Giovanni Lauricella: 0:00

Learn how to network, know the fact that building a network is really your biggest asset. What's the cliche line? Your network is your net worth. So if you are

Harsh Thakkar: 0:13

<Podcast Intro> All right, we're live on another episode of Life Sciences 360. And our guest today is Giovanni Lauricella, he's the managing partner of Lifeblood Capital. And he's a Med-Tech recruiter and investor. He's helped more than 500 startups with fundraising and talent acquisition, and really looking forward to this conversation with him. Thanks for joining Giovanni.

Giovanni Lauricella: 0:51

Thank you for having me. Harsh.

Harsh Thakkar: 0:53

Yeah, I have a lot of questions for you a lot of questions around talent acquisition, fundraising, angel investing, how do you want to start this off?

Giovanni Lauricella: 1:02

If I stay true to my Med-Tech startup equation, then you need the money in order to get the people that will help contribute to hitting the milestone. And then that milestone which the entrepreneurs promised to hit is what got them the money to begin with. So if we stick true to that equation, let's start with the fundraising and raising of capital piece first, and then we'll jump into the talent acquisition.

Harsh Thakkar: 1:28

Yep, that sounds great to me. So when it comes to fundraising, what are, if you had to name three biggest hurdles that companies have with fundraising? What are those? And what tips do you provide to your clients to overcome those hurdles?

Giovanni Lauricella: 1:44

In general, I would say not knowing their audience. So there is this blast approach by entrepreneurs, especially first time entrepreneurs, certainly first time entrepreneurs, I think the serial entrepreneurs have learned their lessons over time. But when you have a list of 500, 1000, 2000, and you're taking this copy and paste message of your startup, and or I should say your technology and startup and you're blasting it to 1000 people. And that's your approach to taking calls to pitching your company, etc. That's not a strategy. And honestly, it's a waste of time. What I do, especially with my startups, and my clients in my network, in general, is I say, if I can't personally invest in you, if I can't personally send you to the right investor, whether it's an angel group or an institutional venture capital firm, the one thing that I can help you with is saving time because raising capital is so time consuming. And if you don't know your audience, if you're not going after the right target, and you're just taking shot after shot, you're supposed to be able to get used to hearing knows as an entrepreneur raising capital, but it got it does get to a certain point in time where there's that one, no, that breaks your back, and you just don't want to get there. So one thing that I strongly recommend is having the startups understand who their target audience is, if you're a software company, a software as a medical device, don't go after investors who only invest in hardware, you're just gonna get nose does it doesn't mean that they're not good investors, it's just they're not the right investors for you. So well, your audience is one. The other one is, as a medical device, do you have an actual product that fits an actual market that has an appropriate market to either go public or a potential acquirer meeting? And even more simplistically, does your product have a home? Or is it an over engineered idea that sounds super exciting that the world has never seen before and everyone's incredibly rah rah about how awesome this could be. But yet, when it starts going through this development cycle, it doesn't hit its clinical milestones, or endpoints rather, it fine there's no user acceptance of it. There's from we can go on and on down the list. Do you have a viable product? I mean, test that out. Especially before you start going out and raising significant money, test it out. So that's that because I do believe that we are in a very saturated market. I think we're at a point right now, whether it's I don't have one silver bullet, if it's the advent of the world that we live in today, the social media world that we live in today, the democratization of information of how everything is just out there for right or for wrong. I do believe we are in a saturated innovation market where people are innovating for the sake of innovating, rather than are they truly be solving a problem, right? Because I forget to properly how to say the cliche, but are you building a product to find a home? Or you have you found a home, and then you're going to build a product to go in that home? Right? Meaning like your safety problem. So that's that, do you have a clinically viable product? That would be number two, know your product. Number three, are you ready for the journey that you are about to embark on, I would say more than more than half of the interactions I have, whether it's in person at this point, virtual podcasts that I host, etc. When I deal with entrepreneurs, the importance of understanding psychology and sacrifice of entrepreneurship is remarkable. The sports psychology is a thing, talking to yourself, having a coach telling you when to give up, when not to give up, keep on going pushing you to your that's what you need, and the amount of sacrifice and the amount of psychological, often torment that an entrepreneur goes through. And it's very, very lonely. Most people aren't built for that. And so, if you don't, when you're going out and fundraising, if you don't know your story, and you don't know your appropriate audience, as an investor, if you are pitching a product, that you are forcing to find a home that doesn't exist. And if you are not psychologically ready for the journey of entrepreneurship, and you're an engineer, and I'm just making this up as an example, that it's awesome to innovate, it's awesome to think of really cool stuff. But do you understand what it really means to take that idea and turn it into an actual physical product that's going to be commercialized to be used in a commercial setting, and everything that happens to have to happen to go between the idea and the shower, to affecting patients? It's tremendous years without pay fail clinical trials, investors that pull out at the last second after you thought your round was closed, on and on and on. So those are the three things -- there's 10,000 things, but those are the three things that I would say are a nice generality.

Harsh Thakkar: 7:12

Yeah, you, you really made a very important point about separating the technical side of things, which is getting investors or reaching out to them. And also the psychology behind it of being comfortable with hearing nose or going through that phase where you get 50 nos, but then you get one yes, that that cancels out all of those nos. The next question I want to ask you is specifically for a first time entrepreneur or founder. So let's say you have somebody that is from an academic background, or from a non business or non entrepreneurial background, never had a startup, but has an amazing product that sort of, as you mentioned, crosses all the checks. What advice do you have for them? Because they just they're just starting from scratch? This is their first rodeo? Is there anything you would want to add specifically for the first time founders?

Giovanni Lauricella: 8:07

Learn how to network. Know the fact that building a network is really your biggest asset? What's the cliche line? Your network is your net worth? Yep. So if you are an introverted person with an amazing idea, and you for some reason, think that the world is going to give you $30 million, and you're going to get a commercialized product or a company bought by Medtronic, with five phone calls. Just don't go any further. Don't do it. If you are open to having a lot of conversations that most of them amount to nothing. And a lot of selling of the same story and a lot of pulling of the string of how do I get to this person and figuring out how to navigate networks, and communicate and tell stories and sell. That's what it takes. I mean, I've talked to physicians who are first time founders, engineers who are first time founders, all sorts of first time founders and serial entrepreneurs. It boils down to one overlapping theme. You have to learn how to network, you have to enjoy network, and you have to enjoy building a network and creating an MS and maintaining and sustaining a network. I think that's key relationships are everything as cliche as that is as well. And the other secondary thing that I would say is just super low hanging fruit. It's been something that I've had to learn through conversations that have intrigued me over the years, you know, whenever I go to a conference and there's a panel on IP strategy, and there's a bunch of IP attorneys out there, I just find it fascinating because superficially when you look at okay, I'm gonna develop a device and then I got to go raise money for it and I gotta make sure I have a quality system and then I gotta make sure I don't go into a clinical trial or not. And then I have to do a regulatory submission. And then you know, if all is good, maybe I can put together a commercial team or someone buys me. But along the way, there is so many business lessons that most people don't have the experience, unless you're a lawyer. And you don't know. And so I've done podcasts with attorneys, and who do company formations and capital raises for companies and, and I want to break the stereotype of of this pejorative notion of lawyers where you're like, Oh, God, lawyers, how expensive? I don't, I don't want to do it. Nope, nope, nothing. If if you have an amazing friend, or if you make them a friend, and they're your lawyer, and you have really good legal counsel, from literally incorporating your company, through structuring capital raises, whether it's a safe note, a convertible note, a price round, an m&a Eventually, or an IPO. I mean, you can literally make a mistake in your first year of entrepreneurship that could possibly blockade you going public 10 years later. And it's no real fault of your own, you're just naive. And you're not supposed to have all these answers. It's not human, to be able to have all of this information. But that's why the the the deck of cards is stacked against the first time entrepreneur realistically. So networking, and find a great legal counsel firm who you can make a friend.

Harsh Thakkar: 11:34

That's great. That's great advice from from what it sounds like, as you're talking to this. You mentioned, storytelling and stressed on that point multiple times. What I want to ask you this, you've I don't know the number maybe you know, or maybe you don't even know how many pitches and stories you've heard in your career, what makes a good pitch or a bad pitch, or good story or bad story? Are there any things that you look for when you are evaluating those that you can share with people or founders to write a good story or a good pitch?

Giovanni Lauricella: 12:06

Let me give an example. First, before going deeper into your question, so sure, a little tactic that I always use to see if someone's a decent storyteller is, and even if I've read the slide deck, and I know fundamentally what we're going to be talking about, tell me what your technology does. And so for example, say you go to a bar, and you sit next to a complete stranger. And they're not the medical device industry. And they're not an engineer, they're not a practicing clinician. They don't know anything, realistically, they don't know anything about the healthcare industry. And you're a entrepreneur, developing a medical device, turn to that person and tell them what you do. And if they can understand, and you're a good storyteller. But if you start going in the fact that, oh, we're a class three PMA medical device, and what we're doing is taking a transcatheter technology to be able to put a hole through the septum and leave nothing behind. And what we're doing is enabling the pressure on the left side of the heart to be decreased. That person drinking a beer next to you is like, what are you talking about? Right? If you can tell, and I think this one's out there and other cliches tell the story, like you're talking to a four year old, or a five year old or six year old. And if they can understand that you're good. It's not that you have to stop there, it's if you can't, it doesn't matter if you're a child, or an older adult, or somewhere in between. We're all fairly simple at the end of the day, I mean, some of us are brilliant, others are not that brilliant. But you know, we all are fairly simple human beings that need to be able to identify things and connect dots, the way our brains understand. And so if you can't tell a short story, and then have the ability to elaborate on that short story to make it a longer story, you're not a good storyteller. And if someone has to listen, and also, if you're not able to read body language, in a communication or in communication and understand someone really understanding you, is someone really trying to ask a question, and you're just keeping on mowing through your story. Because you don't want them to interject, maybe they don't understand, maybe you just need to stop and have them ask a question so they can keep up with the rest of your story. So what I would say is, what makes a good storyteller is being able to telling an elaborate story in short form, but also then having the ability to read their audience and be able to accommodate their audience with proper communication to be able to make sure that they stick with them through the holistic part of their story from end to end. So whether that's the early shorter form that elaborates into the longer form, or if it's this ping pong effect to make sure that we're dragging our audience across the finish line so that they do keep up with us. And I find I mean, everyone's different, but you hear these pitches where sometimes the other person doesn't Have a word in in 15 minutes or 11 minutes, and it's a monologue and you're like, Okay, well, you've asked me at minute three, and that was eight minutes ago. So I would say short form, and making sure that you are adapting to your audience so that when your story stops, you feel comfortable and confident with the fact that they're comfortable and confident, understanding what

Harsh Thakkar: 15:26

Yeah. And this is something I have, I had a guest you just said. in the past he, he's a tech entrepreneur. So he has a software product for Life Sciences. And he also stressed on this point about being simple and clear with the communication. But also, the other thing that I think is important when you're doing storytelling is helping somebody understand the outcome, right? So whether you're a product or a service, anything that you're building, once an end user, or in this case, a patient, or in the case of software and end user, how is their life going to change, right? You have to be able to also articulate that, and not just be too focused on my technology does a, b, c, d, e, nobody else does this. That's great. You know, it's great to focus on that. But at somewhere, you also have to say, This is what my product can help a patient do and sell the outcome, because that's what most people they don't care about your product or service. They care about what it can do for them. And that's kind of what this other guests that I had, he said, that's the other side of the equation, which many people don't do. are great. Yeah. So when I want to go into investing, when you're looking at pitch decks, when you're looking at stories, and you're trying to find a potential fit of a startup that you want to invest in? How do you evaluate that? What are some of the things that either steer you towards a yes, or a no, without going into any confidential details, whatever you can share on that would be great.

Giovanni Lauricella: 17:09

So super, super early stage investing, like, I'm an angel investor. And that experience is highly what I've understood, from my personal experiences, it's very personal or personal, meaning there is a huge emotional draw to it. There are metrics, there are certain things that you want to get out of it just to ensure that you're feeling good about moving forward in investing for for a medical device. But really, you're investing in a journey, because there's really nothing to invest in that much early, early on. It starts obviously changing as the company starts evolving any milestones you start getting into institutional funding, clinical trials, etc, that you're starting to evolve, invest into a business, especially at the commercial stage. But when you start talking about a founder or co founder, handful of people raising a seed round of financing, and the raising from angels, in my personal experience, everyone that I've invested into I've had a previous relationship with for a decent amount of time, some years, some high intensity months, and then it's so informal, I would say, what's really important for me about angel investing, which is really behind the scenes type stuff is. Me personally, there will be angel investors who will, who will disagree with what I'm about to say, when I make an investment, I'm assuming that I'm going to lose that money. I assume that and we're not talking about big investments anyway. But I'm assuming that I'm going to lose that money. But from an angel investor, at least from where I sit in the ecosystem, what does it really mean to me? Well, it keeps me engaged into an operating and developing company, I learned from that experience. Meanwhile, I also get to, it feels good for me, I get to give back and mentor entrepreneurs, I get to sharpen my sword and understand what they have to go through in these early phases. It forces me to pull on my network in ways that I don't naturally have to. And so for example, I'm connected to a lot of people. Some of them are operators and undisclosed angel investors. But all of a sudden, there's a certain company I'm invested in and they have a certain product and I know that it resonates with that person. And I'm like, Listen, I don't I don't know if you advertise it, you're an angel investor or not. But do you want to jump in on this one? I'm jumping in on this one. And so it then creates bonds that are certainly built on trust with your network. So So what I would say is I more impactfully invest. And if I happen to get a return out of it in years to come, fine, great, cool. I mean, we're not returning to a beach and drinking my ties off of that for sure. So what is it just another little pot of money that I can put back into more startups. So it's really more impact investing that I would say, where it forces me to use my network in ways that I don't have to do on a daily basis. It keeps me engaged. And as a mentor, it keeps me close to the entrepreneurial grind of what it means to operate and run and develop a startup company, which also selfishly enables me to be me for the ecosystem and clients that I work with and the startups that I helped develop. So that's what I would say angel investing is, for me on a personal level, and how I would invest in them. I've done series A extension rounds, which they were priced rounds before, meaning, there was an actual value assigned to a share, versus others that are run on safe notes versus others that are running convertible notes. And it's, it's really what you want out of the investment upfront. If there are proclaimed angel investors who invest in multiple industries, which I don't, I'm a medical device guy through and through regulated hardware and or software. So I'm not investing in the food industry, or space industry or defense industry or direct to consumer yet, I don't have any ambition to but I also haven't done it yet. All that I've ever done is invest in medical device companies. So some of them are series A extensions, which were opportunistic, and fun. Others were true seed rounds. And I believed in the entrepreneur, that's really what it boiled down to I had a an emotional connection and poll and scientific curiosity towards the technology, coupled with the fact that I really liked the founder, and paying as an investment to stay close to that company, technology founder, and also what it would force me to do in a larger holistic ecosystem perspective, was the reason why I ultimately made the investment.

Harsh Thakkar: 22:12

That's that's a really great summary. I personally, I'm not into angel investing in anytime I, most of the times I hear people talk about it, there's this notion that oh, angel investment is risky, like you said, you're comfortable, your your philosophies, you're comfortable losing it all, once you go in, because you're going in, you know, for the for the long term. So anyone that wants to be an angel investor, but has never made an investment wants to wants to start doing that. Where does that person start? Let's just say they want to do it in Med-Tech, or biotech or any in the life sciences field. What should that person do to get themselves in front of the first investment? Or sort of angel investment?

Giovanni Lauricella: 23:01

Good question. Let me grab this real quick. So this is this was turned on to me a couple of years ago, and I've read it now twice. So this is Jason Calacanis, his book Angel. Yep. Yeah, how to invest in technology startups, timeless advice from an angel investor who turned 100,000 to 100 million, somewhat of a cheesy title. If you've read the book, it's a pretty aggressive beginning to be honest with you, it sounds very self serving. I mean, you can hear it in the writing Jason's a little bit of an egomaniac at least upfront and then says he's not an egomaniac. And then it gets a little bit more practical in terms of how to, I will say there's one particular chapter in there. I mean, fundamentally, this was written for investing in software companies in the Bay Area. Yep. I think we're in 2023, we've dispelled that not every investable startup company comes from the Bay Area, that's for sure Bay Area had its moment, it's going through a transition right now, it's still an amazing place to be. But there's other areas in the world that create amazing startups. And it's not all about software. I do a lot of hardware, as a medical device, professional, myself, but also as an investor. So I think if you read the book, mechanically, you would walk away with the fundamentals that could be applicable in the end in any industry. You'll also walk away with the fact that it's fundamental math, if you really want to play that game. It really is a numbers. Some of the things that I've already mentioned are mentioned in the book where you have to be comfortable walking away from the money that you're investing, you know, if you're going to put your last $10,000 on a privately held startup company and you need that company to succeed. And you're going to be staring at the ceiling for the next 18 months to five years. I mean, that's a no way to live. And it's not Good strategy. And so I would strongly recommend that you start small. You get interested in and do homework and learn how to ask the right questions and just become an educated investor without overthinking it, because the moment that you write an angel check to an early stage company, everything could be right, the story could be perfect for that moment, etc. But the rest of that journey, and like we just witnessed what happened with Silicon Valley Bank. Yeah, fortunately, everyone or I should say most, at least to my naive knowledge, we dodged the cannon ball as opposed to having an absolute ripple effect, catastrophic meltdown. So I'm assuming for those listening in if anyone was longterm, affected, I'm sorry. But everyone that I've come across, who actually did have their money in SBB, so far lives to see another day, they just learned that they're going to diversify and open up different accounts in different banks. Nevertheless, you can't control everything, that's the point. So you're going to be an angel investor, know that, you're getting more into it. And out of it than just money in and hopefully more money out, you're getting a network. And that's what they talked about in the book as well, you're buying the ability to review cap tables and network. I mean, even in some of the chapters he's talking about, he literally made investments in companies that, fundamentally he didn't believe in, but there was a handful or more of amazing investors on the actual cap table. And literally use that as the opportunity to go make friends with them to share better deal flow together, etc, etc. So it's truly a game. It is a numbers game, especially when you get so early on with Angel investing. It's a passion project. But you know, at its core, if you need that money to live off of don't become an angel investor, and just assumptively, know that have fun with the journey, enjoy the journey. Assume that you're going to lose your money, but look at the greater value that you're getting out of it along that way. Whether it's you helping out others, or just in general, you expanding your network, or whatever else comes along your way throughout that time with the entrepreneur.

Harsh Thakkar: 27:21

I've heard of Jason, I was on. I don't know, it's probably last year, I was active on Twitter for a few months. And I'd seen lots of tweets from him with other people in tech like Jamaat and other investors. I haven't read that book, but I know that Jason is an investor. So I'm gonna put that in the show notes. If anybody's interested in checking it out. I want to switch gears and go into the people aspect. So help me understand when we're at what point do you get in to a startup, like, when you start working with companies? What is the size of the company? And what are some of the key roles that you help them get talent for?

Giovanni Lauricella: 28:03

That great question. And I would say, at the end of the day, classify me as a service provider, right. So they have to be able to afford the service for me to be able to help them. Otherwise, I'll put my hand up, I have done a tremendous amount of hours of impactful philanthropic counseling and consulting with startups who, you know, weren't paying clients. And those are typically the early stage companies that don't have money that are raising their seed, and they're looking to structure their advisory board or their board or what is the the next key hire that they truly need to put on their management slide so that they can go tell the story for investors? So that's the really, really early stuff. To answer your question. Once a company is funded well enough to start building a team. We personally get involved at the full spectrum. So I mean, I have worked for companies that literally I hired number three, we are true to what we do, we our medical device or med tech startup talent acquisition firm, which means we don't deviate from startups. Startups is an incredibly nice nebulous term, depending on who you talk to. The best way I can define it with with a little bit of a monologue to go along with it is it could be anything spinning out of an incubator, and certainly in r&d phases. But we literally go all the way through the lifecycle of the company, through early commercial pilots, where the company is cleared or approved by the FDA there are going they're doing some commercial traction in some capacity. When you start becoming a full on commercial company where you're not dependent on venture capital or growth capital anymore for scaling and you literally are an autonomous company, about to go public or already public. You likely have a HR policy or a HR team involved, you've basically outgrown me. And I'm more of a tactician where as these companies are, are growing, and they don't know what to do, or they are so distracted with actually operating, and they need to have someone who understands their business model can speak medical device can hire them the right people, and go along this journey. That's where I'm really valuable, including building multinational commercialization teams, I do that regularly. But very, very few companies and clients of mine are over 100 employees, I have them, not many. And certainly once they get over 500, they're almost non existent. So most of my clients are, realistically I would say, comfortably 15 to 35 people. And, you know, I do a lot of sub 10 companies. And you know, the other other extreme is, you know, 50 and above.

Harsh Thakkar: 31:08

So, when we're, let's say, like the 15, that you mentioned, like the 10 to 15, you mentioned that you also hired like the number three, in your example. When I'm assuming that when you're getting the number five, or the number 10, or the 12 person to come in, you're leveraging your network, you're trying to find anybody in your network, who is looking for an opportunity to maybe, you know, start a new chapter in their life and they can match. How do you like if you don't find somebody in your network? Have you gotten somebody like that you found that you didn't know? And how did you? How did you attract that talent to come? Come to the company, let's say it was a complete stranger, but you knew that that person could be a great fit for that first five or ten people? How did you attract that person to the company?

Giovanni Lauricella: 32:04

Now a great question. So first and foremost, I'd be the first one to say that I do not know everybody, it's impossible. So I often get that question. I still get surprised to it. 15 years later, I still get surprised. Where you know, are you limited by your network? Or how big is your network? And that's how you're going to choose your town acquisition partner. You know, it might have, it might have been a limiting factor 10, 15, 20 years ago, when it was very mechanical, like how many people could you fit in your phone? Or did you have to reverse engineer a phonebook and call and ruse, the the person who answered the phone and you know, call a bunch of white lies to be able to find out how many people were there and the age of Google and LinkedIn and all this social media, I mean, there's, everyone's findable. And I would say when you have the luxury of focusing in one particular industry, like we focus in Med-Tech, there's hundreds of 1000s of people globally within our industry. However, somehow, it's magically an incredibly small network of people. And so what I mean by that is, you know, 15 years later of building out your own CRM, having paid for, and also very unique tools through LinkedIn. The fact that we've had so many successes and have a great network built of companies that we've worked with hiring managers that have hired us, and candidates that we've hired, like, those one on one successes, those are really strong successes. And then we have really strong relationships with candidates that might have been candidates numerous times that never were successfully hired by us for whatever reasons, but we treated them well along the way. And so you do that year over year over year, there's many positions that we kick off and go recruit for where I don't even open up LinkedIn, or even my CRM, I know that there's seven people that I need to call, and it might not be one of those seven people. But one of those seven people knows another seven people who will get me to the person. And that's the specialty of Industry Focus, I would say. To answer and hopefully be clear, in your previous question, you answered what we do. Like literally what we do is full scale team. So it's everything from r&d to commercialization, like I said, as long as in the startup company, but it's also everything from top down, like independent boards and c-level down to entry level. And our whole goal is to make sure that we're taking the highly consultative approach to startup companies because especially for the first time founders who stick with their technologies and grow their companies and they're always first time founders until they're not. They have a lot of questions and every step and milestone that they hit It's a new territory for them to build and one that they're not aware of. So if we can be the, the shoulder whisperer or the best friend of the CEO, and they're like, listen, we just got this new money in, or we just hit this milestone. And now this is our next challenge. I don't even know what we need. I mean, this is the operational problem. What what person goes here? And then do what level do we need? Do we need a junior? Do we need someone who's going to come in and be the head of what do we need? And that's our specialty of design. That's why we say we're, we design and build Med-Tech startup companies, because we literally design their teams, we, of course, if you want to take a PDF or a Word document and throw it at me, and just ask me for resumes, I mean, I can do that. But so can 10,000 Other recruiters. My differentiator is, I like to think of myself as a med tech person first, who happens to be a recruiter, like I can literally help you solve your problems, and then still go execute on finding those people and then dragging them through a process of hopefully, a good process. They remember us by but that's how we do it.

Harsh Thakkar: 36:09

Okay. Okay. I want to connect like there's so with fundraising and talent acquisition, there is we've seen a lot of layoffs in 2023. You know, it started with a lot of tech companies, then, you know, into life sciences, many big life science companies laid off a lot of people and also startups. And how, how have you seen all the layoffs? What is what has been the effect on fundraising or account acquisition? Because it sort of seems like maybe one reason there's layoffs is because that company or organization missed one of their milestones or like a clinical trial? Or maybe it was because of because they're not getting funding, so they don't. So how have you seen like this whole wave of layoffs? effect? Has there been any effect? or what have you seen from your side?

Giovanni Lauricella: 37:05

There's been an effect. But in terms of the Med-Tech startup scene, not really an effect. And I'm sure if someone's listening to this Podcast driving who's been affected or at a party and has been affected, they're rolling their eyes and call me a liar, but holistically out or generally, I would say, when I look at the entrepreneurial world, this is not like the onset of COVID in March through basically June of 2020, where it didn't matter how large or small companies were cutting, shutting down whatever it may be, we're, no one was safe. What, in my experience I've seen, and the smaller the startup, the less risk, there really was, once again, with this more weak recent wave and setback economically. So we didn't see startups shut down by the numbers because of this economic pullback, which led to layoffs. The majority of the layoffs, that I've personally been a part of meaning, having to deal with the fallout and talking to the people who have fallen out our corporates, it's certainly the larger size middle sized companies and the grandioso big corporate companies. And you're talking about divisional wipeouts. I just talked to somebody yesterday. And I mean, it blows my mind, to be honest with you. I mean, I all I deal with all day long as people, right. And so I hear about and I'm, I'm a father, I'm a husband, I'm a brother, sister, I everything, um, I have family, right? I'm a human, right. So you hear these things where it's like, someone spent 25 years with a company and moved within three divisions of a company. And they've never had to write a resume and their entire career like they graduated. And they started as a sales rep at some whatever company. And they've just progressed and they've progressed, and they've moved in different divisions. And it feels like they've moved in three or four different companies. But when on your resume, there's still just one massive major conglomerate that's employed you for 25 years. And someone who you've never even met waved a magic wand and 400 people were just out of a job. And then that's, that's what we're dealing with. And then and then you hear crazy stories like they let these people go. And because of the politics internally, they can't give preference to someone who's been there 25 years versus 7 years, or 17 years versus 21 years. And, and so how do you start doing that? So then what they actually have to do is these big corporates, then repost the positions, just let go. Because they can't show direct preference of bringing back the people that I let go if there was another strategic change or whatever it may be. They literally have to repost their own positions in hopes that They can bring some of the people back or not. So it's some of these big corporate stories just honestly blow my mind. I'm sure the smart people on the other side who are sitting in the corporate seats, if they were on this Podcast, they'd have really eloquent, beautiful sounding reasoning, that would make sense. And you're like, fine. If I was in your shoes, I'd probably do the same thing to write whatever story you want to tell. But hearing and seeing the fallout of big companies, it's been a thing. I mean, I've witnessed a lot of resumes have come across my desk. And because I work within the startup world, not every big corporate person can go into the companies that I represent, and the ones that I build. So you know, what do you do with somebody who's been at J&J for 25 years, and all of a sudden, they want to go be a CFO, or whatever position in a startup. Like, unless that person is the best friend of the entrepreneur, no one's going to objectively hire that style of talent, because there's no real obvious match. I'm sure once again, there's there's some level or example that someone can prove me wrong. But once again, generally speaking, so on the entrepreneur side, it's been tight. I think, when the economic pullback happen early, late last or early to mid last summer, whoever you're talking to, in 2022. It, it froze up the venture market, I think, really what hurt was the really early stage companies raising capital, like the seed, and maybe series A are the ones that wanted it from family offices and Angel groups. Because once again, if you go into family offices and Angel groups, or angels in general, they're usually very diversified investors. A lot of their money's tied up in public markets, some of its tied up in real estate. The point being is yes, they invest in med tech startups. But that's just one of their asset classes. And so if they're about to write a$500,000, check, a million dollar check, a $10,000, check. And there's a 30% pullback in the public markets, and you just watched, your net worth dropped 20% On paper, you second guess yourself writing that check for 10,000, 50,000 or 100,000. You're saying instead that it's not anything to do with your startup? I just can't do it right now. Have you seen the markets, and all of a sudden that compounds and you watch for 4 or 5, 6, 7 months of just entrepreneurs starving another day, because it's tough. On the venture side, you know, it's not a lack of capital, when you have closed funds, institutional funds that have already been raised, and they're sitting on the cash, they have to deploy it. There's only a certain amount of time are so long that you can sit on that cash because you're watching what's happening in the market. And you and you have to be cautious because you don't want to make a bad bet. Unfortunately, when that combines, that timing combines because of more macroeconomic challenges, and the VCs aren't writing checks, publicly, or at least because they're maybe doing only internal rounds, and they're not taking on new assets, or the angels and family offices are tightening up because of what's happening in the public markets. All of a sudden, you see this whole entrepreneurial ecosystem, which was on every cover of every major magazine in late 2020, and 2021, for sure, about all this gross amount of money that was being flashed around and thrown around in the ecosystem. And it was just so unsustainable. I mean, we look back and 2021 was just so rich, was so rich, and there's had to have been a natural correction. And you know, everyone's having fun when everything is great. And there's 10 press releases a day of companies raising. This company raised a million that company raised 10s, one raised 40. And then all of a sudden, everyone's now on the entrepreneur side dying, looking for cash, because it's tight market. So it hasn't been so dire where companies had to shut down or layoff massive portions of their companies on the startup entrepreneurial side. But there was hiring freezes, there was hiring postponements and pull backs. There was a lot more consultants being brought on rather than full time people just because of the nebulousness of the future. So long story to your question of how is these companies and these layoffs been affected? Strongly and predominantly at the middle to large sized organizations?

Harsh Thakkar: 44:39

Interesting. Okay. Yeah, this this has been really a great conversation. I like I said at the start, I think we have never had a guest on here, who has had the experience with investing and fundraising. So everything that you've shared has been super valuable for me and hopefully also for the audience. I want to ask you a few questions like Personal What do you like doing when you're not reviewing pitch decks and talking to entrepreneurs? What do you like to do to de stress? Or what are your hobbies?

Giovanni Lauricella: 45:10

Yeah, well, today my son turned 16 months. So the last 16 months between building a business and raising a very young baby, who's now a complete Tasmanian Devil and the best part of my day, pretty much, I try to stick with him as much as I possibly can when I'm not doing this. So that's my first answer. And I love every bit of it. The second thing is on a super personal level, I'm a oenophile, I love drinking wine and not for the sake of drinking wine. But studying wine. And I've traveled I think over I've been over 45 countries, but I think I've been to over 35 for wine specifically. And it's just fascinating. You learn about history and culture and topography and geography and cultures. So that's that. I love my wine. And I'm a fly fisherman. And so I love to go fly fishing. And I'm a skier. So next week, I'll be in my magic spot. I'll be in New Mexico, which is where I love and going skiing. So my my one week, a year boys trip, and we get to go have fun in the mountains, skiing, fly fishing, and wine.

Harsh Thakkar: 46:21

Yeah, that's that sounds like a terrific combination. I can relate to being a father, my son's over two years. So 20, 28 months. So it's just an incredible phase that you know, even when I'm doing consulting or talking to clients, when I shut my laptop, it's like, just spending time with him. And there's no other feeling like it what what is on the wine side? What is your, like, favorite type of wine? There's like red blends and reds and what is like your go to what your favorite.

Giovanni Lauricella: 46:56

So I used to want to have an answer for that question. And I think any true wine no, and I'm not talking about people who love their cabs and or even California cabs, or they only love their Chardonnays, whatever it may be. If you're really that beholden to something, you love drinking that wine, that's fine. If you're truly an owner file, if you truly love the concept of wine. I think you'll hear this from any true on a file is that it depends on the time it depends on the moment, it depends on the the weather, it depends on the amount of sunlight, it depends on what time of day it is, it depends on who you're with. It depends on what you're eating it just right, if you can get a breadth of understanding of the scope between super light white to the darkest, darkest, darkest and thickest the reds. And you know that there's an emotional moment for any one of those particular ones on the spectrum. Then you're in on a file. So I choose not to have a response for that. But if you had to hold a complete gun to my head, white burgundy.

Harsh Thakkar: 48:05

Okay, nice. Yeah, I lived on the East Coast for for most of the time that I've spent in US. But last four years, I was on the west coast. So I lived in Seattle for two years and San Francisco Bay Area for two years. And I've had like exposure to like a whole new world of wines in the last four years. And I'm becoming more, I guess selective is if that's the right word about the kind of wine I drink, because yeah, so definitely, that's the one part now I live in North Carolina. And that is the one part I miss about being on the West Coast is just there were so many wineries in Bay Area and, and Washington. So yeah.

Giovanni Lauricella: 48:55

I got married on a vineyard in eastern Washington. So I love Washington wines. My first travel date with my wife was actually to Oregon. And we've certainly done California wines north and south. But I actually proposed to my wife an hour south of Barcelona and a vineyard in Platja Spain. And we got married in eastern Washington and a vineyard in our honeymoon was 23 Vineyards between the North and the South Island of New Zealand. So we love it.

Harsh Thakkar: 49:25

Yeah, where where can people find you after they've heard you on the show? They want to connect with you, what's the best way that we listeners can reach out to you?

Giovanni Lauricella: 49:35

The best way to listen or reach out would be certainly LinkedIn. You can find me there. I'm incredibly active on LinkedIn. My email is Giovanni@lifebloodcapital.com. And other than that, you can find me at conferences. I'll be running around like mad usually, but if you don't see me in person, you can always find me on LinkedIn.

Harsh Thakkar: 49:54

Yep. Listen, this is like I said, this has been great. A very different topic. stuff that we discussed today. And I'll be listening to this a couple of times as I'm editing the transcripts and doing everything for social media. But thank you so much for coming on and sharing everything. Wish you all the best with all the investments and all the companies that you're working with. Any final thoughts you want to add before we wrap this up?

Giovanni Lauricella: 50:20

Thank you very much for having me. I really appreciate the questions. I think that understanding how to build teams is a crucial asset for any entrepreneur, independent of A being Med-Tech or not, it happens to be my focus and expertise. But truly walking away with the idea that entrepreneurship is hard is a psychological journey that you have to be ready to endure. I think that objectively, I think the game is easier, and it's ends up being much more mental, which is where the difficulty comes in. You just need patience. But remember the Med-Tech equation, which is you need money in order to hire the people that are going to do the operations to make sure you hit the milestone that you promised the investors that originally gave you the money to begin with. And that cycle repeats. So as an entrepreneur listening into this, go raise your money, go hire the right team, bring on the right talent, move quick. Hit your milestones, rinse and repeat. Good luck. Yep, that's it.

Harsh Thakkar: 51:26

Thank you so much. Giovanni, appreciate it.

Giovanni Lauricella: 51:28

Thank you. Appreciate it.

Harsh Thakkar: 51:30

Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Check out the show notes in the description for a full episode summary with all the important links. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite Podcast.