In this episode of the AlchemistX Innovators Inside Podcast, Ian Bergman sits down with Nathaniel Smith, Epicenter Memphis’ Director of Programs, to dive deep into how Memphis is evolving into a tech-driven innovation hub. The conversation spans topics from leveraging regional assets to tackling complex industry challenges.

Here are the five main takeaways from their conversation:

1. Leveraging Unique Regional Assets

Memphis isn’t just another city—it’s a powerhouse built on strategic geographical and industrial strengths. Nathaniel explains how Memphis’s status as a major logistics hub, combined with its thriving medical device sector, creates a unique environment where innovation can flourish. The city’s physical infrastructure, from the world’s busiest cargo airport to robust rail and highway networks, serves as a solid foundation for tech-driven solutions that enhance efficiency and competitiveness.

2. The Power of Customer Discovery

A key component of the discussion centers on the importance of customer discovery. Rather than rushing to develop solutions, companies in Memphis are taking the time to deeply understand the specific challenges faced by industry players. By engaging directly with logistics firms and other stakeholders, innovators are better equipped to tailor their technologies to meet real-world needs—ensuring that the solutions are both practical and impactful.

3. Collaborative Partnerships Drive Growth

Collaboration is at the heart of Memphis’s innovation ecosystem. Through initiatives like the Opportunity Challenge, startups and established corporate partners come together to share knowledge and resources. This partnership model not only stimulates the growth of startups by providing them with critical industry insights and customer feedback but also helps large companies stay at the cutting edge of technology by integrating fresh, innovative ideas into their operations.

4. Building Trust and Long-Term Relationships

Trust is a crucial element in any innovation journey. Nathaniel emphasizes that successful innovation is not just about deploying new technology; it’s also about fostering long-lasting relationships. In Memphis, building trust between startups, corporates, and the broader ecosystem ensures that all parties are committed to continuous learning and improvement. This relationship-building approach creates a cycle of innovation, where shared successes pave the way for future collaboration.

5. Focused Innovation Programs Transform Traditional Industries

Finally, the episode sheds light on the impact of targeted innovation programs. By concentrating efforts on specific sectors like logistics and medical devices, organizations like Epicenter are driving significant economic and operational improvements. These focused initiatives help traditional industries adopt tech solutions that solve not only persistent challenges, such as cargo theft and communication inefficiencies but also open new avenues for growth and sustainability.


Memphis is proving that with the right blend of regional strengths, customer-centric innovation, and collaborative spirit, even traditional industries can be transformed through technology. Whether you’re an innovation agitator or a corporate leader looking to stay ahead, these insights offer valuable lessons on how to harness local advantages and drive meaningful change.

Ready to learn more? Tune in to the full episode of the AlchemistX Innovators Inside Podcast and get inspired by the innovative journey unfolding in Memphis.

Timestamps

👋 Guest Introduction: Meet Nathaniel Smith, Epicenter Memphis’ Director of Programs (00:00:00)
🌐 Exploring the Memphis Ecosystem and Regional Economic Impact (00:02:33)
🔄 Epicenter Memphis’ Evolution: Pivoting from Broad Entrepreneurship to Tech Innovation (00:04:27)
🤝 Connecting Corporate Partners with Startups Through the Opportunity Challenge (00:13:41)
📈 Measuring Outcomes and Driving Economic Growth Through Innovation (00:16:01)
🚀 Case Study Spotlight: Ship Flow AI and the Impact of Industry Feedback (00:22:34)
🛡️ Deep Dive into Cargo Theft: Challenges and Tech-Driven Solutions (00:35:43)
📞 Overcoming Communication Challenges in a Fragmented Logistics Industry (00:39:55)
📊 Navigating Data, Regulations, and Global Supply Chain Complexities (00:43:07)
🤔 Practical Advice for Innovation Agitators on Leveraging Regional Strengths (00:46:24)
🎧 Closing Remarks (00:49:34)

Full Transcript:

00;00;16;21 - 00;00;39;05

Ian Bergman

Welcome to season six of Alchemist x Innovators Inside the podcast, where we explore the world of corporate innovation and dive deep into the minds and stories of innovation, thought leaders crafting the future. I am your host, Ian Bergmann, and if you're an innovation agitator like me, then this is where you want to be. Good morning.

00;00;39;07 - 00;00;40;09

Nathaniel Smith

Good morning again.

00;00;40;11 - 00;00;43;00

Ian Bergman

It's good to see you. Welcome to Innovators Inside.

00;00;43;02 - 00;00;48;06

Nathaniel Smith

Thank you. I'm happy to be here. I appreciate, Alchemist having me on, and it's great to see you again.

00;00;48;08 - 00;01;02;07

Ian Bergman

Yeah. Ditto. Last time we had a chance to have a real conversation was in person in Memphis. So now I'm looking forward to this. Actually, we get to stare at each other through a camera with fancy microphones in front and have a bit of a conversation.

00;01;02;10 - 00;01;04;26

Nathaniel Smith

Exactly at a little higher production value.

00;01;04;28 - 00;01;27;21

Ian Bergman

Yeah, there you go. Well, I don't know. It's pretty fun last time. Well, so for folks that don't know you, I want to introduce you briefly. I'm really pleased to have Nate Smith joining us on the podcast today. Nate is epicenters director of programs, leading the nonprofits programing for startups and corporate partners. And this entails a pile of really interesting work.

00;01;27;21 - 00;01;39;23

Ian Bergman

There's classroom style education partnerships. And then one of the programs is one that we're going to spend some time talking about today. Connecting your corporate partners with startups and their innovation. Is that right?

00;01;39;26 - 00;02;00;22

Nathaniel Smith

Yes, exactly. Yeah. We've got a whole bucket of programs. I say that, you know, anything series A or earlier from a startup perspective. We've got some program that will be relevant to you. And then we also work with corporate partners and Memphis's biggest industry. So right now that's logistics and medical device. But we hope to expand it to some of our other biggest industries in the future.

00;02;00;22 - 00;02;05;11

Nathaniel Smith

So tell all of your friends who give out grants to say yes to our proposals.

00;02;05;15 - 00;02;33;28

Ian Bergman

Yeah, well we will and it's it's really fun. So, you know, I've gotten to know the Memphis ecosystem a bit better over the last couple of years, Alchemist has had the opportunity to partner with your organization, epicenter, to kind of put some staff into Memphis and to see the incredible entrepreneurs and the incredible industry leaders and the incredible challenges that exist in terms of trying to keep up with the pace of change in the world.

00;02;33;29 - 00;02;49;08

Ian Bergman

I've learned a lot, but before we get into that and get into some of your lessons, Nate, I'm wondering if you can tell me a bit about epicenter. You're a fascinating organization. And so tell me a bit about your mission. Tell me a bit about what you do day to day.

00;02;49;11 - 00;03;11;05

Nathaniel Smith

Thank you. Yeah. So, you know, our mission, broadly speaking, is to do economic development in the greater Memphis region, the upper Mississippi Delta, as we say. You know, I think if you could draw a circle around Memphis that extends to little Rock in the west and Nashville in the east, Jackson, Mississippi in the south, and the the boot heel of Missouri in the north.

00;03;11;12 - 00;03;27;22

Nathaniel Smith

That's broadly defined. What we see as our as our region. And that's because Memphis is the biggest city in that circle. So we call ourselves the New York City of the Delta. And that kind of bears out in the way that, you know, we're the international airport that people fly to or the place that people come to buy cars.

00;03;27;22 - 00;03;49;18

Nathaniel Smith

So that's, you know, as we're going to probably return to multiple times in this conversation, that's one of our, our assets that we have that might not seem like it as much at first blush, but that is where we are. So I said, economic development. How do we do economic development? We're big believers in innovation and the tech economy as a proponent and a driver of economic development.

00;03;49;18 - 00;04;08;00

Nathaniel Smith

But it's not just about, you know, creating startups that are going to balloon in employment numbers, though of course, we want to do that as well. But it's also about, you know, using startups basically as a vehicle to drive innovation into the largest regions in our industry to make them more competitive on a global scale.

00;04;08;02 - 00;04;22;23

Ian Bergman

That's interesting because you're really hitting kind of two sides of the innovation ecosystem there. You're building up capacity, you're supporting corporate growth, but you're also trying to attract innovation and startups from around across the country.

00;04;22;25 - 00;04;23;29

Nathaniel Smith

Exactly.

00;04;24;01 - 00;04;27;00

Ian Bergman

You mean how do you separate those two mandates or do you?

00;04;27;02 - 00;04;48;22

Nathaniel Smith

So it's a good question, and it's one that I think took a bit of experimenting for us to find the right balance with. Oh, also, I should say this about the epicenter. An important piece of context, I think, is that epicenter has been around for about eight years since 2017, but when epicenter started, it was a broad spectrum entrepreneurship support organization.

00;04;48;22 - 00;05;16;26

Nathaniel Smith

So we had programing for tech startups, but we also had programing for catering companies, restaurants, janitorial services, things like that. And over the years in Memphis, and this is actually, in my experience, counter to the currents happening in other cities, there's been an increased number of support organizations and resources available to these traditional small business models, but less in Memphis now than there was eight years ago for tech businesses.

00;05;17;00 - 00;05;40;01

Nathaniel Smith

So that is why epicenter decided to pivot to focus on the tech businesses, because that is a gap in the in the landscape of entrepreneurship in Memphis. So now we have, you know, 3 or 4 trusted close referral partners. If we do get reached out to by a restaurant or a catering business, who we know they'll get great programing, great support from.

00;05;40;04 - 00;05;59;19

Nathaniel Smith

But before we did this pivot into focusing exclusively on tech businesses, we didn't really have a lot of good referral partners that we could, you know, refer people out to and know that they would receive either good instruction or access to resources or things like that. So that's how we ended up in this new space. And then that dovetails into the industry question.

00;05;59;19 - 00;06;21;12

Nathaniel Smith

Right. So I joined Epicenter in August 2023, which was right around the time that they had decided to fully commit to working with innovation businesses. I'm probably going to use innovation and tech interchangeably this entire time. I think the tech startup is kind of the way that people understand it. That's that cultural signifier. When I say those words, people know what I mean.

00;06;21;12 - 00;06;22;09

Ian Bergman

I think you're probably right.

00;06;22;09 - 00;06;43;26

Nathaniel Smith

But I try to use innovation more because, you know, you can be an innovative company that's venture fundable without necessarily developing a new technology. Right? So there's a lot of space for innovation and scale and growth that doesn't necessarily involve direct technical innovation. So that's the I'm probably being a little bit too specific there. But

00;06;43;29 - 00;07;13;09

Ian Bergman

It's you know, these are interchangeable words. But I will be honest, I actually like that you spent some time on it because we all use them interchangeably. But, you know, one doesn't always mean the other. And so it is really important to remember that you can actually drive really interesting change, positive change, innovative change in organizations without depending on, you know, radical new technologies, while also remembering that, you know, technologies that get adopted tend to be because they do something different.

00;07;13;09 - 00;07;33;17

Ian Bergman

So I think that's really actually kind of an important point. So epicenter and I love the name, you know, at the epicenter like and physically I've been to your amazing facilities. Right. You're right. Right downtown in the center of the city. And as you said, and kind of the center of a, a broader region that for our international listeners that don't know us, geography is really quite a large a large region.

00;07;33;20 - 00;08;02;20

Ian Bergman

You know, you have the opportunity to make a lot of connections. And I think, you know, I think some of our listeners may not understand everything that's going on in the Memphis region, kind of the greater, region that you've talked about. They may not understand that you have a major logistics hub and a massive airport complement, so that a big organization, Fedex, they may not understand that you've had build outs of new technology centers.

00;08;02;20 - 00;08;19;09

Ian Bergman

XYZ data Center is in the area. So help us understand just a little bit about what's going on in the region, what kind of industry exists, and why is it important for a nonprofit like epicenter to be focused on tech innovation in the region?

00;08;19;16 - 00;08;51;13

Nathaniel Smith

Yeah, I'm going to I'm going to flip that question when I answer it and start with the importance. So again, I joined Epicenter August 2023, and I'd been around the Memphis startup ecosystem for a while, so I was somewhat familiar with the existing challenges. And something that we continually saw was that great companies were starting here. So there's a long list of companies who have gone on to achieve great success that started in Memphis, but a lot of times they ended up leaving either to get easier access to capital or to customers, or find resources that they needed.

00;08;51;16 - 00;09;15;25

Nathaniel Smith

And the companies that ended up staying in Memphis tended to stay for personal reasons. They had children in schools, their family was here and they grew up here. And while I'm appreciative of those facts and grateful to those entrepreneurs who stayed and built their businesses in Memphis for personal reasons, that's not scalable, right? And if we're trying to have an economic impact, we can't just count on people staying in Memphis because they like being here, right?

00;09;15;25 - 00;09;15;29

Nathaniel Smith

Yep.

00;09;16;01 - 00;09;18;07

Ian Bergman

You have to you have to have some economic incentive.

00;09;18;13 - 00;09;49;07

Nathaniel Smith

Exactly. So there's for a variety of reasons that we don't need to waste a bunch of time on right now. There's not a lot of investment capital available to startups in Memphis. And startups need cash, right? At the end of the day, they need cash to survive. So we were just sort of looking around and what do we have here that could be an asset and what we do have are in a couple industries, clusters of companies that punch way above our weight.

00;09;49;07 - 00;10;10;24

Nathaniel Smith

As far as the size of our city. So, for example, Memphis is the 48 biggest metro in the country. I think so low end of top 50. But in the logistics industry and the medical device industry specifically, we are no doubt a top five city in the world. And for logistics especially, I would argue, you know, where we could be top one or top two.

00;10;10;27 - 00;10;29;27

Nathaniel Smith

I didn't write down all of the statistics that I normally rattle off here, but so you mentioned Fedex, right? Thanks to Fedex, we do have the busiest cargo airport in the country. For those of you, if you've never been to Memphis, but you're interested in logistics, Fedex has a square mile facility called The Hub that is one of the most impressive things you'll ever seen.

00;10;29;27 - 00;10;50;28

Nathaniel Smith

It's a square mile of, you know, it's both got cutting edge automation. There's robotics and automation in there, but there's also just a bunch of people there who are moving packages and making sure that you get your Amazon package on time. So Fedex is huge. Of course, they're kind of the big giant in the region, but Fedex is here because of a bunch of physical assets that Memphis has.

00;10;50;28 - 00;11;16;10

Nathaniel Smith

So we say road, river, rail and runway. So in addition to the cargo airport, we have one of the country's biggest inland ports. We're on the Mississippi River, which is historic and still continuing trade in corridor. We're on the busiest trucking corridor in the country, I-40, between Nashville and Little Rock. We have five class one railways. There are other cities that have five class one railways, but I believe no city has more than five class one railways.

00;11;16;10 - 00;11;21;23

Nathaniel Smith

So because of that, it's just if stuff has to get anywhere in the country, it ends up coming through Memphis.

00;11;21;23 - 00;11;22;29

Ian Bergman

You're just straight up connected.

00;11;22;29 - 00;11;24;03

Nathaniel Smith

Exactly. Yeah.

00;11;24;03 - 00;11;48;25

Ian Bergman

Which is a huge asset. I mean, you're mentioning it, but the the geographical like the significance and kind of the, the impact that geography is made, I think is probably really fascinating and worth a whole podcast on its own to kind of look at the history of the development of the Memphis region. But it makes total sense why there has been this body of logistics focused industries in the region.

00;11;49;01 - 00;11;51;25

Ian Bergman

You mentioned medical devices, though, to where that come from.

00;11;51;28 - 00;12;14;01

Nathaniel Smith

Yeah. So I you know, I actually I'm not sure how the medical device industry got started here, but logistics is actually one of the reasons for its continued success and growth here. So Memphis is really the orthopedic capital of the country. So Smith and Nephew, Stryker, Medtronic, Johnson and Johnson, all of their orthopedic headquarters and centers are here.

00;12;14;01 - 00;12;40;12

Nathaniel Smith

And that's not just the sort of main corporate business offices, but there's a very large manufacturing and distribution economy here as well. And those industries. And again, taking it back to the logistics, one of the reasons for that is because in Memphis and basically in Memphis, only you can have a part manufactured get it to Fedex by midnight tonight and it is ready for surgery at 7 a.m. the next day anywhere in the country.

00;12;40;16 - 00;12;52;03

Nathaniel Smith

So wherever you are, whoever's listening to this podcast, if you've ever had an orthopedic surgery, chances are something that was used in that surgery was overnighted from Memphis and got to your surgery just in time for it.

00;12;52;05 - 00;13;02;28

Ian Bergman

It's incredible. It's incredible. Okay. And so back to kind of the the mission and the work that has to be done to bring digital innovation into this industry. What's going on there?

00;13;03;00 - 00;13;22;17

Nathaniel Smith

Yeah. So logistics especially is a very highly competitive low margin industry. Right. Medical device. There's a little bit more intellectual property and protection going on though. It's still very competitive itself. But logistics I mean, you know, you're putting boxes on stuff and you're moving boxes from one point to another and everyone's doing that. Right. So it's it's incredibly competitive.

00;13;22;17 - 00;13;41;14

Nathaniel Smith

Everyone's trying to get the best rates. Everyone's trying to be the most efficient, which to me says it's ripe for innovation. Right. So Epicenter and Alchemist and we've loved doing this with you. We have a program that we run together called the Opportunity Challenge. So we started this last year in the logistics industry with the Logistics Opportunity Challenge.

00;13;41;14 - 00;14;01;18

Nathaniel Smith

We're doing that again in the logistics industry this year and next year in the medical device operator or the medical device industry as well. Now, I've already sort of touched on the reasons why we wanted to work with these industries right there. They have outsized economic importance in our region. And to just to be quite honest and somewhat vulgar, that's where the money is, right?

00;14;01;25 - 00;14;26;08

Nathaniel Smith

I came of like startups need cash. Who has cash? I don't have cash. Epicenter doesn't have cash. But the logistics industry in Memphis has cash. So we thought that there was a way to harness the expertise and resources of these industries and bring them together with innovative technologies from across the country. And the way that we did that is I you know, I'm a former venture capitalist myself.

00;14;26;08 - 00;14;45;28

Nathaniel Smith

Customer discovery. Right. It's all about customer discovery. That is something that we preach and it's something that we practice. So Amen. We basically just figured, well, hey, what if we just asked all these companies what they wanted to see from an innovation perspective? And then what if we found those innovations and brought them to them? Now there's a little bit more involved with that.

00;14;45;28 - 00;15;10;01

Nathaniel Smith

It's slightly more complicated. And it does take six months. But in the podcast format, that's how I'll describe it. And so we did that last year and it went amazing. So we did this problem discovery workshop and you flew into Memphis. We had representatives from about ten logistics companies in the room. We did a two day problem discovery workshop, and we generated a list of 15 problems that we then list the applications for.

00;15;10;06 - 00;15;29;15

Nathaniel Smith

We got applications from all over the country, tons of great companies, and ended up with a demo day where we had six semifinalists pitching to a room full of potential customers in Memphis. And again, it's you know, it's not that different from other accelerators, except for us. The focus is always on this customer industry connection. Right. So people aren't pitching for.

00;15;29;15 - 00;16;01;08

Ian Bergman

Investment in the customer industry problem. Yes. What I found so interesting is that, you know, epicenter is able to in a way that is really hard for any individual company, right, or any individual kind of enterprise or organization in, say, the logistics space pulled together, you know, a group of companies pulled together the ecosystem, you know, many of whom are complementary, but many of whom may be competitors and identify problems and challenges that matter to all of them.

00;16;01;14 - 00;16;24;22

Ian Bergman

And so one of the things that I found so interesting is the not just the willingness and, but the ability of the Memphis logistics industry to identify these challenges that really mattered and were worth investing in. And, you know, when you have a problem that is worth solving and then you find someone who can solve it, you've kind of got, you know, a match made in heaven.

00;16;24;22 - 00;16;25;16

Ian Bergman

That. Right.

00;16;25;19 - 00;16;45;14

Nathaniel Smith

That's the exact idea. And I think when epicenter is at its best. Right. That's that's what we are, as were the conduit or the connector. Right. We're not solving these problems. We're not identifying the problems, really. But what we're doing is we're just going to people with problems asking them about their problems and then going to people who are solving those problems and asking them about their solutions.

00;16;45;14 - 00;16;50;15

Nathaniel Smith

And then we I like to say, you know, we just make introductions right? At the end of the day, that's mostly what we do.

00;16;50;18 - 00;17;13;23

Ian Bergman

It is. But in my experience, we're glossing over, you know, we're glossing over a lot here. You know, we don't need to go through all the nitty gritty of of the work that happens behind the scenes to make these things go well. But I want to make sure we don't gloss over one point because, you know, part of those introductions is facilitated two way learning, right?

00;17;13;24 - 00;17;35;02

Ian Bergman

Part of those introductions is taking a really big asset that exists in, say, the logistics industry, which is knowledge. How do the systems work? How do things play, you know, what are the tools that exist? And, you know, the state of the art kind of potential that exists in the startup ecosystem and pulling them together. And so, as you mentioned, like we got the chance to partner together.

00;17;35;05 - 00;17;55;26

Ian Bergman

This is part of what Alchemist calls kind of our horizon programs. And it turned into this, you know, epicenter and logistics opportunity challenge, which was so exciting. What I want to ask you is how do you think about the outcomes? Right. You know, you kind of waved your hand and you're like, yeah, really? We just facilitate introductions. But it was more than that.

00;17;55;26 - 00;18;10;18

Ian Bergman

And I think last year you did see some real outcomes. So how do you how do you quantify them? How do you think about the positive outcomes and how do you think about outcomes. You want to, you know, kind of continue to strive for in the future?

00;18;10;20 - 00;18;21;15

Nathaniel Smith

Yeah. That's a that's a great question. So quantum Fication, I honestly, I don't know if I'm going to have a good answer for that. I feel like most of what I'm about to say is qualitative, but and that's great.

00;18;21;16 - 00;18;24;05

Ian Bergman

Not by the way. Yeah. But go ahead.

00;18;24;08 - 00;18;54;07

Nathaniel Smith

So you know, one of the real the the big, you know, audacious dream outcomes of this program is that what we're doing ideally is that we're transforming our biggest industries and Memphis into tech forward early adopters. Right. And it's you know, it's not that these are not technologically innovating folks already. They are, in many cases already working with startups and cutting edge technologies outside of our support.

00;18;54;13 - 00;19;12;00

Nathaniel Smith

But with this framework, in this convening that we do right, we take it more from, hey, this trucking company was looking for a problem and they did some googling and they found this startup and maybe they're working with it, but to a more systematic manner where folks are also sharing best practices, they are learning what works and what doesn't alongside each other.

00;19;12;06 - 00;19;41;20

Nathaniel Smith

And taking it back to the economic development perspective. Right. It's all about what do we have that's going to get people to to stay in Memphis or to to come to Memphis. And we believe it should be on the strengths of these industries, right? Not just as potential customers, though. One of our hopeful outcomes is companies putting sales and service folks on the ground here, but also, you know, we don't have necessarily a I try to be open with the sense of like who's in our ecosystem, right?

00;19;41;20 - 00;20;03;09

Nathaniel Smith

So some of these companies who were semifinalists last year, you know, they're not headquartered in Memphis, right. But now following this process, they have maybe three or 4 or 5 customers here. So they're flying here once a quarter. They're getting a hotel room. They're going out to eat downtown. And then, you know, frankly, a poor city like Memphis, right?

00;20;03;09 - 00;20;22;17

Nathaniel Smith

I mean, you can look at any of our, any of our demographics, however you want to measure it. We're just a place that has less resources. It's good to have people coming in and spending money here. Yeah. And then there's also the network effects. Right. So really what I would say going back to the qualitative pieces, the top thing I'm looking for is people being engaged and active members of our ecosystem.

00;20;22;17 - 00;20;42;29

Nathaniel Smith

Right. Startups share knowledge, they share network, they share resources. So having folks come in from out of town and get to know the industry here and get to know the local community that has a direct benefit to people who are living here in Memphis as well, because they can get a connection to an investor, or they can get a piece of advice or a piece of knowledge that they wouldn't have got.

00;20;42;29 - 00;20;45;18

Nathaniel Smith

If these companies hadn't come here in the first place.

00;20;45;18 - 00;21;05;01

Ian Bergman

And this is that kind of like that dream life cycle that builds up innovation ecosystems, right? Like you get this virtuous cycle where just a couple of catalysts start powering, okay, and more knowledge, which creates more, you know, successful outcomes which create people that give back, which creates, you know, economic. And I, I love kind of hearing that.

00;21;05;01 - 00;21;25;16

Ian Bergman

I also want to spend a little bit more time though, on the two way knowledge piece. Right. Because you mentioned. Yes. Like sometimes people can fly in and, you know, pass on a piece of wisdom that takes root in the Memphis ecosystem and pays dividends. And I think that's very true. But also people can fly in and they can learn something.

00;21;25;18 - 00;21;50;11

Ian Bergman

Yeah. And take that back. And that also creates these network effects that connect Memphis to the broader region. So, you know, out of curiosity, have you seen people come into Memphis and learn something from one of your corporate partners, maybe through one of the challenges where you were able to look and just kind of see the light bulb going off above their heads?

00;21;50;14 - 00;22;11;18

Nathaniel Smith

Yes, for sure. So I think an important piece of this program that we're talking about that I should go back to, is that the way that we run this, especially the application and the actual coaching and support for the for the startups part is epicenter, but we actually contract people who are logistics professionals, who are experts in the industry.

00;22;11;21 - 00;22;34;09

Nathaniel Smith

We pay them a little bit of money to do a couple hours of work a week, and they both one review the applications because they're the ones who actually are going to best understand if it's a good solution, but then the actual program for people to get accepted into it is you're meeting with these people on a consistent basis over a couple months, and it usually starts off as maybe design feedback or product feedback.

00;22;34;09 - 00;22;58;11

Nathaniel Smith

And then folks are giving them feedback on like, oh, how does this fit into my existing workflows? But one of our semifinalists, they're called Ship Flow AI now, and they're doing generative AI, automated automation of various tasks for for brokers and freight forwarders. So Frank, the CEO, brilliant guy. He's a logistics tech industry person himself. He came out of flex port where he ran their I believe their data visualization team.

00;22;58;15 - 00;23;18;05

Nathaniel Smith

But so he when generative AI started to open up all these possibilities he with his his experience in the space knew there was a huge opportunity here. So when he got into this program, he had said how valuable all the feedback was. As far as not just not just the automation piece, right? If you're if you are someone who's familiar with generative AI, bad technology, you can understand how to do that.

00;23;18;05 - 00;23;37;28

Nathaniel Smith

But it's about getting it into existing workflows, making sure that this technology actually works for your customer, and solves the problem that they need you to solve. So after all of this connections and advice and expertise, Frank now has multiple customers in the Memphis area, and I'm trying to get him to hire a salesperson who will be based here.

00;23;37;28 - 00;23;49;08

Nathaniel Smith

So watch this space for more news on that level. But to me, I'm like, that's the great, great individual outcome is like a company being like, wow, there's so much going on here. I gotta have a permanent presence here.

00;23;49;14 - 00;24;11;17

Ian Bergman

Yeah, I had to open an office. I got to build out that economic contribution as well as extraction and, and, you know, start to show wins. That is so cool. Okay. Well, let's let's step back for a second here. And I mean, we've, we've we've kind of danced around this, but I want to dig in a little bit on, you know, problems and how we find them.

00;24;11;17 - 00;24;38;23

Ian Bergman

Right. The whole idea of the horizon program is that sometimes you can't just take your procurement team and go shopping for a solution off the shelf to whatever's bothering you, right? That, you know, with innovation, with real change, if you're under threat, you really need to fall in love with a problem. You need to embrace kind of the fact that maybe you don't know what the best solution to that problem might be.

00;24;38;23 - 00;24;58;28

Ian Bergman

I need to go kind of seek. Seek the state of the art, seek the influencers, etc. and and learn. And I think, you know, one of the things that we've mentioned is I think a lot of companies forget just how many assets they have to bring to the table there, like even as a small or medium sized organization, you have not just maybe capital, but you have expertise.

00;24;58;28 - 00;25;29;17

Ian Bergman

You have you have feedback, you have connections, but also people forget to do this thing that is actually really hard, which is stay grounded in the problem and not try and find a solution. So from your experience, Nate, like how has this gone in the Memphis ecosystem? How has it gone? How has it worked to keep your corporate partners ground in a problem statement through a process that, as you said, can last many months, actually?

00;25;29;17 - 00;25;34;22

Ian Bergman

Well, you know, there's forces that are driving them to go solve it, solve it, solve it.

00;25;34;24 - 00;25;54;03

Nathaniel Smith

So I think it's gone pretty well. And one of the one of the reasons for that is because of the specific profile of companies that we like to work with. So we talked a lot about Fedex earlier. But Fedex, you know, they've got a whole department with a whole team and a dedicated budget and firm that does this day in, day out.

00;25;54;03 - 00;26;13;15

Nathaniel Smith

That's identifying problems, that's sourcing innovative solutions. And I mean in the last year they've you know, they've done a bunch of really exciting, cool partnerships with new innovative tech companies. They've done a big new data sharing program with for kites. There's a couple others that I can't remember off the top of my head. So Fedex, they don't need this program.

00;26;13;23 - 00;26;35;21

Nathaniel Smith

They actually have a bigger budget for this program that they run internally than we do. But because of because of what I mentioned earlier about all of these geographical assets, the logistics industry in Memphis, outside of Fedex is also huge. So there's like 3600 operating logistics companies here. So our sweet spot is these companies that are, you know, they're not small, right.

00;26;35;21 - 00;26;57;02

Nathaniel Smith

Some of these companies have like 500 plus employees in some cases, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue, but they are small enough that everyone at the company is focused day to day on doing the job of the company. Right? Just doing the work of getting the packages from place to place or finding, transportation and brokerages for their company or for their customers.

00;26;57;04 - 00;27;28;25

Nathaniel Smith

So they know they have problems. Right? But it's no no one has the time or the resources to solve those problems. So in that niche of companies were able to really basically say, hey, if you spend seven hours with us, right. That's about how long this two day problem discovery workshop takes. Overall, if you spend seven hours with us and focus and actually work with us on identifying these problems, we will actually really get to the meat of some of what is is is hurting your company, right?

00;27;28;25 - 00;27;47;15

Nathaniel Smith

Is is, is harming your bottom line, is reducing efficiency. And then this is actually, I think also part of the way we do it. And then we say, okay, now go back to work and we'll see you and, you know, 4 or 5 months and we'll show you what we've found. So in some ways you have to respect that these people are really busy and don't have time dedicated to this.

00;27;47;15 - 00;27;56;01

Nathaniel Smith

And that's one of the ways that we see ourselves as being a value add to the ecosystem is we'll take on the work to do this education, make these connections.

00;27;56;01 - 00;28;18;21

Ian Bergman

It's actually a huge benefit, right. Like to contextualize this in these larger companies, you are able to take on the role that a dedicated innovation organization might might perform in larger enterprises. Right. And I think what's really important about that is that you're also able to aggregate and centralize expertise, right? Every one of these companies would have to learn this on their own.

00;28;18;23 - 00;28;54;00

Ian Bergman

You're able to combine the best practices and able to operate like I'll be honest, I've I've seen epicenter operate. We've been partnering with you. I've seen innovation organizations that many enterprises operate. You're able to operate at a level that meets or honestly exceeds most of the corporate innovation organizations that exist out there. And I think I think that's actually a really important point that you're able to sort of extend the capability to do real innovation, scouting, assessment and, and work, you know, into organizations that are very resource constrained because this does take time.

00;28;54;00 - 00;28;56;09

Ian Bergman

And in fact, it takes time more than money.

00;28;56;11 - 00;29;14;06

Nathaniel Smith

Yeah. For sure. No, this program is relatively cheap for us to run. I mean, it does cost money, of course, but you know, compared to if this was an intensive capital accelerator, right, where folks share $50,000 of investment, mean it's much, much cheaper. And we're a resource constrained organization as well. So we kind of have to think about it that way.

00;29;14;06 - 00;29;16;04

Ian Bergman

I think we mentioned before, you're a nonprofit, right?

00;29;16;11 - 00;29;19;18

Nathaniel Smith

Right, exactly. We're a nonprofit. So this work is funded by grants.

00;29;19;25 - 00;29;39;06

Ian Bergman

Yeah. Well, okay. So let me let me just pivot a little bit. I want to learn more about Nate okay. So we jumped right into epicenter. We did. But you know we talked a little bit about your background. You've been in venture etc.. But yeah tell us the story. Like how did you come to be sitting across the screen from me today?

00;29;39;12 - 00;29;42;04

Ian Bergman

It's it's it's a very unique place to be.

00;29;42;06 - 00;30;00;24

Nathaniel Smith

It is. And I you know, that's one of the reasons I've loved working here so much is I'm like, I don't know where else I would do the exact mix of things that I do on a day to day basis. So I'm not from Memphis originally. I grew up in southeast Michigan on the outskirts of Metro Detroit, a little town called heartland, Michigan.

00;30;00;25 - 00;30;04;15

Nathaniel Smith

I guarantee no one here has ever been there, but it's, you know, it's a it's a.

00;30;04;18 - 00;30;08;21

Ian Bergman

Some audience members raising their hands. I mean, it's.

00;30;08;21 - 00;30;23;14

Nathaniel Smith

In Livingston County if you're familiar with Southeast Michigan. So I moved down here in 2015 after graduating from University of Michigan. And it's because I was in love with this girl, and she got a job in Memphis, and she wanted to move down to Memphis.

00;30;23;14 - 00;30;25;02

Ian Bergman

A story as old as time.

00;30;25;02 - 00;30;39;01

Nathaniel Smith

Yeah. So we're we're married now, but we're both musicians, so this is an important part of my story and why we ended up here. Right. So my wife's name is Emily Rucker. She's an amazing songwriter. Playwright. Artists can find her work on streaming services and whatever.

00;30;39;01 - 00;30;41;02

Ian Bergman

And definitely linked in the show notes here.

00;30;41;05 - 00;31;00;18

Nathaniel Smith

Yes, we'll link it in the show notes. So, we're both musicians and we wanted to go somewhere that was a lot warmer than Michigan, and that had some sort of music scene that we could plug into. Then she got a job in Memphis, so we moved to Memphis and I had just graduated. I didn't have any job offers in Michigan, and I just thought, well, hey, I'll figure something out.

00;31;00;18 - 00;31;20;28

Nathaniel Smith

I ended up getting a job after a lot of networking and just trying to meet people who might hire me to do something. I got a job contract basis with a startup in Memphis who basically had, you know, five years worth of disaggregated, messy sales data in a spreadsheet. And they were just like, hey, will you clean this up for us?

00;31;20;28 - 00;31;44;03

Nathaniel Smith

We want to know what our seasonality is. We have no way to figure it out. So I did that for them. They were happy with the results. And then this is where I just got really lucky. And within two weeks of me finishing up that project for this company, a position opened up at one of the two venture capital firms in Memphis called Inova Memphis, and they had invested in this company that I had just done some work for.

00;31;44;03 - 00;31;57;16

Nathaniel Smith

So I had met them. They were one of the places I had been trying to see if they would hire me. And at first they said, sorry, you know, it's a venture. We don't hire a lot of people. And what we do, it's usually network based. And then I just got really lucky. So I started working there as an analyst again.

00;31;57;16 - 00;32;21;13

Nathaniel Smith

I'm 23 at this time. I'm fresh out of college, and when I was there, when I joined them, we were sort of pseudo impact investing, investing basically exclusively in the state of Tennessee, mostly in Memphis, but also some on the east side of the state as well, and generally cross industry, kind of whatever we would see in Memphis, we would take a look at that's, you know, historically a lot of device, a lot of logistics, as you might imagine.

00;32;21;13 - 00;32;42;13

Nathaniel Smith

And then from that fund, we made an investment in an ag tech company in West Tennessee. And that investment didn't work out. But there was a ton of opportunity in the space. So and over I ended up raising a nationally focused ag tech fund. And then I was neck deep in AG for like, six years from 2017 to 2023.

00;32;42;13 - 00;32;52;08

Nathaniel Smith

So I had a couple years in Memphis, but then it was a lot of outside of Memphis traveling to Iowa, Nebraska. Yep. Washington in California and doing investments in those places.

00;32;52;08 - 00;33;04;11

Ian Bergman

I don't mean to interrupt, but I have to tell you, the image in my head when you say neck deep in AG is not it's neck deep in something AG related. I'm sure it was more fun than that. Sorry. Continue.

00;33;04;23 - 00;33;23;05

Nathaniel Smith

So. Yeah. Well, you know, there they did involve going to a lot of farms. Yeah. So that's it's not that, it's not that bullshit was not unpleasant in this, in this industry. So I'd been at Inova then, you know, fast forward right. I've done a lot of venture investing. Really enjoyed it. Right. And such a great place to learn.

00;33;23;05 - 00;33;55;01

Nathaniel Smith

Inova was the most active venture capital firm in the state of Tennessee for, I think three years in a row. We were super early stage. We did a our model was basically, you know, we do a ton of small dollar early checks, kind of an accelerator model and then follow on and lead folks seed rounds. So I just got so much hands on experience, both on the due diligence and deal sourcing side, but also just on the actual execution of the deals, looking at investment documents, you know, making sure that we knew what our rights were with each investment, that it provided me such a great groundwork to, you know, continue to provide support for

00;33;55;01 - 00;34;18;17

Nathaniel Smith

startups. After after I left the venture space. So where epicenter comes in is that I remember the for for those who were paying attention earlier in the podcast when, you know, 2017 to 2023, epicenter was serving all types of entrepreneurs. But that tends to mean that you're mostly serving folks who aren't doing tech entrepreneurship. So a lot of what epicenter did on the tech entrepreneurship side was in partnership with Inova.

00;34;18;17 - 00;34;36;22

Nathaniel Smith

So Epicenter and Inova worked together on a couple different initiatives a medical device accelerator, some angel investment, education and support. So through that work, I got to experience a lot of the Memphis ecosystem kind of hands on working directly with founders, while I was also having this other venture experience.

00;34;36;22 - 00;34;47;06

Ian Bergman

Super cool. And you got to and you got to see the players, you got to meet the people. And like, you know, you talk about luck, but you kind of make your own serendipity sometimes for sure. So I think I see where that's going.

00;34;47;10 - 00;35;11;06

Nathaniel Smith

Yep. So then in 2023, I just learned that epicenter was doing this focus, this this pivot of focus into tech companies and honestly, I was just like, I was thinking about it. I was like, man, I have a lot of opinions about, you know, all roads. That's it. I was just like, well, hey, if they're going to do this, I feel like I have a lot of thoughts on how and why and when they should do it.

00;35;11;09 - 00;35;17;27

Nathaniel Smith

And then left it over to join epicenter, and then basically hit the ground at a full sprint and have been going ever since.

00;35;18;02 - 00;35;36;25

Ian Bergman

That's amazing. Okay. And so one of the things that I enjoy about these conversations, I think you're thoughtful about the ecosystem, you're thoughtful about the outcomes. You're also kind of a nerd. Yeah. And I've seen you nerd out, which I just love on some of that, on some of the tech and some of the problems. So, you know, let's pick one.

00;35;36;25 - 00;35;43;03

Ian Bergman

Like what's one problem space or one solution area where you've just been like, oh, I can nerd out on that all day.

00;35;43;10 - 00;35;55;24

Nathaniel Smith

Okay, here's here's something that's been kind of top of mind for me lately. And then actually, this was also a problem that we surfaced last year in the logistics Opportunity Challenge. Right. So cargo theft, obviously it's a it's a big problem.

00;35;55;24 - 00;35;59;13

Ian Bergman

I don't think people by the way, I don't think people know how big of a problem we talk about this like.

00;35;59;15 - 00;36;19;14

Nathaniel Smith

Yeah, let's let's talk about this. So you know, probably people who are listening to this that aren't actively involved in the logistics industry. When I say cargo theft, they're probably thinking either are people stealing Amazon packages from their porch, or sometimes you see news stories about people, you know, like literally like robbing a truck with in a stickup style with guns.

00;36;19;14 - 00;36;41;26

Nathaniel Smith

Yeah, those things do happen, but they're actually a very small percentage of the actual theft and fraud that happens in the industry, which mostly is incredibly sophisticated, very high tech. And that's the issue, right? You know, if stickup crews robbing trucks with guns was that big of a problem, then trucks would just have guns on them to to be perfectly honest and but.

00;36;42;00 - 00;36;44;27

Ian Bergman

For our international listeners, welcome to America.

00;36;44;29 - 00;37;03;21

Nathaniel Smith

You do America. But but it's not enough. It's actually not that. Right. That's not the issue. If that was an issue, it's actually, you know, honestly relatively simple to solve. Yeah. But it's way more like okay, so because everything is fragmented, the logistics industry like let me let me just outline a case study. Right. So I'm a I'm a shipper.

00;37;03;21 - 00;37;20;06

Nathaniel Smith

I am someone who makes something. And I need it to be shipped from point A to point B. I don't handle the shipping myself. I reach out to a transportation company totally. For me. We have a contract with them. We work with them, you know, on a constant basis. But this company, I mean, they got a lot of employees coming in and out, right?

00;37;20;06 - 00;37;43;09

Nathaniel Smith

Truck driver as a as a heavy overturned job. So it's not that I've got the same guy who's showing up to my door every day to pick up the latest deliveries. So what happens is, you know, if I'm the shipper and I'm shipping, let's say something high value, right? Let's say I'm shipping PlayStation five. I'm just expecting, hey, this truck's going to show up at 10 a.m. and they're going to take this big load of PlayStation five.

00;37;43;10 - 00;37;58;03

Nathaniel Smith

A truck shows up at at 10 a.m.. They've got maybe an email or something that shows that they're supposed to be there. This is how it happens every week. So I just think, okay, great, come on in, get the PlayStation five and then, you know, $25,000 of merchandise is just gone.

00;37;58;05 - 00;38;00;16

Ian Bergman

25 million potentially. Like.

00;38;00;16 - 00;38;25;15

Nathaniel Smith

Exactly. So that's really how most of it is happening. And there's all this stuff with, you know, it's it's not just about knowing where to be. And when, but folks are mimicking people's identities. They are double brokering loads. So as a skimming off the top there. So one of the things that we've been really trying to think about, and we saw some great solutions for cargo theft last year, but nothing that's you know, there's still not a market leader.

00;38;25;15 - 00;38;49;13

Nathaniel Smith

There's still not something that people are ready to adopt and saying like, oh, hey, that's great. And that's because all of the tech based solutions that I've seen, that we've seen so far to really work and solve these more like high tech problems, they need to be adopted across the supply chain. Right. And that's just not really going to happen unless there's some sort of federal rule around it.

00;38;49;13 - 00;39;09;04

Nathaniel Smith

So hey, open call to anyone listening to this. By the time you're hearing this podcast, applications will be open for the Epicenter Logistics Opportunity Challenge. If you think you can solve some cargo theft issues. And again, it's not people with guns, it's people with phones. It's people with computers. It's people with generative AI who are faking, who are, you know, duplicating phone numbers.

00;39;09;04 - 00;39;14;17

Nathaniel Smith

Right. So you're getting the app, you're getting the text from the number you're expecting to get the text from. Things like that will end.

00;39;14;17 - 00;39;34;03

Ian Bergman

And it's such a fascinating problem. Space, right. Because you think about like what's going on, you know, you can do you can do risk assessments against the different people in the supply chain. But that's hard. You can try and track your actual cargo. There's a whole like industry out people with various sensors, but sometimes that's detectable and sometimes great.

00;39;34;03 - 00;39;55;01

Ian Bergman

You can track it as it disappears off to Shenzhen, but that doesn't excite like, you know, I mean, who knows you? There's all kinds of things that you can potentially do, but it is a hard problem because it's fragmented. Let me tell you one of my favorites. And this is another recurring challenge area. And that is the challenge area of communicating.

00;39;55;03 - 00;40;19;07

Ian Bergman

Communicating with your truckers, communicating with your customers, communicating with whoever. And you know, I learned recently that there are, you know, companies with people like multiple people that have to do things like regular call downs to your trucks. Yeah, right. You know, I think maybe, I don't know, maybe we live in a world where we imagine that, in truck tracking and information systems are fully labeled.

00;40;19;09 - 00;40;45;28

Ian Bergman

Yeah. I mean, there's, there's, there's unbelievable tech, but there's also this overlay of manual work. Right. And so someone, someone told me, hey, I've got staff that have to call all my truckers every, every so often, check in with them, etc. and that's a big body of work. And, you know, and I'm sitting there and I'm like, I just got a pitch from a startup that has a full eye contact center, right?

00;40;45;28 - 00;41;08;24

Ian Bergman

And like, it's almost indistinguishable from a human. And that more than capable of handling a basic conversation. And you start to see these really interesting opportunities, right, where you can overlay tech for kind of the simple tasks and then use your humans for escalation paths. Wait, like this conversation's out of whack or they said something I can't handle and you start to see these opportunities.

00;41;08;26 - 00;41;26;16

Ian Bergman

But there are opportunities that are impossible to discover or really hard to discover when you're in the day to day of running your business, right? Like, how can you possibly know what the state of the art is on risk prediction, right? When you're just trying to get your your material loaded onto a onto a pallet.

00;41;26;23 - 00;41;47;06

Nathaniel Smith

And because the industry is so fragmented too, right, you know, there's a couple fully diversified like Fedex, right? They do they do everything from distribution to last mile delivery. It's a Fedex employee who is picking something up from a factory in a big truck. And it's also a Fedex employee who is taking that single thing off that truck and putting it at your doorstep.

00;41;47;09 - 00;42;13;20

Nathaniel Smith

But that's rare in the industry. Most companies are doing one piece of that supply chain really well, but they don't venture too far outside of that piece. So then you also run it. All these problems are it's not just that new solutions have to work with your existing workflows, but you have all these other stakeholders customers, clients, partner organizations, and whatever you adopt has to not just not screw your operate operations up, but it also has to not screw their operations.

00;42;13;21 - 00;42;40;17

Ian Bergman

Yeah, your partners, your vendors, your customers won't want to work with you now. And it's this weird version of like kind of innovator's dilemma. Like there's all these incumbency challenges that you can't solve, but if you figure out a better way, people, you know, it'll it'll give you an advantage and it'll also help people plug in. You know, the other thing that I've learned working in and around the logistics industry is that we're going to have to save the next podcast to talk about medical devices, because I know you're working on them.

00;42;40;25 - 00;43;07;03

Ian Bergman

But, you know, the other thing that I've learned is it's not obvious also just how quickly and frequently the context around the logistics industry changes. Right. Like, oh yeah okay. So tariffs are in the headlines big time right. Right now. But so many regulations tariff regimes, tax regimes like all of this stuff can change so frequently in markets all over the world because they're global supply chains.

00;43;07;05 - 00;43;21;22

Ian Bergman

And that was another really interesting problem space that I started to nerd out on. It's like, how do you actually know? Well, your package is in transit, right? What the you know, what the cost structure is going to be when it arrives. It turns out that's actually a lot of work.

00;43;21;25 - 00;43;41;24

Nathaniel Smith

Yep. So in our problem discovery session, like we were talking about this exact issue, right. And one of the participants who does international shipping was, you know, with even with the tariffs. Right. It's one thing to just say 10% tariffs on steel from China. But the situation he brought up was he's like okay, but let's say I'm going to pick something up from Shenzhen.

00;43;42;02 - 00;43;55;17

Nathaniel Smith

But it was manufactured in Mongolia. It's 2% steel. And it was shipped on a truck from Mongolia to Shenzhen. To get loaded onto this, onto this boat. Do I pay a tariff? Yeah. You know and it's you dollars.

00;43;55;19 - 00;44;31;27

Ian Bergman

And multiply that by 10,000 and multiply that by, you know, the the fact that you may have cargo that has come simultaneously from multiple regions and like, you know, it's a data problem, it's also a currency, a data problem. But it's also an interpretation problem. And I think that is one of these things that I think is so fascinating because when you when you interpret regulations or law, which is something we all actually have to do very regularly because it's never perfect, you need a chain of thought in the chain of evidence behind your interpretation, at the very least, right.

00;44;32;00 - 00;44;47;06

Ian Bergman

And how interesting could it be for our tech to help not just understand what the changes are when they're in effect and in what geographies, but also to understand to to help build a case, build an interpretation and help understand the cases and interpretations that other people have built.

00;44;47;13 - 00;45;19;19

Nathaniel Smith

For sure. And if you're listening to this podcast and you're thinking that this is an interesting space, please apply. We got this opportunity challenge on our website and I want to say as well, right. So we've talked about this program a little bit. And most of the context is around companies having a product that's basically ready for customers or in the sort of MVP stage, but we are open to if there's not a solution on the market, you can apply with just an idea, and then you will have hours and hours of one on one time with folks who know the industry in and out to fully bake your idea.

00;45;19;19 - 00;45;36;02

Nathaniel Smith

Right? That's that's a that is a outcome that we want from this as well. So please, if you're listening this and you're like, boy, I think I can solve this because I'm Mr. A mr. Data science or whatever, but I don't know anything about the logistics industry. We can help with that piece. Right. So please hit our application.

00;45;36;04 - 00;46;01;25

Ian Bergman

Inspiration on the art of the possible and cross industry. I actually think, okay, you just hit a really interesting point. Some of the best solutions that I personally have seen to challenges in one industry have actually come from the same problem in another industry, where people have never thought to look right. Data like if you have a hard data transfer problem, boy, has the medical industry been grappling with that for many, many years.

00;46;01;25 - 00;46;21;10

Ian Bergman

And there's some interesting lessons. So I think that's a great point. Like ideas come from everywhere. And sometimes you're just like, I know this is possible. I know the tech exists. I want to build it. Tag me in. That's great. Well, okay, well we're coming up on the end here. I've actually I've kept you longer than I meant to, but it's been super fun.

00;46;21;13 - 00;46;23;00

Ian Bergman

Just a few more questions.

00;46;23;00 - 00;46;24;03

Nathaniel Smith

Yeah. No, I got time.

00;46;24;06 - 00;46;48;06

Ian Bergman

The first one's a little on the call it the serious side, but, you know, what advice do you have for, you know, innovators, innovation agitators around the country who, you know, want to want to learn from you, want to do something a bit better or want to get access to the best solutions for the problems that they have.

00;46;48;08 - 00;47;09;29

Nathaniel Smith

Yeah. So this is thank you for asking this, because this is the one I was most excited to answer. So, I, you know, I studied economics and college. I tend to still think of things through that lens. So if you, you know, if you're in a city, basically if you're in a city that's not in the Bay area or New York or Boston, my recommendation is always and this is what we did.

00;47;09;29 - 00;47;33;05

Nathaniel Smith

What is your comparative advantage? Right. So obviously you're not going to you're not in Silicon Valley. You're not going to have Silicon Valley type capital. And also, you know, one of the things that people often don't mention about Silicon Valley is just like the insane top flight tech engineering talent that is there, right? We have talented developers in Memphis, but not in the quantity or the density that are there in Silicon Valley.

00;47;33;07 - 00;47;57;28

Nathaniel Smith

So it is literally, hey, what are what is your region good at? Right? What is your city good at? What is what is working there? What is succeeding there. And it might be an industry. It might be something to do with culture and tourism, you know. And that's step one is figuring out what's what's already working. Right. And then figure out, can I make this work a little bit better or can this thing that is already working, can this make me a little bit better?

00;47;57;28 - 00;48;15;18

Nathaniel Smith

Right. There might be something where you're able to sort of draft off of the off of the tailwinds of something that's going incredibly well in your in your region. So that's step one is just figure out what's working. Step two and this is this is the hard part because as we've you know I could tell someone how to run the opportunity Challenge program.

00;48;15;18 - 00;48;35;24

Nathaniel Smith

It's actually quite simple. But the hard part is building the relationships and building trust, especially if you're going to an established industry. You know, these guys are busy, right? They have their own whole set of problems that they're worrying about. They don't necessarily care about your little innovation program that you're trying to get people to participate. And again, I'm talking about this through the lens of industry.

00;48;35;24 - 00;48;58;03

Nathaniel Smith

But this does not have to be industry, right? This could be anything. So building relationships is really important. I mean, we spent basically a year building relationships in the logistics industry before we did anything. Right. And when that started, we didn't even know that we were going to do the opportunity challenge. We just knew, hey, the logistics industry is like where all the cool stuff is happening, so let's get to know those guys.

00;48;58;05 - 00;49;07;29

Nathaniel Smith

That's my real piece of advice is let's say you want to do something, plan on taking at least six months and just getting to know the actors and not just, you know, you have to get to know them as people because they have to trust you.

00;49;08;01 - 00;49;26;18

Ian Bergman

And that is such good advice. And it's extensible into a corporation as well. And that's what I think is really interesting. Like you're operating from this kind of like aggregator and catalyst outside organization to pull people together, but it's the exact same thing if if you were a captured innovation organization within a larger company would be the same thing.

00;49;26;25 - 00;49;34;23

Ian Bergman

Yes, stakeholders are everything, I love that. Well, this has been a lot of fun. Thank you for joining us on Innovators Inside.

00;49;34;23 - 00;49;35;28

Nathaniel Smith

Yeah, thank you for having me.

00;49;35;28 - 00;49;59;17

Ian Bergman

And you dropped some musical recommendations. You dropped some other ideas. We're going to get all that in the show notes. As you mentioned applications are about to open for the next round of the of the Logistics Challenge Opportunity challenge. So anyone who has a solution or who is curious to see what the latest problems are that are kind of at the cutting edge of the logistics industry in the United States.

00;49;59;21 - 00;50;06;25

Ian Bergman

Check that out and I look forward to maybe welcome welcoming you back on the pod to talk about some of the results later in the year.

00;50;07;02 - 00;50;09;02

Nathaniel Smith

Oh, I'd love that. Thank you. All right.

00;50;09;08 - 00;50;12;04

Ian Bergman

Well with that, have an awesome rest of your week. Thanks, Nate.

00;50;12;06 - 00;50;15;07

Nathaniel Smith

Thanks. You too. And good to see you.

00;50;15;09 - 00;50;35;29

Ian Bergman

And that's a wrap for today's episode of Alchemist x Innovators Inside. Thanks for listening. If you found value in today's discussion, be sure to subscribe to our podcast and check out our segments on YouTube. Links and follow ups are in the show notes, and if you have questions you want us to feature in future episodes, email innovators at Alchemist accelerator.com.

00;50;36;01 - 00;50;40;21

Ian Bergman

Stay tuned for more insider stories and practical insights from leaders. Crafting our future.