[00:00:27] Jay: Hi, everyone. Welcome to The First Customer podcast today. I have a very special guest today. I'm not going to say I'm lucky. I just have a very special guest today. Roy and I connected, over a year ago, just kind of randomly on LinkedIn and, we caught back up before the show. So I'm super excited to have him on.
Managing director and founder of Vella Ventures. he's got a doctor of law and like 50 other things and started a bunch of businesses and has a bunch of businesses portfolio. Roy. Thanks for joining me, brother. How are you?
[00:00:53] Roy: I'm well, Jay. I'm well, Jay. How are you?
[00:00:55] Jay: I'm good. Is that a dog in your background that I
[00:00:57] Roy: that is, that's Coco. She decided she wanted to be in,
[00:01:00] Jay: in the show. That's cool, man. She looks great. She's camera
[00:01:03] Roy: got a dolly in her mouth and she'll probably just sit there until she decides she's had enough and then
she'll leave and come back.
[00:01:09] Jay: me too. That's how I end these shows. If I've had enough, I'll wander out. but, so, where did you grow up? Where, and did that have an impact on you being this, you know, a serial entrepreneur?
[00:01:19] Roy: Yeah, certainly. So yeah, I'm a born and raised inner city Brooklyn kid. I, yeah, I, my, I would say my formative years. So I've got about a dozen years each in, New York City, Bay Area, London, and now about a half dozen outside Boston. But those first dozen in New York, Yeah, I think being from Brooklyn is a thing.
It's like a cultural thing globally. People are like, Oh, Brooklyn, you know, and it's true. I mean, people tell me where they live in Brooklyn nowadays. And I'm like, dude, you wouldn't walk there in the daytime when I was a kid. Right. So that kind of street savvy, thing and, and a bit of a hustling thing.
I mean, that's all part of the sort of New York ethos that I think is, pretty deep in my bones.
[00:02:01] Jay: And were your parents or anybody entrepreneurs? Do you have anybody in your family that ran businesses?
[00:02:05] Roy: yes and no. I mean, my dad, when I was, living in Brooklyn was a math teacher. and then, yeah, he got into the sort of early days of computers. I mean, and, and gave me that bug. And,you know, my brother and I started a driveway ceiling business together and, you know, I delivered newspapers and, you know, all that kind of. Good stuff that you would imagine as a teenager, you know, but, driveway protection services was a huge business in Northern Jersey. And my brother was very disturbed to find out that he was an employee and I was the founder later on in my CV.
[00:02:38] Jay: Oh, that's
[00:02:39] Roy: He was like, I thought we were co founders. I'm like, yeah, no,
you're my little brother.
So you're an employee.
[00:02:44] Jay: so there's a long way between that and Vela Ventures, which we'll get to what was the next steps? Where did you go from Brooklyn? How did you know, bounce around from all these
[00:02:52] Roy: Yeah. Yeah. So, from Brooklyn to, Northern Jersey for high school, Massachusetts for college, Chicago, post college, and then California. And I kind of say that I, you know, found my heart in San Francisco, like went out for grad school, and, just totally addicting the air in the Bay area is, There's something in it. I can't really explain it, but you land at SFO and you're, there's like a bit of a crackling in the air, and, just loved it out at Stanford and loved it in San Francisco and, started a company out of grad school, a fintech company, although back then it wasn't called fintech.
It was, we were an ASP, an application service provider. yeah. I mean, this is a good 20 years ago. So, so, different world. but, but addicted to, I would say the essential element through all of it is I'm just insatiably curious, right? My, I love to learn new things. I love to be, in the deep end of the pool where I'm barely touching the bottom or not touching the bottom.
Like I just can't, you know, have to keep battling to keep up. a bit of a science geek. My, wife likes to joke around that, I'm an inch deep, but a mile wide in all of science. She's like, you could talk to any scientists for a solid 15 minutes, and they'd be very impressed with how much you know about what they're working on.
But after 15 minutes, it's going to be a cliff. That's the end of your knowledge. but yeah, so I would say that's a common theme throughout all of it is, chasing the white rabbit and the new information and the, what's going on,and dissecting that and making it comprehensible.
[00:04:20] Jay: How'd you end up in London?
[00:04:22] Roy: London, we, we were in San Francisco.
We had a one year old and a puppy and. Had the opportunity to both, we both transferred our jobs. I was at PayPal. My wife was at Gap and, and we were both able to retain employment, but overseas instead. And the idea was, ah, we'll go to Europe for a year. It'll be fun. And the one year old doesn't care.
Right. And, We fell in love with it. we went for a year, stayed for 12, got our passports. didn't think we were coming back, frankly, but, life, you know, my in laws were getting older and we're like, Oh, maybe we should take the transatlantic flight out of the equation. And, You gotta be careful with the universe.
We had that conversation and within a month I had a former client say, Hey, we're looking for someone to run North America. You're American. What do you think? And,yeah. So I ended up coming back outside of FinTech. I was running a smart home IOT platform. yeah. So, and that brought us back about six years ago.
[00:05:15] Jay: which one was that? Which IOT firm
[00:05:17] Roy: if you go to the UK, Hive is the largest smart home platform. It outsells Nest three or four to one in the
UK. And they were like, we're huge. Let's go to the U S market and take on Google
Nest. And, so that's what I was doing. I was standing up Hive in the U S market.
[00:05:34] Jay: Okay. I only asked because I, I used to work for zone off, which got bought by ring, which thing I bought by Amazon, who I was actually just talking to one of the early, the first CMO, at ring who helped grow it from 15 to a hundred million, on a podcast before this. So small world all connected.
So we, we had, I'd heard a hive back then. for sure. As we were kind of working through that stuff. And how'd you end up back, and up near Boston, is that where you moved back from the UK to
[00:06:02] Roy: Yeah, Boston?
was, I mean, basically my three choices were Boston, New York, or Houston. And, it was basically Boston or New York. And, we decided Boston sort of triangulated between my family in the New York tri state area and my in laws who are, way upstate. So it
was a middle ground.
[00:06:18] Jay: And how do you like it up there?
[00:06:21] Roy: It's great.
I mean, you know, look, we don't have to go down the rabbit hole, but I, we miss London quite a bit. and the quick summary is in North America, life happens at A and B, you get in your car, in your garage, you go to B, office, gym, school, park, whatever. in Europe, life happens between A and B. There's more life in the high street, in the cafe, in the park, in the pub. We Americans forget that pub is a contraction. The full term is public house. And it is. Like, if, Jay, if you were in my village in London and you said, Hey, you want to watch the game tonight? That is not implying your house or my house. It's your pub or my pub. we as a young family, with the dog and the kids, could spend a whole Saturday at the pub.
Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. My kids took karate and ballet at the pub. Like, it's, there's just way more middle, that third space idea. There's just
way more of it in Europe. And, That was a transition coming back,for my kids and for us overall. We were like, right. Oh, okay. It's just a bit different.
And, something that took some adjustment.
Actually, have you, if you've seen, have you seen Ted Lasso?
[00:07:26] Jay: No, I haven't. It's on my
[00:07:27] Roy: I only bring it up because literally that's our village. That is in
no way a set. They just dropped actors into our
village. So if any of your viewers have seen that, you know exactly where we
[00:07:36] Jay: I feel like somebody else told me that was their, I asked somebody
[00:07:38] Roy: that might've been me a year ago.
[00:07:40] Jay: Maybe it wasn't you a year ago. It might've actually been you a year ago now that I'm, now that I'm thinking that, so tell me about VeloVentures, man.
There's a bunch of companies maybe under the umbrella, like what's, what is it? What is
[00:07:51] Roy: a startup junkie. I, mentor, advisor, board member, angel. Like I do all of that. I, a board chair of a personal data company in Amsterdam right now. I love the creative problem solving of the early stage, right? You know, and functionally I'm a go to market guy. We didn't really talk about that.
So product market fit, go to market strategy. How do you grow faster, better, quicker? Where's the revenue? and how do you get there most efficiently? and so Vela Ventures is kind of a holding company for all my activity. It started back in London for about a decade in London. I was horizontal. I like to say I had retainers and projects.
I did a lot of paid. strategy, go to market strategy and marketing strategy and a lot of paid public speaking, that were all piled into VeloVentures. And back then it was more about mobile. It was about the, you know, what does it mean to have a supercomputer in every pocket? You know, how does that change the world?
You've got processing power and sensors, you know, everywhere on now. It's about big data. A. I. M. L. We've got this. we finally have scale processing. and that has, that's the next big wave that's coming and changing everything. so I'm working with a group called next Co labs. and they are,like me, just kind of, I would say, AI, big data enthusiasts and trying to, help, companies understand what this next wave means.
So how does it change their business? How does it accelerate their business? How does it threaten their business? There's all sorts of aspects to it.
[00:09:20] Jay: I mean, it sounds like you had a lot of accidental and maybe purposeful. Personal branding stuff that came along the way, right? You kind of built this, you know, image of you being a thought leader on these different things and kind of being that scrappy startup guy. Do you still, do you see it that way at all?
[00:09:39] Roy: Did you see it that way? Do you work on it at all now? no, I do. I mean, I think, opportunity knocks and you have to answer, right? I mean, I think that, being curious means you're learning the new stuff. maybe earlier than other people, right? So I tend to be pretty bleeding edge, beyond cutting edge. Right? and,and as such, folks who are stuck in a huge corporate infrastructure, you know, they just can't keep up with what's going on outside.
They're barely keeping up with what's going on inside. Right?
and so, Part of it is that, that I, I'm voracious in my curiosity and so I'm, really keeping up with what's happening. and secondarily, I would say, you know, so for instance, I'll give you a good example. So, so I, when I started public speaking, I had, two different agents approach me to represent me. One was very much UK. The other one was very much EMEA, London Speaker Bureau and Speaker's Corner. And, my main deck initially was, mobile FinTech. It was really about how does the mobile affect the finance and money and banking and payments world, right? that deck expanded over time. Based on market demand. and so what I mean by that is I had people come up to me after my presentation and say, I loved your stuff. Do you have a section on insurance? And so did I have a section done on insurance? No, but my answer was yes. And then I'm going to go home and I'm going to take all the knowledge I have about this.
And I'm going to dive into insurance and see how it applies. And so then I write a section on insurance and I, so over time that deck, insurance, health. Get oil and gas like you name it. Like people would say I do you have do you understand how this applies to this other area? And I could have said no not really but the reality was i'll figure that out Yeah, I can figure out how that applies to this area.
No problem because they don't need me tomorrow They need me next month or the month after. Right. And in my opinion, that's entrepreneurship right there. Entrepreneurship is listening to the customer. What are they asking for? And then having the confidence and maybe the audacity to know that you'll deliver it.
and, I mean that so, so, insurance for instance. So the CEO of Aviva insurance, huge insurance company out of the UK saw me at a public event and said, Hey, I'm having a leadership offsite next month. Can you come and present? And I'd love to hear your thoughts on insurance. Sure. Inside of Aveva I probably presented a couple dozen times.
So I did the leadership offsite to his top 200 And then all the EVPs and SVPs were like, now you gotta come tell my team what you told us. Right? Like,
and each time I was learning more and more about insurance because I was having conversations with people after the presentation. They're like, I wonder how that works in this area. I'd go home and I'd dive to the bottom of the pool and say, yeah, okay, I think I know how this applies to that area, or I would discover something that a competitor of theirs was doing or that was happening in a different market than they were in or blah, blah, blah. Right? So, it's that curiosity and willingness to explore and learn that enables you to serve better.
At the end of the day,
[00:12:49] Jay: No, it makes sense. And you, I mean, do you still do the public speaking stuff,
[00:12:53] Roy: I do. recently it's about AI ML. My, my new deck is called the age of exponentials. And,we are on an exponential curve and, in AI and processing writ large. When you look at the technical product market, you know, it's Moore's law. But it's Moore's law applied to everything, applied to data, applied to energy, applied to processing, you know, and I explained to people that an exponential curve is quite boring for a very long time, you know, it's flat, you know, for 40, 50 years, but then as you enter the elbow, it gets very exciting very quickly, you know, which is why people feel like AI came out of nowhere, like, Oh my God, like a year ago, we weren't talking about AI.
And I'm like, well, That's because of exponential curves, right? when you, and then it's really also because we don't have good intuition around scale. I tell people all the time, humans, we're just not good at large numbers. And I always prove it very quickly. So a million, billion, trillion seconds, a million seconds, it's like 12 days, a billion seconds, 32 years, a trillion seconds.
32, 000 years and most humans have that reaction to go, what? Wait, hold on days
to 32, 000 years. Like really?
And, it's because English is partly to bring million, billion, trillion sounds very linear, but it's times a thousand, right? The curve is dramatic.
And, you know, and so that's the thing when open AI says that they have, you know, trillions of data points, we don't really get what that is.
Like, that's hard to. Well, again, it's like comparing days to 32, 000 years, six times written history. like it just does not compute. Like it's literally inconceivable. Like we can't conceive exactly what we're talking about, which is why, you know, chat GPT and a lot of the LLMs seem a little magical and why we attribute the term intelligence to it. I'm not confident in that necessarily, but, in terms of intelligence, the way we describe it with humans. But it is scale processing. It's the operative word in an LLM is large, like large language model. Large is the thing that matters, right? These are huge data sets.
anyway, so I, so yeah, so this was going down your question.
I'm
how you dive to the bottom of the pool. That's where we ended up with the bottom of the pool with you. A hundred percent.
[00:15:19] Jay: just to stay on that topic for a second. The one thing, you know, people always ask me. You know, how is AI impacting what you do with QA because that's all we do is, you know, we run a software quality assurance agency.
And yes, we use it for some things. The 1 thing that I always say is right now, it lacks the context. To be a problem for not a problem or like any sort of competition for us, right? how do you kind of frame what context means? Right. Cause that is like the one piece that when you're using chat, dbt, or you're using any of these elements, like you can feel like the context is the bounds and you go, okay, well, it doesn't know about this thing over here and that's why it's not talking about it.
If it was in the set, then maybe, but like, what about the thing that led to this, that led to this, that led to this. Like, how is context, is it going to catch up? Are we eventually going to be able to,
[00:16:12] Roy: maybe that's the human element, right? That's the human piece is the context that we can kind of bring in.
So yes and no. So, so I like to talk about chess in this regard. Okay. So humans can be humans. AI beat humans right now. The cutting edge of chess are teams of AI and human and AI and human, and it's not clear who's going to win. And there's a different approach. Again, the AI is bringing in scale processing.
Let me try as many possible moves as, you know, as conceivable. And the human is bringing in pattern matching and different other elements that the AI can't match. Right. you know, an AI can beat an AI and AI can beat a human, but the, it's the combination that is the bleeding edge of competition.
And frankly. That's the future. So in every job, it's going to be the, you know, you don't have to learn AI, but a team of a guy with AI is going to beat you, right? Like that's the reality is we have to leverage the ability of scale processing. And, at the moment, you're right. It doesn't have sufficient, depth and context to, to outperform. But at the moment, the best solution at the moment is going from zero to one. So the countless hours of human time spent staring at a blank page. can set up some, you can set up enough of a prompt for it to give you an initial output. if you submit that, you know, it's 70, 80 percent of the way there. You have to go the last mile. but you don't have to stare at a blank page wondering where to start anymore.
Right. Whether
[00:17:49] Jay: is almost is how do I D chat GPT, something like, how do I make, how do I add the human layer on top of this data that it just gave me? Right. I feel like that's the new problem. Cause you can, and the kids are going to do that in school, right? They're going to be going and they already are, but I mean, they're, that's going to be their new, you know, their new blank page is how do I take this chat GPT chunk and make it sound human compared to how do I start from scratch?
[00:18:13] Roy: Well, and it, you know, the reality is we are all much better editors than originators, right? Like staring at a blank canvas at a blank page at a blank deck. It's just, it's a leap. it's hard to get going, but once the momentum begins, once there's inertia, we're all very good at knowing what we like and what we don't like.
No, that's not right. I want to add this. I want to subtract that. Like, and you know, it is like, I think of it in the creative spaces as we would a calculator or search engine. Right? Like, am I. Training my kids how to use an abacus in case the cat, no, you use the calculator for the stuff that you need to use the cat and the same with a search engine.
Am I saying, no, go to the library and flip through the encyclopedia. Like, no, you like you use the tool in the appropriate manner. Is the tool meant to replace you? No, it's not trying to replace you, but it is a very valuable tool. It can. And some of the, I mean, when you interact with any of the LLMs or the visual stuff, mid journey and Dolly and the rest, I mean, it's. It's incredible like the work product that comes out and by the way We're on iPhone 1. 0 like if you ever had that original iPhone It was a pretty shitty phone like it was
not a good but compared to where we are today You're like holy cow version 15 Is ridiculous. And that's where we are in AI.
We're at the very beginning of LLMs. ChatGPT4 or 5, is, I mean, actually I can send you an image of mid journey in March of 2022 and mid journey of March of 2023. And the first one is an impressionistic painting. You can kind of tell what it is. And the last one a year later is photorealistic. You're like, where was that picture taken? It's using the same under underlying model like it's just so the so this is the thing writing an exponential curve Feels nuts like this is going so fast and it's because as you crest into that elbow Things get real fast and never mind when quantum hits it quantum computing is again gonna be another It's gonna be a curve within the curve.
I mean, it's Processing power of quantum computing is gonna blow us all away. It's really shocking
[00:20:23] Jay: Well, I can see why people pay you to speak because I feel like I should be paying you to speak. This is I'm excited. Like, I'm getting very, you make, you do a great job of making. Some of these just topics that you're beating over the head with on LinkedIn or the news or whatever with AI and you kind of peel back enough of it, to make it interesting again, right?
Because if you hear something enough and like, if I see chat GBT in your feed now, you're just going to scroll through like, God,
[00:20:50] Roy: Starts to drone on. Yeah.
[00:20:52] Jay: I can't see another fucking blog about how, what are the best, you know, here's the best hundred prompts like Jesus Christ, but you, just listening to you describe that I can see why,
[00:21:01] Roy: I'll tell you, given your audience, I would say, for all my higher education, improv training was probably the most valuable.
[00:21:10] Jay: really. Okay.
[00:21:11] Roy: we are storytelling and digesting creatures, and we've been doing that for hundreds of thousands of years. And at the end of the day, being able to tell a good story. And to make things relatable, to find the metaphor, the analogy, the simile that resonates where people go, Oh, I get it. That is the secret sauce to all entrepreneurship. I mean, literally, and you know, and it can be used for good and for evil. It can be Steve jobs, who was a master storyteller, or it can be Elizabeth Holmes, who was also a master storyteller, right?
Like, you know, at the end of the day, but, but the crux of it is. Telling a story where people are like, ah,I'm inspired. I believe I get it. And, you know, that training. So this is the sad part for me is that the reason storytelling has been, has become somewhat of a lost art is we don't sit around the fire once the sun goes down now and tell each other stories. Which is what we did for hundreds of thousands of years. Like, sun went down, build a fire, sit around, everybody's telling everybody's stories. There isn't a, there isn't one storyteller, everybody's a storyteller. And nowadays we sit in front of the, what we used to call the boob tube when I was a kid.
And just, bleh, just, you know, we're receivers and not senders. And, if you're an entrepreneur, gotta be a master sender. gotta know your story, gotta believe your story. And what you're really trying to do is create fellow believers.
[00:22:36] Jay: Right.
[00:22:36] Roy: where they go, where do I sign?
Like whatever you're doing. I want to be part of that.
[00:22:41] Jay: right. No,I'm going to sign up for the Roy Vella course today, right after this. So, you know, send me your website link. All right. I have one more question. I could talk to you for hours. I feel like, but let's keep it. So people can listen to this,on a drive home.
[00:22:56] Roy: Yeah.
[00:22:59] Jay: non business related. Nothing to do with your businesses. If there was one thing you could do on earth and you knew you couldn't fail, what would it be?
[00:23:11] Roy: So on earth for earth, there's a
few aspects to that.
[00:23:16] Jay: to tell me, you know, yeah, if you couldn't fail.
[00:23:19] Roy: that is a great question. And for me, it comes down to communication. I would. I would enable people to reserve judgment and listen to one another, right? Like the crux of all human conflict is the inability to just take a breath, step back and listen, right? You know, and hear the other side.
I mean, you can say, Oh, I'll solve global warming or I'll, you know, there's all these. Problems. But for me, the root problem is that people just are losing. It goes back to the storytelling. Frankly, people are losing the ability to listen to one another and to interact and to understand. And I think like if you sit down with an open mind and listen to someone, humans are very clever and we'll find solutions to things.
You know, it's our biggest problem is the la. Yeah. You know, like people just not willing to, to open their minds and listen to one another. so yeah, if I could do one thing and I would say, enable people to reserve judgment and listen to their fellow man would be, I think that would be the most likely outcome that I could affect most things positively.
[00:24:29] Jay: I love that. That's easy. You're right. It's the underpinning of just about every problem. You can ask my wife. She says, I never listened. So that's I'm sure would solve all of my problems. Roy, you're a fantastic, my friend. where can people find Vella Ventures? Where can they find you? If they want to hear you speak more, like how do they get in
[00:24:45] Roy: Sure. Sure. Yeah. I mean, I'm blessed with a unique name. So Roy Vella, R O Y V E L L A at almost anything gets to me. Roy Vella on LinkedIn, Roy Vella on Twitter, Facebook, Gmail. You just use my name. I'm easy to find. There's one other Roy Vella in Florida somewhere, and I think he's like a graphic designer, but
[00:25:05] Jay: He's riding your coattails, man.
[00:25:07] Roy: right.
I
[00:25:08] Jay: all your business.
[00:25:10] Roy: yeah, I rarely cross paths with him.
[00:25:12] Jay: All right. Well, you're fantastic. Enjoy the rest of your week. I hope people reach out to you. you were very inspirational. you were, you know, you are what I thought you were going to be
[00:25:20] Roy: Thanks, Jay. I appreciate the kind words.
[00:25:23] Jay: Appreciate you brother. Be good and have a good rest of your week. Talk to you soon.
Thanks for it.
[00:25:26] Roy: too. Take care.
[00:25:27] Jay: man.