Innovation Footprints

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Co-Founder Stories

#ProofPoints: An Ending + A Beginning

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My Supply Chain Credo

Acknowledgement #1: I am grateful to Tayo Akinyemi for suggesting that I write this essay, and for reading and critiquing previous drafts. I am grateful to Kange Kaneene, Christian McKenzie, Christine Mendonça, and Lisa Morales-Hellebo for reading and critiquing previous drafts. Their comments and observations helped to greatly improve the final product. Any errors are mine alone. I am also indebted to Nahum Goldmann. My numerous and lengthy conversations with him between June and August of 2017 helped me clarify and sharpen my thinking about supply chain.

Acknowledgement #2: This article does not reflect the opinion of KEC Ventures/Particle Ventures, or of other members of the KEC Ventures/Particle Ventures team. Though I will be leaving the firm this month and we will not be making any new investments, Jeffrey Parkinson and the remaining team will be doubling down on our existing portfolio and working closely with our founders to maximize their chances of success. From the beginning KEC Ventures has been a high-conviction fund, as reflected in our portfolio concentration and follow-on reserves, and so while Fund II will be our last together, the story of KEC Ventures is far from over.

TLDR

  • We have decided to disband the team at KEC Ventures/Particle Ventures – September 11, 2018 is my last day. This is an essay about the decade I spent working on this chapter of my career, starting as the first person on the team that went on to become KEC Ventures.
  • While we will not be making new investments, I will continue to be involved in KEC Ventures Fund I and KEC Ventures Fund II as a general partner and Jeffrey Parkinson and Jeff Citron will be managing our two active funds and working with the companies to ensure their success.
  • Next, I am teaming up with Lisa Morales-Hellebo to start building REFASHIOND, a new early-stage venture capital fund based in NYC that will focus on supply chain. We’re starting from scratch. Our initial focus is technology and supply chains in the $2.4 trillion global apparel and fashion industry.
  • This is not the easiest choice, nor is it even the choice that guarantees me the highest probability of success . . . However, it is the option I am most excited and enthusiastic about – I am teaming up with someone with whom I have been working closely for more than 2 years because her enthusiasm and obsession for technology and innovation in supply chain matches mine.
  • Don’t hesitate to reach out to us if you’d like to talk about what we’re building and to perhaps get involved in some way – see the end of this article for more details. Sign up for our upcoming booklet about technology, and apparel and fashion supply chains here. Check out: The New York Supply Chain Meetup – Our Vision, and The Worldwide Supply Chain Federation – Our Manifesto.

We arrive with focus, and we stick to it.
– Aliko Dangote

A few weeks ago, we took the difficult decision to start the process of disbanding the team that some of you have come to know as KEC Ventures, or more recently, as Particle Ventures. Our journey towards building an early stage venture fund in NYC began in earnest in January 2011, after Jeffrey Parkinson joined Jeff Citron, Joann Vought, and me, at KEC Holdings in December 2010. On Tuesday, September 11, 2018, for me at least, that journey will come to an end. That will be 3,572 days or 9 years, 9 months, and 11 days after I joined Jeff and Joann at KEC Holdings on December 1, 2008, as Employee #2. KEC Holdings is Jeffrey Citron’s family office. Joann was CFO of the family office. They recruited me to start building an investing team since the family office had not done much direct investing up to that point but expected to do more direct investing over time. That investing team was eventually spun off to go and build an independent venture fund.

Before we started building KEC Ventures; I managed two turnarounds for companies with aggregate annual revenues of about $50 million, started the process of helping the founders to launch a consumer hardware startup in which we later made an investment, and performed in-depth examinations of several startup ideas we considered incubating ourselves. Between 2011 and 2015, we incubated a startup to bring a family of 3 financial derivatives to market – they were created by deconstructing large-cap dividend paying stocks. I assumed sole responsibility for designing the framework for valuing the financial derivatives, writing the forty-page plus white paper that outlined the theoretical justifications of the idea, and driving our effort to protect the IP we had created with a patent. I also worked with a software designer to create a rudimentary version of the product that could be used by early investors in the product. We failed to find product-market fit, and so we shut the company down in December 2015. One call I am most proud of is my recommendation that the family office make an investment in Michael Kors in it’s pre-IPO round. The reason’s why that would be a good investment were not plainly obvious from the data that was available to us. I did some further sleuthing and felt confident that my “buy” recommendation would prove to be the right call. I am not at liberty to share details, but I am confident in saying that it is the best direct investment that KEC Holdings has made between 2008 and 2018.

KEC Ventures grew to $98M of AUM, with 51 investments across 2 funds – a 2011 vintage, and a 2014 vintage. Our team tripled in size. Had we succeeded in raising our 2018 fund, we planned to rebrand the firm to Particle Ventures, and to turn the fund’s focus to supply chain and industrial intelligence.

This is not an article about what went wrong, or what our team could have done differently, or why we failed to raise our next fund.[1] Rather it is an article about some of the lessons I have learned over my 10 years in investment management and research, with 8 of those years having been devoted to building an early stage venture fund from the ground up. I prefer not to dwell on the past. However, I believe that making sense of one’s present, and assessing what one ought to do in the future sometimes requires that one reflects on one’s past. So, in some ways, this serves as my personal reflection.

As I tell this story I will try not to succumb to the narrative bias – our tendency to explain the world around us through stories. I will also try to actively avoid falling victim to the survivorship bias – our tendency to explain processes by focusing on the people who succeed at something generally thought of as difficult or improbable, while ignoring those who did not succeed. Among others, these two biases make us apt to reach incorrect conclusions and draw wrong lessons from events around us.

Now, on with this show . . .

Early-Stage Venture Capital Investing Is An Optimal Stopping Problem

“Suppose you decide to marry, and to select your life partner you will interview at most 100 candidate spouses. The interviews are arranged in random order, and you have no information about candidates you haven’t yet spoken to. After each interview you must either marry that person or forever lose the chance to do so. If you have not married after interviewing candidate 99, you must marry candidate 100. Your objective, of course, is to marry the absolute best candidate of the lot. But how?”[2]

This is very similar to the type of problem an early stage VC has to solve every day; An optimal stopping problem is one in which an action has to be taken within a certain period of time so as to maximize the potential benefit of having taken that action in the first place. These problems become more difficult, when the information available is incomplete, or the process involved is characterized by randomness.

In a situation characterized by uncertainty and a lack of historical information, one encounters several difficult questions. What is the optimal number of observations I should make before I make a choice? What is the most relevant question I should be asking before I make a choice? Am I looking in the right place? There are other questions, but you get the idea. For an early-stage VC, becoming good at solving optimal-stopping problems is about increasing the probability of a successful outcome for the VC’s portfolio of startup investments.

I have been thinking about about how a team of early-stage investors can become good at solving optimal stopping problems for some time. I am still working on figuring out how such a set of strategies might be implemented in the real world using a combination of software tools and human judgement and intuition. My sense is that if I succeed in developing a repeatable and systematic approach to solving this problem in the context of an early-stage venture fund, I will want to protect it as a trade-secret.

Early-Stage VC Is A Multi-Armed Bandit Problem

Suppose you are spending a day playing casino slot machines. You are required to play no fewer than 10 different and distinct machines – no two machines will give you an identical payout. Your only objective is to maximize your winnings at the end of the day.

This problem is one example of a class of problems in which a scarce resource must be allocated between competing and alternative choices in a way that maximizes their expected gain in value over time. Each choice has properties that are only partially known or completely unknown at the time of initial allocation. Each choice has properties that may only become better understood as time progresses or by allocating more of the scarce resource to that choice. Such problems are known as multi-armed bandit problems.

The way I see it, multi-armed bandit problems are a special category of optimal-stopping problems. However, multi-armed bandit problems deserve special focus because the approach to solving them is distinct from the approach to solving other types of optimal-stopping problems.

In the case of a VC, capital and time are the scarce resources. VCs must decide how to allocate capital and time among competing investment options in a way that maximizes the value of the fund’s portfolio many years in the future. We must also make decisions about whether we are going to allocate time and capital to startups already in the fund portfolio, or to startups that are not yet in the portfolio. These choices must be made under conditions of extreme uncertainty, lack of information, and incomplete knowledge – for example one must make assumptions about future states of the world. For early stage VCs, the quality and availability of information is not much better even for startups that are already in the portfolio because the future might unfold in a way that has not been anticipated by the VC and the founders of the startups in which that VC invested.

Moreover, some VC investments are made in competition with adversarial peers. That is, if certain VCs decide to make the investment before a peer VC does, the slower peer may become excluded from making that investment for any number of reasons. For example, there may not be enough of the round remaining to meet the slower VC’s minimum allocation preferences given that VC’s fund size.

So early-stage VCs face the explore/exploit dilemma that is key to how one solves multi-armed bandit problems. Exploration involves doing research, cultivating knowledge, and developing a point of view about a topic relevant to the VC’s area of investment focus. Exploitation involves using the information and knowledge that’s been developed during exploration to accomplish the VCs objectives.

Based on my experience and observations so far, I have come to believe that the best venture capital firms – those firms that have shown persistently high performance over the course of 4 or more funds – have developed internal processes that enable their teams to systematically “explore” in ways that give their teams a competitive edge over their peers when it is time to “exploit”. I think this means that they do a lot of research and development – which leads to the question; What is research and development?

I define research as a systematic and organized approach to answering questions that leads to new knowledge which we may apply to solving problems we currently encounter, or problems we expect to encounter in the future. In the context of a business, research is a systematic and organized approach to solving problems that we expect will create new value for the customer. Development is a systematic and organized effort to use the outcome of research to obtain new sources of revenue for the business.

As an early-stage venture capitalist I think of research as a systematic and organized approach to acquiring the knowledge and insights that will eventually enable me to benefit disproportionately from information asymmetries and uncertainty in order to generate returns that satisfy limited partners’ expectations, it is the systematic act of cultivating knowledge that one expects will payoff in the form of unrealized fund returns in the future. The development part of research and development is the systematic and organized actions that the VC takes to transform the knowledge that has been acquired, gathered, and exploited into realized returns that the fund’s limited partners can harvest.

So, the most successful funds are made up of teams of people who have become really good at team-based learning, and taking action as a result of that learning to turn their knowledge into realized returns. I think it also means that such funds have created a knowledge network of outside-collaborators that enables them to augment what the team is learning with knowledge from the trusted and more knowledgeable collaborators within the network that the team has built around itself. The secret-sauce is how such teams combine the knowledge that they develop in-house with the industry specific expertise and connections of their trusted collaborators.

This leads me to my final observation . . .

Early-Stage VC Is An Exercise In Continuous Team-Based Learning

The future is fluid. Therefore, early-stage VCs must constantly be learning in order to avoid being the last to realize what advantageous new opportunities startup founders are pursuing. The question is, how does one implement a team-based learning strategy within the context of a venture fund that is not a single-GP fund? How does one ensure that;

  • each member of the team shares the same mental model,
  • the team has a correct and consistent mental model of the universe within which the team is competing, and
  • this mental model appropriately values and nurtures the team’s collective ability to learn as well each individual team member’s commitment to learning as a prerequisite for accomplishing the venture fund’s objectives?

Although I do not have an answer yet, I have been thinking about this question for a long time. I have some ideas that I am fleshing out. Here’s a preview: 6 Things I Have Learned About Building High-Performing Teams.

We do not learn from experience . . . we learn from reflecting on experience.
– John Dewey

In front of my family’s home, Laung Dabuo, in Nanville, Upper West Region, Ghana. I am the boy in the blue t-shirt.

Where Have I Come From?

Perhaps, I should share a brief summary of my personal background. Most people I have come to know professionally probably glean what little personal information they know about me from our interactions around work. That turns out to be very meagre, since I try not to give away much about myself or my past to people I do not yet know very well.

I am Ghanaian by birth. My parents moved to Kano, Nigeria while I was a little boy and so I attended elementary school in Kano. I have been on my own since I turned 12, when my parents decided that I should attend secondary school at home in Ghana’s Upper West Region, so that I could learn our culture and my family’s history – my parents and my siblings remained in Kano, and my parents and my younger brother still live there. I learned more during those 6 years at St. Francis Xavier Junior Seminary in Wa, in the Upper West Region of Ghana about the advantages of self-sufficiency, drive, and self-discipline than at any other time in my life.

The picture above is of me, in 1987, at home in Nanville, outside the entrance to my family’s compound house. This was during my first Christmas vacation while I was attending Xavier. I am the boy in the blue t-shirt. My classmates were boys who were often the first in each of their families to attend school, and whose parents were subsistence farmers just like my relatives in Nanville. It is the self-sufficiency, drive, self-discipline, and commitment to excellence we were taught at Xavier that produces people like Constancio Nakuma, Methodius “Method” Tuuli, and Aaron Anvuur – who sat directly ahead of me in class for 5 of our 6 years at Xavier, and who along with Edward Tieru Dassah, became my classmate during our final 2 years of secondary school after we graduated from Xavier. Aaron, Edward, and I maintained a fierce and relentless academic rivalry that still serves as a source of positive personal motivation for me.

After Xavier, I moved to Accra, where I completed my secondary education at the Presbyterian Boys’ Secondary School. Then, rather than attend university in Ghana or Nigeria, I decided to save some money in order to self-fund my secret plan to apply for merit-based scholarship grants from colleges in the United States. Connecticut College awarded me a Connecticut College Grant in 1997. I am very proud of that accomplishment because my job at this time paid the equivalent of $40.00 per month, in Ghanaian Cedis, and I saved every pesewa I could in order to pay for the SAT I and SAT II exams, the TOEFL exam, and for applications to nine colleges in the United States. I remember very clearly that everyone around me who found out what I was trying to do thought I had lost my mind, and that my failure was inevitable. Many tried to dissuade me, and I endured mockery and derision because this meant I had to forgo the comforts and social activities in which my peers indulged. For example, at one point I could only afford one or two decent shirts, and I had only one pair of decent trousers.

I was rejected by seven of the nine colleges I had applied to, and wait-listed by Carleton College and Connecticut College. The Connecticut College Grant covered the full cost of my undergraduate education. Attending Connecticut College enabled me to pursue a double-major in mathematics and physics – I was the only student to graduate in May 2001 with that double-major. There is no disputing that Connecticut College changed my life.

Before I joined KEC Holdings in 2008 I had worked as a pension actuarial analyst at Watson Wyatt Worldwide (now Willis Towers Watson), as the statistical research analyst for the Group Diversity team at UBS AG, and as the statistical research analyst for the Diversity and Inclusion team at Lehman Brothers. I started my MBA at NYU Stern in September 2005, while I was working at UBS. I earned my MBA in May 2008, two months after losing my job at Lehman Brothers.

I had already started pursuing the CFA Charter when I joined KEC Holdings in 2008 – having passed the June 2008 Level I exam. I became a CFA charterholder in August 2017. The way my life has unfolded has taught me to have conviction in my beliefs, to be self-sufficient, to embrace uncertainty, to always bet on myself, and not to limit my imagination about what I can accomplish if I commit to making it happen. I am not afraid to be different. I have come to identify very strongly with the Connecticut College mascot, the Camel – a symbol of resilience and stamina in the face of daunting odds.

Start by doing what’s necessary; then do what’s possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.
– St. Francis of Assisi

Where Am I Going?

After giving it careful thought, I have decided to team up with Lisa Morales-Hellebo to build an early-stage supply chain venture fund – starting with supply chain technology in the $2.4 trillion global apparel and fashion industry.

I first met Lisa on Wednesday, June 8, 2016 . . . We had been introduced to one another by Elise Whang, founder of Snobswap, now LePrix, in late-May. I responded to say I could only meet Lisa after my CFA Level III exam in early-June. I didn’t expect that Lisa and I would then spend nearly two hours talking about supply chains during our first conversation.

Coincidentally, we had both been thinking about technology and innovation in supply chains since 2014. Lisa had been thinking and learning about supply chains and technology in the fashion and apparel industry before and after building the New York Fashion Tech Lab, and by the time I first met her, she had spent a year traveling to Puerto Rico to visit apparel factories, maker labs, cut and sew shops, ateliers, and universities in order to learn about the existing apparel supply chain and the challenges it faces. She did this at her own expense, with hopes of reviving apparel manufacturing on the island as a catalyst for rebuilding the already weak local economy.

I had been thinking about value-chains in the on-demand economy since August 2014. When I met Lisa, I had just started delving into the topic of technology and innovation in supply chain in a more disciplined and systematic manner after learning about impending regulatory changes for the freight trucking industry. That led me and John Azubuike to take a deep-dive into opportunities for technology startups in freight-trucking (available here and here) and another deep-dive into opportunities for technology startups in ocean-shipping (also available here and here).

During that first conversation Lisa expressed her desire to join an already established early-stage venture fund in order to explore her thesis that the biggest opportunities for investors in the global apparel and fashion industry are to be found in using technologies that have now reached maturity to rethink the industry’s value chains and supply chains. After listening to her carefully, and probing her more than most people meeting a stranger for the first time would, I told her that I found what she was thinking of doing to be a remarkably bad idea; in all the time I had been thinking about supply chain and speaking with other investors about it I had not met anyone who shared her enthusiasm for the topic, nor had I encountered any investors with her depth of knowledge about the issues. I felt very strongly that this would quickly become a problem if she joined an already established team of generalist early-stage venture capitalists. I urged her to go it alone because she possesses what I feel are the three most important things a new venture capitalist needs; a differentiated body of knowledge, a unique view of the world that is based on that knowledge, and a unique network through which to exploit that body of knowledge. Alternatively, I suggested, she should find someone who shared her enthusiasm for the fashion and apparel industry, supply chain, and technology, and together they should start the fund that she had described to me. After that conversation, we kept meeting in person, and speaking to one another frequently by phone. We discussed developments in supply chain technology broadly, and we shared and compared notes on the startups we each were encountering, and discussing what excited us about their respective founders and the problems they had set out to solve. We would also often talk about what it’s like to run a venture a fund, and the unique challenges that emerging managers must grapple with – they are no different than those a first-time startup founder must contend with.

In the meantime, thanks to my many conversations with Lisa, I came to realize what a wonderful opportunity the apparel and fashion industry presents for understanding the opportunity for technological transformation of global supply chains across many other industries. There’s data, and predictive analytics. There’s logistics and transportation. There’s advanced manufacturing. There’s energy consumption and utilization. There’s agriculture. There’s advanced materials. There’s pollution and sustainability. I could go on, but you get the idea – the supply chain issues are numerous and complex. I have spent the past few months reading everything, and watching everything I can about the industry. I am excited by the challenge of digging in and learning all I can about an industry that is so massive and complicated.

During the summer of 2017, after many conversations about supply chain with people who had read my blog posts on trucking and shipping. I made the decision that I will devote the rest of my career in investment research and management to becoming a specialist on supply chain technology and innovation – in other words, I will spend the rest of my career becoming a supply chain technology generalist VC. As a result, I felt that I should now be hanging out mostly with people who are focused on supply chain, and people who are focused on technological innovation. So, I set out to find a community that brings these somewhat disparate groups of people together on a frequent and regular basis.

After failing to find a group that fit my idea of the kind of community I was looking for, I made the decision to start The New York Supply Chain Meetup on August 23, 2017 – you can read about our launch here: Progress Report | #TNYSCM Minimum Viable Launch – Building A Supply Chain Community. Naturally, Lisa is the very first person I called. I asked her if she would help me in my effort to create this community, a community of practice on everything supply chain technology – starting in NYC. My exact words were along the lines of “Lisa, I’m going to get egg on my face if you don’t help me.” After laughing at me, she said yes, and became my co-founder.

Since then we have been side-by-side in the trenches, trying to build a global network of open and multidisciplinary communities focused on technological innovation in supply chain, starting in NYC. So far, our efforts have been mostly bootstrapped – with assistance from Work-Bench, SAP.iO’s NYC Foundry. UPS and CustomInk helped sponsor our launch in November 2017. Based on our initial success in NYC we are now on the verge of launching a number of chapters elsewhere, under the name The Worldwide Supply Chain Federation. Starting at zero, The New York Supply Chain Meetup – the founding chapter of The Worldwide Supply Chain Federation, now has more than one thousand, two hundred and fifty members. It is the largest meetup in the world that focuses on the intersection of supply chain and cutting-edge technology. All things being equal we will launch new, self-organizing chapters in Athens, Bangalore, and another somewhere in Central Europe before the end of 2018. There are also nascent plans to launch chapters in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Singapore, and Vancouver. We’ve done more than many would think possible, with less than many would think possible.

The past ran on supply chains. The present runs on supply chains. The future will run on supply chains. The world is a supply chain.[3]

Since we first met, Lisa and I have spent more time collaboratively learning about supply chains with one another than with anyone else either of us knows. She is the only person I know whose enthusiasm for, and obsession with supply chain and early-stage investing matches mine. So we believe it makes sense for us to team up to make our-shared vision for an early stage venture fund focused entirely on technology and innovation in supply chain a reality. REFASHIOND will become a fund that invests in startups building the technologies, innovations, and new business models that define the future of global supply chain networks. Initially, we will focus on supply chains in the $2.4 trillion global apparel and fashion industry. Ultimately, our ambitions extend well beyond that.

I can’t think of anyone else I would rather team up with to take on such an enormous challenge. Lisa is an expert at building the sorts of ecosystems that the type of fund we have in mind will need to develop if it’s to successfully solve the problems that supply chain startups often encounter. As Executive Director and Co-Founder, she was responsible for getting The New York Fashion Tech Lab off the ground between January and July in 2014. The New York Fashion Tech Lab is the first-ever accelerator to partner with major fashion retailers and brands. She has served on the board of Parallel18 since its launch in December 2015. Parallel18 is an acceleration program that presents a unique gateway for global startups to scale from Puerto Rico as a launchpad into South American and North American markets. The founders of the startups she advises love her, and I have seen how hard she works to open doors for them with potential customers, potential investors, and other business partners. She innately understands what it means to be a force-multiplier for startup founders because she has been in their shoes herself, as a serial entrepreneur, and has helped other startups scale to exit as an early employee. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Carnegie Mellon University, which was the only school she applied to, and graduated with University Honors.

We have complementary skills; Having never used a computer before I arrived at Connecticut College in 1997, I abandoned computer programming after 2 semesters of coursework during my freshman year. She had to teach herself to code, architect taxonomies, and map personalization systems early in her career in order to eventually build Shopsy.

We get along well, as you might guess from how much time we spent talking about supply chains when we first met each other more than two years ago, and how much time we have spent talking to one another about supply chains since then. I would trust her with my life. We both know what it is like to be an outsider – one may say it is the only thing we know. Neither of us takes opportunity for granted. Neither of us is afraid to be different. We have both learned to embrace uncertainty, and to use it to our advantage. We have learned to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. To outsiders looking in, we probably make an unlikely pair; a Puerto Rican woman and an African man – but we are more similar than dissimilar; for example, we both are only one generation removed from grandparents who earned their living through subsistence farming.

I am more excited about what Lisa and I are setting out to do than I have been about anything else I have worked on so far. Here’s a small and incomplete preview of our vision: The Worldwide Supply Chain Federation – Our Manifesto and Shipping And Freight Resource: Executive Insights: Brian Laung Aoaeh and Lisa Morales-Hellebo, Co-founders of The New York Supply Chain Meetup. We both feel fortunate to be able to do this starting in New York City.

How Can You Help Us?

We’re currently working on a booklet about the convergence of supply chains and value chains in the global apparel and fashion industry. We expect to publish it in late November. Sign up using the link at the end of this article in order to know when it becomes available. We will have more to share about what we are working on as time progresses. When we do, we hope we can count on your support, and encouragement. Until then;

  • It would be awesome to build what we have in mind as entrepreneurs-in-residence at a big corporation that views supply chain innovation as critical to its mission, and the future well-being of its business. We welcome opportunities to have conversations along those lines.
  • Sometime in the near future, we will kick-off conversations with investors who wish to consider becoming limited partners in our fund. Let us know if you’d like to speak with us once we’re ready. Tell any investors who might be interested in what we are doing about us.
  • We are eager to meet, get to know, and collaborate with corporate executives, startup founders, technologists, academic researchers, investors, and journalists who share our commitment to technological innovation in global supply chain. If this describes you, please connect with us personally. Also, consider joining the global community that we are building, or starting a local chapter where you live. Our contact info is at the end.
  • We will need to support ourselves and our families while we build REFASHIOND. To do that, we are willing to take on consulting assignments for corporations, governments, large nonprofit organizations, foundations, and multilateral organizations with consulting needs around open innovation, supply chain, technology, and startups. We’d love to work with companies that are thinking about starting down the path of creating a corporate venture capital arm. Please do not hesitate to let us know if you wish to engage REFASHIOND’s services.
  • We’re also happy to act as consultants to family offices, in the United States or abroad, that wish to explore setting up their own venture capital investing practice, such as KEC Holdings did. Please do not hesitate to let us know if you wish to engage REFASHIOND’s services for that purpose.
  • If there are other ideas you feel we should consider as we start building REFASHIOND, please let us know. Our contact info is at the end of this article.

Motivating Myself

I learned the most important lessons about what it takes to build a business at my mother’s side – she quit her job as a primary school teacher in Kano, Nigeria in 1981 and started trying to build a small business at home. For several years she baked and sold meat-pies through a network of kiosk operators on the campus of Bayero University, Kano. I was responsible for peeling and dicing hundreds of Irish potatoes every day, after I got home from school. They were a key ingredient in her recipe. She baked and sold whole wheat bread to the community of expatriates in Kano, and with my dad’s help, she also raised 1,500 chickens which laid eggs that we sold to the expatriates who bought the whole wheat bread she baked. I bore a significant amount of responsibility during each of those endeavors. I know what it takes to build a business from scratch – the physical effort, as well as the psychological and economic pressures with which one must grapple. For example, I know what it is like to wake up to find that all 1,500 layers we were raising had been wiped out overnight by an infectious virus. This happened more than once – sometimes we suspected sabotage by our neighbor who started a poultry farm soon after we started ours, but we had no tangible proof. My affinity for startup founders can be traced directly to what I learned about the challenges of entrepreneurship from working beside my mother.

After several pivots, she eventually started a school in 1986. More than three decades and hundreds of students later, she’s built a reputation for excellence and her school is highly coveted in Kano. Her very first student is now an early stage VC based in Brooklyn, NY – his name is Rashid Galandanci. I often joke that my mom is probably the only African elementary school teacher who has trained two little boys to go on and become venture capitalists in New York City.

So, when people ask me what motivates me I tell them that I wake up every day trying to become the kind of investor my mom would have loved to have by her side over the years, since she started trying to build a business in 1981. That isn’t going to change. I am leaving KEC Ventures/Particle Ventures, but my commitment to the founders leading the startups in the fund’s portfolio does not end. I will always owe Jeff Citron, Joann Vought, and KEC Holdings a debt of gratitude for taking a chance on me when I met them. They created a perfect environment for “a boy from a small village in northern Ghana” to teach himself what it means to be an early stage technology venture capitalist in NYC – it is not lost on me what a rare occurrence that is, nor do I intend to shirk the responsibility it places on my shoulders.

I am eager to greet the challenges Lisa and I will encounter as we start building REFASHIOND. Whatever they are, I expect that we will each have to work harder than we have had to up till now if we are to succeed – patiently building our vision, brick by brick. Fortunately, we’ll be working on something about which we are both obsessively enthusiastic. Bring it on.

Are you afraid? Good. You’re in the great game now. And the great game’s terrifying. The only people who aren’t afraid of failure are madmen like your father.
– Tyrion Lannister, speaking to Daenerys Targaryen in Game of Thrones Season 6, Episode 10.

How Can You Reach Us?

Update: September 5, 2018 at 14:04 to clarify language around KEC Ventures/Particle Ventures.

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[1] Lee Hower has done a great job exploring the factors that cause venture capital firms to fail. See The Rise and Fall of Great Venture Firms – Part I and The Rise and Fall of Great Venture Firms – Part II.
[2] Theodore P. Hill, Knowing When To Stop. Accessed on August 20, 2018 at: https://www.americanscientist.org/article/knowing-when-to-stop
[3] This is a trademark that belongs to The New York Supply Chain Meetup, LLC.

#CountDown: 3 Days to #TNYSCM04 – Supply Chain & Artificial Intelligence

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A cross-section of the audience at #TNYSCM #02, January 2018.

We’re now less than a week from The New York Supply Chain Meetup’s fourth gathering. The purpose of this post is to outline our plans for that event, and preview what we expect to do between now and June 2018 . . . We’re still in the early days of building this community, so much of this is subject to change, especially as we go through the process of recruiting sponsors.

Our Mission

To nurture and grow the world’s foremost open, global, multidisciplinary community of people devoted to building the supply chain networks of the future – starting in NYC.

Become a coporate sponsor. Email me at: brian@tnyscm.com for more details about our vision, and the team that’s working behind the scenes to build this community.

The New York Supply Chain Meetup is powered by Particle Ventures, a seed-stage fund based in NYC that invests in Supply Chain & Industrial Intelligence. Particle is built by the same team that launched KEC Ventures.

Logistical Details: #TNYSCM #04

  • Date: Thursday, March 15, 2018.
  • Time: 17:30–20:30
  • Location: SAP America, 10 Hudson Yards - 48th Floor, New York, NY. An organizer will be downstairs, at the security counter.

#TNYSCM #04 combines a Lightning Talk, a "Fire-Side" Chat, and a Showcase. It is sponsored by SAP.iO and co-hosted by The New York Supply Chain Meetup and the New York City Bots and Artificial Intelligence Meetup.

SAP.iO helps innovators inside and outside of SAP build products, find customers, and change industries.

REGISTER HERE!

Agenda

5:30 PM - 5:55 PM: Pre-event Networking
5:55 PM - 6:00 PM: Welcome Remarks (#TNYSCM, NYCBAI, SAP.iO)
6:00 PM - 6:30 PM: Lightning Talk (15 Minutes), Q&A (15 Minutes)
6:30 PM - 6:50 PM: "Fire-Side" Chat (15 Minutes), Q&A (15 Minutes)
7:00 PM - 8:00 PM: Showcase (10 Minutes, with 5 Minutes of Q&A, each)
8:00 PM - 8:30 PM: Closing Remarks, Post-event Networking

Lightning Talk: Evolution & Use Cases of Artificial Intelligence in Supply Chain, From An Industry And SAP Point of View

David Judge (@DHJudge) is Vice President of Predictive Analytics and Machine Learning products at SAP. He guides product strategy and drives increased market awareness for SAP Leonardo.

Geoff Maxwell (@geofflm) is Global Head of Business Strategy and Execution Analytics and SAP Leonardo. He is responsible for go to market strategy for SAP’s portfolio of Leonardo solutions.

Fireside Chat: The Future of AI-Driven Transformation in Retail Supply Chains, and in Government Agencies.

José P. Chan is VP Business Development for Celect, a predictive analytics firm founded out of MIT, which helps retailers optimize their inventory portfolios in stores and across the supply chain. Previously, he worked internationally in retail for over two decades with LVMH, Richemont and Roberto Cavalli. José has held senior management positions and has extensive experience in buying, marketing, merchandising, planning, and has run retail store networks. He holds an SM from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an MBA from University of Rochester, a BS from Cornell University and an AAS from the Fashion Institute of Technology.

Sameer Anand is a Partner with A.T. Kearney’s operations practice with over 16 years of experience in management consulting. He advises clients on large scale transformations to drive step changes in productivity with an underpinning of analytics and digital across CPG, retail, industrial products, and high tech industries. His areas of expertise include consumer products, manufacturing, supply chain planning, sourcing, bracket pricing, logistics, and advanced analytics. Prior to joining A.T. Kearney, Sameer worked at Deloitte and American Airlines.

REGISTER HERE!

Showcase Presentations

At #TNYSCM #04 we'll have 3 startups talk about the artificial intelligence-driven products they are building for the supply chain logistics industry. They will appear in the following order;

ClearMetal (@ClearMetalInc): Founded in 2014, and based in San Francisco, CA, ClearMetal provides predictive data and analytics for the supply chain logistics industry, enabling its customers to unlock increased efficiencies in global trade as ClearMetal enables them to solve complex problems using a data-driven approach. According to CrunchBase and CBInsights ClearMetal has raised $12M over two rounds of financing, most recently raising $9.0M in its Series A financing which was led by Innovation Endeavors. SAP.iO is an investor in ClearMetal.

Wise Systems (@goWiseSystems): Founded in 2014, and based in Cambridge, MA,  Wise Systems develops route-optimization software that schedules last-mile delivery truck drivers while considering multiple constraints like customer time windows, traffic, and service time. Wise automatically dispatches schedules to drivers and the software recalculates and updates schedules in real-time as things change in real-time. According to CrunchBase and CBInsights, Wise Systems has raised $1.1M in seed capital. Dynamo Accelerator is an investor in Wise Systems. Santosh Sankar, a co-organizer of The New York Supply Chain Meetup, is also a co-founder & director of Dynamo.

Optimal Dynamics: Based in Princeton, NJ, Optimal Dynamics brings AI to the trucking industry based on over 30 years of academic research and development centered on the use of Computational Stochastic Optimization and Learning in solving problems related to dynamic assignment problems in transportation and logistics. Optimal Dynamics recently raised an undisclosed amount in pre-seed funding.

REGISTER HERE!

Preview — #TNYSCM  in April, May, June

Here is what our team of organizers is working on, between now and June.

  • April 26: A panel discussion and keynote presentation, focused on the issues that have kept blockchain and other distributed ledger technologies in the lab and out of the real world. The keynote presentation is by Silvio Micali, he will talk about his work creating Algorand. THIS IS GOING TO BE BIG!
  • May 24: A showcase of startups in Fashion, Apparel, and Retail supply chain. THIS IS GOING TO BE BIG!
  • June 21: A Sourcing 101 workshop for startups building physical products.

Other "Upcoming" Supply Chain Events

  • TPM2018: Is now behind us. It was awesome. Read my blog post about it here: #TPM2018: The Woodstock Of International Container Shipping & Logistics
  • Maritime Global Technologies: Reverse Pitch on March 15, 2018 from 09:30–12:30. MGTIC is an initiative of SUNY Maritime College to build a global maritime technology innovation hub by bringing together all that the New York City metro-region has to offer entrepreneurs building software for the global shipping and maritime logistics market. I’m a member of the advisory board and have previously blogged about it here and here. I will be there. Say hello, if we've never met before
  • Transparency18: This is the flagship event series started by the founders of the Blockchain in Transport Alliance. It follows BiTA’s Spring Symposium, a members only event that occurs on May 21, 2018. I will attend both days of Transparency 18 May 22 and May 23.

#CountDown: 5 Days to The New York Supply Chain Meetup #03

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A cross-section of the audience at #TNYSCM #02, January 2018.

We’re now less than a week from The New York Supply Chain Meetup’s third gathering. The purpose of this post is to outline our plans for that event, and preview what we expect to do between now and June 2018 . . . We’re still in the early days of building this community, so much of this is subject to change, especially as we go through the process of recruiting sponsors.

Our Mission

To nurture and grow the world’s foremost open, global, multidisciplinary community of people devoted to building the supply chain networks of the future – starting in NYC.

Become a coporate sponsor. Email me at: brian@tnyscm.com for more details about our vision, and the team that’s working behind the scenes to build this community.

The New York Supply Chain Meetup is powered by Particle Ventures, a seed-stage fund based in NYC that invests in Supply Chain & Industrial Intelligence. Particle is built by the same team that launched KEC Ventures.

Logistical Details: #TNYSCM #03

  • Date: Thursday, February 22, 2018.
  • Time: 17:30–20:30
  • Location: Work-Bench, 110 5th Avenue, New York, NY, 10011.

This event will combine a Workshop, and a Panel Discussion. Our MC for this event is Brian Lindquist, a member of our team of organizers.

Agenda

  • 17:30–17:55: Pre-event Networking
  • 17:55 PM – 18:00 PM Welcome Remarks
  • 18:00 PM – 19:00 PM Workshop, Q&A
  • 19:00 PM – 19:45 PM Lessons From The Field – Panel Discussion, Q&A
  • 19:45 PM – 19:50 PM Closing Remarks
    19:50 PM – 20:20 PM Post-event Networking

Preview — Workshop: Going From $0.00 To $1,000,000 – Towards Product-Market-Fit For The Non-Sales B2B Pre-Seed and Seed-Stage Startup Founder (aka Going From Zero To One – Sales and Marketing Tactics For The Non-Sales B2B Pre-Seed and Seed-Stage Startup Founder)

Our instructor, Victor Adefuye, will walk through simple, inexpensive tactics that early stage startup founders can employ as they try to start building sales and generating revenue. He is the Founder & CEO of Dana Consulting, a firm that functions as an outsourced VP of sales for technology startups and other small business. He also acts as a management consultant to Dana Consulting’s enterprise clients as they try to bring new products and services to market.

While this event is being organized primarily for members of #TNYSCM, the workshop is ideal for anyone running a small business that seeks to grow. It is also useful for angel investors, venture capitalists, and startup advisors who do not have a sales and marketing background, but who nonetheless might find themselves trying to help a startup win its very first customers, and grow revenues over time.

The workshop will last about 50 minutes, with roughly 10 minutes of audience Q&A to follow.

Bring pens/pencils and a notebook, because Victor will be sharing practical tactics you can start implementing the very next day. I know – I sat through one of his workshops in July 2017, and I got ideas that I started using at work the very next day.

You’ll get completely worthless bonus points if you bring a cool mechanical pencil and show it to me with pride during one of the networking sessions – assuming I am not running around trying to make sure everything goes well.

REGISTER HERE!

Preview — Panel Discussion: Lessons From The Field

After delivering the workshop, Victor will speak with three founders who have successfully grown sales in order to extract insights and lessons, and also to weave those lessons with concepts he discussed during the workshop. This should help the founders in the audience think about how to allocate time, effort, and resources between trying to grow sales, and all the other things they must do in the very early days of a startup’s existence.

Our panelists are;

Suuchi Ramesh (@Suuchi_madeforU), CEO & Founder, Suuchi Inc; Suuchi Inc. is a design & manufacturing partner for innovative American apparel fashion brands and Fortune 1000 companies. Powered by advanced design software & manufacturing automation, Suuchi Inc’s vertically integrated supply chain replenishes inventory in as quickly as 5 days. Suuchi has bootstrapped her company to a 7 figure 2017 revenue, and hopes to reach an 8 figure revenue number in 2018. Suuchi Inc. earned its first revenues in April 2016, and grew its 2017 revenues to 5x its 2016 revenues. You heard her describe her business at our launch – at which she was a hit with the audience. Here, she’ll talk about how Suuchi Inc. has gone about growing revenues.

Steve Pike, CTO, SevenFifty; SevenFifty is modernizing wholesale beverage alcohol, a massive but technologically antiquated industry with a status quo dating back to Prohibition. SevenFifty offers a web platform that connects over 50,000 on- and off-premise licensed buyers with wholesale distributors to provide them with fast and efficient access to information about products available in their local wholesale markets. Steve was SevenFifty’s first hire and as CTO is responsible for building new products and managing the engineering team. He’s been with the company since 2011, when he built the platform working out of a bar in Manhattan called the Tippler. He too will fill us in on how they grew sales in those early days.

Willem Sundblad (@oden_tech) CEO & Founder, Oden Technologies Ltd.; Oden is a B2B SaaS company combining industrial hardware, wireless connectivity, and big data architecture into one simple platform so all manufacturers can analyze and optimize their production, from any device. Manufacturing has long been an analog world, but Oden is trying to change this by introducing the power of IoT and cloud analytics to factory operations. Willem too will talk about how they have grown sales in a legacy industry that is thought of as insular and unwelcoming to outsiders.

REGISTER HERE!

Preview — #TNYSCM  in March, April, May, June

Here is what the team of organizers is working on, between now and June.

  • March 15: A showcase of startups applying artificial intelligence to supply chain. Co-hosted with NYC Bots and Artificial Intelligence Meetup.
  • April 26: A panel discussion and keynote presentation, focused on the issues that have kept blockchain and other distributed ledger technologies in the lab and out of the real world. The keynote presentation is by Silvio Micali, he will talk about his work creating Algorand.
  • May 24: A showcase of startups in Fashion, Apparel, and Retail supply chain.
  • June 21: A Sourcing 101 workshop for startups building physical products.

Other Upcoming Supply Chain Events

  • TPM2018: TPM, part of IHS Markit is the world’s largest container shipping and logistics conference, 18 years old this year having attracted 2,300 in 2017 representing cargo owners, container carriers, forwarders/3PLs, railroads, ports, marine terminals, equipment lessors and various others. It is one of the three main annual regional container logistics organized by JOC including the Container Trade Europe event in Hamburg and TPM Asia in Shenzhen China. The programs are developed with editorial independence by the JOC team of veteran transportation journalists. I’m attending for the first time this year to moderate the Innovation Jam on Tuesday, March 6.
  • Maritime Global Technologies: Reverse Pitch on March 15, 2018 from 09:30–12:30. MGTIC is an initiative of SUNY Maritime College to build a global maritime technology innovation hub by bringing together all that the New York City metro-region has to offer entrepreneurs building software for the global shipping and maritime logistics market. I’m a member of the advisory board and have previously blogged about it here and here.
  • Transparency18: This is the flagship event series started by the founders of the Blockchain in Transport Alliance. It follows BiTA’s Spring Symposium, a members only event that occurs on May 21, 2018. I will attend both days of Transparency 18 May 22 and May 23.

 

 

 

A Story About Startup Cofounder Teamwork: Climbing To The Summit of Denali

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Denali Image Credit: NPS Photo/Tim Rains
Denali
Image Credit: NPS Photo/Tim Rains

On June 30th, 2015, Naira Musallam and her climbing partner, Tim Lawton successfully summited Denali (Mount McKinley). They made history as The First Arab-American Team to ever do so. Naira also became the first Arab woman to stand on the summit of Denali.

Standing at 20,320 feet, Denali is one of the “Seven Summits” because it is the highest point on the continent of North America. From that point Naira and Tim raised a flag with the message “Peace and Security for All” written in Arabic, Hebrew, and English.

I checked my email around 8:00 AM EST in NYC after arriving at work on Tuesday, July 7th 2015, and found a note from Naira telling me the good news. She had sent it at 6:51 AM. I wrote back to congratulate her, and asked if I could write about their story. She and Tim graciously said yes.

This is their story. It highlights everything I discussed in Innovation Footprints: 6 Things I Have Learned About Building High-Performing Teams.

Naira Musallam and Tim Lawton at the summit of Denali on June 30th, 2015. (Image Credit: Naira and Tim)
Naira Musallam and Tim Lawton at the summit of Denali on June 30th, 2015. (Image Credit: Naira and Tim)

I met Naira on Thursday, October 9th 2014 when I was at NYU’s Leslie eLab to lead a lunch and learn. I had arrived early, to give myself some time to work through my nerves – I get super nervous about speaking in front of groups of people.

Naira was the first person to arrive. She came, said hello, and introduced herself. I introduced myself, and asked if she was an undergraduate student, what year she was in, what major she was studying . . . She smiled at me and explained she’s a professor at NYU, and she teaches statistics. Oh, lest I forget. She also mentioned that she “climbs mountains as a hobby” and “runs long distance, as a hobby.”

I thought to myself; “Great! It really would have been helpful if someone had warned me that I’d have professors in the audience! Never mind mathematicians who climb mountains and run long distance races . . . as a hobby.”

So much for calming my nerves. It seemed to me that her arrival was timed to optimize the intimidation factor. Any way, the talk went well – or, so she says. To my great “horror” there are excerpts on video which you can check out here, here, here and here. After the event, I chatted briefly with Naira again and we agreed to meet for coffee. She wanted to pick my brains about something she was working on. Since I have never met a mathematician or physicist I do not like, I said yes. What could be better than chatting with a mathematician?

We met again on November 26th, 2014 at Cafe Reggio near NYU. After spending some time getting to know one another from a biographical standpoint, we spent most of the time discussing many of the types of questions I have come to expect from the first-time founders I meet; What does a VC want to see in order to decide to make an investment? How does the decision-making process typically work? How about fund-raising, how does that work, in general? How does one get a meeting with a VC to whom one does not have a direct or indirect connection? Does sending a cold-email work? And many more.

During subsequent meetings over coffee, and sometimes lunch . . . I learned about a startup she and Tim have been building, Frontier7 is an online data analytics platform. I also learned a lot about Tim, whom I had not yet met.

Eventually, I met Tim . . . I pointed out to Tim that Naira intimidated me when I first met her, and now she’d brought him along to escalate that intimidation factor even more. I remember we were all laughing so hard, the other folks in the bar must have thought we’d been drinking too much.

Naira Musallam and Tim Lawton: Starting The Climb on Denali (Image Credit: Naira and Tim)
Naira Musallam and Tim Lawton: Starting The Climb on Denali (Image Credit: Naira and Tim)

About Naira Musallam

Naira is currently a full-time professor at New York University, where she teaches Applied Statistics, Analytical Skills, and National Security and Middle East Affairs at the Center for Global Affairs. She also serves as an Adjunct Professor at Columbia University and in its collaborative program at the United States Military Academy at West Point where she teaches graduate level research courses. Naira received her doctorate from Columbia University.

She has over thirteen years of applied research experience consulting with multiple industries in the private sector, ranging from financial services, to pharmaceuticals, retail, oil and gas, and the fashion industry, helping them solve business problems through data driven processes. She used applied statistics to develop insights on business issues such as M&A deals, C-Suite executive assessments, employee retention, and sales strategies. She also consulted to governmental agencies and non-profit organizations on projects related to project assessment, and monitoring and evaluation. Naira is the recipient of multiple research awards from the Earth Institute, Columbia University, and the U.S. Department of State.

Naira grew up in a small Palestinian town in Galilee, and has been climbing for the last seven years. When not working in New York City on statistical issues, she enjoys high altitude mountain climbing, scuba diving, and cultural exploration and adventures around the world.

About Tim Lawton

Tim is a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point and served 5 1/2 years as an officer in various infantry and special operations units. During his time in the Army he was deployed to both Iraq and Afghanistan for a total of four combat tours. After leaving the military he attended MIT Sloan School of Management where he received an MBA with a concentration in corporate finance. He spent the next 5 years in investment banking with experience in debt restructuring, equity financing, and mergers & acquisitions in one role and helped to lead a sales effort in another.

As an active member of the veteran community in NYC, Tim is involved with various veteran non-profit organizations and is working to further veteran’s business initiatives in the city. He is originally from the Boston area. His hobbies include mountain climbing, travel, sky diving, scuba diving, and working out.

How They Met

“We first met at a 5k road race that was to support a veteran’s organization that we were both connected to. We had struck up a conversation because we were both wearing the same brand of sunglasses, which are unique mainly to mountain climbers. From then on we continued our friendship and over time began to discuss not only future mountain climbing endeavors, but also a potential business idea that leveraged both of our experiences from the corporate world.”

Naira Musallam and Tim Lawton: Camp on Denali (Image Credit: Naira and Tim)
Naira Musallam and Tim Lawton: Camp on Denali (Image Credit: Naira and Tim)

Why They Thought They’d Make A Good Team

We both suck at different things.

“In all seriousness, since we initially began our friendship due to mountain climbing and had subsequently climbed together in Ecuador before starting in business together we both had to learn how to trust each other on a different level than is typically required in business and cursory friendships. On that trip we realized that we could trust and rely on each other when things don’t go smoothly.

In one particular recent event while we were climbing together in Alaska, Tim was leading up a steep slope when the ice gave out and he began to tumble down the mountain. As they were connected via a climbing rope, Naira quickly reacted and began to self-arrest. By the time Tim had also recovered enough to self-arrest and stop his fall they had both fallen about 100 feet and 80 feet respectively.  It is this type of event that engrains a level of trust in another’s competence that can be carried over to any other type of situation.

On the actual business front, we both realized that we possessed very different, yet complementary skill sets. Once we began to develop the business plan and put together a strategy, coupled with the trust we had gained with each other from the mountains, we knew we could both move ahead with different responsibilities, yet towards achieving the very same goal.”

Three Things That Have Been Important To Their Success as a Team

  1. Trust,
  2. Complementary skill sets, and
  3. Sharing and believing in the same vision

What successfully Summiting Denali Means for Each One of Them

Tim: “For me it was the culmination of an idea and vision that began years before. In the mountains, it should be about the journey, but getting to the summit is always a sweet addition. This particular mountain and successful summit was by far the most complex and difficult in all aspects as it required more planning and preparation than other mountains I had climbed. Plus, we had spent so long this year attempting to get there. It took two trips, two cross-continental round trip flights, sleeping in airports, hotels, and tents, but we did it. We spent 35 days on the mountain during those two trips. So to have been denied the summit once before, but continuing to try and having the mindset of not quitting until we succeed, and then to succeed, is a great feeling. To have achieved that with Naira, with a mindset that we also share in business makes it satisfying as we look to apply the same tenacity to our new business venture.”

Naira: “While being able to say that I became the First Arab woman to climb Denali has its significance in the mountaineering world, the climbing of Denali with Tim took much deeper meaning for several reasons: Tim and I were the first American- Arab team to step on the highest point in North America. The ability to share a message of hope from there together, especially in today’s turbulent world was extremely unique. In addition, it was elating to reach the top with Tim because we have failed in the past to reach the top. Success becomes way more enjoyable when you achieve it with the same person you failed with before. Finally, reaching the top and being able to make history would absolutely not have been possible without Tim’s partnership and competence on the mountain. In that regards, I feel truly blessed to have Tim as partner.”

Naira Musallam and Tim Lawton: View From The Top of Denali (Image Credit: Naira and Tim)
Naira Musallam and Tim Lawton: View From The Top of Denali (Image Credit: Naira and Tim)

Their Shared-Vision for Frontier7, The Significance of The Name

“The name Frontier7, which certainly didn’t come to us quickly, has a number of meanings for us. First of all, we are both in love with the outdoors and adventure, so ‘frontier’ in the sense of the furthest known boundary, the last frontier, the beginning of the unexplored, etc. appealed to us. In business we wanted to create an analytics platform that helped push our clients to the frontier of their industries. The “7” has many meanings that we both value: in most cultures 7 is a lucky number, 7 wonders of the world, 7 summits, 7 colors in the rainbow, in Eastern thought the 7th Chakra is the center for trust, devotion, inspiration, happiness, and positivity. (There are also 7 dwarfs in Snow White and who doesn’t love Snow White?)”

Our vision for Frontier7 is to be the go-to online platform for seamless analytics. We want to enable companies to be able to unlock all of the value of the data they gather in order to maximize their own business performance.

The Announcement They Sent To Their Friends, and Other Associates

On June 30th, 2015, Naira Musallam and Tim Lawton made history together on the highest point of North America, Denali (also known as Mount McKinley) by summiting as the First Arab-American Team to ever do so, and with Naira becoming the first Arab woman to ever stand on the summit. Denali is one of the “Seven Summits” or highest point on the continent of North America, standing at 20,320 feet. From the highest point in North America they raised a flag with the message “Peace and Security for All” written in Arabic, Hebrew, and English.

Their goal to summit Denali began on May 4th, 2015 when they attempted to climb the mountain with a guided group but were unable to due to severe weather conditions, spending a total of 18 days on the mountain. While it would be normal for them to come back another season to attempt the mountain again, they decided to return only a few weeks later in June. The second and successful attempt was a self-guided climb with just the team of the two of them. They raised their flag on the summit after 13 days and took a full 17 days on the mountain. The two months, two cross-continental round trips, red eye flights, sleeping in airports, tents, and hotels, and 35 total days on the mountain was well worth the effort on the evening of June 30th, 2015.

What makes their story even more unique is that they come from significantly different backgrounds. Naira grew up as a Palestinian in Israel where she spent a significant amount of time working in the conflict field, while Tim grew up in Massachusetts, served in the United States Army and served numerous combat tours overseas. They connected because of their love for mountaineering, and drive to send a message about hope, interdependence, and common human values.

Furthermore, today they are also co-founders of a data analytics company, Frontier7 (www.frontier7.com), and are also in the process of starting a non-profit in the form of a social platform that engineers chance for people by connecting those from varied backgrounds and shared passions (like themselves) and aligning people, ideas, and resources for them to address social issues that they care about. They believe that in today’s reality, this message becomes more important than ever.

My Closing  Thoughts

We’ve had numerous discussions about Frontier7, but I have not yet seen a demo. They assure me that day is coming soon. Either way, I am eager to watch their journey, as co-founders and as people who have a vision that they wish to turn into a reality. They each embody the intangible characteristics I look for in founders; courage, grit, vision, determination, resilience, creativity, resourcefulness, conflict management and resolution, discipline, a willingness to assume responsibility, and the ability to learn from others. I could not feel more proud of their accomplishment.

Naira Musallam and Tim Lawton: At The Top of Denali (Image Credit: Naira and Tim)
Naira Musallam and Tim Lawton: At The Top of Denali (Image Credit: Naira and Tim)