Jenny Lawton on the Makerbot $400M Exit and Techstars Ops

Michael Koenig: Hello and welcome to Between Two COOs, where phenomenal chief operating officers come to share their knowledge, advice, and crazy stories. I'm your host, Michael Koenig, and I'm excited to welcome our guest, Jenny Lawton, executive vice president at Bolster, an on-demand executive talent marketplace that helps accelerate companies' growth by connecting them with experienced experienced, highly vetted executives for interim fractional advisory, project-based, or board roles. Prior to Bolster, Jenny served in a variety of C-suite roles, which included her time as Chief Strategy Officer and then Chief Executive Officer at MakerBot, the leader in desktop 3D printing technology that was acquired by Stratasys for over $400 million. Jenny also served as the COO of LittleBits, the STEM learning division of Sphero, That company behind the adorable little droid BB-8 that captured our hearts in the latest Star Wars films? That's the one. And then she was COO and CIO, Chief Innovation Officer, at Techstars, the global startup accelerator, which is near and dear to my heart. It's also worth noting that Jenny was inducted into the Connecticut Women's Hall of Fame in 2014 for her work in business and labor. And in case you haven't picked up on it, Jenny has dedicated herself towards empowering others to invent and innovate, whether through creating products for makers, by empowering startup entrepreneurs or by connecting companies and executives with great opportunities. Welcome, Jenny. Thanks for being here. I'm excited to have you on.

Jenny Lawton: Oh, thank you for having me. It's a great way to end the week.

Michael Koenig: Fantastic. Yes, it is a Friday. So hopefully everyone here, even though they may listen to it on a Tuesday, they can get in the mindset of Friday. Well, first off, I highlighted some of the roles and companies that you've dedicated your time to. Can you tell us a bit more about your path to joining Bolster? How'd you end up here?

Jenny Lawton: Sure. So Matt Blumberg, who is the CEO of Bolster and one of the 8 co-founders of Bolster, and I have known each other for quite a long time. So the person that we have in common there is Brad Feld. And I know Brad Feld from my days as an entrepreneur in the Boston area. And Mobius was an investor in in Matt's company Return Path. And so he and I have crossed paths over many years. But one of the things we found is that we hadn't really met each other in person. So while we've been communicating with each other over the years, and periodically we had on the phone and talk with each other, I realized during the early, the first year of the pandemic that we kind of lived near each other. And so we got together to talk about what I was doing on my, my time off from Techstars and was telling him some of the projects I was working on. And he was telling me all about Bolster. And we decided that maybe I could do my work at Bolster.

Michael Koenig: I love it. 8 co-founders. That sounds complicated.

Jenny Lawton: It's not as complicated as it sounds. LittleBits had— LittleBits had almost— I think LittleBits had 15, a group of 15 first employees. So it was very It was something I wasn't unfamiliar with.

Michael Koenig: Oh my goodness. That's, that's a lot. So there's a common thread though throughout your career of building companies that empower others. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Where does that passion come from?

Jenny Lawton: So I think that it's, it's an interesting thread that you've picked up on, cuz I don't know that it's, it's one that I articulate. You know, I guess when I look to, look to spend my time somewhere, I'm looking for something that's interesting. Interesting, gives me the opportunity to learn, makes a difference in the world, sort of makes a dent in the universe. And so I'm always looking for something that has an impact element. It doesn't have to be the same thing each time. And in fact, when you look across my career path, I don't do the same thing each time. But I like to spend my time doing something that's meaningful and interesting to me and that I wake up every day super happy about. And so I guess that, that, I think that's part of that journey.

Michael Koenig: Well, you mentioned your professional career and I read that you started a babysitting business. I mean, we're going back to the beginning there, but it was not as a babysitter yourself, but rather as an outsourcer. I mean, that's from— you were a very early entrepreneur. Can you tell us about that? And what do you think that business would look like today?

Jenny Lawton: Oh, is that— are you really talking about when I was a teenager?

Michael Koenig: Yeah, the babysitting business.

Jenny Lawton: I couldn't—

Michael Koenig: as soon as I read it, I said, oh my gosh, I have to ask her about this.

Jenny Lawton: I don't know, I just said I was fearless as a kid. My mom, um, my mom told me from a very early age that I could do whatever I wanted to do, um, and I took her very seriously. And, you know, like, she's definitely regretted ever saying those words because, um, I certainly threw them back at her a lot. So I, um I liked to make money and I liked to scheme on things. And one of them was I ran a pretty robust babysitting business and then I ran a business where I did birthday parties for kids as well. So yeah, I don't know, it's just sort of what I kept myself busy with. I did calligraphy. I, at about the age of like 15, I decided that I could be a graphic artist and made business cards for people and corporate logos and things like that. I don't really know where the ideas came from because my parents both taught community college and I was definitely an enigma to them.

Michael Koenig: So you really just blew past the traditional lemonade stand. In another interview you did, you described figuring out how to bring order to chaos as one of your biggest learnings as COO. Can you share with us a bit about that? What did you figure out and what is that methodology?

Jenny Lawton: So one of the things, I think one of the things I really like doing is being able to go into an ambiguous situation and then put some order to it. Sort of understand, do pattern matching, understand what's going on, know where we're at, what the destination is, and what the efficient way to get there is. And I look at, like, what I'm working on at Bolster now is helping CEOs learn how to scale themselves and their businesses. And in order to scale a business, you need to know what your business is, and you need to know how you're going to efficiently get from where you're at to where you want to get to. So to get a hockey stick, you need to bring efficiency into something. So I think that one of the things I've always liked is planning and bringing order to things. I have a degree in applied math. I love the way that figures line up, and I love having a solution. And I like knowing that you can have a really, challenging problem, but there's always a solution. And that is one of the things I loved about math, is that I always knew that there was an answer to what I was working on, even if it looked really complicated in the middle. So I like bringing order to chaos. I mean, it's just definitely something that I've always, you know, I like to solve problems, I like to solve puzzles, and it sort of seems like that's what I get to do at work as well.

Michael Koenig: So in terms of those new COOs or COOs that are still learning like myself, in terms of finding those solutions, do you have any advice on how to go about it?

Jenny Lawton: Yeah. I mean, it's not overly complicated advice. I think you, in order to know where you want to get to, you need to know where you're at. I'm a big Peloton rider and one of the instructors is often saying, like, you can't know where you're going if you don't know where you're at. Like, the Uber can't pick you up if you don't tell them where you are, right? So you definitely have to baseline where you're at, and you need to know where you want to get to. And my approach is to take the simplest way to put in place a process or operating system that gets you from where you're at to where you want to get to. And be willing to iterate and change on that operating system as you grow and learn and figure out what to do. So it could be as basic as putting in place a cadence of meetings and a way that you track communications. That's really the most basic sort of operating system that you might want to put in place. If you don't tell people how things are going to work, and what the basic process is to make something happen, then they come into work every day wondering how things are gonna happen. So if you give people a framework to operate with, then they're able to get a lot more done, probably be a lot more creative because there's just a basic framework that they work within, and they'll get to that outcome faster. And I liken that to kind of the Montessori method of learning. Which I talk about a very big box that people feel very free within, but no matter what, it's a very rigorous set of rules that define that box.

Michael Koenig: That's so interesting. And you're speaking a lot to passions of mine, particularly with Montessori, though I haven't thought to apply any of it towards business. So I think I need to ask my 4 and 7-year-olds, 'Hey, how would you run a business?' This says in, in the Montessori methodology, it's very interesting.

Jenny Lawton: Oh well, when you like, when you think about it, it's, it's super interesting. Your kid can tell you, uh, how to build pink tower, like, um, and there's a way to do it, and they can race each other, and once they do it, they can do other things. Um, but, uh, you know, there is a, there is a process to how you do things, and I think that learning how What the operating system is gives you a lot of freedom. A lot of people associate the word process with something that bogs you down and is bureaucracy and, you know, TPS reports, something like that. And I look at it as a freeing process that, you know, because you know how something's going to operate, then you get to know the construct that you get to do things within.

Michael Koenig: That's so interesting. And since you brought up Montessori and its sort of predominance with some of the most successful entrepreneurs ever, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Jeff Bezos, these are all Montessori kids at heart. What do you think it is about Montessori that is producing some of these people who have changed the world as we know it?

Jenny Lawton: Yeah, I don't know. And it's, it's not something I've studied. So that's, um, that's something I'm going to have to go look up after this. I mean, I think it's, My kids both went to Montessori school for various time periods. One of them totally belonged there and the other one totally did not. So I think there's a lot of rigor to it that people don't, they don't associate, I think a lot of people don't associate rigor with Montessori because it's a very open learning system. It mixes grades, there's not a, you know, curriculum that you go in and this is what you're gonna do today. Kids get to make choice, but within that choice, there's a way to do things. There's an order of operations. And so I think that there's a lot of logic and order to a Montessori learning, but there's also a lot of flexibility and a lot of allowance for inclusion and diversity as well. Inclusion of thought, people being at the table. There's not a lot of hierarchy, but there are definitely orders of operation and rules.

Michael Koenig: And that's how you make a company work with 15 co-founders, I suppose.

Jenny Lawton: Yeah, I mean, it's absolutely.

Michael Koenig: And so when we look at your career, you've held roles across the C-suite— Chief Strategy Officer, Chief Executive Officer, COO, CIO. While all are leadership positions, there's quite a bit of variety in functions there. Can you tell us a bit about which has suited you best? Is it the COO role?

Jenny Lawton: It's a good question. This is the first time I haven't been in a COO role for a long time or a CEO role. I was CEO of a tech startup in the '90s. I had 2 coffee shops and I had 2 bookstores and a coffee shop for about 10 years. And I was definitely the CEO of that. And then I was in a variety of COO roles. So this is the first time I've been in a role that's not a COO role. And that was one of the things I was worried about. Like, what does it mean to not be, you know, the buck doesn't stop here or like, you know, you're not, making those decisions. And it's been really awesome. Like, I'm able to work as a part of a team and still lead the efforts that I'm working on. But I think that I'm naturally inside, I think like a CEO. And so I look at the COO job as being in service to the CEO. And so knowing how a CEO thinks and operates allows you to be a good service partner with that person. And so I feel like I've been able to use my skills as being a CEO in my role as a COO as well. And so I think that I'm suited to both of them. At this stage of where I am work-wise, I don't feel the need to be a CEO. I love the opportunity to be in service to CEOs who are first-time CEOs and learning the art of being a CEO. That feels like it, It brings, you know, it feels good and it also allows me to use my skills at the same time.

Michael Koenig: You mentioned service, a COO being in service to a CEO. In service of what? What in that framework, what role is the COO filling so that the CEO can do X, Y, or

Jenny Lawton: So there's no one answer to it. And it depends on the CEO and what they want to do and what their strengths are, where they want to spend their time. No matter what, a CEO can't get away from being the leader of the business, setting the tone and culture of the business. But from that point on, they may want to spend their time all outwardly focused and not doing day-to-day work, or they might want to spend all their time doing day-to-day work and don't want to do any of the outwardly future-focused piece. So really understanding what it is the CEO wants to do, what their skill set is, what they need gaps filled on. I think that it's a dance and it's a relationship that you have to form. But there is really no one answer. I think though there is a common skill set in being a CEO. COO, which you need to really know how all elements of the business work, how they work together, what all of the components are. I think that it's sort of becoming redefined as a chief of staff job. And when I think of a chief of staff, I've read some interesting articles about political chief of staffs where they dump out their briefcase and there's everything possible that could solve every problem. And so I think a COO needs to— they need to know how to read the financials. They need to be able to speak to the CFO. They need to be able to say to the salespeople, like, that's bullshit. They need to be able to have a conversation with the marketing people. They need to know how to talk to the engineers. So you need to have that really high-level understanding of how all the functions of the business work.

Michael Koenig: So MakerBot was a hit. With a massive exit, $400 million, as I mentioned in the intro. And that doesn't happen by accident. I'm sure that there were a lot of learnings along the way that contributed to the success of the company. Are there any that come to mind that you can share?

Jenny Lawton: So, so one of the learnings at MakerBot, um, and it's not, it has nothing to do with the sale. It has nothing to do with, uh, it's, it, It's a side effect of where the company got to. I came into MakerBot right after they had raised a $10 million round from the Foundry Group. And the exit happened a little more than 18 months later. We were raising about a $50 million round at that point. We hadn't spent any of the $10 million round, but we had very ambitious plans. So we knew that we needed to raise money so that we didn't stop while we were trying to do what we were doing. And the acquisition offer came up in that process. But what happened after we raised that $10 million and started operating the business is that the company culture had started as an open hardware, open software company, a group of makers who were there to democratize 3D printing. And it was— And so the core group of the employees there were there for that mission. The mission of democratizing 3D printing. It was open. It was shared. And when we took in— as soon as you take venture capital into a business, you have a different goal. You have a requirement to return that money to the venture capitalist at some X return. And that means you have to do something in order to make that happen. So we were in immediate conflict with the employees and the culture of MakerBot as soon as we became a venture-backed company. Because the expectation was, was that we were going to sell and drive sales of our product in order to increase the value of the company because we had shareholders that we needed to do that with. And there was conflict between what the mission and the reason why people were there and what the leadership had on their goals, which was to be a very big company that was democratizing 3D printing. And so that caused a lot of conflict. And I learned a lot at that point from the concept of when you set your values and culture, making sure that they're universally able to grow with the company. Because if they only take the company so far and if there's something that causes them to change, you really have a big problem internally with the staff. I think that's one of the biggest lessons I learned at MakerBot. And it's definitely one that I've applied going forward in every company that I've been at.

Michael Koenig: And this isn't the first time that I've heard that, actually. On an episode with Catherine Stewart, who was the former chief business officer at Automattic, she had talked about how part of the original sort of beginnings of Automattic was around the WordPress open source project. And when Automattic needed to do a shift to not just focus on democratizing publishing, but also focusing on that revenue part there were some detractors and there were some folks who just weren't comfortable with it. It sounds like you experienced something very similar. How did you resolve that?

Jenny Lawton: The resolution was sharing, you know, being transparent and sharing information with people about the why, you know, and having, you know, honest conversations with people. Hey, you know, I know you like your salary. You've asked for bonuses. You want to have benefits. You want to have free lunch on certain days, you want to have all of these happen. And there's a way that that happens, and that is that you have to sell the product and then make money in order to make that happen. So that's how business works. So educating people about how business works. And then there's almost nothing you can do once you change one of those mission pieces there. So we lost, We lost people because of philosophically they weren't mission-aligned when we closed a piece of the software and when we became focused on patenting some of the hardware designs. And that's not why people were there. And so you have to have the conversation with people. If that's not— this isn't going to change. This is only going to— change in a different, in a way that gets further from where you're at. So let's figure out, you know, how you want to handle that.

Michael Koenig: It's good to have those conversations early on. Absolutely. Because it's not going to get better. This is not going to get solved overnight. If you're, uh, have, if you're discontent now, well, let's, let's deal with that. So let's talk about Techstars. For our listeners that aren't familiar with Techstars, can you give us a brief overview of it?

Jenny Lawton: Sure, Techstars is a worldwide network that helps entrepreneurs succeed, and it does that largely through accelerator programming where it brings a cohort of 10 to 15 startups together around a common industry theme or just a common stage in where they are with their company and accelerates their business from idea to the build stage. In exchange for, you know, cash— equity in exchange for cash. They're very— Techstars is probably one of the largest accelerator and pre-seed stage investors in the world, have a very large portfolio of, you know, of early-stage companies.

Michael Koenig: And Part of that, which kind of ties into what you're working on now with Bolster, is Techstars is famous for its mentor network and the concept of give first. Can you maybe, just because you mentioned Brad Feld and because we're talking about Techstars, can you maybe tell us a little bit about give first and then we can have everyone maybe do a little, uh, you know, hashtag give first on this thing?

Jenny Lawton: Sure. Hashtag give first is one of my favorites. So, um, it's just the concept that, um, you should lean in and, and do something for someone without wondering what comes next. Next. And I like to sort of add the caveat on there that if you lean in and do something for someone, something will come back to you. You don't really know when or what that is, but I look at my life in networking and meeting people and being out in the world is, I do like that service concept and everything. I look at it, it's a little bit of checks and balances. Like if you give, you're adding into the bank account of what you're giving and then someone's gonna, do something for you when you need something as well. So I feel comfortable asking for, for help and support because I know that I give a lot of help and support. And it just feels like it keeps a karmic balance in place.

Michael Koenig: That's why I was willing to ask Ted Serbinski to introduce us. So Ted, for our listeners, was a managing director of Techstars Mobility in Detroit. Now I mentioned that Techstars is near and dear to me. Aside from participating as a mentor, I've been part of two Techstars companies, one of which I joined after they came out of that very first one, that first class back in 2007 in Boulder, Colorado. Since then, Techstars, as you mentioned, has expanded like crazy with programs across the world and thousands and thousands of portfolio companies. Can you tell us a little bit about what goes into the operations behind something like Techstars? How do you become one of the biggest seed investors in the world? How do you manage that all? What, what goes into such a massive accelerator? And then also, as you're thinking about this, what were some of the interesting challenges that you encountered?

Jenny Lawton: Oh gosh. So Techstars is, you know, it's, it's grown a lot and changed a lot. When I went to Techstars, we might have had 15 accelerators. When I left, we had 55. Accelerators in 15 different countries. And so that requires— there are a lot of pivots and changes that happen in that time period. And where they are going today requires even more of that. So it's not only iterating on operating systems, but hardening them along the way that makes that happen. So to go from 15 to 55 accelerators, we really use just the basic playbook that we had for the accelerators. Very formula way of creating the budgets for each accelerator. A lot of accounting behind it that was both actual funds and also synthetic fund management. So understanding what the cap table was behind each of the funds was super complicated. And because of the— it's grown a lot and it's gone through lots of different iterations of who it was. There's lots of different parts of the business. So Techstars, it's probably not intuitive or obvious to everyone, it's multiple businesses. There's an investing side of the business and an operating side of the business. When I was there, it had Techstars Ventures separately from the Techstars operating company and a few other companies in between there. We merged both of those things together while I was there as well. And I do think that I don't know if they've separated out the venture side again. But they're two different businesses. One is an operating business, and one is an investing business. And they work differently. They have different financials. They have different economic models. They have different ways of handling business. And so marrying those two things was interesting and complicated and messy.

Michael Koenig: There are a lot of moving pieces that go into that operating business as well. You're finding managing directors in each of those programs, and associates, and support staff and finding locations, but also your corporate partners. I mean, this is a pretty big business that needs to expand geographically. How did you approach that geographic expansion for something that is in person like Techstars?

Jenny Lawton: So when we first started expanding a lot more geographically, um, we did a fair amount of research into, um, where we thought there were good entrepreneurial communities that either were— that were at different stages. So we understood what stage they were at, how mature they were, and so how many accelerators could they bear, or how many accelerators should they bear. So we looked at the demographics of different areas and decided where we wanted to be, where we weren't. Could we expand in some places where we were, or should we not be in some of the places that we were? So we made some decisions about places that we should start looking at and looking for corporate partners in. And so there was that sort of targeted look at where we wanted to be geographically. There was also the same point, same thing looking at what industries are we in now with partners? What partners do you think we should look at to be in other industries? And then there was just the opportunistic piece. Of a partner coming to us and saying, this is what we wanna do, can you do it with us? And there were also the opportunistic pieces of, this is a city that we really think should have an accelerator, and we'd have to really look at how we wanted to do that. When I was there, the city accelerators and the corporate accelerators operated differently, came from different operating models, came from different piles of money. And so, there was actually kind of a third business in there as well. You had the operating business, you had the corporate business, and then you had the, the city's city accelerator business.

Michael Koenig: One of the things that I think back to in my time at Techstars and then in Techstars companies is being able to leverage those corporate partners that help with that program. For instance, in Detroit, it was Ford, and at the start Verizon, which became a very important partner. I mentioned BB-8 before with Sphero, and that came out of the Disney Accelerator. I look at that and I say, wow, that's brilliant. That's brilliant placement. You're setting a company up for success, but how do you figure out how to replicate that?

Jenny Lawton: Replicate something like the success of Sphero? Yeah. So, you know, Sphero, that was actually their second Techstars accelerator. They went through the first— they went through maybe the second Boulder program first. And so Sphero was a little robot ball before they made the BB-8. And so going into Disney completely changed that business. LittleBits also went through the Disney accelerator as well. Look, you don't— Techstars looks to focus on teams and opportunity with those teams. It really looks for a team who's able to pivot, not necessarily deliver on what they came in with the idea of doing. And you're making educated bets when you're doing something that early on. And it's a standard model in terms of you're going to have some amount of success and some amount of failure. The interesting statistic with Techstars is that it flips the failure-success model from an 80% failure, 20% success model to an 80% success to a 20% failure model. Wow. And I mean, those are rough numbers, rough numbers, but when you look at the demographics around how hard it is to be a startup entrepreneur. The failure rate is very high. But just by going to an accelerator and then being a part of a network that's able to support you and help you and get you through that, it flips those demographics. And then what I'm working on at Bolster is I am pretty certain that if you then take it the next level and have a scaling CEO continue to work with someone who knows how to scale a business, and learn from them while they go so that they can continue on an upward trajectory, that the success metrics for them will even continue to go up and they'll get further faster. So they'll deliver higher value earlier to their investors.

Michael Koenig: That's phenomenal. I've moved around the country and the one constant from every city I'm in is that there's a Techstars there. So from Boulder to Chicago to Detroit, I read the Her Story article about you, and in it you talked about the challenges of being a woman entrepreneur. You mentioned that, and I quote, "I've learned that the acceptable margin of error for women is lower. A hardworking and all-guns-blazing attitude and a direct approach to the world is perceived as positive for men and negative for women. The best approach is to keep moving forward." Could you expand on that? And are we taking the right steps to change people's attitudes towards women executives and women looking to move into executive roles?

Jenny Lawton: I think the step that's being taken is there's a higher awareness and a conversation around it. I still think there's just massive amount of unconscious bias. I don't think unconscious bias just goes away because you want it to. I think it takes time. One of the things that I talk with people about generally is how long innovation takes. This is one of the things I used to talk to the employees at MakerBot about. They'd be like, "Ah, you're ruining the company. This is horrible." I'm like, "I assure you that in 20 years, you're going to look back and go like, 'Holy shit, look what I was a part of. I changed the trajectory of how something worked. I changed the way kids learned. I changed the way people had access.'" When you look back at it over 20 years, it's really incredible. So I feel the same way about things like unconscious bias and changing people's attitudes. You have to look at it longitudinally over a pretty long time period. I took nearly 10 years out from the workforce when I owned my bookstores and coffee shop. And from when I left to when I came back, I was amazed by how much more, how many more women had seats at the table, how much bigger their voices were, how much more tolerated they were, how much more they were a part of what happened in the workforce. They were much more middle and higher-level management than they had been before. It wasn't so rare to see a woman doing something. They didn't have to wear a suit. They didn't have to wear high heels. All of that, that had changed in 10 years. And in the 10 years that I've been back, it's changed a lot. It's not abnormal to see a female CEO. We talk about things that we wouldn't normally talk about. Heck, you ask me what my pronouns were today. That wouldn't have happened 5 years ago. So it all takes time. I think that the, at the base of it though, I think the unconscious bias is still very much there. I was just coaching a female CEO yesterday about who's raising money about the fact that she's going to be evaluated for what she's done, not for her potential. Whereas the men who are going to be pitching are going to be evaluated for their potential. And being out there and on the edge and being a cowboy when no one looks at their outcomes. But when a female goes to raise money, they wanna know, what have you done? What have you done now? What are the outcomes gonna be? I don't care about the potential. I don't care what you're going to do. I wanna know what you've done and what you've delivered on. And so that's still very, very deeply ingrained in the world of entrepreneurship, I think, between men and women. And I think it's way, way, way, more bias when you add in people of color in particular.

Michael Koenig: So we just continue moving forward bit by bit, we chip away from it and start to correct the wrongs?

Jenny Lawton: Yeah, you know, I think that we have to be aware of what inclusion is, you know, getting a seat at the table and having a voice over diversity. You have to be willing to take the time it takes to allow for both of those things to happen. You have to take some of the excuses and listen to your biases as they happen. Oh, we can't possibly find a female to be an engineer because there's so many more male engineers out there and they've got more experience anyway. You gotta be able to lean in on the potential there. It takes work, and it feels awkward, like anything new that you do, it feels awkward. I worry about, we have had a lot of progress in laws that bring protections so that it's sort of a part of what you have to do, it's required. And the concept that those laws are being eroded or that some of those rights are being eroded does concern me in terms of, you know, I do think things can go backward quickly as well.

Michael Koenig: Seems to be in at greater risk of doing that than at any time I can remember in, in modern history.

Jenny Lawton: Yeah, except for you think about like, you know, now you have, you know, one of the things you have is that one of the things I used to talk about at MakerBot is the adoption cycle of 12 years. So I wanted to introduce makerbots into grade schools because at the end of that time period, when people went to work, they'd be like, where's my makerbot? So it was a pull-through concept that if you give a kid a makerbot in kindergarten, then it's like the equivalent of a calculator going into college. Like, where's my calculator? And in fact, in the time that I was at MakerBot, we started having colleges calling us going like, ah, we don't know what to do with these things. 3D printers that they're bringing to college. So now they go to work and they're like, where's the 3D printer? And so if a girl sees their mother and father both working and that their mother is an executive and this is an option, or they see a female vice president, or they see that their senator is a female, and it's not even called out that that's what it is, it's just, this is how things work, that girl then expects that's what her life will be and that's how things work. And so the pull-through happens. And so yeah, if the laws change is a problem, but there's a generation coming up that's going to have a problem with that problem.

Michael Koenig: So very true.

Jenny Lawton: I have faith in that.

Michael Koenig: Yeah. And it's interesting that you talk about that next generation. I have two little girls, one of which loves math and science and firmly believes that girls are smarter than boys. And I'm totally serious about that. She reaffirmed it this morning. I'm convinced. And I guess my question for you is, what advice would you give them for pursuing their passions moving forward?

Jenny Lawton: I mean, I give them the same advice my mother gave me. Like, you know, you can do, you can do whatever you want to do. There are a couple of things that I firmly believe in. That's one of them. It's your life and it's your decisions to make. If you don't ask questions, you don't know the answers. And the worst thing that's really gonna happen to you is someone might tell you no. And because it's your life and your decisions to make, you get to decide with, like, what you wanna do with that answer. So, you know, really learning how to be operating in an empowered way. If you want to go do something, then set your mind on it. And don't let someone tell you that you can't. And I have caught myself in front of kids realizing that I'm telling them that they should buck the system and tell their parents, "I'm gonna do what I want." And that's not really what the intent is, but you need that strong core. And if you don't get it where you're at, you need to go find it. And the first place to find it is with yourself.

Michael Koenig: Okay, I'm gonna make 'em listen to this. Jenny said so. So my last and favorite question for you, shifting gears, we've all had those moments where you have a new problem and you've thought, "Well, never thought I'd see that." Do you have one that comes to mind that you can share with us?

Jenny Lawton: Oh gosh, it's a really weird one. So like, and I'm, and it's not, I'm not trying to be glib here, but I'm, I'm nearly 60, and I have now 4 kids, and I find that I'm taking care of my mother, and I find that as you get older, I understand why people need to stop working full-time, because, you know, the, It's interesting that, you know, how things, how things work. Your life ends up having much more weight to it. And as you, as you get out there in age, being able to share what you know and have wisdom and have this huge database that you get to access and share with people feels like maybe that's where you're supposed to be when you get to be you know, maybe in that 55 to 65 year time period. So like, I love the concept of being able to work with people and share what I know and being able to access what I've learned. But I also think that I'm surprised at the caregiving component and how it comes back. And I know it has nothing to do with work, but getting that balance when, you know, I don't think that as, I think that you probably flip it to life having a little more percentage of attention than work as you, as you get older.

Michael Koenig: That's fantastic.

Jenny Lawton: I don't know, it's a little scary.

Michael Koenig: No, it is. I mean, and I think you talk about the percentage of, of life flipping versus work as I think there's, there's a lot that's being said right now about how the pandemic has maybe not forced people, but brought this to people's attention. Yeah, where life is short, what am I doing here? And, you know, let's go, go find something that either gets me more excited or gives me a better work-life balance. And the rise, the rise of remote, all things that I'm very passionate about. So maybe it's, it's not just for when you turn 55, but also, you know, We're getting some wisdom out there. We're forcing wisdom on people, I suppose, then.

Jenny Lawton: I think it comes from the younger generation in some ways. Having worked with a lot of Gen

Michael Koenig: I am too. It's a shift in balance, in the balance of power of who dictates where and how work is done. Yeah. From the employer saying, hey, you gotta be in this office from 9 to 5 versus, Someone saying, no, I actually am going to go to Portugal and I'll get my work done. Don't worry about it. Right. Well, well, I'm excited for the pull-through as well, Jenny. Thanks so much for coming on the podcast. Where can people go to keep up with you and Bolster?

Jenny Lawton: Oh, well, to keep up with Bolster, go to bolster.com. If you're a startup, sign up for an account. If you're someone who wants to help startups, sign up for an account. Either way, sign up for an account. It's free. To keep up with me, I guess, I don't know. I don't tweet that much. I don't do anything that much. Sign up for Bolster.

Michael Koenig: Sign up for Bolster, maybe.

Jenny Lawton: You can always find me at jenny@oldschoolventure.com.