Venture Forward: Navigating the Startup Ecosystem

Tom Leonard 

I'm Tom Leonard. I'm the host of the Gamers Change Lives podcast, where we talk about how eSports can create jobs anywhere in the world. Play games, create jobs, change lives. Now in season one, we talked about jobs. In season two, we talked about “Follow The Money”. We talked to investors. We talked to sponsors. And in season three, we talked about business basics. Now we're on to season four called “Accelerating eSports Success”. We're talking to people around the world telling their stories,

of how entrepreneurs can tap into resources provided by accelerators, incubators, and other platforms to hone their skills. The goal of these conversations is to provide inspiration to eSports entrepreneurs, both new and established, to seek help in achieving their goals. And today, really, really glad because we talked to him in the past, but it's the first time on the podcast. We're talking to Jason Krauss, and he's with Prepare for VC which is a great name. It's like, you know exactly what that is. He's also an investor and an author, and we welcome him to the podcast. Welcome, Jason.

Jason Kraus 

Yeah, thanks for having me. It's great to be here and really looking forward to our conversation today.

Tom Leonard 

Great, great. Where are you speaking to us from?

Jason Kraus 

I'm based in Boston and yeah, excited to connect with all the entrepreneurs in your network.

Tom Leonard 

Great. So you've always been in Boston, right?

Jason Kraus 

Um, yeah, I actually, so I grew up, uh, like 45 minutes from the city and then, um, went to school in upstate New York, came back for grad school, uh, and then, um, stuck around ever since.

Tom Leonard 

We always kind of give a geography lesson here because our audience is like you're from all over the world and they don't always know where everything is in the US and certainly Boston's in the very Northeast. Could you describe maybe a little difference? Because there is a big startup environment in your area. And I think a lot of people think, oh, you know, Silicon Valley, you know, out here in the Bay Area. But can you describe maybe a little bit about what role the Boston area plays in startups.

Jason Kraus 

Sure, yeah, it's actually a really big startup community, especially for, I'd say the biggest influence is probably the university systems and the hospitals in the area. So there's a lot of tech companies more focused on the B2B companies that are selling to other businesses and then a lot of focus on the med tech and biotech industries with a big hospital system and a lot of research institutions around the area. So yeah, those are traditionally the biggest, but there's also, you know, more consumer tech and other industries here as well. I'd say, yeah, the shift is, are kind of comparing some of the markets. You, Boston tends to be a little bit more like, prove each step of the way in the fundraising journey. So, you might raise several hundred thousand dollar round that'll get you to your few million dollar round in Boston, where in Silicon Valley, it might be more, raise a large mega round at the beginning and go for kind of that all or nothing build on your venture. Yeah, where, you know, Boston tends to focus on more of let's make it somewhat. Uh, there are some, you know, case there, there's plenty of success stories that are huge, uh, billion dollar plus ventures, but there's also a lot of businesses that are built, um, and, you know, either merge or get acquired by other businesses that can make them even bigger companies from there.

Tom Leonard 

One of the things that we hear is that there's no such thing as a cookie cutter. This is exactly the way it works. It's like it works differently in different places because of the people that are involved in those different areas. One of the first things, because we talked about e-sports entrepreneurs here around the world. Are you a gamer?

Jason Kraus 

Sure. Um, I enjoy, I enjoy gaming, uh, not, um, I kind of was always, uh, I mean, I was always into more like, you know, um, kind of the impert or like playing games with friends, uh, in person and got a little bit into more of the virtual, um, you know, the, yeah, you know, virtual market there too. Um, like playing online, but, um, not as heavily. Yeah, I always liked kind of meeting up with people, you know, and then I know like the markets really expanded the last Four or five years or so, especially in terms of You know capabilities of streaming and online gaming and everything. So yeah, exciting to see Everything really coming together and all the e-sports teams and everything really, you know taking off the last five, six years or so.

Tom Leonard 

It's good. One of the things that I think a lot of entrepreneurs are finding, it's probably finding in the VC world, in the startup world, as much as in the sponsorship world, people who are asking for funding, asking for money, there's a better chance they're talking to someone who's a gamer across the table than in the past, which works in their favor. Because even you don't have to be a real huge gamer. But if you understand the ecosystem it makes a difference. I wanna talk a little bit about how you got started. Cause one of the things we talked about, what we've talked about since the beginning on the podcast is one of the most important parts are the beginning stories. It's like, where's that inflection point? It's like, I was doing this and then I realized I could do this and I went out and did it sort of thing. You know, what is curious about your start in the industry that you're in and providing tools, working, creating organizations, investing in organizations, businesses out there. Could you talk a little bit about where you were before and then why you decided this was a good industry to be involved in?

Jason Kraus 

Sure. I guess the main tie, if we're talking about the gaming space, growing up, I'd always, I'd say even with physical games, board games, card games, kind of backyard games too, I'd always try to come up with new rules and create a little spin on the actual games itself to try to create something new. You know, it seems like something a lot of a lot of entrepreneurs now are doing too is like, you know, this is what we've been doing. But what if we did it this way? And would it be more fun and exciting? And so, you know, I always had that entrepreneurial spirit on creating something was, and then, you know, really like the finance aspect, trying to figure out, you know, what would basically the pretty analytical trying to figure out, you know, what would become a good investment in the future and using whatever data and resources were available to figure that out. Um, so that's when, uh, you know, I was going down more of the financial management, um, like stock, stock analysis, uh, pathway, but, um, what really kind of sparked my interest was I was at grad school, Babson kind of right outside of Boston. And there's a big entrepreneurial community there and got involved with one of the local angel investment groups as an intern when I was going through that program called Boston Harbor Angels. And got to get involved with the pitch meetings and screening meetings that they had every month and saw, you know, they were taking a financial analysis approach, but they were coming and reviewing startups that were up and coming like businesses most people hadn't heard of yet, trying to figure out, you know, what would be really successful five to 10 years in the future. And I, yeah, I got really excited about that. And, you know, kind of saw the overlap between the entrepreneurship and the finance interests.

Jason Kraus 

So yeah, I've been involved in a couple venture funds on more of an analyst and into a partner role there. And then what kicked off my venture I have called Prepare for VC was really taking what I was learning on the investment side and the experience analyzing hundreds of different startups and investment opportunities trying to help the founders create better pitches and presentations that would excite investors. So there were a lot of great entrepreneurs that, they knew exactly how to pitch their company to customers, but it's a completely different scenario, taking that pitch and talking about the business overall and getting investors excited about it. So yeah, that's where we started there. It was more one of my partners on the company now describes like the beginning of it as Jason as a service. I was just kind of out there, you know, doing individual consulting and trying to help startup founders based on my personal experience. And then as we grew our team out, it was really leveraging everybody that came in as a mentor, partner, advisor of all the different companies having these shared backgrounds and experiences that can help startup founders so they don't have to go through, make as many mistakes on their own, they can learn from other people in the industry and achieve their goals faster.

Tom Leonard 

One of the things I hear from you is you're curious.

Jason Kraus 

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Tom Leonard 

How does that help you and the people that you're investing with or people looking at founders or things like that, how important is curiosity?

Jason Kraus 

I think, um, I think it's very important. So, you know, the, I think the big differentiator is, um, spotting opportunities or spotting things to change and be curious about where yeah, the big opportunity is spotting opportunities to change and advance what other people might just see as problems, you know, they could that they have to live with entrepreneurs will be thinking about how do we actually solve this and make it better and you know, yeah, being curious about like what the world could look like if, if you did X, Y, or Z and, um, you know, not just, and, uh, yeah, being open to kind of go out testing, testing the market and see what works.

Tom Leonard 

Yes, the whole testing approach to things, it's just unbelievably powerful. It's like when I was working at Netflix, when they were just starting out, we tested everything. And that's one of the reasons they're where they are today is because they just, they knew how to test and what to do with the information. So yeah, and I like the numbers too, and I have a finance background. And so yeah, I know exactly what it is you're talking about there. So, now on, what are your ventures called? EQX, EQX fund, am I saying that right?

Jason Kraus 

Sure. Yeah. EQX fund. It's EQ is the emotional quotient. Basically the entrepreneurs ability to really understand, you know, everything from leadership skills and themselves to recognizing when they need support in certain areas. And the whole purpose of the fund is that it's especially at the early, you know, seed series a level, you're really betting on the founders and, you know, it's the people behind the businesses that are gonna, if you have two founders with similar ideas, and, you know, one of them has more of that EQ and, you know, leadership capability, they can take the venture forward and make it more a more successful company. So yeah, it's been, you know, common, or what we've been looking for, a combination of, you know, some serial entrepreneurs that have built up successful startups in the past. It's industry experts and their sector vertical that, you know, now we're taking something, they're like one of the top people in the world in that category and creating a startup out of it. And it's kind of up and coming or ventures, you know, we really like what they've built and they're leading in their company already, you know, this, this startup as their, uh, kind of proving ground, you know, the people they've surrounded themselves with as advisors, board members, team, uh, team members, and, you know, their ability to listen to feedback from their customers and, you know, everybody around them and apply it to their business and, you know, take it forward and figuring out where to go next.

Tom Leonard 

Yeah, we hear that a lot about people are betting on the founders, not on the product. So it's like, it seems to be a universal story that we fortunately keep hearing. We're looking at the industry in particular as a whole. One of the things that we want to do is for our audience is to give them ideas on what is it that's out there? That what kind of organizations it in, in just reading your book. It's just like, okay, there's, there's all kinds of different types of organizations that you're describing and people, because one of the things that we find also in our conversation is we talk to people who are really at the idea stage. I've got an idea, I wanna go do something with it. And then you have the people that are a little more established and probably works differently for each of those. But in a broad sense, can you maybe just create a list of the kinds of organizations that in your world, entrepreneurs can tap into?

Jason Kraus 

Sure. Yeah, I'd say, you know, there's communities which are founders, you know, entrepreneurs and people working in startups in general, advisors, investors, you know, kind of all coming together and going to like, share shared events or networking with each other and having that place they can turn to meet other people they can learn, interact and partner with. There's more incubators and accelerators which have structured programming that can help. You know, there's kind of a wide range in there too. Some are in person with specific like spaces you go to and you know you're part of that program for a set time period and you know there might be a core curriculum. Some might have more of a course model or some might be investing in the startups for a certain percentage of equity in their company. And incubators tend to be a little bit earlier stage than accelerators, but there's pretty big mix on kind of where they focus on and what stage and sector and yeah, what they're looking forward to. On the investment side, you know, there's angel groups, which are groups of individual investors that all come together to review deals. Typically, the investors are going to be allocating their own capital, whereas a VC fund would be, you know, has a pool of capital, they're investing on behalf of other investors that have put money into their fund. So yeah, an angel has a little bit more flexibility in what they can go into. There's not like a strict fund mandate they're following. So, you know, even if they typically invest in, I don't know, they like to see X, Y, and Z, they could just get really excited about something they're passionate about. And, you know, wanna make an investment in a space that's outside of their normal philosophy where, you know, a venture fund does a little bit more formalized process. They might you know, they'll probably write larger checks, kind of depending on the size of the fund. And, you know, could be anywhere from this, a follow on investor, a lead investor, even take a board seat, you know, take a board seat on the company and really help direct the path forward. So, yeah, I mean, there's other ones, you know, there's, Ed City only or another category that's becoming increasingly popular now too is the crowdfunding market. So that's, you know, the traditional version was the rewards platform, which is, you know, kind of anything from pre-sale to more of a donation based system to help get your early products off the ground. But then the last, I guess it's been, yeah, close to, or about seven years now, there's the equity crowdfunding system. Depends on the area you're located in, each of them have different regulations, but the premise is that the public can invest in your company through a platform and you can get either customers or just people that are really excited about your business to put a small amount of money in build all of that together for, you know, if you could have hundreds of people put in a few hundred dollars or $1,000 each and it adds up to a bigger round and then they get some sort of equity or debt financing for your business.

Tom Leonard 

Where do entrepreneurs find these kinds of opportunities? Is this a Google exercise? Is this a networking exercise? Or someone that's not really familiar with this ecosystem, what's the best way for them to learn about it?

Jason Kraus 

Sure, yeah. One of our, I mean, yeah, one of our goals at Prepare for VC is helping founders find the right opportunities, whether it's through ours or through a network of other accelerators, incubators, and communities that we work with too. You know, I'd say other, there are some good directories and resources online too. Uh, you know, LinkedIn's always a good channel to find like people who work at different, um, accelerators, incubators, angel groups. Um, and then, you know, I'd say the direction we're moving is probably, uh, where, or yeah, we're putting, uh, some work into this right now, but, you know, having, um, more of the AI chat bot, like, uh, tools that you can kind of recommend or you can say, you know, this is where I am, this is what I'm looking for, where should I be going to for advice and what organization should I be applying to or trying to get in front of.

Tom Leonard 

Wow. No, that's perfect. Yeah. That's using the tools that are showing up here. Let's say if you're an entrepreneur and you're interested in joining an official program or an established program out there, what's the best way that you seem to make yourself a more presentable candidate? What's going to increase the chances of you being selected for an opportunity that you'd like to participate in?

Jason Kraus 

Yeah, I think if we're talking about incubators and accelerators, it's acknowledging, basically, what they're looking at is, you know, you have a good understanding of your strengths and weaknesses. You don't have to necessarily know everything upfront. It can be, you know, the reason I want to go into this program is I'm really, I'm a strong technical founder, we have all this developed and you know, have these channels proven out by the areas I want to learn and improve on, or maybe marketing and sales or something else where, you know, you know what you're good at, you know what you want to learn within the program and kind of helping establish that for the people that are reviewing, you know, your application and kind of having something clear you want to learn from them too. You know, other places is just showing that you've won out or did some of the low hanging fruit. Like, you know, you started talking with other people, um, you know, getting feedback and having, uh, some of those recommended, you know, even showing like. Maybe we were going down this path. Uh, we talked to customers and, you know, now this is what we're doing because of that. Um, maybe you're going on the right path and you're kind of helping validate it, but it's just really telling that whole story of where you started, where you are now and where you want to go next and why, uh, you're applying to this particular group to help you get there.

Tom Leonard 

Yeah, what it sounds like is you need to have a foundation in what it is that you're looking to do out there. And it probably also wraps back to your EQ. I mean, you know, being able to, you know, how do you measure people? Is your EQ, going back to that just a second, do you have a quantitative measurement that you use there?

Jason Kraus 

Um, it's something we've been working on. Uh, it's more, I'd say more qualitative at this point, but, um, you know, we, we'd like to have that, I guess, yeah, a lot of it is more, uh, kind of getting to know, getting to know the founders, like seeing their, um, kind of history, the way they run their ventures and it is more qualitative at this point, but I think, uh, you know, it'd be really cool to have that like component similar to an IQ where you can have, uh, you know, that score and know if it's, um, I think the one thing that, or this could be a much longer discussion too, is, uh, whether that EQ is something that can continuously be improved on over time or whether that's like your EQ, I think our philosophy would be something, it's something that you can grow that skillset as you gain more experience.

Tom Leonard 

No, there could be a longer discussion because that would be really interesting to see, to test out if it can be enhanced and if it can be enhanced, what's the result? Is it worth the investment? But yeah, it'll be easy to get in a rabbit hole here for our discussion. Now, let's say we're talking about, okay, let's say if you're the entrepreneur and you become, you've been selected for a program a more established program out there, what are the kinds of things that you should be doing to get the most out of that opportunity? Because I think in a lot of cases, people are like, oh, if I'm accepted, that's all I need to do. Then I'm in the gate. It's like, during that experience, what are the kinds of things that you should do, maybe what you shouldn't do to get the most out of it?

Jason Kraus 

Sure, I think one of the biggest challenges as an entrepreneur is at the beginning, there's a hundred things you need to be doing in your company and you're, you know, maybe you have, maybe you're a solo founder or you have a small like two to 10 person team and you know, you're managing a lot more roles that will eventually as your company grows, you know, be handed off to somebody else. But it's, um, uh, the goal or one of the goals of a program you're going into is building up, you know, continuing to build some of the strengths, but also, uh, helping you figure out the categories you're weakest in now. And, um, I can at least like, I'll give an example here, uh, say you're, you know, you're not a technical founder, you're great at the marketing and sales side. But you know, that's not your strong suit is on the technical side. The thing you'd be learning would be how do you know enough to like work with either as CTO or technical lead in your company and be able to communicate your clear vision to them and it doesn't mean you necessarily have to know how to learn how to code and develop things yourself. It means you need to be able to communicate what you want developed into what the developer is going to create for you. So, yeah, some of these programs, a lot of it can come down to the way you present that vision, the way that you even talk about the business overall and then understanding, um, like what gets other people excited about the company, whether that's a customer, a partner, a team member, an investor, and you know, how you can build up that excitement, uh, by other things you're learning within that program.

Tom Leonard 

All of that makes sense. What about afterwards? Is like, OK, you've been accepted, you've gone through a program, you've been successful in an established program out there, whether it's an incubator, accelerator, or something, or another type of program out there, and now it's over. What are the kinds of things that you should be doing to maximize that investment in time and money that you spent to going through the program?

Jason Kraus 

Yeah, I think one of the things is most of these, especially, you know, cohort based programs, there's other founders, you've gotten to know when kind of building those longer term relationships where you can bounce ideas off of each other, see, you know, what's working, whether that's a strip business strategy or technologies they've been using to enhance reach more customers or enhance their products. And kind of, you know, viewing it as like, now everybody you went through the program with as part of your inner circle and, you know, trusted network, you can both, you know, you can help each other out. And it's a win-win situation where, you know, both companies or ever, you know, people who are talking and working with each other can all be more successful together. It's also kind of leveraging, uh, this as a, another validation point to where, um, wherever you're going next, whether it's, uh, the next step in a program or investors you're pitching and presenting to, or even, uh, customers you're talking with that, you know, want to see what validation points you've had, you know, you can showcase that you've went through, you're a graduate of this particular program and you're using all of that knowledge you've gained to advance and continue the trajectory of your business.

Tom Leonard 

Should an entrepreneur go through multiple programs?

Jason Kraus 

Uh, it depends as long as, um, so I think one of the challenges or opportunities in this space is there's a lot of variance between, you know, there's some programs that are a great fit for like idea stage, some are a great fit for product development stage, some are a good fit once you're already on the market and they can all be considered incubators, accelerators, courses. So it doesn't necessarily make sense to go from a program to a program that's at the same stage that you already went through. But if you're going to something that is for the advanced stage that you are now in your company, it can make sense to go into that as your next step. It doesn't, it's also, there's constraints on any company, whether it's, you know, time, money, resources, uh, that you can dedicate. So it's making sure you plan out effectively. Um, and they all have different, uh, yeah, kind of different structures too. So, you know, is this something that is effective because, you know, you're really going to focus on what this accelerator is doing over the next eight to 12 weeks and you see the progress. Uh, you know, maybe you can achieve your six months goals and 12 weeks if you went through this program, or is this something, you know, that is gonna take too much time away from all the sales and product development tasks you have now and managing, you know, if the timing is right for any of these as well.

Tom Leonard 

What about the difference between online and in-person events? Is it only online program valuable enough to spend your time, or should it really be event-based?

Jason Kraus 

Yeah, I think they can both be really valuable. I'd say with the online, the biggest, you know, the biggest advantages are bringing, bringing people from wherever they are together. You know, you can tap into advisors, investors, even other founders in the program from around the world. And it's, if you're in that scenario where, you know, um, I guess there's more flexibility on the timing where, you know, you can have that dedicated time for the cohort session, but then, you know, right after you're just jumping, you know, you're, uh, you can jump into whatever other meeting cause it's all, or whatever else you need to be doing on your venture right after those specific sessions, the advantage of in-person is you get to build up that more community feel, meet people locally. I've seen a lot more programs approach a hybrid approach recently, even ours too. Most of the sessions are online, but then the last week is in-person and we have a big pitch and demo day event at the end where everybody can come out to the Boston Cambridge area and, you know, get to meet the investors and the community members in person, experience, you know, finally, if they haven't met other members in the program face to face yet, you know, have that experience and get to build a stronger relationship with them. And yeah, we're seeing a lot of other programs either doing that towards the beginning or the end of their programs as well, getting everybody together and, you know, build up some of that relationship building that is a little bit harder to do online.

Tom Leonard 

I think it's really, really good. It would be really good to have the live event at the end, the way you're describing it, because if I was going to design the program, I'd put it at the beginning, but it's really good to have it at the end because then people already know each other and then it's, they're able to use that. One of the things that is true about the e-sports, about the gaming world is that it's sometimes a challenge for female entrepreneurs, for female participants to be included at the same level. And it's something that's a surprisingly difficult challenge in the e-sports world, of women being able to be treated the same as men out there, even on the playing side, but even on the business side, it can be an issue. What about in the startup world? Do you think there, is it easier if you're a man than if you're a woman?

Jason Kraus 

I'd say there's still a long way to go in equality there. Yeah, there's, I mean, there's been progress in terms of the numbers of, you know, funded. There's the success stories of female founded ventures, you know, are like probably pretty similar if not the same or better as male founded companies. It's just getting them, there's less funding that's gone to those ventures. So, you know, there are some like different, I think, you know, one of the case studies I heard on this was female founded companies when they talk about their goals and visions for the business. They're a lot more realistic than male founded companies. And, you know, so, you know, somebody, same company with a male or female founder might have, the male founder might say, you know, we can double our revenue over three months and female founder might say, you know, we'll grow it.

Tom Leonard 

Really?

Jason Kraus 

30% or something, but then actually achieve those goals. So there can be, I guess, the benefit of that on the female founded side is, you know, your team gets really excited when you hit those goals. The challenge then becomes, you know, if investors are used to seeing really high growth rates that, you know, they have to assume are not gonna be hit and in their mind, they cut it down a little bit. Then if they're cutting down the female founded ones, it's how do you compare what's realistic and what's gonna happen and still view both as exciting future opportunities. So I think it's getting investors, getting entrepreneurs all on the same page and creating a more fair environment where anybody can be, can, yeah, you know, create a valuable company and learn from each other on what's working and what's not working in the startup space.

Tom Leonard 

Do you do much work internationally or most of the stuff that most of the people that you work with are based here in the US?

Jason Kraus 

Uh, both I'd say, you know, more are based in the U S but we worked with, um, plenty of international ventures as well. And that's where, uh, yeah, a lot of, you know, a lot of the virtual, virtual program can come in really handy is, you know, as long as the time zones work out, anybody can really jump in and, you know, meet people, interact with programs around the world.

Tom Leonard 

One of the things you hinted at a little bit with AI stuff, one of the things I want to ask you, what do you see in the future of the industry? And what really gets you excited about what's coming down the road, do you think?

Jason Kraus 

Sure, yeah, I think.

Jason Kraus 

I think, yeah, it's definitely, there's a lot of tech advancements that are here to stay, especially because of AI enhancements. And it doesn't necessarily mean every business has to become an AI company. It means they can use certain tools and technologies that are out there to enhance the workflows or the way they build, you know, content, the way they market their company, the way they kind of convert people from leads to customers. So, yeah, I think it's easier, it continually gets easier to start a business. I'm not saying it's easy to create a successful startup, but where if you look 25 years ago, it was really difficult to even, you know, create a website for your company. You know, it could be expensive to create a landing page for your company. If you look 15 years ago, you know, that started being really like, there's all these templated platforms now where you can create something that starts getting those customer leads really effectively and efficiently. If we, you know, if, yeah, if you look at where the businesses or the environment is today, you know, now there's tools that, you know, can create all of your marketing content, still need some personal interaction and make it, make it, you know, feel personal and like it's coming from a human. But you can do a lot of the tasks that you might've needed experts in certain categories where you can at least get started today and then bring people on to make it better. So yeah, I guess where the market's going is it's easier to get started. It's probably still just as difficult to scale it, but that might mean we have a lot more idea stage ventures and you know, they're the validate or where the emphasis would go is taking those from those early landing pages and those early ideas to resources that can help them get off the ground and really scale their companies.

Tom Leonard 

One of the guests we had on maybe season two, I think, of the podcast, Jeremy Utley, Utley from the Stanford D school, the design school there at Stanford. And one of the things that he talks about a lot in his book is and one of the things they do at the school is they do getting people out there to do quick testing. I mean, it's like, you know, you go out there and you think, well, I think I can sell this. They're like, go do it. I mean, you know. You create something, you don't even have to actually sell it. Just you don't have to deliver necessarily an item. You can explain what you're doing, but it's like we get out there and start doing what it is that you that you want to be doing and you are going to learn things that you had no idea going in that we're going to be part of the thing. And that's one of the things that I can see with AI and other technology. I'm saying it can, it can jumpstart that, that whole testing process.

Jason Kraus

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, it's, no, even like there's tools we use and recommend to our startups on like presentation decks that, you know, can generate the templates for you. And, you know, it's still understanding, you know, what you want to put in and what makes it effective. But, you know, those getting off the ground and you know, creating that initial framework, you can go start talking to people a lot. And, you know, it's become a lot easier. And then it's just about the execution at that point as, you know, going out and finding people that are willing to like listen, give feedback and advice and, you know, help you shape the next direction of your company.

Tom Leonard 

Can we I just want to ask you about your book because I keep bringing it up because I think it's a really well thought out Book it's called "Venture Forward: Lessons From Leaders", which really like the title that lessons from leaders. It's not like You're telling the stories of others Letting others to tell their stories about their success and from all different avenues out there What what made you write the book?

Jason Kraus 

Yeah, I think, you know, one of the purposes is exactly what you described. It's there's not always, um, a prescription for, you know, this is exactly how you should build every single venture it's more, um, these are things that have worked for other ventures and they're not even, you know, necessarily all the same pathway that they took, but you know, kind of listening to or reading listening to what's worked for other companies and helping entrepreneurs figure out how they can apply some of those lessons to themselves. So you know, it goes through everything from the ideation phase and how other entrepreneurs learn are, you know, came up with the ideas for their company, all the way through pivoting and, you know, listening to customer feedback and changing directions in their business. Um, yeah, where, you know, other businesses came out of their initial ideas all the way to how they built up, scaled and either, you know, exited or grew to huge, uh, companies that, um, you know, are either still around or really big ventures today.

Tom Leonard 

One of the things that you mentioned a little bit earlier was the role of universities. But you also mentioned at one point hospitals, which I thought was really curious. I've never heard of hospitals as being a driver necessarily for startup activity. But I can see your point. What role do universities play in the startup world?

Jason Kraus 

Yeah, I think the two main benefits are, you know, one side is the research at universities. So whether that's creating like, I've patented systems, there's a lot of university research that then gets licensed out to somebody that wants to take it forward, whether that's, you know, a student that founded it or somebody, you know, an entrepreneur that goes and helps, there's a tech transfer process and, you know, they want to then take this research and spin it out into a startup of its own. Yeah. So one side is like having these research institutions that, you know, we're always thinking about things from the point of view of like, this is a problem theoretically, how could we solve it? And then an entrepreneur will take it and say, you know, can we turn this into an actual startup that's building something and solving this problem? The other piece is basically, the students in the area, and one of the reasons they have such a big impact in Boston is there's a lot of universities and now even more entrepreneurship programs than ever before. And those students are either coming out of college and joining startups in the area based on their new backgrounds in entrepreneurship and business programs or tech programs if they're joining from more of the development side. And then, yeah, they're able to either join established up and coming startups or they're coming up and creating startups of their own and networking, connecting with other people in the area that can join their venture and help them build this up.

Tom Leonard

Yeah, one of the things when I was at Stanford Business School, it's like everyone wanted to be a consultant or an investment banker. Now everyone wants to be an entrepreneur. I mean, a startup, it's like, it's just amazing when half of the class coming out is going down that road. I mean, that's a huge shift in focus. Well, it took a few years to do, but it's still, it's something that's different. So hey, no one take your whole day here. So I just really appreciate your time here. Some of the things that I'm figuring out in talking to you is to be curious and be analytical. It's like, okay, because curiosity is always something that's important. But I also get the feeling that you analyze things a lot. So it's like things don't, it's not just intuition. Oh, you know, my gut says, let's go do this. It's like, oh the numbers tell us to go do this sort of thing, which is a much better approach, unless you have an incredible gut out there that's telling you those things. So where can people find you online and learn more about what you're doing?

Jason Kraus 

Sure, happy to connect with anybody that listened on LinkedIn or have a personal site, jasonkrauss.me. I'll have my contact info to connect over email or any other channel there as well. And yeah, I really appreciate all the great questions from you and our great conversation here and excited to meet a lot of the audience that tuned in here.

Tom Leonard 

No, sounds great. Hey, really appreciate your time here. This is as we get launching our season four. Who knew that we were going to last season four of the Gamers Change Lives podcast. So this is Tom Leonard. I'm the host of the Gamers Change Lives podcast. Remember to subscribe to the podcast. If you're interested in this, one of the things we find here on the podcast, we don't have the largest audience out there. We have a really engaged audience. That's one of the things we're looking for is engagement. So if you're in the audience and you want to connect with Jason, with other people who've been on our podcast, with us, you know, engage with us because that's part of the fun of doing this. So we'll talk to you in the next episode. Thanks, Jason. Thanks again, Jason.

Jason Kraus 

Thank you.

Tom Leonard 

Gamers Change Lives podcast. Play games, create jobs, change lives. Thanks.