Podcast Episode# 7: The Entrepreneur Life with Andy White

This article recaps the main takeaways of our podcast episode with Andy White. Make sure to listen to the full podcast below or on Podbean. Follow us to stay tuned for more episodes!

Andy White is a startup advocate with a trail of fruitful endeavors: he was the founding partner of VegasTechFund, is the head of startup operations at Keshif Ventures and a board member at Data Science Alliance. In this episode, Andy offers an entrepreneurial lens to Data Science and advice to students interested in building a Data Science startup.

The Beginning

The 90’s was a culturally-pivotal period, birthing fashion and entertainment trends which we continue to pay homage to. It was also when the internet became a new “fad”, and personal tech such as mobile phones and computers proliferated. Andy recalls his time at the forefront of this tech shift, which yielded layers of both excitement and uncertainty. It was a time “when you can be an expert in a matter of weeks”, as long as you’re active with a thirst to learn. After scoring success in his entrepreneurial ventures, Andy began to look towards becoming an angel investor.

He first began to invest while in Utah, where he was the Executive Director of an accelerator program called BoomStartup. He titles it as a “priceless endeavor”, meeting up with ten different teams in a three-month time frame, and observing the successes and tribulations they endured in their startup journey.

Afterwards, he was connected to the Las Vegas ecosystem and was offered the role of Founding Partner at VegasTechFund. He spent the following three years there, investing in a hundred different teams while persisting towards a dynamic environment. In doing so, he took lean startup principles and applied that to urban revitalization, meaning that instead of taking years to plan out a development, execution mode starts at step one.

Andy recounts the following vision of a theatre space in which these methodologies are applied. The space provided an atmosphere for locals to host events and speakers for education and entertainment, and was initially set in the inside of a double wide trailer. At first, there was no lighting, blinds, or even a stage — it was simply just someone standing up in front of some folding chairs. Every time a new speaker was there, a new element was introduced. Through trial and error and gauging audience interaction, a final, permanent theater space was then established.

His transition into San Diego was intended to be a one-month check up but has now extended to a five-year stay. Andy explains San Diegos’ charisma: its extensive Data Science legacy supplies a unique platform which is stable, yet interconnected and young enough for one person to instigate a tremendous effect. Plus, its wealth of data has imposed itself as a hub for catalyzing startups while casting a welcoming ambience. Andy considers it as refreshing, saying that the “ …more we can do to increase our ability to work together, the greater opportunities we’re going to have to be successful as opposed to being ultra competitive and trying to be the one winner that takes it all.”

Industry

With the mercurial environment that COVID-19 has enforced, companies are forced to go into triage mode. Though exhausting to maintain afloat amongst the frenzy, the pandemic has accentuated the cracks and crevices of a company’s infrastructure. It doesn’t matter how cool your tech is or how much money you have raised: it’s your ability to adapt which becomes key. In doing so, Andy has spent a lot of time working with portfolio companies in helping them understand their most immediate resources and opportunities for making appropriate decisions.

The pandemic has been accompanied with a few unforeseen blessings. Five to ten years of social change have been crunched into three months, which Andy replies with a universal motto: “never waste a good crisis.” A given in these changing times is that nothing will ever be the same, which is why data is essential in developing tools to help us engage in more remote capacities. Issues in working remotely have raised questions which were thought to have been answered: what does it mean to be productive? How do we measure success and productivity without incentives such as office-issued browser controls? As more drastic shifts come into play, Andy looks forward to seeing how workplaces adapt to make sure they’re still running “…next week, next month, next year.”

Andy is a board member at the Data Science Alliance (DSA), which dedicates itself to fostering the growth of a Data Science ecosystem. Especially with COVID, we see data’s imperative value in democratizing statistics such as the number of COVID patients and cases based on locality. There are “no borders to data” — a data set can always be expanded. With this in mind, DSA wants to invest in Data Science-centric companies and cultivate a larger growth of it. They want to be a part of the solution, which means taking more talent development and investing in projects which can be deemed as a viable product and commercialized.

When investing in a potential project, a key question Andy likes to ask is “what have you done which no one else has figured out?” It doesn’t matter if a project is cool or somewhat imperfect, an entrepreneur must demonstrate to an investor why their money is best with them, and show how they can make good decisions to ensure a successful execution.

How to build a Data Science startup

The first step to building a Data Science startup: having an entrepreneurial desire. Several initiatives on campus which Andy is a part of, such as Ignite, poses as a transfer opportunity for taking Data Science research and spinning it into a service that can be commercialized.

Pursuing such initiatives is a multi-step process which is data-focused. A student must have access to pre-existing data and continue to add different roles tailored to storing and analyzing this data. We can’t just report the data, we must also use it efficiently.

Of course, when getting into the startup life you can’t assume immediate success. There must be failures; it’s when you get back up and show persistence which is attractive to investors. By supporting such entrepreneurs and building long term relationships, Andy believes that these culminate to the best stories.

Andy finally offers advice for students interested in growing their own enterprise. A parallel that each college student has is their student title, so take full advantage of it. We have the opportunity to get front access to potential careers and are a demographic most targeted by local companies and startups. However, we also must show ambition, which is why it’s important to be active on campus. Join orgs such as DS3 that provide a gateway of opportunities and connections, and run lots of experiments.

In the end, there are “way more unknowns than knowns.” Of course, when building your enterprise you must do so on a foundation of reality. Have a conscious image of what you want and find the corresponding data.