Bet on People with Abby Queale

On this episode of Bet on People, Abby Queale joins host Keegan Evans.

Abby Queale is the Chief Legal and Compliance Officer at MagCorp, a magnet technology development company she helped build from the ground up as its founding CEO. She's a registered patent attorney who previously served as Director of Innovation at San José State University, where she launched the Technology Transfer, Industry Research Alliances, the SpartUp Incubator, and the Silicon Valley Small Business Development Center. Before all of that, she began her career in tech transfer at Florida State University and somewhere along the way, she became a Disney Parks expert who will absolutely help you plan your trip.

In this episode Abby and Keegan trace a career built on one consistent belief: you sell the person, not the business. Abby's decisions have always come back to betting on the people in the room. 

She also shares the story of building SJSU's SpartUp Incubator from scratch, including the paper plane exercise that revealed what students actually needed — and why she still wouldn't let anyone throw them.

In this Episode:

1. Why "if you put people first, the numbers will come" 
2. How Abby pushed back on investors who wrote off faculty entrepreneurs, and the argument she used to change their minds
3. The value of becoming a mentor once you've got the knowledge to give
4. & so much more

Connect with Abby and Euda:

MagCorp website: https://magneticscorp.com/

Abby on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abbyqueale/

Follow Euda at https://www.linkedin.com/company/euda-io/

Learn more about Euda at euda.io

Subscribe to The Euda Debrief: https://www.linkedin.com/build-relation/newsletter-follow?entityUrn=7435041512645718017

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Welcome to Bet on People, a podcast where we explore the decisions behind human-centered leadership and why betting on people isn't just good for people, it's smart business. I'm Keegan Evans, executive coach and founder of Uta. My guest today is Abby Quayle, the Chief Legal and Compliance Officer at MagCorp, a magnet technology development company she helped build from the ground up as its founding CEO. She's a registered patent attorney who previously served as director of innovation at San Jose State University. There, she led the development of the technology transfer, the industry research alliances, the Spartup Incubator, and the Silicon Valley Small Business Development Center. Abby loves playing and watching sports and is a Disney Parks aficionado who loves helping family and friends plan their trips. Abby, thank you so much for joining me today.

SPEAKER_01 0:48

Oh, likewise, I'm so happy to be here. It's kind of like old times.

SPEAKER_00 0:52

It is. We met originally in uh your work with Spartup uh at San Jose State, and uh I've loved watching where you're where you've gone and and where you're growing and and just being able to catch up with you now is wonderful. Before we dive into the topics and the and the the flow, uh I I'd love to just kind of could get a grounding on what is what's your overarching leadership philosophy? What do you think of when you think of leadership? How do you approach it?

SPEAKER_01 1:15

If you put people first, the numbers will come. Akin to if you build it, they will come. People want we're social people, right? We want to interact. Um, I'm actually gonna steal a line from my fiance much earlier in the podcast than I thought, but you know, life is not a DIY project. Yep. We were actually just at a resort, and I just didn't feel like going to the self-checkout because I'm a huge Disney geek, like you said. So I just wanted to go to the counter and talk with a cast member about you know, Disney. Because that's what you go for, right? Yeah. I want to talk about, you know, these special pins and this and that. And they actually told me, you know, people say that to us over and over and over and over again. Thank you for the job security. Thank you for waiting in line for an what an extra five or ten minutes and just talking to us. And so if you have people as the face of your company, no matter what level, your customers are probably going to come to you over a machine.

SPEAKER_04 2:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:19

And that's why I've always liked your philosophy at Utah is that AI in particular is a co-pilot, right? Yeah.

unknown 2:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:26

It's not necessarily the face of your company.

SPEAKER_00 2:30

Yeah. Yeah. It's not going to be any surprise that we're going to have a great conversation as a result of that because the people at the at the center is is so uh so core to everything we do. And I especially love how you come to that because there could be a bias or there could be a stereotype that uh you know a lawyer is not necessarily gonna think about people first. And so the intersection of your work across law, across entrepreneurship, and across innovation, uh it really reflects well on there. I'm excited about that. I I know I haven't come to my level of my my leadership philosophy or b or my point of view uh in a straight line. I'd love to hear a time in your career what when you perhaps made a decision as a leader that prioritized the business of prioritized or or less prioritized people and what you learned out of that.

SPEAKER_01 3:19

Yes. And I actually started my career in technology transfer um as IP council. So although I had, you know, I were a legal hat and you know, had a stack of agreements I was reviewing, I also had a patent portfolio that I was managing for the university. And, you know, no matter what the size of the university, if you're at a public university in particular, you have to be a good steward of public dollars. And you have a limited budget in which to decide which ideas the university is going to spend the money in in the case of patents, it could be rather significant to protect it and then market and license it or, you know, work with an entrepreneur to bring it to market. And of course, they're going to work with something for which there is a market. Right. And so not every idea was either patentable or and or marketable. Yeah. And so those were strictly business decisions that I was tasked with making. I made them. I would what we call in the industry evaluate technologies. But I would work with the innovators. Yeah. It could be faculty, it could be staff, not necessarily students yet. Sure. Um, but that things have changed, as you know, from Sparta. Surely. Um you still want to work. I mean, this is still a brilliant person that a top peer university has hired.

SPEAKER_02 4:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:37

And they've probably already published too by the time they've, you know, interacted with you in what's called the technology transfer office.

unknown 4:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:44

Um, so think of Gatorade that comes out of the University of Florida.

SPEAKER_02 4:48

Right.

SPEAKER_01 4:49

And so this is someone's life's work.

SPEAKER_04 4:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:52

And sometimes it can be taken as, oh gosh, this isn't good enough. Or something's wrong, or I just, you know what, I don't have time for this activity. You know, I got into this, you know, field to just share the knowledge. But you want to establish the rapport and the relationship, kind of like going to Disney. I want to geek out. I love science. And so I would build a relationship with the innovators based on that. And I even had that experience actually in grad school at UF where my faculty advisor disclosed an idea to the tech transfer office. And all of a sudden, I'm actually even more excited than before because these suits and ties are coming in. I've never heard of a tech transfer office, and I even went to school here. Yeah. And I drink iterate, right? And you get extra excited. So they're even built up even higher than me. We gotta bring them down.

unknown 5:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:42

You could potentially bring them down even more. But if you're geeking out and you're not the scientist, you're not the expert, yeah, but you are just using your scientific brain, that I think is the connection that I was able to, you know, have success with.

SPEAKER_04 5:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:59

Because you don't want to tell someone, well, this mark this is great for research, but there's no market for it, or there won't be for maybe 30 years in which a patent's expired and we're not going to stop you from publishing, right? So just go ahead and publish. But you know, I study material science and engineering. So if some if a biophysicist at the medical school, and I used to be so intimidated, okay, this is a secret, don't tell anyone, you know, by you know, MDs, because I'm like, I don't really know that much. And then I quickly learned, okay, biophysics is physics, biochemistry is chemistry, and I know both of those enough to be dangerous. And you know, okay, so you can remove toxins from a bloodstream. That's amazing. Someone else is already doing it in the market, or this patent isn't quite different enough that we're gonna spend the money going back and forth with a patent examiner. You know, when I was in, you know, grad school, I was studying, you know, removing uh certain materials from waste streams, you know, maybe it's a different way of sourcing my earth. That's a big one, right? Yep. And then you see the light bulb go off. I'm not being condescending to them. I'm just excited. I'm like, oh my gosh, I it like I know about this field. Could that apply here?

unknown 7:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:03

Oh yeah, and then we've got something.

SPEAKER_04 7:06

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_01 7:07

And the relationship is the most important because technology transfer, especially in universities, without getting too niche. You know, there's other priorities, teaching number one, scholarly work, publishing number two. But at the end of the day, I mean, almost every innovator will tell me, you know, tell me a little bit about yourself. Well, you know, my my mother passed through this rare disease. This is why I got into this research. I mean, it it their passion's already there.

SPEAKER_02 7:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:33

And so as long as you just, you know, keep that at the forefront, if it up, you know, if their idea applies to other things, they're happy.

SPEAKER_04 7:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:43

And if it's something where they can build, you know, their research portfolio even more because maybe some royalties are coming in, it's not a bad thing either.

SPEAKER_00 7:50

Yeah. Were there any points maybe early on in that role where you where you got it wrong a little bit and and didn't have that level of care uh and and navigated, and of course, for all sorts of reasons, specific names or anything don't don't need to bring in. Um but I'd love to kind of hear that kind of w where were the how did you refine that lesson for yourself? Where did you where did you learn the hard way sometimes?

SPEAKER_01 8:14

I d I actually this is not a non-answer, I promise. I actually had the opposite problem where I got too excited.

SPEAKER_04 8:20

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 8:21

And I was a member of the patent bar.

SPEAKER_04 8:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:24

And this was, I think, when I was still in law school because I was interning there first in the technology transfer office at FSU. And so I knew about it's called obviousness, I don't want to get too legal, but if you can show, like if it would have been obvious to someone in the field, but you can show that the results scientifically contradict that completely.

SPEAKER_02 8:44

Oh, cool. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 8:45

Then you're you're good to go.

SPEAKER_02 8:47

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 8:47

And this is actually a uh a product that came out of FSU, it's spun out. Um, that was a I won't call it a cocktail, but it's a it's it was a basically a nutraceutical.

SPEAKER_04 9:00

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 9:00

And it was existing ingredients that had already shown effect, but this particular combination showed a multiple of the effect more than you would just calculate on paper.

SPEAKER_04 9:11

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:13

And I had some resistance internally. Okay. And uh someone did say, Well, you have an intern that saw something in this. What else can she look at? And you know, I think I just went that way ever since. And just I I'm not necessarily saying yes all the time. Um, I'm saying yes, you know, just like an engineer or a lawyer with evidence, right?

SPEAKER_00 9:39

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 9:39

With calculations, a calculated risk.

SPEAKER_00 9:42

Yeah. And so that was a case where you saw something that what hadn't been might have been passed over by and you say you were just an intern at that point? Okay. Yes. This is great. We'll make we'll make we'll make the business focused decision about the people who uh who missed it. So you saw this thing that that others had had maybe passed on and not and not seen the passion in uh uh and and and the uniqueness and and and through that excitement push it and then and then you you recognize that uh learning a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 10:10

And we didn't go over the patent budget.

SPEAKER_00 10:12

Oh, also important.

SPEAKER_01 10:14

We grabbed the budget for it.

SPEAKER_00 10:16

And I can and I hope I'm not stealing uh future uh uh future talking points here. I saw this when we worked together at Sparta. Uh the priority of of focusing on the inventor, on the entrepreneur, and are are they are they showing up with a passion? Are they are they working on something that they care about or not? Was much more of a predictor of success than necessarily some rigorous objective standard. And and I saw you embody that in your in your role at uh research and innovation.

SPEAKER_04 10:43

So thank you.

SPEAKER_00 10:45

Anything else around that kind of a that that early experience of uh of of the perhaps observing more business than people decisions that that comes in, or or do you want to talk about a uh another example of something more where explicitly people folks, where maybe the business decision was a bad one?

SPEAKER_01 11:03

Oh, but it could be. And you know, when I would meet with investors who wanted to talk specifically about early stage technologies that come out of universities that are tied to the faculty because they know better than anyone how to practice the invention or create the work or reproduce the results. I did have more than one, so I'm not calling anyone out. I did have a few that said, I will not work with a faculty inventor. They will not lead the startup, they will not be a part of the startup. And and we could debate all day about different roles in a startup. And to not be involved at all, I had to ask, well, why? Do you have a bad experience? Like, what do I need to learn? Maybe you're right, you know?

SPEAKER_04 11:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:45

And they said, Well, this it's that simple. It's almost as simple as one, two, three. Um, they don't know how to pitch. They don't handle rejection very well. And they don't know how to scale something. They're good at starting things and new ideas and new things, but not scaling it. And I honestly sat there and I'm like, okay, I I've been in this long enough, right? I have seen faculty who pitch themselves and their life's work to that point, usually in grad school and through a postdoctor, postdoctoral position, right? Which now is longer than ever.

SPEAKER_05 12:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:21

Um, pitch their life's work and convince a top-tier university to give them a quarter of a million dollars or even more now, startup package for equipment to give them space and enough to, you know, salaries for some graduate students to start a laboratory to start an operation. In the hopes that they will be self-sustaining in give or take six years. Sure. And nine out of ten of those research proposals that those faculty members have written in that time have been rejected.

SPEAKER_04 12:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:50

They I promise you, they take it better than you think. And then what, you know, lastly I just said, what if I introduced you to, you know, a handful of entrepreneurs that have what are called research centers and institutes that have to work with other departments and serve the public directly, some institutes, you know, providing interventions or or services. And they have 80 to 100 employees. And I mean, I could just see them go, oh, I had no idea, you know. And so I had, you know, a sales responsibility um it throughout my career, right?

SPEAKER_04 13:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:25

I've hardly ever, you know, here, look at US patent number XXX, XXY, right? Like I've never said that. Hey, come meet this person. Come to their lab. See the widget itself and what and what I'm doing is head fake, right? Meet the person.

SPEAKER_04 13:39

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:40

The person is what sells things. People want to work with people that they like or have that rapport with.

unknown 13:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:47

Whether you like it or not. And it's the same thing with the faculty and telling them no. You don't tell them no, you just say, This is great. How about looking at another market or please publish this one? Because we probably won't have a market in time for you know the patent it'll be expired by then. Yeah. But come back. And my goal was always repeat customers. And even as a leader, if I see repeat customers and I'm getting compliments about, you know, my staff, that is the sign of success. And the numbers reflected that. They just did.

SPEAKER_00 14:27

So when you were faced with investors who, for whatever reasons, had decided they didn't want to work with faculty, uh, they had told stories to themselves about, you know, I'll put a bunch of words in their mouths. These ivory tower academics couldn't handle in the real world. Um meanwhile, you know, a nine out of ten failure rate for a pitch reflects a pretty sure uh average VC success rates for investments.

SPEAKER_01 14:55

But it hasn't changed because that's exactly what I've always known.

SPEAKER_00 14:58

Uh yeah, it's I think it's higher than that. Um I yeah, I haven't seen what uh what the flood of money into AI is doing. I I my gut says it's gonna go higher than that.

SPEAKER_01 15:10

Um I would backpack.

SPEAKER_00 15:12

Uh take that back. That that's really insightful about finding, and he used the word head fake, which has a certain uh you know, I pulled the wool over their eyes on it, but it's it's really about finding the finding the connection of what is what is the underlying incentive? What is the underlying motivation? What is the underlying restraint in the investor's mind? How can we lower that barrier just enough to get them to meet the people and to to create that connection to see the potential that you see in things? It's powerful.

SPEAKER_01 15:46

Very. The technology could solve all of our problems tomorrow, but it's not going to do it if, you know, the people that are forming that partnership, again, nothing's a DIY project, are not going to I don't want to say get along, but if they don't have the same priorities, if it's not the right team, right? Yeah. I mean, even if you talk about a sports team and building a team, it's got to be the right team. There's different skill sets for different parts of the operation.

SPEAKER_00 16:12

Yeah. How the team interacts is one of the things that I spend a lot of time focusing on. So you're uh you're speaking right to the choir on that one. Before I go, uh before I take the bait and go too deep into uh uh team structure and coaching organization, um, I'd love to I know for our second kind of point of conversation where you explicitly were focusing on solving for people, um, there's a s there was an example of you saw a struggle, uh, you saw a challenge and a problem. And it's uh and and am I right that you took it from your role in the in the university to all right, it's my turn of bat. I'm gonna uh I'm gonna I'm gonna solve this myself.

SPEAKER_01 16:53

I've never put it that way. I'm gonna steal that now.

SPEAKER_00 16:55

You got it.

SPEAKER_01 16:56

Sports analogy, I should have come up with that. I have years. This is what happens when you're too close to something, right? There you go. Yep. Yes, you've got it right on the nose. I was very fortunate to have the opportunity to work at Florida State University, my alma mater, coming straight out of law school. Again, there was an internship in there where I explored technology transfer, but I really did fall in love with it.

SPEAKER_04 17:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:16

And I was lucky. Well, I earned it too, right? I had a dual position, both the legal office and in the office of research. So again, I had that legal protect the university and negotiate hat, but I also had the geek out fun, market this, get this out, manage the portfolio and don't spend all of our money. Um, because of that, I had a bird's eye view of a lot of operations I might not have had if I was in one house or the other.

SPEAKER_04 17:42

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 17:43

And because of that, I would interact sometimes with the same faculty member on two different things, sometimes in the same day. I won't say same day, but like the same week. Like here's, you know, this sponsored research agreement where the IP terms are kind of, you know, getting flushed out still. And here's this new invention, let's geek out over. And so things as simple as, and I'm trying not to go too much down like a technical rabbit hole, but university faculty are allowed to consult under what is called their approved outside activities or outside time. And that's because that benefits the reputation of themselves, but also the university. And to me, and I will preach this all day long, is a gateway into the university. However, because it is the faculty's individual effort outside of the university, I, as university counsel could not negotiate their consulting agreement or represent them, even if the university's interests were, you know, in being affected in the agreement. Yep. Um and I had to explain, you know, my client is the university and the board of trustees. And I would watch these same brilliant people that were geeking out and starting to, you know, buy into this activity as worthwhile, just either not do the consulting, and sometimes it's major corporations where, like I said, remember, if you just meet this person, things will go to the next level. I mean, of course, you're still gonna have a consulting project, see how it goes.

SPEAKER_04 19:09

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:10

But my guess is at a national laboratory, especially that we had there, the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, yeah, you're probably gonna be pretty impressed because they break world records for fun, like on a regular basis with large amounts of federal funding. Like someone's already invested in them. Again, that's you know part of the story. Someone has invested a lot of dollars into these people, I can almost guarantee you they can solve your problem probably rather quickly, and that's the industry timeline.

SPEAKER_04 19:35

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 19:36

So we just kept seeing faculty either just not doing it or unknowingly signing terms that were not favorable to themselves, let alone the university. I also would see in the research foundation, the industry-sponsored research side, the industry was just absolutely asking for, like in unison, flexible IP terms. And I could talk for hours about jointly developed IP. Okay. But the short of it is I would attend meetings with faculty and engineers from a very large company. And there would be another meeting and another meeting and another meeting. I went and see innovation. And I had a faculty member say, I think I can solve their problem. But I don't want to tell them because I'll get in trouble with the university if I don't disclose it here first. And so my now co-founders also worked at the university with me, and they had the same, you know, high-level view of what industry was doing, what the MAGLAB was doing. And we just said, there's gotta be a better way to do this. Um, there's companies saying, like, we can't even get an NDA with you because you won't agree to, you know, jurisdiction outside the state of Florida now being in the legal office. No, we can't wave sovereign and near you. That is a thing. That's not someone being annoying or putting red tape on something to put red tape on something. Right. I saw both sides, just like my legal brand was trained to do, and I said, let's brainstorm something that we can do. We had no idea it would probably be a separate entity, but we can accept at macro the jurisdiction in New York, London, you know, you name it. We're we're negotiable. Yeah. Um, if the activity's happening, you know, in Tallahassee, we're gonna ask for Tallahassee. But just just like a regular business. Just we're we will negotiate it. It's negotiable. Yeah. And so that is that's the language industry speaks. Not necessarily one way or the other, but we're gonna talk about it. And these projects are different.

SPEAKER_00 21:36

Yeah. And you're still you're still in your university role at this point.

SPEAKER_01 21:40

Yes, I was. I was still in the university role at this point, which actually was very scary. Like this could be bad. Could I do this? Are you sure you want me to do this? But it was we were just balancing ideas, you know, because again, just like talking about faculty, you know, and their entrepreneurial. Spirit. People were focused on the systems like academia, not necessarily the people.

SPEAKER_04 22:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:04

And so, you know, and of course there's going to be resistance. You know, we were very cognizant. We're not changing the system. Because you can't change it if you're a public university. Most of it can't change. Right. We're building onto it.

SPEAKER_04 22:16

Right.

SPEAKER_01 22:16

We're taking this, you can't, and you shouldn't. Please don't start.

SPEAKER_04 22:21

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 22:21

We'll do it. So that was that was my crazy idea in short. So that way faculty can do their consulting, which is a gateway to the university.

SPEAKER_04 22:28

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 22:28

And that way no one had to sit and play, I call it poker, but I have an engineering background. And all we want to do is sit at a table on whiteboard and have fun. And it wasn't happening.

SPEAKER_00 22:39

Yeah. The obvious question how did it turn out? What what happened next?

SPEAKER_01 22:43

It worked.

SPEAKER_00 22:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:44

It worked.

SPEAKER_00 22:45

And how'd you know?

SPEAKER_01 22:46

And that's where I can't talk a lot about clients, but there is, and if you Google MagCorp, the public client I can talk about is Phillips. Uh, we are their partner to develop the next generation of their MRI machines.

SPEAKER_02 22:58

Oh, wonderful.

SPEAKER_01 22:59

And to go back, to circle back a little bit about just selling the people.

SPEAKER_02 23:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:03

At the university, we were giving tours of the Mag Lab to companies and showing off these giant magnets. Um there's a 45 Tesla magnet there that's about the size of a school bus, and now they have a 32 Tesla superconducting magnet that's about the size of this microphone. And they did that in 25 years. So when I say when we bet on people, I mean it, we bet on the person that builds a 45 Tesla magnet to be able to solve the problems of industry because we had a company, and it's not Apple, but that said, I need the 10 tiny magnets, you know, out of this device of mine now. And we we either have to buy from China or we have to source them somewhere else, or recycle them in a different way because we're just pulling them out by hand, and it's like we were showing machines and we didn't re I didn't realize it. But then we said, okay, come talk to the person that wind the magnets. And they would geek out. Geek out. Yep. And I still I've still had, you know, even later in my career, some folks that are new to this, you know, they're excited about the visit, but they don't know what to do. They haven't, you know, made a sale like that to industry before, right? They've obviously sold themselves to university and publications and their peers, but someone did ask me, how do I know if it's going well? If you're geeking out, it's going well. And it could be another no for now. Like, yeah, we don't have the funds for this now, but I'm gonna go to my next meeting and next quarter, I'll let you know if we have funds for this because that's you know how industry works. And so that's yes, it's it's been successful.

SPEAKER_00 24:30

That's fantastic. I think this is as good a time of any, uh as any to kind of give a a a pitch. What you you've described the path to MagCorp. What does uh what does MagCorp do? What do you want what do you want people who haven't heard of you to know uh that that you can do for them?

SPEAKER_01 24:47

If you have a pain point um and you're learning about magnetism, we will help. And I say it I don't mean to be facetious. Nope, nope um again, I study material science and engineering. Yeah. I think we spent about a week on magnetism. Here's the types of magnetic materials, here's a hero's theresis loop. Okay, on to the next thing.

SPEAKER_04 25:09

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 25:10

And I say this all the time, and everybody's like, you're right. I mean, there's actual magnetic engineers. You can design a magnetic circuit, right? Right hand rule, that's the other thing you learn. I think that's the third thing you learned in your done.

SPEAKER_00 25:19

Political science major here.

SPEAKER_01 25:20

So you're Well, if you have an electric current, you have a magnetic field, and vice versa. You can actually basically make magic happen with magnetic circuits. And if that's something that you know your engineers aren't comfortable with, a lot of our clients are not. Um, and especially in the beginning, a lot of them were were in FDA, and the FDA consultant was like, uh, magnets, flux, huh? Pacemakers? Um, I think that's bad. And that's, you know, that's what I would like folks to know. If it's anything magnetic. Permanent magnets, resistive magnets, superconducting, hybrid.

SPEAKER_00 25:55

Yeah. Call us. Yep. And you'll and you connect with the the university experts who spend way more than 10 minutes uh on it. I love it.

SPEAKER_01 26:08

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 26:09

Cool. Throughout all of these, there's been that entrepreneurial spirit. We've said it explicitly, but it's been incredibly implicit in everything uh that you've talked about. See a problem, solve a problem. Um how did that uh intersect in what may have been the uh uh the platonic ideal of all of these things uh when you got to San Jose State?

SPEAKER_01 26:36

San Jose State, that was so hard for me to decide. I mean, I knew I wanted to do it.

SPEAKER_04 26:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:42

It was just, you know, I had started this company, and thank goodness my co-founders were understanding. They said we still need the legal expertise. San Jose State University said, no, we like your legal expertise. We want you to keep active in it. And, you know, keep it's Silicon Valley. Everybody's got more than one thing going. I mean, they didn't even blink. They're like, no, we want you to keep, you know, just make sure there's no business development, right? I'm going on a conflict of interest, Bill, you can stop me anytime. But obviously, I was tasked with bringing industry, you know, to partner with SJSU, San Jose State University. I wasn't going to conflict with Mac Corp, but if I was just, you know, doing legal work for MAC Corp, they had no problem with it. I didn't have a legal hat in San Jose State University. I wasn't even barred in California. Cool. So I got to basically just create and operate. They said, come start a new office of innovation and build this ecosystem. You know, we have a vision for it, but this is going to be yours.

SPEAKER_04 27:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:37

And you're gonna hire out a team. And I'm like, oh my goodness, I can do that. I just did it. And it's, you know, I did, to be honest with you, miss the kinetics of the university. That's sure what they are. They're not just buildings, they're people. Yeah, they're groups of the smartest people gathering to exchange ideas. And so I I did it. I made the jump, went all the way across the country, no regrets. Um, I do miss my team a lot, but that was a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_00 28:07

Yeah. Tell me a little more because you've you've said that this is the favorite story that you like to tell around decision.

SPEAKER_01 28:12

This is the favorite, okay. This is one of my favorite stories that I can tell.

unknown 28:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:17

So I get there. Yeah. Uh in June 2022. And we have made out, you know, maybe not the groundwork, but the overall goals, right?

SPEAKER_02 28:28

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 28:29

And then I think I was in a meeting, and well, you're gonna launch this incubator in the fall. Well, okay, the fall is uh about a month and a half away. But the university was very, very good. The leadership was very good about introducing me to recent graduates that had products on the marketplace. And SPHU is a primarily undergraduate institution. So what I've been talking about all the way up until this point in my career is typically faculty focused. Gotcha. Um, because they bring in the resources, and so the resources go back to them. Um, they bring in the research dollars, and those will go back into protecting the IP that comes out of that research. Sure. SPHU was focused on students. That was exciting, but that was nerve-wracking to me. Yeah. At this point in my career, I had a sense of the pain points of faculty and industry at that point, right? I had hopefully solved some of those. But students in 2022, I'm not even gonna try or pretend. Michael Ashley, Michael Mash Ashley, we had a lot of Michaels in the office either. Comes on from the College of Business, the Lucas College of Business to take this on. I'm like, great, he's tapped into students of today and what they do. And so we would talk, you know, with these recent graduates, and one of them even had a product that SGSU bought, a parking app. Um we all know how much you need those, a large urban campus in particular. So I mean the university was vending these people and these products already. Yeah, you know, during co we found that during COVID, a lot of these students coded.

SPEAKER_04 30:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:02

If COVID happened when I was 18 and 20, because I'd probably be playing video games. I'm gonna be honest. I just have to be honest, right?

SPEAKER_03 30:08

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:09

And no, these folks just couldn't not stop creating, and that's that's what I bet on. That's what we bet on. And so I love telling the story because this is the first non-legal job, right, responsibility I had. I still had Mad Corp. I didn't stop practicing.

SPEAKER_02 30:25

Yep, like some people think.

SPEAKER_01 30:27

Definitely didn't stop practicing. And because of that, though, yeah, when MASH says, I want to make because we had a short timeline, the launch event's going to be basically the customer discovery, and I'm thrilled, right? The entrepreneur in me is loving this. This is great. Like we thought maybe 30 people would show up.

SPEAKER_04 30:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:48

Turns out 100 people show up in person and another 200. Well, I think a hundred online, but 300 people are speaking peed, and we were wow. Oh so the mashed, and we have these awesome whiteboarding sessions, right? That's my favorite part of being a leader is that I get to host these safe spaces. And I think it's good for professional development. You have to learn how to professionally have fun.

SPEAKER_04 31:09

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 31:10

And, you know, say what needs to be said, but professionally.

SPEAKER_04 31:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:15

But this is just more of a fun, one of the first whiteboarding meetings we had. And you know, we came up with some crazy stuff like over the years, right? But this is the first part-up like whiteboarding session of what does an incubator look like? What do we want? We knew it wasn't going to be, we weren't going to be landlords to undergraduate tenants. That's not feasible. That's not going to benefit anyone. And so MASH says, What I'm going to do is I want a piece of paper on every chair. And now we're looking at like over 100 chairs. And I'm like, okay. We're going to have everyone write their hopes and dreams and wishes for what they want to get out of this incubator. I mean, I mean a thousand percent.

SPEAKER_04 31:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:48

And then he said what he wanted to do next. He said they're going to fold them into paper planes. And for those of you at home, if you want to look at Sparta, we worked with Marcom to come up with this beautiful logo of a paper plane because it shows basically the prototype of an early idea.

unknown 32:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:03

Covers both the arts and sciences, but also each plane is going to be different, right?

SPEAKER_04 32:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:08

Tell three different people to make a paper plane and get three different paper planes.

SPEAKER_04 32:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:12

And they all function differently, they all look different. And he said, we're going to toss them around the room. And I'm like, no, you know. Maybe it's because I was new versus an attorney, but you know, my brain thinks in like visuals and movie quotes. That's just how it works. So I'm hearing, you know, shoot your eye out. You'll shoot your eye out. And as I'm going through the film in my head, I mean, the people that said Ralphie would shoot his eye out in a Christmas delay were right. They weren't wrong. Ralphie shot his eye out. So I'm just, you know, I'm in that cascade of what could's the worst that could happen. And I'm like, oh, here's this new person, Florida woman, right? That we've hired for her legal expertise. And we've already got a freshman, you know, in the, you know, emergency room, you know, holding their eye. And I just laugh because, you know, there's always that give and take, that balance of, you know, yes and no to your team, right? This is brand new, right? This is the first time I'm kind of like, well, we're not gonna throw the paper plants.

SPEAKER_04 33:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:07

But then we negotiate, right?

SPEAKER_04 33:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:09

Well, why don't we just hold them up and then just gently toss them? Okay, all right. We'll hold them up and we'll gently toss them. But we're all facing the bull, we're all facing the stage and throwing them toward the stage. So if it hits someone, it hits someone in the back of the head. I think that's it.

SPEAKER_04 33:23

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 33:24

Right? Yeah. But I well, I I think, you know, I wanted to show my team. I don't know if I did this on purpose at the time, but like that's just who I am, right? But I think it showed them like she's not gonna say no to things like unreasonably, right? But she's also not gonna let us really cause a lot of ruckus in trouble either.

SPEAKER_04 33:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:38

I I'm not gonna speak for my team, but I would like to think, right, that that's you know, but leadership, it's about that give and take.

SPEAKER_04 33:45

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 33:46

And I say let them play, but you know, there's rules. Yeah. And I actually had a mentor when I was at FSU, uh, Betty Southern, who told me, you know, you take a vehicle out on the road every day, the vehicle has brakes. You don't just accelerate as hard as fast as you can as you go. There's there's laws, you stop, it's for your own good and your own safety. And that actually also taught me how to, you know, negotiate or deliver what could be bad news, you know. Like, no, this is a stop sign. No. It's not a take your driver's license away, no.

SPEAKER_00 34:16

Right. Did you now and I watched you and Mesh work together. Did you all kind of organically or explicitly come to the the roles of push and appropriate break?

SPEAKER_01 34:31

Uh and and how he'll tell you that all day. He'll tell you that all day. I won't put words in his mouth, but he did he did say some words um at my going away party that he was grateful that I said, let's just try it. And obviously the blue stop signs.

SPEAKER_02 34:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:46

We're trying it, and we'll girl block.

SPEAKER_02 34:49

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 34:49

And that's that's entrepreneurship.

SPEAKER_02 34:51

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 34:52

That's a soft launch. That, you know, customer discovery.

SPEAKER_02 34:55

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 34:56

Milestones and and keep going from there. And he was always right. I was it was very hard to say no to him. Yeah. Well, the one or two times I think I said no to him, and he can correct me if I'm wrong. It's just we just didn't have the funds. But he would always have another idea that I could go to leadership with, or, you know, a donor with. Yeah. Always.

SPEAKER_00 35:15

Yeah. Investors want to see rarely will feel excited about a single uh entrepreneur. They want to see a a partnership, uh, at least a co-founder pair. One to show that they're they're that you can actually work with someone else, at least one other person. But additionally, because that dynamic needs to be there. Um, I love the car metaphor. It has a break and an accelerator. Um and it's not because one is always going to be right or predominantly right. It's to it it's the friction there is where some of the great ideas come from. Like, like you just said, MASH would always have a backup thing or or another idea, or reacting to a possible constraint is how the the better idea forms um and and and gets in through that early testing while pushing out to get to customers as fast as possible.

SPEAKER_01 36:07

No, it is, and we had to move fast with Sparta.

SPEAKER_00 36:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:10

And to come back to the paper plane story, we sat and read over a hundred paper planes. That was a good team bonding experience too, because we were all new to this.

SPEAKER_04 36:17

I bet.

SPEAKER_01 36:18

Um, and Matt has said it himself, you know, it wasn't about money. We, I mean, we really kind of thought they would say, Can you connect me to investors? Because a lot of them were far along.

SPEAKER_04 36:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:28

And had users.

SPEAKER_04 36:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:30

Um, maybe not revenue, but had users. And they said, I want to meet other students. Yeah. Or I want to take my coding skills and see if I can help an entrepreneur to see if I can do it and to see if I like entrepreneurship.

SPEAKER_03 36:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:46

And vice versa. Like I have an idea, but I don't want to code it.

SPEAKER_03 36:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:49

And then it evolved into, you know, I need mentorship. I'm in mentorship from someone who likes me that came out in our EDA town hall meetings. And um the SGSU, 10 out of 10, would bet on again. Um, talk about betting on people. They wanted to change the world um in only the ways they could.

SPEAKER_00 37:07

Love it. One of the kind of consistent themes that I've I'm also hearing through all this is an understanding and an emphasis on growth individually and uh organizationally, and and I mean what you just said it, wanting to change the world. Where did you where do you think you got that drive from, that that primacy of growing people, growing yourself, growing the organizations into new things?

SPEAKER_01 37:33

Oh, I always say I'm lucky. This one I was lucky. Okay. I learned a lot of things, don't get me wrong. I'm getting better at, you know, marketing myself and being nice to myself, right? But I was lucky. This one I hit the lottery. When I was in law school at Florida State, I did approach the tech transfer office for the intern position without knowing who was actually there. So there's a gentleman by the name of Jack Sams.

SPEAKER_04 37:56

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 37:57

He's no longer with us, unfortunately, but he was at the end of his career and they knew that he had so much knowledge. And you could Google him, Jack Sams, he's in some documentaries out of Silicon Valley, if you catch my drift. Um, he was an IBM executive that was tasked with uh creating the first OS for the PC, like the PC. Okay. And had the wherewithal to know he couldn't do it. Yep. And went and found Bill Gates, an 18-year-old Bill Gates. And they said he's irreplaceable. We're looking for someone to just be a sponge to absorb all of his knowledge. Wow. All of it.

SPEAKER_04 38:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:32

And since we know you want to be a lawyer, you need to go talk to, you know, the research attorney, the general counsel, and, you know, have fun. But but your first, my first position was learn everything from Jack Sam's. And I I couldn't put it all down in a library, right? I couldn't put it on a server. I couldn't, I got very lucky, but I took that with me.

SPEAKER_04 39:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:01

Um, in Mad Corp, I was more of a project manager in the beginning, working with the faculty I worked with. I wasn't developing them, right? I I didn't have to motivate them or inspire them or get their buy-in, right? SJSU, this is a new point in my career where I'm learning to do that. But I I took from my mentors, right?

SPEAKER_05 39:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:20

And would take my staff out to lunch. What are your goals professionally? Um, you know, what what do you want to do? I mean, a lot of folks don't necessarily start in universities, period. And since this was a new operation, I had a lot of, you know, of folks that had either just started their careers or they were just working at a university for the first time. So I wanted to just basically emulate my mentors and let them do things and shadow them. And then when it's when I clearly know they are capable and it was faster than I thought. Yeah. Which is perfect. Um, because I had to go build something else usually. The first two years was building incubator. S BDC. Keep going, attack transfer industry, research alliances.

SPEAKER_04 40:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:06

Um that's that's what I took with me is just to let them do it. I'm not holding their hand, but I'm there.

SPEAKER_04 40:14

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 40:15

But then they're free. I had a lot of freedom. A lot of freedom. And and I I knew that even early when I was at FSU and you know, always wanted to pay them back for that. I hope, you know, MacReop did that. Um, but that that it that meant a lot to me. And so I I'm happy to pay it forward and just here's all the knowledge that I can't talk about. Yep. Just take it. I would have just have a lot of, like I said, lunches and coffees where I just talk about difficult things or just, you know, what I've seen at universities in general. They're just a different system.

SPEAKER_04 40:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:50

And how, you know, don't worry if someone, you know, asks you to do something like this, they probably aren't resourced very well either. I said, you know, but it it's a large, like any large organization, you're gonna want to have, you know, relationships and partners across because you're gonna need someone one day too.

SPEAKER_04 41:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:08

Luck, growth, sharing.

SPEAKER_01 41:10

That's where we got accelerated serendipity, our original tagline for the startup incubator. And that shout out goes to Barbara Ransom.

SPEAKER_00 41:17

Oh, I love that one.

SPEAKER_01 41:18

From the NSF who was visiting as a program officer. And we just took her on a little tour of the Spartup Incubator, and she's like, You should use accelerater. Like, can we use that? Do we have your permission? She's like, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 41:30

That's fantastic.

SPEAKER_01 41:31

Yep. That that's what it's about. If you keep putting, and that's what I tell everyone, whether it's an entrepreneur or a member of my team, keep going. Keep putting yourself out there.

SPEAKER_04 41:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:41

Because tech transfer is a lot like entrepreneurship. No one thinks you're doing enough. Oh, you didn't talk to this person over here. Well, no, I'm one person. And I've talked to three or four people today. I'll get to them later, right? But yes, it's that never enough. And I try to ease that as much as possible, my staff. Yes, you are enough. And here's the goals. But next year's goals are gonna be bigger because growth, that growth mindset, yeah, is the success mindset.

SPEAKER_00 42:05

Yeah. Love it. Thank you so much for going deep on all those uh and and indulging the extra questions as well. Um, you ready for our our our little fun lightning round to wrap it up? Perfect. Yes. Uh Abby, what was your first job?

SPEAKER_01 42:21

My first job, it's surprised to no one, um, was at the Fort Lauderdale Museum of Discovery and Science, doing science demonstrations on the floor. And then I did spend a summer in the IMAX theater. Oh, nice. And I have uh quite a few movies committed to memory that I probably don't need to see again. But I I I was an IMAX nerd too.

SPEAKER_00 42:41

I get it, I get it. Um we've uh we've enjoyed the the IMAX and the tech interactive here in San Jose. Yes. Uh we've talked a lot about some really great leadership skills and perspectives, but what's one leadership skill that you wish you'd learned a little earlier in your career?

SPEAKER_04 43:00

Being a mentor.

SPEAKER_01 43:04

Someone told me that I'm at the stage of my career where you should be both a mentor and a mentee, and I never thought of it that way. I mean, I had even had leadership training, you name it, not that it was, you know, inadequate, but that I just never thought of it that way. No one presented it to me that way.

SPEAKER_00 43:21

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:22

You think of one or the other, or maybe that was just my brain.

SPEAKER_00 43:24

Sure. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:25

Um, but basically, you're doing it wrong if at a certain point you're not both. Yeah. And that period of time is probably gonna be significantly long, right? So I was so busy building things, a startup, new innovation office, that I didn't think about it. And when I started thinking about it, it's like, where have you been? You have so much. And then there's also the, you know, let's be honest, there's not a lot of stories I can get specific on starting as a lawyer. But just like coming on this podcast, I I've gotten much better at being general.

SPEAKER_00 43:57

I love it. Um What's the biggest myth about leadership that you've heard?

SPEAKER_01 44:04

I have heard that it's lonely at the top. I think there's some truth to that. And I don't want to say top like it's something and I wasn't running a university by any stretch. But I think you you just have to reframe it. That your your network, well, my mentors from Florida State are still my mentors, right?

SPEAKER_04 44:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:22

And they're leaders, and now they mentor me on leadership. But you know, I have to expand that to other folks. You don't necessarily go to the happy hour with your staff anymore, especially if you came from that staff and you know are still there. Um co-founders, we always go on happy hour together for obvious reasons, right? But not necessarily maybe early employees, you're probably still doing it, but yeah. Um you need your own safe space um to have those conversations about leadership and just to pass ideas around each other. So it's not lonely. But then when you go, you know, to your next staff meeting the next morning, you're like, oh, I can't, you know, hang out with them. Obviously, you know, I will take them out for pizza after we crushed an event or something, but it's not the same.

SPEAKER_00 45:04

Yeah, I like that a lot. I I I talk with a lot of leaders about kind of the dynamics of that and what has to be intentional around uh relating the perception or experience of loneliness at the top uh and how you and how you still find that connection. All right, what's the worst professional advice you've ever received?

SPEAKER_01 45:22

The worst professional advice I've ever received. I mean, I threw in the garbage as soon as I heard it. If the other party isn't steaming mad at you, then you didn't get the best deal for your clients.

SPEAKER_00 45:36

Ugh, yeah, that's terrible advice. All right, final one. Not about leadership or business. Uh, but what's a great media recommendation for our listeners? Books, podcasts, shows, movies, anything that you're that you're liking these days?

SPEAKER_03 45:47

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 45:48

Well, I spent this past weekend playing MLB The Show 26. It was early access. I think it was released yesterday. Okay. Yes. So I'm a huge baseball fan, huge video game fan. Nice. I get to turn my brain off. I don't think I'm working, but it's kind of the same.

SPEAKER_00 46:03

I love it. All right. Uh Abby, thank you so much for indulging in the uh in the lightning round. Uh for everyone as a reminder, Abby Queel is a patent attorney and compliance officer who co-founded MagCorp, a magnet technology company. Before Magcorp, she served as the director of innovation at San Jose State University. We'll have this linked in our show notes, but where uh where can people find you and what else do you want our listeners to check out?

SPEAKER_01 46:26

Oh, you can find me on LinkedIn and you can check out our website at magneticscorp.com.

SPEAKER_00 46:32

Awesome. Thank you. Thank you, Abby. Uh, and uh follow, like, and subscribe to Bet on People on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. And if you want to learn more about how we think about leadership here at Uta, visit uta.io slash executive coaching. I'm Keegan Evans, and this is Beton People.