Mike Farber / LaunchSquad
Start Here Podcast | Episode #71 | 10/31/2022
There is a special breed of part time Vermonters that give first, paying it forward to make our state a better place. One of those people is entrepreneur and lifelong storyteller Mike Farber.
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Transcript:
MIKE FARBER
I think that being authentic to who you are and what you’re trying to do with your company is number one. All of us employ people, right? So we have the privilege to help people experience a good chunk of their daily life in an environment that we co-create. And that’s an amazing honor.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
From Vermont Center for Emerging Technologies, it’s Start Here, a podcast sharing the stories of active, aspiring, and accidental entrepreneurs. There is a special breed of part-time Vermonters that give first, paying it forward to make our state a better place. One of those people is entrepreneur and lifelong storyteller Mike Farber. Welcome. This is Sam Roach-Gerber.
DAVID BRADBURY
And Dave Bradbury.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
Recording from the Consolidated Communications Technology Hub in downtown Burlington, Vermont. Hi, Mike.
MIKE FARBER
Hi, how are you?
SAM ROACH-GERBER
I’m so happy to have you here.
MIKE FARBER
Well, it’s amazing to be here, and thank you for that really generous intro.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
Oh my gosh, of course. And I just have to start by saying, you’ve officially made it. You’re spending more than half your time in Vermont. Congratulations!
MIKE FARBER
Thank you very much.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
This was a long time coming.
MIKE FARBER
Yes, it’s been a very long time coming. Like both of you, we have roots in Massachusetts, but my wife and I, Carolyn, were married up here little over 25 years ago at this point, and that’s when our love affair first started.
DAVID BRADBURY
Happy anniversary. That’s a big milestone.
MIKE FARBER
Thank you very much, thank you very much.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
And so how’s it been being in Vermont more full-time than ever before? Any surprises? You chickening out yet, or are you feeling okay?
DAVID BRADBURY
Yeah, it was 42 degrees this morning.
MIKE FARBER
And I’m in shorts!
SAM ROACH-GERBER
Yeah, you’re playing it cool so far. We’ll check in with you in like February.
MIKE FARBER
Yeah, exactly. I think that’s going to be really important. But I think the thing that I’m just most excited about with regards to spending more time in Vermont is this. And what I mean by that is the growth that’s happening with entrepreneurship in the state, and the confluence of things that are happening in the world at large, that really position Vermont in this amazing place to just create the kind of companies that meet this moment. There’s so much happening in the world – I could talk forever, so I’m not going to – but the news from Patagonia yesterday, in terms of selling – all that kind of stuff to me is fitting a larger narrative.
DAVID BRADBURY
That was the baller move of Patagonia, donating the company to then have the proceeds fight climate change, but also to do political activities as well through that. It’s inspiring.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
Truly the most bad-ass move of all time.
DAVID BRADBURY
Did it make you want to go and buy something from Patagonia? It totally did for me.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
It did, yeah.
DAVID BRADBURY
Yeah, you got your vest on.
MIKE FARBER
I’ve been doing Patagonia since way back when. They have a little outlet in Freeport, so when I was in college I would go up to it, and that’s when I first discovered the company. There are a million things that are interesting about this news, but it’s the back-end piece that’s interesting. And what I mean by that is a lot of times entrepreneurs are rightfully looking, what’s the exit, right? And she may be thinking, okay, how do I maximize income or how do I do this or that?
And the Chouinard family, the founder, took a very different route. They could have gone public. They could have done what REI did. But they’ve created a new model that potentially the entrepreneur right here at VCET could look at as inspiration in 10 years, when she wants to start something.
DAVID BRADBURY
They went so far beyond the giving pledge, and it cost them more money to do it. It’s a really special situation and an example, and it’s pretty neat.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
And you’re right, figuring out how you can do things differently. I think it was maybe five years ago now where they cancelled Black Friday, where they just shut down on Black Friday. That’s the kind of thing that other companies followed suit, because they saw it could be done.
DAVID BRADBURY
Or buy one jacket, not five, right? Of course I have four. Hold on, we need to ask questions here.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
So one thing I want to start with is, let’s talk about young Mike. Were you always interested in business, growing things, and entrepreneurship?
MIKE FARBER
Sort of. Young Mike grew up in Harrisburg, PA.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
Really? This is new information to me.
MIKE FARBER
I’m fully surprised, too! I grew up in Harrisburg, PA. Trivia question, the capital of Pennsylvania. Probably one of the ones you got wrong, right?
SAM ROACH-GERBER
Oh, yeah, Philly!
MIKE FARBER
Pittsburgh!
DAVID BRADBURY
Harrisburg, I forgot that. I have trouble with things over three syllables, so that’s probably why.
MIKE FARBER
So I grew up in Harrisburg. I grew up with a single mom, and I mention that in the context of business-minded young Mike. We didn’t have a lot of money growing up. I knew from the jump I was pretty much going to put myself through college. One of the first entrepreneurial things I did was, I had a paper route, check. And for those who don’t know, there were actually paper routes that little kids would run around and do the thing.
DAVID BRADBURY
Thank you for the historical context.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
Who knows? We might have a huge Gen Z listenership here. We don’t know.
MIKE FARBER
Yeah, that’s true.
DAVID BRADBURY
I’m waiting for the first robotic paper route to come out. I want to be the kid that has the Boston Dynamics Dog robot delivering the papers.
MIKE FARBER
Running around.
DAVID BRADBURY
That would be cool. I would pay more for the paper just to have the robot.
MIKE FARBER
The entrepreneurship piece, though, I hit ninth grade in high school. I was pretty involved in a lot of things, it was an afternoon route, and I did not have time to do the afternoon paper route. But I could do the weekends, because it was in the morning.
The Harrisburg Patriot News, which no longer exists, had a scholarship that they gave to kids who had a paper route. It had to be a senior, though. So I basically sublet my route to a little kid who did it Monday through Friday, I paid him for that, then I hung on to the Saturday and Sunday thing so I would stay eligible for the scholarship.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
And this went through your head when you were 14 as a freshman, being like, “I need to keep a foot in the door for this scholarship?”
MIKE FARBER
Totally. I think there’s a parallel there to entrepreneurs, in the sense that a good entrepreneur is always sort of thinking ahead. What can she do to help position a company or something for the future? And I knew in my case that I was on the hook for college, so it’s like, how am I going to make this happen? How am I going to make it happen in a way that I want to have happen? Which in my case – now we get to New England – was I very much wanted to come to New England for school. I grew up in central Pennsylvania, not really my jam. Penn State, an amazing school, but I didn’t really want to go 40 miles away from home.
So I had big ambitions for the schools that I wanted to go to. I wound up going to Boston College, and cobbling together different sorts of scholarships made that happen.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
Did you get the newspaper scholarship?
MIKE FARBER
I did. My picture was in the paper and the whole bit.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
We’re going to need a copy of that, I think.
MIKE FARBER
I need to dig that up. That would be sort of funny, actually.
DAVID BRADBURY
We’ll have to go back to the microfiche room. All right, so let’s jump ahead a decade or more, and tell us about your time at Schwartz. What it is, what you did while you were there, and then how that led to the launch squad.
MIKE FARBER
So both of those are communications agencies. The way I found myself at Schwartz – which when I first joined it was tiny, I was one of the first employees – was actually out law school. I’ll just tease on this for a second. Like everybody, you take little paths, and not everyone has a real linear path.
I went to law school. I thought I might want to be a lawyer. After the first year, I was like, nope, this is not going to happen. I really did not enjoy the work. But I talked before about an entrepreneur’s hat. Now I put on my marketer’s hat. I finished my first year at a pretty good school, and I sunk some cost into this. The last thing I should do is leave.
So I finished up the program, but I started thinking about how could I market or position myself as somebody who has that kind of training, but can go into something else. I had always been interested in journalism, so I thought I would go into journalism. But then I did – I’m not a math person, but I did the math of my student loans to journalistic salaries, and I realized, nope, not going to happen.
So then I started looking into communications. That’s how I discovered Schwartz Communications, which at the time was about ten people in suburban Boston at the time. It was really early. It was founded by husband-and-wife team, Steven and Paula Mae Schwartz. I totally hit it off with them during the interviewing process.
DAVID BRADBURY
Because you don’t really seem like a person who connects with people well, so I’m pleased to hear that.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
Surprising. You really pulled it out.
MIKE FARBER
But here’s the part I loved about it. Like one of the things – I mean, I’m learning something right now from the two of you – I think that it’s really important for people to always learn from interactions, and listen and absorb them. From Steven and Paula Mae, I’ve learned a million things. One of the first things I learned was to trust my gut and make stuff happen. So I’d been going through this long process with big New York firms, and they’re like, “Oh, we’ll get back to you. Could you pitch dog food?” And I was like, no!
And, at this time technology was just starting to take off. And I was fascinated and continue to be fascinated by technology, because it’s continually changing and your brain is on fire. But what Steve and Paula Mae did in their interview process with me blew me away. I talked to Steve, he sent me off to talk to Paula Mae, I talked to one of the VPs, I came back, and Steve made an offer. I was like, “What? You’re already making an offer?” He’s like, “We like what we see. We’re a growth company. We’re going to check your references to make sure they’re fine, but let’s figure this out and move you up to Boston.”
And I was just blown away. Obviously I was very humbled, but then I also realized that a good entrepreneur moves fast. It’s really easy to paralyze yourself with thought. And Steven and Paula Mae spoke to dozens and dozens of people all the time, they sort of knew what they were looking for. And that agency in itself, particularly in its early stage, was very unconventional, so they didn’t want somebody who had done all this time in another agency.
DAVID BRADBURY
And did that scale? I mean, great, you’re employee #11. But now when you start to get up to whatever the top was, I mean, can you continue to do that?
MIKE FARBER
I can recall, and the answer is not well. And what I mean by that is, I jumped from Schwartz when Steve and Paula Mae – which is very much their right as entrepreneurs, they made it very obvious they were going to sell – and I knew that I was not interested in working for a larger corporate overlord based out of New York or London.
DAVID BRADBURY
Sam and I have made that decision as well. We just don’t want to be part of a big overlord network.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
And we just have so many offers, it’s crazy.
DAVID BRADBURY
I’ve always described myself as unemployable, but you’ve gotten there, lady. You’re there now, sorry.
MIKE FARBER
A lot of good entrepreneurs are unemployable, that’s why they start their own businesses. They’re a disaster. That’s why, I mean, there are so few – this is why – I mean, I’m “tangent city” right now, and I apologize if you think Mark Zuckerberg is the greatest person on earth, but that dude should not have been running Facebook for years at this point, right?
Because there’s a different skill set, in my opinion, between the entrepreneur and that scrappy kid who figures out how to go up against those rich, beautiful twins and create Facebook, and then the person who can scale it into something that obviously created a lot of wealth for people, but at what cost? So I do think that there’s something to entrepreneurs – it’s few and far between that have the same skill set to start something and grow it into, like, a billion-dollar company.
DAVID BRADBURY
Do you think he’s wobbling more off his axis since Sheryl Sandberg left?
MIKE FARBER
Here’s the thing about all of this. Those companies basically make money from Internet advertising, right? And he’s struggling – the company is struggling – to figure out how they are relevant in 2022. This whole Meta thing, I am on the cutting edge of technology and I think it’s ridiculous. It’s absolutely ridiculous. And maybe it will happen at some point, but Dave, I’ve heard you about timing and market timing. They’re just way too early. They’re just trying to figure out a way to keep the market cap up and keep up with their competitors.
DAVID BRADBURY
I just had “Meta” tattooed on my shoulder. A little bit early, you think? All right, so Launch Squad. How did you ended up forming that?
MIKE FARBER
So what happened was, I mentioned before that when Schwartz was going to go public or get acquired, I was like, I’m out. I really don’t want to do this. So I had a little bit of a reset in terms of thinking about what I would want to do next. I thought about the things I loved, like meeting and mentoring people, meeting fantastic companies, and being able to move quickly without bureaucracy. I thought about, what is the right platform to make that happen?
When I was at Schwartz back in San Francisco – right after Caroline, my wife and I, we moved to San Francisco for a couple of years and I helped start the San Francisco office for Schwartz. I worked with some really good friends of mine, who then started in San Francisco a company called Launch Squad.
So I joined them as a partner to start the Boston office for them, and that felt like a good step, in terms of going back to what I love in terms of work, and not dealing with bureaucracy. Meeting these phenomenal entrepreneurs and building something from scratch. It was really great, because unlike a lot of entrepreneurs here at VCET and other entrepreneurs, I had someone in the background to do the healthcare and all that kind of stuff.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
It’s the dream, you’re living the dream.
MIKE FARBER
It’s like, my goodness, that stuff is just mind-numbing.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
You’re like, “Okay, now, go to HR.”
MIKE FARBER
I would hire somebody and then be like, “Okay, go get your stuff.” And I didn’t need to worry about it. I just needed to have her focus on how to do great work.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
That’s awesome. And you were looking for an opportunity to get back to Boston, obviously?
MIKE FARBER
Yeah, so my timeline, I did come back to Boston with Schwartz. So Caroline and I moved out to San Francisco, and we sort of call it the “extended honeymoon,” out there for a couple of years without kids, doing the thing.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
Love it. So then you started this Boston office of Launch Squad. And tell us about the early days of having your own group out there and starting to work with companies. What were those early days like?
MIKE FARBER
They were amazing, really intoxicating in a lot of ways, and really made me fully appreciate what entrepreneurs do every single day. My first day with Launch Squad was basically the FedEx truck showing up and dropping off a laptop at my house. This is pre-COVID, so people didn’t work from home. I’m like, oh my God, where am I going to work?
I have a number of people down in the Boston area that I’m friendly with from a business perspective, and one of them was a venture capitalist. And he said to me, “Hey Mike, this is really cool you’re starting this. I’ve got an extra office, just work out of my office in Campbell Square.”
The group’s called Fairhaven Capital, and I went there. At the beginning, I was like a salesperson, right? I put myself on a meeting quota. I had a whiteboard, and I said, okay, I’ve got to build some clients before I can hire some people, so I’m going to get out there and I’m just going to start networking and meeting companies, and just work through all the people I know. So I put myself on a meeting quota of three in-person meetings per week. I would not cold call anybody. Cold calling has a place, but not for that kind of business. At that point, I was networked enough that I knew I could find some interesting people, so I did, and I just started to call through people and call through people.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
Just build that network. It’s awesome, it sounds fun too. So talk about a little bit about Launch Squad today. Like, what are the services that are offered. What type of companies do you all work with?
MIKE FARBER
Launch Squad’s sweet spot is very much companies that are looking at markets, and thinking about there could be a different way of doing things and a way that’s better. And it is across all sorts of different technologies, but then it can also be very consumer-facing. I think that the connective tissue is companies that have something that’s different, and also have great stories to tell because.
Because from a marketing perspective, there’s a lot for entrepreneurs to be thinking about. And sometimes what gets lost in the shuffle of analytics and data-driven analytics and all that kind of stuff is the emotion, the connection with the customer, or whomever it is that you’re trying to reach. And this is definitely not science, but it’s not pure art. It’s a really cool blend.
And many times what happens is an entrepreneur is so close to what she’s doing that you just lose it, that you can’t quite see that – you’re so close, and you’re busy paying the people, and you’re busy trying to raise money, and all that kind of stuff – and that piece doesn’t come. And that’s where I think having the ability to find a partner that can help you through that stuff as a foil, basically, to go back with.
DAVID BRADBURY
That’s so true, you do get in the weeds, that you lose just communicating the magic. Why I care to know about your product, or wear your brand, or feel an emotional connection to it. You do lose that, right? I mean, I just think about even our own experience here at VCET. We have the worst name in the world.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
Sometimes we have to be like, oh, right, there are people who don’t know what we do. And that’s hard when you have a small team, right? Can you share with us just an example of a company that came to Launch Squad, what issue they were facing, and sort of how you turned it around and helped them sort of get to where they are today?
MIKE FARBER
I’ll go with Gihan, who I know you know. He is a classmate of his from Amherst Regional.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
Amherst Regional High School, yeah, he was one of the ones we knew was going somewhere. I’ll put it that way.
MIKE FARBER
He’s amazing. He’s one of the co-founders for a company called Ministry of Supply. Ministry of Supply is a pretty well-known Boston brand, now international. They do apparel. But there is a technology element to it which is super cool.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
MIT technology, I believe, right?
MIKE FARBER
Thank you for paying attention to the branding, because this is part of what we worked with them on. A company like that will sometimes face this need to feel like they have to prove they’re a fashion company, and that was one of the things that I think was happening at. they’re not a fashion company, right? And what’s interesting is the market has now moved where, at least with regards to the customer base that Ministry of Supply cares about, fashion is not like front of mind. But that wasn’t necessarily the case when they started the company. But then it’s very easy to lean too much into the other piece, which is the performance piece.
For the listeners, Ministry of Supply makes dress apparel for men and women that looks fantastic, but then performs just like the Under Armour, Nike, or Noble sort of stuff that they wear when they’re working out. It’s this really cool blend of the two. And from a technology perspective, they actually have licensed stuff from NASA to help them with the performance of this stuff.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
Essentially, you can bike to work in your suit, is sort of the idea.
MIKE FARBER
That is the most practical application of it, or to present in front of your board and not have sweat stains the size of Lake Champlain.
DAVID BRADBURY
Say or get on the Green Line in August, right? No one’s getting on the Green Line right now.
MIKE FARBER
Not unless they want to put out a fire.
DAVID BRADBURY
Sorry to interrupt, although I’m sure there are protective properties with the apparel here. I didn’t mean to interrupt.
MIKE FARBER
So with Ministry, when they came to us they were tiny. They were the founders and maybe one hero product, the dress shirt, which still continues to be their signature offering. But this is a company that has gone through a lot of growth and a lot of iteration over the last five to seven years, where they’ve introduced pants and suits, they introduced women’s apparel, and they have gone more towards casual clothes, as the market has changed that way.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
The work from home.
MIKE FARBER
I love me some Ministry, but I’m not wearing the Ministry shirts anymore. The pants are fantastic. I actually wore the pants in Europe hiking one day, they’re fantastic performance-wise. But collared shirts aren’t as big a deal anymore. So like any smart company, Ministry of Supply is moving to understand their market and provide products that fit within their authentic view of what they do.
DAVID BRADBURY
I recently clicked on one of their ads, because I saw their T-shirts.
MIKE FARBER
The T-shirts got you?
DAVID BRADBURY
Yeah, with no collar.
MIKE FARBER
Yeah, they’re great. They’re this a Merino polyester blend, and they perform really well.
DAVID BRADBURY
I’m waiting for the friends and family code before I buy them!
MIKE FARBER
I’ll get you on the way out. I won’t say it on the air, but I can definitely get you some.
DAVID BRADBURY
Perfect. As a company is considering creating their brand or evolving it, what lessons – any secretes or insights to the most common mistakes? Is it doing it too informally, meaning the team sits around the room and thinks of it, instead of asking their customers? Or how do we help one of the people out in our room behind this wall, maybe with a couple of low-hanging fruit insights.
MIKE FARBER
Sure. I can get into the tactics in a second, but I want to make a super important point, which is authenticity is the most important thing a company can bring to any piece of their marketing, particularly when you’re smaller. Because there’s a reason you founded this company. And this company, for better or worse, represents you as the founder. It’s going to have certain pieces of DNA that are you.
I think a mistake that a lot of companies make when they start thinking about marketing and branding is they think, oh, I have to have these geniuses come in and it has to be this. And at some point when a company gets to a certain size, I imagine there is a certain benefit to that, but you’ve got to be a really big-ass company for that to pay dividends.
I think being authentic to who you are and what you’re trying to do with your company is number one. It is super easy to do this on your own to start, and then find smart people who want to help to shape it and guide it. So on the drive up here, I listened to How I Built This. A fraction of the listeners that you have!
SAM ROACH-GERBER
He likes to take notes on what Dave and I do.
DAVID BRADBURY
I wonder, though, if we just looked at Vermont, Sam, if we had more listeners?
MIKE FARBER
That would be possible.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
Well, something to shoot for.
MIKE FARBER
But I’m mentioning this in the context of the interview I heard. I think I’ve told you this, I totally crushed on this company called Rivian. I don’t know if you know what they are, but they’re an electric truck – so I’ve been following them since 2017 or 2018. I’m very much like a climate kind of person. By the way, so the CEO of that was on two days ago. And they came up with the name Rivian.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
Which I love.
MIKE FARBER
Right? It’s a great name. It was a team of engineers that did it, and they did it after two other tries. The first one was horrible and was like a holding one. The second one, they got sued by a car manufacturer, and they were like, “We have no money, we can’t do this.” At the time the team was like 10 people.
So then literally they did a brainstorm. It was only a team of engineers, and it winds up that it’s basically named after a river by where RJ, the CEO, grew up. Authentic. And they didn’t have this crazy – they had the engineering methodology to check the boxes to make sure it worked right. It didn’t translate into something in another language that was bad, certain things like that.
But so to finally get to your question, once you put the authenticity, don’t overthink it. Try and find people who you think are smart and creative, and understand you and your company and what you’re trying to do – maybe an early customer – and just brainstorm with them, and try to figure this out. Now I’m talking about sort of the company naming kind of thing.
But then I also think that for initial sort of marketing efforts, you can easily move that over to those efforts as well. I know you’re both very familiar with SheFly. And just watching from afar, the way they have their authentic brand voice locked in –
DAVID BRADBURY
Yeah, it’s pretty impressive.
MIKE FARBER
It’s amazing. It’s amazing, right? And I don’t believe they have outside marketing people helping them. This is them.
DAVID BRADBURY
Yeah, it’s authentic. They have come so far since Middlebury’s campus.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
But I think there is that pressure, I think from young companies, to hire a professional to do things. I think sometimes that just leads you to overthink and spend a lot of money. I think you have to be really careful not to always listen to the loudest voices. I know for a fact that they’ve gotten people who don’t like what they’re doing, don’t think that they should have the sizes that they have or the models that they have, or whatever it may be.
And to give Charlotte and Georgia Grace credit, they don’t care. They know who they are, they know who their customers are, and they’ve stayed so focused on that. To me that’s the part that makes a good entrepreneur, because I am wishy-washy as hell. I don’t have that in me to just say, no, this is what we’re doing, and this is why we’re doing it.
MIKE FARBER
The first thing listeners should remember around this is authenticity. The second one, in my opinion, is to have a strong point of view. People are overwhelmed with marketing, everything, and if you try and be everything to everybody, you’re nothing.
DAVID BRADBURY
You’re vanilla. Give me the Heath bar!
MIKE FARBER
You’re vanilla. You’re absolutely nothing. Exactly. And for better or for worse, people are more opinionated in 2022 than they were in the past. Lean into what you believe. Because what will happen is, you will attract more emotion. You will be more sticky with the people that really matter. And it doesn’t really matter where you are in your growth cycle, right? That’s particularly important for the companies here at VCET, because they need to find those first customers, sort of get them on board, and all that kind of stuff.
But we began this by talking about Patagonia. They have always had a really strong point of view on things, and it’s becoming even sharper now as they become bigger and continue to grow.
DAVID BRADBURY
Which is really brave. That was a conscious choice, because usually when you’re bigger, you’re like, well, sales for the sake of sales. We’ve got appeal more. Red states, blue states. Really fascinating. I mean, Vermont has such a number of these founders that when you think of authenticity, like [00:30:25 Skeeter and Karin Prevo], Jake and Donard, Burton, my gosh, walking the walk for all these years, and on and on. How does this translate to sort of business B2B type stuff – or does it? I mean, how do you show authenticity if you’re a CRM solution? Can that happen?
MIKE FARBER
Yeah, it’s a great question. I think it can. So it can happen around a couple of different things. First, it can happen around culture. Many times, particularly aa larger technology company has a lot of people, and they want to make sure that their people are happy, feel part of something larger, and are trying to do something more. So there’s a piece that can help there.
In terms of having a point of view on certain things like problem-solving, that can also be really important, right? I’m trying to think of a good analogy. I mean, this is an early and obvious analogy, but I think it’s relevant to this case, someone like Slack. Now everyone uses Slack, everybody knows what it is. But when they started, it was like, what is this thing? It was really weird.
And what they saw was they wanted to take the sort of customer experiences that she may experience on a personal side from social networking, and the horrible kind of communication platform that was available from a work perspective, and marry them and create something that then the customer would feel great about. And it didn’t matter if she was thinking about it as the sales account executive, or the person at home looking at Instagram or Facebook.
DAVID BRADBURY
Like a Lotus Notes killer, right?
MIKE FARBER
So I mean, another way I think to think about that, Dave, is around the kind of innovation that enterprise companies make. There’s so much innovation that is happening on that side, and a lot of it has to do with just improving the customer experience, and making it more seamless to sort of replicate what they experience in their personal. Life because there’s no reason why you should have a much better experience on Instagram than you do at your work.
DAVID BRADBURY
Sam, I’m thinking of Widewail with reputation management. Through their videos and their people, they live online review reputation management. That’s what they do, and they’re crushing it here locally. Fluency with that team, with robotic ad systems. Again, that’s all they do, and they do it better than anybody.
And I think of Narine Hall and InSpace, with their education, learning video and platform. I needed that give minutes to sort of answer my own question, it took me a little bit. So if you were starting a car company, yours would be called Harrisburg? I’m not sure that would work.
MIKE FARBER
No, I don’t think it would work, particularly with the – I don’t know if you’re familiar with Three Mile Island, if you remember that at all. But yeah, the rivers through Harrisburg were full of radioactivity for a spell.
DAVID BRADBURY
No one wants a car with a three-mile range on it!
SAM ROACH-GERBER
No, that’s quite alright. I love it. So are you getting a truck?
MIKE FARBER
I’ve been on the waiting list for over a year.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
I can’t wait to go for a ride when you got it.
MIKE FARBER
Oh yeah, and we’ll do it in like February, through big snowbanks.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
Yes, I’m here for it. So, one of the things that really jumped out at me is, one of your goals with Launch Squad was to create a workplace that values humanity. That really hit me, and I just want to hear what that means to you and why that was important.
MIKE FARBER
It’s a wonderful question. I have this very interesting view of work, where I firmly believe it is part of who we are, but it does not define who we are. I think increasingly more and more people are starting to see that and recognize that. As all of us employ people, so we have the privilege to help people experience a good chunk of their daily life in an environment that we co-create, and that’s an amazing honor. Having the ability to bring some humanity to that is really important.
So we think deeply about things like kindness, authenticity, and collaboration, but not like in a Steve Carell Office, I’m going to put it on the wall. I’m a bit of a writer, and I firmly believe you show, don’t tell, which is the classic writing thing. If you try too hard to tell people that you’re authentic, you’re not authentic. Just be yourself. Treat others the way you would like to be treated. My mom was a teacher and my dad was a professor. I come from teachers, and maybe that’s part of the reason I take so much joy in helping.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
I was going to say, this is starting to make sense. I’m starting to get Mike a little bit here. And I mean, I love that. Just being authentic in your leadership and showing your employees that you care about who they are, what their lives are like, and things like that. Just to get to the business side of it too, did that help with retention and growth?
MIKE FARBER
Absolutely. Here’s where I think the world’s going. I don’t see those two as separated. I don’t see the business and humanity piece separated. I firmly believe – and I do think this is a bit generational in all the right ways – I do believe there is more of a confluence between the two. For better or for worse, COVID has accelerated this, because the work boundary now has become more blurred – physical work boundary – and some people have the discipline to just shut that off. Some people don’t.
But it’s a lot easier than it was ten years ago to do that. Employees now have power, as well they should. Don’t get me started on the death of unions and all this kind of stuff. But because of the way that the market is right now with hiring, particularly in technology, they have leverage to bring it to business.
So there are certain things that they are rightfully wanting in their work experience, particularly after having proved – emphasis on proved – through COVID, 18 to 24 months of lockdown, companies continue to grow. They continued to grow at record levels. So why are you telling me exactly what I should be doing with regards to my daily life? And some people may want to come into the office, which is amazing because there are a million benefits to come into the office, but some people may not.
And to me, that’s part of humanity. If you want to make sure that your work is done in a way that you’re at, and you’re able to go to your son’s or daughter’s 3:00 PM soccer game without having to do 90-minute commutes, you should be able to do that.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
Or feel like you need to hide at the soccer game.
MIKE FARBER
Yes, exactly.
DAVID BRADBURY
I love it. I love it.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
Oh, go ahead, Dave?
DAVID BRADBURY
My turn. Well, maybe it’s not my turn. I don’t want feedback through our email system here. I want to ask you about Vermont and the innovation ecosystem. You hit on it earlier that, boy, this seems to be our moment. Do you think we got here consciously, or are we just so far behind that we’re ahead again?
MIKE FARBER
I’m relentlessly positive. I would argue that Vermont has always been ahead. And what I mean by that is, I think we’re increasingly moving to a values-based capitalism, and that is something Vermont has always had. Going back to companies like Seventh Generation and Ben and Jerry’s, to the companies being created now. I know we keep talking about Patagonia news, but we look at that, and that is an indicator of where a certain kind of capitalism is going.
I worked with a client for a number of years who is actually a Republican, and one of the things he talked about – he grew up in Western Pennsylvania – and one of the things he used to talk about was capitalism was out of balance. And what he meant by that was there was so much emphasis on the bottom line and profit, that employees and values were just being put aside.
Vermont has always been at the forefront of integrating values into business, and then not just putting it up on the wall but living it. It’s not a coincidence that One Percent is here, things like that. It’s an amazing place for all of that.
DAVID BRADBURY
We lead with employee-owned firms up here.
DAVID BRADBURY
And then I also think that increasingly, we’re having a creative economy, because there’s only so much iteration that’s happening. I think we’re going to have a big shift forward with technology at some point, but it’s like, you’re fine. The iPhone 14 just came out, why would I get it, right? Everything is there’s some iteration that’s happening. And some of the spaces where there’s going to be really transformative change – like around climate technologies and stuff like that – Vermont is very well positioned to take advantage of that in all the right ways.
And then back to the creative economy thing, you look through decades, millennia of creatives, and the outdoors inspires. And what better place could you be than Vermont to be able to take creative inspiration from the world at large, and then be able to bring that to your work in a way that really is important? I think that’s another intrinsic advantage to Vermont, and I am fully optimistic that over the next three to five years we’re going to see some fantastic ideas come out of this ecosystem.
DAVID BRADBURY
I love that he described Vermont as “we.” We stickin’. That’s good. You’re so right. When I think back to early in my career here, my perfect day, I snowboarded one morning with Jake Carpenter in the chair, powder, then came to work, it was a Cancer Research team at UVM. We were doing something. I think that night I saw Baryshnikov dance at the Flynn theater, and there were a couple of beers and pizza in there too. But that was like, wow, you can do it. And I don’t know, I think I drank the Kool-Aid up here. How about you?
SAM ROACH-GERBER
I’m getting there, for sure.
DAVID BRADBURY
Hey, Sam, we’re getting close to asking – what happened after Launch Squad?
SAM ROACH-GERBER
I have one more –
DAVID BRADBURY
Did you recently leave?
MIKE FARBER
I did, yeah.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
I was just going to say, you finished up with Launch Squad. You’re spending more and more time in Vermont. What’s next for you?
MIKE FARBER
I’ll keep you posted.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
And in the meantime, we’re going to continue to send companies and founders your way for a little wisdom.
MIKE FARBER
I’d be thrilled to do it.
DAVID BRADBURY
Yeah, you’ve been so helpful, too. And we’re just so lucky when you come join us at Middlebury, during our J-term class with entrepreneurs over the years. That really means a lot to us and to them as well. You want to do it, magic wand?
SAM ROACH-GERBER
Hit there, Dave.
DAVID BRADBURY
I feel like I took your last question though.
DAVID BRADBURY
Okay, magic wand superpowers time. I feel like he feels like he has superpowers anyway, so this is redundant. If you could change one thing in Vermont, what would you change?
MIKE FARBER
All right. I’ll give you the goofy answer, and then I’ll give you the answer. The goofy answer is, just make each season three months long. I dig me some winter. I don’t dig me some give months of winter.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
The story of my life.
DAVID BRADBURY
Didn’t that come up earlier this week? He’s like, I want winter to end at a certain date in March or something.
MIKE FARBER
Yeah, I’m a seasons person. But let’s all take our proper.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
Winter is really creeping on both sides.
DAVID BRADBURY
Are you on one of those closet programs, where your clothes swap out on a certain date?
MIKE FARBER
And I’m still in shorts, so they’ll be going till November. So in terms of the true magic wand, I would like – and this isn’t just a Vermont thing, this is a world thing, but I think Vermont would benefit from this as well – I would like there to be a Harry Potter-style sorting hat, where the greatest minds went on the biggest problems, and didn’t go chasing derivative values in New York or other ways to try and create incremental wealth or generational wealth for themselves. Instead, figure out how to beat cancer. Figure out these really big, vexing problems.
We’re facing a lot of stuff, and I firmly believe entrepreneurs are the greatest minds we have, because they’re not bought into conventional thinking. I think some of these problems are so big that you need that mindset, but then you also need it with the top intellectual rigor, because these problems are scary and hard.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
Man, that’s such a good magic wand. Just assigning people to certain battles.
DAVID BRADBURY
Yeah, right. That would be a superpower, right?
SAM ROACH-GERBER
I know, for real.
DAVID BRADBURY
I love it. Thank you so much for sharing your story and your time with us.
This has been Start Here, a podcast sharing stories of active, aspiring, and accidental entrepreneurs. This series is supported by the Vermont Technology Council and Consolidated Communications. Let’s get back to work.
