What The Funk?

0:00 we are back on what the funk I've got Kirk Coburn checking in from Houston where I'm guessing the weather is substantially different than it is here in Colorado where I'm in my basement today because

0:13 my kids are off of school due to about a foot of snow outside guessing you don't have a foot of snow in Houston today Kirk. It's spring break weather man I mean you can wear bikini and I'm sure you

0:26 wear a thong to the beach but for me board shorts it's board short weather. Although if you recall it was only three short years ago that spring break was a little bit different down in Houston you

0:40 guys did get snow things were crazy down there.

0:45 And it's kind of cool you know I mean I feel sorry for all the spring breakers but yeah it's good it's actually relatively warm as normal you know this year we don't have the February craziness that

0:59 went right into March. at like a few years ago. Yeah, that was something else. People didn't know what to do. Your houses are designed to keep in cold. Our houses are designed to keep in heat.

1:10 So we're ready for snow. You guys aren't. But many of us have natural gas generators so that when the power goes out, we can still survive and heat. I think most of us have agreed in Houston, I

1:24 think in order to live here, you'd rather die in a heat wave than freeze

1:30 to that.

1:33 I think that's fair. I mean, I generally don't think about if I have to make a choice between those two things, but I'll have to get back to you on what my preference would be. I think freezing to

1:42 death though is like you freeze, but then when hypothermia hits, you feel like you wanna go to sleep and then you warm up. So I'm like, maybe it's the better of the two.

1:55 I mean, I'm not gonna try it out firsthand for you to let you know, if I ever talk to anybody who dies with hypothermia, then I'll tell you. You only have. Yeah, so Kirk, really happy to have

2:07 you on. You hit my radar because you started showing up on the Digital Wildcatters BDE podcast and made me laugh a few times, seems like you're tight with Chuck and the gang. So wanted to have you

2:21 on and have you tell your story a little bit to my audience, which even though it's all Digital Wildcatters, we have completely different listeners

2:28 And I think you've got a good story to tell us. The question I ask all my guests and I'll just ask you is, who are you, man? Who's Kurt Coburn? I'm ordinary on many levels, that's me. And I'm

2:41 just gonna own that term. I'm a dude that I have never been motivated, I'm motivated by curiosity, I think, in many ways. And I just follow sort of rabbit trails and the current Robotrail I'm on

2:57 is. I love the outdoors, that's always been a rabbit trail. I just love outside. So I surf, I played golf. Nice. And I don't do run, I used to ultra run. I did 100 mile races. I used to do,

3:12 well, Leadville was my sort of like, any summer, let's go run 100 miles in the mountains. Crazy. I don't do that anymore because it's just crazy and takes a lot of time. And then on the career

3:23 front, I've started multiple companies and I made a really bad decision in 2010 to get into energy and I'm regretting it and I'm 14 years in and I am still kicking myself, but man, it just sort of

3:40 draws me in and I can't get out of it. So I'm an energy focused on a new business but we'll talk about that at some point. But yeah, that's me, man. I'm from Houston. You grew up in H-town?

3:52 Group of Naysh town

3:55 went to the University of Texas.

3:58 And then stayed in Austin until basically stayed in Austin.

4:02 I live in Nashville for a little while, live in Washington, DC for a little while, but definitely Austin was my home base until 2010 and moved back home. And I love, I mean, I just love Houston

4:11 as a, it's a great place to live.

4:16 I'm gonna stop on that one 'cause I have a lot of negatives about Houston. It sucks outside. I'm just gonna say it. I don't care what anyone else says. I'm a seven generation Texan We got land

4:26 grants from General Santa Ana himself. So we were here before anyone else was here, but Houston sucks, man, the buy you snakes, which I love the buy you, I swam in as a kid. I love Galveston,

4:38 it's my beach,

4:40 I grew up there. It's the best beach in the world to grow up on because every beach I go to is insanely awesome. So if you start at the bottom, you can only throw up. But it's my beach, it's my

4:53 armpit So like, I'm a big fan of God, I love it. I love Houston, but it's not like the prettiest place in the world. It's very flat, it's very hot. The food is amazing, I really like the

5:06 people. It's great. I mean, you can't avoid Houston if you're in energy or oil and gas. I never went there until I was in oil and gas. My first trip there was about 16 years ago, and I went in

5:17 February for nape, and the weather was perfect. People were nice, I had amazing meals. I'm like, this place is awesome, like I could move here And then the second time I went down was in July of

5:28 that year, I'm like, how does anybody fucking do this? How do you do it? I mean, I skate in the summer, I get out of Houston the summer. So I'm not here because it's too, just miserable.

5:41 Where do you go?

5:44 The whaling capital of the world called Nantucket. Love it. Oh, nice, all right. Well, I'm a New England guy. I've never been to Nantucket. I've spent a good amount of time on Cape Cod and

5:55 Martha's Vineyard. So Nantucket is on the bucket list. That's, that's fun. And you've got to go, man. It's great, you'll love it. Good serve, rig off, just great people watching. Yeah,

6:07 summer's out there, amazing. Winter's on the other hand, not so much. That's when you want to be where you're at. Brutal, yeah. I mean, that's, you know, the shining type of stuff. Exactly.

6:17 So talk to me a little bit about your career. So you went to UT, horns up, right? I don't want a 15 yard penalty. I don't want to get on your bad side So I'm just going to say, horns up right

6:27 here. But also, like, so what did you do? I was down because that's just everyone admitting, like we have the best hand signal. And everyone's jealous, let's just be honest. I've always liked

6:37 it. I've been to that stadium before I've been to a game. I like Austin personally. It's sort of like, I live here in Colorado and my business trips to Texas are 80 Houston, 18 Dallas and that 2

6:54 that I get to Austin. is Austin. Yeah, I appreciate it. Not bad. Nah, it's not. So you graduated from UT, mentioned Asheville. What did you do right out of school? What was your early career

7:04 like? I worked for Michael Dell. I mean, of course, a lot of us did. I had buddies working there. I moved, I was in Washington, DC. I thought I was going to take a different route. And I

7:17 just didn't want to be in DC. And I went back to Austin and my buddies were working at Dell, they're like, hey man, this is a great place This is right after the laptops cut on fire. And so Dell

7:28 was sort of on this like maybe dying company. And then I joined and all of a sudden there's no, maybe there's no, you know, correlation here, but the company just rocketed up. And I was there

7:43 during that rocket. So I could have been responsible for none of it, but I was there, I didn't get fired. I loved every minute of it.

7:53 And I did a lot of stuff there, but I was a problem solver. I was able to fix problems. And so executives would send me into different roles to fix shit and I was good at it. And the threat was if

8:07 you don't fix it, we're just gonna fire you because we're not sure. You're not that valuable. But if you can fix this problem, we'll keep you. And so that's what I ended up doing for a while.

8:19 That's neat, that's neat So you really saw like the early tech wave, right? We're talking about kind of first tech boom, at least what I would consider first tech boom, probably, well, mid to

8:30 late 90s at that point, and just saw this. Yeah, we'd watch Dellcom, which became like the number one, a commerce site on the internet. The internet launched, and I had a great idea. I had two

8:45 great ideas while at Dell, and neither one really made it but my best idea, and I almost got fired for this one,

8:54 we were making a Palm Pilot competitor. And I was like, no, no, no. And at this point, I was doing notebook strategy or something, I can't remember what role I was in, but I was close to the

9:07 product side. Like, what if we put a Palm Pilot and a cell phone together in the one? And they were like, that is the, who wants, who wants a Palm Pilot and cell phone together? I was like, I

9:22 do I think it's a great idea. They're like, this is the dumbest idea we've ever heard. Do not bring that. We're not going to bring it up to Michael because you'll get fired. I was like, was it

9:34 that cutthroat?

9:37 It was not sure. It was pretty, I mean, it's cutthroat. It's not the right word. It's like, it's all meritocracy only. Like you perform or you're out. And like, for some of us, you know,

9:48 that's what we like. We like that super competitive Yeah.

9:55 and not cutthroat, just super competitive and meritocracy based. I loved it and it was awesome. So you had the idea for sort of what ultimately became something like, like an iPhone. I say I did,

10:07 yeah, yeah. Which, that brings me back to a story too. It's my podcast, it's all about me, everybody knows that, but - Absolutely, it's what they found, dude. You know it, late 2007, I had

10:20 a blackberry, I was super proud of my blackberry A blackberry shit. Dude, it was so ripping, man. So cool, blackberries. I loved it, I spent back then 150 bucks on it. Anyways, the

10:33 blackberry starts to die, and I can hear people, but I can't talk, there's something broken with it, so I went to the ATT store, and my full intention was to get another blackberry. And there

10:46 was a blackberry on sale for, call it, 299 bucks, the most recent version, I'm like, okay, cool, I'll take that. And then I paused for a second, looked to the left, and I saw the first

10:56 iPhone. I go, Hey, what's this? And they're like, Yeah, that's that new Apple iPhone thing. You can play with it if you want. I start messing around with it, and the price for

11:09 that was399. So there's a100 difference. I'm like, So you're telling me that this phoneis only100 more than this piece of crap next to it? And they're like, Yeah, that's right. I'm like, This

11:21 company's in troubleI'm taking the iPhone. So got the iPhone one. I remember being on flights and people would be like, Can I touch it? Like it was a novelty that I can write that first iPhone

11:32 that it was game-changing. And so, I mean, obviously I was hooked from the start, but I was just like, Man, I probably should have boughtsome stuff. I probably should have shorted Blackberryand

11:41 bought some Apple, but I was a 20-something year old kid. I didn't know anything. Dude, I was there at Dell when Michael actually challenged Apple to return. cash to their shareholders because we

11:57 were going to put them out of business

11:60 and then Steve Jobs gets back in and becomes like, you know, one hit after another and who knew that because everyone was back then everyone was trying to figure out what's the future of mobile and

12:13 everyone thought it was audio video. Everyone did. It's like bandwidth is going to go through the roof and Steve Jobs comes in and goes, no, I got it. We're just going to repurpose content that's

12:21 already existing and repackage it and sell it. And no one understood that. The app store. I

12:30 mean, who would have known when it was crazy? It's brilliant. No one knew. No one knew. And like, I feel like, too, great idea. And the early idea, too, was like, that I liked, I'm like,

12:42 oh, I can just listen to music on this, too. So now I don't need to buy an iPod. Like, okay, so I just saved money because of that, I could justify the purchase of the phone because now I don't

12:52 need to buy an iPod. Um, really, you know, just, just really cool stuff. Anyway, so, so you, you go to Dell, you really cut your teeth, right? And, and not like cut through up, but a

13:03 meritocracy based tech company that that was really on the rise of the time may or may not correlate to your, um, spending time with that company, but I'm willing to give you credit. And then what,

13:14 where'd you go from there? Did you stay in tech? Did you do something different? Like what was next? Did I tell you I was ordinary? So I thought I knew everything I was so smart back then. And

13:25 so I went, I left in 99 to, to go make a billion dollars in the internet. You know, this is back to the internet big days. I go to this company in Nashville. I get fired in less than a year.

13:39 And I'm like, man, that didn't work. Well, yeah, I do. And it was a publicly traded company in music industry that basically a bunch of internet guys, including myself, basically destroyed

13:50 this publicly traded company Mmm. That's the Internet. Internet implodes, I get to another startup in Austin, we raise like 60 million to do, this is great. Great idea, 2000, 2008, it was in

14:05 2000, 2001. We did home security systems over broadband cable 'cause this was back when all these cable companies

14:18 installed all this broadband, spent billions of dollars putting all this infrastructure in and people were like, Well, what are you doing with it? And everyone's like, I don't know. But we were

14:26 trying to justify, we were like, What about home security? And I was the product lead, and so we did audio and video in the home.

14:37 And guess what? Like, we had to fight the, like, oh, well, people be creeped out because there's cameras. It was back when they were people like, This is so weird. And we had Comcast as a big

14:49 investor, and we did two markets. And we installed in Austin and installed in Las Vegas of all places, I spent a lot of time in Vegas, which is not great as a kind of a young guy. Yeah. And it

15:05 failed miserably. And then, you know, ring is like, ring comes out years later once Emperor struck. People started getting comfortable with having cameras everywhere. But this is back in the

15:16 days when it's like, so anyway, we failed miserably. But I got fired from that company too.

15:23 And then Dell hired me back, which was a blessing. It was funny and just like, I got fired and I had a job a week later. So it was like, I never really had to suffer and think about my decisions

15:36 'cause I still was holding on to it wasn't my fault. I never looked in the mirror. I was like, it wasn't my fault. They and both companies failed. So I was like, see, I was right.

15:50 But then I, I got my MBA at night at UT while I was at Dell, and I was in another role where I was a fixer. I was actually managing NVIDIA and ATI and graphics memory, which is really interesting

16:05 time in the ecosystem because, well, that's not interesting, but what's interesting is that a really cool role, I loved it, and then I was getting my MBA at night, and I was like, man, I want

16:16 to start a business. And so I wrote a business plan for golf on satellite radio.

16:23 I was like, this is a great idea, I'm a golfer. I was like, you know, and I wanted to listen to the masters while I was driving to work every day. And I had this old FJ 60, it's an old land

16:35 cruiser. That was Chinese red, it kind of looks orangeish, it was really cool, but it was the slowest SUV on the

16:43 planet. And I drove from like far west Austin to

16:48 Round Rock every day, and it was like during the Masters, There's no one on salad radio, it's cable for radio, and there's no golf, I'm like, come on. So I wrote a business plan for it, and it

17:01 took off, and

17:04 it's still on XM, serious XM, it's called the PJ2 Radio, or - Nice. During major golf events, it'll be called Master's Radio, or US Open Radio, but I started that, and a few other channels on

17:17 XM Ran the company, loved it, we sold it about four years later to XM, and they fired one guy. Me, of course. Of course, the guy who gets fired.

17:35 And they fired me because they didn't need me, but I also was, you know, from it, as an investor, it was great as a guy that was

17:46 my job, I was sad And so anyway, it worked.

17:53 I realized then, not when I got fired, but I hired a couple of people like me that were no dolls. And I wanted to fire one of them because he bothered the crap out of me. But I kept them on

18:06 because it reminded me of myself and how far again and foolish I was. Back in my previous startups where I got fired. So I held onto them for just to remind me. So that's where my entrepreneurial

18:22 career took off And it was the best job I probably ever had. It was super fun, but learning how to broadcast golf. For those of you that don't care for golf, yeah, you'd probably rather go to an

18:34 insurance seminar. But for golf fans, they love it on the radio. It actually is the medium of the mind. And it actually works live coverage is crazy, but it does. I buy that a little bit. I

18:47 mean, for me, I like listening to baseball on the radio. bit of a rite of passage in New England, right? You listen to when I was growing up, Joe Castiglione and Jerry Trippiano and WEI. And I

18:60 probably listened to more Red Sox games on the radio in the summer than I actually watched on TV. And there's something just relaxing about it. Baseball is like a similar pace to golf. Not as big

19:11 into golf as baseball, but I could see where people like that. It kind of like brings down your blood pressure a little bit. You can put yourself there. You can do other things. You can do other

19:21 things while you're listening, especially those in the car. And people commute, like commute times were going up and blah blah blah. So you have an audience that's, that's sort of, you know,

19:33 perfect for that media.

19:36 So I like this. So now we're talking like, what, mid, mid 2000s? Yeah, mid 2000s. That's right. You had a successful exit. You came up with the business plan, you executed on it, you found

19:50 your passion, you love golf, you incorporated sports. And we started another company at the same time, XM was like, how do we promote XM and get more subscribers? Sure. And I was like, well,

20:03 I have a great idea. Why don't we go to PJ tour events and promote XM and we'll hand out these radios. They can listen to what's happening while they're falling 'Cause when you're at a big golf

20:15 tournament, you can only follow like one group, but you wanna know what's happening. You hear wars, you don't know what's happening. So we started a company that was a, basically we called it

20:27 fan enhancement program, but we were a marketing agency that would go to major sporting events. We went to, we ended up landing NBA, NFL, major league baseball We did all these different events

20:41 for XF and XM was like, There was like, well, why are you, like how, what do you guys know about marketing agency? I was like, nothing, but what do we know about broadcasting golf on the radio?

20:55 Nothing. So they gave us the business and me and two other partners, they were younger

21:04 and they flew around all to all these places. And then we started landing clients like we landed,

21:12 man, who's, I'm not blanking on his name. I love him as an artist Who's the New Orleans rapper that's like, I almost said a little Twinkie, that's a Houston guy, but Lil Wayne, we did stuff for

21:23 Lil Wayne and stuff. I don't know, but none of us were real marketing agency people and there's professional agencies that do this type of stuff. And we would beat them and these, we'd win these

21:35 accounts and we're like, but we had this business where like, we don't really care for this business. It's hard because we're flying people all over the country for events and man. Young girls in

21:48 college that fly and do these types of events, glorified booth babes, they are some subscriptions, but like, that's the worst business in the world because

21:58 they're never on time. They miss their flights and professional athletes always wanna go out with these types of people for one night only. And they're thinking, I'm gonna land one of these people

22:10 as a husband and they never did So from a business perspective, it was a terrible business model, but we did that for a while and that was kind of fun. And then we sort of just lost interest

22:22 because we'd have to go pitch new accounts. Like, and I'm like, we don't know what we're doing. It was hilarious. We're like, we're, the successful agency had no business being in it, but it

22:33 was fun, it's fun. So I did that. Okay, all right. So you had two businesses at once, which is crazy enough as it is. Yeah, it's terrible.

22:44 I'm not even on Musk either, ordinary, but there's extraordinary and then you've got ordinary and I'm on that scale and I'm like, dude, it's too much. And then I started a company, I got real

22:55 into the entrepreneur organization and all these different groups. I was like, man, there's something missing. I got real fascinated around marketing strategy and I started researching and just

23:07 studying it I started a company called Chief Outsiders and it is basically outsourcing chief marketing officers for mid-market on a fractional basis.

23:20 So companies that are trying, basically companies between 10 to 100 million are struggling because they hit this innovator's dilemma, but the reality is they need to scale, but they don't know how

23:33 because what they did to prove that there's a business doesn't work when you're scaling it just doesn't so they hire us to go and as their sort of interim or fractional CMO. And Chief Outsiders is

23:48 all over the United States today. It's doing really well. But

23:52 yeah, we, I launched that business with a partner and

23:57 I landed a few critical customers in the early beginning and it worked. And I realized like, I'm just a terrible CMO. Like I'm a terrible number two. The idea is awesome. And I was like, I just,

24:12 I'm terrible at actually doing the work. I created all the content. And here's how you do an engagement. Here's the model. Here are the first clients. But when I actually went into a client, I

24:24 was like, this is what you find out when you go into these companies. Almost 99 of the problem is the CEO or the founders that are not willing to hire people better than themselves in the roles. So

24:39 they have usually sub talent that they don't have process.

24:44 knocking up against the wall. And so you walk in, you have a CEO that's like wanting you to fix stuff and you have a team of people that hate you because they're really the issue. And I was like,

24:56 man, I don't know what to tell you. So I was probably too immature at the time to really appreciate like good consultants are good at getting paid and it doesn't matter if the company's successful

25:11 But for me as a founder, I'm like, if they're not listening, like that's frustrating. But good consultants are really good at being like, hey, man, yeah, hey, you pay me, grade engagement.

25:23 Maybe you'll hire me again in the future and give me leads. You know, we're out. But for me, I took it personally when the company's like, hey, great advice, but no, we're gonna continue to do

25:33 what we've always done. There's crazy. Yeah, I was the point. Yeah, I would probably do. I did feel that way Yeah, I would I would lean toward probably being a kindred spirit with you in that

25:45 regard. Like, if you're going to work with us, I actually want to make an impact. It's not just about making money, it has to be meaningful and it has to have lasting impact. So your idea was

25:59 really good. I would say, chief outsiders, you may have just been early. Like this is a huge thing now. I run fractional sales company. There's all kinds of fractions. No, chief outsiders is

26:10 all over the country They're, my partner is still like, blowing and going. It's great. Yeah, now's the time for that. It works, it's great idea. And now I'd be like, man, it'd be perfect now.

26:23 But back then I was not in a set where that's what I wanted to do. I was like, oh, this is great, it works. You know, y'all keep going. Then I moved to Houston to be like, I'm gonna start an

26:38 accelerator. That's what I'm good at like I love early stage. And so I started Surge, which was me and a community of great people like Blair and Mercury Fund and Houston Angel Network guys. And

26:54 it was

26:58 a great idea. And Y Cometer tech stars, tech stars just started to consult, I don't know what the balloons are for, but they're consulted to help

27:10 other accelerators get off the ground. So we became a tech stars partner and we launched in 2011. And we did four classes, 45 invested in

27:20 companies all over the world and mainly energy software. And so

27:27 we're just tour, I mean, energy just didn't perform as an investor. Like you're, and it's funny, my current company, Mo of Partners, Chip Davis is like the guy when it comes to investing in

27:40 energy software. got the best track record. I met Chip during this time, and he was brilliant. But our companies, and it's something I learned, it's taken me years to learn, but something I

27:54 talk about and we talk about at MOAC is your process is your product. When you think about products, and I'm a product guy because that's, I started, you know, even working for Michael back in

28:08 the early days is I was a brand manager for one of our product lines and I became product-minded. Like, it's all about the product, but when I think about products and especially energy buyers,

28:22 when they're buying software, is the software ever the greatest things in size bread, the answer is almost never. Why does one company outperform another? It has almost nothing to do with the

28:35 product and what I mean is, on a baseline level, You need a product that has a value proposition, and I have a definition that's probably unique to others, but let's say that you have a product

28:48 that works. But what separates you, let's talk about field ticketing, 'cause it's been on my mind and we've talked about, there's 30 companies that do field ticketing. And I've invested in two of

28:60 them, and Chip Davis and Dave Levitt, my partner's a MOIC, worked for Liquid Frameworks, one of the other field ticketing companies Well, Liquid Frameworks killed every mile. They did. And I'm

29:12 like, their product wasn't as good as, I know at least one of my companies, but they had a process to sell complexity into these big companies. Totally. And so their process was why they had

29:28 great exits and they made a lot of money. And I'm like, that's something that's super interesting. And so, Serge didn't, we didn't work to the level we wanted, 'cause we didn't have exits big

29:40 enough to justify continuing to raise a fund every year. And it was almost every accelerator, there's only a few accelerators that actually make it. Techstars went sort of the corporate route and

29:52 they raised some big funds. And Y Cometer is sitting in Silicon Valley in get they and on all the best deals that do exit. But other than those two, very few other accelerators model really can

30:05 work But anyway, I realized that in 2015, I decided not to raise another fund. I sort of shut it down. Surge is still around in terms of our four funds are still in existence, but we're not doing

30:20 anything anymore. And at that point, I joined Shell Ventures as one of their managing directors. And that was super fun. So I got to travel the world and

30:30 that's great. Someone paid me to travel the world and invest into a cool company So, I mean, what's. What's more fun than that? It's the dream, man, it's the dream. It was the dream.

30:41 Going back to Surge, right? So this is fascinating to me. I do remember hearing about Surge at that point in time. I've been an oil and gas tech for 16 years. So you probably even took a look at

30:53 some of the companies that I was at at the time, whether it was energy navigator or seven lakes or various others. But

31:01 how big was your investment into these companies? And was the ethos like, we're going to invest in 45 companies and like two or three are going to hit it huge? Or like, we really think every one

31:10 of these companies can give some level of return? No, we did 10 to 12 companies per class. We invested30, 000 for 6 equity. That was the model. That was sort of the Techstars model. We

31:24 derivated on the fourth class a little bit. We tried to go a little bit later stage companies, less equity, et cetera. But the reality, that was the model and the idea is we had the network Yeah.

31:36 We had everybody involved.

31:40 The challenge is, you know, why is Exxon gonna hire a startup? Like, you can't even, it doesn't even make sense. It's like, we're too big, you can't handle us. And

31:52 founders, there's been this big myth that I frustrated. Silicon Valley has done a huge disservice. And I think part of it is founders read too much why combinator shit or they just think, like

32:09 they have all these flawed ideas. And one of them is just because you're a SaaS company B2B

32:17 means you're in the cloud, your product is in the cloud. What ab turn? You're not on-prem anymore. Your sales model is still enterprise sales. You're still selling a very complex product. And

32:32 you're not really selling a product you're selling change management.

32:37 Silicon Valley taught a lot of these guys like, Hey, you just build it and they'll come. It's like, No, they're not going to come. Right, that's right. Especially in oil and gas. They're not

32:47 coming. They're not going to buy you. And then second, you need a sophisticated process to sell to them. And what's interesting is, you know, a lot of our companies would be like, Oh, we'll

32:57 have prime buys. We'll do no monthly contracts. Like nothing. I'm like, No, no, no If you close a client, they want long-term contracts. Not you, the client wants long-term contracts 'cause

33:14 they want you to be in business to support them and make sure 'cause they're changing how they do business for you. That's right. 'Cause you've taught, you've convinced them that there's a better

33:25 way of doing things and they need you to commit to long-term. So it's almost like startups can't work with these big companies because they don't have the process to be successful. yet killing that

33:39 whale, right? Reeling in that big fish is the dream of everywhere. Go with the company. Tech companies, like that's what they live for, right? And the salesperson's thinking, man, I'm gonna

33:50 get a huge commission on this. They don't think about what this could do for future business. They think it's only gonna be a boon. What if it fails? I could wreck your company and oftentimes

33:59 though.

34:01 Absolutely. So you dig deep into oil and gas tech and I took a look at your site, even some names I recognize there. I remember Greece book. Maybe they're still around it. There's

34:13 mobile tech for lease operators, makes a lot of sense. Like I was kind of early in that game too. It just made so much sense. But the hard part that you mentioned is you're selling change

34:25 management, right? You're getting people away from a solution that they tie their value to the company their job security too, even if it's archaic technology. And that's the hardest thing to sell

34:38 to me.

34:40 It's complex, and it's a complex sale, and it's most people, that's why there's very few great salespeople and energy per se, and that's another flawed thing. Here's what's interesting, you're a

34:57 sales guy. So let me ask, you know this, but it's so interesting. I was an investor for Shell, but I'm also the founder, so I've been, and I've spent a lot at Chief Outsiders, I learned a lot

35:10 about marketing, the funnel, the entire funnel, I became an expert at it.

35:16 But here's what's interesting, most investors or finance people have zero sales background.

35:24 Most founders, CEOs that I talk to, are usually their engineers or their products people. They have zero enterprise sales background. 100. So what happens when I talk to both of them about, well,

35:37 we're not selling. I'm we're talking this one potential company, well known in the space. A lot of, they're generating revenue that they've raised a lot of money. Their sales are just not,

35:51 they're not performing. Sure. Because they haven't been able to convert into a complex sale. They don't have a process as complex. And both board and CEO is like, it's just a people problem. I'm

36:08 like,

36:10 it's not a people problem. It's a, you don't have a process. People don't know how to buy from you. And when you're ordered, like when your order taking stops, because the early adopters are

36:19 like, Oh, that's cool. Now you need to sell these long term deals. And it's complex, you don't know how to do it. But founders and a lot of investors have, they just think sales is this higher

36:31 salesperson. I don't, it's, it's as, engineering and process intensive as writing code. And these people don't, they don't know it. So what they don't know, they don't understand. And so they

36:43 just think it's just hire somebody, but it never works. You tell me, you're preaching the choir, I know this. You're precious. I do this and I'm like, I'd go right to the belly of the beast

36:58 because a lot of my clients are earlier stage and their founder led and a lot of those founders, most of them are technical, they're engineers. Yeah. Somebody told them what they have is a good

37:11 idea and they sold it a couple times and now the challenge is, well, how do I sell this to the masses, right? And I always have to try to explain to these clients or potential clients and they

37:22 don't like to hear this that you don't have a process. This is part of your problem And the harshest reality for them is, listen man, like. you feel like whatever you created is the greatest bread

37:36 slicer of all time, nobody cares about them, right? They wanna know the value that this is gonna create for them and that you're gonna be there to support them and the massive amount of change

37:46 management that will take place for them to adopt your solution. And they hate hearing that and sometimes it even keeps me from getting deals. But it's just simply the reality of it. I don't think

37:57 people care, at least in oil and gas, how great the product is They'll buy it from people, they'll buy it from security, and they'll buy it from value. Can you bring me value great? What does

38:08 the product do? I don't really care. Yes, you know, it reminds me, I was thinking back to the PGA tour radio days. And we had the best content. So we, I had to, in order to get this deal with

38:21 XM, we had to convince them that we had the great content. They could market professional golf, which those things were home runs. but that's not why they wanted to do the deal. The most

38:36 important thing to accent at the time and still is is selling advertising. Yeah. Because they were the fastest at the time, they were the fastest technology to go from zero to a million subscribers

38:47 at the time. So it was like, they set the record, super fast adoption. But what set their valuation was going from, which cable had to learn, was going from subscriptions to also making money on

39:02 advertising. I brought in advertisers and almost doubled their revenue by the anchors I brought on, but it was the advertisers on why they pulled the trigger. It was sales. It was the most

39:17 valuable part of the business. It was like, yeah, the content's really cool, y'all proving you can do it. So product check, like anything else. Marketing check, yeah, okay, we can get

39:28 eyeballs, but it's the, oh, y'all bring revenue? Like boom, we'll take that. Yeah, yeah. Revenue, man. It's like, that's what matters to these companies. They start up seeing revenue and

39:40 they don't know it. They get easy wins and no one sells like a founder. But the founders, the founders are selling the dream and they don't understand why they can't hire people to just do what

39:53 they do, but they're not successful 'cause they don't have a processor like, well, sell like I do, well, no acquireor or investor wants to hear that your selling method is going in the back door,

40:05 because that runs out, you run out, like that runway is too short.

40:11 There's so much here that's reminding me of why I started my business and even some of the early pitches, which I'm guessing is some of what Moak pitches as well. You and I talked about this when

40:21 you were sitting next to Fred Funk, unrelated, but at your golf club there in Houston, we talked about, so what happens, right? A founder-led technology company goes out and raises money. And

40:34 the investors tell them all you need to do is hire sales guys, and then you're going to go sell the shit out of this product. So what do they do? They hire CRO, VP of sales, account executives,

40:44 customer success, and lead gen people. And now your cost of sale, right, cost of goods sold is extremely high. You're burning a hundred K a month on a sales team, and then you end up firing

40:56 everybody. And you say, yes. Earlier, it's a people problem. So let's turn this over So I go into these companies, and it's the best for me when they've hired a sales person or team, and it's

41:06 failed. But I'll generally come in and say, so this is what's going to happen, right? Your investors are going to say, you've got the best product ever, like, now you need to hit these revenue

41:15 milestones, go hire people. And I'm going to tell you what you need is revenue. And what you need is to get in the room with decision makers, and that's what I'm going to do for you. Guess what?

41:25 I'm going to charge you like a fraction of what you're going to pay. If it doesn't work with us, then just do the traditional route. Your investors are going to want you to do that anyway. But I

41:34 promise you, for these next six months, it's not going to work if you do it the traditional way. And I've seen it a million times. And you sort of want to be like, dude, you know, this doesn't

41:44 work. It's like, yeah, but the investors want me to do it. And this is the only way. I just put a number to each salesperson and they're going to hit their number and we're going to go to the

41:51 moon. It never happens. It never happens. Ever

41:56 Tell me more about Moic.

41:60 Moic is a consulting firm. There's myself. There's Chip Davis who is with Houston Ventures. He's the guru and investing. And then Dave Levitt. Dave Levitt is a guy a lot of people know. He

42:14 started his career at Seabull and then he went to SAP and he's part of the SAP mafia selling. The reason Will and gas companies, the big ones that are using SAP is I think Dave Levitt He's the guy

42:26 who said he went to Salesforce and built. Salesforce energy practice from zero to a hundred million, and then Pip

42:35 got Dave to finally listen, take one of his calls and took him into liquid frameworks. When liquid frameworks was at a point where they had to fire all their customers and really kind of start over.

42:48 And Dave, as

42:51 the head of sales, they built that company and had a great exit, and then they had a second exit, and then they had a third exit. So the three of us really are

43:00 focused on energy, B2B SaaS companies, on building a sales engine. So what is your process that can predict revenue and be transparent, so that everyone in the company can know exactly where we

43:16 are anytime. And so we really helped them on the sales engine. And we have a process that's been proven that Dave has used throughout his career and other people that he has trained are using at

43:28 their companies.

43:30 that is really behavior based, not on the salesperson, but on the prospect. Because you can't move to the next stage in the process until there's a behavior that's been shown by the prospect. And

43:44 then the second service we offer is valuations looking is choir a to when is, buy

43:52 you, how are you gonna sell for the maximum price? And there's, we have both sort of key lever, we have five really important levers on the sales side, that also apply to the valuation.

44:09 And a lot of valuations based on your quality of earnings. So when an acquire is looking at you, they go into your sales. And the most important person usually in an audit is the cheap revenue

44:22 officer. 'Cause they're looking for, are these contracts long? Are they with the right customers? Are they showing the right trend? Otherwise, I'm gonna keep discounting what I'm gonna pay for

44:34 you. Sure. We also teach our clients how to take control over your exit process by managing your exit, managing the potential strategic you wanna sell to and moving it from a short-term auction

44:48 model to a long-term auction model. So that's what we do and it's been awesome. We started in really this year and we're having a blast I love the model and I think it makes a ton of sense and

45:01 obviously you guys have the right experience to execute on it and I know you're talking to me but I actually feel like you're talking to me 'cause I'm just thinking about my own business as I go

45:10 through this process of what is my business worth? 'Cause like a lot of founders, I started a company because I had an idea and I didn't wanna have a job. And then all of a sudden it turns into

45:21 like hey, this thing actually produces revenue and now I have employees and this is sort of a real thing Is this business worth anything? right? And then you're like, well, maybe I could sell it

45:29 tomorrow, make a billion dollars. Pat's not going to happen. Right? So

45:35 I love it. You know, a question that I like to ask a lot of people, and I think that you're self-reflective enough is like, what advice would you have one to your younger self, right? You in the

45:48 90s, hot shot coming out of school, getting fired right and left. That's one. And then two, what advice would you have for entrepreneurs that are trying to either build a company or exit a

46:00 company?

46:03 I think if I had to talk to myself is be patient. I think patience is worth the law. I'm not patient and that's there are times when I exit, like when I left cheap outsiders, I knew it was the

46:18 right decision. But

46:21 I didn't feel good at what I was doing. Maybe that's It's a confidence thing, I don't know Um, and it. it actually thrived after I left. So that's a good sign. When I start companies, if it's

46:32 still in existence, you know, the PGA tour radio network is in existence, chief outsiders, I wanna make sure like, is it still in existence after I'm gone? That's a good thing, I think. Yeah,

46:43 yeah. So to me as patients,

46:47 the second thing I think is, and this is hard, it's like, how do you learn, you know, I'm unconsciously incompetent on a lot of things. And the big danger of being that is, I don't know what I

47:04 don't know. And when someone's telling me something, I don't know and I don't know. It's hard for me to hear. Like, how do I open my mind? One of the things, reason why I like Chip Davis and

47:18 we're working together, finally, is he met with one of our startups at Surge, And he literally went like. 10 steps down this process hole with the entrepreneur saying like this, if you can solve

47:33 this 10 steps later, that is amazing. And the entrepreneur was like, I don't know, whatever. I'm going to keep doing my little like mobile app that allows people to quickly build a form. And

47:47 that's all I care about. And of course, that company didn't make it is being aware that I know that I don't know. I at least want to be consciously incompetent. But moving from unconsciously

48:03 incompetent to constantly incompetent, like that's, I don't know how to do it. But it's like being aware that I don't know. And that's important because I talked a lot of CEOs and founders now.

48:15 And they're so confident. Yeah, they're confident in areas that I'm like, wow, that's a big red flag. And they don't even And they're not aware to know when we ask questions that we sort of

48:29 walked them through into a trap, not to be mean, but just to ask, we're just playing Delves advocate and they walk right into the trap. It's like, man, how do I convince them that we're making a

48:40 big mistake? And that's really hard.

48:44 I love that. And I think to go back to the first one, patience is, is extremely hard when you're young, especially when, and I did this, I don't anymore, because comparison is the thief of joy,

48:55 I would compare myself to my friends who were crushing it, right? Well, this guy's making all this money, or this guy just made partner at this big firm and the Yorker, this guy's going to, you

49:05 know, University of Chicago to get his MBA. Look, what the fuck am I doing, right? Just pussing around out here, making35, 000. You start comparing yourself and nothing can happen fast enough,

49:15 right? Like, I want to get there and your path is going to be your path, right? And just accepting that there are things that you don't know And that's okay. Right, ignorance is bliss, I love

49:26 that. I think you guys are well positioned. I think this industry needs a Moic partners. Where can people like find you, find your company? What's the best way to get ahold of you if they want to

49:37 learn some more?

49:39 I mean, we have a shitty website and I'm trying to fix that, but we've made this decision to, we're not gonna invest a lot in

49:49 our image, top of funnel marketing presence until we land some more clients. But Moak, you can find me on LinkedIn, Kurt Coburn, reach out. MoakPartnerscom is not necessarily working to the

50:06 degree I want, but find me on LinkedIn because you can find everything there. And I'll definitely reach out to you if you're interested. Well, Kurt Coburn, ladies and gentlemen, Makes me want to

50:17 say Kurt Cobain. Rest in peace.

50:24 Rhett, man, Rhett. Yeah, I'd never forget where I was, where it was Kurt Loder on MTV News. He broke the news for you. He broke the news for me as my basement, maybe like midnight on a Friday

50:38 night watching TV and just being devastated. And I was trying to actually go down a different route. And I'll explain to my oldest daughter who's 13 and she likes rap music. So she's into like

50:50 boogie with the hoodie and Drake and some of these other guys who are hot. And I tried to explain to her how devastating it was my junior year of high school when Tupac was killed and then nine, six

51:01 months later, Biggie was killed. It's like what that did to rap music, which I love for the next six, seven, 10 years, maybe permanently, it changed it, right? 'Cause you just lost like some

51:15 of the greatest ever. It'd be like Michael Jordan dying when he was like 25. right? Like, then you don't know. I watch the documentary on both two, pop and big E and I've seen multiple documents.

51:27 It didn't change. It's

51:30 we could talk for hours about that. But same thing with Nirvana, right? Like they were just like heading to the, they were so popular back then, right? And that whole grunge scene in Seattle.

51:40 Yeah, Soundgarden, right? Now, you know, Cornell passed away. I mean, there's, there's a lot, you know, from that era where there was pain and I think it's setback music substantially. I

51:53 don't know how we got on that rathole, but I feel like it was. That's a great rathole for another block, another podcast we have to go down that. Next time I come and choose to do that. Yeah, I

52:04 mean, I'm sure Chuck would love it. But he's buddies with Dave Grohl, right? Yeah, he knows everybody. He does everyone, he's the man. Well, Kirk, really appreciate you coming on. I learned

52:15 a lot from this session. I hope that founders and entrepreneurs, especially younger ones took something from this. A lot of times you just have to see it yourself a few times. You have to fail,

52:26 you failed, I failed, you've succeeded. I'm still trying to succeed. Let's make the best of work again. Let's not do that. No more of that. I appreciate you very much Kirk.