Bridging business and technology

Mo Dhaliwal

[00:00:00] Welcome to High Agency, where we ignite conversations that drive change and spark momentum towards transformative action and professional mastery.  The ability to bridge the gap between technology and business is more crucial than ever.  In recent reports, we see that 70% of digital transformations fail often due to a lack of communication between tech teams and business leaders.  This disconnect isn’t just costly, it’s a massive missed opportunity.  But what if we could cultivate leaders who speak both languages fluently?  Imagine the potential when someone cannot only envision groundbreaking technologies, but also translate that vision into tangible business outcomes.  In the startup ecosystem, this blend of skills is particularly vital.  re talking about a technology that can be used to create Without an environment where startups don't die, they commit suicide.  And why?  It’s often due to a lack of market need or running out of cash.  The ability to secure funding and validate product- market fit can quickly mean the difference between success and becoming another statistic.  Moreover, in an era where diversity drives innovation, we’re seeing a shift in the landscape.  Women-led startups, despite receiving only 2.  3% of VC funding, have been found to generate a lot of money.  And they generate 10% more in cumulative revenue than their male counterparts.  But beyond the numbers, there’s an intangible quality that sets truly exceptional leaders apart.  It’s their ability to inspire, to see potential where others see obstacles, and to turn setbacks into stepping stones.  So today, we’re going to explore these themes through the lens of someone who’s lived them.  From overcoming personal challenges to navigating the complex world of tech startups, our guests - we’re going to take a look at some of the things that we Ve learned from this journey, offer valuable insights into what it takes to succeed in today’s evolving business landscape.  Today, I'm talking to Dr. Mersa Rehzadeh, who was named the 2022 Woman of the Year in Canada by Bay Street Bull, and 40 Under 40 by Business in Vancouver.  Mersa is a trailblazing entrepreneur and technologist.  As co-founder of Mintlist, she secured $1 million in Committed Annual Revenue Profits.  Mersa was the first woman in the industry to pre-launch and raised over $10 million in two years.  Overcoming challenges as a woman in Iran, mastering ADHD, and breaking national swimming records, Mersa completed her PhD at Georgia Tech in just three years with over 20 publications and patents, and she’s known for bridging the gap between technology and business.  Mersa now focuses on helping startups secure non-dilutive funding and mentoring as an entrepreneur-in-residence at New Ventures BC, Yale, and Futurepreneur. Welcome, Mersa.

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Mehrsa Raeiszadeh

[00:03:01] Thank you for having me.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:03:03] So, first of all, growing up, I am just so happy that our parents weren’t friends.  Because I think my parents would have just pointed at you and been like, ‘Why can’t you be more like this person? Look at everything she’s doing.

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Mehrsa Raeiszadeh

[00:03:20] You’re too kind.'

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:03:22] But you've got a long list of achievements here.  And, you know, I want to talk about that a little bit.  Because you're working in Vancouver as an entrepreneur-in-residence.  You're mentoring other startups.  You're involved in startups of your own.  But there's a whole sort of pre-journey.  Because, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think your plan was necessarily Canada or to land in Vancouver and to be doing this.  Perhaps you started life with different dreams and different ambitions.  So let's maybe start there.  You know, why a PhD in, was it in microelectronics?  Or what was your education?

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Mehrsa Raeiszadeh

[00:03:59] Yeah, microelectro-mechanical systems.  Subsection of microelectronics.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:04:02] Okay.  So, you know, why that PhD?  Why that path to education?  What led you there?  And why did you leave it behind?  I’m sure a lot of it still stays with you, right?  But you didn’t pursue research necessarily or direct research. So, you know, what brought you to that point?  And then why did you leave it behind and get into the world of entrepreneurship?

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Mehrsa Raeiszadeh

[00:04:24] So I, when I finished my bachelor’s in Iran, I went to the States for grad school. After I finished my master’s, I was, I was done. Like I said goodbye to my teachers. I was like, yeah, this is great.  And then I attended my sister’s graduation ceremony.  She did her PhD at Georgia Tech as well, in Electrical Engineering.  And she was one of the honor students that they get up and everybody claps for.  And I looked at my parents and this proud face, like true happiness, you know, that’s shining through their eyes.  And I was like, I’m going to recreate that experience for you.  And right there, I promised myself, I’m going to do my PhD in three years with an OGPA and 20 publications.  And I had to do it because I was like, if I don’t respect my own words, I can't expect other people to respect my words.  So that’s how I ended up doing my PhD at Georgia Tech in Microelectronics.  And one of my sister’s PhD advisors became my PhD advisor.  One of the most influential people I’ve ever had in my life.  And then after my PhD, like in microelectronics and MEMS, usually like the work that I did, microelectromechanical systems, the natural path is to go to like Intel or IBM of the world.  But I was in the States with an international student visa.  As in, you know, Iranian chemical engineer.  So unfortunately, when I interviewed with Intel, they told me they wouldn’t be able to hire me because they didn’t have a green card or like citizenship status.  So, I ended up joining a chemical company because my PhD was in chemical engineering, like microelectronics under chemical engineering department.  And it was a technology innovation leadership that they recruited me for, like nine of us globally, I think.  That was quite an experience too. So, I’m glad I did it.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:06:28] So it's an interesting thing when sometimes I guess things don't work out the way you expected, but it leads to a different path because I'm sure that there are many of your contemporaries who were probably moving on to jobs at large chip manufacturers. And so that kind of created a constraint that maybe I guess forced you into getting creative and finding a different path. So when you joined that company, what was your trajectory there? I guess what I'm trying to get at is even to that point, it still seems like there’s a leap that you took to get to Vancouver. So when did you take that leap and why?

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Mehrsa Raeiszadeh

[00:07:06] I was working in the States for that company, technology innovation leadership program.  So I took two or three different R &D divisions of the company.  So three, eight months.  And then for the last one, I had one of the VPs of R &D fly to Blacksburg, Virginia.  That’s when I was one of my my second rotation was. And this VP of R &D flew there with a crew and they came to see me. I was like, ' I’m a recent graduate. What’s happening? A recent PhD. And then he came and he talked to me. Tell me about your experience with sales and influencing people to buy something to be able to have this repeatable sales cycle. I’m like, sorry, I think you got the wrong person.  My PhD was in microelectronics. I have no idea what you’re talking about.  Have you ever sold anything?  I’m like, no.  I tried to sell the idea of becoming a lifeguard to my dad one summer.  And he just said, how much are you going to get paid? I’ll pay more. Just don’t do it.  So anyways, he came to recruit me for doing my last rotation at the headquarters. Doing it in the headquarters for a project for the CTO of a company. This is like a multi-billion- dollar revenue company.  And it was like the CTO wants to do a project that bridges the gap between sales and marketing and R&D.  To be able to replicate the success stories that they have for specific products or business lines.  And they’ve identified that there’s a gap in communication between the techie people and business people.  And they thought I could be that translator.  So they were like, would you fly to Dallas with us?  So I was like, this person flew to Dallas with them and went on this journey.  That was like the last step before I moved to Canada.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:09:08] Yeah, we don’t actually always give credit to the importance of that role.  I was living in California in the early 2000s when I first encountered a role called Sales Engineer.  And it was odd to me because at that time I was working in Software Engineering.  So I was working with developers.  We’re on the tech side.  And sales and marketing was always a different division.  But because of the nature of the solution, they had this really interesting role.  And I think it was the most polite way of saying that any of their developers or architects that had a personality were promoted to these positions of sales engineer.  So, you get to be client- facing because you’re not going to scare anybody. And the sales engineer role was actually critical in that firm because we were doing solutions that were integrating with companies like HP, Disney; you name it.  But you need somebody that has the depth of technical knowledge, quick on their feet, but also were able to translate that technical knowledge into very business or operational terms.  Essentially, to take some of the hostility out of what can otherwise be very technical jargon.  And I don’t think it’s a role that we necessarily give as much credence to as necessary.  But obviously somebody saw that in you because they said, ‘Okay, we have somebody here who’s got a lot of the engineering and technical mastery.'  But there’s something going on with her such that she can be promoted to actually be facing people and bring some of her personality out.  But you seem to have actually leaned into that quite a bit.  Because I could be wrong, but I feel like you'  re doing less electromechanical engineering these days than you are meeting people, crafting ideas, shaping new ventures.  But you're in a very people-oriented realm these days.

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Mehrsa Raeiszadeh

[00:11:00] Very true. I think that was the second time I got to see the I love technology, business, and people. I love that triangle. And I think every business needs it. Otherwise, how can you survive as a tech startup or tech business?

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:12:23] Yeah, absolutely.  And so that' 's basically where your love of entrepreneurship was born?  Was it the first time you were seeing business, tech, and people come together in some meaningful ways?

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Mehrsa Raeiszadeh

[00:12:32] I didn't know how to spell entrepreneurship when I was in the States, by the way.  I was traveling after I finished my professional program at Seven Needs.  I was like, you know what?  I was go-go since I was five.  I broke the fridge in our house because I was ADHD.  I climbed up to get a jar of jam, fell, and my parents were like, '  You go swim as much as you can.  You're going to get all the energy out of you.'  And then I was like, '  I was go.'  They put me in swimming.  I broke the national record.  And then studying and all that.  And I was always go-go.  I'm going to take a year off and I'm going to travel the world.  I was flying.  No, I was driving.  From Houston to Austin to start my year journey.  And my dad, and I called my parents proud that I quit my job.  I'm going to go travel the world.  I'm done.  And they were like, '  My dad was like, don't you have parents?  Why Austin?  Why not Vancouver?'  I was like, well, I was starting my, you know, my trip.  And anyways, Iranian parents turned around, went to the airport and flew to Vancouver.  First night at the party that I went to, I met the co-founder of Recon Instruments.  One of the co-founders.  And he introduced me to this startup that was doing something.  The process was similar to what I did during my PhD.  They're struggling with scaling of their technology.  Can you take a look?  And I was like, I think I can help.  And that's where my genes got crooked.  And I got into the entrepreneurship world and left the beautiful corporate world.  That'

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:14:08] s where the mutation happened right there. That  Where the mutation happened.

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Mehrsa Raeiszadeh

[00:14:12] But yeah, that's how I joined the entrepreneurship community of Vancouver and Canada.  I wasn't planning on moving here.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:14:21] It doesn't sound like it.

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Mehrsa Raeiszadeh

[00:14:23] It was supposed to be your trip that started in Vancouver and ended right there.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:14:28] Wow.  I mean, there's a fair amount of serendipity in your story, right? But there’s also obviously being ready for those opportunities. So this initial startup that you joined then, I imagine that if there was some spark of entrepreneurship that kind of got started in the States, this probably just continued fanning that flame.  Because what happened in this conversation was you went to a party, met somebody interesting who was doing interesting things, they presented a problem, and it was the curiosity of the problem that probably initially attracted you.  So is that a startup that you actually joined?  Did you continue as an advisor or what was your role there?

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Mehrsa Raeiszadeh

[00:15:05] I joined as the first employee.  Some of my salary at some point for some of the grants and stuff we had.  Yeah, I was the first employee.  And then we won the first place New Ventures BC, money started flowing in, and then we were finding product market fit at the very end.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:15:25] What was the startup?

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Mehrsa Raeiszadeh

[00:15:27] Microdermics. It was a microneedle technology for drug delivery and biosensing.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:15:33] We should have talked more before this podcast. Because Microdermics is a past client of ours. The initial brand, we helped launch that.

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Mehrsa Raeiszadeh

[00:15:42] Oh my gosh.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:15:43] Yeah, that's a skyrocket client. Oh my gosh, that'

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Mehrsa Raeiszadeh

[00:15:46] s why your name is so familiar.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:15:48] Hi, how's it going?

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Mehrsa Raeiszadeh

[00:15:50] That beautiful branding, the thing with the three dots.  That was your work.  I told you I'm Dory.  Dory from Finding Nemo, that's me.  Yeah, that's where it's coming from.  That was beautiful branding by the way.  Fantastic, I loved it.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:16:06] It was a fantastic technology.

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Mehrsa Raeiszadeh

[00:16:08] We'

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:16:08] ll just spend half an hour here just complimenting each other about the great work that we do.

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Mehrsa Raeiszadeh

[00:16:12] One of the co-founders, Sahan, actually started doing another startup based on that because we pivoted from drug delivery to biosensing at the very end.  It was beautiful, fantastic opportunity, but there were some things behind the scenes that happened, behind the closed doors with the board that happened and the company didn't continue, but Sahan actually continued.  I know he launched something else with it and he seems to be doing pretty well.  Maybe he needs you with your branding.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:16:44] Oh yeah, I'd love to talk to him.  We were very passionate about the company and loved the technology because I'm a bit of a sci-fi and Star Trek person myself.  So on the show they had these things called hypo sprays, where you don't insert a needle, you just go and something gets injected into a person.  For me it was realizing these kinds of very sci-fi technologies that I found fascinating.  It was a fun brand to work on.  It was a very cool group.  A lot of innovation happening in the city that we don't realize sometimes.  And in very close quarters.

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Mehrsa Raeiszadeh

[00:17:15] I love what they did.  I remember when I joined, we weren't able to inject into the skin yet.  So the microneedle couldn't inject.  I remember when we actually got it and we built one that we could insert into the human skin.  We were working on dead human skin, right?  I was like, '  I wonder if this works in a human.'  And while someone was thinking, I was like, '  Oh, it works!'  Did you just inject yourself?  I hope no one from Health Canada is listening to the podcast, but yes.  It was really nice to see it working.  It was just like sci-fi movies.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:17:57] Once in a while, you've got to violate some research protocols, right?

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Mehrsa Raeiszadeh

[00:18:01] You'

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:18:02] ve got to make things happen.  So, microdermics.  s fascinating.  So what happened after microdermics?

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Mehrsa Raeiszadeh

[00:18:11] One of my investors actually recruited me out. And that's how I got into consulting.  Then I started consulting for some startups. And I knew I wanted to do my own startup. And I can tell you why. But I knew I wanted to do my own startup. So I was looking for a business plan that resonated with me. And a friend of mine knew that I was in the tech scene. He knew I was itching to build something. He passed on his business plan to me. He said, ' Hey Marisa, I wrote it three or four years ago.' I think 2020 would be a good year to start working on it.  It was December 2019 when we met. And then early 2020 he was like, ' I think this year would be a good year to bring this to market' Or start working on it. And that's how I picked up the business plan of Medlist. I looked at it. I was like, you know what? I would use it. I would use this service. I would totally use it. And that's how it started on Medlist.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:19:16] Wow. And so talk to me about Medlist.  What was that journey like?  Going from zero to one.  Of having the idea literally on paper of something that’s describing a business idea.  But you and I both know that the idea is like 10% of it. 90% is execution, the people you bring together, the rest of it. The other parts of that triangle. So what was it like going from zero to one on Medlist and actually building something and getting it launched?

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Mehrsa Raeiszadeh

[00:19:44] Painful.  Exciting. Rewarding.  Just when you're having a baby and you're delivering a baby. There's a baby coming out of you and that's your business. I think it's beautiful when you see okay, there's a 40-page business plan scratched up with different pens and different colors.  And then you look back and you're like, 'I built a business around this.' And there were people transacting on it. And you have five-star reviews from all these people, hundreds of people. The thing is it's so rewarding that makes it worthwhile with all the pain, with all the hard work, with all the sacrifices you got to make. And I think we sacrifice the overly used word in the startup world.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:20:33] It's just what you do.

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Mehrsa Raeiszadeh

[00:20:34] It's the only way to do it.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:20:36] Yeah. So, just to give a bit of an introduction. So, Mintlist is a marketplace for used vehicles.  So, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but did you have a there wasn’t like an automotive passion here? It was more so the opportunity and the passion around solving a problem that was curious to you. You know, I think a lot of times in entrepreneurship, the norm is that there's always going to be challenges you’re trying to solve. And when you come to that with a lot of technical knowledge and background, you’ve got the tools to be solving the technical challenges. But was there what did you learn from this experience though? What did you learn about entrepreneurship?  What was new beyond just the technical challenge of we have an idea, how do we get it to market?

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Mehrsa Raeiszadeh

[00:21:28] That’s a great question. We did not practice this at all. What did I learn? I think I really felt everything is about people.  I really learned from ' The Book: Good to Great'. I felt it every step of the way.  I felt the need for ' The Book: Good to Great'. I felt the need to read the book that I should have read the book scale up when one of my pre-seed investors gave me the book and it was by my nightstand four months before he said, ' Did you read the book now?'  And then we actually bought it for everyone in the company.  Maybe a little too late.  But what did I learn?  A lot.  Every day is learning.  Because if you’re not learning, you’re not growing.  Because the business is growing.  The business grows so fast.  Zero to one is like a baby.  Every day the baby is learning something.  The business is growing every day.  And as a leader, as an operator, as a co-founder, if you’re not learning every day and you’re not growing, the business is going to outgrow you.  So there’s going to be so many things that I’ve learned that I can share with you.  Just tell me which one.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:22:45] What was interesting to me was because the previous situations you described, it’s like either you were coming into an existing situation or there’s a company or there was already some formation that happened and you were coming in to solve a problem. But this really seems like it was yours. You were maybe taking a model that somebody had put together and there’s a lot of assumptions on model that probably proved true, probably many that proved wrong.  But this was really your ownership for the first time. Is that fair to say?

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Mehrsa Raeiszadeh

[00:23:15] It is. It was the first time that I co-founded the business. Scratch. From scratch and ground up. So yeah. It was mine.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:23:27] And so, that like, you know, we had talked about what life looks like when you found something, when you're involved in startup and entrepreneurship and in general, but what I' m always curious to understand is what motivates that, right?  Because yes, there’s an interesting problem to solve there, but there’s lots of businesses that have interesting problems to solve.  There’s large enterprises that are implementing all sorts of complex technological solutions maybe.  There’s no shortage of things to be done in the world.  And you’d mentioned that you want to get into spaces where you So, re- solving some unique problem or you’re bringing something unique to it.  So what is the unique thing that attracts you and what is the unique thing that you think you’re bringing to the companies you’re working with today?

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Mehrsa Raeiszadeh

[00:24:18] So let me answer the question of like what interested me in Mintless. There were so many different startups that I was looking at. So many different problems I could solve. I’m industry agnostic, right? So I could take on any of the businesses that came towards me as far as the operations goes. The reason I chose this one, a few reasons. Microdermics, we missed the big opportunity in biosensing. So it was that product market fit, right?  We really a bunch of PhDs came together, we perfected the technology and then we started trying to place it. And at the very end we found that potential product market fit. So the product market fit was one thing for me.  The other so that comes from the industry experience, that industry knowledge, right? So that was what’s missing at Microdermics for me. So when I looked at Mintless business plan, my co-founder Mike, he had 30 years of experience on the auto industry. He was the first Canadian president of the National Vehicle Listing Association in the States and won a bunch of awards and done that like serial entrepreneur. So he had that industry experience. And then product market fit was a question to solve based on my past experience. So that’s how we got to $1 million company at AIR because I was like, ‘Hey, you give me a problem, I’ll solve it.' You tell me get to the moon, I either build a rocket or I grow wings and I will fly and I will get to the moon. But I need to make sure there is something on that moon. So that’s how we started signing up the dealers before we wrote a stitch of code to get to that $1 million company at AIR. So that was the other one was product market fit.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:26:05] So those lessons you learned from Microdermics?

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Mehrsa Raeiszadeh

[00:26:08] Because I'

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:26:09] d argue there, you guys flew to the moon. But then you looked around and said, hey, where’s all the people?

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Mehrsa Raeiszadeh

[00:26:16] And then the other piece was culture.  When I was at Microdermics, my sense of ownership, have you read the book The Amazon Way?

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:26:27] No.

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Mehrsa Raeiszadeh

[00:26:28] So their leadership principles, one of the key leadership principles of Amazon that they hire people for and that's how the culture and then they run the business based on those is ownership. And reading that book, I was like, oh my gosh, my number one attribute is my sense of ownership. Anything I do, my sense of ownership is 120%.

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Mehrsa Raeiszadeh

[00:26:51] And it doesn'

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Mehrsa Raeiszadeh

[00:26:52] t have a dial for me to dial it down. So either do something or I don’t. So when I was at Microdermics, I was all in. I wasn’t a co-founder, but I was all in and I was putting my heart and soul into it. And I remember when things were getting tough, the things behind the closed doors, I was like a bird that was in a cage.  I was hitting the walls. I was like, you should do this. Why are we not looking at this? This is so obvious to me. Ten steps down the chessboard, I was like, this is so obvious. This is a very obvious pattern to me. Why are we not doing this? And I remember one of the co-founders looked at me and he said, ‘This isn’t even your startup.'  Why do you care so much?  And at that point, I felt something like a lamp, like a light that turns off.  It turned off inside of me.  And I felt something broke inside of me.  And at that moment, I said, I m going to do my startup, my own startup.  And I’ll make sure everybody thinks they own a piece of that company.  And their sense of ownership is going to be equal or more than me.  And that’s the way I’m going to do it.  And when Mike proposed this business plan to me, I felt he was a person I could build that culture with.  And he really accepted me for who I was.  And coming from a culture of Iranian culture, which is so judgmental, it was such a breath of fresh air for me.  So refreshing that I was like, wow, I can be who I am and it’s fine.  And I don’t have to have this book on my head that my dad does when I was 25.  Walk straight, good posture.  So all of that came together and I looked at the business plan.  And I sold my car and I had a terrible experience.  Terrible experience buying it and selling it.  And I was like, I have a PhD.  I’m smart.  I can solve problems.  But I have such a terrible time buying and selling cars.  So other people must have this problem too.  So it was a combination of things.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:29:06] You know, the ownership part is interesting because we actually have some parallels here.  When I was in my early career, and I was working various jobs right out of school, some of them were tech roles, and some of them weren’t. But I would enter a company and I would literally look around and start figuring out what my role was. But much like yourself, I’m either in or out.  And when I’m in, it meant I was literally making decisions and walking and talking as if I owned the place.  So whenever I had the right boss or mentor, they knew how to cultivate that and shape that.  They knew how to engage me properly. And when I didn’t, one of two things happened. It’s like either there was a period of exploitation where I was throwing myself with a role and they were actually just squeezing me for everything I was worth. And this is when you’re super young and you don’t know.  You don’t have the experience yet.  Or there was instances where it was a little bit closer to what you’re describing where I was getting looked at almost suspiciously like, why are you acting like this?  Why are you behaving like this?  And those were cases where actually, yeah, the sense of ownership you bring to the role, it wasn’t appreciated in the same way.  So for the most part, I think, you know, personally I maintain that sense of ownership, but it You’re not a surprise that I would at some point in life go out and take the experience I had first in advertising then, or sorry, first in technology then in advertising and put that together in a digital agency because you want to feel like you actually are able to make, you have the latitude you have the power to make the decisions and shape your own destiny.  And that part of your story actually really resonates with me because I feel like that ownership that you have with the right team members, it has very little to do with share structure or equity or anything like that because even somebody that has a high degree of ownership to a large extent they  Re- doing it for themselves.  And what I mean by that is it’s not just a selfish interest, but it’s about how they’re going to show up.  You want to show up in a certain way, you want to feel meaningful and effective, and as a result, you’re willing to take on the responsibility, you’re willing to take on the accountability, and you’re passionate and you're happy to push an agenda in that company if you think it's going to help in some meaningful way.  And that’s been a pretty, I feel consistent thread in your life what you describe with your education and your roles after that was about whatever you’re going to do it.  re going to go at really, really hard.  There was a little anecdote and I just want to touch on this just because it was a cool and very interesting story but you mentioned very briefly that you were like a national swimming champion, so was that in Iran or in the States?

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Mehrsa Raeiszadeh

[00:31:53] In Iran.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:31:54] So you obviously brought a fair amount of tenacity to whatever you're doing whether it's studies or swimming or what have you, but early life is so critical and shaping who we are and what we turn out as. You also referenced your parents; you referenced answering to your dad which we’ve all done in my case, my mother and you also mentioned your words not mine, the judgment of an Iranian community so what was life like in Iran and how were you able to navigate having this real drive and sense of ownership and how were you able to express that in Iran before you came to the US or even Canada?

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Mehrsa Raeiszadeh

[00:32:43] It’s a great question. Iran is such a hard country to grow up in because of the pressure in the society and the government but I was very fortunate to have the parents that I have because I think I was 17 when I told my parents, I'm never going to have kids, my parents were like, ' why?'  I was like, because I don' I think I can ever raise kids the way you did provide freedom so I feel I have a choice and I can learn from my mistakes, but there' s a there is a path, there are street lights for me to know where to go when I think about it now that I'm trained as a mentor and a coach, I'm like they were the best coaches I could ask for, and so to answer your question, I was very fortunate that I have parents that helped me to get on that path. Like, I remember my dad said, '  If you want to be a janitor, be a janitor, but be the best janitor in the city and I'll be proud of you, whatever it is. But that comes with a disclaimer.  I wanted to become an actress like the street lights got me to the Stanford of back home and then getting to Ph. D. at Georgia Tech it was all my mom'

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Mehrsa Raeiszadeh

[00:34:12] s there.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:34:15] Some things that are said, and some things that are done, great philosophy, but in practice, it might have been a little bit different.  I get that another major influence in your life that you touched on earlier was your Ph. D. advisor, and I think especially when you’re a driven and high-ownership person it’s pretty rare that somebody can just come along and change the trajectory of your life and keep going. So, what was it about this person that caused them to have such a meaningful and profound influence on you?

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Mehrsa Raeiszadeh

[00:34:50] How many hours do we have? So many things come to mind. Let me start by saying that a few months ago, just a couple months ago, I was thinking about this person, and I sent him a note, and I said thank you, a note.  I was like ' hey, how are you?' and I said ' thank you for investing in me.' And he responded back and said I don’t know if I invested in you or more you invested in me.' That’s the type of a person we’re talking about.  So when I was doing my Ph.  D., it's very much similar to what you just said earlier, that if it's a right fit, if someone understands how to leverage this beautiful talent, this energy, this sense of ownership, and where to place it, each of us is a piece of puzzle, and we all are a perfect fit for another piece of puzzle.  Just that having that vision to understand someone and creating that environment that they will fit into, the other the perfect place that they need to be, it could be their role, it could be anything, and that's exactly what Dr. Cole did for me during my Ph. D. I joined you know a Ph. D. student usually supposed to like research I don’t I tend to find research boring, and if someone else can do it for me, please do so.  What I ended up doing is he identified that before I knew it and I ended up having 10 undergraduates; he had me as the first multidisciplinary mentor in the program at Georgia Tech, so it was a program from EE I hope this is okay).  I keep hearing this so we have like EE had the program that the Ph. D. students would partner with undergraduate students so the Ph.  D. student would become a Ph. D. advisor and the undergraduate students would work as a Ph.  D. student, sort of working on the Ph.D.  Level project, just to see if they liked going to grad school, and he put me on that even though I was a chemical engineer.  I was the first person who went from chemical engineering; he made him put me in there, and I brought this together.  And I had like this chemical and electrical engineering students work with me, and they would do what I would do is that I would design experiments.  So I was I was the creative mind behind it.  I would come up with an experiment, I would design it, I would strategize who’s going to do what, and I would just monitor the work being done, and I would exactly empower the students.  And then gather data, synthesize it, take an analytical approach to it, and then come up and that’s how we ended up doing like 20 plus publications and patents in two and a half years.  And my committee didn't let me graduate because they were like two and a half years, you cannot do your Ph. D. in two and a half years and it As a different discipline, I was like ' yeah, what else do you want me to do'?  So we ended up like my professor, Dr. Cole, was like ‘Hey, just take a trip so I went to the states and then Iran for two months, so I came back and then graduated after that.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:38:07] Sounds great, I mean, but what an opportunity!  Like there’s a lot of serendipity in that as well, right?  I’ve just happened across the right person who can recognize your inherent talent and then cultivate those and pull those out of you so’ I’ m redoing a lot of mentorship now, right?  So, I guess some of that Dr. Cole legacy lives on in MRSA mentoring entrepreneurs today.  What are you seeing with entrepreneurship right now?  Like, what are new startup founders doing?  What are they excited about?  What do you like to see?  What don’t you not like to see?  What’s going on?

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Mehrsa Raeiszadeh

[00:38:41] What I’d like to see more is kindness, like my grandma always said: ' If you have a choice to be kind or to be right, always choose kind.' And I think that would help a lot in business, in every aspect of it.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:39:00] Oof, alright, I'm going to take that one a little bit personally because there are many points in my life where I have the choice between being kind and being right, and I'm going to confess to you that I choose being right like 90% of the time. I'll work on that one, yeah!

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Mehrsa Raeiszadeh

[00:39:19] I think I have a picture of my grandma next to my screen, what my mom says: ‘Always the unsaid can always be said it'. s like trying to bite my tongue when I really want to talk sometimes not that I want to talk my emotions want to talk and that' 's a good time to pause yeah but in the entrepreneurship world I would love to see what we're discussing about the founder day that Chris from Panage Ventures did yesterday I would love to see that more bringing the OGs and the new startup entrepreneurs the startup founders and entrepreneurs together because there's so much so much knowledge and experience that we can leverage there are people who

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:40:13] ve been here before and have done fantastic work and I think Vancouver being a small market sometimes we' Re guilty of a bit of amnesia where we' re chasing there' s still a little bit of an inferiority complex it is a smaller market and so we' re looking to the next, looking to the new and just moving on and being progressive to a fault almost but yeah, the founder' s day I do feel like they really did it right because they had almost like a heritage feel you know intergenerationally because it' s like okay there' s a legacy we do actually have like ancestry almost that' s in the room from people that have actually done some amazing and incredible things and why wouldn'  t they still be a part of this community and continuing to share their story right but I do feel like that happens in some spaces that are a little bit smaller that kind of have this amnesia but I think the way to counter that is through more sharing and storytelling and that was a big theme of yesterday as well was you know in the realm of entrepreneurship yes being focused on your outcome the impact you'  re trying to make solving your problem that'  s important, but sharing bringing people along is important too, right?  And they told those stories in very impactful ways.  Sometimes people take you know the kindness side, sharing the coming together; they take these as kind of like the bonus, it’s the cherry on the top once you’ve kind of solved everything else.  But they were able to actually point at San Francisco as a market right where people are moving incredibly fast, but it feels almost open-source because there’s a shared understanding that execution is everything - right?  So nobody’s gatekeeping; nobody’s really hiding a lot.  Everybody’s talking about everything because the assumption is that there’s plenty to go around, and at the end of the day, it’s whoever moves fast and executes well is going to win anyway, so why gatekeep?  Why try to be private?  Why be siloed?  So, no benefit in that right, but in small markets, I think sometimes we fall into that habit a little bit.  So you know, aside from attending Founders Day, how are you trying to break that up with the entrepreneurs you’re working with like do you still see some of that siloed thinking where they’re really, you know, a new entrepreneur or a new startup that you’re working with they’re hyper-focused which is necessary but have you been able to sort of help them break down some of their own silos or maybe even curb some of those behaviours?

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Mehrsa Raeiszadeh

[00:42:36] Some of the startups that I work with are in that zero-to- one much closer to the zero, they don’t even know the entrepreneur, the entrepreneur community here, so it’s all about getting them in the community connect them with the other founders that are ahead of them or in the same industry but been there done that multiple times, so I’m doing that a lot for my mentees.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:43:03] That sounds perfect because that’s I mean, just about the most impressionable place right, because you don’t have a lot of hardened behaviours yet, right?  Of somebody who’s been a serial entrepreneur yet, so I feel like that.  Is the right time to catch them, yeah?

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Mehrsa Raeiszadeh

[00:43:14] And getting to know the different stakeholders like government grant providers, the VCs, the super angels, and angels, mentors, advisors like there's so many amazing people in this community that are willing to help, and they have those resources to deploy.  And you just have to make that connection again, like find that piece of puzzle, connect them, and make sure that they have this rough edges smooth, and then fits right in.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:43:44] So as you’re an entrepreneur-in- residence at New Ventures BC, so what’s the thing that you find yourself saying all the time to early-stage startup founders?  Like what’s the thing that’s coming up time and time again?

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Mehrsa Raeiszadeh

[00:43:59] Do you play poker?  Do you know poker?

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:44:01] I play poker a little bit I can’t say I' 'm good at it by any means and I can

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Mehrsa Raeiszadeh

[00:44:05] t say I have a poker face okay the first and best advice I got from one of my friends who was teaching me how to play poker she said don'  t ever fall in love with your hand if you have pocket aces and that'  s not your flop don'  t think twice fold it and that'  s what I say the most to my startup founders take that prejudice and that that need to convince people this is the right idea and convince yourself that'  s the right idea take that away and don'  t fall in love with your idea don'  t fall in love with your business then that gives us that sense of reality to think is this the right market is this the right customer is this the right solution the second thing that I say the most do you want to know absolutely everyone is an investor in a startup we don'  t have founders we don'  t have employees we don'  t have advisors we only have investors the founders are the first investor of that business plan because you'  re investing your life into it you could go work somewhere else and get paid a lot and not have a sleepless night and you don'  t have employees because they'  re investing their career in you and your business plan and your ability to execute and they could be making more money elsewhere as well absolutely so I think if we as founders have that hat on always to think that I'  m an investor in this business plan and everyone else is an investor and that having kindness versus being right and then we'

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:45:42] re amazing founders then wow so kindness versus being right for sure everybody's an investor and don't fall in love with your business don't fall in love with your hand because the obvious implications of that is that your business will break your heart the thing is that and don'

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Mehrsa Raeiszadeh

[00:46:05] To fall in love with your hand is at different stages sometimes. You hire this CMO, and you have this amazing well-go-to- market strategy, and then we have this competition like ours raise 250 million dollars in the same market. What are you gonna do then? Don’t fall in love with it; you gotta change, you gotta pivot. So it applies to different stages and different things in the business absolutely well.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:46:32] Mirza, this has been a fantastic conversation. Thank you, yeah thanks so much for your time, and thank you for coming in. Where would somebody learn more about Mirza Rehzadeh and everything that you have going on?

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Mehrsa Raeiszadeh

[00:46:46] LinkedIn, I think I'm most active on LinkedIn if someone needs help or they wanna reach out alright

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:46:52] ll go find you on LinkedIn.

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Mehrsa Raeiszadeh

[00:46:53] Thanks for coming in, thank you for having me alright.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:46:55] Well, hopefully we've given you a lot to think about don’ To forget to like and subscribe, and we will see you next time