324. Susan Sly, Tech Co-Founder and Co-CEO: What the War in Israel Means For Entrepreneurs

00:02
Hey everyone, Susan here, I hope you're having an incredible day. In this episode, I am going to be talking about the war in Israel and what it means to you as an entrepreneur or someone who wants to be an entrepreneur. And I'm going to be sharing the five things you need to be on the lookout for and how they may impact your business. So with that, let's go ahead and get started with this episode of Raw and Real Entrepreneurship.

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This is Raw and Real Entrepreneurship, the show that brings the no nonsense truth of what is required to start, grow and scale your business. I am your host, Susan Sly.

00:45
Well, hey there, wherever you are in the world, I hope you are having an amazing day. And I want to acknowledge you for being here. I know that the war in Israel is a hot topic, it is something that has caused a tremendous amount of divisiveness. It's something you might be very personally connected to depending on where you are, it might be something that you have friends who are there in Gaza, in Israel, or who are directly related to the conflict that is going on. And you know, the challenging piece about this is I thought for a few days about doing this episode, but every time I thought about doing something else, I know some of you tune in because you want motivation. Some of you tune in because you want inspiration. I couldn't not talk about this. Because there are several factors in this war that are going to influence your business or even if you're in the process of starting a business. And they might not be things that you're thinking about right now, as emotions are high. And if you have young children, I know that many of you listen to the show, it has a PG rating. And you may want to shoo them out of the room for a couple of things I'm going to say. And as a mother too, I have been extremely guarded with some of my children, with my older children, especially with global warnings that went out, I had to have conversations with them saying, hey, you know, I need you to make sure that you don't go to any public places, I need you to make sure that you focus on just, you know, avoiding group gatherings and so forth. And so you may be thinking, well, you know, you should just live your life. And as a mother, one of my jobs that I signed up for is protecting my kids. So having those conversations, and then with our youngest daughter having different conversations and really shielding her from as much as possible. And so if you have young children, now's the time, perhaps to shoo them out of the room, or maybe pause if you're in the car. But as I am recording this episode, here is where we are at. There are 1000s dead in both Israel and Gaza, there are images circulating on the internet of just the most deplorable sites. And even in my past life, my first job out of university was federal law enforcement, I saw a lot of photos, things you cannot unsee. And there have been things circulating that one cannot unsee. And because of this, people are angry, they're upset, they're sad. And there are so many people that this is affecting globally. And as part of this, one of the things that we want to really think about very deeply, is having the human compassion side about it. And also as entrepreneurs and people who wants to start businesses, think about the question, does this require us to pivot our business plans for this year? And you might say, Well, no, I'm not going to pivot my plans, Susan, I'm just gonna go for it like always. And here's the thing I would like to say in quotes Sunsoo from The Art of War, who said we must adapt to our terrain, and this is the terrain we're in. And that's why I'm going to cover five things that should be on your radar with regard to being an entrepreneur and this war in Israel. So, before I do, I want to share our story. We were supposed to fly to Israel, and I was in Atlanta, and it was, I got back Friday night and I was tired. And the next day I had originally planned that Chris and our youngest daughter and I were going to go to Israel for her fall break. And then I decided to move it to Sunday. So I woke up Saturday morning at three in the morning and I could not sleep and as is my daily routine, I always get up and make some very strong black Coffee and then I go and I pray. And I meditate. And I love what Joel Osteen says, which is that prayer is when you're talking to God, meditation's when you're listening, so I couldn't sleep. So I thought I'll just get up. I'm basically on East Coast time, I've been everywhere. I've been in Washington, DC, speaking at the voice and AI conference then I was in New York speaking on the topic of the future of women in AI. And then I was in Austin, Texas, speaking at an AI conference. And then my next trip, I actually go to Toronto, where I'm speaking at the Big Data and AI conference. And I'm a finalist for an award as a leading woman in AI. So I thought, you know, this particular day, I'm just, you know, on a different timezone I'll just wake up. And after my prayers, something impelled me to turn on the television. Now, I never watch news in the morning, and very rarely do I pay a lot of attention to news a couple times a day, swipe right on my phone to just check out the headlines. And I turned it on and it just said, Benjamin Netanyahu, we are at war. And I went, Oh, my gosh, what is happening? So thankfully, I was able to cancel our trip, and not go, but it really left me thinking about what if we had been there? What if our plane had arrived? What if we had been trapped there and what would be going on in my mind as we were trying to navigate that situation on the ground. And it led me to really thinking about the people who are in that situation, and it doesn't matter, you know, what side of the fence someone is on, there are people hurting, there are innocent people whose lives have been lost, there are people who've watched their loved ones die in front of them. And you know, at the end of the day, as I'm recording this, the conflict continues to escalate. And so regardless of when it ends, and I pray to God that it does, there are still a few things to be really present to as an entrepreneur, and someone in business about how this war can have some long reaching effects and how it can impact your business strategy. So I dive right in here. And the first one, CNN is reporting the destabilization of the global economy. And so the first thing to know is really run supply chain. And there could be further tariffs and restrictions, as countries choose sides. And so whether you have an Etsy business, as one of our guests did, Gina Mote who is just crushing it on Etsy, or you have a restaurant or you have some kind of retail business, or whatever it is you do, if you rely on any kind of import of something that allows your business to operate at scale, and it could even be technical enablement, there could be a disruption in the supply chain. And I'm not saying that there will be but there could be. So something to really think about is do you have supply chain alternatives? So whatever it is that you put out in the market, are there other places to get some of those enablement that you have in order to deploy your product? And that would be something I would suggest that you look for if you are in that case right now. Number two, is that there are US based tech companies working with Israeli based companies. And so as an example, Spike technologies is an Israeli based company and its clients include snowflake and fiber, and their CEO was called up as a reservist. So in Israel, it's the startup capital, really of the world. It has the highest density of tech startups anywhere. And so there are US tech companies that use Israeli companies for all sorts of things. I know, I have a friend, and they have an Israeli based company that does all of their front end stuff, their dashboards and things like that, their UI, their user interface, and so on. And so there is going to be a disruption because for US companies that have Israeli based companies that are servicing them, they might have other employees or leadership who are called up as a reservists or they might be, you know, hiding in you know, in terms of in shelters and so forth. And it's definitely going to cause a business disruption and so that is going to be a significant problem.

10:03
Pardon me, for those companies, there's no question. The third thing is around canceled culture and employees. So we saw billionaire hedge fund CEO Bill Ackman demand that Harvard release the names of the students who are blaming Israel for the incursion by Hamas. And then Jonathan Newman, who's the CEO of Sweet green, he said, he would never hire any of those students. So when we start to look at this, we are going to see more and more CEOs and C suite leaders start to take a look at the social media of their employees. And it's even as some of these billionaires have stated going to impact who they hire in the future. And so as a result of this, we are going to potentially see a disruption in terms of hiring, we could potentially see a disruption in terms of where different people go who have different talents and skill sets. But this further canceled culture. And I, you know, I want to say we've seen this for a variety of different things in the world. And without making any political statements here, that it potentially could impact you as an entrepreneur, because it might determine who you hire and who you choose not to hire, and who you choose to work with, even in a collaborating company. So something to think about there. Number four is VC funding. So Horowitz, he's an American Israeli VC, in Silicon Valley, he said there is going to be a ripple effect. And they're already seeing it. So engineers, data scientists, people working in startups, they're very concerned, quote, unquote, with other things. In other words, what we're already seeing in terms of the tech sector is this is deeply affecting people. And then when people are very deeply affected, and they're, you know, rightly so feeling emotions around this war, that they aren't able to focus on their work. And so this could also affect the output of what these companies are producing. And the other thing Horowitz was saying is that he's seeing more investors postponing their meetings. And so they're, this has already been called, you've heard it in this podcast, the year of No, that VC funding is at its lowest point in two decades. And so we're seeing a lot of startups who have to do either more pitches, or do more Angel rounds, or whatever the case is, a lot of startups are going out of business. Because they're not able to get funding, the VCs are holding on to the funding. Now, given this war, we may see more of that, where people are a little tentative to write checks to those funds. And those funds are a little tentative in terms of disbursement. So that is also going to be something that we want to be paying attention to. And we will, on Raw and Real Entrepreneurship, I talk about funding a lot. I talk about funding with my guests a lot. So this could be something that just pay attention to and I know as someone who has worked with startup myself and getting funding going and then also as an adviser to a startup that is in funding rounds, it's always a very interesting landscape. And then having interviewed hundreds of entrepreneurs right here on the show, in terms of creative ways they come up with funding, I think we are going to see, it's my opinion, that we're gonna see a longer cycle of the need to do angel funding, as opposed to traditional VC funding. And we're also seeing the fifth thing is to pay attention to is the stock market uncertainty. So we've had a tremendous amount of volatility in the stock market. And the the reason that affects you as an entrepreneur is in several ways. So one, when you're looking at if you have a company that is b2b business to business, then you know, the those companies are dealing with inflation, they might be dealing with lower margins this year because of inflation. And so you may not have the same just, I guess, the the flood of potential customers, you might have to work harder at it just to fight for limited dollars. And if you were in b2c, what we tend to see is when consumers are doing well in the stock market, they tend to loosen their purse strings so as we go into the holiday shopping season, we may see, given the war, given how it is impacting the market and then other factors such as inflation, Consumer Price Index, that we might not see people as bullish in terms of their holiday spending. And if that affects you, as an entrepreneur, if you are in CPG, consumer packaged goods, or you have some kind of, some kind of business that is really grassroots to the consumer, you may start to see that people are tightening up their budgets as they come into holiday season. So that could all have a ripple effect. So finally, I know you're like, Susan, a lot of bad news, like I tune into your show to be uplifted. So the thing I want to finish with and say is this, first and foremost, that you always have the ability to create your future. I believe that with my heart, and there are times when creating your future is easier and there are times when you have to work harder. As I said earlier in the show, it's about adapting to your terrain. And I know for myself, there have been times when oh my gosh, things just flow with ease. And there have been times that I'm like oh my gosh, this is such a hard work. That's okay. You want to be adaptable. And the second thing I want to say is are you training are you trying? I did a show on this and you can go back and look, listen to that show. Training means that you know that you are going to have to put in the hard work, the sweat equity, I was a former professional athlete before getting diagnosed with MS in the year 2000. And there were workouts that were really hard and they were designed to be hard on purpose. Because on race day it would make race day easier. So in these times of challenge friends, that you understand that you are in that training mode and you want to get out there every single day, put your best foot forward, make you know, make the reach outs that you need to reach out with you want to put the extra work in, do all of those things because when the season is easier, you are definitely going to soar and that's going to be phenomenal. So I will leave you with this as my, one of my dear friends who passed away, her name was Kathy Smith, always used to say Susan, you've got this, you've got this. And she was from just outside of Philadelphia, Westchester PA, amazing woman, mother of seven, you've got this. And if you're a subscriber to my newsletter, I want you to know I always you know, I finish every newsletter with you've got this and if you haven't subscribed yet go to Susansly.com Get on the insider's list because right now I know what many of you need more than anything is the answers, the How to, the courage, the upliftment, and I am going to be starting live coaching but only for subscribers. That means that you get to tune in on a Zoom, ask me questions about business, about leadership, about management, and I will answer them in real time but it is for subscribers only. So go to Susansly.com and get on the insiders list. And lastly, if this episode has been helpful, please give me a five star review on iTunes and drop a comment. I read all of your comments so please drop a comment in there. If you have a question for me that you'd like me to answer go to susansly.com and just submit a question. I read every single one of them. So with that, God bless. You've got this! Go out and rock your day. And I will see you in the next episode.

18:51
Hey, this is Susan and thanks so much for listening to this episode on Raw and Real Entrepreneurship. If this episode or any episode has been helpful to you, you've gotten at least one solid tip from myself or my guests. I would love it if you would leave a five star review where ever you listen to podcast. After you leave your review, go ahead and email reviews@Susansly.com Let us know where you left a review. And if I read your review on air you could get a $50 amazon gift card and we would so appreciate it because reviews do help boost the show and get this message all over the world. If you're interested in any of the resources we discussed on the show, go to Susansly.com That's where all the show notes live. And with that, go out there rock your day God bless and I will see you in the next episode.

19:44
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