The Process: Avoiding the Hype of Silicon Valley (Ep.2)

Michael Gervais (0:19)

All right, welcome back to The Process.

And I hope you enjoyed the last conversation we had with Alex Fiance, the founding partner of Kairos. And in this episode, we're gonna dive deep into the weeds to better understand what makes an entrepreneur. And these are questions that have been emerging from the tribe. We wanna better understand, like how do you create a company? And when you strip it all down, what makes a great founder? What makes a market opportunity?

And how Alex goes about developing, cultivating and selecting companies that he thinks and his team thinks will work. So Alex, great to be with you.

Alex Fiance (0:53)

Great to be here again, Mike.

What's been going on? How are you doing?

Michael Gervais (0:55)

Yeah, I was gonna ask the same thing. Like, bring us up to speed.

And I'll go first, certainly, is that we've been in kind of a great time for our development of our company and building. And we're working on being able to find the right opportunities and structure deals in the right way. So behind the scenes, it's been a blast. And then with Seattle Seahawks, it's been a lot of selection stuff. And we just got back from the combine recently, working on trying to better understand the right fit for our culture, the right talents. And so we're just kind of in the thick of it, if you will, from that frame. And so, yeah, a lot going on in the side, but more importantly, what's happened since the last we spoke with you?

Alex Fiance (1:38)

Everything's good. We made an investment and we hosted a big event in New York this week that was really focused on what is the responsibility of startups and tech companies to think about the implications of what they're building at scale before they start a company. It's a very timely and relevant topic because there's been a lot of recent backlash around some of the companies like Facebook, specifically for not thinking ahead about the implications of some of these hot topics like data security.

So I guess I would say we're continuing to invest. We made an investment and we're also continuing to just evangelize this mission that entrepreneurs and startups should really be about solving important problems that benefit the masses.

Michael Gervais (2:24)

Okay, when you say you made an investment, that sounds like you and your team huddled. You found one that you say, you know what? We think there's a chance here.

Let's put our money, our resources, our time and a talent behind it to make this thing or to help support this thing to give it a good shot. Is that right?

Alex Fiance (2:41)

Yeah.

Michael Gervais (2:43)

So when you do that, how do you, what are the final hurdles that you go through to be able to make that commitment of time and money?

Alex Fiance (2:54)

So I'd say there's two things. The first, which I think we can touch on in much more detail is really just, is this founder, is this team oriented to go the distance, right? We know there's gonna be some major peaks and valleys starting a business. Do we think this person is oriented to be a founder and that the team is set up, right? The second is, do we think this problem is worth solving and do we think it's best solved by a startup?

So across the board, everything goes through that lens. I'm happy to kind of go deeper into the specific company we invested in.

Michael Gervais (3:31)

Yeah, okay, let's go for it.

Alex Fiance (3:34)

So this one was within one of our core themes, right? So one of the trends we see is, there's a, the aging population is increasing and it's relative percentage of the population. And we think there's a ton of interesting products and services that could be developed to cater to that group, both on the health and wellness side, but also on the cultural, social, even spiritual side.

The company we invested in is called iBeat. Their focus is really on emergency life or death situations that involve heart failure. So I would almost think of it like a home security system for your body, right?

It's a watch, and if there are specific changes or fluctuations in your heart rate that spike to a level that correlates with cardiac arrest, it'll automatically call the paramedics, it'll automatically activate the volunteer EMT network so you can get help as quickly as possible because 10 seconds can be the difference between life or death. So you have stuff like the Apple Watch that'll track your heart rate, but this is entirely geared towards high-risk patients who want to be alone, they want to maintain their independence, they don't want to be monitored 24-7, but also obviously want to have the ability to save their life if it's necessary.