Impact Through Innovation - Fastlane Founders with Kevin Koym - Fastlane Founders and Legacy with Jason Barnard

Kevin Koym talks with Jason Barnard about impact through innovation.

Kevin Koym is the CEO and Founder of Tech Ranch, a venture accelerator for early-stage technology companies. He shares deep insights from his journey supporting over 6,500 entrepreneurs across 42+ countries.

Kevin highlights the importance of vision-driven leadership, the role of community support in fostering innovation, and the critical need for durable, cross-cultural collaborations. He also discusses how disruptive innovation can drive positive global change.

Discover how strong, lasting networks are incredibly important for entrepreneurs navigating today’s fast-changing world. Learn how working together across borders can help solve some of the world’s biggest problems.

What you’ll learn from Kevin Koym

00:00 Kevin Koym and Jason Barnard
01:03 What Does Kalicube Specialize in?
01:15 Why Can’t Google Categorize Kevin Koym?
02:16 How Long Did Kevin Koym Manage to Move His Google Map Pin?
07:03 What is the Meaning of Innovation According to Kevin Koym?
09:10 Why Do You Need to be Vision-Driven When it Comes to Disruptive Innovation?
10:07 What Kind of People Does Kevin Koym Want to Focus On?
13:41 What is the Relationship Between Innovation and Business?
14:36 Why Do Some People Resist Innovation So Strongly?
14:50 Why Does the Current Focus On Innovation Excite Kevin Koym?
18:03 Why is the Number of Bankruptcies Increasing?
19:46 What is Aikido?
20:08 How Does Kevin Koym Apply His Aikido Experience to His Work?
20:30 Where are the International Projects in Which Kevin Koym is Involved?
22:07 What is “Senpai Kohai” in Aikido?
23:10 What is Kevin Koym’s Perspective on Mentors and Advisors?

This episode was recorded live on video December 17th 2024

Links to pieces of content relevant to this topic:
https://youtu.be/V0rZ-C9HpN4?si=NorSQolLGaxRIcU6
https://youtu.be/rQgcxO1wfHg?si=T7D6YKeQtO09PziH
Kevin Koym

Transcript from Impact Through Innovation – Fastlane Founders with Kevin Koym

Narrator [00:00:03]:

Fastlane Founders and Legacy with Jason Barnard. Each week, Jason sits down with successful entrepreneurs, CEOs and executives and get them to share how they mastered the delicate balance between rapid growth and enduring success in the business world. How can we quickly build a profitable business that stands the test of time and becomes our legacy? A legacy we’re proud of. Fastlane Founders and Legacy with Jason Barnard.

Jason Barnard [00:00:31]:

Hi, everybody and welcome to another episode of Fastlane Founders and Legacy with me, Jason Barnard. And a quick hello and we’re good to go. Welcome to the show, Kevin Koym.

Kevin Koym [00:00:45]:

Thank you. I appreciate it.

Jason Barnard [00:00:47]:

Brilliant. Lovely to have you here. We’re going to be talking about the Impact Through Innovation. I’m really interested in innovation, business, how it all fits together, how we can make an impact. And from a business perspective, keep your business going while you’re innovating, which is something you would imagine is really simple. But I found to be very hard at Kalicube, which brings me to this, which is your Knowledge Panel. This is where we specialize in the representation of people and companies in Google and in AI. And I thought it was really interesting that you don’t have a subtitle of your name, so Google can’t categorize you.

Jason Barnard [00:01:20]:

That’s the thing at the top, the little arrow. So Google doesn’t know which category to put you in. And because it works on cohorts, that’s a big problem. And at the bottom, I’m in France and you get this beautiful big description in France, but you don’t get it in America, which is strange. It’s unusual. So you want. You are looking really closely there.

Kevin Koym [00:01:39]:

Yeah, no, no, I’m…

Jason Barnard [00:01:41]:

Generally interested, I would get more information where you are located than I would where I’m located. So this doesn’t make sense. And it just means that Google is unsure. And that’s a really nice kind of segue into the innovation thing is Google is, let’s say, the smartest machine on Earth, and yet it’s unsure and confused. And from our perspective, that means that your digital footprint isn’t clear. So it’s not that Google’s stupid, it’s that things aren’t clear for it.

Kevin Koym [00:02:14]:

I can give. I mean, one of the interesting things that not, not that we necessarily want to spend a lot of time about Google Maps, but one of the things that’s happened is it took us a year to get our Google Map pin moved. So if we were to talk a little bit about why that might be, why that might be like, I almost had to take Google to court to get our map pin moved. And I do not know why there’s some, you know, I’m not so sure that I’d agree with the idea that Google is the smartest machine in the world because specifically on location, it took us a year and it’s only been within the last couple of weeks. Interesting for you to pick up on this. I don’t know that I didn’t know that we were going to talk about that. But I’ll tell you this, I’m extremely disappointed, extremely disappointed that Google hadn’t figured out that because I own the I myself, not just one of my employees, but I own the business profile myself and we had to force this. It’s interesting because I guess the thing that I would say about it with regards to your introduction is a lot of businesses are resistant to change.

Kevin Koym [00:03:28]:

And it’s interesting that you know, on something like identity, whether it’s a location or something like that as well, you know, since it’s so easy to spoof so many of these pieces, it’s important to have some rigidness so that someone can’t just hijack my profile or your profile. And I can see this from a higher level perspective of why Google might have tried to block changes. Because for whatever reason, given the work that I’ve done around the world, my identity has been hijacked or tried to be hijacked to an equivalent a number of times.

Jason Barnard [00:04:07]:

Oh, wow.

Kevin Koym [00:04:08]:

The rigidness of the innovation, you know, the resistance to innovation that might create exposure, I can see on this specific thing, you know, it’s an intriguing thing that there would be a problem with that identity. But one of the things I’ll say is Google Maps with regards to this absolutely sucks and it needs to be innovated.

Jason Barnard [00:04:32]:

Brilliant.

Kevin Koym [00:04:32]:

I use it every day. But also there’s some difficulties there.

Jason Barnard [00:04:36]:

Well, isn’t the question is it was incredibly innovative and then innovation comes to a point where it kind of stagnates and it gets stuck and it becomes bogged down in its initial innovative push. Or is that me imagining things?

Kevin Koym [00:04:52]:

I think the thing that’s happening, if we were to like target this specific thing, the only, only excuse that I can give for Google for the lack of rigor with regards to blocking us from moving our own pin that I set in place, you know, years ago. The only thing I can imagine is it’s a financial problem that Google has a service that they don’t know how to serve up and they’re not making enough money to then dedicate more resources to.

Jason Barnard [00:05:18]:

Right.

Kevin Koym [00:05:19]:

And so they put it on a steady state, you know, just running it, not adding. There’s not a lot of been a lot of new features over the years. There’s never been anything since they actually did the initial innovation. There’s not been anything revolutionary. We see revolutionary stuff happening on some of the other platforms with regards to Maps, but not the extensibility of what’s there. The thing, this is interesting thing to be looking at and saying, okay, yes, there should be incremental innovation all the way through, but part of what we are seeing right now, and I’m sure, actually I don’t know this for certain because I haven’t asked them but. Or I haven’t been able to figure out why there was a blog. But the thing that I do know is that typically people don’t look at innovation because they’re like, hey, we can’t, we’re not going to make any more money over here.

Kevin Koym [00:06:09]:

So let’s just like ignore that and let the kids play with, you know, maps and all that sort of stuff. I suspect it’s a financial issue. I suspect that the neglect that we saw on Google Maps was a financial issue. They probably had a big team that they whittled down to a small team that are now just watching the servers and doing the basic things without any investment being put into innovation. And I don’t mean incremental innovation. I mean like, you know, the stuff that my career has been about is disruptive innovation.

Jason Barnard [00:06:39]:

From what I’ve understand at Google is it’s divided into teams and if you have a strong team lead, things move forward. And if you don’t have a strong team lead, things tend to stagnate.

Kevin Koym [00:06:50]:

Yeah, I don’t know, I’ve never worked at Google and.

Jason Barnard [00:06:53]:

No, me neither. Anyway, but back on the topic, which is what do you mean by innovation? We’ve been talking about Google Maps. Let’s get back to your core topic. What do you mean by innovation when you say innovation?

Kevin Koym [00:07:03]:

So in my career I worked for a Steve Jobs startup straight out of college. I went to University of Texas, got an engineering degree and then ended up working. I was based here in Austin, worked for that Steve Jobs startup. When we talk about innovation, the story that everyone’s heard is, you know, Steve started Apple and there was the Apple 2 and then all of a sudden there’s the Macintosh. When he built the Macintosh division, that was what you would call a skunk works. A skunk works. Skunk works is a term of art or a trademark of another organization of Lockheed specifically. My experience base has been 100% on building skunk works.

Kevin Koym [00:07:46]:

Disruptive innovation. Local Austin claim to fame is the E-commerce engine behind Dell Computer Corporation that went from zero to $2 billion of computers sold at dell.com was started in my living room. I was the lead. I mean I was a third party, started my first startup, built that. Dell knew that they knew they know how to do like this incremental, okay, we’re going to add like one little feature, you know, 3% increase per year. They know how to do that, but they don’t. They, they recognize that they don’t know how to do disruptive innovation. You know, we’re a catalog business with a phone bank. Now, we’re going to do this thing called E-commerce. Now looking back, everyone can see and they’re like, oh, of course, E-commerce.

Kevin Koym [00:08:36]:

You know, it makes so much sense. At the time though, E-commerce, I was being told by a lot of my friends, hey, Kevin, this vision you have about E-commerce, it’s totally off. You’re going to lose, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I’m like, yeah, I don’t believe you. And I was able to sell Dell the concept of E-commerce and how to scale it. And then it became a disruptive. It delivered really interesting things.

Jason Barnard [00:09:04]:

For innovation, you were saying you had to really insist, you had to truly believe. And I think innovation doesn’t happen if there isn’t somebody leading.

Kevin Koym [00:09:10]:

Yeah, especially for disruptive innovation, you really have to. It has to be vision driven. Vision driven. And I like to think vision driven beyond just the economic guys that are like thinking about just making money. Vision driven about how things are going to change the world for the better. One of the reasons we focus on impact through innovation is to say that we really, you know, well, after building all these different skunk works for organizations like GE and Fidelity Investments and the DOD or the DOE, the Department of Energy here in the United States and stuff like that. After doing those kind of skunk works, I decided I wanted to figure out the thing that I really know how to as an individual is how to go from 0 to 1, 0 to 1, 0 to 1. Whether it’s a startup or skunk works.

Kevin Koym [00:09:56]:

I’ve done that a lot of times. 18 different skunk works during my career and then a number of startups that, you know, that I’ve got off ground from a standpoint, zero to one. I started an incubator and then recognized that the entrepreneurs that are really working with vision to change the world for the better and using disruptive technology to do so. Those are the people we really want to focus in on. And our whole work has been to drive impact through innovation. We sometimes talk about that in the context of social impact. The truth is that social impact in the United States sometimes can be seen as in certain circles, certain venture circles could be thought of as bad words because, you know, there’s this fear of, oh no, we don’t want to get involved in something social like socialism or whatever. But the truth is that the tools can be used in a very impactful change the world for the better way.

Kevin Koym [00:10:53]:

And so I took my skunkworks background, got together with a handful of community as well as a core team to use those capabilities around the world. And you know, we’ve worked with, you know, literally thousands of entrepreneurs around the world. 22 countries in the last eight years alone. The idea is, I like to say it this way, all the world’s problems have already been solved. It’s just a matter of connecting the entrepreneur with a solution to the market with a problem. That entrepreneur with a solution might not be in the United States, might be in some other country, some other place. Some of my favorite examples is taking on diseases, taking on a disease called leishmaniasis in Ethiopia with funding that came from Houston. Entrepreneurial insight that came from Austin, Texas through US and technology that came from Adelaide, Australia, from Flinders University in Adelaide. And you know, the idea is by having access to these different insights and these different networks, you can solve almost any problem like this. And it’s been a driving vision for me to say that let’s do this.

Kevin Koym [00:12:13]:

In my early career, 30 years ago, I was an Austin based entrepreneur that had a piece of database software that we applied to a bank in Guadalajara, Mexico. You know, one country away, we had emerging technology. Our early adopter was a country away. It’s because of that software that that bank made it through the 1994 peso crisis. It’s one of the few banks that made it during that time. The main thing about it is like solving problems cross border is fundamental to what we’re up to.

Jason Barnard [00:12:49]:

All right. Oh, that’s what we’re doing at Kalicube because we’re in France and we’re trying to solve problems for particularly entrepreneurs in America. Because in America, from a British perspective, there is a much better or more realistic view of invest in my brand, in my personal brand, in my corporate brand, and I will receive the rewards, as it were. Whereas a European perspective would be that to cost. But that’s beside the point. I’m really intrigued to know about the relationship between innovation and the business itself. Because what you were saying is we’ve got this innovation and we have the market and we don’t have the connection. That connection is business and it’s a huge missing piece.

Kevin Koym [00:13:30]:

Right. I would even go a little bit deeper than that in that. Since, especially since we’re talking about cross cultural cost, country cost, business culture pros. You know, the main thing is, you know, business is what drives the change. Right. That’s the engine of change.

Kevin Koym [00:13:49]:

Innovation is not always adopted by business because business is so focused on making money. And then once we get a business model that’s working, let’s not touch anything.

Jason Barnard [00:13:59]:

Yeah.

Kevin Koym [00:14:00]:

What’s interesting about the world that comes though, right? AI is a disruption. Electric vehicles are a disruption. The virus coronavirus was a disruption. The supply chains that are changing, right. There’s this radical change that it’s clear that the United States is trying to isolate China out of supply chains, which is bringing Europe closer to the US and we’re doing things like that. The war against Ukraine, another disruption. The fact that what, three different governments in the world have fallen in the last week, another set of disruptions.

Kevin Koym [00:14:36]:

Right. The main thing about it is for the people who’ve been resistant to innovation over the last few years because they didn’t have to, they didn’t have to transform, they didn’t have to transition, they didn’t have to change. For a guy like me who’s been living in innovation his whole career, I’m kind of like, I’m excited because, I mean, because what we’re doing, I think is even more fundamental. And, you know, a 20 year journey of this type of innovation, of helping entrepreneurs cross borders, makes even more sense. It’s going to take deeper relationships across borders with people who know how to speak into each other’s realities, you know, like your company’s doing, like my company’s doing, and then helping these other entrepreneurs to do so, that is so fundamental to what’s coming. I think there will be a lot of gnashing of teeth because there’s so much stuff. There’s a lot of uncertainty. But innovation is going to be one of the tools that creates certainty into the future.

Kevin Koym [00:15:40]:

And, you know, and so in some ways I’m like, I mean, I joked at the very beginning, I guess, when we’re off camera about having scar tissue to donate to others to help them figure out how to innovate, especially in terms of a disruption. There are reports that say that more than 50% of the jobs are going to get disrupted in three to five years because of AI. We’re already seeing it here in Austin. There’s been, there’s been a significant number of layoffs. Part of the driver that, you know, prior to is cost controls, part of its change in market. But the one of the other ones is AI. None of those things are going to go away. You know, it’s not going to be just wait another little economic cycle.

Jason Barnard [00:16:23]:

And that is the thing. There’s no point in denying it or being afraid of it or worried about it is one thing. You can’t deny it. You need to figure out a way to deal with it.

Kevin Koym [00:16:33]:

Yeah, well, I mean the main thing is somehow too we need to bring together the technology worlds and the political world. Right. In this country especially, there’s a lot of crisis and I don’t know that the, there’s clarity in the general populace because of some of the different things. I mean, it’s really clear that there is a appetite for change here in the United States, but it’s not clear that people have really figured out root cause analysis to then know what tools to pick up. I am hopeful, I’m hopeful, I’m concerned, but I’m hopeful that we can figure out how to shift some of the dark energy of what’s happening into stuff that ends up being positive innovation. There’s a lot of work to be done over the next few years for that.

Jason Barnard [00:17:22]:

Yeah, 100%. I mean, I see things changing from my perspective at Kalicube. I’m excited because it’s what we’re working on. AI bring coming into search, changing search, changing research online. It fits in with what we’re doing. And I can see that. If you’re not sitting in my seat, it’s really scary. If you’re sitting in my seat, I’m saying, oh, this is a great opportunity.

Jason Barnard [00:17:45]:

But I wanted to move on to the next thing, which was bankruptcies up 7%. I saw somewhere on your site I was curious as to why you told me that wasn’t the right figure today. And you’re not sure what that is, but why are bankruptcies going up?

Kevin Koym [00:17:57]:

I tend to try to pay attention to the continuous type of stuff. The main thing is looking at the key indicators of change. Bankruptcies are up and it’s because underlying there are these disruptions that are happening. I think part of what’s happened is a lot of the press hasn’t been announcing that as much. And so you kind of have to look to the secondary sources to see what things are changing. A good example, another statistic to look at is 10% of the cars sold in the United States this last year. It’s my understanding is they were electric vehicles. There’s still a lot of resistance, though.

Kevin Koym [00:18:34]:

If you look in the press, you know, as if, oh, we’re not going to be switching over to electric vehicles anytime soon because of this and this and this and this. And the truth is that it’s. The shift’s already taking place. The tectonic shift is about. Is taking place. So we are seeing signs of the disruption. The bankruptcies are one of the signals, the actual real numbers about number of electric vehicles being sold. What’s interesting, though, is the news that’s counter to electric vehicles.

Kevin Koym [00:19:08]:

Like, you know, there’s a lot of fud, fear, uncertainty and doubt that’s being put out there about those technologies to resist them. My concern about that, a city of martial art called Aikido. When you resist too much, when you resist whatever the attack is, that’s when you can break an arm or something like that. You know, you allow yourself to be, you know, crushed by what’s happening versus, you know, versus actually learning how to transform with the impact of what’s happening?

Jason Barnard [00:19:42]:

It would not be deflect.

Kevin Koym [00:19:43]:

Yeah, well, deflect or in. In Aikido. The Aikido is all about harmonizing, harmonizing the attack. It’s a different. You know, it’s not like boxing where you just stand there and slug, you know, slug back and forth. No, you know, it’s like instead of. Instead of trying to block the attack or deflect the attack, you blend with the attack. And the.

Kevin Koym [00:20:09]:

The whole idea about it is that ends up, you know, it’s like, it’s a way of me taking care of myself without hurting the other person. But even more importantly, underneath that, not to get too philosophical on you, but it’s about harmonizing. Because I’ve practiced Aikido now 27 years. It’s natural that this passion martial art of mine shows up in the work that we do with entrepreneurs, especially as we’re looking at working across country boundaries. You know, whether it’s Europe. Like, we have a project happening in the Baltics right now in Lithuania. We have some interesting stuff coming in from Hungary. We have a project in the UK, we have a project in Japan, and then a lot between Texas and Mexico.

Kevin Koym [00:21:00]:

And the main thing about it is in those different cultures, part of what has to happen is learning how to create those signals so people can blend into what’s happening versus perceive it as an attack or is it like something to be frightened of?

Jason Barnard [00:21:21]:

I think Kevin. I’d like to ask you one question that kind of intrigues me is mentors and advisors. I’ve had a lot of coaching this year and it’s done me an enormous amount of good and given me, potentially passed on to me some of that scar tissue that you were talking about earlier on. Give me your perspective on that. I’ve been. I’m a huge fan of it since one year ago and I’ve been an entrepreneur for 30 years and I’ve only just discovered the glory of mentors and advisors.

Kevin Koym [00:21:49]:

You know, this is really greatly informed by my martial arts backgrounds. In the, in Aikido, which is a Japanese martial art, there’s a notion of a senpai kohai. The sensei is another term that a lot of people have heard of. That’s the teacher, the person at the front of the room that, you know, might be leading the class. But the senpai kohai relationship, the person in senpai kohai just means the younger person that’s learning or and the person that’s been on the trail for a little bit longer. Right. The thing. Because I have been such a.

Kevin Koym [00:22:24]:

I mean, I’ve received such wonderful support all the way through looking at these relationships about how to help other entrepreneurs. Especially when we’re talking about innovation, right when there is something fearful happening, right when there’s something hard happening in the world. The only answer to that is community. The only answer is community. We saw the 2008 and 2009 change. There was lots of layoffs, lots of startups that got started. And a lot of times those companies had to bind together and the entrepreneurs had to bind together to discover what’s the new reality. We’re seeing that right now too.

Kevin Koym [00:23:06]:

We’re about to see it like 10 times more with these disruptions that are coming. The thing that you’re talking about, that advisor, mentor, we also use the. We distinguish between advisors, mentors, coaches, and a variety of different type of things. It’s because of that senpai kohai relationship about the person who has the more scar tissues that donate to the other individual. And it’s not that the kohai, the younger entrepreneur, and it’s not always about age, but it’s about experience. It’s not like that the kohai always should listen to the senpai because one of the great things about it is as an entrepreneur, you work for yourself. Even in a senpai kohai relationship, it’s still peer to peer because this person is in charge of his or her own outcomes, no matter what.

Kevin Koym [00:24:00]:

I’m fascinated with that and because of the experience that I’ve had in the martial arts, you know, 30 years of Japanese martial arts, you know, like I said, 26. 26ish years. 25, 26 years, depending on your start. Look at my start in Aikido, mainly because this is how we can help each other transform. It’s also how we create a safety net. There’s a number of times in the community that we have that we’ve had entrepreneurs that are flying high, they’re driving really intense outcomes. There’s a failure who catches that entrepreneur.

Kevin Koym [00:24:37]:

It’s in the United States. It’s not our social system. Absolutely not. Absolutely not. It’s actually the downside of being an entrepreneur in the United States that their social system absolutely is not going to catch, but the community can. And so as an example, even deeper than just the senpai kohai relationship about what you’re saying about mentorship and advisors, the thing that we should be thinking about, especially for the disruptions that come, is that we need to be creating even more durable communities of practice that advisors and mentors. The question you asked me point to, it’s those more durable communities of practice, especially that are cross country. They’re like, you know, two different countries.

Kevin Koym [00:25:22]:

Right. That really can change things about the outcomes we can drive for entrepreneurs without having to raise more venture capital, without having to get more investors, without having to get the, you know, more tax dollars in place. The entrepreneurs combined together in. Because the reality is a lot of times the governments haven’t figured it out, the investors are not accessible, and, you know, entrepreneurs want to continue to take pioneering steps. And so we have to figure out how to debt.

Jason Barnard [00:25:51]:

Brilliant. That’s a delightful way to end it. Thank you so much, Kevin. That was wonderful. Delightful. Interesting and encouraging and frightening at the same time.

Kevin Koym [00:26:00]:

Yeah, no, there’s definitely reason to be concerned about what comes, but I am convinced with my experience of the last 20 years and then as an entrepreneur of the last 30 years, that these are the structures that we need to engender even more. We need. This is the culture we need to drive. And so it’s my honor to be here with you, especially cross culture, you know, cross country, talking to a Brit in France, you know, connecting to Texas. It’s because of these kind of connections that we can really draw, drive impact in the world and create a healthier, more prosperous, more livable world in the future.

Jason Barnard [00:26:39]:

Definitely. Thank you so much. You get the outro song as well. A quick goodbye to end the show. Thank you, Kevin.

Kevin Koym [00:26:49]:

Thank you, Jason.

Narrator [00:26:51]:

Your corporate and personal brands are what Google and AI say they are. We can give you back control. Kalicube.