#172 - Finding Closure After Shutting Down the Business

Jerry Colonna
I think closure is actually a process. I think closure is not something that just, you flip a switch and then all of a sudden you know those feelings. And I think that if we look back and we look at the process, it's about revisiting and remembering. And I'm a huge fan of taking that word remember and hyphenating it, remembering that which has been disconnected. And I think that retelling your story remembers that, which over time, because of the conflicts that you were feeling, got dismembered.

And that part of closure is pulling it back together so that we can then look back with fresh eyes and say what actually happened. Welcome to the reboot podcast. We are so glad you're here.

Joao Barrows
I've shut down three companies in my career, each time more painful, more dreadful than the last. And each time it made me wonder, what was I doing with my life? Who did I think I was? What will become of me? Will I ever become anything?

And each time, eventually, with time, I learned and I grew. I'm thrilled to welcome a longtime friend of reboot to the podcast today, who's here to share his story of beginnings and endings, transitions and all that he learned about life, leadership, and himself along the way. His name is Joao Barrows and he made the amazing transition for professor to entrepreneur to CEO, back to professor shut a company down along the way. I had the pleasure of meeting him through a reboot bootcamp and was blown away by his energy, his enthusiasm, his authenticity. So it's my pleasure to introduce him now to all of you for a raw and direct conversation with Jerry.

Enjoy.

Speaker C
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Jerry Colonna
Well, good morning. Well, good morning for me, good afternoon. Good evening for you. Almost evening. Yes.

Joao Barros
Hi, Jerry. How are you? I am very well, thank you. How are you? I'm great.

Jerry Colonna
I woke up this morning and we've got blanketed with snow, and it's so. Different from where I am right now.

Joao Barros
Well, let's start off. Welcome, Joao, to the podcast. Every time I see you, my heart expands. I have to tell you that. Thank you.

Jerry Colonna
So we have known each other for what, seven or eight years perhaps? Yes, about that. 2012, August, I moved to Mountain View, California from Portugal. From Portugal, exactly. So I was a professor in Portugal, and Portugal was hit by a really bad financial crisis with the notation agencies all downgrading Portugal, and we were below junk, as they said, in terms of our plants.

Joao Barros
And what happened was that we had actually spent ten years investing in science and technology and building up university institutes and departments and so on. And actually everything was actually going great from that perspective. Also for me, as a young professor, but from one day to the other, the country went bankrupt and I had a 23% salary cut and all my students were giving up, but they were just saying, there's no future for science and technology here in Portugal. We have to immigrate. And so I felt we have to do something.

And so I actually invited my research group to come to my house for a Christmas party of about 1516 people. And everyone was so depressed. I felt like I have to do something. And so I told them, 2012 is going to be the year where we're going to take all of these amazing technologies that you've been developing in the lab and we're going to take them to the market. And I have no idea how to do that.

In January, we are going to start. And suddenly you could see the energy level of the students going up. So this was in 2011, December 20, eleven. And then in March 2012, we launched two startups. So venium, the one I ended up leading for about ten years, and streambolico, which was led by three of my PhD students.

So that's how it started. And then after raising series A in August 2014, that's why I know it's about eight years, actually longer. It's going to be ten years this year, Jerry. Actually, ten years. And then basically, I had my first board meeting, which now, in hindsight, went really, really badly because I had no idea what I was doing.

And my investors at the time, so Omalek and Rohit Sharma at Trueventures were very, very kind after the meeting. And they came to me and said, you know, you're not doing anything wrong. Let us just establish that. But we have found that CEO's who have a coach perform typically much better than CEO's who don't. And I asked immediately the question that I always ask.

So, okay, so who is the best CEO coach? And they said, jerry Colon. And I actually didn't know who you were, but I went online and I saw your talk about the hairs on. Fire standing still while your hair's on fire. Exactly.

Exactly. And I noticed in one of your interviews that you had said that you actually didn't like when VC or investors came to you and said, can you fix my CEO? But instead, you much preferred that founders came to you themselves and said, hey, Jerry, I'm ready to work. And so a few months later, I remember vividly, I was sitting in the plane and I was completely depressed because I felt like a total fraud. I'm a professor.

I'm not an entrepreneur. Why am I doing this? This is crazy. I moved my family to Silicon Valley and I have no clue what I'm doing. And so I started writing, first, a little bit of journaling.

I thought, okay, I'm going to write to Jerry Colonna. And so I started to, Jerry, my name is Johann, I'm a founder and I'm ready to work, which is just out of your interview. But then I couldn't stop writing a really, really long email. I don't think I've ever written such a long first email to anyone in my life. And you replied really fast, and then I was working with reboot, and then we did a boot camp, and it has just been just a wonderful, wonderful friendship, I want to say, because over the years, we just got to know each other, and I really cherish your teachings, but most of all, I also cherish you as a human being.

So thank you very much for that. Well, I just want to say I didn't hear that I didn't know the facts of the December 2011 collapse. And I have always loved and admired you from that first email, because you opened up with your heart and you leaned into the work, and everybody always says to me, well, what does it mean to do the work? It means leaning into the tough spot of, oh, shit, I don't know what I'm doing, and all of the feelings that come from that. And, you know, for folks listening, you have an incredibly impressive resume, both as a musician and as a scientist and as a human, as an adult.

Jerry Colonna
And I know all about your backstory about what? How hard you've worked to help Portugal, and I can't wait to tell the story of where you are now. We'll get there. But I did not know, and it is completely fitting that a huge part of why you launched the two startups, but in particular, venium, was to actually provide employment and opportunities and economic prosperity to people you gave a shit about. So yet another reason to love you, buddy.

Joao Barros
Thank you. You know, I felt very strongly at the moment that I was responsible for that group of people. And in a way, that's how I was raised. So I am the oldest of three, and since I was young, and before you ask me about my father, I'm going to tell you, you're onto all my tricks.

But that's how I was raised. I was the oldest, and I was responsible for my younger siblings, and I was responsible for also public service. I mean, in a way, three of my grandparents were doctors in the national healthcare service. My father was a judge, my mother was a high school teacher. So it was all about public service.

So it was not a coincidence that I became a professor first, before I was an entrepreneur, because it just felt. Felt natural. But at that point in time, it was the mix of this real need for hope, having something to aspire to in Portugal that students didn't need to immigrate, that they could think, okay, we can actually create our jobs somehow. And here's how. And so I wanted to learn how to do that.

I had been exposed to world class research at top us schools, and what I realized was that in certain areas of technology, certainly not all of them, but in certain niches, the research groups in Portugal were doing work that was at least as good as what I was seeing in those institutions. But Americans were 20 times better at creating companies and products and bringing those technologies to customers in a commercially viable way. And so I wanted to learn that. And so that hopefully by learning that, I could help others, then replicate that and prove that it was possible to do it out of Portugal. And the only way to learn entrepreneurship, I think, is to start companies and start somewhere.

And so it was the confluence of all of those things, so feeling responsible for the students, at the same time being very, very curious about how do you, how do you do that? And why are my colleagues in America and my friends in America so much better at that? And can I learn from them? So what was that mix of curiosity and a sense of responsibility? I immediately started making notes because I know that as we have this conversation and as it flows into some of the things you're bringing into the conversation and the question that we're really working with, these are themes that kind of define you, not just as an entrepreneur, but as a man, as an adult.

Jerry Colonna
This notion of responsibility and civic duty, if you will. No, for sure. I also was very fortunate to actually live through a period in my country's history where we went from being backward and poor to a situation where Portugal actually now, today, has universities, it has a vibrant startup ecosystem. It went from being this irresponsible country. According to Germany and France, well, with.

Joao Barros
A formidable history, nonetheless, but still in decline, let's say a country in decline, to one where people could, to hope again and build again. And I went back to Portugal after my PhD in Germany with that goal of being part of being part of that. Then it turned out to be actually a lot harder than I imagined. And that financial crisis in particular, I think, brought home to me the fact that there are many things that are outside of our control, but the fact that we were then able to lift ourselves up and then, with the help of very patient american investors, show that it was possible to bring our technology, to bring the ability to build mesh networks of vehicles, have them share data with each other and with the cloud, give auto oems a way to do easier. Over the years, software updates provide new functionalities, and ultimately help pave the way to shared autonomous, electric and much more sustainable mobility.

That basically, the fact that we were able to embark on that journey was not obvious at all. But I was really, really, really lucky to also had the opportunity to work with amazing mentors and amazing people that basically just also just asked, why not just go into it? So I realized that a lot of the barriers were actually inside our heads that we felt, oh, we're small country, nobody knows that we're at the end of Europe, yada dada. And I always had, fortunately, from my PhD all the way to my research career, amazing mentors in university and outside university, that basically just asked me, why not? Why shouldn't you start a company out of Portugal, a tech startup out of Portugal, and why shouldn't it succeed?

Jerry Colonna
Let's pause and describe venium, because you kind of referenced and backed into it. So if I remember correctly, venium was placing, I guess, transceivers in primarily buses, if that's correct. And as a result, they would create a mesh network in the particular urban area in which they were operating, with the idea of providing Internet access points in a kind of mesh coverage for local folks. And as a result of that, there was this communication that would go from the vehicle to the cloud and back. Am I getting that right?

Joao Barros
Yeah, absolutely. That was the starting point was that it was actually a technology looking for a market, so we knew how to, we knew how to build networks of moving things. So that's basically where our research was coming from. And I was actually mostly interested at the time in using the vehicles, not just as transportation machines, but actually as part of the wireless network. So providing Internet access to passengers, as you mentioned, but also as part of the smart city ecosystem.

Jerry Colonna
I love how you describe that. It's basically your overlaying reliability on top of an infrastructure that was inherently unreliable and whose connections would break. And so it sounds brilliant. It sounds ahead of its time.

I kind of know a little bit about this, but what happened with the company? Yeah, well, that first series a I mentioned before was on the premise that we were able to go from what we at the time was the largest mesh network of connected vehicles in the world, which was in Porto, Portugal, my hometown. So we basically actually were able to put Porto on the map of technology because all the buses, garbage collection trucks, service vehicles were part of this network. It actually still operates, still gives free Wifi to passengers using this mesh technology that we developed a proof that it could work at city scale. But then the premise for the initial investment was to be able to scale it to buses and cities all over the world.

Joao Barros
We had an initial success in Portugal, then in New York, in Singapore, but it wasn't a business that we could really scale. The hardware was very messy. It was still quite expensive. Ten years ago, the fleets didn't have a lot of data yet to transmit. And turns out that offering free Wi Fi to passengers was not a priority for them.

And just in general, public transportation, especially in the US, but also in other places, is a difficult market for startups, because very long sales cycles, public sector changing priorities and so on. And that was a very difficult moment because we had already raised, actually series b, which was 25 million at the time, which was unimaginable for me. I was like, and a few months later we realized that this is not going to work, because we've contacted more than 100 fleets in the last twelve months, and we're not getting enough contracts to scale this business. And that's when we started working with car makers and we pivoted, as one says today. But basically, we switched gears and started and made several difficult decisions.

One was to drop the hardware, so be software only, and then leverage the fact that we were also using AI to optimize the communications and to do an intelligent networking platform for vehicles, for the car manufacturers. Completely different business. So you only have like 25 potential customers worldwide, longer sales cycles, because you have to do engineering with them for like three, four years until, you know, something comes out of the factory with your software. But our investors were very patient. They believed in it.

It was also a little bit the hype curve of the autonomous vehicles. And this was an enabling technology for autonomous vehicles, actually a critical technology for autonomous vehicle, one could almost say. And so essentially what was really hard was that obviously we had people that were working in building hardware operations, deploying in fleets, and we had to part ways with all these people. That was my first time that I actually had to fire people for reasons that had nothing to do with their performance, especially also people that had been with the company since the beginning. So that also very hard.

Jerry Colonna
So let's just pause right there, because I want to take us back to the original impetus behind launching the business. And I just want to honor and recognize how difficult that decision must have been for you, because you were letting people go who were actually talented and working hard. Yeah, it was that moment. And then fast forward two years with COVID We had to do the same again. And that was heartbreaking.

Joao Barros
And fortunately, most of them, if not all of them, found other jobs and moved on. But there was something in the relationship and in the trust relationship also at the. I felt that I was breaking a promise, the promise that we would build this great company together. But during COVID it was. I really hit rock bottom over those different years.

There was, as always in the startup journey, lots of ups and downs. One moment was that I had been in California with my family. My family went back to Portugal because I was traveling all the time. So it didn't make sense for my wife and three kids to be alive alone in California. And that's actually when I had the boot camp with you, because it literally took me like one and a half years to muster the courage to tell my board that it didn't make sense for me to be living in Mountain View, California, with my family in Portugal and my business now in Detroit, Tokyo, Munich, where the carmakers are.

And actually the boot camp was actually the moment where I finally gave myself permission to just think, where is the intersection between what the company needs, what you need, and what your family needs, and how do we get to that point? So I'm eternally grateful for that because it really saved my family. I want to stay on that point for a moment because in this recounting of the journey, what I'm sensing and what I'm picking up is what our mutual friend Jim Marsden, one of our coaches, would call competing commitments. And you had a series of competing commitments. You had a commitment, psychologically, to being in Mountain View.

Jerry Colonna
That was the belief system, was that's where entrepreneurial startups need to be. There was a realization that the business had shifted and in fact, many of the employees had been close to the customers and they were all in these different locations. And you had a commitment that was both beautiful but challenging in the sense that you were going to build a startup that not only provided employment, but was emblematic of your belief in Portugal, emblematic of the potential. And then last and perhaps most important, was your commitment to your family and to yourself. And there you were in this really, really tight spot, trying to navigate, and as you said, for a year and a half, kind of frozen in place.

How do I choose? How do I do the right thing when there are four or five right things that may be pulling me in different directions? Does that resonate? Yeah, absolutely. So I felt like I couldn't live up to any of the expectations because I couldn't really pick one.

Joao Barros
And.

But what I also realized was that the most important thing, really, was my marriage and my kids. Because if Anna and I have been together for 29 years, our kids, two of them are adults, now, and one is a teenager. And we became really, really close during these different phases that were very hard emotionally. But basically, I just realized, if my marriage and my family are okay, if we're doing well, if we're as close knit as we usually are, then everything else is easier, whereas if that's not working, then everything else has no chance of succeeding. I was having panic attacks in airplanes, so my body was doing strange things.

I also eat compulsively when I'm under stress, so I start gaining weight. Then I entered this negative spiral of not feeling good with my body, not sleeping, all of those things. Um, and I feel, in a way, that my life has been, you know, constantly switching between the virtuous cycle and detrimental one. That makes I oscillate a lot between these, uh, um, these two. But my wife, Anna, and my family have always been, you know, what keeps me grounded and about what is important.

And so that bootcamp just gave me, for a few days, the permission to actually remind myself of that. And turns out that my board just reacted very naturally to the decision. They said, yeah, makes perfect sense. Go. And I felt really stupid.

Oh, come on. Well, you know, one of the things I adore about you is the way you are able to laugh at your own absurdities. And I just want to. I want to give space to the fact that we all build these cages around us. You know, William Blake in a poem called the mind forged manacles.

Jerry Colonna
These are the stories we tell ourselves. And so when we're in the midst of that no win situation, that double bind. I can't do this. I can't do that. Frozen, almost invariably, the bars of the cage that we find ourselves in are our belief systems, which fuel that.

And it's not to say that choosing a way through that is easy. You may have had the unfortunate situation of having investors who didn't support you on the decision, for sure. It also doesn't surprise me that that being who you are, you attracted the kinds of investors who believe in you. Because this is a truth about you, my friend. People have believed in you for as long as I've known you.

And when you tell me the story about how this company was founded, those research students who became employees believed in you. And we all still believe in you. Thank you. You know, it's actually so moving now to see where they are right now, because at the time, they were, like, 20 somethings, right? And I ended up, for some of them at least, to be kind of a fatherly figure, being a little bit older and just generally also still being the professor in chief.

Joao Barros
Even if I tried very hard to be a CEO, it's very hard to stop being a teacher and a mentor, if that's what you're supposed to be. I mean, it took me a while to realize that that's actually where my true vocation is, but, well, I'll say. This about you because I believe it about me. You teach and mentor because that's who you are. It's essential to who you are as a person.

Jerry Colonna
That's why it feels like a vocation. That's why it feels like a calling. I coach because it's who I am, not the other way around. Yeah, no, I see that very clearly now in looking at the venium arc again. Covid just brought that point completely home, because suddenly we had to send everybody home.

Joao Barros
It was for everyone in the world and for many people, way worse than for us.

Just being isolated, living on Zoom and slack. And then for me, the biggest shock was that even though we were able to save the business by working with dash cams, so cameras that go into vehicles, and then eventually that became our direction, and then the automakers started coming back. But basically, at the time, for me, just not having this human, face to face physical contact, having had a life where I would go to university and see literally hundreds of people and be in front of class and giving talks at conferences and all of that, it took me a while to realize, actually how much I needed that. Felt trapped again in the sense that I felt I gave up my academic career to do this company. Then it was a little bit of a snowball because the promises kept mounting.

You raise another round of finance and you did another round of promises, and it keeps snowballing and getting bigger and the expectations getting bigger and bigger. And the truth is also that the CEO job was forcing me to do a lot of things that are actually not part of my nature. I like to be able to have a very sincere, authentic relationship with the people that I'm with. I like to be able to tell everybody the same thing and not having to tell the story in 20 different ways, to make sure that the investors invest, the customers buy the products, the team is motivated. And part of the art of being a business leader is to be able to bend the stories in different ways, depending on the needs.

To be able to play poker in negotiations when you have to play poker. These were all things that left me really uncomfortable. And yet I felt I never succeeded in finding someone for that job. So even though I tried, but I didn't feel myself for a very long period of time, especially then with COVID and going home and everything. And so, yeah, so that was when it became clear that since I couldn't find someone to scale the company, the whole startup scene changed dramatically, as we know, also the financing situation, everything.

So that's when, also talking with the board, I realized that we needed to find an exit for venium, a way to land the plane, knowing that we have an amazing team, some really important pieces of technology that fit into the ecosystem. And now they were needed, because now cameras need to transfer huge amounts of data between the vehicles and the cloud. So it took ten years to get there, but now the vehicles really needed to send a lot of data between them and the cloud. And so that's when we started thinking of how to exit the company. When I started thinking how I should exit this life also was one of the things.

But it took me another one and a half years to actually get from that point of deciding, okay, I can't continue living like this to, okay, how do we find a way for the company, for the team, first of all, to be well, for the technology in the company to find its way to the market, for the investors to get at least some return of their investment, and for me to be able to close this chapter and hopefully start a new one. So it was a very. It was still a very long path. And for you to be yourself. See, indeed, you just said something really important, which I want to lift up, which is I wasn't feeling myself.

Jerry Colonna
And I remember we recently saw each other on a walk in Barcelona. We have mutual friends in Barcelona. And because of you, I'm connected to folks in Barcelona. So thank you. And I remember walking and realizing a similarity in our experiences.

I remember walking and realizing that, like you in my late thirties, I no longer felt myself. I no longer felt connected to myself as a consequence of living for so long and not resolving these conflicts. And, you know, the quick end to the story is that you did find a place. You found a home for venium, you found a home for the team, you found a home for the technology, which was important, because as a scientist, that's really important. And you found a place that you could resolve, if you will, these conflicts with the exit without necessarily ringing the bell on Wall street and taking the company public.

Does that describe it? Yes. And when we met in Barcelona, you caught me completely off guard with a very simple question, which was, was Benjamin a success?

Joao Barros
And in that moment, I really couldn't bring myself to say, yes, it was a success. And then I started wondering why. And we went on with one of other participants of the workshop that you were, or the class that you were teaching, we went on this walk to by two walk, and I found myself, or I heard myself say that I am still trapped in that storyline, Silicon Valley storyline, or you're only successful if you create a unicorn and everybody celebrates rates, the huge, massive valuation that your company did. And the other thing that I also heard myself tell myself was that in the end, I was honest with everyone that I dealt with then I did the best I could, and that has to be enough. And I had never, ever said that to myself.

So I never really allowed myself to say that that's enough. And that was a really important step for me to just allow myself to be happy about the fact that it was a very, very long journey, and that even if I was often forced to do things that were not in my nature, I still held strongly, I would say to my values, and the one thing I'm most proud of, which was another question that somebody asked me, is actually that in the last three years, I had an executive team of amazing people, but basically, this team just made it through in a way that I felt was true to my own values and ultimately the company values, which are actually pretty much the same. And I'm very, very grateful that I was able to have that experience, even though it was a terrible time to have had the experience of working in a team like that and following many of reboots of the things that you teach, of reboot's teaching, but at the same time also that we had more than 100 people altogether, I think probably about 150 people worked at venium at one point, maybe even more. I don't know the exact number, but people that experience that it's possible to work in a company like that, where you're doing good things, but you're also being good to one another and honest and straightforward. And I would say, irrespective of what the outcome of a company is, I think for me personally, I can say today confidently that it was a success to be able to start this company out of Portugal.

Portugal proved that we're able to raise the interest and the finance from leading investors, and fortunately, we're not alone. So Portugal now has seven unicorns. And so I'm now a very strong believer of actually, before you start something, writing down your definition of success before you actually embark, then lots and lots of people are going to tell you what success means. But if you have your own definition that you wrote down before everybody else tells you what success is, then at the end of the journey, you can go back to that and just say, and thank you for reminding me of the starting point and what we set out to do. And from that perspective.

So, no, we did not create a unicorn, but we achieved those points. We helped people believe it was possible to start a tech star out of Portugal, and the technology is now in hundreds of thousands of vehicles, and hopefully it will be in millions of vehicles sometime in the future. I mean, it's out there. And, yes. So from that perspective, I'm grateful, and.

Jerry Colonna
I will add to that, that oftentimes I will say that the hallmark of a good leader is the number of leaders that they help create. I'll expand that right now. The hallmark of values driven leadership is the DNA of those values continues to spread. Every one of those 100, 5200 employees were touched by the values implicit at the beginning of this startup, at the beginning of this journey, this very long 8910 year experience, because of who you are as a leader. They have benefited, they have experienced what it's like to be led by someone who confronts the competing commitments, who confronts the challenges, who confronts the stories that can hold them back.

And so I'm going to bring you back. Before we started recording, we talked a little bit about the notion of what is it that Joao is bringing into this conversation?

And you asked me, how do you know if you've had closure? So let me ask you, just as I did on our walk in Barcelona, how do you know? Do you have closure on Bennium, on the venium story? So I feel now, at the end of this conversation that I might do. I wasn't sure in the beginning, because just in anticipation of our conversation, and I knew, of course, that we were going to revisit the Venu journey.

Joao Barros
I did feel a certain amount of fear into going to certain places because, you know, I think scars is a good image. You have those scars, it has healed, and so you have closure on the wound.

But I think I will always have some triggers. So some things that remind me of traumatic experiences along the way, mostly experiences that had to do with self doubt, in pain, feeling that I was not being true to myself, more so than with respect to others. I've been very fortunate of not having had really mean, ugly things happen to me during my startup journey. I think that's also fair to say. I was blessed with great investors and wonderful board, great mentors and great coaches.

So I really. I cannot say that the pain was inflicted so much from the outside, except for the externalities that everybody has to deal with. But I inflicted a lot of pain on myself over a number of years. Partly also, I think, because I also always felt that, and I almost. I hesitate to say this, but I always felt that I had, in certain areas, exceptional abilities, so, abilities to do, to go beyond what I saw others being able to do.

So I always felt a huge responsibility to do that. But basically, I had to live up to this image of myself as the one that does exceptional, or that brings himself to do exceptional things. But always, I have to say, at the same time, in service to others. I don't think I've ever been so much on. There's always a phase where I did feel also that I need to prove myself.

Obviously, during the PhD, during the tenure track, there were always moments where. But very quickly, though, I found a lot more satisfaction when I saw the people around me doing well and going in the right direction and building something exceptional themselves. And so I. It became very clear to me that that's really my vocation, is really to help others do exceptional things.

And for a period of time, I thought that was leadership. Now, I'm actually quite reflexive in thinking, whether leading an institution or leading a company, leading an organization is the right thing, or whether it's really just through presence and listening and giving back and helping shape things, but not necessarily in a leadership position. So I'm still wondering about that. So I think closure is actually a process. I think closure is not something that just, you flip a switch and then all of a sudden those feelings.

Jerry Colonna
And I think that if we look back and we look at the process, it's about revisiting and remembering. And, you know, I'm a huge fan, partially because I write about this in reunion. I'm a huge fan of taking that word remember, and hyphenating it, remembering that. Which has been disconnected, putting it together. Yes, exactly.

Joao Barros
Yeah. And I think that retelling your story remembers that, which, over time, because of the conflicts that you were feeling, got dismembered. And that part of closure is pulling it back together so that we can then look back with fresh eyes and say what actually happened. And I want to lift up what you said about. And so now I see what my version of leadership is, what your version of being a vocation is, which is about helping other people do exceptional things, extraordinary things, which to me is a perfect setup for the epilogue, because we can't tell this story without talking about where you are in this moment and why you're there.

Jerry Colonna
So tell us, where are you and why are you there? So I moved to Kigali, Rwanda, earlier this month. So four weeks ago, exactly four weeks. And I have to say, I feel tears coming in my eyes because it just has been a wonderful, wonderful moment in my life where actually remembering. It's a perfect expression.

Joao Barros
Everything is coming together. Why am I in Kigali, Rwanda? Well, last year, visited some friends in different universities, because I was trying to figure out, I gave myself some time to just talk to friends and figure out who I am and what I want to do next. And I visited Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, with whom I had worked before. And they told me that their campus in Rwanda, as in Africa, had just received a large endowment from the Mastercard foundation to do three things.

So one is to try train future leaders for Africa in technology, particularly information communication technologies. The second is to use AI engineering to help advance Africa in all the different domains. And number three, to help innovators and entrepreneurs grow a startup ecosystem. And the dean of engineering asked me, so why don't you go and visit? And immediately I went back.

I told my wife, we always wanted to do something in the global south. I had thought of India because my mom's family is from Goa in India. I had thought of Brazil because, of course, Portugal is very tightly connected to Brazil. But Africa had always been on my mind. And when we came to Rwanda, we found this, this incredible campus outside of Kigali, where 400 students from 22 different african countries are pursuing their masters in electrical computer engineering, and it in AI.

And I had the chance to talk, one to one, with a number of students, about twelve students that signed up to talk with me when I came for a visit. And every single story was just breathtaking. I started asking, what do you call home? Or what was growing up like there? And for the first time, I was talking with someone from Burundi.

For the first time, I was talking with someone from Ghana, I was talking with someone from Ethiopia or from all these different countries. I realized how ignorant I was also about Africa. And now I realize Africa is not at all the story that we've been told. That's a subject for another program. But basically, the more I thought about it, what happens to me is that I'm naturally curious, but I'm also obsessively curious.

So I started watching as many YouTube videos and reading as many books as I possibly could. And now it's very clear to me that this is really where I should be. I am in the heart of Africa in a beautiful, safe country, Rwanda, surrounded by these incredibly high energy, really ambitious, but also humble and kind african students and also hugely idealistic colleagues that have come here to make a difference in the world. And so I'm now a professor here and it's a huge honor and also fills me with gratitude because it's not obvious that again, coming from Portugal through this startup journey, that at the end, for a long time, I was actually, I'm 47 years old. I'm too young to retire.

Also, I was joining boards and doing some consulting, but it didn't feel right to me. And now having arrived in Africa, seeing how much there is to do because there's some really big challenges and big barriers here. But at the same time, all these young people with huge aspirations and huge dreams, they remind me a little bit of my students in Portugal 15 years ago.

But I feel now that all those different pieces of the venium story and all the scars now also make it possible for me to talk with students, talk about out the theory of how to build products. But what they really love is the stories of when we had that box that needed to fit into the bus, but we couldn't find the right form factor or the ups and downs and those questions. And I can bring the entrepreneurship topics to life in a way that would not have been possible. And at the same time, I can find joy in those moments, the good and the bad ones, that happen during the venium story. You know, what comes to mind, Raoul, is there's an old bit of saying which goes like this.

Jerry Colonna
Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. The venium experience was a profound experience. And before venium, your job was to take exceptional people to do extraordinary work to help their communities. And after the enlightening experience of enemy, your job is to take exceptional people to do extraordinary work that is a profoundly important contribution to the world.

And I can't think of a better person to bring that forward. And my friend Schwa. Thank you so much. It means a lot. Thank you.

Thank you for coming on the show and sharing the story. I know people are going to be moved by this. I appreciate it very much and I've been very moved by you many times. So it's an honor and a very big privilege to be here. Thank you very much much.

Joao Barrows
If you enjoyed this episode and want to hear more, go to reboot IO podcasts to listen to all past and present seasons of our show and leave us a review at Apple Podcasts or Spotify. That's the best way for other people to find and enjoy the show, just as you have done. And don't forget to join our mailing list at reboot IO signup so you never miss an episode. Thank you again for listening.

Speaker E
How long till my soul gets it right? Can any human being ever reach that kind of light? I call on the resting soul of Galileo, King of Night vision, King of Inside.

Speaker F
We often talk about the work of rebooting your leadership as individual work you can't do alone. If each member of your leadership team is pursuing the work of self inquiry and actualization, that's wonderful. But to create the company that you'd all like to work forth, you must also create the opportunity for the collective to grow. Experiences like facilitated leadership groups, off site retreats, organizational change explorations, and immersive leadership trainings move the organization closer to its fullest expression of the inherent values. At Reboot, we're here to support you and your team members in bringing forth the best that you have, using everything that emerges from organizational life, both the challenges and successes, as opportunities to grow head to reboot IO team experiences to learn more and more about reboot's.

#172 - Finding Closure After Shutting Down the Business - with João Barros & Jerry Colonna

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2. The Emotional Journey

3. Learning from Failure

4. The Role of Leadership

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