Jeff York 0:00
Welcome to Creative distillation where we distill entrepreneurial research into actionable insights. My name is Jeff York, Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship at the Leeds School of Business at the lovely University of Colorado in Boulder, and I'm here today with my co host, as always,
Brad Werner 0:15
Brad Warner. I work at the demo Center for Entrepreneurship. It's great to see you again, Jeff. I am excited. We have a awesome guest, a friend and colleague and we're broadcasting from a really cool venue.
Jeff York 0:27
Yeah, it is. It's it's snowing outside. We're in here and Brad's really happy because not only are we in a brewery today, we are in a Bruce Tillery.
Brad Werner 0:37
Yeah, Bruce Tillery. By the way, that's a new term for me. But I actually think that I'm gonna really like this term, we're gonna
Jeff York 0:43
learn all about it. And the reason we're here today at not just a brewery, but also a story and a brewery is because the last time we had our special guest on the day where we bred we were
Brad Werner 0:54
at a coffee roasting venue. So we're gonna make it up. So we're gonna provide Sharon with pretty much the full universe of cocktail.
Jeff York 1:02
Absolutely, because she was like, what's the deal here? Man, you guys, you guys, I hear this podcast. You're drinking wine. Whiskey beer. Yeah, me on and we have coffee. Well, that's just what we do in the Dean's office. So our guest today is Jean shirring. Welcome, Sharon.
Sharon Matusik 1:17
Thrilled to be here and happy to be here at the Bruce Tillery instead of the coffee, the coffee restaurants. It was excellent. Great coffee sitting
Jeff York 1:26
around. It's like five an afternoon we usually do this this thing like after a long week of teaching and, and work. And then we're like drinking coffee and just getting more and more amped up. But today, we're gonna relax. And and we have Sharon here because she is well, no, actually, here are witnesses. We don't have Sharon on because she's the No, no, of course, we would always have the Dean on the podcast because we want the Great. We'd like the podcast to continue. But we actually have shear on because she is actually a very still. And I don't know how the heck you do it. Like she's still publishes a research addition to be the dean. And she herself is an entrepreneurship researcher.
Brad Werner 2:03
I think that that's fabulous. His research that was working well for you.
Sharon Matusik 2:07
Wow, since I moved into the world of academics, yeah. I mean, the reason that I got into academics in the first place is I worked in consulting for a while, and kind of stepped back and said, Do I want to do this for the rest of my life or not? And I'm just like, yeah, probably not. And one of the things that I reflected on is, to me, it was really interesting in companies where you'd have one company that was trying something, it'd be a great success, and other would be a great failure. And the whys behind that got me really interested in the research piece. And that kind of goes hand in hand with entrepreneurship and innovation. Because, you know, how do you know which ideas are going to be a success and which are going to be a failure, sometimes at first blush, you can't really tell. And so getting into the nitty gritty of that was something
Jeff York 2:48
that was 100% 100% gonna
Sharon Matusik 2:51
count on that. launch this venture fund for the university, we're gonna count on Brad to send some good ideas.
Brad Werner 2:59
I don't know if my batting average is 100%. It's no lie. But it's not bad. It's pretty damn good.
Sharon Matusik 3:05
I'm counting on that brand.
Brad Werner 3:06
Right. But it's fun. But you know, what, wouldn't you be a hot commodity in the venture capital world with the research that you do with understanding when we're talking about failures to be able to identify these these early stage investors?
Sharon Matusik 3:20
Well, we'll see when we launch this venture fund, I mean, to me, I think it's really interesting to look at all that goes behind that. And you know, I love being on the front lines in terms of looking at specific ideas. I also love stepping back and looking at patterns in the data to say, hey, if we look over 2030 years, and we look at all these different decisions, what can we learn from those patterns? So I like a mix of both right, I'd like to see it on the front lines. And I also like to step back and reflect and maybe pull out some insights that are not quite as easy to see, when you're just one on one with some of these ideas, you
Brad Werner 3:53
have a specific industry focus
Sharon Matusik 3:55
within within airship, you know, not really tech, mostly, my PhD is from University of Washington up in Seattle. So all of my early research was on the software industry. And so you know, that fits really nicely with Boulder and a lot of the tech forward companies that we have here. So I would say the tech space more generally. And I have more experience with software compared to other ideas.
Jeff York 4:18
You guys are kind of breaking news here a little bit. Was this your alluding to a venture fund is this? I mean, this is now public knowledge. It's public
Sharon Matusik 4:26
knowledge. Yeah, the university is launching a fund to invest in Cu technologies. So we've got really, really amazing scientists across our campus. You know, you and Brad both know this. And they're coming up with really fundamental, amazing insights. So how do we create a win win? How do we make sure that those ideas get the funding that they need to commercialize and turn these into things that can benefit society more generally, and then as university as an investor in those technologies, know how can we We use what we're doing to help create more revenue sources for all the great things going on
Brad Werner 5:05
at the mercy of the ecosystem where we live. Absolutely incredible. Yeah,
Sharon Matusik 5:09
it is really phenomenal. And we've got the talent. And so by helping to scale up these ventures and provide them the right funding, you know, we hope to be an even more integral part of this.
Jeff York 5:20
Normal channels channels for that, like we have, you know, tech transfer and things like that. But this is a whole different level of investment, right? You know, we have classes ever leads all the time, we see technology based ventures that have really tapped into pretty much every avenue of funding there is on the CU campus, and they still need to raise a lot more money. So this is trying to help make that bridge.
Sharon Matusik 5:40
Absolutely. And so you know, they're to me, it creates this virtuous cycle, we help those technologies get to the next level, we're able to benefit from that financially, which allows us to reinvest in our entrepreneurship efforts and that technology development at the science and technology,
Brad Werner 5:55
we can really amplify that to sharing and that's gonna be amazing.
Jeff York 5:58
And the thing that would probably help us make really good choices in this new endeavor is local beer and whiskey. I'm sure. So since I know
Brad Werner 6:07
that this is where the fun meets, yeah, that was a pretty smooth transition. Yeah, very smooth.
Jeff York 6:13
I worked on that, like all last night, I was gonna
Brad Werner 6:15
have to tell, you know, the ventures that I've worked at, it really does happen, though over a glass of wine or beer.
Jeff York 6:22
I've actually got a paper about that called the tavern effect.
Brad Werner 6:25
I know you've been doing the research.
Sharon Matusik 6:27
I think that is a good one. Qualitative
Jeff York 6:31
conversion associations oxide. I know this is true, but I just have to make things go on. We want to empirically demonstrate the density of micro breweries and distilleries is actually positively correlated and predictive of new venture bounding.
Brad Werner 6:45
So I like that, but I'm just wondering if you're gonna be able to keep the title down to just the tavern
Jeff York 6:49
effect, what was gonna be the tavern effect, and then it would be the institutional ecosystem effects and socio cultural interactions within
Sharon Matusik 6:59
title if I ever heard you know, I
Brad Werner 7:01
think I'd like to introduce Dustin, Katie.
Jeff York 7:04
Please go ahead.
Brad Werner 7:05
So Jeff, and share, we're lucky to be sitting here with the co owner of Scott street distillery. Dustin, welcome. And Dustin is brought along the general manager Katie. So Katie, welcome to both you guys. We're really looking to find out how this came about. So why don't you tell us the story of how you arrived in Boulder and maybe a little bigger story and how the venture was founded?
Unknown Speaker 7:25
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for you guys being here. Like more breaking news than I'm ever going to acknowledge just got brought to the table. And I'm curious to hear more about your research. I've always thought pubs were the social lubricant and a lot of things coming together in the American
Unknown Speaker 7:39
lead to pub.
Unknown Speaker 7:43
Yeah, the American Revolution, tavern effect. Yeah, you should trademark God. It's a good term. So we're at Scott Street, Bruce Tillery. We have a brewery and distillery under the same roof. That was a lot of licensing city of Boulder love doing that. For us. It only took about 800 pages of paperwork. But we're here now. So we have two parent companies. Scott brewing down in Durango. They opened in 1995. I don't know number six, number seven. Total volume and yeah, really independently owned, same owners that started the place in 95. Oh, yeah, that's a independent business. And we have a distillery in palisade knows the region of palisade peaches, peaches, a lot of stone fruit, pears, western slope on the Colorado River. Great, really fun mountain bike trail. Plunge is pretty serious. No, I've ever No, no,
Jeff York 8:34
no, it's it's pretty famous in the mountain biking.
Unknown Speaker 8:37
And it's been a promise for a long time sections of it have been open, but it fully got opened last summer. So we're excited to see what it'll bring this spring to our little mountain community western slope community. But both companies so 95 for Scott 2005 for Pete Street. We've been big on the western slope for a long time. But we've never had a Front Range presence. And I worked at Avery brewing for quite a few years. Back in the alley about 10 years. For those who know the little flat iron. Yeah, definitely.
Brad Werner 9:03
We're talking about the alley before we launched the podcast today. I remember going there myself.
Unknown Speaker 9:07
It's a historical part of Boulder beer tradition. Yeah. But now Avery's out in and gun barrel and a much bigger facility and some things have changed, but I was on things. So a few things have changed. Well, anyway, so we had a history Avery had a familiarity with the boulder community. I lived in Lewisville for most of the time I worked at Avery. So when this building when this space came open, there used to be another brewery in here. Things didn't go as well for them. And there was a state auction and we came in and as Scott and Pete street made a bid on the auction and we want it and suddenly we had to deal with the reality of we're opening a Front Range tasting room. And that officially happened on March 16th 2020. And if that sounds like a familiar we did our friends and family on March 13. Friday the 13th Ides of March all the no indicators, this was a bad idea. Monday we open for an hour and 11 minutes for the stage show moralize that somewhere behind.
Unknown Speaker 10:10
Here our first anniversary when we made it to a year, I'll be at a hiatus and in the middle there of sorts. But we had a 111 was one of our first big Imperial stouts that we brewed. And
Sharon Matusik 10:25
can you talk a little bit about how you persevered through that. I mean, that is talk about timing and talk about unexpected challenges for an entrepreneur just getting
Unknown Speaker 10:33
Yeah, I mean, we're still trying to evolve and figure out what what makes sense. I mean, a lot of the things that made this building so functional and such a successful business before at least before the doors got chained. were things that aren't round as much anymore. A lot of the office buildings, the Google campus, the lunch menu, you know, that's not as many folks are going out of business lunches over a couple years. See you football games are still full, but not as much as they were at a certain point. We're right down the bike paths are getting folks in for brunch and going up a little more challenging. Certainly destination travel to Boulder has been a little limited. Most of the hotel occupancy will show you that but we've been surviving good beers, good spirits, good food, Katie and the crew have been put down very hospitable environment. So we're getting through, but it is definitely adapting to the model we originally designed.
Unknown Speaker 11:20
Yeah. And I think when you talk about running a small business and being an entrepreneur, not many people think about the domino effects of the pandemic and the supply chain, and that our costs have gone up. And we'll continue to do so. And we have things like aluminum shortages for cans, glass shortages for the distillery. And so when you talk about the entrepreneurial spirit, and when you talk about how you develop and grow and pivot a small business, we've pretty much been thrown every obstacle. And so it really is. And I like to also acknowledge that we are not alone. This is something that every small independent business has had to go through. And I think it's really indicative of the community here in Boulder when we have something like the marshal fire, and within 72 hours, all of the restaurants were partnering up with Hosea Rosenberg, world central kitchen and the conscious alliance to get food to the families. And so that I think is something that rings true and is a through line for the craft community, whether it be a brewery or distillery that our communities reign supreme, and the way that we survive is our community. And so it's important to always give back, I'm good friends with the people that own Noda brewing down in the Carolinas. And they're very much focused on community too, because let's be real, we're here because of loyal guests. And so we first and foremost want to thank those people that have come in and supported us through all this, and really welcome everybody else in because we're here to give a good experience, you know, start to finish food, beer spirits, and our service. And we really can't say enough about the community here in Boulder and how supportive everyone has been in Cu has been a great partner with us. We have so many students, grad students coming through tell
Sharon Matusik 13:06
you we come here for our Dean's happy hour. Yes. Dean, yeah, happy hour. And our last one.
Brad Werner 13:15
Katie, is it where we've done podcasts, I would say in the last year, Jeff, we've actually been able to go on location. But the first thing that the founders of these businesses said is it's amazing how the tie between the business and the community is much deeper than what would appear on the surface. And certainly pre pandemic. We depend on each other. Right? We each other, and businesses are part of the community, they become souls of the community, and they need that type of support. And vice versa.
Unknown Speaker 13:42
Well think about how many jobs you know, we started out with 90 employees is what we thought we would hire for the projected business level. And we've at one point, we're down to three employees. And then it was a really big day when we were at seven. And then it was an even bigger day when we're up to like 20. And something that has been so important to us this whole time is to keep as many local jobs here going as possible, because then we are only then helping build back the economy helping build back small and independent business. And so that is and it's diverse, too, right? Like we all wear different hats, we're willing to learn we're willing to grow. And it's important for us as a management team, like we've all given every single employee that works here multiple job codes, because if they can do multiple things, we can keep them employed. And so when you talk about entrepreneurialship and how you design a business, I think most businesses start out with what one or two people that have an idea at a tavern or in your garage or you know, wherever, and you have to wear multiple hats, but part of how you grow that business is also how you develop that role and delegate effectively. And that's really been a challenge for all of us in the mental gymnastics of how we make the best use of our time, take care of our people take care of our guests, and really kind of develop and grow and grow the right way, because we've had to relearn how to do all of that. And a lot of bars and restaurants and distilleries are in that position. It is a shared burden. Oh, yeah.
Sharon Matusik 15:08
And and Jeff may know the citations on this, because I don't remember them offhand. But there is some research that shows that businesses that start in hard times tend to persist more than those that started more flush times. And I think it speaks to exactly what you're talking about. You just figure out how to be resilient, you figure out how to do multiple roles, you don't count on lots of resources to help you get to the next step. And, and those founding conditions and experiences helped lay the groundwork for much more resilience, longer term. So it's hard now, but those will, hopefully help you over the long haul, add one
Brad Werner 15:43
layer to that too, and it shared values and talk about values and values based decision making. And it seems like that's what you've done. And that's really that's fantastic.
Unknown Speaker 15:51
Yeah, and I think that stems from every single one of our owners, we are blessed with independent ownership for people that care about your family, and people that care about you, as a person and care about the communities and great products, like at the end of the day, quality is never compromised in any of our beer, spirits or food. And I think that's a testament to what Bill, Dave and Matt have all started and never let slide.
Unknown Speaker 16:18
Yeah, this philosophy is something we've had on the western slope for so long. And we've been doing it for a long time. And being an integral part of the community and the community given back is always what we built, you know, our businesses on I think it's a great, you know, shared philosophy. But a lot of the harder questions we've had to ask ourselves here in Boulder, and to get to your point of evolving quickly, it's a little different when you come into a new community, and you're trying to get the awareness built, as opposed to executing that model in a community where there is already an amount of awareness as these tough times hit. I think, if anything, a lot of steam on our train, day one, what is a Bruce Stollery? What's this new business coming into this spot I see coming down rapaho It was just completely wiped out. And and everybody was in their own mind. But hopefully, we're coming out the other side of that now in the philosophy span and off, but we have had to ask a lot of tough questions that are first couple years that I don't know, we would have had to without a global pandemic. Well, yeah,
Unknown Speaker 17:13
I think a lot of it goes to in Travis or chef who will remain as silent as humanly possible and in the kitchen as much as possible and not outside. He is a very humble person, but a very kind soul who said the hardest thing for him was when we were doing to go only you know, when we can have anybody in part of what they love to see is a clean plate coming to the kitchen. Right? And the feedback. I didn't get the feedback. Yeah. And so for a new business to not have that critical feedback, like, oh, yeah, what a bag of food, I hope you like it, and to not have that exchange. Probably for Travis and myself one of the most challenging things because that's how you grow a business like this is
Jeff York 18:04
all about customer. Feedback every day.
Sharon Matusik 18:09
You say, I love it. You know, it reminds me also of the transition in higher ed, because we go to these remote teaching and similar kinds of dynamics. Because if you're in front of a class, people, you know, right away if they're like, fall asleep, yeah, totally. Yeah, I'll try everything remote. It's so much harder to judge that interaction. Your material is being perceived question
Unknown Speaker 18:34
everything, you know, right. Like I've been in this business for 20 years, Travis has as well. That's a pretty good foundation to be doing something and feel like you know what you're doing? And to be quite honest, I feel like most days, I have no clue what I'm doing,
Jeff York 18:46
oh, we've all gone
Unknown Speaker 18:50
every day.
Jeff York 18:52
Unless it was someone who just was, I mean, every faculty member, every teacher, who actually cares, has gone through that in the last year or two, because you go online, and a lot of us had never taught online classes because we were like, No, I don't want to do that I won't be in the classroom. And all of a sudden, you're standing in your house in front of a camera with a microphone if you were lucky enough to get together a decent rig. And you're looking at a bunch of black boxes, and maybe three students who turn their care because we didn't know you had to tell students to turn their camera on for longest time. I totally empathize with what you're saying. Yeah, cheers to you for making. Let's cheers. That's awesome. That's a great Okay, so now we got to go back to college guidance is it shouldn't be liquor before beer never fear or because we've got two drinks in front of us. I don't stand on any of these pretenses. Opening with bourbon. Alright, there we go. The
Unknown Speaker 19:45
bourbons night.
Jeff York 19:46
Oh man I've just been seeing or smelling it waiting to Matt's got really, really well. Brad's the bourbon expert. I'm gonna defer
Brad Werner 19:53
to him. I don't know if I'm an expert,
Jeff York 19:54
or an expert i bourbon. Yeah.
Brad Werner 19:57
This is great.
Unknown Speaker 19:58
I do like it.
Brad Werner 19:59
So Talk us through the bourbon.
Unknown Speaker 20:01
Yeah, so this is actually our five year age single barrel Colorado straight move I didn't want to waste your time we'll start big. Really? We've been making bourbon in Colorado since around 2007 to a couple years being open making clear spirits before we could start laying down I mean bourbons always something that you invest in heavily and have to wait years and yours to come out of the the Rick house. Yeah, but there's barrels here. Even though we've only been open a couple years we were able to transfer them in bond from palisade. So there is five year bourbon here that you can sample in the frayed out of the barrel, but it's all Colorado grain. It's about 60% palisade corn, Western so sweet corn. We know the farmer he's right around the corner, he brings it over and fills our silo with his tractor driving down the road. Awesome. And the other 20% malted barley 20% Rye, both grown in the San Luis Valley down near Alamosa, so all Colorado grains and first use American oak with the number two char and we let it age as long as we can we put out some 10 year at Christmas last year. And hopefully we've got some some 15 year tucked away for a few more years for you to come back
Brad Werner 21:05
and do a podcast when they open up.
Jeff York 21:06
Oh man, this is so nice. So so first of all, the first thing I thought when I drank this was just smoothness. Now, Brad, I mean, I'm not trying to make you sound like you drink bourbon. Do
Brad Werner 21:20
you trust me? I think that Sharon probably does, too. You know,
Sharon Matusik 21:23
I don't but I I'm developing a taste because I'll tell you one of the things that we did and you may or may not know this every year, we have a silent auction to raise scholarship dollars for MBA students coming from diverse and underrepresented. And so what I auctioned off this year was a whiskey and bourbon tasting with me and one of our alumni a guy by the name of Leonard Firestone who started whiskey distillery in Texas so he lives outside of Fort Worth. And so he flew up and we sold it not once but twice. So he had to come up for two tastings and he brought up some of what he has been working on down in Fort Worth. And we had that Friday night
Unknown Speaker 22:12
well save him a trip you just let us know. Yeah.
Brad Werner 22:19
I'm referring to if I was a dean, I would be drinking all the time.
Sharon Matusik 22:22
Well the Dean's job involved dealing with pandemic oh my god you know all all the last couple of years.
Jeff York 22:31
A Bruce Tillery involved
Sharon Matusik 22:34
no one could have anticipated what the last few years
Unknown Speaker 22:37
if we would have planned to open on the day of the pandemic started we would have screwed it up we could not have predicted that that's the way the world goes make the best.
Jeff York 22:48
Okay, so So back to the bourbon. If I come in here and I want to buy this is it sold in bottles? Or is it local liquor stores or
Unknown Speaker 22:55
all of the above?
Jeff York 22:58
The actual brand we look at on this it would just did we just say peach street distilleries bourbon or
Unknown Speaker 23:02
Colorado straight bourbon. straight definition straight just means that aged minimum of two years TTB definition. You can find it all over Colorado Boulder treats this really well. But you can buy bottles here too. And we show off a few little one off things here that may not make it to the shelves everywhere else. We released an eight year peated single malt here. Yeah, we
Sharon Matusik 23:24
see Brad Smiling. Smiling ear to ear
Brad Werner 23:28
Oh yeah, I don't even side.
Unknown Speaker 23:30
Anyway, we have some six year XO brandies that are over six years from all palisade fruits. So we've take some of the longer age stamp stuff and tuck it away here but again, the community has been amazing to us off prem stores really got us through 2020 When nobody could go out and drink in public
Brad Werner 23:46
and recommend the Colorado straight bourbon. Oh
Jeff York 23:48
yeah, no, this is great. So complexity here like I'm getting a lot more complexity off of this. I'm not a big bourbon drinker. I like whiskey better but but this starts with like kava honey sweetness on the front end and then there's a rich I was almost like I always call it toffee. Yeah, toffee. Yeah, I was thinking like of a cinnamon roll or like some other kind of like, it's kind of really nice
Unknown Speaker 24:11
that layers of paper to it. And what I think really speaks to some of peach street strengths. And what we do out there is the Rick house is just a barn and the great thing about palisade you have really hot days really cold nights. And so the barrels naturally expanding contract thought about that.
Unknown Speaker 24:30
temperature swings. Fancy wine word is diurnal shift, but it really just means how far the temperature went in one day if it went from 60 to 100, or whatever that is Colorado.
Unknown Speaker 24:41
Yes. Thank you by allowing nature to do its thing out in the Grand Valley. We can extract a little bit more complexity without doing a whole lot more than just letting nature take its course. And so I think there's regular Colorado straight and regular Colorado through is a beautiful cocktail spirit can drink it on its own but it is a beautiful cocktail spirit five year 10 year and like the eight year that doesn't talking about those spirits speaks so well for themselves on their own. Yeah, but I don't Yeah, anytime I talk about a cocktail with peachy spirits I always start with Colorado straight I let this one speak for itself the only thing that I ever really and this is a personal thing for me that I like to just take an orange peel and twist over it because I think the citrus of the orange peel a little bit more brightness to it particularly the five area
Jeff York 25:36
the complexity thing I keep noting right he's got really nice complexity layers of flavors, it's and that's why I don't drink much bourbon because usually just like as bourbon okay, this is got like some really nice layers to
Unknown Speaker 25:48
it, I think it's worth acknowledging that are five years a single barrel packaging. So there is barrel variants character. So if you have a barrel that lives way up higher near the ceiling, and there's more of a temperature differential, a little lower on the north side of the building where it may not be as warm you'll have different character development and we let that stand out and do its own thing and five year we don't try to create a consistent flavor. A lot of people do pick up more honey more vanilla and more of those roasted sugars out of the barrel when you roast the the sugars. But it can be a little spicy, it can be a little rye forward. I've seen some other ones come out but I think he's a delicious example.
Jeff York 26:23
Fantastic.
Brad Werner 26:24
I'm getting it all except the cinnamon roll. I'm having a tough time
Jeff York 26:29
as a toffee Cinnamon,
Brad Werner 26:31
cinnamon roll Come on. This is a great
Sharon Matusik 26:35
it's the warm it's usually the right
Unknown Speaker 26:37
that people get is cinnamon on rye bread, bread. I
Jeff York 26:41
can't hope if your palates pick that out. Yeah, but yeah. All right. I mean we're kind of working hard on it. Very nice.
Brad Werner 26:53
Okay, but we have something else here as well. There's a beard that's along with us. What did you bring out? Dustin? Well yeah, we
Unknown Speaker 26:59
wanted to show something we made here on site because we do have quite a few Scott brewing beers that come out of Durango but this was made by David our Bruce stellarator on site and I thought it tied in a little bit of your history. It's a coffee stout
Jeff York 27:14
The real question is do you have any pumpkin beers still around? They Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 27:23
I don't think Scott has ever made a pumpkin beer. Oh my memory in 26 years pumpkin beer been made I believe
Unknown Speaker 27:40
this dry stout you have in front of you. That doesn't sound like Irish guy right? Irish that would be a nice base for sure. It's about five and a half percent. And the coffee beans that were used on it actually lived in a Colorado straight bourbon barrel. So we do some coffee aging down in Durango in our bourbon barrels. Great little local artisan company that does the aging. Well what a great time to put it back into the beer and just tied together everything up here in Boulder, so figured a good place to start on a snowy day.
Jeff York 28:04
Yeah.
Brad Werner 28:06
I've never heard anything like this.
Jeff York 28:07
Really? Yeah, I haven't drank coffee
Brad Werner 28:10
before I have no idea. Very good. easy
Sharon Matusik 28:15
drinking the bourbon. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 28:17
the nice thing I like about this is you know a lot of stouts I think a lot of people assume they're going to be the higher gravity the big beers there are a great many of stouts made this lower abv and we get a lot of people that really want that bold flavor profile but necessarily aren't looking for 10 You know, 10 plus percent ABV. So this is nice that it's the lower ABV but it has got so much flavor to it.
Brad Werner 28:42
If I'm on a desert island, I'm taking the bourbon with me.
Unknown Speaker 28:47
I mean, bang for your buck, right. And islands. Yeah,
Jeff York 28:50
yeah. But I mean, like, that's a cool thing. Like you're saying I mean, and that's actually truer to the original style by American beer is people like up the ABV So hi, like trying to because we want to cram more hops into it. And like, that's the whole thing in America but, but this is way more similar to a stout you actually would have in the UK. It's actually a session beer. You can drink a few of these at the barber or more than a few of them and still make it home.
Unknown Speaker 29:12
Yeah, yep. I mean, I've been to many countries in Europe and I had the pleasure of going to actual Oktoberfest and yeah, Europeans don't drink for ABV Air America.
Jeff York 29:23
I really like this I might one of my favorite things in the UK is like going drinking mild like it was like 3% but actually tastes like something Yes. And so how much coffees in this like, just roughly like
Unknown Speaker 29:34
you can taste the coffee? Yeah, I don't know the ratio exact. I feel like it was around five pounds on six pounds on a 10 barrel batch. So pretty heavy for its size. Keep in mind you started with bourbon so it may taste a little closer to spring water than if you just started with.
Jeff York 29:52
Never fear. It's not the maker. thing you learned at the University of Georgia. Anyway, fine, stout guys. Thank you. Yeah. This is great.
Brad Werner 30:04
How many beers do you have attacker?
Unknown Speaker 30:09
Anywhere between 25 and 30?
Jeff York 30:12
Giving us 15 of them. This is fantastic. Yeah, I'm enjoying the stat. It's perfect for that.
Brad Werner 30:18
So I have a question though. Bruce Tillery is new to me.
Jeff York 30:21
It's new to you.
Brad Werner 30:23
But there's a lot to talk about. But But tell me, are there other distilleries? Is this unique to you? How did this come about?
Unknown Speaker 30:32
That's a good question. There is one other place in Colorado that has used the term Bruce Tillery. They're pretty far out in the sticks. And they're I just don't know that a lot of people would have seen them. And they have a two operations on the same land, but they're not under the same roof. So they're licensed by the same guy I've never seen. But But for us, yeah, we didn't actually know about them. When we started this idea. It was just a we have a brewery we have a distillery. How can we tie the two together? And it became a long challenge of licensing we spent a lot of time
Brad Werner 31:01
licensing is licensing hell.
Jeff York 31:05
Yeah, like to try to do both things under one roof. Yeah, really, at every level, and then serve it in house like and sell for off site, by the way, like holy cow, you guys like I mean, just from knowing the state and
Unknown Speaker 31:17
the city of Boulder all had a lot of very specific questions about how things work in the flow and where things move. And we partitioned off a little area in the production area, that is technically the distillery space in there, you can go in and sample spirits, and we have barrels to Thief out of the remainder of the brewery space. And there are clearly some lines of demarcation and what you can take here in there, but I think we've created a guest experience where it's pretty seamless.
Brad Werner 31:41
There are factories in Mexico and China that have parts of the factories sectioned off that are free trade zones. Interesting. I think about that. And I'm just kind of used to thinking about that and how and how you approach this. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 31:53
I've been to places around the country. It's all based on the, you know, licensing and stuff. But here in Colorado, we were kind of the first to do it in the same roof, but I've been to other places that make cider and beer, for instance, or Dogfish Head is a classic example their original location which now no longer exists, but in Rehoboth Beach. They did have a distillery in a brewery.
Jeff York 32:16
It was a route to I think, I think.
Unknown Speaker 32:20
Yeah, yeah, great
Unknown Speaker 32:21
spirits, but I don't think they have the same facility. See all that happened
Unknown Speaker 32:25
me I think Dogfish Head was one of the only same same location,
Unknown Speaker 32:29
say about a hotel with a distillery and brewery underneath it.
Sharon Matusik 32:33
So my question is, does the fact that you've got both under the same roof the both sets of knowledge does that influence your product in any way?
Unknown Speaker 32:42
That is great question. I think it's something we've been exploring more and more so our Bruce Stover here, Damon, his educational background was Heriot Watt in the UK and Scotland. It's a famous distilling and brewing University and he actually has a degree in Brewing and Distilling it was a
Jeff York 32:57
head brewer and the Bruce was amazing.
Unknown Speaker 33:00
So finding him and he actually spent his first brewing job was in Silverton down here Durango so he knew Scott very well and lived here with his wife in Boulder. Somebody saw you know, Scott Street was opening in the distillery background he was thrilled and we talked to one or two other people but he was by far and away the best fit so ROM is the only spirit we make full time here. The other spirits come out of palisade and the rum project has been Damon's from one end to another he researched a lot of the historical lineage of the Caribbean roots the yeast what you're using because out in palisade our thing is using Colorado ingredients and there's not a lot of cane sugar in Colorado. Not a lot we played with beet sugar itself into the yeast it's all the same thing beet sugar you're using the beet sugar we did we don't know
Jeff York 33:49
I had some students who were starting a color rumbo thing and they were gonna use all like the beet sugar
Unknown Speaker 33:55
high definition sugar spirit not rum horrible.
Jeff York 34:00
No longer exists. I can say this.
Unknown Speaker 34:05
So I let the cat out of the bag of Scott Street and what sky is but Scott music.
Jeff York 34:12
Yeah. What do you think it
Brad Werner 34:15
is? So I think it has something to do with Jamaican music.
Unknown Speaker 34:18
Well Scott music is somewhere in between reggae and rockabilly.
Brad Werner 34:24
But I do but I didn't put it together in Boulder though. So I was thinking, is there another meeting? Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 34:29
well Scott music and punk rock roots were all a part of Scott brewing in 95. I think the third wave of ska music in 95 A lot more people were saying what that was at the time but Caribbean roots and a lot of the FM radio stations coming out of the south drifting across the Gulf of Mexico is influencing the style and it's closer to punk music than it is reggae these days punk music with trumpets usually. But so anyway doing a spirit from the the Caribbean base and that did overshadow some of our food program and our culinary direction too. But it seemed like good middle ground between what Pete street did the sky roots, the Caribbean based ska music and it was really the only spirit we didn't do. So it made a lot of sense to up here and Damon's around that from one end to another. We do the fermentations and beer tax. So traditionally when you do distillation ferments you don't control the temperature a lot like you do in beer can have much more range because still and yeah, there's a couple of flavors that developed a volatize out of the Stell anyway, you have to be much more strategic in beer because everything else much more delicate product. But Damon has applied a lot of that beer knowledge to the fermentations of sugar and the yeast that we've used before the distillation so there's been a lot of overlap between the two
Unknown Speaker 35:40
and we're we've had rum sitting in a barrel for 10 months,
Unknown Speaker 35:46
almost a year 11 And some
Unknown Speaker 35:48
so we will have a dark rum releasing here soon. So we have the white that we've been making the we incorporate into cocktails at the bar and then we will have the dark rum out pretty soon.
Unknown Speaker 36:01
The checkerboards you can see it in a lot of influence fans still uses it a ton on anything skater but it referred to the the second wave of ska music in the UK. The Mods and rockers and kids of different colors getting together and celebrating the music
Jeff York 36:15
video was the original like pop culture documentation of that whole thing.
Unknown Speaker 36:19
Absolutely. So using the black and white as variants of the ROM and aging it in a second use Colorado straight bourbon barrels so the dark rum is aged in bourbon barrels here. So seem a good tie to our roots.
Brad Werner 36:31
So I've spent a lot of time in the Caribbean when I was in college. I've spent a lot of time in the water and love to sail to do all that. And there's a place in Antigua when I was in my early 20s that you could take your empty milk jug to their barn and they fill it up with rum for a buck
Jeff York 36:47
there's a place in the Virgin Islands
Unknown Speaker 36:50
questionable deal
Jeff York 36:59
Thanks Guys, guys. Great, awesome meeting you and congratulations on making it like so. So again, we're it's gonna speak for stellar. It's on a raphoe Avenue. Come on out 32 beers on tap spirits made here and also over on the western slope. Amazing, very tasteful beverages and just lovely people. Totally agree.
Sharon Matusik 37:19
Thank you. Thank you
Jeff York 37:26
all right. Sure. Now we got to talk about your favorite
Sharon Matusik 37:29
My God. Some bourbon. Welcome
Jeff York 37:33
to my world doing great in this collection.
Brad Werner 37:35
Okay, so before we get into shares, paper,
Sharon Matusik 37:39
pubs lead to pubs. I didn't mean pub leads to more establishments, pubs?
Jeff York 37:46
Okay, as much as I'm not a patent paper fan, yeah, it'd be good for the like. So if you want to do the innovation crossover, you can do one like, Okay, so here's a little inside baseball. Brad loves this kind of stuff.
Brad Werner 37:59
I'm gonna I'm just to name a drink.
Jeff York 38:02
When you want to go collect it. And one of my mentors taught me this, once you go collect a set of data, you should have an eye on the prize of hey, you should get at least three publications. Because this takes years. Yeah. So if we go and collect this data about which actually we already have, because the American Brewers Association is also here in Boulder, and we got to go visit those guys, sometime. You can look at the density of micro distilleries and microbreweries quite easily. But what you could do is you could do foundings for the tavern effect, and then you and I can write the, obviously the pubs and we can look at the publications of patents. And that would be a whole innovation and ideation kind of thing
Sharon Matusik 38:41
or even just academic publication. Okay? Third paper, okay.
Jeff York 38:46
So when US academics can get together and go drink together?
Sharon Matusik 38:52
And are the are the papers more impactful? And the question frequently because all empirical questions,
Jeff York 39:03
questions that must be dealt with. Yes.
Brad Werner 39:08
I need to stop you both. There are two world class researchers. So I'm honored to be amongst this group. I was thinking about entrepreneurial papers and there was a paper that came out yesterday that I think affects entrepreneurs directly. A paper so I'm going to the Wall Street Journal. No, no, this is a paper published by the World Health Federation. Awesome. So I don't know I don't know if our
Jeff York 39:32
listeners Brad is sitting here with an academic paper that he threw his own volition. We're on like episode 25 located this kid well, here's here's my point tested resources and time and
Brad Werner 39:45
brought bottom line is this is actual wisdom. And I think that when wisdom that we've heard from our physicians for years is two to three glasses of wine and night is good for you, right? Well, I'm gonna just say yes. Okay, sure. Yeah, okay. But I actually heard Last night, I'd like to drink and pass this to both of you guys, that the new conventional wisdom, that wisdom, but the paper that was published said, contrary to popular opinion, alcohol is not good for the heart.
Jeff York 40:11
Oh, Brad, what are you doing here? This is terrible. So but so I sound like my doctor now.
Brad Werner 40:19
I've heard people debating this on the news, they've been implying that the earlier data was paid for by people in the alcoholic. Well, that's not surprising. So I mean, just what do you think of this news? Now, as an entrepreneur, I'm going to stick with the old data.
Jeff York 40:35
Yeah, of course.
Sharon Matusik 40:39
Who likes to drink? But at the end of the day, so
Brad Werner 40:41
providing my own bias, but what do you what do you think about this in kind of these? Well, first of all, it goes to I think we society right now is struggling with what being an expert means. Right? And so this kind of information that people listen, that really pay attention to Yeah.
Sharon Matusik 40:58
Well, I think it's a it's, it's if you think about what academics bring to the table, it's knowledge, you know, broadly in terms of universities and their role in society, we need to make sure we're creating knowledge that can be replicated, right. So if Jeff does a study that says a leads to B, if I try to do the same study, like I bet, that there's a relationship between A and B, and I think this speaks to this larger distrust of institutions, and there's a crisis of facts, etc. Yeah, no, not having read the study myself, I do think it raises a really important point in terms of, we need to dig in, right? Like, we need to be able to feel that if you're doing a study, if you say eight leads to be, we should be able to count on that we need to be reviewing those papers in a way that it's rigorous. And we feel confident that if we did that same kind of study in different contexts, that we would find similar results. Right, right.
Jeff York 41:57
But you know, I think we also have to, as quote unquote, social scientists, and even the people that have been guiding us to the pandemic, that the Dr. Fauci is in the world, the people in the research area, I think people have to understand, yeah, science does not equal truth with a capital T. It's the best we can do at any given time. And we do the thing Sharon's talking about so that we can improve and get better, you know, we used to not understand that, you know, yeah, if he was smoke cigarettes, that's fine. But it's going to kill you probably, and your odds are very high. It's gonna kill you. And I think this is the same thing. You know, I, and to your point about being paid for by the alcohol industry, guess how many times I've had to avoid being funded by Koch brothers back foundations? Oh, I bet you it's often, oh, it's three different times. And it's been three different organizations. And now,
Brad Werner 42:48
you know, what, at the time, or do you have to I have to go dig?
Jeff York 42:50
Because it's, yeah, so it'd be like, we're in a think tank. And we're called, like, freedom is good, or I don't know. But yeah, okay. I like freedom. Because I do environmental entrepreneurship, they think that equals some kind of pro business perspective on environmental issues, like I do, the business can help solve environmental issues. But I don't think that we should have no regulation on environmental. And so it's really interesting, you got to be careful as a researcher. And I think that's one thing cu actually is really good at and my experience is avoiding that. And many other schools are not they've taken large amounts of money from various foundations that
Brad Werner 43:29
face that issue.
Sharon Matusik 43:30
I was just reflecting on a book that I read recently called what universities Oh, democracy. So it's written by the President of Johns Hopkins University. And there's a few different key ideas in the book, you know, one is we need to make sure universities are accessible, so more people can have access to an education to and he thinks that universities need to do a better job in teaching civics, you know, not as particular perspective, but more broadly, the role of education in society. And then one of the third thing that he talks about is restoring trust in science, right? Broadly, you know, to this issue of replicability and the fact that you can write trust in the fact that if Jeff York does a study, it's not from the perspective of a funding agency, or something along those lines of bias. And, you know, I think those are important ideas to
Jeff York 44:24
grapple with. And I think it's actually a symptom of the lack of funding for public universities in this country to some extent, when we don't view universities as a public good anymore. And we don't do that research to the public good, and we don't fund it. It's got to get done somehow. And that's where we end up with these things. And I'm not saying it always is a conflict. I certainly could have taken money from any of these foundations and done whatever the heck I want. It's not a necessarily a quid pro quo. But for me, personally, I just didn't feel comfortable. But you know, there's I guess
Brad Werner 44:56
the question is, if you take money from a bias group in your research is counter to their messaging.
Jeff York 45:05
They just won't give you
Sharon Matusik 45:08
I think that's an important point. The onus is on
Jeff York 45:12
the research. Yeah. Right. It's, it depends on your own character, right?
Sharon Matusik 45:15
My integrity is riding on this. And even though you, you know, I'm going to study the relationship between A and B, if you want to fund it. Great, great. And you have no editorial power over. I mean, I really do think that it's up to the researchers, I agree with to say, like, I'm a scientist. And when I publish something, it is my reputation on
Jeff York 45:39
the line that it doesn't matter. Like I mean, you know, if you go falsify data or don't publish your results properly, or whatever, and you say, Well, it's because I was funded by sun, so it doesn't matter. You're still done. That is, there is a high level of accountability. What Drake? Did they just bring us I didn't see. Okay, I was like, I was wondering, Where's that really nice. I think it's okay, anyway, so important that we got to talk about the paper. Okay, so what am I talking about research? So So yeah, I don't know.
Brad Werner 46:07
Yeah. I'm gonna stick with the two to three drinks a day. And just assume that this is probably noise. Yeah, no.
Sharon Matusik 46:19
Yeah. And look at the underlying data. Decide, right? You know, what's real? What do we know? What don't we know? Here's the
Jeff York 46:27
thing. People always like, Oh, they changed your guidance on this or that or whatever. Your butter is bad for you and make your butter is good for him. Right? Well, guys, you know, I mean, we get better at doing research, it changes. It evolves. I mean, it certainly happens in our field, like, you know, things we thought were great may turn out not to be. Heck, we used to teach everybody how to write a business plan. They log in every day, right? That's what we used to
Sharon Matusik 46:48
do, literally, for social sciences. You can never control all the variables, of course. It's not physics, right? It's something that's where you can control everything in the environment and the dynamics between all the different elements in an experiment, for example, you just can't do that with social science research. Yeah.
Jeff York 47:07
Well, speaking of social science research, yeah, we got to make sure we actually talk about Sharon's paper.
Brad Werner 47:12
And really, how can it help the entrepreneur on the street? Yeah, I think that is really important.
Jeff York 47:17
Brad, thank you. I just want to commend Brad once again, this is I feel like after
Brad Werner 47:23
how many years was our third season,
Jeff York 47:25
this is our third season is starting to love. I am winning. What this means is I am winning. I'm reading I am totally winning. I am like getting bred to read research. This is awesome. Alright, so maybe we're going to talk about is published in global strategy, journal, location, capabilities, institutional distance and startup survival. This is by Carla V. Bustamante. Sure enough, McKusick and Jose Miguel Bellefontaine.
Sharon Matusik 47:50
So the long and the short of this paper is we look at this really amazing accelerator called Startup Chile. So you, you may be familiar with it. Carla, just to give you a little bit of context, and what I think is so fascinating. And Carla is one of my former doctoral students. She's from Chile. She's now an academic. She's Spanish. You probably are, she splits her time between Boulder and Santiago, Chile. Interesting. Faculty at a university in Chile. Oh, I'm excited to be on time up here.
Jeff York 48:27
Yeah, she's really she's one of our really cool alums, we have
Sharon Matusik 48:31
really interesting context. And so Jeff may know this. But I spent a semester down in Chile, and was a visiting professor at the University there. And one of the things that's so interesting about Chile is for the last, I don't know, two or three decades, they've been trying to diversify their economy away from natural resource extraction, copper mining, in particular, because historically, the economy has gone up and down with the price of copper. So you know, as they look to move forward with creating good jobs and economic growth, they want to encourage more entrepreneurship. And so it's a super interesting context. Because what they've done over the years, if you know anything about Chile, they have, you know, lots of free market principles. There's the story of these Chicago Boys where, you know, shet sent these hotshot young economists to study at the University of Chicago, and they went back down to Chile. And these free market principles are throughout a lot of what they do. If you look at their formal institutions, they're very conducive to entrepreneurship, strong rule of law, strong property rights, they've introduced lots of incentives to try to get people to invest in early stage venture, like three to one investment,
Brad Werner 49:50
or what about the social aspect of failures as
Sharon Matusik 49:53
well. So that's exactly the point even though they did everything right in terms of formal institutions. They couldn't really move the needle on entrepreneurship. Right. And so StartUp Chile was a really, we, I don't know that this was the intent. But the effect of it was, you know, they're essentially importing entrepreneurs into job incentives to say, hey, come start your great idea. And so one of the things that, you know, in my estimation StartUp Chile has done is change some of those informal institutions, that culture so that it's kind of cool, like you're an entrepreneur. And as part of being called with StartUp Chile, you have to commit to, you know, doing some speaking events being out in the community and things like that, right, you know, so where it started to move the needle is making entrepreneurship, a more acceptable choice, because you know, the reality of Chileans, you still have haves and have nots, if you're educated, and you know, you went to university, you're going to have a good life, you're going to have a nanny for your kids, you might have a house on the beach, you don't need to take the risks of being an entrepreneur. Yeah, so one of the things that StartUp Chile did was made it more acceptable to be an entrepreneur. So so it's a really interesting context. And you know, when you think about the specifics of this,
Brad Werner 51:10
is it acceptable to be entrepreneur? Or if you fail
Sharon Matusik 51:13
more acceptable? It's not? Well, you know, so I think culture is hard to change, right? I mean, there's a lot of stigma against failure, for sure. You know, as in other Latin American countries, there's tight social networks, extended family gatherings, you know, so I go to your house, on Sunday afternoon for a big barbecue with our extended families. If my venture failed, you're talking to the, you know, cousin, Jose, saying, Oh, my God, all those people.
Jeff York 51:42
And you might have involved your family quite a bit.
Sharon Matusik 51:45
So the costs, you know, the real costs of failure are higher. So you know, so there's a lot there. But what I think is so interesting from the perspective of this paper, and this was really Carlos dissertation, she did so really amazing work, and had the right kind of connections to collect these data, which are super, super interesting. This is crazy. StartUp Chile, attracts entrepreneurs from all over the globe, right? It gave us this very interesting context to look at people coming from stronger institutional contexts and talking about formal institutions and weaker and compare and contrast how that influenced their success when they move their venture to Chile to start some of these entrepreneurial activity,
Jeff York 52:27
because a lot of the research about institutional distance or the strength of institutions has been about Well, first of all about large firms, mostly right, and also not really a comparison of the origin, like so it's just been like, this country, people do better in this country, they don't do so well. Well, okay. But
Sharon Matusik 52:45
and also, a lot of the institutional distance research has focused just on distance, not the directionality,
Jeff York 52:53
which is really weird if you think about because like, you think people would focus on that, but they don't, right. It's just,
Sharon Matusik 53:00
you know, one of the things that this study does, you know, there's, you know, a smaller set of research that's starting to look at this directionality of distance. But this is, you know, essentially finding that, you know, someone from the US goes to Chile versus someone from Colombia. What are the effects of that in terms of survival, so different kinds of institutional distance relative to Chile.
Jeff York 53:26
So this is where we actually get to. And I know, our director of the Deming said, I'll be very excited about the bell ready, but actionable insight. actionable insight, nice. There we go. We should be doing that every 20 minutes. I don't think we're doing for you. So like this paper is, I like it, because it's very easy to see the actionable insights. Like, if you're thinking about this as an entrepreneur, should you move somewhere that has stronger institutions or weaker? And intuitively, as you were saying, there might be like, Well, I'm an entrepreneur, I don't obey the rules. I don't, I don't want to go somewhere. More institutions. I want to go with less. Right,
Sharon Matusik 54:08
right. Right. Yeah. And so this is showing that if you're coming from a weaker institutional environment, and you go to a stronger institutional environment, you actually have better survival prospects, particularly if you invest in, in these location capable.
Brad Werner 54:23
So my takeaway is, if you're a country that has this weak institutional ecosystem, and you're looking to grow and to make a fit, and to cultivate entrepreneurs, you need to start with some real infrastructure changes and right, well,
Sharon Matusik 54:40
and you wanna, you want to try to make your, you know, there's a lot of factors. And we're just looking at a couple of factors. But, you know, what this is showing is that if you're able to attract people into your country context from weaker institutional environments, those ventures are more likely to succeed and so you and you know if those people are investing in the We'll go business community that's gonna have spillover effects in terms of the entrepreneurial ecosystem. But it's also saying, you know, so if you're a country with a weak institutional environment, don't try to go to the US, right? You know what I mean? Like, you know, you want to go to institutional context, where, you know, those ventures are more likely to succeed. And, you know, if you think if you work through the details, you know, think about it, you're coming from a context that has weaker institutions, you're going into a context that has stronger institutions, like all those surprises are on the upside. They are right, as opposed to the other way around. Where you come from a strong institutional environment, you expect things to work. And you know,
Jeff York 55:43
and there's so many examples like multinationals in the US trying to go into developing economies, it just utterly failed. Right,
Sharon Matusik 55:49
right. But But the flip side is, if you're coming from a weaker institutional environment, things work.
Jeff York 55:58
to bribe anybody. Yeah.
Sharon Matusik 56:01
So that's sort of counterintuitive, because I think with a lot of that economic development literature, you know, there's a focus, you know, an eye towards the stronger environments that you want to emulate and attach to, and, and there's value in that in different kinds of ways. But what we're talking about is in terms of startup survival, right, you know, if you're coming from one of these weaker institutional contexts, you're going to have better survival benefits. It's awesome. If you move into the stronger institutional context, and you invest, and especially if you invest in those locations, specifically,
Jeff York 56:37
I want to talk about that
Brad Werner 56:38
real quick. So I want to ask you to make a leap. Sharon, the LEAP is at the dining center, we do a lot of work with rural Colorado. So how would you kind of tie this work? Are there any sort of leaps that you can make or?
Sharon Matusik 56:53
No question? I mean, I, I feel like the formal institutional context is the same. Mm hmm. You know what I mean? So if you think about, you know, because this isn't about culture, right? This is about rule of law, property rights, those sorts of things. And since we're all in the United States, and we're all in the state of Colorado, you don't really have variants there. However, you know, if you think about some of the things, for example, that Eric does in South Africa, and other country context, you know, Eric's been to Chile. I think with some of our global programs, there's some interesting considerations. But I would say within the state of Colorado, just because institutional sex is the same
Brad Werner 57:33
interesting, I have students asking all the time, though, can I build out a business that I could use in my country? And that's really interesting to know now, yes. As an educated
Jeff York 57:43
Yeah. Well, here's the bigger extension that I know you guys don't actually test this in the paper. But the more subtle finding here is that investing in these location capabilities, establishing and maintaining business relations in the place, you're gone, one of the founders residing in the country have gone to registering that country actually doesn't help. If you're going somewhere that has weaker institutions, correct, which is really interesting, because you can talk to an entrepreneur. Now you can say, well, to your point, Brad, if that student comes from a place of weaker institutions in the United States, maybe you don't spend that much time on that, because it's not gonna help, right, which is totally right. Oh, totally counterintuitive, right?
Sharon Matusik 58:28
I mean, it's a very interesting finding, and I think has some very interesting implications, not only for the individual entrepreneur, and what's gonna lead to their success, right. But you think about, you know, a lot of economies trying to encourage more diversification away from natural resource extraction, trying to encourage more innovation and entrepreneurship, right. This provides some, I think, interesting public policy implications in terms of like, how do you want to do that? Where do you want to target and to me, it is counterintuitive, because you're not saying go after the people from these country contexts where we want to emulate them in terms of the foregone conclusions, but rather you want to bring people in from weaker institutional environments, if you want to build out the kind of the
Jeff York 59:16
another actionable insight right there. If you're moving to a weaker institutional environment, maybe don't focus as much on your location specific capabilities. Now I'm going to take a leap and based on my my own research and research I follow a lot, I'd say actually, what might imply is you should actually get involved in changing and evolving the institutions at least on a local level. I know you guys don't test. But we see that a lot in sustainability sectors where people have to go because there's a market failure, which by definition is a lack of any institutional controls, right. Like for example, in the organics industry, we talk a lot about the example of Mark red slaw, a friend of the school and spends a lot of time with us working to create an organic standards so that you could charge a premium for organic foods. But until you have that institution in place, nobody knows what it means or cares. So that's a wildly non actionable insight. Total speculation. Question
Brad Werner 1:00:12
for you, Sharon, will this paper spur kind of that 10 General resource that we don't know?
Sharon Matusik 1:00:18
Well, we hope so, you know, we hope that people build on it in different kinds of ways. What we think is interesting about this is it introduces an entrepreneurship lens to a lot of the international and global research to be focused on more of these large multinationals. And also, you know, you asked me earlier in our conversation about are there certain industry sectors that I spend more time on or less time on? And I said, you know, software and tech, you know, I think these are especially interesting context, because there's no physical assets. And so they're very mobile. Right, so I can decide to start in Berlin, Santiago, Boulder, you know, you name it. And so, you know, there's there's some really interesting elements in terms of looking at those kinds of organizations and what drives them because they're not wedded to a specific physical context. And it's easy to move around. And I also think, this interplay between the directionality of institutional differences and different sorts of capabilities that you might Yes, in those contexts, like, I think there's a lot of interesting avenues to explore.
Brad Werner 1:01:26
Yeah, I think of the India tech world. Yeah. Right. So English speaking. Yeah. And there's a lot of platform development in India, that then comes this way. Yeah, sure.
Sharon Matusik 1:01:37
And I think to that point, too, so we just look at a particular type of institution. Right, right, based on these formal institutions, but But to your point, there's a lot lots of different kinds of resistance in terms of culture and other elements. And I think there's some really interesting avenues to explore by looking at different forms of institutional difference, and how they might play out in terms of specific, firm action to take advantage of the best of those institutions
Brad Werner 1:02:05
and understanding it flow those.
Jeff York 1:02:07
Yeah, absolutely. So if you want to check the paper out, it is in the global strategy, journal, location, capabilities, institutional distance and start survival. First, Arthur is Karla Bustamante, who is at Universidad Adolfo Ibanez in San Diego. Yes, at San Diego State Chile. Of course, Dean churn F. McKusick, who's here with us today. And as we said, we don't have her because she's a dean, but because we want to talk about our research, and more importantly, we wanted to have her on the podcast and not just drink coffee. And Jose Miguel Benavente. Who is at inter America livan? Yes, thank you.
Sharon Matusik 1:02:43
The Inter American Development Bank, yeah,
Jeff York 1:02:46
awesome paper really interesting. And I think we distilled some actual insight. So once again, my name is Jeff York. I'm the Research Director at the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship at Leeds School of Business, joined by my co host, I'm
Brad Werner 1:02:58
Brad Warner. And it's great to be here with you, Jeff and Sharon.
Sharon Matusik 1:03:01
I'm a professor of strategy and entrepreneurship and the dean of the lead School of
Jeff York 1:03:05
Business. Hey, and by the way, hit that subscribe button if you like what you hear. And even if you hate what you hear, hit that subscribe button or make a comment. We really appreciate it.
Brad Werner 1:03:14
And also, if you have any questions for Jeff, Sharon or myself, please shoot us an email at CB podcast@colorado.edu.
Jeff York 1:03:22
Season. Charlie D is in David not CD podcast, an
Brad Werner 1:03:26
update from our emails. Jeff, I have not heard back from that Prince in Nigeria after I give him the time
Jeff York 1:03:30
round man and you were like so interested in a great deal. So yeah, send all of your proposals to Brad he would love to sort through them. He'll be more than happy to invest in your venture. Just Just reach out to him and advise you as much as you like, hey, anyway, we hope you enjoyed the podcast. We look forward to seeing you next time. Thanks a lot.
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