Mobility Innovators

Mark Norman ([00:00:00]):

Developing an autonomous vehicle is a very attractive problem to solve because it’s hard and it looks solvable. This has been an insight over the last five years. It’s the last 5% that’s killer, right? And it’s been driving a car for a few decades now and it probably driven a million miles. What do I know that I can teach my kids as they’re learning to drive? And can a computer learn those things, teach those things in certain ways, yes, but we know from the recent examples with crews in San Francisco and cones and construction and ambulances and things like that, there’s just a lot of edge cases that are hard.

Jaspal Singh ([00:00:48]):

Welcome to the Mobility Innovators Podcast.

Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of Mobility Innovators podcast. I’m your host, Jaspal Singh. Mobility Innovator podcast invites key innovators in the transportation and logistics sector to share their experience and future forecasts. In this episode, we’ll be discussing the role of venture capital in mobility space.

Our today guest is a General Partner of FM Capital. FM Capital is a venture capital firm focuses on technology which are transforming transportation industry. He’s responsible for fund leadership, investment strategy and portfolio management. Prior to setting the fund, he was the president of Zipcar where he led the company expansion, creating the world’s largest car sharing network. He was also the CEO of FlexCar, a vehicle subscription company; CEO and chairman of Chrysler Canada and Managing director of Summit System, a European technology startup.

I’m so happy to welcome Mark Norman, General Partner, FM Capital. It’s time to listen and learn.

Hello Mark. I’m so happy to have you on the podcast today and I’m looking forward to our discussion because your experience as an operator and investor that was, I feel the mobility startup required somebody who understand the space and also can support in the growth journey.

Mark Norman ([00:02:07]):

Thank you. It’s a privilege to join you today. Really appreciate it.

Jaspal Singh ([00:02:10]):

Great. Now let’s start our discussion with your personal journey. And I saw you had such a long professional career. You were the CEO of Daimler Chrysler, Canada, and we discussed like you were in Windsor Canada. And it’s good to know, like you mentioned, a lot of people don’t think Windsor is a part of Canada, but I believe it’s very much part of Canada. And later you became the CEO of FlexCar and in 2007 the company merged with Zipcar and you became the president at Zipcar. The company was later acquired by Avis.

So I feel you are like a lucky person whenever you join a company. It got acquired by a bigger player, so you had such an good operating experience and managed two big exit. And in 2015 you decided to join First Move, which is also called FM Capital as General Partner.

So I’m very curious to know why did you shift your career from operator to investor? And also can you share some highlight of your professional journey? You’ve seen so many spaces, you see the mobility evolving. What did you see how the mobility space evolve in last three – four decades?

 

 

Mark Norman ([00:03:16]):

Yeah, there’s a lot there. Thank you. When you think of a career, a little bit like a movie, I hope mine is still in production and it’s not for yet and it’s just a fascinating industry that continues to change. It’s big. We used to say a lot when I was in government relations in Canada about how many jobs get affected by the auto and mobility industry and at the time, and it’s changed a little bit, but I mean it’s about one in six, maybe one in seven. And even worldwide mobility is about 12 or 13% of global GDP. So it’s large and it’s in transition. A couple questions in there when you ask about highlights, I think back to the movie, there are certainly frames in the movie that are moments in time that are awesome and exciting. I mean, I think ringing the bell on the New York stock, well the NASDAQ Exchange is a really fun moment and super cool, but at the end of the day it is only a couple hours out of somebody’s time and really the kind of movie clip or the real behind that is building great companies.

Mark Norman ([00:04:29]):

And so that to me is what’s really exciting and encouraging and fulfilling in this growing transformative space is building businesses that are making a difference. So then to the question you asked about moving from operator to investor, we had the privilege of being backed by some of the best VCs on the planet. I mean specifically, and again that’s maybe arguable, but many, many, many would agree companies like Benchmark and Greylock and Revolution with their founders like Rob Kagle and Bill Helman and Steve Case and Don Davis who were all on the board and very active with Zipcar in that growth is a privilege frankly a lot of entrepreneurs and management teams don’t have for a lot of startups, the VC is a dark, misunderstood, not understood business, Hey these guys girls are busy, hard to reach, a little short, difficult. And our experience was tremendous value add.

Mark Norman ([00:05:39]):

And I think the other point I would add is in shifting to the investment side or known by entrepreneurs sometimes is the dark side to the VC side was to be invested in a portfolio where you can add your greatest value in a small way across a number of companies as opposed to the ups and downs of doing a little bit of everything in one company. So there’s a bit of a diversification element but also an application of some of your best talents to more companies. So that was the reason for the shift for me that I made eight years ago and what’s really been kind of a second career for me where I was a little more of a hired gun operator than a growth leader. And then frankly I run a small business today and I’ve got a co-leader with it, a co-managing partner, and we’re only about 10 people. So I relate to startup world very closely even in my own business.

Jaspal Singh ([00:06:38]):

Yeah, that’s great. And I really loved your analogy about career as a movie and it’s still in progress and I know many more blockbuster scenes are about to come and we are looking forward to that.

But that’s a good point when you say people see that success, but there is lot in back which is happening and you put a lot of work in the background, which a lot of people don’t know because they see just the final movie, not the unfinished one or not the unedited one. And your point about working with operator and having a right investor on your board is a big blessing because entrepreneurship is a lonely journey and finding a right partner will help you to make the journey easier and better.

Now you mentioned about you joined this from FM Capital. Now I want to know a little more about FM Capital and Fund is doing very great. I saw it was set up in 2012 with the fund one with $40 million, but then the fund two was 90 million and in 2021 you guys raised 150 million. So the Fund III, can you share an overview of FM capital and your focus within the transportation and mobility sector, what you guys are looking now and also what specific trend and technology are you more excited about in this space now because the space is evolving very fast, so what is keeping you excited at the job?

Mark Norman ([00:07:59]):

Yeah, great. And again, a lot of questions in there too. Maybe it’s helpful to share a little story on the fund and how it got together. So FM Capital two backstories on the name one is Frazier McCombs, my partner Chase Frazier and Red McCombs is a well-known Texas entrepreneur who passed away earlier this year at the age of 95. He was involved in owning or starting of 400 different businesses including clear channel communications, several professional sports teams like the Minnesota Vikings car dealership groups that had almost 80 dealerships at one point in time and dozens and dozens and dozens of others. Red was a small part when my partner Chase wanted to, we met by the way, all of Rose lead through Canada by the way, even though he went to university at a very large school in Texas. I went to a very small school in Texas.

Mark Norman ([00:09:02]):

He lives in Colorado today, I live in Boston and we met in Toronto when I was on the board of a company called SCI that was doing all the websites for GM dealers in the US, for Mercedes dealers in Canada and a number of other clients. They bought a company that Chase my partner founded that was doing in a sense CRM. Think of it, what that means is, so fixed operations is service in the car business. CRM is relationship management on when to bring customers in the door using spreadsheets to say now might be a good time. Now that sounds terribly quaint today, but 20 years ago it was a pretty novel idea. We met when the Canadian company acquired his company became friends, he worked through an earnout period for a year or two and at that point in time he realized, and I had seen this as well, the industry was a little bit underserved by VC.

Mark Norman ([00:10:03]):

It’s a little hard to measure things like TAM, a total addressable market opportunity in the space. The layers of selling of dealers and customers and things like that were not well understood by VCs. So started the firm in 2012, small pilot fund of less than $40 million. It was a generalist fund, meaning IT focused across industries and multi-stage raised money in a hundred days. That was early. It was a pilot. There were lots of learnings, lots of things to do differently, not unlike frankly an early stage startup that makes a hard pivot. I joined for the beginning of Fund II, 100% auto focus, realized that our best strength was in Series A. Companies that were ready for their first institutional capital, a lot of enterprise software where his background had been ours had been, Zipcar was a tech company as well with select later stage investments where we would do later stage in areas where we really had thematic conviction, domain expertise and influence with the team.

Mark Norman ([00:11:22]):

So maybe that backstory is a bit helpful and then now leading into your question on hey, what do you invest in? So in the Mobility, Transportation, Automotive Tech space, I think McKinsey coined the term maybe 5-10 years ago of ACEs acronym to understand. And the way we coin each of those terms by the way is autonomy and sensors. We really focus on automation, so not so much flying cars but automating tasks that are hard to fill today. The C is connectivity and fleet management. We’ll talk about that I think later in our discussion. But opportunities there as just everything becomes connected and cars become a bit of a smartphone on wheels. The E for us is energy transition. A lot of it is electrification and the supporting ecosystem, but wouldn’t rule out some other select applications of things like hydrogen and other clean technologies.

Mark Norman ([00:12:29]):

Then the last one on S is on shared mobility, but what that is really asset-light business models and marketplace. So yes, it’s everything from in the shared space generically like Spotify or Zipcar, but the software that supports those businesses and brings in market and then we’re very quick to bring one even larger area over top of all of those, which is another A and that’s auto commerce. And you say, well what’s that? But in some ways that’s the largest piece of all. It’s how people consume transportation. It’s making car buying easier and more frictionless for both dealers and consumers and enterprise software that makes that happen. The business that my partner started and sold would also fall into that category. So those would be the five that we invest in and we can talk about trends and exits and opportunities that we see just about across the board in those areas.

Jaspal Singh ([00:13:35]):

Amazing, that’s a nice term. ACEs and I agree with you, the automobile is a bigger sector and mobility is part of our life. Everything people or goods, everything need to be moved around and the human actually evolved because of mobility. There was no mobility. Probably we’ll be still living in the primitive stage. So I always feel, and you rightly said, there are not many fund who understand that and for founder it’s very important to go to fund like you who understand mobility and understand automation, understand connectivity because not only you can provide the required capital but the knowledge to expand and grow.

Now you were the CEO of an automobile company. Like you mentioned earlier you were managing Daimler Chrysler and you were also part of car sharing company, which is an interesting mix because there are some company who tried to bring both model at one place but it failed like Ford Motor tried to do that in past. I’m curious to know what is your view on feature of automobile industry to automobile industry? Need to look share mobility or car sharing as a future. And also how do you see the future of a car dealership? Because if the car company starts selling or providing services, why would people need to go to car dealership?

Mark Norman ([00:14:55]):

Yeah, great question. So there’s a few things there. I mean when you think about it at its core, I mean certain things like public transit is a shared mode or anything that we ship by air or rail or truck inevitably is a bit of sharing of a resource that might be government owned and might be privately owned like rail that’s owned by a certain number of rail companies that update the infrastructure for example. And so to your question, we are seeing some really cool changes in and there’s a lot going on even with Covid, right? With what happened with public transit ridership and how you felt about kind of clean personal space. The explosion of micro mobility and scooter networks in cities was the fastest creation of a unicorn business and has had a couple cycles that are almost equally quick on the downside as well.

Mark Norman ([00:16:06]):

So I think to your question at a high level on the opportunity is you can see in each of these areas of technology that we’ve split them into and there’s clearly a lot of overlap and there’s more changing all the time. We’ll talk about some new trends as well today on this call, but technology is moving fast and I think that means good things for consumers because it’s more options, it’s less friction and it’s lower cost. We think that’s good things for providers. There are certain and provisions that lend themselves well to large network operators. So some benefits accrued to scale, none unlike Zipcar where we used to say when we took Zipcar public that car sharing had very, very low barrier to entry, but a very high barrier to scale running those businesses like that efficiently in that example and many others that we’ll talk about require deliver network returns meaning the network, establishing the network of nodes, partners, parking spaces, things like that help make the total offering better. It drives word of mouth as well that says, hey, this is reliable wherever you go. And there are a number of businesses like that we think are really exciting. So short answer to the question is I think it makes me think a little bit of a quote that’s often attributed to Bill Gates, but I think it might’ve been originally coined by Alfred who was a NASA consultant back in the sixties. My dad had worked for NASA back then and he said that people usually overestimate what can be done in the short term

Mark Norman ([00:18:04]):

And they usually underestimate what can be done in the long term. And you’re nodding because you’ve heard it before that sentiment. So it’s not new.

Mark Norman ([00:18:12]):

Alfred may have not even coined it himself, but with all the changes going on in mobility, there’s a lot of talk about hey, we’re going to be, there were discussions three or four years ago about ubiquitous robo taxis by 2021. They’re not, there’s talk about at what rate certain cities will completely phase out ICE engines. And so a number of these things are at work, but the larger opportunity is things are moving fast to create alternatives that are cleaner, safer and more efficient. And so back to your question on is it a personally owned world where you buy from dealers or is it a dynamic shuttle model where you’ve got this technology figure out where the bus goes and it picks you up? The answer is yes to both. Now if you live in downtown of a large major city, you may have more interest in one of those than the other. And if you live out in a more rural or less urban environment, you’re going to be more dependent on a car. Let’s just be honest and you’re going to be super thoughtful about range if it’s electric, but the fact that there are more cleaner, safer opportunities is good for everybody.

Jaspal Singh ([00:19:38]):

That’s a great answer and I agree with you. We heard this quote many times that overestimating in short-term and underestimated long-term. But I never thought from the mobility perspective and what you’re saying is absolutely makes sense. A lot of people are cynical about and a lot of people are too bullish about robo-taxi, it is coming tomorrow. But I think what you said, the truth lies somewhere in the between. It will come probably not come tomorrow, but at the same time it is a lot of changes are happening now we are seeing in San Francisco and other places where things are happening. So thanks for sharing that perspective. I think sometimes it’s important to look at different perspective on thing. We know stuff but we never have a different perspective on stuff. So what you said is absolutely right, lies the truth, lies somewhere in the between.

Jaspal Singh ([00:20:26]):

Now you mentioned you guys are very bullish about connectivity and you are looking startup and investing in that space. And I would say that our mobility sector is evolving very rapidly and we see a lot of this vehicle to everything V2X communication, which is going everywhere. We are seeing connecting vehicle. At the same time we are seeing new technology and new partnership. Now it’s not the automobile company which are driving everything. The consumer electronic company like LG recently unveiled their Omni pod mobile cabin concept. And there are a lot of other company like Apple is looking to launch, Xioami in China, they are looking to launch. A lot of technology companies are entering into this space.

How do you see relationship between this vehicle manufacturers, tech company and telecommunication company provider evolve as a vehicle connectivity become a more integrated into automobile ecosystem. And also I feel like do you see that? We see a big shift in the automobile space because of these technology companies are coming into the picture. So there’ll be the vehicle automobile manufacturer will just become like a hardware provider and rest all will be done by the technology company.

Mark Norman ([00:21:40]):

Yeah, Great question. You’re definitely seeing a new sort of tier one ecosystem. I mean it used to be, and not that long ago, I mean we’re talking 20 years ago was vertically integrated from the OEM to the supply network. And think about it like Delphi and Ion were spun off in the not too distant past from their OEM parents, General Motors and Ford and even those companies have diversified quite a bit. Delphi had split off into propulsion and now BorgWarner and then the Optiv tech side of the business, which is much more software and bought companies like Nutton and now Motional for its software stacked to compliment other work it’s doing in software and sensors. But what it’s also brought up is a new set of partners. I mean when you think about it like Amazon web services and Microsoft are now part of the discussion on hosting and things like that.

Mark Norman ([00:22:47]):

Or you look at the role Nvidia is playing now and the value of that company driven by sectors in addition to mobility, but compute is also very, very, very important. So I think the answer to your question is that new partnerships are forming and are more important every day assembly, how you create and sustain value in a car is evolving quickly. And what I mean by that is it used to be that making a great car was efficient packaging and efficient powertrain and time to market with a very high quality bringing time to market in a reasonably quick period of time, three years more than six on the inside and producing it with high level of reliability was important. Those are all table stakes and there are even some contract manufacturers, whether it’s Magna or Foxconn or others who are willing to do that for a tier one or a new manufacturer. You remember Tesla going through that period in the 2017-2018 period, I think Elon called it production hell was to get to that table stakes game of volume and quality. And now I think you’ve seen Jim Farley Ford’s CEO made a comment just a few weeks ago on, hey, how much of the stack did we need to control to protect vehicle identity, security, and margins frankly? And so lots going on there and maybe the short answer is watch this space.

Jaspal Singh ([00:24:56]):

I love your point and you rightly said a lot of these things are given now the value stack is on the technology side and we are seeing more and more technology coming into the picture and Nvidia becoming a dominant player now in mobility because everybody needs chip, everybody need computing power to perform now. That’s a great point and one other major trend, what we are seeing in the industry, which a lot of people are not noticing because I spoke to a lot of people about that and a lot of people are not aware about that. It’s called the Software Defined Vehicle (SDVs) and it’s basically mean when the vehicle, the significant version of their functionality and feature at that mind and control by the software rather than the traditional hardware component.

Last year, BMW launched this heated seat as a service. There was a lot of meme about that, everything will be kind of software as a service.

Jaspal Singh ([00:25:46]):

So automobile company become like a SaaS company, but Tesla is doing that with the full self-driving feature. You can pay for it and you can have it all, the vehicle will have the feature but you need to pay for that. What is your view on SDV as the automobile player are shifting toward that path and how do you see that SDV will benefit the customer in term of flexibility, adaptability, and long-term value compared to the traditional vehicle? Like I can buy the vehicle but I can prefer not to have those functionality now, but later on I can have that.

Mark Norman ([00:26:18]):

Yeah, great question. Software-defined vehicles are really tech stacks again going forward. Meaning if the old way of developing a vehicle was a little bit more modularity based, start with a basic frame. The subsystems don’t really talk to each other. You’ve got entertainment, you’ve got safety, you’ve got brakes, you’ve got other controls. And historically many of those were mechanical controls, meaning a mechanical linkage versus a by-wire linkage, throttle steering other inputs and that’s what you’ve seen in certainly a push to L4 and L5 autonomy requires drive-by wire across the board and you say, well wait a minute, I thought you said autonomy wasn’t tomorrow type of thing. But with even L2 and L3 safety, there’s much more. And the larger point is to develop a vehicle that’s upgradable like your smartphone requires a software based architecture. So some manufacturers are doing that themselves.

Mark Norman ([00:27:32]):

We have an investment in a company in Israel called Guard Knox that does architecture for vehicle makers and suppliers. They handle a lot on both latency moving signals very quickly and also managing traffic to be able to pick up a spoofed signal that might be a cyber-attack that says slam on the brakes at 60 miles an hour type of thing can pick up those things. So all of that is critical.

Then to your question on what about paying for features is very interesting. I think the simple point is customers will consider paying for things that they’ve never seen before. And the reason they can ask is a lot of early adopters don’t keep vehicles for very long. And so even look at the price on full self-driving for Tesla, I mean it’s been I think as little as $6,000 a few years ago then 10 and 12 and so on. And if somebody doesn’t keep a vehicle for very long, say 2 years instead of 6 years, $12,000 is a giant amount of money. But to flip that to a monthly is something they might consider. And Tesla has been fairly rigid about transferability of those features and oftentimes not transferring those. But to ask a customer to pay for heated seats that might only have cost a couple hundred bucks on the vehicle price of what’s now on average $50,000 US on a new car is absurd and they’ve backed off on.

Mark Norman ([00:29:21]):

But on some new things we see things like security monitor more, I bought a Rivian earlier this year and it has more cameras and they call it I think gear guard, which is to be able to check campsite. And you’ve heard stories of, and it’s a two-edged sword by the way, right? With Tesla cameras being used almost like a ring doorbell, Hey on pick things up, detect some perpetrator of a crime, but it also has the unintended consequence of inadvertently spying on you. And so who sees that information with what risks and so on. So where there are new features, there’s an opportunity for a dialogue on charging for them. Where there old features that customers are, especially in a luxury car is usually standard equipment charging for them is a non-starter.

Jaspal Singh ([00:30:28]):

I got your point. I think that’s very valid. It’s like people who love to experiment probably will okay to pay, but if something which is an old feature, you don’t want to pay anything extra for that and you feel that should be part of the vehicle.

Mark Norman ([00:30:41]):

And I think the other point is also upgradeability, right where, and again that’s a bit of, I think Tesla’s point on full and there are advocates and naysayers for sure on the efficacy of that system, but at least the approach of using more customer miles to make the system better and safer stands to reason that could you keep charging because it keeps improving, which is different than a feature that if you buy a new car every 10 years, you probably won’t be very happy about paying for something every month for a two months if the feature’s not improving over that time.

Jaspal Singh ([00:31:22]):

Yeah, I think that’s very important that you see some changes happening in the car. And again, like what you said, the vehicle will become like a table stack and the technology will be additional feature and bringing that upgradability, there is a lot happening in automobile sector and I think that’s what keep us exciting. The other big change is electrification. We never thought, I mean electric, there used to be electric vehicle centuries back, but it’s coming back. There is a big shift now all the automobile player country, cities are pushing target that by 2025 or 2030 or 2040 all vehicle need to be electric. So there is this growing interest in electrification and system and transportation.

How do you see the future of mobility evolving? Because you work in automobile space, you work in car sharing space and now you’re working as an investor, where do you see the opportunity for innovation? Because I see there are a lot happening in different sites.

Mark Norman ([00:32:19]):

So we see innovation opportunities across the ecosystem and what I mean by that is everything from battery chemistry to both production and supply ecosystem and also charging. Now the trouble is it’s a little bit of a chicken and egg. Let’s be honest. The early adopters of EVs tend to have garages not exclusively.

Mark Norman ([00:32:54]):

Again in urban centers like Toronto and Chicago and Boston, and yes there are fights being fought in those cities about charging on street, can you run a cable across the sidewalk from your flat to your park, things like that. And all that stuff is beginning to surface as penetration grows. And so yes, we see great things coming from the battery side of things. We’ve got an investment in a company called Factorial Energy that’s a developer solid state batteries that is achieving very high performance numbers in terms of energy density volumetrically for packaging a vehicle and also by weight. And the weight of EVs is not a small issue at this because they’re quite heavy and they clearly chew through tires. They’re more dangerous when they hit pedestrians or cyclists because there’s more mass. And some would even argue that at least on the truck side of things can tear up the roads a little more quickly too.

Mark Norman ([00:34:10]):

So we are in the early innings I would say. And again I think this is, you’ve seen some of this from Toyota and maybe to a lesser extent from Ford, the value from hybrids in terms of achieving lower emissions and also when you look at full lifecycle cost to produce a vehicle is a bit less for a hybrid. And if you really are just kind of banging around town exercising what might be a 50 or 75 mile range, you can be electrical all the time. And then if you really are worried about range for a longer trip, you’re using gas then. So the answer I think to your we’re excited that things are moving. You look at the cafe performance of the vehicle from manufacturers, it is going up. It’s been in a push – pull meaning push from government to provide alternatives for customers that they might actually like in demand, not just things that they don’t want. But you’ve also seen, and again led by Tesla and Porsche and Rivian and some other companies, the new offerings, Ford Mach-E see it in police service now too. It’s got performance attributes that make even the biggest petrol heads happy because the torque’s great. So we’re seeing things move, but we are not at the final innings of this by any stretch yet.

Jaspal Singh ([00:35:46]):

It’s still, I would say movie is still in the progress. So movie is still need to be finalized. Using the analogy,, we’re early in it and we’re still developing the characters,

Jaspal Singh ([00:35:57]):

I love that point. Now the other thing which is moving and which we discussed earlier is automation, autonomous mobility. There was a lot of skeptic and there were a lot of optimism, like we said, by 2021 city will have fully autonomous fleet and running around, we are not there. But at the same time we see now state regulator has allowed Cruise and Waymo to launch 24X7 fully autonomous commercial vehicle operation in San Francisco. Tesla is very bullish about robo taxi. I was recently listening to Elon Musk and he said that Robo Taxi can bring $10 trillion value in the company because it’ll be game changer and everybody can just use anywhere and can be used.

What is your thought on the autonomous mobility and how do you see the role of autonomous mobility in the future of transportation? Because I don’t think it’s coming very fast, but at the same time as VC always have that superpower to see 5- years ahead. So as a VC, how do you see life will be in 5-7 years?

Mark Norman ([00:37:03]):

Yeah, we think about this in terms of jobs to be done and remember I maybe used the phrase early on the call more on automation than autonomy. Why? What task are we solving for? And again, for all the talk about AI this year mean developing an autonomous vehicle is a very attractive problem to solve because hard and it looks solvable. And this has been an insight over the last 5 years. It’s the last 5% that’s killer and it’s been driving a car for a few decades now and have probably driven a million miles. What do I know that I can teach my kids as they’re learning to drive and can a computer learn those things, teach those things in certain ways, yes. But we know from the recent examples with crews in San Francisco and cones and construction and ambulances and things like that, there’s just a lot of edge cases that are hard.

Mark Norman ([00:38:14]):

So that’s the technology problem. Back to your question for entrepreneurs, what’s the consumer problem? The thing we deal with a lot is there’s a lot of people that are willing to drive for pretty little money. I mean they’re delivering Instacart and DoorDash and doing ride-hailing today for $15 or $18 or 19 bucks an hour. And I’m not here to say that that’s an adequate pay, but I’m just saying people are willing to drive for not that much money.

And I think as a society we’ve learned that, I don’t know, I drove my daughter to school today, she’s 14 years old and the seat time in the car was valuable to me as well for somebody who wouldn’t talk to me otherwise. So back to the question then is what are we trying to solve is usually this is where we’ve landed on goods delivery to say a few things, goods move 24X7.

Mark Norman ([00:39:16]):

Not just when they’re awake. Goods are not as litigious when they crash. People are for some good reasons and frankly goods drivers tend to be commercial drivers with the CDL license, that’s a little harder to get. And sometimes more recently post covid, it’s been difficulty hiring drivers of certain classes of vehicles. So to your question, do we see automation of certain of those roles? Absolutely. You see it with automation on certain parts of a lot of flights that you might fly, right? That some ways it’s better. Have they pulled the pilot up? No, a lot of good reasons, but you can certainly handle certain roles with less fatigue, with more automation assist. And so I think we’re going to see more of that. So it’s focusing on work to be done. But the thing to remember is what else was that driver doing? Were they loading boxes?

Mark Norman ([00:40:27]):

Were they moving a dolly? Were they moving at five feet, a hundred feet? Things like that. And so what are the other pieces of the supply chain that also need to be automated if you just pull the driver out? And so those are things that I think to solve and where we’re going with some early applications. And yes, we will see robo taxis more in controlled repeat route, not unlike a monorail type of thing that’s pretty controlled. But if it’s, we did a lot of work in the early days of Flexcar with King County metro in Seattle who was very proactive and thoughtful about CO2 reduction and about vehicle miles traveled efficiency and they used a lot of buses to commute where laying rail would’ve been terribly expensive. And so does autonomy make sense in some of those? Maybe. So that’s what we’ll see more of versus your private driver coming to pick you up for all your daily duties like a chauffeur.

Jaspal Singh ([00:41:41]):

And I love this point because a lot of time I see people look things only from technology point of view, but I love when people say what is the real problem you’re looking to solve? And you need to identify the problem and what you mentioned about, and that’s what I also personally feel probably the good and logistic will be the first adopter of autonomy because it’s less risky. It’s 24X7, you can deliver goods in the night and I know you guys have invested in Gatik, which is this mid-mile travel warehouse to warehouse and it can be done throughout the day or even in the night. So providing that opportunity or automation is much better than saying the whole world will be autonomous. And your point about driving your vehicle, driving your kids to school in your own car, you have that captive audience. They will listen to you that time, otherwise you’ll never get a chance to talk to them.

Mark Norman ([00:42:32]):

That’s true. We have another investment that’s called Outrider that just moves trailers around a terminal yard. Why is that important? Generally private land, generally low speed, less than 12 miles an hour, same thing moving goods around and it’s moving trailer, so it’s sort of dock door to dock door in what can be a little city of a terminal yard where hiring those drivers is hard because the skilled ones want to do the longer or areas where they can get paid more and just moving trucks around yard might be a little harder to fill and it’s a little boring also. So that job is boring, so it’s better to give it to automation

 

Mark Norman ([00:43:22]):

Well, right. And if you’re bored, you might be distracted and if you’re distracted then you’re unsafe and that’s now we’ve got a problem

Jaspal Singh ([00:43:27]):

Yeah, that’s what happened. Now other technology innovation and you mentioned about a little bit about Artificial Intelligence, Generative AI, there is a lot of buzzword VCs are investing in a big chunk of money in this space. The only different thing I would say compared to Generative AI and Blockchain is that blockchain we were still looking for user case and in Generative AI at least we are seeing some real-life user cases like chatbot and for customer service, I was talking with some company which has chatbot to automate the whole customer service in a better way. Recently Mercedes been integrated chatGPT in their car entertainment system and production process. So we see at least there are some early adopter to see.

What’s your views on generative AI and how do you see it can be part of mobility and logistic ecosystem?

Mark Norman ([00:44:14]):

Yeah, we’re definitely excited by the potential. I mean we view in some ways this could be as big a deal as search. We’re just looking for information. What generative AI does is distills from a lot of information then says what’s the next word or the next thought and starts to predict. Now the risk of course is bias, right?

Mark Norman ([00:44:40]):

With search and there’s bias in search too, let’s just be clear, but it’s a little harder to see it in generative AI. So back to your question on applications, we have a company Tekion that does dealer management systems and a cloud native software power everything in a dealership as well. And they’re doing some things and CRM and some other things, but just, and by the way, founder came from Tesla where he’d built the retail management software that was in use in 34 countries with Tesla. They just announced this week a generative AI tool to generate emails for dealers, for customers that are very thoughtful. So think of the chat type tools on steroids that it’s a possible holistic, comprehensive, personalized email. Great, fantastic. And so we’re seeing that companies using generative AI may not replace all their people, but they will beat companies not using it. That it’s definitely a productivity accelerant and a tool and an opportunity. It was interesting, but talking to some of our CEOs as well, how much of it can be used even for coding with generative ai, CEO who said he was judging a competition with high school kids and he couldn’t believe the quality of startup tech that these kids had done in 30 days

Mark Norman ([00:46:14]):

With the use of generative AI to help the coding that might’ve taken a small team, three or four people a year or two to do maybe more. And so that’s exciting to see again this accelerant productivity driver. But we’re also in a little bit of a hype cycle too, sort of how you value and what’s a mode around it versus better ingesting and using of the various LLMs out there is a bit of a question for debate on how to best harvest and harness the technology.

 

 

Jaspal Singh ([00:46:52]):

Yeah, I agree. I mean in Gartner recently published their Gartner hype cycle and generative AI is right now at their peak in the hype. So we will see some downfall, but that’s how the technology evolve.

Mark Norman ([00:47:04]):

Yeah, we’re excited

Jaspal Singh ([00:47:07]):

Now. I am so amazed to see whatever topic we discuss, you guys have a startup invested in that area, so I feel happy because it means all these topics are relevant and you see it’s a future. Now I want to discuss a little more about your investment size as an entrepreneur. How do you manage your day-to-day job? So I saw the FM capital very impressive because you guys have 26 active company and 13 exit already, which is remarkable because it’s hard to get an exit in company. So this is really impressive. Could you share some of the success stories from your portfolio?

You mentioned some of the company where you invested in all, but I would love to know some more success story from your portfolio and how did you meet founders and how they scale up and exit. How do you train them to scale up? 13 exit is big. So how do you work with founder to manage those exit?

Mark Norman ([00:48:01]):

Yeah, let’s go back to the movie analogy. I think the exit is sort of the big scene late in the movie where it’s exciting. It might be a chase scene or there’s a reveal and a mystery and the villains discovered or something like that. But the buildup and the behind the scenes happened all movie. And that’s important that when you think about our role as investors. So yes, it’s identifying trends and buying companies or investing in companies, right? Meaning you can throw money at things and overpay and that

Mark Norman ([00:48:46]):

Might be in the right companies at the wrong time. Secondly, there’s cultivating and building value and operating these companies. This is where maybe our skills are a little different than some others because we build businesses and started scaled and sold them ourselves. So we know what that work entails and those scars have taught us. And then thirdly is the exit side of things. And that’s a lot on timing and getting the timing right. I think Warren Buffett has said, I’ve made all my money buying too late and selling too early. Tongue in cheek of course, but not optimizing always for perfect, but for solving for done is better than perfect. We say a lot in our business.

So to your question that some exits that we’re excited about, a lot of them aren’t household words or household names or logos. There’s some unsexy businesses that you’ve never heard of that are in enterprise software that have built a nice tool, grown a business in a smart way, have been frugal with capital, have made acquisitions in a efficient manner, have invested in sales to grow where they’re very clear on what a dollar of sales investment will drive in terms of growth in annual recurring revenue.

Mark Norman ([00:50:19]):

And those are really exciting even if they’re not very famous. So I’d be remiss if I didn’t talk about sort of building value, but we have a business in that space that was called Keeps that we sold to a private equity buyer. They do basically yield management for dealership shops for their service area. So yield pricing, mystery shopping, warranty rate adjustments. It’s not very sexy, but they do a good job and have built a nice business and there’s an entrepreneur in the business. Les Silver is the chairman, Lee Silver runs the business who execute really well. They have other financial investors now who are happy to having bought from us. On the other hand, we’ve also been thrilled of having exited some businesses that are a bit better known.

Mark Norman ([00:51:21]):

Some that come to mind in different spaces that we’ve talked about in selling cars online in Vroom. Again, knew that there was a trend to make that easier during Covid had a team that was not from the industry but was natively from an e-commerce background and built a nice business and we exited that in a way that was a nice return for our investors. We had another one in ride hailing that was a company called Via. We talked about this dynamic shuttle space and it’s really the software to make the rides more efficient and the routes efficient. Great team building a great software business around the world hasn’t gone public, but we sold along the way and it’s been good for us. So there’s lots of different shapes and sizes on what we invest in.

Mark Norman ([00:52:26]):

How we exit, and certainly that big part in the middle, which is sort of how we managed to get there, which we hope we’re doing with all the companies we still retain as well as those that we’ve exited. And we keep in touch by the way, with those founders. I was texting with one of them that we exited probably four years ago yesterday. He’s in a new startup. That’s another unicorn. It’s not in the mobility space. But I will say success does tend tended beget success with founders in follow on acts and then also with referrals for other potential perspective investments.

Jaspal Singh ([00:53:09]):

Yeah, that’s a great point and something I really like what you said about the timing and I think as an investor you need to, you can’t predict the right time, but you need to be good in picking the company at the right time and exiting the company at the right time. If you miss that window, like you mentioned about Via, it’s a great company, I know them very well, they’re doing very well. But you need to know, okay, it’s a long-term play probably you need to leave some time in secondary and cash in and build more company, which is working in the space. So the timing is very important. The point you mentioned about working with the founder, you need to have a close relationship with the founder, even founder, which exited have a good relationship with you. It’s a big thing because not many investor manage to have that kind of relationship because it’s not when you have an exit discussion, it’s not an easy discussion. If you manage that, that’s great.

Mark Norman ([00:54:04]):

And a lot of that is also sort of values alignment. I found that was a big learning when we first started the firm where a founder’s on a different timetable for liquidity than investors. It can cause problems. You can read as much into that. And so we’re different because we manage, we don’t have evergreen funds that are unlimited time horizon. I think it’s simple, but having an honest discussion with founders over this is over the course of years, not weeks

Mark Norman ([00:54:48]):

Of these are our goals, this is how we’re thinking about it while still being unwavering in our support for those founders, but honest about our liquidity desires and goals can help us when we need to diverge and sell when they may not want to.

Jaspal Singh ([00:55:09]):

It’s very funny you mentioned this, the value alignment, because I was talking with one lawyer yesterday and he said lot of investors don’t even know what is the liquidity preference for the founder. What is the timeline? They assume that whenever we want to exit they will exit. But a lot of founders like, no, I want to continue to build a company. I want to scale it up. And there are a lot of conflict happen when you don’t have those alignments. So it’s very important to have what you said is honest discussion and bring both party together on common points.

Mark Norman ([00:55:44]):

Did you ever see the movie Moneyball on baseball?

Jaspal Singh ([00:55:47]):

No, not yet. But that’s a Good recommendation.

Mark Norman ([00:55:49]):

It’s a few years old. But the simple point was, and this has moved into, again, a lot of your listeners will appreciate its application across other sports is a much more statistics based approach to athletic ability and how do you build a team around complimentary skills. But a simple point in venture is I think it focuses a lot on home runs and these marquee, the stories a little bit like the person that went to the casino and the story that you hear about somebody went to the table with a hundred bucks and came back with 5,000. Those are great stories. Those are not typical stories. Those are not what build casinos. And so for us, and it’s a good discussion with entrepreneurs too. We think a lot about on-base percentage using the baseball analogy, so not getting out versus getting a home run.

Mark Norman ([00:56:51]):

I do think a lot about scoring. And so winning’s important. It’s not just not losing, but you don’t have to get it done with slugging and home runs all the time. And so you say, well, how does that relate to an entrepreneur who may not have a portfolio like you do? I’ve talked to a few of our entrepreneurs about at bats though, and to say some of them think their startup is the, and that if I’ve got something and my paper worth in the investment is worth X today, and if I run it for 10 more years, I could get 10x and the X is still good by the way. We sort of say, what if you get two X and you get three more shots as opposed to running all this to get the one to 10. Does that make sense? So anyway, that’s a little bit of detail behind the scenes on some of how portfolios get constructed and how the sausage gets made in venture. But cash is king for our investors and for startup investors.

Mark Norman ([00:58:00]):

And so we love the ideas and we want to change the world, but if we’re not honest with each other about liquidity, it doesn’t, doesn’t always end well. Let’s put it that way.

Jaspal Singh ([00:58:17]):

Yeah, that’s a great point. Thanks for sharing, Mark, because a lot of time we don’t discuss this behind the scene discussion. So thanks for mentioning that because I think for the founder, it’s very important to understand how the VC system work and why they have to be in alignment with the VC. The other thing about I want to check with you and learn from your experiences, one of the superpower of investor is to predict future trend correctly and identify the right founder who can achieve that because it need to be alignment between the founder or founder product fit. What factor do you consider when you evaluating potential investment in the mobility startup? Like you mentioned you invested in a company where founder was not from the industry, but they understand e-commerce business, so you still invested in them. Are there any criteria that stand out to you like something you see in the founder and you say, okay, this is the one we need to bet on?

Mark Norman ([00:59:10]):

Yeah, we think a lot about the founder’s story. What does that mean? Their reason for starting the company is not just a get to know you small talk, but what we’re looking for was what was the moment and the pain point that made them say, I have to do this. And usually where it’s born from something personal, a frustrating experience, look at Uber for example, and let’s be honest, taxing hailing and payment was a pretty humiliating experience for everybody. And if you weren’t a pro in Manhattan, you weren’t very good at it and they drive by, you had to get out in the street, kind of wave, really make a scene, and you’d always get the, when you pull out a credit card, when you get to the airport, you get the, oh my god, credit cards kind of thing. And so I just use that as an example of a pain point or in the founders of Zipcar was, oh my, I’m living in Cambridge, I can barely afford rent.

Mark Norman ([01:00:27]):

Parking was very difficult and I didn’t need a car that often, but a cab wasn’t going to get it done, nor was public transit. So I had to have a car, but just for a few hours, what do I do? And so that moment of frustration tends to drive the seeds of disruption or something that needs to be much better. Disruption as Clay Christensen would say, is usually 10% of the cost, almost an order of magnitude cheaper of the way things were done before. So that’s one. The second point is really a founder who’s hungry it needs to work, and this is where repeat founders are good. They usually have means hopefully they’ve made some money on the prior exit and they’re so wired to win. It’s not about the money anymore, it’s about winning. And so they have a hunger that they’ve seen and they’ve satiated and it’s helped them drive, drive, pivot, do what they need to do to make sure that the company gets to viability and they can show value at each.

Mark Norman ([01:01:49]):

And then maybe the last point is on scalability and repeatability. So it’s one thing to just solve something and be hungry to solve it, but we do find founders that can’t scale or maybe good light bulb people but aren’t necessarily good entrepreneurs. And so it’s really being able to frankly innovate yourself and change and adapt who you are to run through the scale. Frankly, it’s not that different from me and my job. I have to adapt. I’m not running a big organization with a lot of staff, so I got to roll up my sleeves As our team grows, I’ve got to hand off more getting better. And so things like that. So that flexibility and adaptability is important for any growth leader or CEO. So I hope that’s helpful and wasn’t too obtuse.

Jaspal Singh ([01:02:49]):

I think I love this point because a lot of time we just say that only the founder, only the market, only the product, only the problem. But what you said it’s really resonate is the founder story, founder hunger and scalability and repeatability. Because a lot of time you can create a business, but it’s not repeatable, it’s not scalable. And what you mentioned the example of Uber, I work at Uber and I’m one of the big fan because I travel across the globe sometimes you don’t need to talk to the driver, you just hit the button, the driver come pick you and drop you. You have no conversation and they don’t understand your language and you don’t need to haggle, you don’t need to do anything. It’s make your life so easy. And I still travel to some country where there is no Uber like tele iv still it’s not there.

Jaspal Singh ([01:03:34]):

And you have those problems. You need to negotiate, you need to set the price. They don’t accept credit card like you mentioned. It’s still those problems exist. So yeah, sometime we don’t realize how the life can be easier with these product and it’s just come from the founder stories and founder experience to build that. So that’s a great point. I really love these angles.

Now the job is VC is also very hard because like you mentioned, you work in a small team, things are changing, things are evolving. So you always need to be on the run and keep learning and you need to really find out what’s happening in the market. What is a new player coming up, what is a new trend coming up? How do you find out? Because you need to keep learning. And so I want to understand how do you update yourself in the market?

Jaspal Singh ([01:04:22]):

What do you read? How do you analyze the market trend and how do you find out if this idea is a market disruptor or just a fad? Because there is a lot of noise in the market, a lot of new technologies are coming up. So it’s very difficult to find out this will be scalable or this will be go long-term. Because when Uber started, Uber said, we will replace taxi, but actually Uber replaced a lot of personal vehicle. Nobody thought Uber market will be that big. So how do you understand this kind of a thing?

Mark Norman ([01:04:56]):

Yes, we say in our team, all of us are smarter than any of us and so please don’t sort of come away from this that there’s some sort of genius behind the curtain type of study things. And out comes the bright shining light from above and the answer, but much rather a network that’s feeding

Mark Norman ([01:05:24]):

Where the puck is going and who’s moving it and what I mean by that, in our firm at least focused on mobility and auto and transportation, have a lot of strategic investors who, and the largest ones comprise our advisory board. Lots of VC firms have an advisory board, usually retired guys that are on call. These folks are in the job today managing businesses of scale, concerned about what’s next. So they’re paying attention to technology and pain points in a core business. So it’s sort of like having CEOs who have skin in the game, significant amounts of money on what’s next, but maybe can’t big enough to have their own VC and that chemistry and collaboration with each other a few times a year of interdependencies. And how’s one trend affecting another in addition to the on-call? Elements that have on a specific question is very helpful.

Mark Norman ([01:06:36]):

We do have an investment team, it’s not massive. We, and they do go to conferences and network with our entrepreneurs as well and then find ourselves stress testing certain themes, what’s the future of the OBD2 port in the car, little things like that. Or how big a pain point is calibration on sensors or is generative AI going to transform your business? And so it’s not to maybe point to one silver bullet, but that’s the part I may have started with on the dark side, again, my early experience was they’re hard to reach because they’re constantly meeting new people and having to digest new ideas quickly, whether it’s an entrepreneur, a conference, a potential buyer for a company, things like that. And so it’s a lot of micro interactions, but the sum of all that really does help us kind of create almost like a heat map of opportunity that says, look, these are growing trends. They’re not always investible and we’re not always right, but where we can sharpen on where does maybe B plus strategy meet with an a plus execution and drive a nice return? How come?

Mark Norman ([01:08:13]):

I’d say our firm necessarily one that’s going to have a hundred Xer because we’re catching stuff as it goes out for commercialization and scale. So we’re not seed investors, but we also don’t have the mortality of a lot of seed. We don’t have nearly as many zeros as most VC funds. It’s frankly more like PE. And so we’re really growth oriented. So I hope I answered your question, but maybe we’re a little different from some other.

Jaspal Singh ([01:08:45]):

It’s great point. What you mentioned about the macro interaction and some of those macro give you better knowledge. So you have to keep talking to people in the space and actually people who are in the ring, not people who are outside or used to play, now they are sitting outside, but actually people who are in the ring, they can give you better tactics and strategy. And if, may I ask how much time in your day or in your month you spend on learning and how much time you spend on investing?

Mark Norman ([01:09:16]):

Yeah, maybe the answer is all of it on learning. Some of that’s fundraising, some of it’s investing and some of it’s managing to and some of it’s exiting back to those sort of three areas I mentioned. Frankly that’s the thing that’s the most attractive about being in tech in general and in VC for me in particular is that curiosity and learning and growth keeps me humble but keeps us as a team sharp too.

Jaspal Singh ([01:09:50]):

Yeah, I love your point learning keep you humble because then you realize, man, how little we know and there are so many people who know so many different things. So that’s a constant hunger like what you said for founder hunger, I think there is investor hunger required too. So investor need to be hunger for more information, more knowledge, and that’s only you can be successful.

Well thanks for sharing that Mark. I mean some of these points are great and very unique what you said about you think more like a PE rather than VC, so that’s why you managed to have 13 exit, which other point couldn’t able to do with so many small number of portfolio.

Now this is my last question and basically you said you are investing in a growth stage company or Series A, but what advice would you give it to the early stage mobility entrepreneur who are seeking investment from venture capital firm like FM Capital and all but general, what thing they should remember when they’re going to VC to raise fund?

Mark Norman ([01:10:48]):

Yeah, I think my simple advice, and it’s simple to say, I acknowledge that it might be a little hard to deliver, but the simple advice is build it right? And what I mean by that is your clear on your opportunity. We understand in some early stages, sometimes there’s a need to pivot. The tech is more applicable in this sector than here. Or maybe you’re more software than software and hardware. Sometimes it’s you’ve got to apply to a couple of industries, not just mobility. And so there’s some industrial and mobility or something like that. And it’s not to overthink it by the way,

Mark Norman ([01:11:40]):

Some basic thinking on values on product focus and on what you’re trying to build. So is it a lifestyle business? Is it to sell early? Is it to go the distance and it’s to hold that loosely, but at least think a little bit about it and then that’ll help inform who are the best partners along the way and what good looks like at each step of the way. There’s not really one answer.

Mark Norman ([01:12:12]):

What building it right isn’t really for me or for a VC investor, it’s for you the entrepreneur. So if it’s, Hey, I’ve got a SaaS business, I’ve sold 3 other SaaS businesses, I’m solving this, I kind of know who the customers are. I mean that might be a little kind of a simple playbook and write sort of looks like certain things. And then others, I mean again, you talk about Uber, I think I’ve got a really big idea, okay, what would be the MVP and is it livery or taxi or okay, focus here, who can pay prove it? And then we know Benchmark was an early investor in Uber and the thing that they were so excited about was the negative churn, which was kind of mind blowing, which people weren’t. I mean yes, some were leaving but more were accelerating their use than were leaving, which is a fantastic opportunity for a startup. But again, there’s not one answer, right? For the entrepreneur.

Jaspal Singh ([01:13:27]):

Yeah, but I think what you said is it’s perfectly fine. It’s a good answer. It’s like build it right? Your product, your service, your strategy, everything should come along and think through who will be the customer, how will you serve? And a lot of time I feel some of the founders are not ready or prepared for that and I’m shocked. I feel empathy for them. I know you are a founder as well, at least you work in a startup. So you always have empathy for founder because it’s hard to build. But at the same time you feel like guys, you need to prepare yourself better.

Mark Norman ([01:14:00]):

And one of the things just on that point is I remember Rob Kagle from Benchmark saying this at Zipcar is that great companies are built on what they choose not to do.

Mark Norman ([01:14:10]):

That’s for us. And I do think it’s easy to be a little bit lazy as a founder and say, I don’t know, let’s see what sticks. And it’s like be a little sharper than that. Be a lot sharper than.

Jaspal Singh ([01:14:26]):

That’s a great quote. Great companies are built. We choose not to do stuff and not get out of focus.

Thank you so much Mark. I really enjoyed our conversation. Generally we end this podcast with this rapid fire question round and idea is to now know a little bit more your personal side and what you think and what you like and what you read. So if you’re ready, I’ll start with this rapid fire.

Mark Norman ([01:14:50]):

Absolutely.

Jaspal Singh ([01:14:51]):

Okay. So my first question will be if you are not in the transportation or mobility ecosystem or sector or investment sector, what other profession you would’ve selected?

Mark Norman ([01:15:01]):

I would’ve been in tech. I was selling computers in Eastern Europe a year out of college. So I would’ve stayed in the tech space.

Jaspal Singh ([01:15:09]):

But I think you are still in the tech space somewhere or not?

Mark Norman ([01:15:14]):

I am. So if you say that’s cheating, I’m in tech, then I’d be in used car sales because

Jaspal Singh ([01:15:19]):

Oh that’s a thing you love.

Mark Norman ([01:15:21]):

Or in classic cars and stuff like that.

Jaspal Singh ([01:15:23]):

There is a big market for that. Now you mentioned you have travel around the world, which is your favorite city in the world and why?

Mark Norman ([01:15:30]):

This is an important question and it’s because I’ve traveled a lot. It’s wherever I am and I know that sounds like it’s cheating, but I found if I wish I was in pick a great city, I won’t be happy in Detroit or Boston or wherever. So life short, seizes the day and enjoy the city you’re in.

Jaspal Singh ([01:15:57]):

I love this line. You’re the second guest who mentioned this line because my first guest, he said the next one, his point was, whichever city I’m in next and what you said, wherever you are. So that’s the best city to see and live and I agreed. All cities are so different, beautiful different sense you get in different cities so it’s important to just enjoy the day. Now I should have asked this question is like which is your favorite movie? But you have already told me now, which is your favorite book?

Mark Norman ([01:16:29]):

I would say especially in line with some of what we’ve talked about today. I really like Carol Dweck’s Growth Mindset. I think it’s important as a parent, I think it’s important in a second career. And as I think about whether I work 15 years or 35 years more, the growth mindset’s a really important part of that.

Jaspal Singh ([01:16:52]):

Yeah, I think it’s important for life as well because the way Covid has impacted everybody’s mental health, so that growth mindset is required because that give you hope, that give you prospect to do something different every day. So thanks for sharing that, that’s a nice thing. Now you have such a long career at the leadership position now as an investor in some other places, what one thing do you wish you should have learned early in life?

Mark Norman ([01:17:20]):

I think this is simple. I think this is important for me and for anyone is learn to say thank you. It’s not hard.

Jaspal Singh ([01:17:31]):

Yeah, we don’t do that quite often. Not to everybody, sometimes, no, a lot of time I see a lot of, I mean we sometimes say, but a lot of time we ignore a lot of thing and we take it for granted. But if

Mark Norman ([01:17:47]):

I sent an email this week to somebody who was on my Chrysler Canada dealer council more than 15 years ago, I haven’t talked to him in more than 10, just

Mark Norman ([01:17:58]):

Hey, I don’t know if I said thank you enough. That was the gist of the email.

Jaspal Singh ([01:18:01]):

That’s lovely. That’s lovely. Probably I’ll send somebody today after talking to you. I think I write, I feel sometime you forget those people who play some important role in life or generally it’s important to just say thank you. There was a very good video TikTok video, the people in transit saying thank you in Vancouver to the driver. So the Washington Metro CEO, he put as like, we should do same in us. Say thank you to your bus driver or train driver.

Mark Norman ([01:18:32]):

I agree.

Jaspal Singh ([01:18:35]):

And it was a nice video about that thing. Now this is my last question. If you can change one thing in life, what would it be?

Mark Norman ([01:18:44]):

I’ve had that question before. I’m not good at this. Sparky Anderson was a general manager of the Detroit Tigers and a couple other teams and he has a quote that says many faults in life, but living in the past isn’t one of them. There’s no future in it. And I tend to live that way as well, is just always looking forward and no regrets.

Jaspal Singh ([01:19:11]):

That’s a beautiful quote, that’s a beautiful quote. And most of the people I have heard, because they said they don’t want to change anything because they’re happy where they are. And also they feel if you go back to life, the life will not be interesting enough. It’ll not be, if you know the future, it’ll not be interesting. If I watching a game and I know which team will win, what’s the fun to watch? So the thrill and the excitement is when you don’t know things. So thanks for sharing that is going back to pass is not making anything different and it’s better to live in the present and think about future.

Thanks for sharing these insight. Mark. I hope you enjoy the conversation. I learned a lot with this conversation and I’m pretty sure the listener who will be listening to this will find it quite enjoyable and you will get a lot of clinging request.

Mark Norman ([01:19:59]):

Hey, I’m so grateful. This has really been fun, informative, and comprehensive. You really thoughtful and engaging. So thank you.

Jaspal Singh ([01:20:08]):

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