July 22, 2015.
On July 10, 2015, startup strategy guru Sean Murphy (@skmurphy) was kind enough to do a podcast interview of Ramesh Sambasivan, designer and founder of the program AlligatorZone, where kids meet cool startups. Here’s the transcript.
Sean: The thing … I guess the thing when you first told me you were doing the AlligatorZone, it seemed interesting but I didn’t get it. It wasn’t until I attended one that things came together for me. The idea that entrepreneurs come to a library and they talk about their product to an audience primarily of children, maybe 10 to 15, or 8 to 17, that the introduction was read by a child and that there were questions from the audience. It’s maybe a 5-minute presentation and then 5 or 10 minutes of questions. It seemed kind of different. You had a lot of very specific ideas for the format that seemed to just come to you as a package, right? How was it that the package idea came together for you? That the whole cluster of features came together?
Ramesh: The various elements evolved and I was literally improvising, tweaking things on the fly in the middle of various sessions where each of these ideas came to me. The primary idea was just to get my own kids to meet with startup founders and get them to share their opinions. In the process they would be learning a lot. It would also help the startup founders simplify their message. Their conversations would include rephrasing sentences so that it conveyed their messaging with greater clarity. You’d hear them say things like “that’s not what I meant, this is what I meant”. Or, “that’s a good idea but, what do you think of this possibility based on your suggestion?” It made for a very interesting conversation between 7 year-old, 7 to 9. The age-group that I aimed this program for is 7 to 17 and above, and then of course parents, grandparents, everyone shows up and joins in the conversation. They’re all welcome to be a part of the conversation. What I realized was, putting very complex products in front of children who have very different view of the world, a world that they’re trying to figure it out, required a lot of improvising and adaptation even as it was going on. I did not have children introduce startup founders in the first session. That came about later on because one of the founders brought his child along, which is also something we encourage, and I wanted to keep that child engaged … feel like he was also a part of the program, and not be left out. That’s when I said “why don’t you introduce your dad” and I think that’s how it came about. A lot of these things were almost solving some problems at each point in time.
Sean: To me, lucky or smart, the genius of that is that it forces the entrepreneur right in the beginning to think about how to put together an introduction that a child can read and understand.
Ramesh: Very true. When inviting the entrepreneurs and startup founders I tell them to send me a bio, and I say “strip it off all jargon, so that even a 3rd grader can understand it”. But they struggle with that. We go back and forth with trying to find a happy compromise because entrepreneurs really want to include some of their favorite jargon in their bio and in how they describe their business. The perfect example was Grabit, Inc., he has an electro-adhesion technology. We went back and forth until he finally he came up with this really simple explanation of how a balloon sticks to things when you rub it, and how clothes coming out of a dryer grab each other when you pull them out or, how they make your hair stand when you pull them out of the dryer. It did force him to think differently. There is a little bit of coaching, if you will, that’s involved in trying to get them to that point. I think seeing the world through the eyes of my own children helped a lot. It helps a lot.
Sean: The other thing is, I was at a Alligator Zone out here, I think in Sunnyvale, and there was a company that had a social media product where we were going to have to give them permission to inject Tweets into our timelines and, what impressed me was that the children in the audience were very sophisticated about social media and had a number of suggestions for how to improve that product. What was also interesting of course was that as the children suggested potential problems of the product and ways to address it, the entrepreneur kept saying, “No, no you don’t understand, it works this way.” Which I thought was …
Ramesh: He seemed to go on the defensive often.
Sean: Yeah, as opposed to … So some of the concerns were – I don’t want to let you have an unlimited number of Tweets. I want to know what the contract is in terms of how many Tweets you’re going to make on my behalf. Can this look like a donation, where I say I’m going to give you 10 Tweets in July? It was a very insightful conversation back and forth, where the entrepreneur didn’t really benefit from it because he was so committed to explaining his vision for the product as it stood.
Ramesh: Later on he told me that he got a golden nugget from one of the teenagers in the audience. I think that session also made him re-think some of his strategies. It happens a few times. I’ve seen that happen in some of these sessions where they really had to go back and re-think some of their messaging of course, but strategies as well, because these kids seem very savvy with how the internet works. I think you were the one who mentioned the phrase digital natives.
Sean: Yeah. It’s not phrase. It’s a buzz word or whatever, but it’s definitely the case. I forget who the quote is by. It’s by Douglas Adams that, the technologies that you grew up with are natural, and then the technologies that get invented between the time, I think, you’re like 8 and 15 are new and revolutionary and you can probably get a career out if it, and everything else is a bad idea. For these, for the 7 to 17, a lot of these technologies, I mean Twitter is not new. Twitter is part of the landscape, right?
Ramesh: Right.
Sean: I guess I’m being too hard on the entrepreneur. I guess what you are saying is that in the moment … What you’re hearing is you follow up with these people, that they sleep on it and they tell you a day or two later – “you know I actually did get a fair amount out of that session. I got more out of it than I realized.”
Ramesh: It’s not after they go and sleep on it. You know I record a video immediately after the session asking the startup founders what their impressions are. That’s when they tell me.
There’s one thing that I struggle with all the time. Should I record the session or should I do it after the session. I had very interesting results. When you have a camera running during the session, the startup founders have their guards up. They are more measured in their responses to the kids. They’re not always themselves. I have consciously tried to stay away from recording the session while a session is going on, even though it means that very valuable content is lost for posterity in the process.
What I think that preserves, though, is the quality of the actual session. It is unparalleled. Almost like a confession box sometimes. The kids ask all kind of questions. I have a list of 31 tips on how to present your startup to children and families. For example, I would remind the startup founders never to put a child on the spot. We had a session recently where one of the kids asked a question and the startup founder said “unless you are investor I am not going to answer that.” “Ask your mom or dad to keep their checkbook handy and then I can answer that”, he added, amid laughter from the grown-ups in the audience. You don’t expect those kind of responses, because it leaves a bad taste in the mouth of, not just the kids, but the parents too. That’s is what makes AlligatorZone a very tough environment to present a startup. It is tougher to present to this audience than any other.
One of these startup founders in Palo Alto blogged about his experience at Alligator Zone. I think I sent you the link. It was titled, The Toughest Audience to Pitch? It’s Not VC’s’. Fortunately for him he was the second presenter of the evening, and this is another thing that I see – we have 2 startup founders every time typically – those who go in 2nd do better. Those who are not the 1st one to present they do a little better, because they … the startup founders by nature are a quick study and know how to improvise. They learn from the first presenter’s stumbles.
This happened a few times. This happened with Grabit Inc. He had come with his powerpoint presentation. As soon as he saw the first founder presenting and the intensity of the questions that she was getting he asked me, “are you okay if I switch around the presentation a little bit?”. I said, “Go for it”. He changed it around completely. He did not even go near his computer except to show them some pictures and a video.
Sean: I think that … A couple of things, you hit a bunch of stuff in that. I think there’s this Heisenburg effect, where observing something changes it. Or observer effect and maybe it’s a Hawthorne effect, I don’t know, but we don’t record the Bootstrappers Breakfast. If a speaker comes we record the speaker, but I think that the activities of recording the interactions somehow makes people much more self-conscious.
Ramesh: Right. It might not be an issue for the new generation.
Sean: Yeah. Possibly. The two guys that I saw that I think did the best job were … there was a legal start up that was like Lexmark or that was doing …
Ramesh: Yeah. Casetext.
Sean: Casetext?
Ramesh: Yeah, Jake Heller of Casetext.
Sean: I thought he was mentally prepared to talk to an audience of children and he did it in a way that he also communicated with the adults. I thought, he thought he did a good job and I thought Allistair Hood of Verdafero came to present. Those 2 guys mentally were flexible enough to …
Ramesh: Go with the flow.
Sean: Go with the flow, well and I think part of the challenge is that … I think it’s actually a really … It’s a good audience for people to prepare for because it’s actually what gets repeated out of your message. So the electro-adhesion startup, I think what he doesn’t ‘realize is that when he gives the big jargon answer, most people he’s trying to reach they don’t repeat that, right? Because they don’t’ understand it. The balloon thing, that’s a story I’ll tell because people understand that.
Ramesh: Right.
Sean: I think there’s something about and I don’t’ know how what the metaphor is but … it’s not like cooking necessarily but it’s … What to me appeared to be a polished format from the get go, you’re saying was the result of several things happening in several meetings and you continuing to refine, and adapt, and improvise what you were doing.
Ramesh: I keep refining it even now for every session. Even during the planning stages I refine it. Then while the session is going on I improvise. Then I take notes of those. Lately more mental notes than written notes. I used to blog about everything, but what I realize that this is becoming a very valuable brand. I’m trying therefore to make sure that before I publish anything it has some structure to it. That’s where it is right now. A lot of these observations are in raw formats … I have some 2,000 pictures and about 55 videos of startup founders of which I probably have published only 40 videos. It’s very time consuming. There’s a lot of knowledge being gained at a very rapid pace. The program changes often. It has not just evolved from one iteration to the next. It also adapts to different locations, different cities, their cultures, different layouts in the room, the lighting, so there’re a lot of variables that I’m trying to juggle while taking it to a new city, and saying “alright, this is how you could do in the your location. This is how we do it traditionally, I think this is what will work.” There is a lot of learning going on. I’m glad it appears as a package. I’m glad it does look organized when it’s all coming together.
Sean: That struck me as some of the challenges we’ve … Maybe challenge is the wrong word but the iterating on the breakfast format has taken a while as well. It didn’t really occur to me how many subtleties there are in planning for an interaction like the AlligatorZone or Bootstrappers Breakfast where you actually want to have a format or a structure to it and, it matters. Small things make big differences.
Ramesh: I think you’re right, absolutely. I think having a framework helps and giving each location some wiggle room to adjust for what will work best in their setting, I think is important. Where I have struggled and still am struggling with is that until somebody actually comes and attends one they don’t know what part of it appeals to them. There are so many parts of it. It’s like trying to describe the taste of Coca-Cola.
Sean: Yeah, you know for the Bootstrappers Breakfast I’ve tried to explain it a couple of times. Most people have been to a round table format discussion of some idea of what that’s like. In some ways … I think your format is much more innovative then the breakfast format. I think the challenge of describing it is harder. At least having experienced it a couple of times and reason I encourage entrepreneurs to take part in AlligatorZone now is that if you got … If you’re selling a piece of medical instrumentation to Life Science Researchers that’s … You’re in a niche market, highly technical, the process of going through the AlligatorZone is probably not going to be helpful in what you’re trying to do. But if you’re selling a product which is more mass market or consumer I think it’s a fantastic venue to force you to realize how hard it is for people to understand the message and how important it is to boil it down.
Ramesh: I think it will apply to even niche markets that are highly technical. The reason is this what I saw in companies like Grabit, Inc., he sells to manufacturing companies that operate on a large scale in assembly lines. Were you there at the session? I don’t think you weren’t.
Sean: I missed Grabit.
Ramesh: You missed that one. That was a good one. One question that came from a kid was, can this be used in the defense industry? The founder asked the kid how. He then allowed him some time to think through it because he said they were already doing some work in that space. The kids are pretty aware of what something can do and where it could possibly be applied. The startup founders manage to come away with something that they did not think of. There’s a video of this founder afterwards where he said that there was one of the parents in the room who talked about a killer application for his product they’re working on and he really would have liked to talk to him later on, but this parent had already left. Even if they are hard core business-to-business startups, or even in a very highly technical scientific field, I think it’s worthwhile for them to, if nothing, at least show it to the common person. For example, when they are in the mode of raising capital. Or say, they are in the mode of trying to explain this to somebody who is non-technical, such as training their own sales force, or training their own administrative staff or HR people. I think all those experiences in talking to children and teens will help them a lot when they come out of AlligatorZone.
They’re always go away surprised by the insights they gain. I never seen one session where they are not surprised about what they get asked and how they have to pause and think, how to answer a question in a manner that is not nonsense. They get called on things like that … There was a company that was showing how he had a recycling process. As he was speaking, one of the kids in the audience goes to the EPA website does some fact-checking and calls him on something that he mentioned. They can’t simply bluff and get away with it. They probably can do that in a grown-up meeting where people might save all of those things for due-diligence later on.
The same thing happened with a startup founder was trying to talk about a picture indexing app. A kid in the audience tried finding it, called him on it, saying “you said it’s free but it’s $0.99 cents”, and it just happened to be a competitor’s product. That brought up a good point of how do you ensure people actually find your product. Very important questions like that show up. You never know what will come out of it. It’s a one hour very well spent for a startup founder. Just show up and actually show the product.
Lately I’ve been calling it a product show-and-tell, because startup founders keep asking me what do they expect me to do there? And I tell them “get to the product as soon as you can”. Using the term product show-and-tell seems to make it easier for them to remember what they’re expected to do when they come in.
Sean: I’ll take you word for it on the niche market. I find it difficult enough working with those guys to get them to boil it down to where other people in the industry can understand it. I think if they’re motivated to go for children that would be great. I think …
Ramesh: When they’re raising capital from angel investors, not all the angel investors are from the industry.
Sean: No, that’s true. Right. … Yes, I agree with that. This would be good practice for raising capital from angels.
Ramesh: It is, it is yeah. Even sometimes the Angels investors will maybe from a completely different field. They might be hotel owners. You will not always find strategic money coming in. You take what you get to survive sometimes, right? Having a pitch down as a simple way to explain it or changing some of the strategies so it makes sense to a child who is just trying to figure out the world, helps.
One thing that I realize is that children have a very simple need. They’re just trying to understand the world around them. There is no other agenda that I have noticed so far. In the 55 or so start ups that I have showcased so far in AlligatorZone they only want to know what problem the startup founders are trying to solve. Why are you doing this? They ask. They make the start up founders address a very basic question. Why bother doing this thing? Why are you doing this? If the startups can get that answer right, I think they are doing themselves a favor, but along the way the children learn a lot.
Sean: I think this is good. I think that’s a good point, that the forcing yourself to really look at your product with newcomers’ eyes is a hard problem. I think if you wanted to talk a little bit about the format if you wanted to share some of those 31 tips … What would be the most useful thing you can get out … You think we can communicate some of the core value of AlligatorZone?
Ramesh: The core value of AlligatorZone is that it is an incredibly engaging experiential learning environment in a community gathering, both for the young, and for the young at heart, in the audience. AlligatorZone helps young people learn about problem solving by seeing living examples. The kids and teens are emboldened to ask the startup founders any question that comes to mind, or share any opinion they have, and know that they would be taken seriously. The parents who bring their children also participate in the conversation. Families make an impromptu community gathering at the end of each AlligatorZone session, while celebrating local entrepreneurs and local innovation. From the perspective of the startup founders, even getting prepared mentally for AlligatorZone brings greater clarity in their minds about their own offerings. Not only do they learn to communicate their raison d’être, but sometimes they also revisit their raison d’être.
Sean: Is there a place that people apply. Is there a central website for the Alligator Zone?
Ramesh: Yeah, it is at Alligatorzone.org.
Sean: Okay.
Ramesh: Right now people find me through Twitter or through email when they read contact information on the website. I want to, sometime soon, develop a process where start up companies can request to present and then submit it online directly. At least in Silicon Valley I’m getting people contacting me through Twitter. Which is just fine, too.
Sean: Okay. I thought the stuff about refining the format was interesting. I think talking about the format and the reason why each element contributes to it might be useful for people. I think for me at least, thinking about all the effort that goes into talking about what is the 13 slide pitch tech for investors, right? We honed down this one kind of model and I think with Alligator Zone there might be 6 elements that you could also get people to think about, preparing for.
Ramesh: Right.
Sean: Without necessarily giving away … I think at some level you got to give away enough of the format so that people know how to prepare for it and decide to take part, right? There maybe aspects of it you didn’t want to talk about.
Ramesh: It is pretty open source. I mean I’m not hiding anything. I think the challenge is to have entrepreneurs and startup founders realize that they are not doing the kids a favor by showing up. It’s the other way around.
Sean: That’s a good point.
Ramesh: Kids have better things to do, trust me.
Sean: To me the thing that was interesting about it was that you actually accomplished something. You’ve created a new kind of experience. I think you created something that could be a way we think about diffusing technology into our lives in a more thoughtful way. To be able to talk about that would be interesting.
Ramesh: You mentioned the Hawthorne effect.
Sean: Oh, Hawthorne Effect. Very briefly in physics there is a thing called the observer effect where if you try and measure light like a particle, it looks like a particle. If you try and measure light like a wave, it looks like a wave. I think one of the risks with … if you get successful and you start recording sessions, that formats changes the dynamic … It’s no longer a conversation between a couple of kids in the room and the entrepreneur. It’s people looking at the audience that is not there, right? I think one of the things that works in the Bootstrappers Breakfast that builds trust is, people can look around the room and see who’s in the room. They can hear introductions and they can make a decision about, I’m going to share in this bounded context what I’m going to share, but if you start recording that then there’s this unknown element which I think puts a lot of people off.
Ramesh: Yeah.
Sean: Your thing maybe different on the entrepreneur side because they’re trying to get the word out but they may not want to … Although Shark Tank is very popular, so…
Ramesh: Startups in AlligatorZone aren’t trying to get the word out as must as giving back to the community. I’m trying to go with a different purpose. So it is completely different from Shark Tank,
Sean: Yeah, that’s what … Ramesh: There’s the element of winning and losing in Shark Tank.
Sean: Right.
Ramesh: That’s more of a game show. It’s how I look at it. AlligatorZone is not a game show. Everyone’s a winner in AlligatorZone, so that makes it very uplifting and joyous.
Sean: Yeah. No, it think yours is actually … I don’t know, there’s something you’ve got there. You definitely have accomplished something.
Ramesh: With AlligatorZone my dream is to make local innovation and inspiration accessible to kids and teens in every small and big town as a part of their learning experiences. If you think about it, factory tours are really exciting for kids because they are innately very curious makers. As grown-ups, our responsibility is to stoke those fires of curiosity and learning in the kids so that they learn how knowledge is applied to solve real-world problems, or to make things better. Why companies would not allow kids into tradeshows I will never understand. Kids have brilliant insights. However, startups who show up at AlligatorZone believe they are doing the kids a favor. To change that perception will take a lot of time or money, or both. Making AlligatorZone a necessary refueling stop along every entrepreneur’s startup journey, for topping up their teams with some high-octane inspiration will take time – one library at a time. The one tradeshow which could really benefit the most by welcoming children onto its show floor, but does not, is the NY Toy Fair. AlligatorZone hopes to gradually change that culture.
Sean: To the extent that you’re able to explain to entrepreneurs what they will get. I think that would be interesting. Well, is it okay to break here?
Ramesh: Yes, this is good. I am hoping this will help get the word out to more cities. I’m hoping to eventually find parents who would encourage their teenagers to volunteer, to build leadership skills by becoming AlligatorZone Ambassadors in their own cities. Thank you for making the time for this conversation!
Sean: Thank you Ramesh. Onto your next adventure.
Ramesh: Thanks a lot, Sean. On to the next adventure.
