Jothy Rosenberg Podcast Transcript
Jothy Rosenberg joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Welcome to Coruzant Technologies, Home of The Digital Executive Podcast.
Brian Thomas: Welcome to The Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Jothy Rosenberg. Jothy Rosenberg is a two-time cancer surviving amputee, book author, host of the Designing Successful Startups podcast, and serial entrepreneur who fought back, survived, and thrived.
With the course of his 35-year career, Jothy built nine startup companies and achieved impressive success. With a PhD in computer science from Duke University and an early career in academia, Jothy transitioned into a tech innovator and an incorrigible entrepreneur, founding startups in fields as diverse as supercomputing and cybersecurity and even a TV production company.
Jothy’s journey has been shaped by personal battles, having lost a leg and a lung to cancer by the age of 19. Rather than slowing down, he channeled his tenacity into extreme sports and building companies resulting in two major exits of over a hundred million dollars each. His book, Think Like a Tech Founder, Anecdotes of an Incorrigible Entrepreneur is a trove of hard won wisdom with 35 years of entrepreneurial ups and downs distilled into essential lessons for founders and CEOs.
Jothy’s story of overcoming adversity to achieve great success is not just inspiring. It’s a roadmap for anyone looking to navigate the treacherous yet rewarding waters of startup culture.
Well, good afternoon, Jothy. Welcome to the show!
Jothy Rosenberg: Hello Brian! I’m glad to be here. Thank you.
Brian Thomas: Absolutely. Thank you for making the time.
We’re just an hour difference you on the East Coast, me in Kansas City. And I know you just got back from a big trip on one of those milestone trips, but I appreciate you making the time. So, Jothy, let’s jump right into your first question. Thank you. You’re welcome. Your journey of surviving cancer and becoming a successful entrepreneur is incredibly inspiring.
How did your personal battles shape your approach to entrepreneurship and building startups?
Jothy Rosenberg: Well, the personal stuff really taught me above all to never give up. And, you know, when you’re doing startups, Lots of unexpected sometimes not very good things happen and you can’t give up. And I’ve had situations where the investors decided that they wanted to shut it down in spite of my, as the CEO saying, no, we don’t need to, we can fix this problem.
And I’ve also had situation where I’ve had to sign term sheets and on the day that we’re supposed to close a financing round, one of them changes their mind and pulls out. And the other therefore is spooked and does to man in that case. I had to lay everybody off, but I kept the company alive. It’s just about never giving up.
Brian Thomas: That’s an amazing story and you’ve got such an inspiration in your personal life, your personal story of cancer surviving and the things that you did that this, the human spirit is amazing. So, I appreciate that. And I think that helped you provide some resilience in your business as well.
And Jothy, your book that just came out recently, think like a tech founder shares lessons from 35 years of entrepreneurship. Can you share a key lesson that you believe every aspiring entrepreneur should know?
Jothy Rosenberg: Well, one of the things that is so important, the most important thing is cash and it’s easy as the CEO to, there’s so many things that are demanding your attention and your time that you can say, well, I got a CFO or I got a controller who’s keeping track of cash and whatnot, but it can sneak up on you and it, and you have to not let it sneak up on you because.
You can’t like be three months for money out of cash and then start raising money or cutting expenses, because when you only have three months of salaries, cutting expenses is you got to cut too deep right then. So, I just want people to always know what’s my burn rate. And given that, how many months do I have of cash before something bad is going to happen?
And therefore, I can plan ahead and. Raise money and whatnot. And the 2nd thing besides the cash is making sure you’re, as you’re starting out, you’re focused on getting to product market fit. And I talk a lot about that in the book, because there’s so many steps to getting to product market fit, but no startup has ever been successful who didn’t prove product market fit.
And you can’t raise a series a without product market fit. And so those two things are what I, how I would answer that question.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. And I know there’s so much more that was a loaded question. We could talk for an hour, probably just on that question alone, but I do appreciate that. I really do. That’s very helpful.
I know that as an entrepreneur, the journey is sometimes brought with challenges and as you explained, and I’m sure in your book as well. So, thank you. And Jothy, you founded startups in diverse fields like supercomputing, cyber security, and even TV production. How do you identify and seize opportunities in such varied industries?
Jothy Rosenberg: I would say that all of those came from sort of two ways of sort of figuring out that that was what I wanted to do next. One is because I was working on something And maybe at a bigger company, or in fact, the 1st 1 was because I was doing research at a university and then saw that what I was working on had commercial potential.
So, that was 1 way and that really got, like, maybe 4 of the 9 came from that approach and the others came from connections that, you know, people would say to me, hey, we got this idea. And would you come, you know, kind of investigate it, work with us, see if you think this has legs. And then they would ask me typically, because I was, you know, just a little bit older than most of the co-founders I ever worked with, they would say, would you, you know, take this on and run with it?
And I would say the others were of that kind of ilk. And it may be that these were founders I’d worked with before. And we decided to try it again, and that’s happened several times. So that’s the sort of personal connections versus something I was working on. That really had commercial potential.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. And I think that comes at the end of the day, and I’ve seen this in my career, you know, through personal connections, opportunities arose. Not even, you know, in the entrepreneur space. And I think the human connection, us humans in the world, really what makes the world go around. I think a lot of times it is that synergy that’s developed in that personal connection that makes all the difference, regardless of what your background is or what you want to do.
So, I appreciate that. And Jothy, as someone who has seen the tech industry evolve over decades, where do you see the future of tech entrepreneurship heading? What emerging trends or technologies are you most excited about?
Jothy Rosenberg: Well, a lot of people that you would ask that question of would say, oh, AI, I always try to resist following the latest shiny object, but I will acknowledge that there’s a lot of things that are still an opportunity with AI right now.
As with anything that’s brand new, a whole lot of infrastructure has to be built out before it really can take off, meaning all these specialized AI chips and so forth have to happen. So, yeah, that’s 1 area, but I have a sort of a particular bone to pick that I want to see solved and that is all the cables that we have to have.
Cables here, cables there, different interfaces, just the, the trip I just took, we had to make sure that a, we had the right adapters for the, for the plugs in the, you know, in the different countries. And then you have to have, well, I got 1 thing for a phone. I’ve got my Bluetooth speaker that takes something else, et cetera, et cetera.
And it’s just, it’s just, it’s just crazy. We’re starting to see this magnetic charging. So, I never plugged my iPhone. Into a cord anymore, or my watch or my earbuds, there’s magnetic charging for those things. And, and think about it, if that could extend to everything, including, you know, your, your computer, and we’re not that far from having even wall current that can be transferred to devices through the air without having to have all these cords.
So, I want to see, I want to see the end of cords and cables in my lifetime. And it’s, I think it’s coming. And I think there’s a lot of opportunities, by the way, that’s why I’m answering this question this way, to doing things with that magnetic, not just magnetic charging, magnetic power.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. I absolutely agree with you.
I think there’s a lot more that can be said about cables and wires and all the other junk that we have to put up with, like Apple a trillion-dollar company valued company can charge us $30 for a charging cable, which is, I think a little bit crazy, but I hear you, I hear you. And I know that we’ll get there soon with people like you, Jothy.
It was such a pleasure having you on today. And I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
Jothy Rosenberg: Thank you. Enjoyed it.
Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Jothy Rosenberg Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s podcast page.
