Creative Distillation - Episode 4: Patterns and Assumptions in the Field of Entrepreneurship Transcript
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SPEAKERS
Jeff York, Sharon Matusik, Boxcar Coffee Roasters, Brad Werner
Jeff York 00:10
Welcome to Creative Distillation where we distill entrepreneurship research into actionable insights. My name is Jeff York. I'm the research director at the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship at the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado, also a professor of strategy and entrepreneurship. And we are here today at Boxcar roosters. If you could be here, you would smell the wonderful rumors of roasting coffee. Unfortunately, we're here on a Friday afternoon where we really should have a distillery Brad, don't do that. I totally I know my co host. Brad was most disappointed with this location.
Brad Werner 00:43
You know what? You know, I love the distilleries. Yes, I love them. Yeah. And I was thinking about the introductions and actually looking at our some of our prior work. Oh, my goodness. I know it, but I had to. And I think that my title is way too long. So what I'd like to just say is that I'm Brad Warner, and I'm not an entrepreneur,
Jeff York 01:01
you are right.
Jeff York 01:02
But that's that's if you've listened to any of our podcast, you know, that's way and descriptive of Brad Wright has been an entrepreneur and like virtually every segment of the economy, and those that he has not been an entrepreneur, and he's been heavily invested in at one point or another. That's my my view of his experience when bred. And now Brad is our teaching director at the Dimmick center of entrepreneurship, which is wonderful, because we get this great blend of people with a more academic research based background. And people who have actually done this successfully folks like Brad. So I think that gives our students the best. But you know
Brad Werner 01:33
what, Jeff? Totally when you think about the complete experience, and what Sharon who's going to be joining us later, his work towards to have students come in and I plugged in the university here for a second. Oh, no, but you have students come in and in their first couple years, really work on fundamentals, and take those fundamentals and then put them into practice? Yeah, I really think that that differentiates our program from what many of the programs are doing around the country. And I think that we get validated number one by the number of businesses that come out of the school, but to entrepreneurship is not all about starting businesses, right. And the creative thinking and the mental horsepower that comes out of here. I think it's just fantastic.
Jeff York 02:08
I completely agree. And I'm humbled by it every semester when I'm teaching and see these students, you know, trying and succeeding and others not succeeding, but learning a heck of a lot in the process. So it's really cool. And we're learning. Oh, absolutely. And so we're also learning how to do a podcast as we go along. So, so again, here a creative distillation. As always, if it's your first time listening, welcome, we, we attempt to take insights from entrepreneurship research, and then try to kind of boil it down to like, why is this interesting to an entrepreneur and investor or a teacher, and Brad plays all three of those roles. So he sort of talked
Brad Werner 02:46
about this, though, it's certainly for the entrepreneurs that are listening or watching our performance here. The bottom line is you're looking for tools to help you Right, right, that we all have these different challenges. And the challenges are as big as the rainbow. Right? And so how can we actually identify specific research that hopefully translated can can can help the person on the street trying to accomplish grow their business scale, start whatever the heck?
Jeff York 03:13
Right right piece of lifestyle and so and so that's what's so cool about the paper we're gonna be talking about today. a fresh look at parents and assumptions in the field of entrepreneurship. What can we learn by Gary douche netsky and around Sharon F. McKusick, the Dean of the lead School of Business, also professor in strategy and
Brad Werner 03:28
entrepreneurship, my first thought is, what is the F stands for?
Jeff York 03:32
France or ANSYS?
Brad Werner 03:34
Right, something we were learning already.
Boxcar Coffee Roasters 03:35
That's beautiful.
Jeff York 03:37
So let's, uh, what we want to do as always, on a creative distillation, what we first do is we we taste some kind of a liquid beverage. I guess, if we were tasting liquids that weren't beverages, that would be kind of disturbing and quite odd. But yeah, we're going to be tasting today, we're tasting coffee from boxcar raspberry. And we're gonna be talking to their founder vas about the business how it came about. And we'll bring Sharon in, and we'll taste a few things. And then we'll talk about this paper and see what Oh, I didn't mention, what's so cool about this paper is it's actually completely and utterly aligned with the podcast, it is a call for how we can have what the paper refers to as dual discussions between practitioners and entrepreneurship scholars to have more impactful, interesting and, frankly, modern research.
Brad Werner 04:19
So right there, you're losing most of the entrepreneurs out there when they're thinking dual discussions. It's like what the hell Okay, okay.
Jeff York 04:25
Yeah, yeah. conversation about
Brad Werner 04:27
Okay, a conversation works for me. And I love it that Sharon's here and I think she'll set us both straight. It's
Jeff York 04:33
gonna be great. So let's let's get some coffee in here cuz you know, it's Friday afternoon and, and nothing says into the workweek like drinking coffee or bourbon as well. Yeah. But today a little bit. Yeah. Awesome. Great. So we're back in. Let's go ahead and bring our guests in. Our first guest is Sharon F. McKusick. We just found out the F stands for Francis which is not something we knew as faculty members. So we're very excited about that. She is our Dean as well as Professor of strategy and entrepreneurship at the Leeds school business. Thanks for joining us share it. My pleasure. And we're gonna be talking about her paper in just a bit. But first, we're going to be talking to our hosts for the day. Roger riches, the founder of boxcar Coffee Roasters where we are lucky enough to be situated here in lovely boulder today. Subhadra like we were talking earlier, you started this off by actually roasting the coffee yourself?
Boxcar Coffee Roasters 05:23
I did. That's correct. I should say I'm a co founder. Why false? No, no, it's okay. I didn't I didn't let you know, started boxcar with my wife, Kara. Cool. Her name was Kara Baker. She didn't take my last name. For some reason. We don't know why I just followed that pattern, right? Yes. But she grew up here. And I grew up here. And we started the company together along with a friend of ours. I mean, he was our only employee. His name is Yana sports. And he also grew up here to grow.
Brad Werner 05:52
Did you identify a market need? Or did you just say, you know what, I love coffee, we can do it better.
Boxcar Coffee Roasters 05:57
This is a good that was it was the ladder, the ladder because I just really wanted to I couldn't think of anything else to do. I didn't think about business. I didn't think about making money. I didn't think about being a success at all. Actually, a lot of people warned me against it, but I just felt compelled. Right, I should say, Yeah, I guess I saw a need for, or at least a space for someone to do their best. You know, it felt like coffee was in Boulder was a little bit more like, you know, it had some there's a lot of coffee shops here. But coming from the northwest, where I was living before I moved here, there was just some more attention being paid to it. And as you would a good meal or a nice bottle of wine or more, I guess would say producing wine, you know, careful attention to things. I felt like there's a lot of room for improvement. Also, that's just the way I am. And I just wanted to do something. Well, there we go. Well, I
Brad Werner 06:52
have to tell you abajo for the people that are listening, that are not from Boulder, this is a boulder jam. This is this is not screwing around, everybody, everybody that I know that we give this coffee to has US Senate to them at Christmas, Thanksgiving, all the holidays. This is really, really you've made it you've changed people's lives for the better in the morning. A little less grumpy. Maybe something's going on. But pretty good.
Boxcar Coffee Roasters 07:13
Thank you so much. That's that's like the best compliment Really? Yeah.
Brad Werner 07:15
And it's true. It's true.
Jeff York 07:17
Absolutely. And so when did when did boxcar start?
Boxcar Coffee Roasters 07:20
Well, we started in 2010. Okay, may so we're coming up on our 10 year anniversary. We started just as a roasting business. So we just had a few customers that would buy whole bean roasted coffee from us. And always wanted to open a retail space or a space where people could come and, you know, experience it more in depth. And also just like cafes. So about a year later, we opened our spot on Pearl Street 1825. And we brought the roaster with us and put it in there. And roasted all the coffee for our wholesale customers out of the back. Well out of this little room in the back. Yeah, but all the coffee. And then we had a bag up in our in our, you know, wholesale bagging operation was like in a hallway in the back of the place. And yeah, we used to have to take our deliveries of our green coffee, which come in pretty big, heavy bags. I don't know if you've ever seen them. It was like 150 pound sacks of coffee, through a very narrow hallway and in the snow and the ice. And you know, it's definitely a it's a good story anyway, you know, it feels like we came a long way
Brad Werner 08:24
I think about the metrics to the metrics we talked about sometimes the businesses that come out of cu and especially it leads me to think about all the businesses that were developed in your coffee shop, I would imagine that I really have a long list.
Boxcar Coffee Roasters 08:36
Yeah. In fact, I, I recognize so many people around town, and I wonder, you know, they're one of our goals was to provide a, like, we intentionally tried not to put too many outlets in there for people to plug their computers in. We wanted people to have conversations. And that was really important to us. So finding an old building with like, nice natural materials, and you know, real brick and then real wood floor was a big deal to us, I'm sure. Yeah, I tried to make all the tables sort of small. So you can set up an office in there. While you're developing your brand. Yeah, but I think it worked. Right. People liked to spend time there. They like to talk to each other. And absolutely.
Jeff York 09:12
I mean, like, I can think of how many times entrepreneurs or investors I've wanted to talk to have suggested me at boxcar. Now, it's almost like you go in there in the morning, you can almost see see deals getting done. It's Oh, yeah, it's I mean, it's kind of amazing.
Boxcar Coffee Roasters 09:25
I had this was not part of that's totally great.
Jeff York 09:32
Your tip was just to make great coffee. Yeah, and place a community 1000. But I think people gravitate to a place of authenticity. Yeah. Especially when they're making big, you know, important discussions making a important decision. Being an author, I sense a sense of place can can make you feel more comfortable, more able to feel like you're communicating honestly,
Brad Werner 09:51
and a creative space and a creative space. Really, which is
Jeff York 09:54
another aspect we want to talk about. It's not just the cafe.
Boxcar Coffee Roasters 09:57
Right? Right. So I think that's a big So when we first were thinking about moving to a retail location or a downtown location, friend of not a friend but sort of a mutual acquaintance, Brett Zimmerman of the on the wine merchant in Boulder, by the ideal market, he knew will first corn and Corel Ferguson who just moving back to Boulder and wanted to open they're sort of charcuterie wine shop. meat and cheese place. Yeah, yeah, olive oil, all the stuff that's in there. And he they wanted to have some local craft Coffee Roasters coffee on the shelves of their eventual store. And so Brett introduced us. And within a week, we were looking for space to share together. It just made sense, right?
Brad Werner 10:42
I mean, very European.
Jeff York 10:43
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Boxcar Coffee Roasters 10:45
Also, you know, the, and this was 10 years ago, almost now, but the per square foot cost of a retail space on Pearl Street is hard to do. Yeah. And this is something I'd love to talk all about. But you know, there are there are reasons why boulder is special. And I don't I fear the loss of that if we have only big corporations that can afford those spaces. So So splitting that space with with will and coral. made it a bite sized piece in a sense, what seemed like no way we're ever going to be able to afford it, actually. But still. Yeah, it was half the space was
Brad Werner 11:21
outside of Boulder. You go downtown to some of these communities now. It's either banks or real estate offices. That's right. That's right.
Boxcar Coffee Roasters 11:27
Yeah. I'd love to find a way to make sure that doesn't.
Jeff York 11:31
Yeah, that's a tough one.
Brad Werner 11:34
Save that for the podcast with bourbon. Yeah.
Boxcar Coffee Roasters 11:39
Let's taste it. Oh, yeah, please.
Boxcar Coffee Roasters 11:41
So I didn't put too much because I know it's late in the day. Yeah. So let me just tell you, this is a coffee from Burundi. My Talking too close to the mic there. Not say that word. I'm coming from Burundi. So this time of year, it's very kind of no green coffee is kind of sparse, we only use fresh coffee. So we don't have coffee sitting around here. It goes stale. It goes and loses moisture, and it doesn't taste very good. So right now is the time of year when there's not a lot of fresh green coffee available. Green. I mean, unroasted.
Brad Werner 12:13
How long can you keep green coffee on the shelf before you need to roast it.
Boxcar Coffee Roasters 12:16
So in a stable environment with the temperature not fluctuating too much. And we have these are all inside these burlap sacks in here. But they're inside that they're in a plastic or the air bag to keep the moisture from leaving, especially in this dry climate. We don't like to keep anything around for more than six months here. And so we try to make sure we plan ahead and roast just enough or order or buy or contract just enough green coffee that will go through it by that six months, how many?
Brad Werner 12:42
What about sustainability issues and your decision and your buying decision of green beans.
Boxcar Coffee Roasters 12:46
So what we try to do and what we've been building for years, and we only have one really great success story about this, but we're still working on it is a sort of year after year working with the same farm. So we have countries we prefer coffees from certain countries. We try to work with those countries, specifically. And then farmers more specifically. So our most long term, in fact been with us the whole time was his name is Mauricio celeea. He's from El Salvador. And his farms are there and we've been buying coffee from them. Yeah, so nine years now, right? So that way we can visit the farms, we can see their process, we know what they need from us, we know what we can tell them what we would like them to give us and you know, it's like it's a conversation rather than just a commodity thing that you get from a mass importer. So these are small farms. Okay, so sustainability. We know if they're running into trouble, here's a good example. So in that country, particular, there's the climate is changing, it's warming and there's a sort of a fungus growing on the leaves of the coffee trees and in getting in the way of photosynthesis and therefore the cherries don't ripen and the coffee doesn't taste good. So their whole coffee crop is very, it's very, it's it's on edge. So we're trying to help figure out ways in which we can still support research into different varieties that handle that better. That still tastes good. So you know, yeah, sustainability, it goes a lot further than for us anyway. Getting a coffee that has a certified stamp on it says that doesn't really do much for us. Honestly, a lot of those stamps can don't mean much and you're preaching to the choir, I think at this table, ya know, we know a lot more about what's going on with those farms then. Fairtrade sticker and I'm not trying to talk badly about them. No, they did a lot for the coffee industry and for farmers. So it's not that it's just we pay like twice their minimum or more. So it's a whole other story. So
Brad Werner 14:44
So tasting coffee, yeah, other than pay, wake me up in the morning. What do we what are we looking for?
Boxcar Coffee Roasters 14:50
Well, you know, there's definitely a trend with what we I guess I would, I don't like to say that we're one of these Coffee Roasters, but we could call us a third wave Coffee Company. So the second wave was when people got into espresso Starbucks. Starbucks kind of helped start this whole thing by getting people interested in the coffee itself, rather than it just being a commodity thing, right
Jeff York 15:12
thing I started to wake up,
Boxcar Coffee Roasters 15:14
right. And basically what we're looking for is, I mean, we have so many detailed notes. I mean, this one here says we've mango, fig and fudge. These are flavor notes that you'd find in this particular coffee. Oh, this is coffee from our CEO. This is one of the newer varieties that he's trying to grow. Okay, seeming to be resistant to the leaf for us. Oh, interesting. Anyhow, yeah. So we're looking for sweetness. coffees got bitterness no matter what. So it's always a little bit but you want to imbalance just like anything that's tasty. Balance of like a sweetness, roundness, a full body, but also some acidity, some citric acid malic tartaric acid, these are things you find in coffee, Africa, this coffee in particular, you'll get citric, but you also get a little bit of like, Blackberry kind of tartness.
Jeff York 16:01
Yeah, yeah, it's on the back end like almost acidic. tart after bite. Right. And then the mouthfeel this Yeah, like, it feels more viscous like a thicker than I'm used to. Am I normal is am I just crazy? Yes.
Boxcar Coffee Roasters 16:15
No, you're not? Well, there's two different things not nerdy but not about. Well, I'm definitely crazy too. So when glossy? Well, there's brewing methods that affect the body of the coffee. This one I used what's called a fresh press, which you've heard of, also this roasting style, so we don't dark roast coffee, dark roast and coffee does give you the opportunity to buy less quality, because it you will taste for it or you won't taste the defects if there's a bunch of underripe coffee and this is like
Jeff York 16:44
craft brewing and IPA where you just dump a ton of hops just put
Boxcar Coffee Roasters 16:46
it in taste. It's like really blows your mind. Yeah, no, no darker is a coffee can be done. Well, I'm not sure. I'm not also disparaging dark roasted coffee, but a very well prepped, well grown well roasted, medium roast, you'll get a lots of syrupy mouthfeel. Whereas a dark roasted coffee is a little darker roasted coffee has that sort of like that bite and a little bit of bitterness, but it's also kind of light and thin. And
Jeff York 17:12
it's a funny thing. That's what I normally drink. So that's
Boxcar Coffee Roasters 17:14
Yeah, totally explain it can be body decreases as the roast gets darker.
Brad Werner 17:19
And when you say that French press is the best process for someone at home, looking for the type flavor profile that you were discussing?
Boxcar Coffee Roasters 17:25
Man, people just this is like the endless debate. But yes, I find that French press as a little more forgiving. For most people. The key to everything is the ratio of coffee to water. People sort of don't pay attention to that too much. We're finding that it's like baking and that you can't just put in less flour. I think it's real tablespoons, a tablespoon. So there's a there's a certain amount of water that's needed for the soluble compounds in that coffee to be dissolved into the liquid. So if you don't put enough water in, yeah, it won't happen. And then you'll get what we call under extracted coffee, which is out of balance. So I like French press. If you get your water issues, right, the there is oil and there is little texture. So that will coat your tongue. You may not pick up on the super subtle flavor notes. But I think it's hard to pick up super subtle flavor notes for most folks anyway. of paper filtered coffee, if also done with the perfect brew ratio. Right. Can you can get a little bit more of the acidity profile like okay, I do taste a little bit of grape, a little bit of citrus. I can see those two things are there.
Brad Werner 18:31
Okay, here tasted great for citrus. Oh my god. Yeah.
Jeff York 18:33
You haven't looked for it?
Boxcar Coffee Roasters 18:35
I haven't thought that's right. wine. Yes. Well, there's definitely grape and wine. You guys sat right. Yeah. But sometimes you'll see those descriptors for wine and you're like, wow,
Jeff York 18:45
I got a chocolate flavor with this one.
Boxcar Coffee Roasters 18:46
Definitely chocolate.
Jeff York 18:49
bittersweet chocolate almost.
Boxcar Coffee Roasters 18:50
Yep. And you'll find some acidity there beyond right. So a little bit of brightness to go with that bittersweet chocolate.
Brad Werner 18:57
So I'm very sophisticated because I taste coffee.
Jeff York 19:00
Yeah. You're approved that we knew that was you
Boxcar Coffee Roasters 19:03
know what? That's okay with me. And then, right, and if you're no, you finish it, and you're like, satisfied and you liked that cup of coffee. That's that's the best thing that could come. That's the best outcome. Really? Yeah. No, like you don't leave going. Oh, man. I need to chase her or something. Yeah.
Brad Werner 19:20
And I overthink everything. So it's nice not to overthink my coffee. Because then I would actually just go nuts.
Jeff York 19:25
But you're going to now? Yes, I
19:27
am. Absolutely. Yes.
Jeff York 19:29
Well, this is awesome. Thank you very much for the the tasting. Yeah, and, and teaching Brad how not to be such a non considerate coffee drinker. We'll keep on him about that. This is reminding me of our CBD chocolate tasting except for it's having the opposite effect on me. And it's
Brad Werner 19:45
so true.
Boxcar Coffee Roasters 19:48
There's a really cool company over here on walnut called American. I know extract labs there. Yeah, they're making CBD out of organic hemp grown in Colorado, right? Right. And so I was talking to them about making a beverage choke CBD.
Sharon Matusik 20:06
companies.
20:07
Yeah. That might be like a nice the science. Yeah. What
Brad Werner 20:10
about CBD coffee is that on your radar?
Boxcar Coffee Roasters 20:12
I think it needs to be ready to drink beverage because it needs to be dissolved. And I think that there's certain things that it dissolves better into or mixing or with. Yeah, I just I'm into chemistry, so I feel like it's just fun to figure out.
Jeff York 20:26
I don't know if I I met the founder last night of a CBD company. Uh huh. So there you go. He's figured out some way to her. So
Boxcar Coffee Roasters 20:33
he coats the night called numbnuts. Yep. I saw that on the on the shelf. And
Jeff York 20:44
I literally saw it on the shelf, and on my way to go to play poker with some folks. And then the founder was there with a hat on. And I was like, What is that? He's like, Oh, it's this and then this guy comes over. He's like, your CBD nuts are making me lose at poker. That's a good, that's a good. Anyway. But, uh, thank you so much for having us. Yeah, this is really cool to learn some of the history because I think you're a pro street location open just after I came here and started my job at Leeds. And it is my go to place to take potential entrepreneurship faculty, because I feel like it's the place where you most get a sense of the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Boulder, whether it's through your entertain or not, you really add something to that community. And of course, your your product is amazing. Well,
Boxcar Coffee Roasters 21:29
I appreciate that very much.
Jeff York 21:30
Thank you very much. We appreciate you having us here.
Brad Werner 21:33
This is really incredible, I
Boxcar Coffee Roasters 21:34
should say that I fully encourage. And I'm glad that that you guys are doing this. And I fully encourage people to try out whatever they feel really passionate about. Because, you know, maybe I just got lucky. But I've had some mistakes, we opened another coffee shop didn't work. Sure. So I've learned a lot from that. Right. And and almost, you know, it brought me to really appreciate what what we did when we first started the thing and and now I know that if I wanted to do some other business or some other version of boxcar or some other combination of things, I would want to only do it if I really, really wanted to do it. And I think that that's the keto to keto. The keto
Jeff York 22:11
Yeah, and we talk about that a lot in the classroom of like, you know, it's not, we're not trying to make everyone be an entrepreneur, we're just trying to if you find something that you actually really want to do, and you really are the right person to do it, and you have a passion for this, and we're trying to help you get there. Yeah, but our goal is not for us to like, Oh, you know, come up with an idea. Be an entrepreneur, I think you have to have that passion or or be really, really, really lucky. Otherwise, you just can't make it.
Boxcar Coffee Roasters 22:43
I was basically I was completely driven to do this thing. I didn't take into consideration the risks did I didn't care and I'm a risk taker anyway. So they probably did. I just I just had to do it. There was no, there was no thought about what if we don't succeed, because I didn't have success. In my mind. It was just this thing I had to do. Well, something I wanted to make.
Jeff York 23:05
Turns out that's a lot of expert entrepreneurs things actually
Brad Werner 23:07
kind of Jerry's of coffee. Yeah, the same type of approach. Can you tell us? How did boxcar the name resonate with
Boxcar Coffee Roasters 23:14
you? Well, this is great. This is actually too long of a story. I wanted to open a place when I was living in Berkeley, California, and I'm always talking about how coffee could be so much more than just this dark roasted thing. There's so much more going on. There's all these different nuances and different types of coffee from different countries. And, and a friend of mine said, Why open a little kiosk in the parking lot of the monitoring market up there in North Berkeley. And my friend said, you should just call it soapbox, because I was always on. And then I started thinking of we started talking about the great American soapbox Derby riffs. Yeah. And I thought that was really cool. And that sort of was a kind of a double. Not it. Would it be it would be like, it could be either one, you know, meanings. But somebody didn't like the word soap in there. They thought that would be a bad thing. Yeah. It looks cool in print, though. And I thought that was important. So but then we found that some people call those little wooden cars boxcar. And that's like the condensed version. I've had a lot of practice.
Boxcar Coffee Roasters 24:17
I used to ramble on
Boxcar Coffee Roasters 24:20
about it and didn't make any sense.
Jeff York 24:21
Sounds like the rest of our podcast.
Boxcar Coffee Roasters 24:24
But I've gotten to the point where I'm almost ready to just say, when I was a little boy, I was really into my Oh, yeah, Lionel train set. And box. My favorite part of my train set. That's cool. And what's
Brad Werner 24:34
the future? Like? Are you are you looking to scale in a bigger way than you are now? or? Yeah,
Boxcar Coffee Roasters 24:40
I think we have to grow just because I have some folks that work here that I just want want them to stick around, and I need to find a way to get them more stability in our lives. And hopefully, you know, two of the most important people are wanting to have a baby and I just wanted to be able to live here and so I need to make the company bigger so that they can work. live here because they like living here. I'm not really ambitious about making a bunch more money. But I do think there's room for us to grow our wholesale business. And I would like to open I would like to move our bakery into a really nice little space somewhere in Boulder. We make the best pastries in the state, I think. And if nobody knows we even make them.
Brad Werner 25:19
I didn't know until right now. Yeah, so
Brad Werner 25:21
I've eaten them. So one of our
Boxcar Coffee Roasters 25:23
it's all being produced in a 200 square foot room in the back of that building.
Jeff York 25:28
It's a trend here with like things being produced in small rooms at first. Yeah,
Boxcar Coffee Roasters 25:32
and just having to having to find a way to move them. So absolutely. But yeah, yeah, come check those out because they're made fresh every single day. Actually, Millie, who's just here watching our brisa competitor, live stream. She pitched this idea to us used to work at Frasca, and they're a little pastry. They're a little cafe that they have for a little bit, and then close that. And she she pitched the idea. And and we always wanted to have pastries, that that kind of compliment compliment. Yeah, like it was up to snuff. Like, we had great coffee, but we couldn't find a wholesale situation. And we took a chance. And she's been doing this for years now. So anyway, yeah, they're there. They're the best.
Brad Werner 26:14
It's awesome. That's awesome. Well, thank you very much.
Jeff York 26:18
Yeah, it's great talking to you. Thank you learn more about the history of this. Yeah,
Boxcar Coffee Roasters 26:22
I could go. I just could talk forever about that stuff. But
Brad Werner 26:25
next time, yeah.
Boxcar Coffee Roasters 26:27
Yeah, this is great. What's up?
Boxcar Coffee Roasters 26:29
How can people website? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It's just you know, it's
Boxcar Coffee Roasters 26:33
www.boxcarCoffeeRoasters.com
Jeff York 26:36
Yeah, it's what is your address down on pearls on the cafe, the cafe,
Boxcar Coffee Roasters 26:40
our original cafes, 1825 b Pearl Street, okay. In between 18th and 19th on the north side. So
Jeff York 26:47
if you're coming to Boulder, and you want to, you know, drink real local phenomenon coffee, that's, that's absolutely delicious. And they also make coffee in really interesting ways. It's almost a show to get your coffee made some time and not to mention the display. And then there's other things you can buy there. It's just a wonderful place to go in the morning when you're visiting boulder
Brad Werner 27:05
100%. And actually, it's a must stop.
Jeff York 27:07
Yes, yeah, it really is. I agree. I take people except people like Brad. Yeah. Well, hopefully we'll see you there. I'll see you.
Jeff York 27:25
So that was awesome. I've always liked this these guys product I've always thought was amazing. I had no idea anything about the history of place just knew it popped up. And they made great coffee. And I know lots entrepreneurs hanging out there. So now we know quite a
Brad Werner 27:38
bit. Well, I think about the journey from garage to this really amazing. Yes, I think it's a common theme that you see when people really believe in what they're doing. Right. Money is not it can't be the initial driver. Right? Yeah. And I would say actually something that we could talk about, even in academic research, if we talked about early entrepreneurial motives, right. If money is the driver, what's the success rate there versus money being the purpose?
Jeff York 28:04
Yeah, yeah. Well, that's that's actually a one of the topics in this article that we're going to talk about this week. So a fresh look at patterns and assumptions in the field of entrepreneurship. What can we learn by Gary douche netsky? And sure enough, McKusick appeared in the strategic entrepreneurship journal recently. So Sharon, you want to tell us a little bit? How did this? How did this article come about?
Sharon Matusik 28:27
Yeah, it's a great question. So both Gary and I are interested in entrepreneurship research that also has a lot of implications for actual entrepreneurs. Believe it or not, yeah. All right. One of the things
Jeff York 28:39
in Brad's language,
Sharon Matusik 28:40
one of the things that we've been talking about is the fact that if you look at how the world of entrepreneurship has evolved over the last 1015 years, there's been a lot of pretty disruptive changes, and then you look at the research that we're doing, and it's kind of building on the same old patterns and the same classic research like Schumpeter's work and his work. And so our challenge to ourselves was, can we step back and get together a bunch of people who are really active in the entrepreneurial ecosystem, VCs, accelerator firms, entrepreneurs, economic development people and say, Hey, what's changed? And then step back and say, What are the implications of that for how we study entrepreneurship?
Jeff York 29:21
Right, right. And I mean, I think that's something we very rarely do in research. You know, we, oftentimes we get inspired by a research project, or at least I do, and a lot of authors I know get inspired by talking to an entrepreneur, but they don't necessarily think about asking entrepreneurs and others in the field. Hey, you know, what should we be studying?
Sharon Matusik 29:44
Yeah. And it was actually we pulled together a roundtable in Boulder pulling together some of these great people that are at the coffee shop. And, you know, we structured the conversation around, you know, hey, step back and tell us what you think has changed in entrepreneurship. Over the last 10 or 15 years, and certainly there's a lot of stuff that we still do, for example, business plans, you know, thinking about facilities, how do we build those out, you know, what kind of investors do I want to pitch or things like that. But there's been a lot that's also changed in terms of you know, how easy it is to get something up and going, what your capital needs are, and just the ready access to lots of different kinds of expertise on a market. So you don't have to employ those people, right. And so we wanted to kind of step back and say, Well, how has it fundamentally changed? And what are the implications of that for how we study entrepreneurship?
Brad Werner 30:34
And I'll tell you, one of the big changes that I've seen over 1015 years, though, is the availability of capital, right? You have people that are thinking about starting businesses, now they can say, Brad, you know, I have this idea, but there's no way that I'm going to be able to come up with million, 10 million, whatever the number is. And I actually think that that's a misconception. Now, I think that there's so much excess capital floating around that Money Follows great ideas,
Sharon Matusik 30:57
that and also, if you look at the different ways that capital is bundled with expertise, that's right, not bundled with expertise, that's really been a big change. So if you go back, you know, 10 or 15 years, and you were really trying to do a capital raise, you know, you might pitch well, and you might try to pitch a venture capital and venture capitalist, and they're bringing money and expertise, and they're
Brad Werner 31:16
probably sitting on your board. And I would say sharing that expertise component is even more important than the money component,
Sharon Matusik 31:22
for sure. But now they're decoupled right, and so you have some options where they're still bundled, but you can think about pitching a VC where you get both of those together, or you can crowd fund where you get just the money. That's right. Or you can go to an accelerator where you get mostly just the expertise and advice in the mentoring or an angel investor. And so there's a whole different set of options, right? And what are the implications of that? How does that influence what kind of ventures get funded, which kinds of ventures don't get funded? And, you know, at the end of the day, there's probably more capital out there, it's easier to get. So is that good? Or is that bad? You know, some people would argue that some businesses that should never have gotten funding and now get funding, and you know, does that push people into positions that maybe is not ideal,
Brad Werner 32:09
and it's trickling all the way up to the IPO market? Right? Because some of these companies, if if we take Uber, Airbnb, they've had such massive funding early on, where normally they'd have to go to the IPO market to get that, but they're already there. It's a different world. Yeah.
Jeff York 32:25
Yeah. Well, and I think that's, that's driving some of the the movement to to actually look at profitability.
Jeff York 32:36
Money, I know, I'm getting I'm getting out there, you know, as a veteran of the.com, boom, I can remember when it was like, hey, look, I drew this thing. It's gonna be on the internet. Okay. Well, you know, that sounds good. But okay. So this paper, I think, what what I like about it a lot, especially for this podcast is I think it's trying to ask the very same questions that I've been struggling with, and trying to communicate to Brad, with differing some degrees of success, purely my own fault. Second drink, I think, yeah, why entrepreneurship. And this is sort of a this paper almost acts as a meta framework for what we've been doing on this podcast. And so three areas that are identified in the paper are the nature of opportunity, scaling and funding. And I was sitting here, as we were talking, I was thinking about the nature of opportunity. And one of our alums of the lead school, PhD alum, Sharon Alvarez is very famous for putting forth this framework with with co authors, mainly Jay Barney, on created versus discovered opportunities. And so when we're listening to Vonage, I was just thinking like, this is not a discovered opportunity. Nobody could look at the boulder market and say, Oh, my gosh, there's just an arbitrage opportunity to create coffee in Boulder because there's like 15 coffee shops. And clearly we need another one. It's it's what he did. It's very different.
Sharon Matusik 33:58
Yeah. And I think really, along those lines, a lot of what we heard when we sat down with people from the ecosystem to talk about how things have changed, is the theme that came out again, and again, is this execution is everything. So good ideas are a dime a dozen. That's right. And if you think back to 2030 years ago, there were much more opportunities for information asymmetry. So you know, something specialized, I don't know it right. And so you have an opportunity to really build that out and run with that. Now with information being absolutely everywhere all the time. It's the opposite. Right? Right. So the ideas are all out there, right. But how are you actually going to act on those opportunities, right, exploit those opportunities and execute on those opportunities? Yep. And, you know, as we were just talking about with boxcar, you know, it was it was not just the coffee, it's, it's the coffee, it's the experience, it's the location, it's how they interact with their suppliers and the whole story behind that. That becomes really critical in terms of building a business around that idea. Just Coming up with an another idea for roasting coffee isn't enough.
Jeff York 35:04
Right? Right. It's the uniqueness of the building the place the sense of, you know, this is a premium product, there's care, there's authenticity. And I think that's as, as entrepreneurship educators, you know that that kind of gives me a lot of hope, actually. And we don't have, I'd say, there's like, there's a handful of more execution based theories, right. So there's, of course, the the creation versus discovery, but there's also effectuation, and brick collage. And the nice thing about those approaches, oh, god, I'm getting academic. I'll stop bread. And they gave me coffee, this time to sell whiskey. So yeah, this is more like pointy headed. No, I mean, like, it's like, Hey, you know, the idea is, it matters. But what really matters is what you do with it. That's exactly like an opportunity is an idea plus action. And, and the cool thing, I think, as educators, we can teach people how to execute. Now, whether or not they do that is up to them. Right. But there are ways to teach that. Yeah, I want to teach you how to have a great idea.
Sharon Matusik 36:03
Well, and I think it just it opens up a whole different set of things to study, yes, in the entrepreneurship realm, to really be able to dial that down, right people increase the odds that their businesses are going to be successful.
Brad Werner 36:15
So that's the point right there. That's the point we're all trying to reach for right is right now the data says, one out of 10 succeeds. And if we can increase that percentage, now, we've helped the guy on the street. Right. So what would be the takeaway, that you think from your work that you would say that directly could affect this?
Sharon Matusik 36:34
Well, you know, to me, the whole purpose of this is to try and stimulate more research in areas that have implications. So I would say, kind of to Jeff's point, we need to do more work on that execution piece, spent a lot of time on that opportunity, discovery. And not to say there aren't some additional contributions that can be made there. But if you look at where we should spend our time and energy, there's a lot of uncharted territory on that. How do you really execute effectively? Right? And how do you create opportunities and build from those? That's
Brad Werner 37:07
right. Yep. I love that. But there, there are a lot of people that are graduates like that right now doing kind of what Raj was doing, saying, move a little faster, please, guys,
Jeff York 37:16
right? And telling those people, hey, you should write a business plan might not be the best advice. yet. You know, I know, in our programs, of course, you know, a business plan is a valuable tool. But it's more it's the artifact of going through business planning. It's not a plan.
Brad Werner 37:33
It's understanding the fundamentals. Right. What makes your business classic,
Sharon Matusik 37:37
you know, you've got to get the product out there. You've got to test it, you got to find it. I've got to be able to adjust on the fly, or use that to drive things for writing
Jeff York 37:46
a business plan for something you've never executed. pointless. Yeah,
Sharon Matusik 37:50
I know, people do have to think through. Yes, I do think there's a risk on the other side. Just go out there. Oh, no, no,
Jeff York 37:58
that's cool. Like, that's how many people misinterpret the whole creation, discovery effectuation bricolage. All of these are the lean startup, even people misinterpret that as meaning like, just go do some stuff, and it'll be fine. And it's not it's all of those are very specific methodologies that can't be taught. They're not just go do things in a workout.
Brad Werner 38:17
And they're, but they're not a blanket. Do this in your guarantee success? No. But the bottom line for me so so I would say my approach to both of you is an agile engineering focus with your pulse always on your customers. Yeah, right.
Jeff York 38:31
Design Thinking? tools. All right, empathy. And I feel like that's, um, that's kind of one of the cool things we were talking about, like he is the person that cares about,
Brad Werner 38:42
there is no question that he gives a shit about his Yeah, exactly. But not not about the financial benefits of his bills about the quality the quality of his product. Absolutely.
Sharon Matusik 38:50
And, you know, the other thing that came out when we were having our roundtable is how visible entrepreneurs actions are now Yes. Yeah. And and that mission, and that, you know, do you care about your, you know, with your soul, how you're sourcing your products or your employees, you know, there's endless amounts of information on every entrepreneur, you know, you've got your LinkedIn page, you've got a website, you know, people are following you on Twitter. So it's more than just running the business, everything that you do is a reflection on the brand and the company. So that also introduces a whole different set of considerations that you didn't really have if you go back a year, because what I did outside of work was not nearly as visible.
Brad Werner 39:32
I agree, but I think boulders different so Sharon and I are both from Chicago, Chicago area. And when I was working in Chicago, I walked out with some new component for my businesses that I'd spent a lot of money on. If someone would want a knife view in an elevator to get that that work. And in Boulder, you can walk down the street and go I'm done with this. Here you go. Yeah, so the collaboration aspect is really important here. And
Sharon Matusik 39:53
you know, that's one of the things that I think is so special about boulder and I talk about this all the time when I'm trying to get new faculty to come Our students, there's so much this Pay It Forward orientation. Yes. And this, you know, let's just work together and elevate everything we do together. And I think there's some, you know, one, it's the people who are here to I think there's something kind of special about the size of Boulder. Yeah, you know, we're 120,000 ish people, and there's really only about two degrees of separation.
Jeff York 40:22
That's really true. You
Sharon Matusik 40:23
know, like, if I don't know that person, you know, I'm gonna tell you, and you probably know him, or you probably
Jeff York 40:28
introduced to people you've known for five years.
Sharon Matusik 40:30
And then you've got a few, you know, really key people in the ecosystem, who very much feel strongly about this, pay it forward orientation. So if you blow me off all the time, when I try to meet with you, on board, you know, it's a small, it's a small community. And so when you have that kind of a connection across people, and that, pay it forward orientation, I think it's, it's, it's really pretty special. And you don't get that Yeah, Silicon Valley is in the Chicago isn't your Austin.
Brad Werner 40:58
area. Right. So that collaboration component, though, that part of the ecosystem is also another one of these ways to help you execute?
Sharon Matusik 41:07
Absolutely. And I think that, you know, it's that's that executing that scaling piece, right. And, you know, a lot of what we heard too, was the nature of the kinds of expertise that people are looking for, when you're trying to scale up, right is different. As you look, if you look back in time, it was you have the technical skills, or trade those, I'm gonna hire you, right, but now there's much more of an open market for that. And that's not necessarily differentiating. But what I care about is, you've been through this kind of experience, you know, back to your introduction of brand in the beginning of the podcast, you know, you've been an entrepreneur, and all these different sectors, or you funded entrepreneurs in these different sectors. So you have that ability to kind of say, Oh, well, you know, this isn't really going where we want it to go, and oh, my gosh, we've got all these pressures on our budget, etc, etc. You know, let's try this. Let's try that. So that ability and that experience to kind of be agile and move things forward in a different path. That's what we're hearing is really valuable, as opposed to you have this specific industry expertise or this technical expertise. It's more it's a very different kind of orientation in terms of, you know, what do you need to really scale things up? So much,
Brad Werner 42:17
is agreeing or disagreeing?
Jeff York 42:19
No, no, I'm absolutely agree. I just, I think that's like really encouraging as an entrepreneurship educator, because you know, you have you end up in these discussions, I don't know if any of our listeners can relate to this. And they mean, well, and we're talking to our finance or accounting colleagues, not to slam on those professions. But we can, oh, that's a very technical skill set. It's kind of like, you know, Elon icon, it is, it's mathematics and algebra, it's like, this is right, this is wrong. But it doesn't cause you to really think about operating under ambiguity, under uncertainty under stress, other than the assumptions you make. And that I think is a huge, important part of what entrepreneurship education does, is you take it and you say, like, Yeah, I don't know how to tell you to make this work, you're going to collaborate together. And of course, there's criteria grading and everything else involved. But you know, this is a class about how do you act under uncertainty? At least that's how I
Sharon Matusik 43:11
yeah, yeah. And if you look at those specialized technical skill sets, it's not to say that they are no, you have to have them or you can get them on the market. The other thing too, there's so many, either apps or ways to contract talent that we didn't have if you go back in time, right? So if I need a technical expert in a certain area, right, I can hire someone on a contract to do that for you, or, you know, if I need to set up a webpage, yeah, I can use Wix and off I go. And I don't have to hire my own developer to maintain my website. Yeah, you know, so that's really an option that wasn't available. If you go back 1015 years,
Jeff York 43:48
you guys actually say this fine quote from the paper. First is the cost of entry decreases, one may expect increased competition, it begs the question in a world where many firms draw on the same resources, how do firms differentiate and compete? Right? And I think that's a really that's a question we don't know much about, right? Because we're so used to taking a Resource Based view and saying, Oh, it's because of your unique inimitable resources that you're able to compete effectively? Well, if everybody has the same access, again, it comes back to execution in some ways.
Brad Werner 44:17
And authenticity, sure, things. Yeah. So authenticity is a big thing for me. And I think it's a big people recognize that in businesses, right? Customers recognize whether they're being sold a bill of goods, or if somebody truly believes right, but I also, I'd like to add one, one more component into the discussion. And that's we all live within our life horizons. If you came over and immigrated and lived in New York City in the early 1900s, you may only know this one black, you know, you have the corner bakery, and you know, those people there. And so, really expanding your horizons through these life experiences, I think actually gives you that better sense of being able to execute in a better understanding of the entire marketplace and the lay of the land because all these other skills ELLs are so easily available.
Jeff York 45:02
You know, it's, it gets into a human capital story. But as the paper points out, it's not a human capital story. And the way we traditionally think of human capital as your educational attainment, or something like that, you know, maybe we need all different measures of thinking about this. And there's been this movement entrepreneurship research to, to not equate the entrepreneur in the venture, the venture may fail, right? That doesn't mean the entrepreneur is failed, because they're likely to have a lot of success in their next round. And they said, physics tell us, so. Okay, third topic, resource acquisition. There's so many, as you alluded to earlier, sharing so many different ways of getting funding yet. We don't know that much about how, what are generalizable insights about using these.
Sharon Matusik 45:46
Right. And I, you know, and we started to talk a little bit about this before, I think there's some interesting things that have changed, such as decoupling the expertise, right? And the money, right? And what are all the implications of that? You know, and there's also these different forms of funding that require different ways of managing your investor relationship. Right? Right. Right. So, boy, it seems like crowdfunding is an easy way to go, but oh, my gosh, then you've got 1000s of people who want an update on how
Jeff York 46:17
we're going to launch our Kickstarter. Oh, we have to actually deliver.
Sharon Matusik 46:22
Right? And we know that one of the things that contributes to failure is if you're actually oversubscribed, because right, you can't keep up with all right, you know, your way over over skis, able to manage those relationships. So there's a lot of really interesting opportunities out there. But how do we make sense of all that, you know, they're, they're very different from what we're used to, you're able to get smaller amounts more easily. So that has pros and cons. And then looking at how these different funding sources interact with one another. So you know, say I get some early crowdfunding money, what does that mean, later on when I go to get some equity capital?
Sharon Matusik 47:01
And what does that mean later, still, if I want to go to the IPO market, or sell sell out to a buyer, or partner, you know, all of those things and how they interact with one another, we're just really starting to understand some of those dynamics and a lot of room to advance our knowledge area.
Jeff York 47:17
So So basically, and this is how I distilled it down. Feel free to correct me. Yeah, we have to take a little bit different lens on this kind of research. I think it is useful to an entrepreneur reading it in that it tells them hey, you know, we have a limited understanding of some of these new emerging areas. It's, it's great to see that level of honesty in a paper and coming out like this for you know, for a second nemix. I don't know, Brad, what do you think like, you know, we need to understand better where opportunity comes from.
Brad Werner 47:48
I don't see uncertainty as a surprise, though, right, but
Jeff York 47:52
understanding at a more nuanced level. So getting out of this idea that that opportunity is like arbitrage, okay? And understanding how people actually engage in action to foster opportunity. We just don't use that a lot. And entrepreneurship. So this is more like prescriptions. And you can tell us if you think that
Brad Werner 48:10
direction should go. So the takeaway for me is, if you're an entrepreneur, and remember, we're talking about entrepreneurship, and under the lens of starting a business, we have three people from the business school here, but entrepreneurship does not live the school, all around it. So So with that in mind, if you're going to come up with your idea, and you really believe in it, you really, you want to dedicate your life to it, right? In a sense, it's it's a partnership, it's a marriage, that understanding that the execution component is incredibly important. That's the takeaway for me.
Jeff York 48:41
Okay, cool. You did a better job as usual, distilling it down than I did. And then looking at the I think that ties directly into the scaling. I mean, to me, it's like, oh, yeah, that is just the natural language, like, you've got to execute early on your idea. But then you also have to actually on scaling, and I don't know, I mean, gosh, maybe I just missed it. But I don't know that we have a whole lot comparing when some venture scale more quickly than others, and how that I mean, we tend to look at it Right, right. Right. Right. And so that's another thing like that comes into something translatable. And then finally, like, I mean, I think it's, it's this part of the paper is very much mythological. You know, we don't understand how different forms of funding especially the more emergent ones, most of the studies that are done are done on like, one platform, right? So here's how this works on this platform. But there's other studies showing that doesn't generally
Sharon Matusik 49:28
on every platform is a little bit different than the other in terms of the dynamics of what you need to put out there and, and how you get the money or not get the money and all that.
Brad Werner 49:38
But funding I would say is is really needs to be looked under the lens that what is the entrepreneurs goal? Is their goal, just five years and out, right? They want that exit do they want to build a business over generations? And so there's there's some other nuances just besides where does the funding land and your path and funding actually need to be aligned? I guess this
Jeff York 50:02
sounds good to me. So that's a sure. And anything else you would say about that?
Sharon Matusik 50:06
You know, I guess one of the things that we hope comes out of it is just more ongoing dialogue between academics and the entrepreneurial ecosystem to better understand, you know, what are the current issues out there? How are we thinking about them as academics? And why do we need to shift our thinking, and if we can facilitate more of those conversations, I think it's better for entrepreneurs, I think it's better for academics. And so that's one of the things that we hope people will take away from
Brad Werner 50:31
are their next steps for the paper. I mean, it's the kind of like, you're getting feedback, and then go back at it. Well, you know, it's
Sharon Matusik 50:37
interesting, because we just been, we're trying to get the word out more about some of these ideas, and we're hoping that
Brad Werner 50:43
all four of our listeners, we're gonna go, they're gonna, they're gonna, they're gonna pull it up, we're
Sharon Matusik 50:47
hoping to see more research in some of these areas that we've identified, you know, getting people to step back from some of these classic assumptions and what still holds what doesn't hold and we drive that forward
50:57
right now. Awesome. That's
Jeff York 50:58
wonderful. I mean, I think there's all sorts of from an academic like perspective, like, I think the more we do that, the more we actually end up with original ideas, they're more likely to be published anyway. Right. So you know, that's kind of what
Sharon Matusik 51:11
we were talking about in the in the beginning, I think a lot of academics who are attracted to entrepreneurship is, at their root, they have this drive to not only understand things from a rigorous academic perspective, but they do want to make a difference. And they do want to provide some knowledge that's useful to entrepreneurs, and
Brad Werner 51:29
entrepreneurs are thirsty for the knowledge coming out of academics and out of all the universities. And they're looking for a translatable in actionable research to help them yeah.
Jeff York 51:43
And that's what we'll keep working on here on Creative distillation. So Sharon, thank you. So
Sharon Matusik 51:47
my pleasure, thank you.
Jeff York 51:51
And we will be back with more actual insights from entrepreneurship research. Hopefully, lots of people will respond to the call of this paper, and then they'll publish their papers and we can get them on here. And then they can face off against Brad
Brad Werner 52:05
its not that bad
Jeff York 52:07
name, I think thank you both for being here. This has been awesome. Yeah.
Brad Werner 52:09
Thank you, Jeff.
Jeff York 52:10
Thanks again to boxcar Coffee Roasters for having us this is a wonderful thing. It's now five o'clock on a Friday, I just drink a cup of really strong coffee, so I'm gonna go annoy my wife for the rest of the evening. So, thanks. Okay. Thank you.
Sharon Matusik 52:24
Thank you.