KP Unpacked

A Biology Lesson for Startups

• KP Reddy

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Startups are living organisms, constantly regenerating and evolving—much like human cells. In this episode of KP Unpacked, KP Reddy dives into the parallels between biology and business, sharing insights inspired by his recent LinkedIn post. Together with Jeff, they discuss how startups must continually adapt, refine teams, and restructure priorities to thrive in a fast-paced world.

Key takeaways include:

  • Why startups must embrace "refactoring" of teams and talent.
  • How leadership priorities shift as businesses scale.
  • The importance of recognizing and addressing startup fatigue.

Plus, hear KP’s thoughts on how AEC firms can apply these lessons to remain agile and innovative in a competitive industry.

Don’t miss out—tune in now and discover how to ensure your startup or firm doesn’t just survive but thrives in today’s ever-changing landscape.

💡 Upcoming Event:
Join KP in Phoenix on February 25th for a One-Day Mastermind Event, connecting innovation leaders, founders, and VCs to tackle the future of AEC. Learn more HERE!

Speaker 1:

Ready to level up your strategy and solve shared challenges with industry leaders? Join us for a one-day Mastermind Meetup on February 25th in Phoenix, arizona. These quarterly meetups are your chance to collaborate with top minds from AEC and tech industries and explore innovation strategies that can transform your business. Experience firsthand what our Mastermind program is all about connecting with peers, tackling shared challenges and gaining insights you can't get anywhere else. Each meetup is hosted in a new city, bringing fresh perspectives and unmatched networking opportunities. Don't miss out. Visit kpreadyco slash events to learn more and secure your limited spot at a Mastermind meetup. Today you are listening to KP Unpacked with KP Ready a weekly dose of insights for innovators and startups from the built environment and beyond. Want more discussions like this? Join KP's exclusive online community, the Catalyst Network, to learn more. Visit kpreadyco slash Catalyst Network To learn more. Visit kpreadyco slash Catalyst Network.

Speaker 2:

All right, welcome back to KP Unpacked. This is my opportunity to ask KP Reddy, the CEO and founder of KP ReddyCo and also the founder of Shadow Ventures. Hey, kp, I just read your LinkedIn post. What were you thinking when you posted that my name is Jeff Eccles? I'm a senior advisor at KP ReadyCo and, as always, I'm joined by KP Ready. Hi, kp.

Speaker 3:

Hey Jeff.

Speaker 2:

Happy New Year. By the way, what's the official?

Speaker 3:

date in January where you're no longer allowed to wish people happy new year. I don't know.

Speaker 2:

And it really doesn't matter, because somebody's listening to this in August.

Speaker 3:

It's January 15th is what I understand. January 15th at noon Eastern. You're not allowed, no longer allowed.

Speaker 2:

All right well, let's record about six more of these today.

Speaker 3:

It's like white pants after Labor Day.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I don't understand.

Speaker 3:

I know I put my white pants away. I know I put my white pants away.

Speaker 2:

I'm usually pretty safe on the white pant front. I was reading this post and actually, as we're recording this now, it was just yesterday that you posted this, and it's it's the time of year for this type of post. You talk about longevity and.

Speaker 2:

I'll. I'll read the post here in a minute. But health, longevity you know, how do I get better in 2025? Those types of things? I thought, yeah, this is this feels I get better in 2025, those types of things. I thought, yeah, this feels right and it's fascinating. So I'm going to read this and, as usual, I'm going to ask you okay, what was it that you're reading? You mentioned it here in the post, but what led up to this post and why were you reading this thing? So the post goes like this I was reading about longevity, et cetera, and ran across this your cells regenerate on average every seven to 10 years. I feel like for a startup, it's probably even faster. The churning of staff as a startup organism grows includes the removal of dead cells and adding new ones. So you know, we've got some stuff going on there, right? So what were you reading about longevity? I'm curious about that.

Speaker 3:

First, Well, you know, Jeff, at our age.

Speaker 2:

That's where we're going, okay.

Speaker 3:

At our age. You know we're always looking to biohack and figure it out. Right, like, eat more protein, take these supplements intermittent, fast yoga, like all of it. Right, manage our dopamine better. You know all this stuff, so I'm constantly reading this stuff, um, I've been actually really enjoying peter diamandis. Uh has been posting some interesting stuff. If you're in the podcasting world. Peter attia wrote a great book called outlive, uh, and then huberman as well in the pods. Bright um has some interesting stuff. So, you know, you reach a certain age and you start consuming all this stuff, um, and so I was reading something about the whole idea that we lose, like, I mean, skin cells is insane. I think it's like a million skill so skin cells a day or something.

Speaker 3:

It's quite disgusting it is as you look around your house or your office it turns out that dust on the on my bedside table isn't dust, it's my skin cells I guess maybe that explains why my house seems to get dustier yeah, there you go, so, but but I thought it was interesting because you know all the various analogies of uh, of a startup, right, people say, oh, it's a baby and you're growing it and all this stuff.

Speaker 3:

And so if you look at a startup as an organism of any kind that's developing from the seed, the embryo of an idea, right and onwards, it's a constant. It's a constant changing, right, it's constantly changing and growing. And one of the reasons it was triggered a little bit, one of my portfolio companies, icon. There was a press release about, oh, they laid off a bunch of people. And of course, I'm getting like these text messages from people like, oh man, I'm so sorry, oh, I hope they turn it around, like this doom and gloom thing. And I'm like, what are you talking about? Like, business objectives change without talking out of turn. Icon's fine, right, without talking out of turn Icon's fine. But what happens is the business changes, the priorities change the type of people you meet, business models change the skills and talent, and then, honestly, there's startup fatigue. I mean, I have a founder that I coached. Many of you probably have met him because he comes around a good bit. He has a unicorn and I remember when he started, I helped him start that company and he had like 25 people writing code in his house and they're writing code for like six months and they were doing it nights and weekends. He wasn't even paying them. It was like, hey, if we can build this thing, I'm gonna raise money and then you, then I'll make you part of this. The interesting thing was they built it, they raised money. Maybe about 10 of those people moved forward because and then it was like probably zero percentage of those people existed a year later.

Speaker 3:

Because you start to find out like, well, the people I need that can hack code together nights and weekends serve a purpose for that. They may not be the long-term disciplined product builders that you need as you scale your business right. Writing a bunch of code without documentation, kind of just running rogue and building stuff. That might work in the early days of a startup, but once you have customers on it, you have to start. Maybe you don't care about cybersecurity at the beginning, so maybe you don't care about performance. Like, oh, I've got two users. I'm not really that worried about the performance of the code base. You get 200 users on a stuff that was unforeseen, so you need to go back and clean up some stuff and optimize some stuff.

Speaker 3:

So there's also a refactoring of staff and it doesn't make that person bad. It means that sometimes people get burned out Like hey. I mean, I have a former employee of mine. It's a fascinating story. He started as my receptionist. He's now a partner at one of the big three consulting firms and it was so funny. We're super close friends and he was at my third startup with me and he was like my COO. He'd gone from receptionist to COO and we sold that business. And he looks at me. He's like KP, I love you, man, I'll do anything for you. And that's the problem I can no longer work for you. It is not good for my health.

Speaker 2:

It's not good for my wellbeing, because I will literally, I will run through a wall for you. Good for him.

Speaker 3:

And that's not healthy.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 3:

He's like I can't do this again with you, like I cannot do this again with you, like we're not going to start something else and do all this stuff again and deal with the craziness. I was like, well, what do you want to do? And he told me I ended up getting him a job. You know where he something he wanted to do. Right, I wore that guy out like I literally, literally wore him out. I look at him now on Facebook. I was like man, he looks great. It's amazing what less stress does for your health and well-being. It's amazing what not being around my chaos does for you. So I think that happens right. Sometimes the skills you need today are different, sometimes the specialization we're going through a little bit of a transition, right. So we hired ethan our new podcast with. Because you got busy like you couldn't do all the things involved in putting this podcast together. Because it's grown, we've it's become popular um, it's the number one podcast in ac innovation do we?

Speaker 2:

we get a medal for that. Yeah we do um you know producer ethan, you need to put a photograph of our metal yeah can you please? Nobody, please do not fact check.

Speaker 3:

Please do not fact check me and send me comments so you know, they must have misheard that.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, we needed different. It's growing right. We needed more help, we needed more specialized skills, we needed someone focused on this and, like I told you, I was like hey, jeff, we just need to make sure that you're just like the on-air talent you show up and do your thing and you don't have to worry about anything else, right? So just the business evolves, right, the business evolves and so I think when you look at a startup and you think about it as an organism, you're constantly evolving and the best founders I know are pretty relentless about this. They don't let a dead cell stick around for very long. There's not a lot of bureaucracy to hide behind. They realize if they're scaling really fast. The VP of sales they had a year ago that was great at managing a team of 10 is no longer the person that can manage a team of 100 and do great financial forecasting and all the things that come with that, or recruit people that well. Same thing with CFOs. Most startups do not need a CFO on day one. They need an accountant, but over time they might need a real CFO. So I think it's the organism as it grows and the thing is, unlike maybe humans or other animals, that we grow linearly, right. We just keep getting bigger and bigger and then we stop growing.

Speaker 3:

Startups go through shrinkage too, right, they'll grow and then they'll contract, and then they'll grow and then they'll contract. It's very common, right? Because maybe they realize like, oh, we've grown and the business we're in the margins aren't that great. We need to pivot into a different business. You know, ebay started off by trading PEZ. Dispensers was their first model. I don't think that's what they do anymore I haven't been on the eBay lately but these businesses evolve and change, and the people you need it's just a different. You know it's a different business, and so I really. When it comes to founders, I don't think they should constantly wake up every morning going, hey, this is the team I have and this is what it is. They should be constantly reevaluating their team. They should be constantly evaluating things and making changes as needed, because it's an organism and um, and many times the company that started out was where it ends up. Who knows, right?

Speaker 2:

Right, right, and it's you know, even, even in a traditional AEC firm, especially larger firms. I remember, when you know, when I graduated and went to work in a traditional AEC firm, especially larger firms, I remember when I graduated and went to work in an AE firm in Chicago, we had a particular specialty which meant that we were working on a certain phase of a certain prominent facility in the city of Chicago, once every couple of years, two or three years, something like that, and we would staff up and staff down, right, there would be a dedicated team to that next expansion and then they would go away. And it was, you know, part of it was skill set, part of it was bodies, and you know this shouldn it was skillset, part of it was was bodies, and you know this. This shouldn't be that hard, I don't think, for people to to grasp. It happens, happens all over the place.

Speaker 3:

No, so so I think that's one of those things. So I think at startups really and I hate to use the term ruthless, I would say just more, relentless is probably the right word.

Speaker 2:

Sure.

Speaker 3:

Cause these are people and all that, but I think you use the term ruthless. I would say just more relentless is probably the right word. Sure, because these are people and all that, but I think you see it a lot. You see it Same person that's doing sales is also doing marketing. I think there's also a point where I say this all the time, like hey, we're not trying to deliver a world-class podcast or a world-class event necessarily award-winning events per se, you know, but guess what? Now I'm like no, we need to deliver award-winning podcasts. The objectives change over time as you get better, and sometimes the team you have can deliver that better, and sometimes the team is just really good at delivering the 80% solution. Right.

Speaker 3:

And the 80% solution goes a long way in startup world.

Speaker 2:

Right Pareto's principle, the 80-20 rule for those of you that want to Google it?

Speaker 2:

Yep, absolutely All right. So if you just joined us I don't know how I say that all the time, I don't know how you jump in at this point in the conversation, but right now, kp and I are unpacking one of his LinkedIn posts from I guess it would be January 12th 2025, as you're listening to this in August or September. So we do this once a week. If you're not following KP on LinkedIn, you should be. Just look up KP Ready R-E-D-D-Y on LinkedIn. He posts once, twice, three times the latestEC world the things that affect the built environment.

Speaker 2:

So you should definitely be following him and we come here once a week to unpack one of those posts. The post that we're talking about right now goes like this I was reading about longevity et cetera and ran across this your cells regenerate on average every seven to 10 years. I feel like for a startup, it's probably even faster. The churning of staff as the startup organism grows includes the removal of dead cells and adding new ones. So, kp, thanks for sharing the insights around this and also the resources, the sources, uh, the information on longevity.

Speaker 2:

You can go back to the beginning of the episode and, and, uh, maybe producer ethan can drop in some some links in the show notes as well, but um, so that's a good stuff there, not not only for human biohacking, but also the realities of startup and and other types of businesses. So thanks for the insights on this and I'll see you again next week. And for everybody that's out there, thank you for listening. One thing we didn't talk about today that we probably should have touched on is the fact that, speaking of startups, we will be in Phoenix on February 25th for our next one-day mastermind event. Many of our current mastermind members will be there. A lot of those folks are the innovation leaders, the directors of innovation, chief innovation officers, ctos, cios. We also have construction technology leaders there. We'll have some founders there. We'll have some VCs there, probably some sustainability folks there as well, and we'll dig into the topics that matter in terms of innovation in the built environment.

Speaker 2:

So you can get exposed to conversations like this where we're going to dig into real world situations around the future of AEC business and innovation in AEC. So if you want to know more about that, go to kpreadyco slash events and I believe it's the first event at the top of the page at that URL, so check it out, apply to join us there. We'll see you in Phoenix. We'll be back here next week for the next episode of KP Unpacked. Thanks, kp. Thanks everybody, see you next week.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for listening to another episode of KP Unpacked. You can connect with KP Ready today at kpreadyco that's K-P-R-E-D-D-Yco, and additionally follow him on LinkedIn at wwwlinkedincom. Slash IN slash KP Ready Until next time.