in the first place.
Jesse Purewal [00:20:24] And how crystallized was the vision that Jeff articulated to you around the part of Water Street Tampa that would become Tampa Bay Innovation Hub and later Embarc Collective, or was the point that there was this sort of cloudy thought and you had to be the one with your operational bias and get it done mentality to go to find that and execute it?
Lakshmi Shenoy [00:20:47] I think that's the thing that is really exciting about working with Jeff Vinik, is that he really trusts you to be able to take the lead if you're working with him. And so it was very high level. It was build a hub, create the level of impact that we need our early stage startup community to have, and you can figure out the details. And so in many ways it was a vision, it was more of a mandate. And I was then tasked with figuring out how are we going to do it?
And that is perfect for somebody like me. And definitely one of those opportunities where if you take a person like me that doesn't like a plan, that doesn't want to be told what to do, but wants to be told, "Here's what we're trying to achieve, help us figure out how to get there," that's a once in the career opportunity and something that is for me, a dream opportunity. So you jump on it and figure out how to make it happen.
Jesse Purewal [00:21:55] So you joined 1871, you became a leader as a member of that organization, but now you're being the consummate leader, you're the CEO of a new enterprise. You head down to a new city to do it. What were some of your early steps in finding your footing? What did you do over say the first hundred days or the first six months to start strong?
Lakshmi Shenoy [00:22:18] This was a very intimidating experience. And in retrospect, I think I would have second guessed it if I had known sort of everything that I know now because you're building a brand new organization for an existing community and one which you have no connection to. And so me as a new person, what credibility do I have in a community that is well-established that already has some startup support in place?
And you have to make sure that you are not coming down to Tampa and saying, "I know best." And so that's really the approach that I took, was to make sure that I spent this first few months learning from everybody who was down here, who was building here, who was part of the existing startup ecosystem to better understand what are the strengths, where are the gaps and how do I create an organization that supports the entire community and doesn't unnecessarily duplicate resources that were already available to entrepreneurs here?
And so that included, I think it was maybe about 500 different conversations between February and June. I was so over-caffeinated because I kept going to the downtown Tampa Starbucks for all of these coffee meetings with people just to listen. And it was fascinating for me because very quickly trends emerged as I listened to the collective conversation of what they were telling me in terms of here's what we're good at, here's what we need more of. And that ended up being the blueprint for what eventually became Embarc Collective.
But I spent those first months just listening. And in listening, gaining the right credibility as somebody who was a team player, somebody who wanted to integrate into an existing community and somebody who respected what already was in this community. I think that's really important for any newcomer, is not to presume that best. There has been many, many successesin this region before I decided to make the move down here, it was really about how do we amplify those successes and create more of them for this region.
Jesse Purewal [00:24:39] So briefly state, if you would, just what Embarc Collective is and what your organization does and why you decided to set up as a nonprofit.
Lakshmi Shenoy [00:24:50] So in those trends, in those conversations that I was having, there were three needs that emerged, the first was that we had a need for density. We needed a central landing zone, very similar to what I experienced in Chicago. This is a big region and people didn't know where to find each other. The second was making sure that we were really focused in on curated support. The founders that I was talking to were so diverse in terms of their experiences.
Some of them, it was their fourth time building a company, others were straight out of high school or community college or university. And so just the vast differences in experience levels showed me that we needed to have curated support that really fit where their strengths and their development areas were. And then the last was just increased connectivity to capital sources, to customers and to talent.
And so those three components of density, curated support and connectivity is what Embarc Collective is. It's a startup hub that co-located the startup community into one central landing zone in downtown Tampa, make sure that we bring together the other stakeholders that are required to help startups grow. We have a very unique coaching program where my whole staff are made up of startup operators and their job is to coach startups. And then the last piece is around connectivity to capital, customers and talent.
We have a talent strategist on our staff to help companies recruit. We have a network of about 140 early stage venture funds that we work with to make sure that the companies we support have access to great sources of capital. And then we work with local corporations as well as national and international corporations to make sure that the technologies that are being built out of Embarc Collective are on their radar for them to test.
And why we're a nonprofit is a really excellent question. As we're thinking about what does a startup community need to succeed, the thing that I think is fundamental but doesn't get talked about enough isvolume. You need a lot of companies in order to make sure that you have some chances of success happening. In a lot of ways, it's like portfolio strategy. If you're investing in startups, it doesn't do you any good to just invest in one startup.
The chances of failure are far too high in the startup world to bet on one company. We need to make sure that we have enough chances at having breakout successes. So the number one thing we need to do is to grow the number of startups in our region. The reason why we're a nonprofit is because we want to make sure that we are reducing any barriers for startups to be successful. So we are not taking equity in these companies.
They pay us a very small fee that translates to about 11% of what they should be paying us. And what we're trying to do is just remove all obstacles for them to be able to get the right coaching, the right programmingsupport, the right peer community that exists at Embarc Collective and just try to increase the number of companies that are growing here so that we have a higher chance of a few on the other side being really successful.
Jesse Purewal [00:28:13] And I know Lakshmi in your 500 plus coffee chats, you were in listening mode. And one of the key tenets was to not duplicate or create redundancies. But you're not doing this in Austin or Portland or Toronto or someplace that has already shifted historical perceptions of how the local economy is constituted. You can't ride a wave, you have to create the wave. And so how do you think about this challenge and what specific barriers are you working through as you do it.
Lakshmi Shenoy [00:28:49] Goodness, you're a hundred percent right. And it's funny because a lot of the challenges that I have are related to awareness and knowledge of what we are doing and the impact of it both locally, but also across the world. And so we invested a lot in making sure that we built a brand of Embarc Collective that wasn't geographically tied to any place. We wanted a brand that people didn't have already a perception about. People may have a perception about any geography, it could be Tampa Bay, it could be Cleveland, it could be Austin.
And by tying yourself to that geographic brand, you already are creating the idea for somebody of who you are. And we wanted to avoid that. We wanted to surprise people, to show them the level of support that could occur here that happened to be in Tampa Bay. And all of a sudden they can say like, "Wow, there's a lot happening in Tampa Bay." So that was the intent there during the pandemic. We've seen an influx of talent, of startups, of investors coming down here, and it's been staggering.
I mean, we've been tracking the number of what we call tech transplants to Tampa Bay since before the pandemic. And I mean, there's 80 people on our list that we just sort of keep in a shared air table hub. And so it's fascinating to see that growth. So the storytelling piece, cutting through the noise, all of that has been really an interesting challenge and one we navigate every day.
Jesse Purewal [00:30:27] So with the storytelling piece, tell me about the cover of the book then. You originally came into an organization notionally known as the Tampa Bay Innovation Hub. I think for anybody keeping score at home, that counts as a placeholder name no matter what. You chose to rename it and rebrand it Embarc Collective. So talk about what's in Embarc as a name and what are the implications of being a collective instead of a hub or instead of some other frame of reference?
Lakshmi Shenoy [00:30:56] Absolutely. So it's pretty simple. Embarc is because we're all starting on something here. This is a place that supports the creation and the growth of early stage tech and tech enabled ventures, so we're embarking on this journey and collective is because it takes all of us. Building a startup as a team sport, I would say it's a community sport. You want to gather as much help as you can during the early days to make things happen and to move the boulder up the mountain, which is what I feel like every founder has to do every single day. And so that's the reason why we call ourselves Embarc Collective.
And it really is about this pure community that is emerged. And it's fascinating because when we originally launched, we launched with just our coaching program and our programming without a physical space back in March of 2019. And we were supporting 25 companies in 2019 and today we're nearing 100 companies in 2021. So the amount of growth that's happening there through a pandemic is really amazing to me. And it demonstrates the people who are a part of it are seeing the value proposition of what we're building, they're experiencing the benefits of it all and they're telling their friends.
Jesse Purewal [00:32:12] So speaking of embarkation or going on an adventure, you did exactly that as an individual, as someone who grew up in the Chicago area, went to school in Chicago, had a career in Chicago. You weren't running from something as far as I can tell and you also could have had a reallyinteresting next phase of your career journey had you stayed at 1871 or done something else in the Chicago area. So how did you develop courage and the conviction to take this road into the unfamiliar and go seize this opportunity?
Lakshmi Shenoy [00:32:45] I was very happy in my time at 1871, but I got that note from Jeff Vinik out of the blue and I shared it with the person who's now my husband and I said, "I should probably just pass on this opportunity, right?" And he said, "You should at least hear them out and see what they have to say." And so that was how this happened, was that I had somebody in my life who said, "Just try it out and pursue it." And so in a lot of ways, it was the confidence from another person in my life who said, "You should explore the possibilities. You should take that road."
And then personally, I really was in a place where I did need a change. I took the job just months after my father had passed away of a very long-term disease. And it was exhausting for our family. It was one of those diseases that's terminal. And so I needed change, I needed a change of environment. And arguably, I probably, if a therapist were coaching me might say, "You took too much change by changing location, changing jobs, starting a brand new organization from scratch in a place where you know no one," but I tend to just swing for the fences in those types of situations.
So in some ways I was running from something, knowing that I just needed a little bit of... I needed something new. And in a lot of ways, being able to throw myself into building Embarc Collective, it's a tribute to my father. Honestly, I think about it every day as a tribute to my father. So it really has been a productive way for me to focus that energy after his passing into something that hopefully is helping the world.
Jesse Purewal [00:34:38] Lakshmi, I've heard you describe yourself as a starter CEO. Tell me what is contained in that title for you?
Lakshmi Shenoy [00:34:46] When I say starter CEO, I'm basically telling people I'm new to this role, I'm a new CEO. I guess now I'm three years into the role so maybe I need to start changing that title for myself. But I do want to come to the table with some acknowledgement of what I do and don't know, and the experiences that as a leader I've yet to have. And I want to make sure that I am authentically me and I'm not shy about talking about the areas where I still need to develop, and I don't feel the need to fake it till I make it.
I just do the work and I'll tell you what I'm good at and I'll tell you what I'm not good at. And so maybe that's a real indicator that I am a starter CEO. But that's what I mean, is I'm figuring this out as I go, as all CEOs of startups or first time CEOs of startups are going through. I think it gives me a real level of empathy for the people that I work with every day, all 90 companies that we work with every single day. I have leaders who are in a similar position to me and so I think that allows us to have a great level of trust and just connection because of that.
Jesse Purewal [00:35:58] And I want to follow up on that with,what's it like to have your own ambitions for building the brand and building the business and the community, but also being for and with everybody who's trying to build their own organizations?
Lakshmi Shenoy [00:36:13] I often get laughs when I say I'm building a startup for startups, it feels like a bad episode of Silicon Valley. And it's always a challenge because I have built this organization that serves other startups and to the point where our brand's persona for Embarc Collective is someone we have dubbed Alfred. And Alfred is named for the butler of Batman. And so Alfred is ready with a Batmobile before Batman needs it and has everything well sort of ready to go.
That's who Embarc Collective intends to be for the startups we support, yet I'm still running an organization with a team, with a P&L, with a board, with all sorts of stakeholders around me and all the whileI'm also focused on 90 startups growing. So you've got to be comfortable with the chaos, you've got to be comfortable with having your attention get diverted to probably a hundred different topics in a given day. But being able to do the work I do is so gratifying.
The best part of my work is getting to sit down with companies, which I do every single day. I spend 20% of my time working directly with thestartups we support. My aspiration in life is to help other people pursue the ways that they want to make the world better. It is the best job that I could have ever mapped out for myself.
Jesse Purewal [00:37:42] Lakshmi, what advice do you like to share with younger professionals who have an interest in the kind of career path you're on? If there's somebody right now who is sitting in late high school or early college, they've used creativity to hack their life, they had flyers on how to save the earth when they were 12, they know they have some entrepreneurial zestand energy and want to maybe figure out what the right way is to take that courage and conviction and kind of put it out into the world, what advice would you give that young person?
Lakshmi Shenoy [00:38:10] I would advise just try to learn a little bit of everything. I mean, even with coding, I think about the fact I used to go to QBasic and Visual Basic classes when I was 12 or 13 years old. Those skills really paid off. And so being able to have the ability to learn just a whole random set of skills and topics, I think will really help anyone in the future because you A, have the confidence that you can learn new things and B, you have that ability to... It's sort of like being at a cocktail party.
You've got the ability to talk about any topic that comes up and if there's something there, you can dig into it, if not, great, we'll talk about the next topic, I'm prepared for that as well. So I think just that perspective on really aspiring to be a generalist keeps you open to the possibilities for your career.
Jesse Purewal [00:39:04] Okay. Lakshmi, I want to move into a lightning round. There has perhaps never been a guest for whom the lightning round was better named, but let's jump into this. Give me a brand you admire, a brand you can't personally imagine living without.
Lakshmi Shenoy [00:39:18] It's going to sound cliche post pandemic, but it's Peloton in terms of giving me some accountability, community and some wellness through this whole thing.
Jesse Purewal [00:39:29] Something that would surprise most people to learn about you.
Lakshmi Shenoy [00:39:32] I first bought a car when I moved to Florida in 2018. I never needed to own a car because I had only lived in Chicago, Boston and New York.
Jesse Purewal [00:39:42] Play sliding doors with me for a second. Lakshmi, you've done a million different things. Let's say you'd stayed longer at Time or stayed longer at Prophet or elected to not pursue the letter from Jeff Vinik and team when it came, where do you think you'd be right now?
Lakshmi Shenoy [00:39:58] It's interesting. I got my MBA in... I graduated Harvard for my MBA in 2010. If I had not gotten an MBA, I would have gotten an MFA, a master's in fine arts and pursued creative writing. And so I am always curious about what I could have done. Could I have become a writer? Could I have written on a television show? All of these... When I was a child, I wanted to be a writer on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. That was just a dream that I had. So maybe that would have been the destiny for me.
Jesse Purewal [00:40:35] All right. I got one more for you. And I want your honest prediction here because I know you've probably got some Chicago Blackhawk in you still. Who is going to be the Stanley Cup champion in 2021? Are we going to see the cup stay where it's at or are we going to see a new champion this year?
Lakshmi Shenoy [00:40:52] I will side with my new home Tampa Bay and say that the Tampa Bay Lightning can go all the way once again. And that was something that I very consciously gave up when I moved down here. I said, "I can't have any Blackhawks allegiance." So the team no longer exists to me and I am Bolts all the way.
Jesse Purewal [00:41:12] All right, well, good enough for me. Lakshmi, namaste to you. It's been such a joy to have you on the show, I love the conversation and I can't wait to see you again in person and do it again soon.
Lakshmi Shenoy [00:41:21] Hope to see you soon and thanks for having me.
Jesse Purewal [00:41:28] Thanks for listening to Breakthrough Builders. You can subscribe the show wherever you get your podcasts. If you enjoyed the show, I'd be grateful if you could spread the word by leaving a rating and a review, it really does help other people find us. And please, tell your friends. Breakthrough Builders is a Qualtrics Studios original, presented and produced collaboration with StudioPod in San Francisco. The show is hosted and executive produced by me, Jesse Purewal. Our writer is Todd Bagnull.
From StudioPod Media, Deanna Morency is our show coordinator. Editing and production by Katie Sunku Wood. Additional editing and music is provided by Nodalab. Our designers are Baron Santiago and Vansuka Chindavijak. Website by Gregory Hedon, photography by Christy Hemm Klok. Special thanks to the entire Breakthrough Builders crew at Qualtrics, including Ali Rohani, James Wadsworth, John Johnson, and Kylan Lundeen.