Keegan 'Keegs Bakker

“I've thought for ages I've been waiting to get the invite to come on the show, and now I've only get the call up when you have literally double the available guest spots.”

“I hope it does. I feel really strongly about this issue because I just think there's just such a weird cult vibe in tech, particularly. I really hate to use the word startup to describe AllData, and people always introduce me, "Oh, here's Keegs. He's got a startup." I hate the word startup because people, if you have a tech business, it's a startup, but if you have any other business, it's a business. And people create startups and they feel like because it's a startup that they are immune to the laws of business. Like, they— oh, we don't have to worry about making money because we're a startup. Um, and it's just absurd that there's been this big bubble in venture capital, particularly in Silicon Valley and the like, and now around the world, where people throw obscene amounts of money at these founders who come along, usually young people, 20-something white males come along, and because they might be the next Steve Jobs or whatever, people just throw— I mean, WeWork, you can look at that as an example. You know, these obscene amounts of money at people without real strong business practises or a real strong business in place. And then it's created this culture, I think, where so many people get into create startups or, you know, whatever they're doing. Um, everyone's business is, oh, it's like Uber but for this. And then everyone focuses on raising money instead of making money. So no one's thinking about how they're serving customers, no one's thinking about how they're delivering value for society at large. All people are focused on day to day is, oh, we got to get our seed round, and then we got to go get our Series A funding, then we got to go get the next round of funding so we can employ more people. And before we've even figured out how we're a business, we've got to grow so we can employ, you know, a new VP of marketing or whatever. Um, and it's really interesting because I think maybe you're right, Tommy. I think it could be on the other side of this. I think maybe we'll just, as a society, you know, around the world. Maybe we'll just all cool down a little bit more and not take everything for granted so much. And well, I think even like, think about trying to do projections for cash flow even when you are a startup that doesn't have a business model dialled in yet. They're still trying to create some kind of, uh, snapshot at what the future may look like from a revenue basis. At the moment, that's like, you can't How can you say what you're going to be earning in 6 months in this climate? It's very tricky. And the problem thing, I think it'll be more of a focus on, which seems like it should be the thing. What's the problem? What's the solution? How great is that solution? Because there's a bunch of businesses that have a pretty low-ranking problem and people are still willing to drop cash on, which those things are going to change instantly. When you're thinking twice about getting a coffee and how much you're spending on a goddamn coffee. It's, um, it's interesting times. I think it's, you know, the reset and what the shift in priorities. Josh and I were talking about like the almost— it's like, um, it'll be fear, it'll be damage to people in terms of wanting to go out. Like, uh, it's almost like, what do you call it, like, um, uh, we've been all affected by this, so how can we jump back into going to shopping centres instantly. It's almost like a bit of, um, damage internally. It could possibly be the same for the startup culture, or just residual.”

“No one's thinking about how they're serving customers, no one's thinking about how they're delivering value for society at large.”

“It does feel like everyone's in the same boat together. And I mean, we're all in this together is the phrase that every news outlet has thrown around quite a lot. But it is true.”

“The doctors sort of rushed me straight into the resus room and they kept saying— I was there for like 24 hours and they kept saying, oh, it can't be anxiety because anxiety wouldn't make your heart do this, but we can't find anything wrong with your heart.”

“You could not pay me to be in his situation at the moment... he's had two pretty much unprecedented disasters, absolute catastrophes back to back.”