At REMUS, we have a special knack for finding rebels.

It’s what we do. We look for contrarians who are unafraid to challenge the conventions that constrain creativity and impede progress. We believe these free-thinkers have the audacity needed to build the world’s most exciting, most innovative, and most transformative companies.

But what defines a “rebel”? Are rebels born, or are they made? What does life look like for them?

In this series, we’re speaking with some of the boldest, most passionate, status quo-upturning rebels we know to answer these questions and more.

Today, we’re speaking with Shantanu Gaur, founder and CEO of Allurion Technologies: a rebel in the medical device space. Allurion is the creator of the Elipse gastric balloon, which helps patients lose weight thanks to an outpatient procedure that requires no surgery, endoscopy, or anesthesia. Allurion’s contrarian view of obesity treatment has catapulted the company to success. By keeping patient needs and interests at the center of its strategy, Allurion has touched thousands of lives around the world.

In his leadership position at Allurion and throughout his life, Shantanu has valued contrarian thinking. Here’s what being a rebel means to him.

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How do you define “rebel”?

A rebel is a contrarian, someone who has the courage to hold an opposite view. In entrepreneurship, rebels abound. Good entrepreneurs often hold views that are contrarian, that aren’t obvious, and which require time and effort to validate.

The Sioux Indian tribe has a concept they call the heyoka, a person dedicated to contrarianism within the tribe. The heyoka is part jester, but s/he also forces the rest of the tribe to question the boundaries and customs they’ve created. That concept—to never shut the door on a contrarian viewpoint—resonates strongly with me. Often the greatest ideas, the greatest inventions, the greatest paths to progress in our society are plowed by those individuals who hold that contrarian view.

What makes you a rebel? 

Certainly my role as an entrepreneur makes me a rebel, as does my work in obesity, which has often been viewed as the ugly stepchild of the healthcare space. Obesity is a problem that everyone faces but no one really wants to talk about. It takes courage to enter a space like that with something innovative and novel, to stare at all of the failures that have come before us, and to have the courage to move forward with our somewhat rebellious view of how the world should view obesity. 

I think it takes several different characteristics to be a rebel as an entrepreneur. You have to be audacious. You have to think big. But you also have to have the grit to see it through. In her book Grit, Angela Duckworth says “enthusiasm is common; endurance is rare.” There are so many would-be rebels who have the enthusiasm, the energy, and the passion to think differently. There are very few who have the endurance to see it through. 

“There are so many would-be rebels who have the enthusiasm, the energy, and the passion to think differently. There are very few who have the endurance to see it through.”

How do you cultivate that endurance? Or do you think it’s innate?

Like all skills, I think it’s a combination. Some are born with grit, some have it beaten into them, and some are just more likely to be successful in a difficult environment. 

As an entrepreneur, one thing that really helps is to surround yourself with gritty people. That’s something we’ve done intentionally at Allurion. We want people who can stare failure in the face, accept it, move on, and build from it. It’s much easier to be a rebel when you’re surrounded by other rebels. When your energy levels and enthusiasm are down, there’s nothing better than to have them picked back up by people around you who are gritty and deeply rebellious. 

Who are some rebels who have surrounded you in your life?

It starts with my parents, who were immigrants to the United States. I think people who drop everything and move entire families to start a new life are some of the greatest risk-takers out there.

Growing up, I heard stories of how my parents were able to succeed in a very resource-scarce environment. I heard stories of how they got out of that environment and into the promised land, where they built a family and had meaningful careers. That built grit in me as a kid. It taught me that the cloth I was cut from is a really tough one.  

And certainly going through the experience of starting a business and seeing all the ups and downs along the way taught me to be gritty. When you start a business, you learn to endure. You learn that no problem is unsolvable. Periodically reflecting on problems you’ve solved builds those muscles that allow you to move forward, even though times may remain difficult.

Can you talk about what you might consider a defining challenge from your life or your business?

When we started Allurion back in 2009, my cofounder Sammy and I were medical students. At the end of medical school, we had a very tough decision to make: should we go full-time into Allurion and see it through, or should we continue on our journeys to become physicians? 

I remember sitting down with my father, who’s a mathematician and a brilliant guy. As a rebel himself, he gave me very good advice. He assumed that as a doctor I would treat 10 patients a day for 5 days a week. That’s about 50 patients per week, 200 patients per month, 2400 patients per year. If I were to practice for 20-30 years, I would probably touch the lives of tens of thousands of people. That’s incredibly fulfilling, and not many people can say that.

If I pursued Allurion, however, I could potentially impact billions of people, because that’s how many people around the world are struggling to lose weight. Or I could impact no one, because businesses do fail.

My father told me he didn’t want me to say no to Allurion simply because I was afraid of failure. At the end of the day, he helped me realize that the question was whether I wanted my life to be more about maximizing impact and taking a bit of risk or taking a less risky path for a good amount of fulfillment.

And when you put it like that, who wouldn’t take the first option of taking the risk and maximizing your impact? 

I imagine there must have been some mourning involved in moving on from the life you’d envisioned. What was that like?

In my life and my leadership, I value clarity over certainty. Once you make a clear decision, you need continue to move forward with that. 

You may be uncertain about the trajectory. You may not even be right. But if you have clarity, you and your entire team can proceed together in lockstep. 

That is what makes startups and growth-stage companies so exciting. You have this army of people who are all aligned with the same vision and goals. And that comes from valuing clarity over certainty. 

At Allurion, has there been a time where you’ve gone against the grain professionally? What happened as a result of your making a rebellious or contrarian move in your role as operator or CEO?

Absolutely. Our path at Allurion is inherently rebellious and contrarian. When we started the company, we were two medical students in our 20s who had no business entering the medical device space. That’s a space dominated by executives who have cut their teeth at large companies, who understand how the entire healthcare ecosystem works. It’s not a space that is incredibly welcoming to outsiders—to rebels, so to speak. 

That decision to enter a space where we had no experience, no real knowledge, where we weren’t seasoned executives could not have worked out better. What this space desperately needed was a fresh perspective and a departure from the old ways of thinking and executing. And that’s exactly what we brought to the table. 

“What this space desperately needed was a fresh perspective and a departure from the old ways of thinking and executing. And that’s exactly what we brought to the table.”

How have you continued that spirit of rebelliousness?

A more recent example stems from our understanding of how our customers were responding to our technology and our product. We’ve treated over 40K people, we’re commercial in over 40 countries, and we get a steady stream of feedback from our consumers and our providers. We kept hearing how much people loved our very basic smartphone app and our Bluetooth scale, which allowed them to share their weight loss journeys with their families, friends, and providers.

Last year, at the height of the pandemic, we launched our digital product team and have built something almost no medical device company would ever dream of building: an entirely digital consumer experience that is a far departure from a medical device company’s typical product.

Launching this team was a huge, rebellious risk, because we did so when businesses were shutting down. Most companies were advised to double-down on their core businesses and to scale back. We did the exact opposite, and it could not have turned out better. Twelve months later, we emerged with a virtual experience our customers and patients love, and it fits beautifully into this new world we’re living in, where everything is virtual. 

What do you think is the biggest source of opportunity in your sector as a whole right now? 

The same source that attracted us to the weight loss space to begin with: listening to the unmet needs of our consumers.

People who want to lose weight are incredibly complex consumers and incredibly nuanced in their desires. When you think about the different pivots we have made as a business—starting with a singular focus on a great medical device for weight loss, branching out into a great digital experience that complements that medical device, now tackling the nutritional and wellness space to further augment the weight loss experience—all of those moves were driven by feedback from our patients.

I will go to the grave listening to the good, the bad, and the ugly that our consumers have to say about our technology. 

What keeps you personally going in the face of challenges? 

We have a wall at Allurion that reads, “We Unlock Stories.” On that wall are photographs and stories from people who have enrolled in our weight loss program, lost weight, and changed their lives.

I’ve had the privilege of talking to hundreds if not thousands of Allurion customers, and I rarely hear from them the number of pounds they’ve lost. They always start by telling me all the things in their life that weight loss unlocked: they’re no longer afraid to be in family photos, no longer embarrassed when they board an airplane and have to ask for a seatbelt extender. They can now run after their kids or grandkids without losing breath. These are really emotionally-driven individuals who want to unlock new stories in their lives more than they want to see a smaller number on the scale.

Whenever there is a challenging time at Allurion—and of course, at any high-growth business there are several—you’ll often find me in our kitchen staring at that wall, because those stories are incredibly motivating. They’re a big part of why we get up in the morning and do what we do.

What advice would you give to an aspiring rebel? 

Just go. Do it. Start it. Move. There are so many would-be rebels who like to think about starting something. The actual rebels just go. They take that contrarian view, they take the perspectives of all the people who are telling them no, and they move forward even faster.

So if you are a rebel out there, just go. Your time is valuable, and the time of the people you are going to serve with your invention and your product is also valuable. So get to market as soon as you can.

And remember that you’ll be in the arena every day. Being a rebel is not a one-day thing. It’s not a one-week thing or a one-year thing. It’s a career. It’s a lifestyle. It’s in your DNA. And as the founder, it’s your responsibility to inject that DNA into your company.

Expressionism is a vital artistic and entrepreneurial spirit. It is vibrant, it is unfettered, it is emotional, and it is at once full of eternal angst and electric optimism. Expressionism allows one to visualize a future that isn’t chained by reality and, in being thus free and emotional, can be incredibly empowering — for both the artist and the entrepreneur.

In these interesting times and with this expressionist spirit, I called together our UK team (there were 6 of us, so we followed the rules!) to an offsite at Blenheim Palace, the ancestral home of Sir Winston Churchill, a man who found a way to stay optimistic and passionate even in an era of great uncertainty and change.

There can be many purposes of offsites, but arguably the most important one is to build trust and understanding – and thus alignment – among team members. By definition, an offsite creates space and freedom for everyone to ideate without some of the constraints of our day-to-day lives.

So, for a day, we felt free and relaxed across the expansive grounds in Oxfordshire. I was meeting this team — under the capable leadership of our UK lieutenant Marc Felske – in person for the first time, and I loved getting quality time to interact with them. Our UK associates are based at Cambridge, Oxford, LSE, and UCL and hail from the UK, Germany, Switzerland, and Hong Kong. We talked about the journeys that brought us all to this point, about the beauty of math and the horrors of politics, about the transcendence of tech beyond an industry, and about the evolution of entrepreneurial cultures and ecosystems at different campuses.

While there, we were surrounded by 24 works of expressionist painter Cecily Brown. She created all of these works specifically for Blenheim, and they are dispersed across the rooms. Like some of the best ideas, it seems they were always there, and yet, once discovered they stand out as centerpieces, bringing the palace to life and imbuing the regal Churchill family estate with a modern energy.

How could we not be inspired — by the glory of one of Britain’s great families and by the brilliance of one of modern painting’s great exponents in turn? We came out of this day with more creative ideas on how to help build some of the UK’s next great technology companies and will be rolling out some of these ideas in the months to come.

I’m quite confident we could not have achieved the same outcome over a Zoom call or in a room where we all had to wear masks and stay highly distanced while speaking to each other.

So, here’s to visualizing a day when we no longer need masks, no longer need to distance ourselves from our fellow humans, no longer need to live in worry and fear, no longer need to spend our time finding ways to enter friendly nations…when we can once again express ourselves authentically in everything we do. It is the entrepreneur’s spirit, and it is a spirit we espouse at REMUS.

Today, we’re excited to announce that we’ve backed Hello Patient, a leading Voice AI company in the healthcare vertical.

We’ve spent nearly 2 years exploring applications of Voice AI in healthcare and have spoken to nearly all the players. What struck me about Hello Patient is that their strengths align with what I’ve learned are the three most critical components for success in Vertical Voice AI companies:

1. Team-Vertical fit
2. Commercial approach / customer empathy
3. Product vision beyond the immediate use case

Over dinner in Austin, I realized that Hello Patient co-founder Alex Cohen (and more broadly his leadership team) had all 3. The leadership team has 50+ years of healthcare experience, and many hail from Carbon Health, a network of primary and urgent care facilities, where they built the customer-facing product. All are united in their passion for improving the broader healthcare system. Alex is someone I could easily introduce to  customers and trust he would have soft hands while helping them appreciate the company’s differentiated platform. Finally, Alex has a product vision that is more authentic, inspiring, and cogent than many others in the space.

Hello Patient did not need our capital; they were backed by 8VC and Bling Capital. Alex and I just came away from our dinner wanting to build a partnership. I’m confident our firm has the deepest expertise in building Vertical Voice AI companies – born from my leadership of Presto and our decade-long experience in Voice AI – and am similarly certain that we will be able to add real, tangible value at Hello Patient.

We are building a portfolio of Vertical Voice AI companies, all working on similar but unique missions across verticals. Voice is the most authentic way for humans to communicate, and we believe any company that masters delivering AI conversations in a given vertical will then have the keys to deliver a suite of Enterprise AI applications for that vertical.

It’s been great fun to work with Alex. I joined the team for an offsite, and he joined us in London for our annual summit. We already count him as a member of the Remus family, and we look forward to continuing our partnership in the months and years ahead. 

New job, same amazing colleagues. I am thrilled to share that we have launched our new REMUS brand, and I will be leading the firm’s activities in Europe through our new London office. I will build a transatlantic bridge with my team, which we will leverage together with founders, partners, and friends. As an American VC firm that spun out of MIT over a decade ago, we have been investing in the UK since 2016. Today, I am increasingly excited about the potential of Europe-based startups.

Why are we so excited about the European startup ecosystem?

1. An Impressive Talent Pool

Few people know that there are significantly more STEM graduates across Europe than in the US. I’ve had the privilege to see a wide swath of culturally diverse, sharp-minded people — whether my friends, startup teams we’ve backed, or founders in my network — working together, speaking multiple languages, and promoting diverse thinking.

2. Europe’s Strong Growth

I’m still in my 20s — I care most about continued development and being on a steep trajectory. Most metrics in Europe have seen double-digit growth since the last recession. Even if the 2020 figures might differ, I fundamentally believe in a return to wild growth. From a digitalization perspective, Europe may lag behind some other geographical locations; however, this unharnessed potential and a strong ability to catch up will provide founders with fuel for their ventures.

3. Europe’s Reasonable Cost Base

Starting and operating businesses in Europe is comparatively cost-effective. When hiring developers or renting office space, European startups will spend half or one-third of what their US-based competitors will pay. European founders also raise smaller funding rounds, which allows them to give up less equity and efficiently scale their business to make quick progress.

4. Europe’s Geographic Location and Relative Political Neutrality

Startups in Europe will be allowed to do business with both the US and China and are located optimally in between. European founders are trusted and have an excellent reputation when it comes to compliance, data security, and privacy standards. Thus, startups in Europe are well-positioned to take both domestic and international markets by storm.

5. Europe is a Springboard for Internationalizaton

Increasingly, European startups expand internationally early on, rather than focusing for too long on their home markets. When they do expand, they often break into the US market as a larger opportunity. At REMUS, our intention is to be the best imaginable partner to help founders take this critical leap across the pond.

REMUS’ role in the European startup ecosystem

We’re a global firm

Since its genesis, REMUS has been designed to have a global vantage point that would include our investments, advisers, partners, and own investors. Our experience of a global firm is something we happily share, and we see ourselves as unique transatlantic partners for European founders. For several of our science- and research-backed companies, we’ve helped open doors in the US and Europe and cleverly structured partnerships that benefit our founders, regardless of their location. Thus, we consider ourselves uniquely positioned to help founders in Europe.

We’re a local, university campus player

We believe that a VC firm requires deal flow as much as it requires input from clever, critical, and contrarian individuals. We facilitate this influx through constant engagement with students on campus. REMUS started in a dorm room, similar to a lot of the companies we backed and plan to back. Working with students comes naturally, as several members of our team have recently graduated, and our firm has deep student roots. We maintain those roots with our Campus Associate program (read more HERE). Over a decade of presence on campuses has allowed us to observe how university ecosystems are becoming increasingly entrepreneurial and very sophisticated; indeed, over 40% of UK startups are spin-outs. 

As a Cambridge graduate, the REMUS<> Cambridge connection is something I am proud of. I was able to join REMUS while I was still a student: a result of the firm’s close involvement and trust in the ecosystem.

We’re ready to go

We are already taking advantage of the momentum we’ve gained from previous engagement in the UK ecosystem. This week, we announced REMUS’ first UK investment. Spotta completely fits our thesis — it is run by A+ founders, disrupts a sleepy yet massive industry, and leverages proprietary technology based on years of research.

What’s next?

Going forward, we will continue our industry-agnostic investments in early-stage B2B startups. To work more closely with European founders, we set up shop in London with a new, permanent office. I believe co-location will continue to be very important. We look to partner with bright, aspiring entrepreneurs with the goal of building large, sustainable businesses that stand the test of time.

By walking in our founders’ shoes, and as a young and opportunity-driven team, we embrace the entrepreneurial ethos of hustling and adapting. Our long-term horizon gives us the confidence to invest even during challenging times, as we believe in European prosperity in a post-COVID world. (The same positive sentiment applies to the UK ecosystem in a post-Brexit world.) Because we call both Europe and the US our home, we understand cultural differences and strive to create a best-practice environment.

We have continued to invest in the UK over the past few months and will do so going forward. We’re looking for audacious, visionary founders who see opportunity and want us to join them on a 5-10 year journey. Our doors are wide open — please reach out.

To a bright, transatlantic future!

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Our first-ever portfolio company Presto (fka E la Carte) announced today that it intends to go public by merging with hospitality-focused SPAC Ventoux. It’s a great moment for a team that has persevered and ultimately thrived through the restaurant industry’s transformational journey over the past few years. Now is the most exciting time in our history: Presto’s labor productivity-enhancing technologies are in hot demand with restaurants across the country as they struggle with post-COVID labor shortages that are becoming permanent fixtures of the industry: a narrative we all recognize from our favorite daily media sources.

I am a part of the Presto team. When I started our venture capital firm out of MIT in 2008, Raj was the kind of founder I envisioned REMUS working with: a very sharp, first-generation immigrant founder educated at world-class engineering schools (in Raj’s case, Waterloo and MIT), with highly entrepreneurial instincts, world-changing ideas, and an interminable work ethic. His idea was my first investment, and in December 2008 I was his first $100K check. He was effectively our first Entrepreneur-in-Residence, and our incubator/office space was The Asgard, the local pub next to MIT where Raj worked as a waiter and trialed the first versions of Presto’s technology (and I helped write trivia questions). Our journeys out of MIT are indelibly intertwined, and the work we did together in those early years was foundational for both of our firms.

Raj and I have lived a thousand lives in the intervening 13 years, but we are still both working just as hard as we did on the MIT campus and still chat nearly daily; the only difference is that while we struck our original deal over Gchat, we now use WhatsApp (he also now happens to have a lovely wife and 2 incredibly cute kids – time flies!). We were Presto’s first investor then, and today we are its largest shareholder across various entities.

Presto is the quintessential REMUS company, emblematic of many of our firm’s core operating principles and vision. I am always in search of more entrepreneurs who can relate to these:

• We seek to be contrarian and are most excited about investing when others are not, when the opportunity is not obvious.
• We love rebellious technical founders from world-class technical universities like MIT and Waterloo.
• We strive to be exceptional partners across the journey, even 13 years after the first check. We are always there for our companies, whether by winning customers, crushing competitors, hiring executives, enabling fundraising, or crafting strategy. We build; we do not bet.
• We are believers in the massive opportunity digital transformation is creating, in every large vertical, and we want to back companies that can become platform – rather than point – solutions.
• We are passionate about the best product- and technology-led companies, even if in the presence of competitors with better commercial relationships or presence at the origin.

This deal represents what the SPAC instrument is best designed to do, in my opinion. An industry-focused sponsor is partnering with a market leader to take advantage of particular dislocation and momentum in time and market. The combined entity will have certain advantages in the public markets that private markets do not afford.

Perhaps if we ever find ourselves in the corner of a Presto-enabled Cambridge pub or Silicon Valley restaurant, I can relay the backstory of how this deal came to be. In the meantime, I can only say I am truly thrilled to embark upon the next chapter of the Presto-REMUS journey with an exceptional management team and board that I am excited to chair. I wonder what chat app we will use a few years from now!

ᐧ

Said when something appears or happens so quickly or easily that it seems to be magic.

– Definition of ‘Presto,’ Cambridge English Dictionary

also NASDAQ: PRST

If you believe automation will continue to be more prevalent in the face of a crippling labor shortage…you already believe in Presto.

I’ve believed in Presto since 2008, when we were its first investor. It was my first investment after founding Remus in my MIT dorm room; today, it is a public company and I have the honor of serving as our Chairman. Founder Raj Suri’s mission remains the same: to transform physical industries like restaurants with next-generation automation technologies. Presto is a great example of the AI platforms that are emerging in every vertical.

It might seem magical that Presto is now trading on the NASDAQ, but it required real tenacity to get this deal done and go public in the aftermath of COVID and in this market environment—the worst since Remus and Presto were founded in 2008. Helping close this deal ranks among the hardest things I’ve ever had to do, and I’ve had to pull a fair number of rabbits out of hats over the years.

While Presto is treating being public as just another funding milestone, we intend to take full advantage of being a public company. We are in a position of strength and will have many options to raise cash if we ever need to do so. We have a liquid stock that will be valuable to acquisition targets and employees during the oncoming recession. We have a powerful brand augmented by the pixie dust of the NASDAQ. Finally, we have incredibly strategic partners in the form of Cleveland Avenue, who are renowned in the industry as operators and investors.

All of these assets are in the service of the customer at a powerful time in the arc of technology adoption. Presto’s enterprise restaurant chain customers have real pain points associated with labor; Presto delivers world-class technology and implements it system-wide, which is something no other company in the space can claim. This transaction should make it a no-brainer for customers to choose Presto – a long-term public company with a strong balance sheet, clear financials, and a decade of experience – over startups with little enterprise experience and opaque or uncertain financials heading into a recession next year.

Raj and I are completely aligned on the long-term approach we take to the company. We will not succumb to the short-term instincts that have too often felled great American companies. We embrace that progress must be measured in the now, but the horizon must always be surveyed in years, not quarters.

I’ve always believed in Presto. To win a war, you need vision, talent, and capital. We have all three – and we have magic wands. Onward, Presto!ᐧ

A few months ago, we put out a call for Black entrepreneurs to apply to join REMUS as the firm’s first-ever Black Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR).

As a firm, we believe deeply in the ethical and financial value of various perspectives and backgrounds within our team and our portfolio. We know we have blind spots that have kept us from becoming as diverse as we would like to be. With this program, we’re hoping to begin to change that.

Today, we are pleased to announce that we’ve found our first Black EIR. Brantly Fulton is the co-founder and CEO of LAMAR IoT, a cold chain tracking company that identifies damages that occur during product transport, particularly in the food and pharma industries. Brantly has already been joining our weekly Sunday investment team meetings, we have invested in his business, and we will work with him as an EIR as he further develops the foundations of LAMAR.

Brantly met his co-founder at Morehouse College — one of this country’s leading HBCUs. As part of this partnership, we are excited to deepen our understanding of the Morehouse talent network and culture.

LAMAR’s focus is deeply appealing to us, as is Brantly’s personal story. REMUS founder and CEO Krishna Gupta recently sat down with Brantly to discuss his company and our partnership.

Brantly, I’m super excited about working together, our partnership, and the opportunity we have in front of us. For me personally, this is an opportunity to broaden my horizons and to help build a company in a space that I’m very interested in. I’m looking forward to a number of mutual learnings along the way.

I’d love to start us off by first understanding why you do what you do. How did you get into this space, and why are you passionate about it?

As a materials chemist, my background is in green chemistry, and I’m focused on positively impacting energy and the environment. All the work I did while I was in grad school really centered on that, and it led me to think about creating a supply chain logistics company that could provide sustainable end-to-end solutions, which could become a leader in a future planet with a zero-emissions goal.

That goal is something I’m passionate about, and it’s a never-ending journey. I’m both a scientist and a businessman, and with LAMAR I can explore my curiosity as a scientist by providing and implementing revenue-generating solutions in the cold chain logistics space.

When you take a step back and look at any company, every company has some form of a supply chain. It really governs the world around us. As we’ve been able to dig deeper in that and understand how products are raw materials-sourced, how they leave a manufacturing line, how they may sit in a distribution warehouse, and the customer’s need in terms of a final good, we’ve really seen this human aspect of the supply chain. It’s no longer linear – we’re starting to think of all these circular economy ideas. We’re asking: how can we put products in a space that then become raw materials for the next set of products? 

For the future we want for ourselves, and when we think about the next generation, our children and our children’s children, how can we begin implementing better sustainable business practices right now? That’s really at the core of what LAMAR is focused on in the cold supply chain. 

How do you think being Black has affected you as an entrepreneur to date?

When [my cofounder] Michael and I started this company two and a half years ago, there were not a lot of Black founders at tech companies. We take that on as a challenge, and we wear it proudly on our shoulders.

When you look at the statistics, only around 1% of venture capital goes to Black founders. So if I go out and raise $100K, and I only have access to 1% of the available funds, it poses a real question: how good am I? If I can have some access, it means I must be very talented. It’s those types of disparities that we want to overcome at LAMAR.

I think investing in a company is really similar to so many other things that you do in life: it’s a friendship, it’s a partnership. It’s easier for people to invest in people who look like them or who have ideas similar to theirs or who come from similar walks of life. I think we need to break that chain. I think giving opportunities to people who may not look like you or may not come from where you come from is part of a new revolution here in America, and it’s something that will catch fire all around the world. 

“I think giving opportunities to people who may not look like you or may not come from where you came from is part of a new revolution here in America, and it’s something that will catch fire all around the world.”

– BRANTLY FULTON

There have been plenty of positive things about being Black in my entrepreneurial journey, too. I think it can certainly be a good thing to stand out in a room, and that creates some opportunities. Just in the past few months, during the pandemic, we’ve won several awards, and I think we’re starting to see Black communities and Black investing groups start to sprout up across America in a way they never have before. I think being able to leverage some of the existing networks that I had, such as Morehouse College (an all-male HBCU), where I went for undergrad, has been an incredible opportunity for me. We’ve been able to connect with older alums who are really interested in what we’re doing, and that’s given us access to their networks for investment and opportunities.

If you don’t go out there and seek those types of opportunities, very rarely I find in life do they just knock at your door. 

Speaking of opportunities, how did you hear about REMUS?

I first heard about REMUS through a LinkedIn post. Immediately, I really liked the firm’s mission. Compared to what I was seeing from other firms, I thought it was ambitious. I felt that REMUS was looking for companies that were driven and doing things outside of the box, and that the firm really wanted to support its founders. 

More specifically, when I was reading about your story, Krishna, and how you started out of a dorm room, I began to have this kind of déja vu. It reminded me so much of my own story, because I was in my last year of graduate school when I was starting LAMAR.

I really liked your story, and it reminded me of my own. That’s something I appreciate. 

Well that’s great. And conversely, that was one of the things that really attracted us to you. I could resonate with that dorm room sort of story, and also the fact that you and your cofounder got to know each other at Morehouse. I really do believe that when you see friendships amongst the founding team or the leadership team, it creates a higher probability of success.

And to me, success looks like you becoming wildly rich. Honestly, that has to be the number one driver here. This is not a “program,” it’s not a summer camp. This is about helping you and Michael build the best company you can build. We are obviously a very small part of that journey — it’s up to you to really build it. But if there’s a way we can help facilitate that by opening our networks and providing any guidance, that is to me the number one driver of success.

And from a more personal standpoint, I would like to come out of this feeling like I have gotten rid of some of that unconscious bias that I’m sure I have as a leader. I would love to be aware of and exposed to networks that previously I didn’t even know existed, and start the journey of helping to play a small role in leveling the playing field. 

Look, I’m a guy of Indian descent and an engineer — so it’s super easy for me to keep funding Indian engineer entrepreneurs. And candidly: it’s a pretty good bet. There are a lot of Indian engineers who are building massive businesses. But I think you lose something in that. And what you lose is that you then sometimes run into the same fact patterns, you make some of the same mistakes, you live in this bubble, which from a personal sense is not very attractive to me. There’s a ceiling on growth.

But even in a professional sense, there’s probably high correlations between what Indian engineering entrepreneurs think about and start companies around. And that means I’m probably missing certain opportunities in the world, especially given how young I am — and I take a 40-, 50-year perspective on this. I want to be more aware of what people are doing. I think diversity promotes a more holistic way of thinking and discussing problems and problem-solving. Personally, that’s something I’d like to get out of this partnership.

I would second that, Krishna. I’m really looking forward to this partnership in terms of REMUS helping LAMAR grow and ultimately build a winning business that’s revenue-generating. That’s my number one goal.

Secondarily to that, when I think about growth for myself both personally and professionally, being inside a venture firm like REMUS, where I can learn how a fund thinks about startups, the key metrics it analyzes, how it manages the portfolio – those are all areas that will aid me both as a founder and as a leader in my community. I wear with pride being a Black man in America, as arduous as that is at times. And you know, I would say to myself: in my position, having a PhD, I know there are a lot of younger Black males that either went to Morehouse College or are from other places, and they look up to the things that I do. And the things that I do are visible to them, so I always try to honor that and be a leader. And that’s a big part of what success looks like for me. 

One thing I love about REMUS is its Campus Associate program. I immediately thought: how we can get the program to reach HBCUS? So much about the venture world is unknown and untapped at these colleges. One of the things I have learned is that talent is all around us, but opportunity is not. There are so many students I know at Morehouse College and Spelman College and Clark who have wildly great ideas, but they just need someone behind them who will help support them and see their vision. 

So I’m personally focused on 1) being on the front line leading that journey for them, and 2) finding ways where I can personally help and assist. That’s important for me as well. 

Let’s talk about the company for a second. How do you think about what you’ve built as a competitive edge? The idea of sensors and software in supply chain is one that many are pursuing. How do you think about your edge? And more broadly, how do you think about whether sensors and tracking really make sense for all kinds of goods?

In terms of our platform and where we see the edge and advantage, it’s really around granular-level or itemized-level tracking. The ability to ideate product at the vial or the dose level in the case of pharma, and at that individual carton or package level when you think about food products. That’s where we see our edge in terms of granularity.

This is backed in two ways: one, in the pharma space, there’s a drug supply chain security act, under which all pharma goods manufactured in the US by 2023 have to be serialized at the individual pill bottle level. Having government and regulatory compliance will, I think, force companies to adopt better and newer technology.

Second, by having these printed flexible sensors that fit in better packaging and in more narrow spaces – not only do you get the ability for this granular-level tracking, over time as these materials become cheaper, you’ll also be able to cut costs. 

In which industries do you think it matters to have item-level tracking? Does it really matter for me to know whether a roll of toilet paper is here or there?

That’s a good question. I would say for a roll of toilet paper, maybe not – and tracking these items is not, right now, at the level of difficulty of food or pharma. That’s why we really focus on the cold chain, because we began to see how temperature-controlled products and temperature-dependent products really needed a higher level of tracking than products that are stable at room temperature. We began to see these breakdowns in the cold chain as a result of inefficient temperature tracking. That led us to understand that core industries like food and pharma were going to lead the future of this sensing. 

When we do kind of take a step back and look at other spaces, a particularly relevant one is pandemic PPE. This is a real-world example: there was a donor at UCLA who had purchased something like $45K worth of N95 masks for the UCLA hospital at the height of the pandemic back in April or May. It turned out when those masks arrived at the hospital, they weren’t N95 grade, and the hospital workers couldn’t use them. Think about the chaos that creates from a disruption in the supply chain, by not understanding products as being authentic or not being able to track their origin.  

I think granular tracking of a lot of our day-to-day items will not necessarily be needed, but as we do move toward more circular economies, I would say if we are going to have this kind of zero-emissions planet we envision, understanding these raw materials sourcing processes and having a good lead on where the raw materials step is all the way through to that final product will make an impact on how we perceive carbon emissions. With that being said, in the future I think there will be a higher level of tracking even on just common products. 

I’m excited to partner with you, and I’m looking forward to the journey that you’re on and hopefully just seeing it being wildly successful. 

I couldn’t agree more.

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