Welcome to the backstage capital Green Room Podcast. I'm Megan Rose Dickey, Chief Content Officer at backstage capital and your host. The backstage capital crew showed up and showed out at the first South by Southwest since the pandemic started. Yeah, people were backstage capital founder erlin, Hamilton had a million speaking events. We hosted a headliner meetup. And in between all of that, I sprained my foot. Thankfully, I still had a chance to chat with a couple of backstage headliners and partners about the blockchain web three, and the future of work. First up, we have Carrie Schrader Karis, a co founder and CEO at peer to peer engagement startup mix TROs. She said it's important for her to stay up to date on emerging technologies, like blockchain, NF T's, and of course, the metaverse
I need to become more educated in it. Because I mean, it is a future like we like anything else right? The Internet Hell, I'm a part of that generation that was like what I email what who? i Who Got Mail where how they get my mail, let me go to post office. So you know, it's coming. You need to educate yourself and figure out where you fit. Even for mixtures. I believe mixtures will play a vital part in the metaverse because community like it's you could play with avatar so long, but at the end of the day, as you've seen here at South by humans need human connectivity, something beyond just an avatar. And so I'm already thinking we're thinking about that already for our company
on the topic of emerging technologies. Backstage capital, general partner, Christy Pitts said she sees web three as a foundational technology
a few years ago, I feel like it was kind of what was very buzzworthy was AI. And everybody was trying to be an AI company. And it seems a little bit like that right now with web three. And it turns out that most companies need to have some form of AI and their software. And I think similarly, most companies will need to understand how to leverage web three for their offerings. So that's kind of what my perspective is right now. But like I said, I need to learn a lot more about
it. The Future of Work also had a strong presence at this year South by Southwest. The COVID 19 pandemic led to what many refer to as the great resignation. Pew Research recently said the nation's quit rate reached a 20 year high last November. The reason most workers cited either low pay no opportunities for advancement or feeling disrespected at work, the pandemic has ultimately served as a wake up call to employers that the status quo isn't working anymore. In fact, it never did. at South by Southwest, the story of seven former Starbucks employees who said they were fired for trying to unionize was illuminating for backstage capital general partner, Brittany Davis. She told me she was surprised to hear that Starbucks wouldn't do whatever it took to create a supportive work environment for its employees. Here's Brittany,
hearing their story. I think she has another light on what it's really like, and they should have a space to create whatever environment they feel like is more supportive, which would keep them there. Like that's what you would want, I think in not just, you know, churning through people, because that's expensive to thinking about it from like a profitability standpoint.
She's right. It's expensive to churn through employees, yet so many companies are still anti Union. The Economic Policy Institute recently found the private sector employers spend nearly $340 million per year hiring advisors to help prevent their employees from unionizing. That's a lot of money. Anecdotally, I've heard some tech CEOs say union scare away venture capitalist. Here's what Brittany had to say about that.
I mean, I think of it in terms of sustainability of your workforce of your employees. And I think if they are treated well and feel like they're in an equitable environment, I think that translates to even the experience they're delivering for the end, consumer and user. So I find it. I'm more for it. And I think hearing some of their stories, I really think in particular, this was Starbucks should get in front of this and not confront the fact that these people want to provide a better work environment and relationship with you know, Starbucks corporate, they should be thinking about it, and how can they do better so that they can retain employees and not have as much turnover and then actually have employees that want to be there because that reflects on the service and It's just, I mean, some people were literally like BOYCOTT STARBUCKS right after that. And I was talking to some folks afterwards and I didn't even thinking of it from. Like, even a revenue standpoint, if you really want to think about, you know, company, deciding if they're pro union or not, like if your customer base doesn't feel good about patronizing or purchasing at a certain place, because they don't feel like their workers are being taken care of. I think this generation really cares about that thinking millennial Gen Z in particular, that can really hurt your bottom line. So I think companies should be a lot more proactive and thinking about how they provide for their employees in providing a good environment,
fostering inclusive, equitable, and flexible work environments, is going to be even more necessary in the future of work than it is today. Arland said that part of that flexibility may entail letting employees have side hustles. Here's a snippet from Ireland's talk at South by Southwest
entrepreneurship is the competition to these bigger companies. So instead of fighting that, and saying I hope we don't have this leaky bucket where people really talented people leave, I think they're going to have to start figuring out how to encourage it. And to say, stay with us, please, and let's keep retain your talent, but also go and do the thing. Or if if you're an artist will be the be the artists, you know, until that same in that same vein a little bit different, though, I think we're going to start seeing and if if we don't start seeing it soon, I'm going to try to make it happen. I think we're going to start seeing and I hope you do. A lot of people and across a lot of industries starting to figure out how to take sabbaticals and come back. And I think Runar could be really interesting for this. I think that we talked about this at runner maternity leave, paternity leave sabbaticals where you can plug in somebody from runner or you know, in different places, there's different there's really great companies that do this, across the board. But imagine, I just know for myself, I'm sure there's some song I could quote, but I can't think of it fast enough. I'm not that fast this morning. But like a free bird or, you know, free bird or something. But I just don't see myself somewhere for 1020 30 years, and being stimulated enough to stay. But if I knew that, like, every three years, I could go away for six months in find myself, I might just come back to you, you know, I might just bring my that person I found back to the company. And so I think you're gonna see that over the next five years, you're going to see people and I hope that that runner has a big role to play their
workplaces also need to evolve to be more supportive of mental health needs. Both founders and of employees. at South by Southwest Brene, Brown spoke about the importance of people being able to identify and name their emotions. Chacha validez, a principle of backstage capital, so the tech industry can benefit from her wisdom. Here's Chacho,
it's true, we're thinking and feeling humans, we like to think that we are very rational and, and think through things logically, which we often do. But overall, like, there are times where it's beneficial to be able to, and maybe even necessary to be able to describe your emotions in a better way, especially when you're in a team environment, when you're maybe giving difficult feedback to someone on the team or when you are hurt by someone or when you're upset about losing a customer or not getting a lead investor or maybe you're elated that you do have your lead investor. So all these things, which seem to be like secondary, or like being able to actually define them as really helpful. It's almost like being able to properly define your like, which metrics matter what which metrics, you should measure that matter in your business, whether it's daily active users, monthly active users, conversion rates, and all that stuff, like almost like getting that fine tune with who you are as a human being and your emotions. I think that's really really powerful and can end up turning into a big time superpower. And the same way you work on your company or the same way that you work on your physical health is the same way you have to work on your mental health as well. It's not something that's like, can be like done with five minutes of meditation, which is great, like if you're doing that on a regular basis, but there's like ongoing things that you need to do in order to properly take care of your mental health and for some people might be sobriety or something It might be that, you know, it's often physical exercise helps with mental health a lot. But some people might be doing something completely creative that has nothing to do with work. Or be could be like getting like scheduling time to have coffee or breakfast with your family. There's, it's different for everybody. But I think that it's really important in order to be your best self. And then, in turn, you're going to be the best version of yourself, for your startup, for your company, for your teammates, and all that matters. And not to say that we get it right every single day, we definitely don't. But it's certainly important conversation. It's certainly something I want our founders and all founders to embrace. And I'll never be the person who's like, why are you getting coffee with your partner, you should be writing code. Sounds ridiculous. But you know, that's might be a little bit of an extreme. I just think that it's really important. And so yeah, I definitely want to create more content around this create more playbooks, I think my podcast running in public is like a start. Because it goes to show that like, we are more than, like, just startup founders, or just VCs or operators, that we have other things that we care about and are passionate about, and that end up like, being beneficial to our work more often than not. And so, yeah, that's really important to me, it's just sort of like, I hate the word brand, but like brand myself in that way, you know, or like, be known to like, for that. And I've written about my own depression and all that stuff. And so it's not something that just like goes away, just because, like, you wrote a blog post about it, and you go to like a few therapy sessions, you know, or you write read a Twitter thread, like, it's so important. And, but it is hard to get there with like a founder in terms of like, the being just like vulnerable, and it's a lot is, you know, yeah, but if you can't tell I'm passionate about it.
So there you have it, folks, there are a lot of exciting new technologies, but the future of the tech industry, and society depends on the well being of people. Thanks for tuning into the backstage capital greenroom podcast. Be sure to also check out our blog at medium comm slash free room. I'm Megan Rose Dickey, and I'll catch you next time