Season 3 - Episode 2 | Inside the Mind of the Founder of the World's First Investor Angel Network: Marc Kramer (USA)

Dive into the remarkable journey of Mr. Marc Kramer, a seasoned entrepreneur and author, as he shares insights from his diverse career in entrepreneurship, journalism and angel investment. Marc recounts his path from sports writer to founding the world's first formally organised investor angel network, and shares the secrets behind his entrepreneurial success and practical strategies for navigating challenges and fostering resilience.

Join Dr. Ramesh and Marc as they explore the entrepreneurial mindset, innovation and sustainability in a thought-provoking conversation that promises to inspire aspiring entrepreneurs and business leaders alike. Don't miss this chance to tap into the mind of a true visionary!

3 Key Insights from this Podcast:

1. Entrepreneurial Mindset: Marc explains how cultivating an entrepreneurial mindset empowers us overcome adversity to thrive in any situation.
2. Crisis Ready Mindset: Discover practical tips for problem-solving and breaking down obstacles to navigate uncertainty and disruption effectively.
3. Purposeful Living: Marc's reflections on living with purpose prompts this question - Do you put enough focus on meaningful experiences, relationships and making a positive impact in the world in your own life?

Host: Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra, Author, Podcast Host, Founder of Talent Leadership Crucible & Founder of Impact Velocity

Guest Speaker: Mr. Marc Kramer,  Senior Lecturer of Entrepreneurship at VinUniversity in Hanoi (Vietnam), Serial Entrepreneur, Author, Columnist & Podcast Host. 

Tune in, and together we'll be Thriving in the Age of Disruption. 

Thriving in the Age of Disruption with Dr. Ramesh
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Transcript

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra 00:00

Welcome to Thriving in the Age of Disruption podcast series, Marc. I'm so excited to have you here, we could start off by having you introduce yourself.

Marc Kramer 00:08

Thank you so much for having me. And by the way, I just love the name of your podcast. I think that's just a great name. And so appropriate for the era we're living in right now. My background is I never wanted to be an entrepreneur. My grandfather was a business owner, my father was a business owner, they worked six, seven days a week, I said, I never ever want to do that. I wanted to be a career sportswriter, I started writing when I was 15, for newspapers, and I wrote until I was 22, then I had met my wife, and realize that family was more important to me than traveling with teams. But I still needed to make money. So, I didn't realize at the time, but I had a real knack for coming up with ideas and launching them. This even started when I was a sportswriter. And I tried to syndicate myself around the country, which was my first failure, I had started trying to syndicate myself, the secondary newspapers, wrote to 100 of them, only one of them responded. And I learned a valuable lesson that I shouldn't have written to papers all over the country, I should have just gotten to my car and driven and met editors of newspapers.

Marc Kramer 01:17

So, it was a valuable lesson learned. And so, my undergrad degrees from West Virginia, my master's is from Penn State, my undergrad and broadcast journalism. And I've managed to stay a journalist and writer in me for my entire adult life. I've written six books, and I read wrote a national column for American city business journals. And I've written for Forbes and lots of other publications as well. And I host a podcast called the Best Business Minds, where I interview business book authors every week. And we've won six awards from that. And I have two daughters, one who has a global company herself in the communication space called Clover Communications, and another daughter, who is the most resilient person you could possibly imagine, because she works in Hollywood. And if you don't have resiliency in Hollywood, you have to be so mentally tough to be in that business that I don't think I could handle working in that space and the constant rejection that you get, and you're always in survival mode there. 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra 02:18

I also know and you didn't highlight this, but you'd worked in Singapore for a while.

Marc Kramer 02:23

I worked with the National University of Singapore, actually. I taught for the Wharton School of Business for 10 years. And Singapore wanted somebody to work with their students in Philadelphia, they had a joint venture with the University of Pennsylvania engineering school and the Wharton School. So, I worked for them for seven years helping develop entrepreneurs. So, the students would come to us we would put them in with an entrepreneur learn entrepreneurship, the idea at the end of the day was for them to create their own business, and come back to Singapore and start that I did that for seven years for them. And I they flew me over and I taught some entrepreneurship there. But Singapore really realized that their ways for Singapore to break out and to have long term success concerned that they don't have oil or anything else, that entrepreneurship was the way to go. And Singapore now has a global reputation of being one of the entrepreneurial hotspots in the world. Now I teach for VinUniversity, and I'm the Senior Lecturer of entrepreneurship. Here in Hanoi, Vietnam. Vietnam also realizes that they lose 70% of its college graduates to foreign countries. And they realize that if they don't encourage entrepreneurship and create new business opportunities that Vietnam will never reach, its full potential.

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra 03:44

That's so true. Entrepreneurship actually is part of nation building and economy growing. So, a lot of countries who have started to focus on entrepreneurship are going to be the next wave of winners, because they're going to have a much stronger corporate scene. What I want to do now is to talk a little bit about an entrepreneurial mindset. And I define that as someone who is being resourceful that is, they're able to look at a problem and define it correctly, and then go on to solving it. Number two, is to be able to take risks as well as to manage uncertainty. Number three is to create value, and it can be valued financially or non-financially and also for themselves or for others in your journey of teaching people running your own business. Where have you seen this entrepreneurial mindset show up? And how important has it been, especially also when you look at what's happening today with disruption?

Marc Kramer 04:45

At VinUniversity,  Dr. Le Mai Lan, who's the Founder, President of our university, the mission here is to teach people the entrepreneurial mindset and why that's important is that the entrepreneurial mindset is not just for business, it's for all facets of your life, when you get married and you have children, you have to realize that there's going to be lots of obstacles throughout your life. And there's going to be up times and down times, having an entrepreneurial mindset means that you can overcome any obstacle, because you're not going to go and panic, you're going to go and look for a solution for that. And that solution may come from you that may come from somebody else. We are bombarded with stress, both professionally, emotionally from family. And then we see all these horrible things that are happening around the world. And we feel powerless to do something about it. The Entrepreneurial Mindset teaches us how to deal with it, and how we can make the world a better place, whether we're making a lot of money or not, and how we help other people. Because if we all stand together, we all benefit together. And so, I think that's the real value of the entrepreneurial mindset is how to overcome obstacles and adversity and survive it and thrive as you have in the title of your own show here.

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra 06:04

So, when you look at that aspect of dealing with obstacle, what do you think is an important practice or something that people can do you bond with it? Or is it something that you can develop?

Marc Kramer 06:15

I remember, Franklin Roosevelt said that, “You can't fear fear.” And you have to almost essentially embrace fear. When we see obstacles, instead of being scared about it, we have to go and take it apart and break the problem down and solve it. That's what Navy SEALs do. That's what elite people do is that they take a problem. They don't let it overwhelm them. And they figure out how do I break it down and solve different parts of it. And I think that's really what we need to do when we have something that seems overwhelming. I myself have mind tricks that I do myself, like, if income isn't coming in, then I say, Well, I have enough on my bank that I can go six months, and in six months, I should be able to find some other revenue stream in there. Or I look at myself and say, I did manage to win one award in my life. How many people actually win one award in their life, or I'm interviewed on your podcast, how many people actually even get interviewed once in a podcast? And by staying those kinds of things, it takes the temperature down, you're not as anxious as before. And I think that's a lot of what happens when you have the right mental mindset in order to overcome problems and adversity and stress. I don't get stressed because I break down the stress and say to myself, is it really worth getting riled up about an ounce silver? I say to my kids and my students, if nobody dies, it's no big deal. 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra 07:47

That's a good one.

Marc Kramer 07:48

Yeah, ‘cuz you live to fight another day. And that's what's really important. At the end of the day, I don't think it's the end of the world. It's just because you've had a bad day, a bad week, a bad year, looked at tomorrow, because tomorrow can be a better day. And at the same time, when you're writing a hot streak, you have to realize at some point, the hot streak will act. It doesn't matter if you're Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk, look at Elon Musk now, how would you feel spending $43 billion on a venture that's now worth about $10 billion and declining every day. And so, he I'm sure it feels a lot of stress, even though you think Oh, my God, this guy's still worth 150 billion, but in his own mind, he's Bally terribly, and he's trying to figure out how to overcome it based on his past history and successes. And we all have to look at that no matter how small the success was to know that we had been successful in some way, shape or form.

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra 08:45

That's right, excellent. In some ways, you've taken us into my next topic, which is about a crisis ready mindset. Incidentally, I'm going to be launching that book in about two months’ time. And I think that entrepreneurs have to develop actually a crisis ready mindset, because like you pointed out, we have to deal with obstacles, and how effectively we deal with that has us be effective and successful as entrepreneurs, what I loved was the fact that you called out that we can look at a problem and take it apart, break it down so that it doesn't look overwhelming, and that we can go to work on the smaller parts. I also loved the tip on using mind tricks to sort of empower us in that moment when we are feeling down with the successes that we have had as well. And the last part was of course to know that whatever goes up will come down like a hot streak and its boom, right? Yeah, boy, it is a bust. So, the question that I have for you mark is targeting people can actually develop something that allows them to deal with the setbacks in life.

Marc Kramer 09:56

It's all deals with mental mindset. I've had times where where I wanted to crawl up in a ball too. And I remember years ago when I was a writer for a daily newspaper and I wasn't happy being there, and I was so stressed that all the muscles in my body were like tight as knots could not move around, and I couldn't sleep or anything. And I started to read about other people who had overcome enormous obstacles. And one of them was a woman I actually met, where she was a Holocaust survivor in two different camps. Her name was it could summon tau vich. And Steven Spielberg had her when he got the Constitution medal in Philadelphia, he picked one Holocaust survivor to be with him at that event. And it was this woman in a cemetery, which she had watched her mom get shot in the head, because she wouldn't point out a shopkeeper that the Nazis wanted to arrest, her whole family was killed, the war ended and she got out of the camp, she met another camp survivor, they had four sons. And then he died in a car accident after 40 Some years of marriage. And that six months later, one of her sons died. And a car accident after that, how much worse can it possibly get, and yet this woman had amazingly positive attitude. And she basically said, you can't forget those people. But you have to realize that you still have to live your life every day, and that there's a new date coming and new opportunity. And it's all about how you embrace tomorrow. And I've lived by that ever since. And my father went bankrupt when I was 12. And I remember that he was in terrible pain about this just inconsolable about it and he eventually dust themselves off and came over. But I ended up becoming an adult in a minute when he went bankrupt. I think that if you take a look at all the things that happened during your life, and you realize that almost none of them are good or bad. Do you have any controls over the only thing you truly have control over is your own mindset about how you look things. So, my colleagues here at VinUniversity go Oh, my God, you're always so positive about everything and embrace everything, it's a waste of the time. And going the other way, if you're going to be negative, that's just going to add the time it takes to get to where you want to go get into that positive space that you need to be in. I hate the long way. I like the short cut. So that's the shortcut. And that suck. I was interviewed Rich Diviney, who was a Navy SEAL on a train that elite Navy Seals and I was joking with him I showed that said when they're training you to see if you could be a seal. They do all these physical mental things. And that endpoint, you could hit the bell and say that's it, I'm done. So, I said, Rich, I'd hit that bell before it even started. I can't imagine this. And he goes, frankly, he said, you would be an excellent Navy Seal, I have no doubt that you would get through it. And I said, why do you say that? He says it's all mental. It's not physical. He said, I'm not the best fighter, I'm not the best shot. Most of the guys are not. But what we all have in common is that when the chips are down, we joke about everything. And we stay loose. And we're constantly thinking about breaking down problems and how to solve them. So, he said, we don't let anything really deter us, we keep a positive mental attitude. And that's how you end up becoming a CEO. It's the people that panic. And let's say they rely on their physical skill set. And when that doesn't work out for them, then they give off easily. And I think that's the case with people. Let me just add one more thing.

Marc Kramer 13:26

When I graduated high school, my college board scores were so low that my dad wrote to them and said, Where's the other half of the score, because my board score was 725. And even to be a college athlete, the minimum was 800. And they only got accepted to one school main campus. And that's because they just needed outsiders to come in, which was West Virginia University, not a single day that I worry about my college board score. It didn't bother me. I just had a mission that I was going to be a great sportswriter, I focused on that mission. And that's all I cared about most people, especially really smart people, because I would see that when I taught at Wharton, if they weren't used to failure. They had a hard time holding up against it. But my whole life had been working had credibly hard to achieve whatever had to achieve. So, this was not a problem for me. And I think that's what people find at the end of the day that the folks that you see are the most successful, resilient aren't the smartest, best athlete best anything where they are is the most mentally tough.

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra 14:28

Wow, that's really insightful. Marc, thank you for sharing that because what you've actually helped us to see is that number one, the mental mindset is really an important piece and coincidentally a Talent Leadership Crucible, the consultancy that we run when we look at corporate culture change, it all comes down to a mindset. And if you can change your mindset, then you know you can change anything which includes the performance and results. Number two is that you also pointed out focusing on your mission, or what we do right now is to create purpose for people. 

Marc Kramer 15:04

Yes.

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra 15:04

And in some ways that focus on that mission helps you to navigate things and put things into perspective, because it's not about the results. It's about fulfilling on that purpose, which is much bigger. And the third piece that you can actually celebrate failures, in fact, failures come back as strength. Because when you've dealt with failures, enough and early, then when things come at you, you have developed the ability to actually sort things out to solve it. And that's a valuable asset. Rather than have a failure much later in life. I think you've really pointed to some very good tips for people in terms of how they can create a crisis, really mindset. So, thank you for sharing that. And was there any particular crisis that you struggle through your personal life that you want to share?

Marc Kramer 15:58

Oh, my gosh, I've had a lot of personal crises saved my life. One of the biggest ones is that my oldest daughter, right after she was born, and she was born six weeks premature. My wife was in the hospital with her. And the doctor call me I'll never forget was a Sunday morning, and I was getting ready to go to the hospital to visit. And my doctor said, you seem like a really calm guy that pretty much can deal with anything. And I'm thinking, okay, what is he going to tell me here? He goes, I've got bad news for you. He said, your daughter has what I believe to be necrotizing enterocolitis, which is your bowels are not fully formed, there's a 50% chance she doesn't make it out of this hospital. And I have not told your wife this yet. But that's what's happening here. So, I said, “Okay, I focused on the 50%. But there's still 50% chance that she could…” I said, “What's the next steps?” They told me, “We'll keep observation,” and it did turn out that she had it. And then one day I was at the hospital, and I was looking at her and I said, “I think she's in more pain than normal,” because they thought maybe she was getting better. 

Marc Kramer 17:06

But if you can manage to hold it together, everybody else will hold it together, because they'll look at you as the example. That was a time that I remember over and over again. And I can still see my daughter being wheeled into the operating room and her little white t shirt and her blazing red hair. And now fortunately, she's a 33-year-old adult hoping to eventually have her own family with her husband. I guess that was probably the most difficult time but I went through bankruptcy in 2008, I had raised all this money for a new venture called crop payment was reverse factoring and the crash of 2008 yet and all my investors pulled out in one night, there were Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, and then I had that business in a marketing consultancy and my marketing clients all canceled their contracts. So, I went from making a lot of money to zero. But I believed in always, as an entrepreneur, you have to live below your means. And you have to have put away a lot of money. So, I actually had enough money for two years put away. So, there was no reason in my mind to panic, because I said, Okay, I got money for two years. Now, if I did not have money where I was living above my means, like, so many people were at that particular time buying these large homes and relying on two incomes just to pay the bills, then probably I would have been patenting to or oh my gosh, I could read a jump off a bridge here. But I wasn't if you think through what all the possibilities that could happen, and you put safety rails and that's another way for you to stay calm when things don't go right.

Marc Kramer 17:06

But I was seeing her like once a day, so I wasn't staring at her all day long. And I see you were to bring the surgeon back and have her take a look at it. And they did. And they flew in a helicopter to another hospital. And they did emergency surgery, but they told us would take two and a half hours. And they came out two and a half hours later and said was worse than they thought it would take another two and a half hours another surgical team to come in. Because it's like taking apart spaghetti. And so, everybody was like, upset. My dad was just barely holding it together. But I kept my suit on. I didn't move my tie, everything looked as if I had just woken up that morning and was going off to work. And I felt if I did not hold it together for everybody else, there would be panic in the line. And that's what they worry about in the military is when the leader panics, then everybody dies, because everybody is running helter skelter. 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra 19:38

Yeah, that's right. And safety rails. That's a great shout out. We found in the last maybe 10, 15 years with the success stories of a lot of the tech entrepreneurs people start to count and aspire to become billionaires and trillionaires. What we forget is the stress that we put on ourselves, to move in that rat race, as you keep taking risks after risk. What is it all for because ultimately, if it is about fulfillment and meaning, then we might be overextending. You know, in your situation, you have the safety rails to make sure that you can bounce back. 

Marc Kramer 20:17

I believe in living a simple life, I've could have afforded much bigger houses, I did have a second home and Panama City, Panama, because my now ex-wife was from there. And I wanted my kids to be immersed in her culture as well. But even then, I bought a house after the Americans had left and the price of homes dropped by two thirds. And I believe that it's the small things in life that we can rejoice in going to the movies with my daughters or going to a ballgame. That's where the real value is, or me watching a movie with my girlfriend, just with a bucket of popcorn and my favorite candy. That's as good as life is gonna get. It's when you spend your time with your friends. When I look at stars out in Hollywood, or professional athletes living in 25,000 200,000 square foot houses, I'm thinking, “Oh, my God, you're adding more stress to your life and more pressure,” as opposed to simplifying it and enjoying it and actually taking that same money and making other people's lives better, because during the pandemic, and the market crash of 2008, there were people sitting or lifeboats by themselves, and right across from them, were an overloaded lifeboat where people were going to drown because the people with the empty lifeboat weren't actually helping them out. So, my goal in life was to be super uber rich, so I could give it away. My ex-wife was totally on board with it, still would be on board. If I said, “Hey, I want to start a foundation, give it away.” And we wanted enough money, that our kids would be protected, they'd still have to work, but they would know that they would never end up in the street. That's always my biggest fear, by the way. And it's irrational. But it's true. I have a fear of ending up in a cardboard box or on the street every day. So I work 10, 12 hours a day, six days a week for this fear, I've gone through therapy, I just cannot release that fear. And I think that's what drives me, I'll be 63, February 1st, it drives me every day to work really hard. And I'm very disciplined, I get up every morning at 530, read and then I go work out every morning, seven days a week, from 6 to 7 or 730. I think that having that discipline allows me to overcome anything and be able to start things and not worry about failure, so many focused on the future, and what the future could breed and be excited about the future. I mean, I think people don't stay excited and engaged, especially when people get older and they feel like oh, “That's it.” 60, 70, whatever. 

Marc Kramer  22:52

But you see 60, 70, 80, 90 year old people accomplishing great things. So it means that that something’s a number, that doesn't mean that you check out or if, in fact you come from nothing, my parents weren't college-educated, it doesn't mean that you can't ascend to the highest levels, especially most of the world is built on a meritocracy, including party-run countries, like even Vietnam, because they realize that everybody will starve here, if we don't create incentives for people to maximize their potential. If we're not doing that, then how is everybody going to benefit? At the end of the day, there are some people who are white, who are like Elon Musk, who will work 100 hours a week to attain great wealth and success. There other people don't want to work very hard and just get by. But the vast majority of people want to make enough money to afford a home, a car, give their kids a proper education, go on a vacation and have enough money to retire. And that's the vast middle class. And hence, that's what most people want. That's fine.

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  23:53

So on this note, I want to ask you, where are you in your spiritual journey? 

Marc Kramer  23:57

My spiritual journey, I wouldn't ever say I'm religious, but I'm spiritual in the sense of this. I really believe that we have literally no control over our future, except to get up and give our best effort. So all the best things that have ever happened to me, I cannot tell you that I plan for a single one of them. I have a good friend of mine. He thought before that he had control over his future. And I said, “Well, look, you were born in the United States of America. Let us consider the best country to be born in you were born with all your fingers, your toes, your eyes, you have no mental or physical disability. Did you choose any of that? No, you didn't make any of those choices. You just lucked out and grabbed a lucky lottery ticket.” There are other people who are in war-torn areas. They didn't pick that. And it's unfortunate that they're in that situation. But I think at the end of the day, the only thing that you can do is wake up and be your best self and know that you're not just responsible for you, but you're responsible to be the best person you can be for everybody around you as well. My spirituality is I believe there must be a higher being. I’m Jewish and I don't go to synagogue except for the major holidays. But I think about that there is higher purpose. And I have a responsibility to meet that higher purpose at the end of the day. And I think that people should just be grateful for even the moment like I had lunch with my colleagues yesterday and I bought lunch and they said, “Well, we’ll chip in, like we typically do.” I said, “I just consider it a blessing that I had the lunch with the three of you, you three have made a my experience here at VinUni an amazing experience, as people I work with every day.” And I said, “What I was spending is nothing compared to what you gave me in return.” 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  25:44

Wow, great. You know, I love that - Show up and be your best self and do your part to contribute to this universe. 

Marc Kramer  25:53

The job of the leader, company, country, whatever is to make everybody else's life better, not their own, but everybody else's life better than anybody who's voting for people, or picking people to run companies that don't have that mindset, or picking bad people?

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  26:08

Got it, great. So now the next question is this, if you've had to use three words to describe thriving, what would it be?

Marc Kramer  26:15

I would say thriving is living in the moment, enjoying your friends and family around you and contributing to society in a positive way. Because I really believe at the end of the day, we do that everything else falls in place.

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  26:28

Contributing to society in a positive way. We've heard this theme throughout the interview. The next question that I want to talk about is related to it. And it's about Sustainability. We define Sustainability as the thriving of our living system. How do you define Sustainability? And how does that show up in your life?

Marc Kramer  26:47

Well for me, Sustainability has been consistent my own behavior and how I'm supportive of family, friends, that's extreme, my kids, even my ex-wife, and everybody around me. So I think that's part of Sustainability. But the other part of Sustainability is we have to be looking to the future to make sure there is a future here, when you hear people, especially Donald Trump's climate deniers, you don't have to be climate scientists to realize that if you went into an empty room, and you feel totally comfortable, because you're the only one standing in a empty room, but if you put 100 people in that empty room all backing up onto each other, of course, the room gets overheated. And that's going to cause a problem. So there's no rocket science here involved. And I think at the end of the day, that we have to be thinking about, “How do we take care of the planet?” And how do we make sure that all these floods that are happening, all these things we know from science, that is something that we have to work on, or it's only going to get that much worse. So the Sustainability and environmental sustainability in terms of people's mental and physical safety are incredibly important. Oh, my gosh, everybody has enough anguish, just deal with their own kids and family, on top of people adding on to the already existing stress of everyday life. So that's how I look at Sustainability. 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  28:10

Great. Thank you so much. I wanted to thank you for being on our show. You know, it's been a great interview, and I'm sure our listeners would be intrigued by some of what you have had to share with us.

Marc Kramer  28:22

I appreciate you having me on the show. And I want to leave you with one other story. Back in 1989. I had this idea of connecting entrepreneurs with wealthy people, angel investors. And in 1990, I was working for Penn State University and I told my boss I wanted to start the very first formally organized investor angel network. And my boss said, “I think that's a good idea. Let's take it to the treasurer who oversees these kinds of things.” And the treasurer says to me, “Mark, now why would rich people want to invest in startups, like they've gotten no revenue when they can put their money into AT&T or IBM or whatever?” And I said, “Those companies all started as startups, one person came up with an idea. And that's how they got launched.” Truly, the future is providing capital for early-stage companies. So he was like, “I'm not so sure.” And then I got hired to start the Eastern Technology Council Trade Association Technology Companies and found my entrepreneurs, and I told him my idea, and they go, “Great, we embrace it.” And there, we started the world's first formally organized investor angel network. And the Angel Capital Association just acknowledged recently in a report that I had started the very first one in the world. When I wake up every morning now, I realized that I made my contribution to changing the world in a positive way, but I didn't let him deter me by telling me, “That's a really dumb idea.” And I think that anybody who's listening to your podcast, they have to realize that people are going to tell them things are bad idea for a variety of reasons. One, they're personally scared. Two, they don't know enough. Three, they don't believe in entrepreneurship. And that you have to believe yourself. And you might have a wrong idea. But you don't want to wake up in the morning and years later and saying, “I should have tried that.” What if I support my daughter in Hollywood, because I didn't want to wake up on a psychiatrist’s couch saying, “My parents never backed me for this and I never took my shot.” So I think we should always take your shot, whatever that is, professionally. And personally, I can't say how many people you talk to. And they're single, and they're afraid to put themselves out there. What's the downside? So someone says, “No, that's it.” That's the downside, you're not going to die. They just say now, and you're that much closer to finding the one that you're best match with.

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  30:44

First of all, congratulations, you've shared with me about being part of the angel network, but I didn't realize that you had actually started it. And that's so awesome. 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  30:53

Yeah, it's a great experience at the time, and I really want to create a national network. And unfortunately, that senior partner who was wanted to underwrite this nationally, became the President Chief Operating Officer of Netscape. This is back in the 90s. And so I got one other city, Baltimore, off the ground, but it was never able to do it national. And even then, angels were thinking like, “That's crazy. I'm not going to invest in anything I can't drive to or see.” But now, we see angel investors investing all over the world. And there are no boundaries anymore. ]

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  31:27

Yeah, it's really funny because you remind me of my own journey where my first technology startup in 1999 was going to list and we had started the first incubator in Singapore. When I started, I realized that I had that something at that point that I didn't even realize was the first and at that time, we failed because there wasn't enough of traction, not many people doing it. Of course, sometimes to be there at the right place at the right time is equally important.

Marc Kramer  32:02

That is absolutely the most important thing. If I can share with you this story that a woman from my synagogue got a job at Wharton for one year. That's all she has. It was one year as executive director of the Wharton consulting practicum as a consulting group at Wharton, and we worked all over the world. And she called me one day and said that one of the faculty members who was supposed to go to Peru, his wife gave birth to their son six weeks premature. Could I go in his place since I had a home in Panama, and I understood that culture? So I said, “Yes, absolutely!” Chance to work for Wharton. Not only did I get to go on that trip, but I ended up working for Wharton for 10 years and ended up running Latin America for them. 21 years later, that same child who was born six weeks premature, became my partner in another business venture in the metaverse. And no plans on my part. If she doesn't get that job of Wharton, if that guy's wife doesn't go into premature labor, if the kid didn't come out and visit me one day about the metaverse, none of those things would happen. Right place, right time. And sometimes you're at the wrong place, wrong time. So those things we had no control over. And that's just the way it is. That's the only thing I tell people is that's why you have to stay positive and hope that things just fall right for you. That really, there's no control. If you hear most of the great entrepreneurial success stories, there's a guy I know from Philadelphia, and he was going to be a doctor and his father fixed tractor trailers and his sister got sick one day she ran the front of the office, “I need you to come in.” And so he did and two guys came in and said we need our tractor trailers fixed. His father said it's going to take six weeks to get to it. And they go, “We're independent truckers. If we don't have trucks, we can't make money.” So he said, “Why don't you go run out?” So he bought two with a loan from his dad and rents it to these guys. All sudden he developed a reputation for renting tractor trailers. He switched his major from pre med to accounting. When he graduated 1973, he was personally making $50,000 a month was a multimillionaire. Owned 850 trailers. 30 years later, when he retired, he had 14,500 trailers and sold out to GE Investments. Amazing, I can get to lots of those stories. 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  34:28

Yes, it's been a super interesting morning having this conversation with you. Thank you once again, Mark, and we'll see you soon.

Marc Kramer  34:34

Look forward to it.