Jack Neil, co-founder of Hank AI, has some unconventional advice for founders. He’s been starting businesses for a long time, including Cracker Jack’s Pecan Cracking Service at age 13. He says, before you spend anyone else’s money, spend your own. He says, go to biz conferences, but don’t talk business. He says, losing money isn’t failure; failure is not making any.
Today, Neil is an anesthesiologist trying to crack the code forgetting his team’s task-automation app for medical coders into healthcare settings where they might help. Neil has intentionally chosen an unconventional path through the entrepreneurial ecosystem. He’s been picky about which resources he’ll take advantage of and explained the one resource that’s never failed him.
How have you maneuvered resources throughout your journey?
There’s so much focus on resources, and a lot of incentives. There’s a whole bunch of people asking for it, but the challenge is you’re gonna throw away a ton of money on people who aren’t incredibly committed to a purpose. You get a whole bunch of uncommitted people wasting money, and they don’t get where they need to be.
Acquiring resources needs to be a little hard, because what you’re about to get into is really hard. For example, medical school is impossibly hard, so it had better be hard to get into.
If all you can do is a local accelerator and that’s it for some reason, commit to it 100 percent. I have a family, so there’s no way I can commit to something like Y Combinator. If you’re gonna do hard things, try to apply to the really top-notch programs. Local resources are great, so fall back on that.
Also, you shouldn’t take other people’s money until you’ve put in your own money. Other people’s money is precious, too. It’s not about not losing it, because if you sit on it and give them no return 20 months later, their opportunity cost is still large.
So, when you do get access to a resource, risk-taking is expected?
You’ve got to do it and go as hard as you can. Failure is not making money. I’ve gotten into ruts at times when I worry that a decision I’ve made will cause a lot of burn (spending), but you have to be able to take reasonable risks. In my 20s, I was jumping out on a plank and hoping it wouldn’t break. Now, I test the plank.
How do you use your network as a resource?
I spent many, many years making prototypes for free. Years of radical candor –asking for honest feedback --got me started. Once I was ready to go, I had a network of customers, vendors, and advisors to answer my questions.
Mine are hard-to-enter markets, selling to enterprise customers. You need a network before you even want to consider it because the barriers to entry are huge. You don’t need to break every barrier down, you just need to get over them, and then there’s a mote behind you.
Be sure to talk to somebody high up because there’s nothing to replace the complexity of running a company. Find people who’ve sat in that really tough spot of balancing finances, taxes, and hiring, while not running out of money.
How, exactly, did you build that network?
I tend to build first impressions around intelligence. Not that I don’t like people who aren’t brilliant, but I’m only gonna call the person who I would trust almost everything they say. It doesn’t mean I’m gonna take their advice verbatim, but I want to avoid having to over-analyze it.
Local conferences have happy hours, or local coffee happy hours. These are probably the most useful, easiest to scale things to do in the beginning. The SCRA, South Carolina Research Authority, has been supportive with grants and investment funds.
A lot of connections I made were from the McNair Summit, hosted by the McNair Institute for Entrepreneurism and Free Enterprise at the University of South Carolina and SCBIO, and most of them started by just having a conversation with a random person standing at a table.
I don’t look for young people with a lot of energy. I look for those with less energy because they’ve likely been through a lot. And, I wouldn’t go up to them and talk about business. I’d go up and talk about nothing, like a Seinfeld episode. Like, “Wow, those are some fantastic shoes.”
Entrepreneurs really need more get-togethers and mingle time, less structured agenda topic time—and somehow, we've got to make sure no one is there just to try and sell things.
Okay, last question. Do you agree that you should always offer something before asking for anything?
Well, for 23 years I was mostly offering; I don’t know if I ever asked for anything. That's because I just feel you and I need to know each other first. It’s your yin and my yang. It’s not a give-and-take or a transaction: it’s a relationship. People attempt to make deal-making an algorithm, but I think you’re better off just treating it like the Bible says–to treat others as you want to be treated. “Give first” implies you’re gonna “get” next, but that’s just totally wrong. You might never “get.”