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Entrepreneurship For All: Training the Next Generation of Founders, with NC State's Haley Huie

Trevor Schmidt: Today’s guest is Haley Huie, Director of the NC State Entrepreneurship Clinic. As part of the NC State Poole College of Management, the E-Clinic is a place where faculty, students, entrepreneurs and service providers go to teach, learn and build the next generation of businesses in Raleigh.

Haley grew up in Kannapolis North Carolina, and she wanted to be everything from a Mickey Mouse Club star to a marine biologist, but then what seemed like a normal high school job at a florist introduced her to a new way of thinking.

Haley Huie: I got in there and started probably with the least glamorous jobs ever. I was scrubbing buckets and answering telephones and doing all the things that you normally do in your first jobs. But I think that, you know, I, I tend to work hard and I was laser-focused and just trying to download every possible lesson I could gather from that. 

So before you knew it, gosh, I was not only answering the phones, I was making calls, to do collections. I was wiring orders; I was managing events. I was, I was leading a lot of the design they could leave for days or weeks and leave me in charge of running the shop. And I loved wearing all those different hats. It could certainly be overwhelming during high traffic time, but just being able to see the direct impact that you had, we were creating jobs, we were improving the local economy. We were obviously offering goods and services for the community, and I just loved that whole experience.

Entrepreneurship would stay in the back of her mind for a while, and she always had the itch. 

Trevor Schmidt: Haley went on to NC State where she studied journalism and wrote for the college newspaper. After college, she started her career in Washington DC where she freelanced covering business and local government, and then she traveled across the country to San Francisco where she gained experience in education and corporate America, and even started consulting with founders.

Haley Huie: San Francisco was such an incredible experience for me. I met my husband there, again, spent close to a decade, but we really love North Carolina. And it was truly sitting, here in Raleigh we were, you know, grabbing a drink on Fayetteville Street and just noticing what a beautiful and vibrant city it had become. So lots had happened when I left NC State, and we said, Hey, we gotta figure out a way to get back here. We love it here.

So it was around that time that an opportunity came up to join the NC State Entrepreneurship Team which, you know, serves all of NC State's campus and it was gonna be in building a signature program, the Living Learning Village, where students could get their first taste of entrepreneurship. And I said, okay, great.

I have such experience, you know, and a wide variety of ventures and strategy and building organizations. And I love education. So how can I leverage all of this to help others, build things that they're really proud of? So, you know, that was just, gosh, kismet, serendipity, I don't know. But it, it clearly opened the door for us to say, this is the time for us to make the move.

And, and that kind of led us to head back home with Texas Pete, our dog at the time, and then, you know, we have so loved living here. 

Trevor: Yeah. So it sounded like a real vision for North Carolina in some respects. You know, again, I hear you talk or a theme that comes throughout. It's just this desire to improve small town businesses, improve kinda the local economy. Seeing the greatness of North Carolina and having a desire to kind of come back and, and improve that even more. 

Haley: Yeah, totally. You know, it's interesting cuz I feel like it started with really small business in a, a grown-up cotton mill town, but then having the added experience of working in large companies and startup strategy consulting just outside of Silicon Valley, you know, those were fantastic experiences and I think I had to leave and, and gather up a lot of that stuff to really appreciate how awesome the triangle had become.

To recognize that there, there's so much density of talent here. There's so many amazing resources in people. I think this is such an inclusive community., so to be able to land here and say, great, I wanna help improve things here locally, it was like perfect time and place.

Trevor: And now, so I understand that as of last year, you were named Director of the Entrepreneurship Clinic at NC State, right?

Haley: Yeah, that's right. So I've hopped around and done several different things, which has been really exciting. You know, I think coming back to an incredible university, it's my alma mater, helped me think about how I could add value to the local community, how can I, you know, bring together all these skills and experiences and things like that. There's so much talent here and there's so many great people and students are so excited to build on their ideas. And we don't just work with students, right? We work with companies of all sizes in the community. But yeah. So joining the clinic, what is, what is also the clinic? 

So for any listeners who aren't familiar, the entrepreneurship clinic adds value to local organizations, and those could be small businesses, those could be rapidly scaling startups. They could be, large corporations or nonprofits that come to us and say, Hey, we wanna explore this a little bit more, or we wanna develop a product or service. So what we do essentially is we put together, teams who will follow a hospital teaching method, we are gonna put them directly to work on that client and they will have the benefit of being overseen both by their instructors, but also by an entrepreneur or business leader.

so they very much learn by doing, and I think that's what NC State is really scrappy and really great about delivering for each students. We see a lot of value for that. You know, we have businesses that wanna work with us every semester. Obviously we have a finite number of students. So it, it's both that direct application of how can we add value to your organization and creating a really strong talent pipeline coming out of the university.

Trevor: So, and is the clinic then kind of part of the classwork or is this an extracurricular? I mean, how are students getting involved? 

Haley: Yeah, so the clinic is actually, so it's a program that serves classes., students can take classes with us. It's a senior practicum experience. And we also work with instructors across campus with electrical engineering, with students across any college within NC State that wants to minor in entrepreneurship.

They join us in the classroom as well, but also, you know, I can approve people on a case-by-case basis. I, I am a believer that there can be someone who's incredibly talented, it does not fit within their degree audit, but they really want the experience of working on a real company, right. That, that's sometimes hard to do. The experience of working on a startup is often hard if you don't have a startup yourself. 

Trevor: Yeah, well, and I also think that there's so much application for so, such a diverse number of majors of focuses. I mean, if, I don't know, if you're a theater major and you're gonna go out and someday run a theatre. Yeah, it'd be great to have some entrepreneurship experience, understand what a business takes, understand marketing and those types of things.

Haley: That's right. So entrepreneurship for all. Entrepreneurship for beekeepers, entrepreneurship, for computer scientists like you name it. I think that's really helpful just as a combination of skills and mindsets, because when I talk about entrepreneurship, I don't mean that everyone must be a founder, right, to identify with entrepreneurship. I mean that everybody should be able to leverage these skills and mindsets to create some type of value. 

Trevor: So tell me a little bit about some of the projects that you see coming in from like a local business or you know, what is it that these students are working on? 

Haley: Yeah. Oh gosh. So, we'll, we'll talk about this semester cuz there are so many great stories over time. It's a mix of software startups, you know, we'll work with consumer package goods., we're for the first time working with the city of Raleigh with our Office of Strategy and Innovation.

And so one of the core questions that we're answering there is, alright, we have these accessible dwelling units., we think that this can help add income and increase the wealth of Raleigh residents, we think that this can help provide some solution that plays in affordable housing. But one of the core problems is do the people who would benefit from this most even know that this is an opportunity?

And so sometimes the marketing and the planning happens at such a high level, people rejoice., but if we want deep penetration in southeast Raleigh, how are we going out in the community to find the people that would really benefit?, so our students are out actively, testing for demand. They're gathering insights from those people.

They are helping design some marketing campaigns that say, Hey, here's how we're gonna get the information to the people. And sometimes that means being boots on the ground at a YMCA to be able to talk to real families in the community. Right? Sometimes that means going where the people live and work., so that we can better understand where they go for information and how we can get in messages in front of them that will help illustrate the full value. 

so that's a City of Raleigh project. Of course, we're always doing, things like customer discovery work, right? With helping gather customer insights that, will drive either product development, marketing outreach, sales prospecting, anything that helps attack whatever problem or opportunity of businesses. 

Trevor: And what kind of feedback are you getting from students? I mean, what are they taking outta the program? What are they telling you was the best part for them?

Haley: Yeah., I, I see a lot of deer in headlights early on. I think this is, So different. So you come to college, what do you do? You probably try to cram right before an exam or you write a 20-page long paper. This is the opposite. Throw that out the window. We don't use a textbook. we very much are focused on creating value today, And the world changes so quickly.

So we teach a whole week, that is focused on go figure. So we just have G F I O on the board and that is the key lesson, right? What you need to know is not something that you can download from a textbook or something that I can just show you on a slide. You need to not only recognize the problem clearly, you need to go out and learn about it, and you need to help your business partner, right?

They are, they are super limited in bandwidth and hours and resources and all of those things. Even if they work for a multinational company, even if it's a Fortune 500, they're gonna benefit from something that you can offer them, right? I do think that that's a, a huge help. but students really struggle with that.

They are, they come to me, so wanting to fill in a blank. Or like just get the answer on a slide so that I can memorize it and I can say it back to you on a quiz. And that is the, the polar opposite. But I, my firm belief too, that I say to them in the same week is the same things that help you in life should help you in this class.

If you work hard, if you do your part, if you create real value, if you're highly accountable and your results are exceeding expectations. This should be something that helps your gpa. I want it to help your gpa, right? You won't all do that. You won't all make that choice. Some of you will not show up on time.

You will not do your part. You will not be the stellar team player, just like all companies, you know? Not every employee that you hire is a 10 outta 10, right? So, you know, that's, that is an act of choice that you'll make every day, and I hope that you did good, do-good things. I hope that you do amazing things for your company partner.

And I hope it ends up with a job prospect. You know, I hope you go to work for this company, or you leverage something that you learned, and that makes you really stand out as a candidate for your dream job. Or, I hope you download all these lessons and you, you create something of your own, like all of those are possible pathways. 

Trevor: And, and what do you see from your students? Are, do a lot of them come into it with an idea for a business that they're hoping to germinate kind of as they go through this process or are they kind of just exploring just the field. 

Haley: Yeah. My, my non-scientific answer to this is I think they fall into thirds. We got a third that are founders or founder focused, they know they wanna do this at some point and, and hey, statistically we think they might do this really, really well at, I don't know. 38.2 years old, or in their second or third venture.

Like we know, but, but founder focused is certainly a third., we have a third that just say, Hey, I really wanna add value to startups, to small business, to growing companies. I want my hands on something that I know I can build and have a huge impact. Right, right. And there are probably a third that come to us as what I call entre-curious.

They're a blank canvas. They're, they're interested. It's piqued their interest somewhat., but they don't know where to go or what to do with that. And I think those are sometimes the most interesting for me, cuz you almost have a convert sitting in the room. Where suddenly they're recognizing that, you know, gosh, I wanna, I wanna go into marketing or, you know, hey, I've been really focused on accounting, but I wanna think about how to create real good and how I can leverage these skills to do something., or maybe I'm gonna work in fractional roles for a bunch of different startups. Right, right. All of these are possible paths. 

Trevor: Yeah. Well, I, I think it's great to kind of expose them and have that opportunity to see, well, there are a lot of different ways to do whatever it is that you're passionate about.

And, and you mentioned some, like potential to hire out of the program. Do, do you see it as kind of an employment pipeline with the, the partners that you're working with, or is it more just kind of getting the experience that the they have, doing these types of real-world work really. 

Haley: I was gonna say, my, my focus is definitely on the experience Yeah. On both sides of the student and the company., so we're laser focused on that. Are we meeting the milestones that we set out?

The talent pipeline is definitely a baked in goal. You know, we've had students who found internships, immediately, who get job offers right away. And I think that is truly the icing on the cake. I do think that it's not my primary focus. I think it's great when it happens, but what I, I'm interested in seeing is like, what's the long-term benefit of this? How do we plan to seed really early on through these essential experiences that means that somebody is now more motivated, more knowledgeable, more prepared.

When, let's say they go work for Red Hat, they go work for an exciting local company and they're able for the first decade of their career to do incredible things there. They see a ton of growth, but maybe they recognize something on the job that they can spin out and they can solve in a real way. You know, I think it's definitely a short game and a long game. 

Trevor: Now when you talk to these, these students, would you encourage them to spend some time in a bigger corporation before kind of jumping out into a really small startup? Or do you, do you encourage 'em just to kind of jump in and, and, and do that startup?

Haley: Yeah. There's no single path, right? Yeah I, I, I have in my career seen the added benefit of getting significant industry experience. I think learning how to run your company, you are really focused on providing a solution to a target market, and really understanding your customer. But there are so many other questions that you have to answer and things that you have to build to run a successful business.

Are you reducing risk appropriately? Are you managing your cashflow appropriately? Do you understand sales and marketing basics?, all of these things, you know, I watch early-stage founders or co-founders really struggle with, in ways that people who have worked in larger corporations just already come in, having studied or read those chapters in the textbook. Right? 

They've seen it at work., they've recognized things that work or do not work about managing the humans because the human element is so important as well. It's not just your concept, right? You can be the most talented product developer in the world., if you can't also manage humans and, and run your business, then it will be short-lived success. 

Trevor: Yeah, a hundred percent. I, I agree with that cuz I, I think I see a lot of really talented product people who can't manage, and sometimes you have to re realize that early on in your business. To bring in somebody either who can manage or learn to manage yourself.

Haley: Yeah. And, and there, you know, there are certain pieces of advice that float around, which is, you know, hire slow, fire fast, things like that. How do you practically implement that? What does it look like? What is performance management? How do you set KPIs that make sense for your business?

I learned all of those things, you know, I, I definitely joke that I learned business through the school of life., but you do, you download all these helpful insights and now you can deliver that to your own company. And, and that's not saying you'll do it right the first time. Stakes are part of the process. That is another thing I shout from the rooftops.

Um, but yeah, how can you just prepare yourself and, and if you are skipping straight to, I'm gonna found a company that I'm really excited to grow right away. That's awesome. There's a ton of content out there for you. There are people, places, and things here that wanna help you succeed. 

Trevor: Yeah. So it might be a related question, but what are some things that you wish your students knew before they joined the clinic?

Haley: The go figure it out mentality, I think is the biggest change maker in terms of a mindset. So how can you be really willing to go and find the answers that you don't have access to, where you're not expecting someone to show it to you first. 

That personal accountability and curiosity to say that I'm gonna go out and do that. I think creative cognition, critical thinking, cultivating all of those skills. The, the answer to your question is I wish that people really understood that it's really up to them, they have to go figure it out. They have to propose the solutions. That's what really sets apart a lot of the business leaders.

But, you know, another baked in lesson is how to deal with humans. I really wish that people, and they don't have to have that coming into the clinic, but one of the things that I hope that they really, wrap their arms around during the experience is how can I have the hard conversations right with the humans around the table to create the most good possible within the parameters of this project?

And that is one of those soft skills that will help them become a more natural leader of teams and a high growth human. I believe that not only are we trying to spin out companies and really support students in their coursework, we're also preparing people for a lifetime of success. Right? How do we do that in a practical way? We're gonna challenge you on this project. We're gonna be here on the sidelines coaching you, and then it's really up to you to go out and learn it. Right? 

Trevor: Well, I mean, related to that, do you think we as a collective, we in the population are doing a good enough job training students kind of even before college on principles of entrepreneurship. Principles of leadership. Principles of management. Or, or are we just kind of expecting life to teach them or kind of professional careers later on to teach them? 

Haley: I have two conflicting viewpoints on this. I think they're both right. I think they're both wrong. I think it is totally situational, but, but here's some observations. We have, and I'll focus on Wake County for a moment and then I'll widen the aperture.

In Wake County, we now have entrepreneurial design embedded within, magnet schools, right? We have these core principles, so, so that tells me that, Both an awareness of the value and there is strategy behind delivering this at an early stage so that students might cultivate that interest. That's really good. There are clubs now, there are classes., some of the privates do a great job of it. Some of the publics do a great job of it. So that exists, out there in the ecosystem a little bit. 

And then the opposing force that I'll offer is that I frequently in, in students that I meet in their first or second year of college have trained themselves so clearly to fill in the blank, right? They are so clearly trained. In some cases, they're gonna write a paper, it's gonna have an intro, a body, and a conclusion, and they're gonna stick to that framework. And sometimes that does really good things for them that helped them perform to the test that gets them into whatever X opportunity is. 

So that's not an incorrect philosophy, but we have in some ways made people too reliant on that. Right? That they are clearly expecting if I follow this formula, then that will yield the result that I'm looking for. And theories are good, frameworks are good, but being a thoughtful processor of the world around you, I think is the biggest change maker or difference maker in how somebody views a, an organization or their community or a concept they're working on. 

Trevor: And do you see that those changes kind of happen from B students at the beginning of the clinic to the end of the clinic? Is that something you're seeing productively happen?

Haley: Yeah, so I, I do get to meet students at all different stages of their academic journey. Typically, the clinic's gonna intervene later on., so I, I typically get to see people as they're ready to enter the workforce. They're within a year or two. So, you know, I, I think we're good talent spotters. 

I have definitely seen a, a difference in those who followed entrepreneurship courses versus a student who has, strictly studied their discipline and, and probably are incredibly talented and they're gonna do great things in their career. Right? But how they view the world, how they view identifying opportunities, really figuring out if this is a commercializable opportunity. Those are different things. 

So, yeah, I think I, I, to circle back on your earlier question, entrepreneurship for All is something that we genuinely believe in., we work across all of the colleges within NC State. I think in the clinic last semester, we worked with students from more than 30 different unique majors.

Wow. So that's pretty exciting. 

That is very exciting. You have all these people going out to do exciting things in their career, but how can we have that message embedded within all the other critical lessons that they're learning? 

Trevor: So what do you see as the clinic's role, kind of in the broader triangle entrepreneurship ecosystem? Yeah. I mean there clearly there's a role for it. So where, where do you see yourself 

Haley: in that? Yeah., two simple things. Value creation for local organizations and talent pipeline. Those are the two. We can plug in and we can do projects and we can help an organization again, could be a local city government, could be a nonprofit, could be a scaling startup, we get a lot of those, you know, that could also be a really large corporation that wants help. 

You know, we've done amazing projects with Under Armor or with Wells Fargo, Tommy Hilfiger brand. So there's kind of a place for all of it, but also we run the Andrews Launch Accelerator, and I think that that is also an incredible addition to the local community and economy because that helps us work not only with our students at NC State, but graduates up to five years post-graduation. 

Trevor: Okay. Tell us a little bit about the accelerator. 

Haley: Yeah. So we're in recruitment season right now, perfect timing for this. The accelerator's top of mind for me every. This is such an exciting program and gosh, I wish that we could work with a hundred ventures every summer, right? Yeah. I, I wish that we had limitless funds and capacity and, and all of the things.

We typically work with three to five ventures per summer, and we're, we're. Thinking about how to expand that because we've seen, so many signals of success from our cohorts, they come to us across all industries., I can, I can share a couple quick stories from this last cohort, which have kind of blown me away., but in essence, the Andrews Launch Accelerator gives us a chance to offer non-dilutive funding for early-stage startups. 

Trevor: And is there any sort of industry focus or No, it's just, no?

Haley: Yeah. We, we are constantly calibrating to say, who, who can we serve? You know, you can't be everything to everyone, right? So who can we really serve? Like what is the timeline to commercialization that makes sense for us? What's the sweet spot?, is it pre-revenue? Is it early revenue? Many of our companies are pre-revenue or early revenue.

You know, we have certain guardrails on the accelerator companies, but truly it's, you know, students in up to five years post-graduation for at least one of the co-founders. No, no guardrails on industry. We’re not into any of that. We, for example, in this last cohort, Two that kind of stick out to me in, in very different ways., TSB Analytics is an exciting company that we have worked with, and, and mostly the founders really impressed us early on. So it's a combination of, the humans and the concept.

And these folks had also industry experience. One of the co-founders had gone out. Trevor Fury had gone out and worked for IBM as a data analyst. And so he learned all these things from his business analytics experience at NC State. They built a solution that is really geared to help social media marketers work more efficiently.

You know, they are in the predictive. Space. So predictive analytics and social listening. They can also do content creation, content scheduling. So how can they save you hours, right? And help you predict what's gonna be trending, you know, weeks from now or days from now, or whatever it is. So I think that's incredibly helpful.

I think we're living in the world of open AI and thinking about how AI can really be leveraged to serve your business needs., so I think that's really awesome. But I think, you know, on the flip side, we have a hardware solution. So Max Burden is the CEO of Clean E., Max joined us last summer too, and you know, he just had such a laser focus on his target market.

Hmm. He really understood what they need and want., he was very clear too about, you know, when I say go after commercial real estate, I mean usually apartment complexes and office parks where people are, B for a period of time. Obviously there are other folks like ChargePoint that create the electric vehicle charging stations.

You know, I think for Max it's about efficiency. It's about quality. He had already gone out and been pounding the pavement and gotten all these great introductions and built systems and, and he also had industry experience for like a year or two after college that he's able to come back, and fold into his start up. 

Trevor: and, and what is it The accelerator, aside from the, the non-dilutive funding, what else is the accelerator providing for these companies. 

Haley: Yeah. I think if, if we were to ask all of the accelerator companies from years past, and we've worked with about 25 teams now over the Accelerator's history, I don't think any of them would say that the check is the single most valuable thing, right?

It is critical. It is needed. It was a gift from Chip Andrews who is just a rockstar mentor within our community. Chip really saw a gap that existed and he stepped in to say, I wanna help., we could not do this without his support, but I think what he does with coaching, the ventures is just as helpful.

Right? Right. He sits down and he's able to share with them the insights, the connections that he has, the questions that he would wanna know as a more sophisticated investor in a company and really help them understand what their pathway to commercialization looks like. So I do think, you know, having local firms, Lyles Law, Fourscore, you know, Hutch Law, many others who are willing to plug in and say, I'm gonna meet with your companies, and just go through some basics of risk management and mitigation is really helpful. 

I think being able to sit down and help somebody come up with a financial model. That is our best guess at what the next 12 months look like. And, and I hope we're wrong in the best way possible. But like, what, what is concrete planning look like so that we build real companies and not just exciting ideas. 

Trevor: Yeah. Well, and related to that, what, for these companies, either during the acceleration process or kind of first few years after. What are some of the barriers that you see for these startups? What are the biggest issues that they're facing?

Haley: Oh, man. Well, the, the economy right now is a pretty open question. Yes. It's harder to go out and do fundraising in uncertain economic times. Of course., so the answer to that is how do we shore up financial performance and revenue that help people have an increased sense of security in their investments?

So yeah, some things are under our control and some things are very much not. we definitely talk quite a lot about building the business. When is it time to go out and hire for talent to join your team? Right. You know, one of the misconceptions coming into our accelerator program, and I'm assuming most, is that, you know, pop culture worked against us with Shark Tank and others that told people that they just needed to go out and find an investor, somebody who believed in them, to write 'em a check.

and most businesses are not built that way. And then those that are, maybe it's more a question of timing, so, so helping train people out of the philosophy that, you know, the, the accelerator's a 14-week long summer program that we're gonna kick off and we're gonna do, as much as we possibly can to build these businesses.

And we've had really exciting things come out of it. Our, our accelerator companies now bring in more than $3 million in annual revenue. That does not mean that come demo day, that really they're auditioning for people to write 'em a big check, right? Sometimes the goal is to go talk to your friends and family.

Sometimes it's to find an angel investor. Sometimes it is to build your revenue and bootstrap your company and help your cus have your customers help you build your business., so we have to do a lot of breaking down of preconceived notions around what the future looks like and setting concrete milestones to get people where they need to go.

Trevor: Yeah. And so are, are they, these companies making early mistakes or, or do you think it's just kind of that learning process or, and if there are mistakes, what do you see as some of the common mistakes that they're making? 

Haley: Yeah. I say a lot like fall in love with your customer, not your solution. I see people fall in love with their solution. They're so pumped about the thing that they know how to build. They love it. And guess what? Their mom told them that they really loved it too. Right? And that's great. Your mom loves you. I'm, I'm sure she thinks that everything that you create is, is the best this world has ever seen.

But that won't help you if your customer doesn't love it. So how can you really understand? that customer experience, that customer journey. What are they doing before, during, and after they experience this pain point or this gap that exists? How are they currently solving it? What do they wish they had access to?

And that's a tricky one because people usually just give you a, a, a slightly improved version of something else they already have. But like, really imagining where a solution could intervene and improve something, maybe that's a critical need in the community., maybe that dramatically disrupts an industry, but maybe it's an iterative improvement on something else that already exists, which is where most companies come from.

That is a hard thing to do to help them kind of pace that product development that is purely based on customer insights, right? Are, are you technically capable of doing the thing? Great. That's a check, right? Is it a feasible business model? Okay. We think so. We're gonna continue to invest. But none of that can proceed if your customers don't fanatically love this concept that you're building. 

Trevor: And they have to be able to listen to that and adapt and... 

Haley: that's right. And have a clear focus on who that even is. You know, one size fits all, not real well. So really thinking about even if you are creating, I'll, I'll call out Casalu for example, as a wonderful example of this. So they came through the accelerator the year before., Gabe Gonzalez was also the program manager in the entrepreneurship clinic before, so who, who better to have, you know, kind of visibility on early startup struggles.

They have gone out and really created a cravable brand for this rum seltzer product. And that's really exciting because, such a crystal-clear focus on who their target market is, how they can reach them through brand creation, how they can make some noise around their product., it's delicious. I purchase it.

You know, I, I think it's a wonderful product, but more than that, it's a wonderful product that meets the target market where they are. And that is the critical thing for me in business. 

Trevor: That's exciting., so, you know, you kind of talked about ai, you've talked about some other things. What are some trends that you're seeing in the businesses that are coming through?

Cause it sounds like there's a diversity of different types of businesses, but you know, it feels like we move in fad sometimes in the entrepreneur space. Are you seeing that or do you see just a wide variety. 

Haley: Yeah, I, I always shy away from calling things fads or trends only because I, I think that there's, there's value and I don't wanna communicate the opposite of that, but you're right, there's certainly trends.

like, there are things that just pick up interest and, and speed and all that. AI certainly is one of those things right now. Gosh, we've all investigated chat GPT by now and some of the other things that have come online. Which is exciting, but I think, you know, clean tech is, is certainly of interest.

There's a strong interest in sustainability., we've had a number of ventures over the years that have focused on that, from a different vantage point. I think AgTech is also a growing sector in North Carolina. Life sciences, of course, has dominance here in the triangle., we see a lot of those things.

People are, are very much, people, meaning my students and my early alumni, or even those who've been in industry for years or kind of paying attention to those signals, right? And saying, what is something that we can do really, really well? But yeah, I think mobile services is also really of interest.

You know, you got Spiffy. And, and really large companies doing that extraordinarily well., I was blown away by my experience, but I think, okay, great. What's the translation in other services that we, in our everyday lives? I, I hear a lot of concepts like that, and I'm interested to see where they go.

Trevor: Right. That's, that's fascinating. And it's interesting to see kind of again, that juxtaposition between iterative kind of companies versus coming up, coming up with a whole new idea. But you know, yeah. Still being, you can make a great company out of something that iterates off of something else.

Haley: Totally. You know, and, and I spend most of my time with teams and even in my classes introducing it in that way. Examples of companies that are literally just iterations of, of previous things that exist. 

Even, you know, thinking about like your smartphone in your pocket really brought together a bunch of different devices that back in my day, we used to, had to carry around as separate things. 

I actually had a camera and I actually had a laptop and a cell phone, and. And all these other things that were really pulled into one more comprehensive solution that, you know, saves people time, money, efficiency, all of those things.

Yeah, I, I, I'm delighted. I cannot wait to see how other things will improve my quality of life. 

Trevor: That's, I'm excited. I'm a technology fan. I'm excited to see what technology can do for us and see what the businesses that are coming up. So you mentioned that you're recruiting right now for the accelerator Is that's right? So what do people need to do? 

Haley: Yeah., applications are open online. You can find it through our website. And our, our quick go link is go.Ncsu.edu/accelerator. It is available on our website. I would love to see every person working on a concept, even if that's an early-stage idea, or even if that means that, you know, they're beginning to develop more mature revenue channels apply.

Because I'm also a firm believer that the advice that you get going through these things, and we will block a couple weeks post accelerator to meet with any team that wants to download the advice from the judges and investors that looked at their application. And, and I think that's as much a gift as well.

Maybe not as much a gift as the accelerator program itself, cuz it's pretty special., but I think, you know, strong call to action if you have an NC State tie, if you have graduated from NC State, if you have a co-founder within, you know, five years post-graduation. Then it's worth at least investigating the program.

Trevor: Yeah, a hundred percent. I hope people check it out and look into it. And kind of stepping back to the clinic, is there current needs for the clinic? I mean, kind of as far as, you talked about having partnerships and programs. What are some of the needs for the clinic right now? 

Haley: So we, we would love to build the accelerator operations. How can we serve more ventures? and, and what powers an accelerator? Certainly it's the ability to write checks for teams that build them. It's service providers in the community that are willing to sit down for office hours and coaching sessions with them.

You know, it truly is plugging in all of the people and the talent and the resources that we have locally. Early-stage funding continues to be a pervasive need., I think there are exciting things happening with Co-founders Capital and others that have just raised around, but I. in general, people who are able to even leverage connections that help people get to early revenue is a critical need. 

So, so I think that's really a call for mentors and supporters, like who can be the raving fans of a program like this that believes in NC State, believes in entrepreneurship, wants to build the local region for whatever reason. That is a, a huge call to action. And, and how do we do that? Oh, gosh. Just reach out on LinkedIn., shoot me a note. I would love to grab coffee with anybody who's interested in plugging in and helping these student ventures and, and really early-stage companies.

Trevor: That's exciting. And I, again, hope a lot of people reach out and, and, and contact you for it and yeah, it makes me kind of wonder, so what, what is your why for doing this? What is, what excites you the most out of this right now? 

Haley: I genuinely love working with students. I just think they're the absolute best, You know, I am such a fantastic experience at NC State. The fact that you could work at a university and you could impact people's lives in that way was not even on my radar. Even while I was at NC State, I think I was still oblivious to the fact that people can really build a career on helping others and help accelerate what it is that they wanted to do.

I think it was important for me to work outside of higher ed. I think my industry experience makes me more helpful. I think the fact that I've started companies and grown companies certainly helps me speak the language and help them solve some of those early problems. But yeah, why do I do what I do? Because I genuinely love helping people build exciting things. 

Trevor: Yeah. Was the clinic in existent during covid? How did that kind of play out? Yeah. Like what, what did that look like during those lean times?

Haley: Totally. So here's a, here's a quick timeline. So the clinic was actually started by Lewis Sheats,., Lewis is a good friend, mentor colleague, all of those things. And so he worked with a couple program managers, notably Gabe Gonzalez for the past couple years., they were actually the team leading the clinic through the pandemic, and I think they, you know, I, I had the benefit of working closely with them, which I think sort of made it the, the next right fit to take on the leadership role in the clinic.

I think it was hard. People were figuring out survival and what this new world looked like socially and in every other way. That didn't dampen the entrepreneurial spirit. If anything, it sometimes gave people more time and more focus to begin creating these things,. So I think we started to see a bubble, of all of the stuff that was happening kind of undercover and then, you know, once the world opened back up, people were ready to unveil it.

But yeah, moving everybody online for things like our mentorship, meetups and classes, community engagement and accelerator and all of that., definitely had its pros and cons. Right? Right. Improved efficiency is one., but a lack of social connection, amongst the cohorts. I think one of the reasons that people go on to do accelerators and programs like that is because they meet other people that are going through the same experiences and they're not your direct competitors. and they are your support network. 

So how can you become really close with a group like that?, you know, with our, our past couple years cohorts, they're still meeting up for a beer or a coffee all the time, right? And they are there for each other., I do the same thing with them. Like, let's grab a quarterly pint and just like chat about what's going on in your business. How can I help you today? Your needs now are different than they were six months ago, right? 

So I think that is one of the things that really changed over time. I've been in my role for about a year now. So it was really neat to be on the sidelines, helping support, and now in a more direct capacity driving, where do we go from here?

Trevor: Yeah. And do you see any of the learnings kind of from that covid period that are carrying through to today? And you talk about like, some of the things we learned during Covid were, you know, we can't have some meetings that are online. They doesn't all have to be in person, even though in person is great, but yeah. What are some of the efficiencies that have carried through? 

Haley: Yeah. So being able to extend our network, has really helped. How can I hop on and, and I can run a, a panel discussion from investors from Silicon Valley, from New York here locally in the triangle, from all over, wherever they may be, to help deliver insights in a one-hour period that doesn't require people to physically travel to a location, right? 

That's huge. How can I get judges from all over to participate in selection processes? there's so many efficiencies from understanding a hybrid or remote capacity that I think have really helped. It helped us rethink how we deliver content. In some cases, it increased the appetite for people to be able to work remotely in cases., you know, I certainly enjoyed that in my everyday life. I think that's helped, professionals, families, companies as well., because I think there's overall greater satisfaction and retention that comes from being able to, to make this work with your life, work life balance is something that we all have to focus on.

But yeah, just being able to bookmark the efficiencies and hang onto those and then circle back and say, okay, great. If we lost some of that, You know, connective tissue with the, the social elements. How do we go back and build that in? So being more creative about, how we draw people in and we make sure that those are relationships that we're building and not transactional interactions.

Trevor: So you, you talk about kind of this network effect as you see these accelerators kind of continuing to support each other, do you see just, I mean, tell me a little bit about that vision for the network of these companies as they continue to grow and what that means for kind of NC State. 

Haley: I, it's so interesting to see what the future's gonna look like. Truly. I think we're really picking up speed in the accelerator now., one addition that we made last year, which was my first year leading the accelerator, was the addition of junior EIRs. So not just these incredibly seasoned mentors that exist out there, that have started X number of companies or had successful exits or are done really big things.

But also, you know, if I wanna learn how to play tennis, I'm gonna play with somebody better than me. But you know, I don't know if I need to play with somebody from Wimbledon. I need to play with somebody who's marginally better than me also, right? Yeah. Somebody who recently gave lessons., so I think being able to build in that way, keeps people engaged in what's going on in the accelerator, they have a vested interest in helping. 

They got a lot out of the program and they wanna help others., so I think that addition is really helpful. Bringing the backend for socials. Yeah, building even more community around local founders and local organizations, I think is essential., so yeah, I think like that's another primary operation of the clinic is network development in ways that really help. Again, maybe it's people who are entre-curious, that are super talented and wanna plug in with a local startup. How do we create the social spaces and those relationships that will, build really great things in the region. 

Trevor: Yeah. Well, I, I think that tennis example is very helpful cuz you can have an entrepreneur who's at this stage and seeing somebody who just had an exits, you know, it's great. It's, it's exciting. That's, that's the dream. Maybe it helps to see somebody who's just a few months down the road or a year down the road or had their first major fundraise knowing that that's a step that I can achieve. 

Haley: How did you start your early investor search? Yeah. How did you position your product to help make sure that you are differentiated?, who are the, the service providers for these critical business needs as you grow? Like those are some of the questions that you're trying to answer in an accelerator program or with early-stage ventures. Yeah, totally.

If you're a seasoned investor or you're a seasoned entrepreneur, you have people that you can call on the phone and they will invest in you because you're you, right? And because you have a track record of success that is totally different than marketing yourself and your early-stage venture for that, first big win.

Or, you know, even saying like, I wanna extend my runway by 12 months, right? Here's what we need to really get our product in the marketplace. that I think is critical. I also have seen such an uptick in our young alumni and I should say recent alumni, cuz gosh, you can go back to school at any time, look back in.

but really, yeah, seeing those folks come back out and be supportive at the meetups, sending us emails to say, Hey, do you have anything going on? Is there team that I can help? That's a really great way to plug in., so that we even know like what interest is out there. 

Trevor: Wow, that's exciting., so we are the Founder Shares podcast, and so I like to ask all of our guests if you had one piece of advice that you wanted to share with somebody who's thinking about starting a business or just early on in their, in their, in their journey, what would, what would that advice be? 

Haley: I would say go and talk about your idea. I think that's really important. And, and I'm not saying give away your secret sauce, right.

I'm not suggesting that you, you share highly proprietary knowledge around your concept. I'm. So many people, and this fits with the, you know, really get to know your customers, not just what you wanna build for them., you must understand who wants, needs, or would celebrate this thing, and, and open yourself up to, to get all the feedback.

And know that what you end up doing will look different than it exists in your head today. Right? But you can't do that without gathering the critical insight. So that is my biggest piece of advice. Truly it takes a village. Yes., know your resources, but ultimately go out and start gathering that feedback and.

and welcome people to poke holes in your concept. Right? Like, encourage them, say it that way. Help me poke holes. Where could this go wrong? Where, what is this missing? You know, when we wanna be overly protective of our concept, our business, whatever, that's when we never get to the hard conversations that will actually help you build something really valuable.

Trevor: I was gonna say it's an ego check, but you gotta go through it. Because otherwise it's not gonna be as great as it can be. 

Haley: Yeah. What one of my favorite, TED talks too is like what I learned from a hundred days of rejection, being able to defang the feeling of rejection so if you can go out expecting it, wanting it, welcoming it, that I think is just one of those skills that you can build over time. So yes, that is a long answer to your question.

In general founders, my advice is to go talk about your idea, do it with those that you trust. Do it with those in the network that will help you do good things with it. But don't be afraid to get people to poke holes in your idea. 

Trevor: That's great. And so I know we mentioned a couple different things that people should reach out to you. I hope they do reach out to you. What's the best way for them to connect with you? 

Haley: Yeah, connect with me on LinkedIn., message us, you know, our contact info should be on our website.

You can, if you have a company and you wanna apply to work with us, with a company project, you can go through that application all directly through entrepreneurshipclinic.ncsu.edu., but if you don't know where to start, gosh, you can reach out to me. I'm the director of the entrepreneurship clinic, or my program manager is Josh Guder and he is also looking to grab coffee or meet up with anybody in our local community.

Trevor: That's great. Well, I can't wait to see what the next few years bring and look forward to continued success. 

Haley: Yeah. Thanks so much, Trevor. 

Trevor: Thanks, Haley.