Lessons on innovation from over 100 founders
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This is Most Innovative Companies from Fast Company, where we speak to visionary founders to understand how they think, how they innovate, and what lessons they may have for you and the businesses that you run in every shape and size. I'm James Vincent, a founding partner at Foundr.

Hi, welcome to the most innovative podcast by Fast Company. And this is a special mid-season episode. And I'm very excited to share a conversation with you with my three partners at Founder, FNDR, we couldn't afford the vowels.

For the bus, Becca, Jeffrey, Stephen Butler, and Nick Barham, who you'll hear from today, have been building over the last five years a company that's worked. Actually, we did the numbers, and we've worked with 126 founders.

And in that time, in those five years, we've been harnessing the power of narrative and telling stories and giving voice to their vision. And I really want to get into with these guys who I literally spend every single day with over the last five years with all these founders.

the stories and the lessons of innovation, like all the different shapes and sizes of innovation. And so what lessons can we be bringing to the Fast Company community around what has been a very focused series of conversations with founder-led businesses? We believe founder-led businesses are the future, hence the name, that you can make real effective change and improve society, that narrative is the way of liberating their bold ideas and

And so, you know, since we started Foundr, we've worked across all kinds of categories from vertical farming to hydrogen cars to, you know, cultured meat, precision medicine, e-sports, biotech, all kinds of different areas. And it's in that sort of horizontal perspective, it's dipping in and out and being the storytelling experts that I think hopefully you'll get from this conversation a fairly unique perspective.

That unique perspective is if you work across 20 categories and you work with these founders who are creating the future, maybe you see some of the tears and the threads, some of the themes that cut right across all of the different things. Because every founder is just a deep domain expert in their own world. But perhaps in this conversation, you'll get some of the advantage of working across 126 founders in all kinds of different. So what are we seeing? What's the pattern? Is there a pattern in all of the craziness?

So let's get into it. So I'm here today with my three partners at Foundr. I'm going to start with Bekka. It's great to have you. Hey, James. Stephen, how are you? I'm awesome. Thank you. You just got back from Europe, so a little jet lag. I did. I'm a little jet lag, but I'm raring to go. Raring to go. And Nick, welcome. How are you doing?

That's about as formal as we've ever been with each other. So now you're introduced to all of us, let's get into it and make this a really useful conversation around innovation. So I'm going to start with, actually I'm going to do three basic questions during the course of this. I'm going to talk about what we've learned so far,

What we've seen in the last couple of years, because it's been pretty exceptional, kind of crazy. And then what does the future look like? So pretty simple structure. I'm going to start with the first question. You know, since we've worked with so many different companies and across so many different categories, is it really possible to talk about lessons learned? Is there anything like shared characteristics and approaches to innovation that

in those 126 founders that we've worked with. What have you noticed that might help the fast company community to understand how to work with innovation? So I'm going to start, Becca, with you, if you don't mind. How do you think about that? Yeah, I mean, it's a huge question. There's so many things we've learned over the years. But I would say the most interesting space right now is just thinking about the massive change and evolving context we're in.

And with any of those kind of moments, you get these huge waves of innovation that really turn those unique challenges into new opportunities. And that's super exciting from the way we've sat with all these founders over the years to really see them take those on and start to create the new, which is fundamentally what innovation is, right? So how do you even attempt to

draw out how you're going to go about it or what that's going to be. Innovation is just simply something new, something that hasn't been done. So we have to really think about the lessons for me are really, how do you create the conditions? What kind of conditions do you need to let innovation come to life?

It's this really sometimes scary, daunting process. It's something that, you know, you're not exactly sure what it's going to be. So how do you have a vulnerable interaction with yourself, with your company, with other perspectives and really try to develop and nurture something new? So I think that's what makes it so exciting, but also, you know, pretty big task. Yeah.

I think what we've really seen in the work that we do is that there's a diversity of founders, right? So innovation becomes so many different things and so many different styles. And that founder being at the core of a business can really inject their spirit into it.

really drive it and lead a company forward. And they're all so different. So I think, you know, just some examples, we've worked with so many different kinds of founders, scientists, business operators, athletes, which are their own breed, activists, and even catalysts that are more the spark to something that will really drive something forward, but not even focused on themselves.

So as you can imagine, with all those different types, there's a whole range. There's very calculated ones, and then there's very spontaneous and very intuitive. So each is unique. And for us, it's really focusing on that human. So who are they? How do they operate? How do we get to an intimate place with them and create an environment to really understand who they are and then really pull the genius out of them in the process?

So with such diversity of founders and so many different shapes and sizes and scientists and software engineers and storytellers and athletes and biotech people, what can we learn from all of the different diversity that's so clear in all of these different founders? To debunk the idea that innovation might be one size fits all, it's not one size fits all. And a lot of people think that really this is the domain of a creative or an inventor only, but we've seen so many different kinds. I think

There's obviously the ones everyone expects, product innovation or entire new categories. We've plenty of founders that are in that space like the ones, even Meaty was growing meat from mycelium and creating a whole new category of highly nutritious and low impact food for the planet.

Then you've got things like operating systems innovation, where like the Bowery operating system with Irving, that it really never stands still and it builds off constant iteration to make scaling vertical farming a reality. You have examples of innovation through internal structures and ways of working. And we're really seeing that with one of our founders, Jeremy, over at Zag Studios. Really, he's scaling a singular, very unique, very passion-led personality and innovation

all of his instincts into a really huge company that's bringing amazing content to the forefront in culture. And he's doing that through beliefs and behaviors and values that he is clearly infusing into the way the company works, not like your typical studio.

And then there's times where, you know, the business model itself is the innovation. And you start at the beginning with a company like Pangaea as an example. It's built as a collective dedicating to bringing niche material innovations to market, but at scale and speed. And that in itself is...

is innovation at the core and is constantly how they operate. With all of that in mind, thinking about the different types of founders, their different styles, their different archetypes, and then all these different ways and places within a business and an idea that you can look for innovation, the through line for us is just that you have to create those conditions and

What we've found is that narrative can really help create the conditions for that innovation to thrive. So something that sits above everything at the level of the founder, it brings clarity, freedom, and confidence to an otherwise scary, uncertain, and uncomfortable space. Stephen, do you want to jump in here? How would you go about answering that question? Yeah, well, look, I think it, again, comes down to this idea of intentional narrative, right? And that's why we're sitting here today, and that's a lot of

you know, our experience of working with this huge amount of founders that we've worked with. I don't think anyone's going to argue that we're at this incredible inflection moment, right? And the reality is if we are going to change our world, in many ways we need to change the narrative. And I think it's important to recognize that brands and businesses can be one of our most effective vehicles for narrative change, right? And if we can raise the bar at that level, it really is kind of, there's no limit to what we can kind of achieve, right?

The reality is, though, is the root to that profound change, you know, through positive innovation lies in this idea that business can be part of our kind of human future. It doesn't need to be its own story.

And narrative is this way of kind of reconciling and realigning businesses, ethics, and humanity. And intentional narrative is just that, right? At its core, that's what it does. It's this new understanding of the cause and effect of each and every business. And we talk a lot with our founders about this. It's really to get an understanding. I think in many ways, it's how we choose who we like to work with. And

Also, it's this idea that it's about capitalism not just viewed as a sum total in of itself, but rather as a form of collective accountability and responsibility. I think importantly, seeing intentional narrative as a founder is really thinking of it as a source for and a product of innovation. It's both these things. It's not just something you wrap around your innovation, but it can also become this powerful driver of innovation.

And it tends to drive your recruitment and your retention, not just in terms of your customers, but also internally, right, with your employees. And I think this is very, very important in understanding what that looks like and how that feels. And look, I think, you know, one of the great privileges, certainly of my working career, was having that front row seat with Brian Chesky at Airbnb for those three and a half years.

and really getting a sense of how a kind of core idea can drive that intentional narrative. And when we started working, obviously, we were launching this idea of Airbnb and the notion of belong anywhere, which is a pretty high-minded idea for a brand that at the time was seen as a kind of 21st century couch surfing brand. But of course, the ambition for that brand was far greater.

And I think what we were able to understand there is that you were really kind of creating this new type of invitation, right, to the guests as well as challenging the host, right, to really lean into unlocking this kind of basic human power, which was that power of hospitality. And I loved at the time, I remember one response was a sense of adorable overreach, right, the idea that, hang on, you're a home-sharing brand, right?

What has that got to do with a sort of global idea of a world where 7 billion people can belong anywhere? But what Brian was brilliant was, is continuously retelling that story, understanding that it drove both product guest and host innovation, and even bringing it down into the basics of how you run your day-to-day business. You know, if we were sitting in this room that we are today and it was a meeting room, I know Brian would look around and go, well, who's hosting this meeting? Right? So it's not just something you communicated externally. It was something that drove your kind of internal culture. And

And I think this is often a misunderstanding and perhaps as we've transitioned from a very sort of marketing-led kind of way of storytelling with brands and businesses where the kind of famous tagline was the thing that led the marketing is I think today what we are mostly dealing with is these statements of intent.

that really drive the entire business, right? And really give us a next level way of up-leveling a connectivity through the entire organization. And that's the fun part that obviously we as a foursome here love getting involved in and really helping founders unlock what that can be

and really building that. I love the way that you've sort of talked about, you know, I think in the past people thought brand was sort of the thing that you did with the agency and the CMO and like that's what you do in that little department and then you do everything else everywhere else. Whereas actually this is kind of an existential conversation with founders because they are literally building the company. So what kind of company are they going to build? And they're making decisions and they do it around an intentional narrative, a statement of intent.

And so that is directionally the future. And they can build the company because it is new rather than do an ad that's maybe forgotten the week later. I think, look, I think this new generation is building on, you know, I mean, obviously Steve Jobs was the godfather of this, of understanding brand and product as one idea. But what we are seeing amongst our founders is that they understand the power of this.

And they really want to make that seamless. And they really understand that is part of their innovation strategy as much as anything else. Fantastic. Nick, what are your thoughts on the topic? Well, we see that the most powerful and successful companies are the ones that are able to describe their innovations extremely simply and clearly, right?

So ones that have this statement of intent or one very singular idea that can describe the business but also the environment so it can bring along both the customers but also employees and even investors as well. A lot of the time we're working in areas that are really new. They can feel somewhat weird or complicated or difficult or just going out into areas that businesses haven't kind of been in before. And I think in those areas particularly, it's really imperative to have this simple language

to introduce kind of new and challenging ideas. A lot of the time we talk about how do you get the right balance between the new and the familiar. You can't put new on top of new because then things just feel scary or weird. So how do you get in your intentional narrative something that people recognize but also something that acknowledges where the new is?

We often talk about the name as being the first act of innovation. And if you get a great simple name, then that often does a lot of the first, a lot of the important work, first of all. We recently worked with a company called Fork and Good who are growing meat. So it's cultured meat, it's pork.

but without killing animals. And that means that you've got these laboratories where spheres of pork are growing, which can feel quite a strange idea. But we think the name is a lovely introduction to that and a way to overcome some of the kind of implicit challenges there. So if you think about Fork and Good, they're concentrating on the fork, which is the thing that you put food into your mouth with, not the knife, which is the thing that you kill animals with. And also, if you say it quickly, Fork and Good...

It actually sounds quite funny. And we think a bit of humor when you're doing kind of complicated technology can go a long way. Another great example is Bowery. They do vertical farms, so they grow lettuce indoors. And again, that can feel like quite a technical new idea. But Bowery is based off...

a Dutch word for farms. And originally, the Bowery in New York was the connection between the farms outside the city and the city itself. And what Bowery is trying to do is to bring vertical farming to every city. So it's all about this idea of proximity. Fantastic. Well, thank you, guys. There's a lot to unpack in some of the answers you've already given. You know, it's

The last two years have been just so crazy and so different. Of course, COVID being just the first chapter of that, but COVID turned into supply chain challenges, turned into sort of war, you know, the sustainability challenges of the moment, the freakish and rather scary weather that

is happening all over the world now and happening much, much faster than we ever thought. So at so many different levels, it seems that the human condition is sort of like being challenged, right? The technology revolution that we're going through is at a massive extreme. It's at peak revolution.

You know, one might argue that in a moment like that, storytelling is more important than ever because people have sort of lost their way and the world is upside down and going sideways. So what have we noticed in the founders that we've worked with in the last couple of years about what the last two years has set for them? Is it more challenging or a bigger opportunity?

Well, I think that we've definitely seen a new wave of founders kind of emerging in all of that chaos that you're describing, James. But I'll go one further and just talk a bit broadly. I'll use a broad paintbrush here about the first 20 years of the century. I think, you know, if we just zoom out, technology and our relationship to it has been a bit of the Wild West. And I think we were kind of going through maybe our adolescent period we like to talk about.

In that phase, as everything was growing and moving so fast, we were just getting disruption because you could, you're focused on speed and convenience and efficiency. I think there was so much self-capitalization going on.

Funding was seemingly endless, growth at all costs, maybe without limits. And we were starting to give up data for dollars and lack of privacy and all of the list goes on and on. But I think we started to notice in our founders this bigger shift coming across like just at the turn of the decade, right before the big, big changes of COVID and everything that happened since.

But we were really seeing across a lot of conversations, a lot of different industries, a pretty major shift and a different approach by founders. I think we had gone through that period and people were starting to say, wait, there's some major unintended consequences we're seeing. Maybe there's a different way to do this. Maybe the playbook isn't quite right yet. And I think we started to see a shift from some things that maybe were a bit, you know, fun and frivolous to more impactful, bigger systems, bigger

bigger ideas, changing things that were going to take a lot of infrastructure and heft to do. And I think that also came with real intentionality. It was a lot more considerate and more focused on the human. So if we were maybe like move fast and break things in the early days, I think we're really seeing a lot more founders go towards like move fast or move forward, but make things, don't just tear things down.

at all costs. They're really thinking about what could be the unintended consequences and things and starting to design more thoughtfully from like clear and ethical places. And that's been really inspiring to kind of see all these different founders prioritize that.

Yeah, we described in a previous episode the difference between disruption and innovation. Disruption is just sort of breaking shit down. It's like, okay, great. Of course you can, but what are the implications of that? So are you saying you're feeling a sort of more conscious founder and conscious businesses trying to think through the implication of it? Is that? Yeah, I mean, I think there's tons of examples of the founders we've worked with, and maybe we're a bit selective in our choosing of some of these founders as well, but we really do see...

the intention coming through, you know, and taking on and tackling those like bigger societal or human challenges, not just simply, I want to put this thing out there and get rich. They're really having that kind of impactful starting point and seeing like the more existential crises that we're maybe facing and trying to solve those big, big issues. And I think there's a few ways that like that's coming to life and the way they're starting and running their businesses that they're developing, I think,

They see that there's a value proposition, a really good value proposition in balancing both business success and like humanity succeeding. There's a lot of money to be made there and they're starting to realize that you can make a good dent for everyone in that. It's win-win. They're really clear and inclusive about their beliefs and behaviors and then they share them and they make them really important. They're not just a back office. They're putting them out for consumers as much as they are for their internal team's

they prioritize those healthy internal cultures and don't necessarily subscribe to the more cutthroat, toxic kind of cultures that we've seen in the past.

And they really win on that, like, respect and collaboration. So, I mean, it all sounds really nice and lovely. But I do think, you know, it's not that the party is over at all. I think some people might say that right now, given the time we're in, the climate we're in. But I really love that, like, Warren Buffett quote where it's like, when the water recedes, you see who's got swim trunks on.

Well, I think the party is like actually just starting now with the ones who really are going to do things right and intentionally. And I think that's where all the opportunity lies. And so those founders innovating with that in mind are really seeing an uptick. So actually, you know, what might have been described as purpose in the past, which was some kind of like narrow, small niche, is actually becoming mainstream in the way that there's a new type of consumerism

consumer, new types of businesses who are all being held to a higher bar. Like, what are you doing for sustainability? How are you contributing to society? How is that a good thing for the world? And so that maybe that transparency that is now exists in the world means that companies have to think through these things to a greater degree than perhaps they had to in the past. I think Stephen says it really nicely with the, you can have purpose and profit.

Yeah, no, I think, and that's why we always say to our founders, you know, make it work on purpose. And we mean the duality of that, right? Make it simple, make it able to be used, but then also make it ethical. Make it have a purpose in life. Don't just make it another, you know, we don't need more shit on the pile, as they say. We need these incredible innovations that are really going to change the way, but we also need them to be effortless.

And so I think it is, I think historically, you know, profit was the only purpose. Now people plus profit makes for a purposeful business. And I think that builds infinite profit. And so, again, it's not a compromise. You know it when Blackstone, BlackRock, when they talk about we're going to invest significantly in sustainability because we actually think it's so important to absolutely everybody on the planet that actually that purpose will lead to profit. Yeah.

And I think that confidence of those two things drives innovation. And it's no longer like tree hugger, grow your own yogurt, knit your own denim, like sit in the corner, but actually has gone into mainstream culture. And I think that's what I feel Becca was saying in terms of the trend she was identifying from the founders we're working with.

Nick, how would you go about answering that question? Well, it feels like innovation has changed its focus a little bit. And one of the kind of ongoing anxieties around innovation is, are we doing it in the right area? Are we putting our effort onto the right things? And, you know, to Becca's point, the first 20 years of this century can feel a little bit like a lot of the focus was on reducing friction, expanding connections, increasing efficiency, all of those things that make consumers' lives a bit easier.

And I think, you know, there was that famous quote, wasn't there? We wanted flying cars and we got 140 characters instead. I think what we see right now is that we are getting hydrogen cars and electric airplanes and people are growing food from mycelium and making sweaters from banana skins. And it does feel like a different type of innovation that really a response to the 21st century and the conditions and the situations that...

we see now. And I think we find it really encouraging to see the number and the range of companies who are rising to today's most critical demands and are thinking about how should we feed ourselves? Where do we get our energy from? How do we move around cities? How do we better understand each other? Really matching a kind of new experiences and services with what people and the planet need. It comes back to, you know, the cultural perception of technology, right? And I think one of the things we've talked a lot about with our founders is that

At the moment, our perception is skewed because technology's only delivered on half its promise, right, which was connection at scale.

And this was this ability to identify where everybody was, what they were doing, and how we could target them to a degree. And I think what we really realize now, we're in this incredibly exciting phase where we need to deliver the other half of that, which is really diversity at scale, right? Our diversity of innovation, our diversities of types of ideas, people, countries, all of these kinds of things. I mean, we've had the privilege now over the last two years of working with an enormous amount of European founders.

and really kind of starting to get into this kind of more diverse range of founder culture. But really, this is this balancing act that I think we're seeing today, and I think is going to be the real next kind of up-leveling of what technology can do for us. That's interesting you mention Europe, actually, because Silicon Valley has gone from being a place to being a mentality. And in traveling the world, I've witnessed it in Stockholm, in Paris, in London, in Lisbon, in Australia.

And Europe is definitely pushing significantly in its growth of venture-backed and is pushing also on some of these issues that we're talking about. And Silicon Valley itself maybe has also transformed in this at the same time from being perhaps some of the bro culture that it was in the past to being much more diverse geographically, popping up all over the country.

and allowing for more diversity and the future, recognizing that technology, of course, if you think of like machine learning and AI, right, the opportunity of technology can be the foundational piece that allows for diversity, right? Because we have all this information, we can provide a thousand different solutions.

And so the future isn't mass, it's multi-niche. But also we can design that diversity into our innovations. We have to. We're compelled, right? And I think whether it's Europe, whether it's Asia and looking more towards the East even is, you know, I always think of the sort of second child syndrome, right? The second child is able to fill the space left behind by the first child. And I think Silicon Valley is the origin story, but I think it's

grown into something very much more profound and powerful as it reaches across more diverse territories. And that's really exciting. And we've seen that in a really amazing way.

But I think it does lead to this other big question about it's not just enough to have innovation, it's how you frame your innovation, right? How do you present that? And I think a lot of the conversations we will have every day with our founders is, you know, you don't want to create a great innovation and then position it as a solution to an old world problem, right? You need to project and look at what is this interaction with a new way that people want to live and the world is looking at today.

Because we know that a sort of problem solution model is actually a limited business model, right? Whereas when you're looking at an interactive model of like, how is my product, how is my technology gonna interact with culture?

You're looking at an infinite model. And again, I think we've had some great examples for different reasons with great brands and businesses that we've worked with. The first one that springs to mind is Oatly, right, which was a unique experience. When Tony took over Oatly, it was a 30-year-old idea. You know, they'd been sitting there as a kind of oat milk for many, many years. And it would have been easy to kind of play into that sort of rise of a new consciousness in the early noughts.

where suddenly we would become much more aware of what we wanted to eat, what we wanted to put in our bodies. But very quickly, this idea that perhaps it was a milk for vegans or for lactose intolerance, which would have been a market, but a much more narrow market versus going, well, actually, how are people interacting at the moment and looking at that huge rise in coffee culture? And the idea that could we be in a place where every morning people were touching our product? And of course, it was that wonderful discovery that oat milk frothed better.

than any other product on the market, right? So suddenly you penetrate the barista marketplace, you get them excited about it, and you're delivering something every day to people that's an innovation. And so this idea, again, of seeing it as that new interaction, not just as that kind of problem solution.

I remember Tony saying, you know, it was wonderful that they found the coffee thing, but actually the sign of success was when they made it into Burger King. Absolutely. It's not like we're just in Air One and Whole Foods, but we made it into Burger King. You can now have Oli in Burger King, and that's the sign of success. Well, that's when your innovation really has the democracy and the appeal because you haven't...

positioned it in too narrow a channel in terms of that problem solution. I think another one, and Nick's touched on briefly and maybe Becca did as well, meaty. These were, by definition, a sort of meat substitute. But when we looked at that product and when we talked about it, we realized it was offering so much more that could elevate it out of this very crowded marketplace at the moment and the plant-based and all these sort of substitutes for meat.

And when we were looking at, we thought actually the way mycelium delivers a new type of energy is really something interesting. And especially when we're living in a world today where we know to move forward, we're going to have to find new sources of energy at every level, right? Emotionally, psychologically, physically. And so thinking about it as this new form of energy and a new energy source really painted a completely different picture

Good energy, right? Good energy, right? This idea that it was a healthy kind of energy versus the idea that you were substituting or compromising. You know, instead of eating your meat, you were going to eat this mycelium steak. But rather, no, you were doing something incredibly good for yourself. So I think this constant sense of framing your innovation, not against the problem, but framing it against the promise of this new interaction is really important, I think, in terms of how we really kind of up-level ourselves.

And how these innovations come to life. I think that those were both two good examples of just like not blending in with the crowd. Like literally the Oatly story is, you know, oat milk exists. It had existed for a long time. But in the way that you define the brand and made it a story, that's where the innovation showed up. Yeah.

Wow, no cow. I think they're singing in there. Tony was the guy sitting in the field singing in the field, right? That's right. Super Bowl last year. So that's awesome stuff. You know, I think the point about the future is that it's not one thing and it's the opportunity for it to be multi-niche and diverse and

And that you can build big companies with multiple ways in which they can attract people. And I think in the past, maybe you might have looked at how do I build a big company? Oh, I need to just sort of like get to massive scale. Like, how do I get mass?

How do I get on that, you know, on the corridor of Ralph's and, you know, like how do I get into the supermarket? But it seems as if, you know, what we're talking about now is this opportunity where technology and storytelling, right, which are coming together because technology is becoming more and more familiar for all of us, right? We're all getting used to on our iPhone every single day. Oh, I hit the button, a car comes. Yeah, of course. Are you kidding? Yeah.

Oh, hit a button and oh, wow, I hit a button and wow, okay, that's becoming part of our everyday expectation. And, you know, one of the themes throughout actually this podcast series has been this sort of, you know, the tear between the physical and the digital and that challenge as people trying to negotiate that. And I'm reminded actually of, I think, one of our very first clients at Founder and good friend of Founder is Evan Spiegel at Snapchat.

who used to pull up outside every other week for almost two years. And we navigated a conversation with him around the digital and the physical at a time when, as we know, you know, that social media was just beginning to be understood to be a bit of a tear in society. And what are your thoughts on that, Stephen? Well, look, I think it's, you know, back to the conversation we're having about the future, right? The world has up leveled, right? But what

The reality is that we know that the future of human well-being lives at that intersection. I think the greatest lesson I learned from spending two years once a week with Evan was really the challenge of overcoming digital dualism. This idea that we saw the digital and the physical as two separate ideas. I think, again, we've talked with a lot of our founders about this understanding of how you position your innovation. We even had that model of the best brands act initially as a shock absorber,

Then they build a bridge between the two and ultimately they become a springboard. But again, I think with a lot of these innovations, understanding back to Nick's point about the shock of the new is,

is that you are having to introduce culture into this new way of living, into this new interaction. And it doesn't matter how much we live on the internet, we still have this bifurcated idea. We either feel like our reality is too ordinary or we feel like when we're on the internet we can't escape our reality enough and we're very demanding of both sides. But this is because we see them as these two kind of conflicting ideas.

And I think, again, the privilege of working with people like Evan is – and we've had a number of amazing young founders who are really natives of this new kind of single storytelling universe, right? And when you look at that single storytelling universe, you're no longer looking at a bifurcated idea. You're looking at new types of jobs, new economies, new forms of governance, new

new information, right? And I think the biggest problem I think we've made as a culture is to initially see the internet and now perhaps even more dangerously the metaverse as these alternative destinations, these alternative realities, versus seeing them very powerfully as filters

to enhance our reality, right? It has to be a feedback loop. But again, many brands have profited off the idea of creating alternative realities where we can kind of capture people and capitalize on people. And so I think, again, this kind of idea of just really getting over that tear. And I think, again, we find the best innovations, the best founders are the ones who are native to that

We even talk about Generation Alpha becoming the digital alphas. They're becoming that first generation who are going to be seamless. Even millennials still have this tension, the move fast, break things. Then Gen Zers were like, well, now we've got to fix it. And the alphas are coming up as these kind of digital alphas. I think I see it in my younger children who are

top end of digital alphas or in digital alpha. We have Gen Zers. Very fascinating to see these new native behaviors. You talked with Albert at NAIT. We definitely saw him as a native who are really not seeing this distinction.

And I think the more we get to that point, I think the more we'll see our progression occurring and our evolution as it's meant to do. But right now, we're in a speed bump moment. And we're feeling that tear. It's funny because I think some of what you're speaking to is I think in the last five years, founders have been lucky enough to be in the room with the people at the leading edge of creating some of the...

There's some prescience there when you're in the room with Evan and he's like, "No, no, no, the future will be." And if you have glasses on, you'll see a layer of digital over, and they're the biggest augmented reality company in the world by a long 300 million people every single day.

And so I think those things allow us to have some sense of the radical present and maybe some sense of what's coming, some sense of where technology might take us. And maybe there's a good path from some of the experiences we've had in the past about what it takes to build a good company with good ethics, good purpose, and good profit because coming from good ethics and good purpose.

for this new generation, those two things are inextricably linked. Last week we had Albert from Nate on who was talking about the tears between the physical and the digital and what machines should do and shouldn't do. He talks about Web3 with Patreon in terms of what the future looks like and that ownership artists deserve.

deserve to own. And with the way they operate, you can actually own and should own the things that you do. And, you know, is it 2030 already? It was a question we asked ourselves, I think, in 2020. We were like, wait a second, did we just skip a decade? You know, if your grandma can sit at home, do telemedicine and click a button and someone delivers their medicine and they're having trouble with their hips. So that was a whole logistical. That's

enormous leap forward, right? And again, it wasn't flying cars, but it's come about where just some of those everyday frictions have been removed. And no doubt that will carry on, right? So we're not saying the removal of friction goes away. That carries on and carries on and carries on. But I think layered on top of that are the human implications and the human storytelling required to understand this massive shift in human behavior. Yeah. Well, I think, look, I think the cultural narrative is

is so noisy today and paints the future as one big problem versus what are the opportunities.

And I think that's what we are very fortunate every day to experience men and women coming to us, you know, founders with great ideas that are opportunities to make that future better. And I think the other reality is the future never feels comfortable, right? For the most part. It doesn't matter how much you're a kind of futurist or conservative, there's a sense of that. It's always something that naturally feels uncomfortable. And I think that's because by nature,

the future perhaps has always been and certainly is a paradox, right? And if we look at ourselves today, we're dealing constantly with these kind of tensions. And you can see these tensions as something to resist and try and get rid of, or you can see them as something that we can lean into. And it doesn't matter whether we're talking today about how does technology coexist with nature? How does we deliver scale, but with intimacy?

How do we take care of things and yet people want to be free of care, right? They don't want to feel the weight of ownership and yet they want to be able to do the right thing. We want our world to feel real, but we also want it to be augmented. We want it to be artificial, but we want it to be intelligent, right? These are by nature the truisms of the human condition and therefore the future of where we're going. But I think what we have seen in the best founders and the best innovators

is that they draw positive change from that paradox, right? They really lean into it. And the most innovative companies we've worked with tend to be powered by that paradox, right? And again, I come back to this point, it's not about trying to dissolve it, it really is about resolving it.

Forgive me for using three of the great brands on the planet, but if you look at Apple, I think Steve's great sort of unlock was marrying the liberal arts with technology. There's always that great story I read about that he took a calligraphy class and through just that idea of creating characters by hand and understanding the space between that, it really influenced the way he thought about an interface.

And I think Apple was that first company that it wasn't just about the technologies and the engineering, it was about what Johnny brought in terms of design and the spatial qualities of that. And again, this unification of product and story and innovation as one kind of idea in a very intentional narrative. I think Tesla is probably the sort of star child today, right, in terms of this idea of environmentalism with performance.

Those were two anathemas historically. Ludicrous mode, right? Yeah, ludicrous mode, right? This idea that if you wanted to be sustainable or environmentally friendly, you had to compromise on performance, right? There was always a sense that you were going to have to take a step back. You were the Prius being pulled up at the lights. Exactly. You were being dragged every time on the light, whereas today...

Elon wants that tester to perform as powerfully as anything else. And so these are really kind of transformative kind of ways of thinking about that paradox. And then again, last but certainly not least, thinking about Airbnb was again this ability to travel anywhere and be at home, right? These are two things that you were just going, hang on, where are you? I'm at home. Where are you? I'm in a foreign country. Well, how is that possible?

So understanding, and again, I think we'd all agree we've worked with enough founders and enough businesses, and we're always able to find that paradox, certainly in the best. And what we try to do is really bring that to the fore because we do believe that's where the positive change comes from and really starts to inspire their innovation sort of strategies. Yeah, that's fascinating. And I think if you manage to resolve those paradoxes rather than pretend they're not there or just counteract,

kind of lean to one or the other. I think they're a problem. You're able to deal with the fact that so many of our consumer choices at the moment feel conflicted. So we feel that whatever we put into our mouths, whatever we're eating, what's the impact of it? You know, what land is it using? What water? Where's our clothing coming from? How much water was used in that? How do we travel without giving emissions? And I think a lot of the companies that we're working with are kind of trying to address these areas that perhaps historically might have been thought of as sustainable and

But we don't really see sustainable or sustainability as a destination, more a strategy of achieving kind of business success. And it's about brands who don't see kind of another paradox, economic growth and environmental protection as a zero-sum game, but realize that you can achieve both.

with the right kind of business. And I think a lot of the companies we're working with are seeing almost constraints and diminished resources as a spur of innovation and encouraging them to think about business differently. A lot of the companies are kind of using products or sources of things that we see as waste as an input. So Pangaea uses banana and pineapple leaf fiber to make sweaters, making sunglasses from CO2. We work with this wonderful company called Alonia,

who were kind of developing these enzymes that eat plastic. And we always think of plastic as being this forever chemical. And they're like, no, you just find the right enzymes and shortly we'll be able to eat plastic and turn it into something that is less harmful. So I think we're always interested in the companies that have sustainability as a strategy,

but are really interested in how they use that to make something substantial. So to your point, how do these businesses have impact at scale? - And I think this is also super encouraging in terms of a leveling of the playing field of innovation. All the talk of the last 10 years has been, the big four get the talent, right? There's a dearth of talent, where do you find that? But these challenges are real and they're huge and they require again, this sort of mosaic of solutions and diversity of types of people bringing ideas to the table.

But they really are allowing these sort of middle-type companies to really have an innovation strategy, which is in some way applied pressure on them. But to see that as an opportunity, I think, is really enormous. And I think we'll start to, in some way, flatten the curve in terms of these discrepancies.

So to all of you, like I'm getting the feeling that the future isn't dystopian. There's some sense of optimism that maybe technology and founder businesses can help us out and are starting to begin to tackle the real issues facing us. I certainly feel that every headline you see about a problem in the world, particularly in terms of resources, emissions, consumption, there's technology to address it and to do it better.

I think the challenge is not in terms of technical innovation. I think it goes back to what Stephen is saying is how do we change our narrative around where we're going, the role that technology and business plays in that, and how do we help people feel perhaps less hopeless? Yeah. And that the private sector is one of our best bets. Right. Right? Because the world has changed so much. The idea of this kind of unlimited space has made governance very difficult. We see that every single day. And look...

We don't want to be naive, but at the same time, we are, as I said earlier on, this inflection point where we also can't be passive. And I think, as I said at the top of the conversation, I think business is our most powerful hope in terms of the liquidity of investment and the ability to truly operate without the dogma and constraint.

And as Becca said, I think we've moved from the move fast and break things to really a more intelligent, careful approach. And we're seeing that every day. And we've seen, right, we were there five years ago, six years ago. We've seen the move fast and break things. But we're also now seeing this new consciousness and realizing that they don't have to be mutually exclusive.

So I feel very hopeful. And I think as long as we keep investing in good ideas and that they come from a more diverse range of people and places, you know, we have the power to do that. You know, they say the talent is there. The opportunities are just not equal. And technology has that ability to break that down in a very powerful way. Wonderful.

So the word sustainable, I might challenge, right? And I think we've talked about beyond sustainability as like, you know, we don't want to hug the tree so that it survives. We want to get past it. Like if we can find enzymes that eat plastic, which I'm sure is news to most people from this podcast, Nick. So, you know, like, wow, that sounds pretty optimistic, right? And a couple of us have teenage kids and, you know, it's constantly coming back from school with conversations and questions around the future of the planet.

You know, hopefully there's some understanding amongst the people listening to this podcast that there are interactions with this new world that can be positive. And there are technologies that can be brought to bear and that the future doesn't have to be dystopian.

And that maybe, you know, I was surprised by how many friends of mine's children were going off to study biochemistry or agro-technology. Or environmental studies. Or environmental studies, right? I mean, the next generation, I have the feeling they're getting into it. And so this is the beginning of this new wave of,

I think the cat's out the bag. That is where we're going now. So, okay. Thank you, guys. That was absolutely awesome. Nick, Stephen, Becca, it's a privilege to work with you every single day. Even if we're not in the same room together, actually, we're uniquely in the same room together, which is pretty awesome. I think the community is going to really enjoy so many of the lessons and stories here that might just...

give you some sense of how to think about the challenges you're facing every day, even if you're, you know, whatever size or the shape of the company or the job role that you play in, can this inspire you to think about the challenge you're facing now in a way almost like a green field, you know, like it's a brand new moment. How would I leap forward? And it's not these little evolutionary steps. It's giving yourself permission to make the leap. And often I think we're in the room with those people that are making the leaps and

So there's no reason why larger companies can't also create, I think, Becker, as you were saying, create the conditions for innovation. And I think that's one of the biggest trends, thoughts here of this conversation is creating the conditions for innovation. And I think sometimes as an external force, founder has that unique opportunity to come in

be that, set the conditions for innovation. But of course, that's absolutely possible for you to set your own conditions for innovation. Just be really intentional and purposeful about it. You know, create that group that is absolutely charged with, I think, Patrick from Sonos. What did Patrick call them? Explorers and the builders. There you go. Let the explorers have their own space to explore and not worry about the rest of the company. Right. So anyway, thank you guys. That was awesome. Thank you. That was fun. Thank you. Thank you. See you soon.

All right, that's all for this episode. If you're a new listener, be sure to subscribe to Most Innovative Companies wherever you listen. And if you like this episode, please leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts.

And we also want to hear from you. So let us know what you'd like to hear more of. Send us an email at podcast at fastcompany.com or tweet us at hashtag most innovative companies. Most Innovative Companies is a production of Fast Company in partnership with founder FNDR. We couldn't afford the vowels. Our executive producer is Joshua Christensen. Our sound design is Nicholas Torres. Writing is Matias Sanchez.

Alex Webster and Nikki Checkley helped with the production. This podcast was done in collaboration with my wonderful partners at Founder, Stephen Butler, Becca Jeffries, and Nick Barham.