“Coming on the show right now is Will Hayes who is the CEO of Lucidworks. Lucidworks does, I guess, what's called “Intelligent search.” It makes sure that as the user comes to your website, they have a good experience. They're connected. Think of it like Amazon but only smarter. So other businesses that are looking to make sure that they improve the customer experience, that's what he's leading in.

You're going to hear about his experience. You're going to hear how he got there. He never actually finished college but he's one of the few Black CEOs that are leading the way in tech. And he is disrupting the narratives and constructs out there. He is working hard. I know you're going to enjoy his story. I hope you learn more about his company, “Lucidworks.” Without any further ado…“-- Rob Richardson

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ROB RICHARDSON
Will Hayes, CEO of Lucidworks, I appreciate having you on the show. How are you doing today?

WILL HAYES
Doing all right. Really, really great to be here. Good to see you.

ROB
Yes, it's good to have you back. We had this beautiful in-person interview that we had and… We don't have that footage so we're going to have to recreate the best that we can. So I appreciate you allowing us to do this on Disruption Now and really appreciate your story and what you're doing. And I think you offer a lot to our listeners.

WILL
Absolutely. Really excited to be here. I think these times have taught us that we have to adapt to any circumstance. So here we are getting another take going.

ROB
Part of what we focus on is disrupting common narratives and constructs and your story has done that. I want to take you back to something I read that talked about some of your interactions you have being in the tech world. We know, unfortunately, a lot of people don't see the connection with people of color in the tech world, particularly Black people if we’d be really specific…

WILL
Absolutely.

ROB
…in the tech world. So you've had interactions where people, knowingly or not knowingly, were racists or ignorant or whatever adjective you want to use there. And you've had people mistake you for the assistant -- everything else but the CEO.

WILL
Right.

ROB
And their face stop smacking when they say their CEO… There's a pause look on their face. Talk to people about how to respond to moments like that because if you're a Black entrepreneur, those moments are going to happen to you. People are going to make assumptions wrongly. How can you pivot from those moments and how do you advise people as you know that they're going to go through moments like that knowing that you, at your level of success, they'll go through it?

WILL
Yeah, it’s a good question and I’ll be clear that there's no, I think, answer, right, in terms of just, “Oh here's how you deal with it” or “Here's what you have to do. Here's the playbook.”

I think what's unfortunate, in the way I would classify my experiences, is it comes around more so as what we would call “Bias,” even unconscious bias, in some ways. In a lot of ways, that can be even more difficult. I think we all, more or less, know how to deal with just sort of blatant racist people, right…

ROB
Right.

WILL
…people who are just out there in your face. And frankly, I think a lot of us just don't associate in those environments. It's harder when the bias comes in, unconsciously; when it comes from people who don't consider themselves to have any bias bone in their body.

Put this into the context of raising money in particular. Really, with a lot of folks, Black folks in particular, at leadership, there's not this pre-wired assumption that you're the leader; that you're the boss, right? And that shows up in just very subtle but disruptive ways such as kind of coming in and greeting a white colleague as if they're your manager, they're your boss, they're the CEO, right; making assumptions about your role and sort of who you are. So that's frustrating in every context.

It’s funny. I talked to some Black CEOs. We talked about taking the team out to dinner. You're doing all the ordering. You're making sure everybody's taken care of. But at the end of the day, no one's bringing you the check. They’re bringing it to somebody else. So these are all little things but they tend to add up.

In the context of fundraising in particular, what was very just unsettling was those little mistakes. Greeting my colleague as the CEO, not necessarily knowing who I am lead to a discomfort. And that discomfort is permeating throughout the room, throughout the entire meeting.

Now a lot of venture capital, investing in particular -- because remember, this is an institutional investing where I can go research on Wall Street and understand -- it comes down to like a little bit of a gut feel. I believe in this team. I believe in this market. And when you get off out the gate with this severe discomfort and guilt, it can just derail everything.

So when it comes to coping, to your point… and I'm not going to say this as if I'm proud of it. But in that moment, when you're building a company, when you're raising money, you were laser-focused. There is nothing that is going to get in my way including adversity, including bias, including racism.

So for me, and I don't know if this was a coping mechanism or just a survival mechanism, my only goal in those moments was to defuse it. To just, “Look, didn't happen. Let's just focus.”

ROB
Right, yeah.

WILL
Because the moment I stay in that moment, they start dwelling. They start getting uncomfortable. They start getting distracted. They're not hearing what I'm here to present; what I'm here to do. So that's a severe disadvantage.

And if anything why I tell this story is I want people to be aware that that one little mix up, of you just not waiting to figure out who the CEO is, completely derails the entire process. You change that. It's simple. You know, we can talk about institutional racism. These are much bigger problems. This is a simple problem that people can fix and level the playing field.

ROB
Yeah. It’s sort of incumbent on you to figure out a way to get people comfortable and moving past that moment so you found yourself figuring out how to make a joke out of it, not take it personally. It actually is not personal. I tell people this all the time. Even when someone is racist, bias, whatever, it has to do with their own experience. It never has anything to do with you.

WILL
They don’t know you.

ROB
Yeah. They don't know you. And the fact that they have these beliefs… Like you said, most people are not bad. But the fact is that I do believe those microaggressions, the indifference maybe to what happens to Black folks and communities of colors is what allows and empowers some situations that are going on right now.

I mean everybody can see George Floyd, how he was killed and what happened there. And I think most people who have some common decency… There are still some people that won't see it. For them… I won't say there's no hope but they're not the audience we're trying to reach. We're trying to reach the people, which is the vast majority of people that can see this is wrong.

Do you think there's any opportunity in this moment for Black founders, for Black CEOs? I mean I hear companies throwing out, “We're going to do a hundred million here, hundred million there.” I can't tell if that's all just to look good in the moment or if there's actually real opportunity for Black founders, Black investors, Black small startup companies. What do you think is the opportunity in this moment if any?

WILL
Yeah. I mean it's an interesting question because to your point, there's definitely what I call a “cultural shift” that's occurring. I think the question that a lot of us have is, “Okay, this feels a little different than it has in the past so I can appreciate that but I'm very skeptical of sort of… kind of consistent in more long-term change.” As it relates to kind of tech in a lot of what we're seeing, I have very mixed feelings about it.

And I’ll tell you… I mean, obviously, representation is important to me. We're doing a terrible job here in Silicon Valley particularly Black representation, Black women even more so. But the reality is that this is not a problem that needs to be solved for any social reason. There is a severe economic disadvantage from not finding these founders. There is this fierce strategic disadvantage for not building these teams with more Black representation. There's no question.

You can tell me all day long that you want to do better and this is for social good and yada-yada-yada, I'm looking at this as just being a missed opportunity -- a missed economic opportunity. So whether you're a limited partner in a venture capital firm, a private equity firm, an organization that's doing strategic investing or a corporation, if you are not looking to this portion of the population, you are missing something. So I want to say that first and foremost.

There is a lot of effort going on and I don't begrudge it. I appreciate it. But I often get rubbed the wrong way when it feels like this is some type of social responsibility initiative.

ROB
Yeah.
WILL
Forget about that. Again, we are missing a significant opportunity from a return on investment to invest in a population which… Adversity creates grit. It creates entrepreneurs.

ROB
Absolutely.

WILL
It creates leaders. So statistically, again, your hit rate will be so much higher if you start working with this population that's faced more adversity -- the Black population in particular. So venture capital needs to understand that.

Now, in terms of the opportunity… Look, we should always look for opportunity; take advantage of opportunity. This moment is definitely creating a lot of attention. I would say, if you're a Black founder, getting meetings at this point will probably feel easier to you.

ROB
Yeah.

WILL
I don't think people write checks because they feel bad. I’ve seen this happen. I’ve seen funds get announced that are supposed to do X Y & Z yet you rarely see them stay true to that mission.

At the end of the day, the checks are going to come because we can build conviction. What we need these folks to do is to actually engage with an open mind to miss some of the mistakes that I’ve experienced and others have been experiencing so we can get to work here. And that's the most important thing for the community which is--

Look, there is opportunity. It's going to take grit. It's going to take determination. And you're going to face adversity. But guess what, good news, we face adversity all the time. You know what I’m saying?

ROB
We’ve faced worse.

WILL
I have a hard time… When people hear my story and they are, “Oh my gosh, I can't believe you went through that,” I'm like, “You know it's funny because that's probably one of the more tamed things.” I'm talking about raising money from venture capital and having some issues with bias. You know, let's talk about people's situations and facing with law enforcement and housing and healthcare. I mean forget about it. This is a small problem but it's also one that I think is so easily fixable that is why I'm investing my energy and really talking about it.

ROB
And I want to talk to you. We’ll talk a little more offline in this. But I do want to talk about something that we want to launch at the Disruption Now Summit which is… Thank you for coming. You're going to be there. We want to figure out a way to not only get more accredited investors, the venture capital money which some… There's a lot of efforts being out there -- 645 Ventures, Lightship Capital, some of my friends there -- but really figuring out, I think, a way we can build a movement to build a large crowd funding equity where you don't have to just be accredited investors…

WILL
There you go.

ROB
…and have a central focus on that. That's something that I do want to talk to you about -- helping us and advising on that because that's a platform that we are going to build because I think that is the next step. We do something like that.

I actually look at it like this. I raised $2.5 million for my campaign. Obviously, I didn't win that campaign but people didn’t say, “Okay, give me all my money back.” At the end of the day, that's an investment in a way. And these are investments and all of them won't work out. But more of them will work out when we all start putting more of our money collectively towards it and if there's a focus.

I think this moment, I think you said it well, it's not about social responsibility. At the end of the day, it's really about an opportunity to gain more equity. We want equalities -- the basics. We want equity. And equity will help everybody and it will help the investors. And people aren't going to give you something just because they feel guilty. You might get an opportunity to go to the door and present a real concept, an idea. And this is your opportunity. Go to the door. Be ready to present because the doors don't always open that often. When it opens, walk through it well.

WILL
And frankly, a lot of this gets talked about. I mean so much of this industry is around relationship and network, right? So if you don't come from those circles, you're at a disadvantage. So the fact that there's this sort of focus on bringing these entrepreneurs in for conversations, take advantage of it.

And again, there's advantages out there for all types of people. I think this is a moment where there might be an advantage for us to at least get some airtime now. Again, to the point we both just made, people don't just write checks because they feel bad, right?

ROB
No.
WILL
So you still have to do your work…

ROB
You better come prepared.

WILL
…and come prepared. And frankly, there's no other way that you'd want to get a business off the ground anyway. So it’s going to be good for everybody.

ROB
Yeah. Same rules still apply. You have an untraditional path. Well, actually, it’s not that untraditional in terms… There's a lot of founders that didn't complete college.

WILL
But typically don't look like me but yeah.

ROB
Yeah. But typically don't look like you. You have the story of not going to college, just going right in. Talk about that. Does that give you any unique advantages? Did it cause you any, I guess, issues just because people try to question your credentials even though, again, that's like standard operating procedure for everybody else? But for us, it's like, “Well where are your credentials?” Sometimes, that’s how I look at people.

WILL
No. I mean it's how we've been conditioned, right? And I think, as a community, we understand the merit of education, of just self-enrichment and so we tend to look to those things as just being the kind of measuring stick. We don't know a lot of self-made entrepreneurs, typically, in things like high tech. I mean, obviously, there's self-made entrepreneurs everywhere. But in terms of just working sort of in the tech industry--

For me, it kind of goes back to like my childhood. I grew up in Richmond, here in the East Bay of California. I’m a child of the ‘80s and ‘90s. When I was about 12 or 13, early ‘90s, is when the internet kind of became a thing. Now this was not the World Wide Web which is important to be able to understand, where you could go to a web browser and type in “Google.com.” No. This was like… you were dialing into phone numbers and phone banks and message boards and things like that.

ROB
I’m old enough to remember all of that. Yes, I remember.

WILL
You know what I'm talking about, right? Exactly.

ROB
Yes, I do.

WILL
You know, what was interesting for me and what was exciting for me was not only getting exposure to that world. And I was very fortunate. We had a computer in the home. That was not very common for anybody, let alone a Black family, right? The connectivity that that provided always just simulated me. I'm talking to people in Australia. I'm connecting with people all over the world.

And then what I found was not only my ability to kind of tap into that world, I could manipulate it. I could build applications. I could build anything. Information was out there. I could learn. There were books I could get. I could just start building. If I wanted to be like an architect, I couldn't exactly just go build a building in my backyard but I could write software applications all day long. So that really clicked for me.

You know, I was a born hustler. I was always trying to look for ways to earn money. I would [take a kid - 15:06] like a babysitting business and a dog walking business and… You name it.

So not only that I find this thing that inspired me and I could actually create and it kind of unlocked that energy but then I looked around and I said, “Oh the world is going to pay for this stuff.”

And I started building websites and I started doing database administration. I just started doing stuff to, frankly, just earn money. And I got a lot of attention for that. Even amongst my peers that were making money in a variety of ways, not always on the level, would start to recognize, too. Like, “Wow. You're hustling.” You're out there doing it. You're doing it with computers. So that was something that I was always really proud of and my community was always really proud of.

Fast forward, 1999, I'm getting ready to graduate high school and I am part of a program that's focused on urban youth in helping them with sort of career development and college development skills -- a great organization called “INROADS” -- and that got me to a--

ROB
I was in that, too.

WILL
You were in INROADS? Oh we can talk about that. Yeah, actually fantastic.

So at the INROADS career fair, which is typically geared towards college students -- I was a high school student -- I met Genentech. They were a large pharmaceutical company and they were going through kind of what we call “Digital transformation.” They were trying to move more applications that were old desktop applications to web applications and it was something I knew how to do. They were having a hard time not only just finding an intern but literally, hiring anybody to go do this work.

So I came in 18 years old, coming from Richmond, didn't know a whole lot about corporate environments and here I am now and I'm getting paid money to work on computers. And they're giving me a laptop. They're giving me a phone. And my mind was blown. I'm just like, “This got to be the greatest thing in the world to have this privilege.” So that kind of what got me going.

Now I’ll say one final thing, which is the advantage now that I think I had, both with the lack of college but also just being different, like just being this young kid of color in this environment where there weren't a lot of people of color let alone people who were 18 years old, I embraced everything. I mean you could not give me enough work to do. I couldn't sit in on enough meetings. I couldn't do enough informational interviews. I was so just enamored in being in that environment. And that was my real advantage.

You'd give me a coding assignment or an application that needed to be written in a month and I would literally do it the night. I go home that night. I work all night. I get it done and I look for something else to go do. It was joy for me.

But what I realized as I got older, and I try to tell younger folks, is, “Look, invest that energy.” I was 18. That was great. But you come out of college when you're 22. Invest that energy in your career and in yourself because frankly… Hopefully, you're just having fun and working.

ROB
Right.

WILL
So you can just do those two things and it will pay off. And that was for me. The hours that I put in, the sheer dedication to what I was doing, it advanced me really quickly. And I didn't even think it was work. Again, it was a privilege and it was fun and I was getting paid along the way. So I was blessed, for sure.

ROB
Right. So speaking about your younger career, what advice would you give to yourself knowing all of the knowledge you have now? It sounds like you would stick to working hard.

WILL
Yeah.

ROB
It sounds like nothing would change there. But is there any other advice you may give yourself knowing what you know now and what advice would you ignore?

WILL
Yeah, good questions. I think the two things that I feel like in the… You know, I’ll be 40 next year and so the last… like in my 30s where I just… Obviously, I’ve developed a lot of things. I think two things that I’ve really come to just learn and appreciate, one of them is you've got to continuously learn. And I don't mean just absorb and be open-minded. I mean you are out there pursuing knowledge. You're reading books. You're watching lectures. You're looking to people in the industry or otherwise that you can really aspire to be and to look up to and just try to absorb as much as possible. I didn't do enough of that in my 20s. I was very focused on like new programming language or whatever I need to do to kind of do my job. There's so much more knowledge out there that now when I--

ROB
You mean be broader in your knowledge.

WILL
Be broader, yeah, and absorb. Again, seek out information. Today, I read a lot now about just like organizational leadership. I love reading case studies and memoirs -- you know, [indiscernible - 19:14] Shoe Dog, about Phil Knight, the Nike story. There's so much great information. And I just tell myself, I'm like, “I missed out on 10 extra years of just consuming this stuff.” So that's definitely key.

The other thing that I’ve gotten much more focused on as I’ve gotten older, and I wish I would be doing this, and it’s harder when you're younger because we all have a little more ego about us, but be very, very clear with yourself about where your strengths and weaknesses are.

ROB
Yes.

WILL
Really understand them and leverage those strengths. Try to apply them in places. Look for opportunities to apply those strengths. But more importantly, know your limitations. Know your weaknesses. You can work on those. You can figure out ways to kind of develop. You can engage and get help from other people. But you also know how to avoid them, you know.

ROB
Yeah.

WILL
So learning how to just say, “You know what? I'm not really good at this thing. I'm going to make sure that I spend as little time as possible doing that because it's not a great application of my skill.” Again, when we're younger, we think we can do anything, right?

ROB
Yeah.

WILL
So it's a little bit harder to come with that, that humility that says, “Look, these are some things I need to work on” or “Frankly, I'm just not good at.” But once you have that awareness, it's like a superpower because now you can leverage your strengths and you can leverage them correctly and you can wield it like a power and you can avoid some of your shortcomings. But self-awareness is definitely the key to that.

ROB
Yeah. I want to talk a little about your entrepreneurial journey. This is not a linear process, I'm sure.

WILL
[Laughter] No. Never.

ROB
Yeah. I'm sure there's been bumps along the road. Can you think of a time when something may have seemed like a failure but then later is set up to be a better opportunity or that wasn't the right opportunity and that experience helped develop you into a better entrepreneur or into a better leader?

WILL
Definitely. I’ve been fortunate to just… I’ve had a very enriching career and a lot of that has been to do with just… I’ve had some very great support and mentors around me throughout. And then part of it is just I think how I just tend to look at the world. I mean, look, challenges, these are all opportunities to grow and to learn. And frankly, if you're not being challenged, I always feel that I'm sort of withering away as a person, right?

ROB
Yeah.

WILL
And this is because I--

ROB
I’m the same way.

WILL
Exactly. You know, I'm inherently lazy. I know that about myself. What I also find is… Look, if you're not pushing and you're not learning, you're probably just coasting. So that's something that you've got to definitely look at. So that helps kind of just deal with the ebbs and flows particularly in entrepreneurism.

You know, when I came to Lucidworks… Again, I was young. I was 32. I was asked to come in and kind of lead this company through a turnaround. They were doing something before that the investors just wanted to stop but they wanted to try to pivot it. It's a very difficult thing to do in any circumstance, let alone you get this 32-year old CEO coming in, has very little operating experience but has a vision for what needs to be done.

ROB
Right. Right.

WILL
Again, I was a little naive in terms of how hard it would be. So when I came in, I'm like, “Look, here's the thing that we need to go build. I can see it clearly. I know exactly what we need to go do.” And then the reality of trying to move an organization towards that vision, pivot that organization, deal with the baggage and some of the history and some of the drama and--

You know, when I first got in there, I remember I had all this motivation and energy and it just felt like we were just getting hit. We couldn't raise money. So now we're going to run out of money.

Somebody wrote a really negative article about us that was completely uncalled for and frankly, not true. But it was just debilitating and it just was such a gut punch to us. We had some--

ROB
It had a wide reach, I take it though.

WILL
A very wide reach -- VentureBeat. We had some personnel kind of leaving a huff and created a bunch of drama and things. So there were moments, you're sitting there just like… I feel I'm in this burning building and I feel hopeless. And not to mention that I had walked away from a job that I was like Employee #2 of 3,000 people and I was having a great career and I was making money. So it wasn't like I had nothing to do at that time.

ROB
Right.

WILL
So that was a moment there. And there was a few moments there where it's just like I can't win. I don't know what to do. Now what we did end up doing… and my wife always pushes me on this. It's like you hit the bottom and then it's like, “Well where do you go from here?” Right? You’re kind of beaten down.
I'm not trying to be one of these like… you know, whatever… give a pep talk. But I’m just like… Look, there’s a point in which you’re just like, “It can’t really get any worse. So what am I going to do? I’m going to stew on this or I’m just going to start building.” And I think that experience--

And I’ve had to go through… Like you said, it feels like it’s just ebbs and flows. But just knowing that like at any point, there’s always a way to move forward. Now, look, it doesn’t mean it’s going to be painful or emotional and overwhelming. But the more overwhelming it is, just make the steps smaller. “All right, I’m here today. Tomorrow, I just got to get over here.” You know what I’m saying?

ROB
That’s a really good point -- when it’s overwhelming, just break it down to smaller steps.

WILL
Break it down to something smaller. To me, it’s just how you just continuously move forward. And then once you start to get your rhythm, you can pick up your pace a little bit and then you find yourself in a moment where you go, “Wait. Now I’m standing in a valley of a whole bunch of new problems which--“

ROB
Right.

WILL
Remember back when I thought I was like at the end of my rope and I wasn’t going to be able to go anymore?

ROB
Right.

WILL
I got here. So then that motivation, reminding yourself that like, “Hey, look, you made it this far,” so just keep going one step at a time. You know what I’m saying? So I think that’s really been just kind of the key of navigating it.

But look… I mean I will have highs that are really high and lows that are really low. And there’s nothing like just being up on that high and letting yourself get comfortable just for a minute like, “Hey, you know what? It’s pretty good up here” and just “Boom” COVID-19 hits you.

ROB
Oh man, and the whole world changes. Oh my god.

WILL
And the whole world changes and you’re just like, “Whoa, sh*t, what am I going to do now?”

ROB
Let’s talk about Lucidworks -- what Lucidworks is. And then talk to me about how this moment is or is not affecting the business and how you’re approaching the COVID-19 world for the foreseeable future because it looks like we’re going to be doing this for a while.

WILL
For a little bit, absolutely. So what we build is a… It’s a search engine and it’s a search engine that companies deploy on their own websites -- a lot of large retailers. For instance, companies like REI, companies like AT&T, most of the major home improvement chains, most of the large grocery chains, we control the search experience on their website.

Now “search” isn’t just you type in a keyword and you get back something. It means that we’re ranking those results based on your preferences. We’re personalizing those results. We allow for things like product recommendations and discovery to occur. We use artificial intelligence to determine, “Hey, people who buy these things might also buy these things” or “People who tend to like the same things as you often purchase these things over here.”

We give tools to merchandisers so they can control and promote and do different things around that experience. So we’re controlling those experiences for a number of the top retail brands.

We also do it for companies just to help their own internal operations and finding stuff for employees -- so large oil and gas companies, large banks like Morgan Stanley.

We’ve been in the business for doing this for about seven years now. We released the product five years ago. We’ve grown the business quite substantially. We’re about a $70 million a year run rate business. Yeah, we’re continuing to kind of just refine those capabilities.

My vision for the world is really that… You know, we create engaging, connected experiences that are digital. It’s one thing to walk in to a store and have… You’re at REI. You want to go camping. And whether it’s your first time camping or you’re going to go camp on top of Kilimanjaro, there’s somebody at REI who can tell you everything you need to know about the boots, about the material, about the various equipment that you need. That’s the experience. That’s why you go to REI rather than just go to Amazon and buy something cheap.

Well now in this new world, obviously, those brands need to carry those experiences into those digital channels. So we really help them craft that and that’s part of our mission.
When you think about COVID, it’s interesting. On one hand, you’d say, “Wait. You guys are an e-com provider. This must be great for you.” And the reality is, in some cases, it is, right? Customers are scrambling now to figure out their digital strategy. So much of retail still rely on that brick-and-mortar experience. Yeah, they all have websites but are they good? Not necessarily.

ROB
No. Some use Wix then call it a day. -- Go ahead.

WILL
Thank you. There you go. Right. And then you can’t find anything and it’s not personal. “I just bought this thing. Why don’t you know what version I had?” You know, there are so many things that create these frustrating experiences.

And by the way, why they’re frustrating -- because we know what’s possible. We’ve been on Amazon. We’ve been on Facebook. We’ve been on Netflix. So why is it when I go to shop on your site, it breaks down? I feel like I’m back in 1999. And forget about when I come in to work and I try to use one of those applications. I feel like I’m in 1989. Right?

ROB
Right.

WILL
So that understanding is what’s creating a lot more demand for the kind of stuff that we do.

So in one hand, again, we’re engaging customers. We’re supporting them. Some of our retail customers have seen--

You know, Black Friday is always the big event in retail, right, where you’re going to get the most traffic. You’re going to have the most deals. And they’re seeing Black Friday traffic just sustaining through March, April into May even.

Now some of that slowed down because we all went home. We bought a new exercise bike. We bought a new mixer. We bought some lawn furniture for the backyard because we’re not going on any vacation anytime soon, right? So there was a big spike and spend and then that’s kind of tapered off. Clearly, consumer spend is down.

So what that does for our business is it means a number of our customers are cautious. They’re not pushing big initiatives forward. They’re not making major investments. They’re being very incremental in the things that they’re doing. So we’ve had to adjust our business with an expectation of--

Look, the customers that we serve are in a good position and they renew well and we can just continue to focus on their success and invest in their success. And we’re going to let the market kind of determine when it’s ready to pick back up again.

ROB
Yeah.

WILL
But most importantly, we are going to position our business so we can withstand any market events that occur. So that means that we look at expenses. We cut cost. We try to reduce the overall budget and just ensure that we’re preserving as much cash as possible so if this goes on for two-three years, we don’t have to worry about running out of money or doing layoffs or anything like that.

ROB
Right.

WILL
So we’re trying to look down the road and assume the worst and then hopefully, we all just find out that we overreacted and we get back to normal. [Crosstalk] [Indiscernible - 29:51].

ROB
That’s the hope. But even when that happens, there will probably be a delay.

WILL
It will take time.

ROB
It will take time because people are going to--

So part of what I do… I have a company that kind of aligns with what you do. It doesn't do the AI version but we do research data and marketing. We’ve done a lot of research.

And as you said, in February -- we were looking at this -- people were taking this seriously and then by March, it was done. I mean they were democrats, republicans, anybody across the board. No matter what they were telling the pollsters, what we saw is people are taking this seriously. And even when things get back to normal or the governor say it's okay, even when the healthcare experts say it's okay, there's going to be a lag in people's, I guess, responses to getting back to normal.

WILL
Exactly.

ROB
The question is, “What does normal look like?” Does human behavior change because we've set in so much? Do we do more virtual events now? Do these things change? And how do you position yourself to be ready for that as a business?

Speaking about that, when you talk about your business with AI… I heard a lecture from you. You talked about the need to make AI more connected to the human experience and [have more empathy in understanding - 31:09] the human experience. What do you mean by that?

WILL
A really good way to think about AI being non-experiential is Amazon. Amazon is very effective and it's very efficient. We can spend money, in fact… Look, just open up the homepage and you're going to start shopping, right? It's no secret that they've figured this out.

But what they really lack from an Amazon perspective is there's no context. There's no human level experience to it. And we see it, right? I mean how many times have… you go shopping for a lawnmower and you keep getting recommended running shoes and other things, right?

I had a brand tell me one time -- a clothing brand -- they said, “You know, the problem with the Amazon is Amazon has no taste.”

The difference between what machine learning… gets deployed, in the sense of Amazon in kind of what we do, is Amazon is all about machine learning decision-making. “I'm going to sell you this. I'm going to promote you that.” There's no one there to really decide, “Does this make sense?” If I'm out there mowing the lawn, why do I need to shop for running shoes right now?

ROB
Right.

WILL
Human beings have that intuition. So what I talk about is… Look, AI should not be a decision engine because frankly, it can't make a good decision. It's a computer. It's not a person.

ROB
Right.

WILL
But where AI can do is we can assist the human in making more informed decisions. So for instance, what we do with one of our products -- we call it the “Predictive merchandiser -- is we will tell a merchandiser if you're looking at running shoes, “These are the top-selling running shoes” by brand, by color, whatever. We're monitoring all of that stuff. We use our machine learning to make a recommendation to say, “Hey look, if someone's looking for running shoes, we really think that these Nikes are the way to go.”

But we surface that to a merchandiser who goes, “You know what? Yeah, the Nikes are cool but man, everybody's talking about these new Adidas.” And we're running a campaign over here. I'm going to override the AI to tell it what I want it to go do. That's a human being who understands the context. Remember that person at REI who could tell us how to plan for our first camping trip?

ROB
Right.

WILL
It’s the same idea. So in order for AI to be effective, it has got to have more human training; more human… kind of in the middle. Now that's being effective.

The second part is biases. Think about language. So much of what we do to train AI is we look to the way people are talking. We look to the way they're talking on the internet. We look at the way they're talking on Twitter. And we use those conversations to inform the way that chatbots and artificial intelligence should behave.

Have you ever read Twitter? [Laughter] Have you ever read the comment section of a news site? And you're going to tell me this is like… It’s like if you had a child, a baby--

ROB
It’s the bottom of the barrel of the earth, sometimes, of comments and people.

WILL
So AI is like a child, right? It’s a brain that is just completely absorbable and permeable. And we're telling this child, “We want you to learn to speak English” -- actually, not even speak English. “We want you to be like a conversing member of society but you're going to go learn everything on Twitter” -- the way people talk on Twitter, the way they communicate, the way they relate sentiment to things like race, to things like sex and then we wonder why we have problems like the chatbot that Microsoft put out that was like racist.

ROB
Because it's learning a lot of the biases that we have and it's just re-implementing them.

WILL
Thank you. Now let me ask you a question.

ROB
Okay.

WILL
Do you think you and I would be surprised by the outcome of a racist chatbot that was trained--

ROB
Not at all.

WILL
Hell, no. The people at Microsoft were. Who do you think was in that room making those decisions? Was anybody like you or I sitting in that room?

ROB
Probably not. That's my guess.

WILL
So, again, you could tell me that this is wrong, that it's socially unjust. Forget about all that. You just failed. You just spent millions and millions of dollars on an initiative and it's a complete failure and it's a PR disaster and it's because you didn't have any Black people in the room.

ROB
Hey, there you go.

WILL
There you go. There you go right there.

ROB
There you go.

WILL
We can talk about economics all day.

ROB
I think the challenge with that is they found so much success. When I say “they” -- the big tech world. I'm going to take Facebook as my main example here, and I’ve read a lot on Mark Zuckerberg and his feelings and how he's approached this.

One of the books… I think it's called… It's about big data. “Everybody Lies” is what it's called. “Everybody Lies.”

WILL
“Everybody Lies,” yeah.

ROB
It’s a great book. It talks about the 2016 election -- how all the polls got things wrong.
I think the challenge is human beings aren't as self-aware as they should be either. You mentioned the “unconscious bias.” That's real. And also, people wouldn't say who they were voting for in 2016 because they were kind of ashamed of who they were voting for but you can tell by their data where they were leaning towards.

I know Facebook saw an opportunity. Mark Zuckerberg talks… I mean he talks about this or hints around this -- the warriors, the nature of how human beings are, how we like to sometimes go after each other. We have aspirational things, too. But I think he's seen… and so far social media has seen that they can make more money not based upon what people say they want to see but what they actually want to see.

WILL
Yes.

ROB
So how do you balance that out because… I see where you're coming from and I love it. And I also think like, “Okay, there's clearly a market for what we don't admit we want to see but we clearly want see it.”

WILL
There's no question. I mean I think there's… Well look… I mean first off, these aren't just one problem, right? Like the Microsoft example, you're putting out a chatbot into the general population that's meant to answer questions and be useful and frankly, be an important business driver, right? So the fact that they allowed so much bias to occur and weren't thinking about that ahead of time is just a failed business initiative.

ROB
Yes.

WILL
Look, that hurts you more than it hurt anybody else.

ROB
Absolutely.

WILL
Facebook is different because Facebook is now… It's a utility, right? It has become so pervasive in the way we live that we have to kind of treat it and think about it differently.

And to your point, we might decide to do things with our utilities that others may not find to be very tasteful. It's sort of my prerogative to read hate speech. It's my prerogative to converse about violence -- these types of things.

Look, I think of all the people and just where I can empathize… And this might sound funny, is I empathize… I mean Mark Zuckerberg has got the hardest job in the world because on one hand--

First off, he's a creator -- and I have all the admiration and respect for that because building is… It’s what makes us as human -- but at the same time, the level of responsibility in terms of the impact of what that platform can have, so we can talk about where he may be can do things differently or better. But the thing I have a hard time believing is that somebody else can just drop in and get it right.

ROB
No. That’s kind of my point. This thing is like, “How do we--“

WILL
How do you do it?

ROB
How do you do this and… I love the term you said. “Artificial intelligence,” you don't like to view it that way. It's really “Augmented intelligence.”

WILL
“Augmented intelligence,” right. But this is hard. It's one thing to augment intelligence when I'm trying to help somebody sell running shoes, right? Look, again, I'm the company. I can decide how I want to augment that intelligence. If I'm right, I make more money. If I'm wrong, I don't. It's kind of on me.

Now, when we're talking about manipulating opinion, when we're talking about spreading false information, this is where it becomes such a blurred area. And actually, frankly, I don't have an answer because… Look, on one hand, you could say, “Well it's easy. Just have people fact-checking.” But now we get back into bias. I have bias. You have bias.

ROB
People don't believe facts.

WILL
People don’t believe facts. What's an interpretation of a “fact”? You and I have a certain interpretation of what's going on in the world as it relates to police violence compared to other people. We both think we understand the facts, right? So it's a very slippery slope and it's a very dangerous game when we start to kind of use our opinions on what is right and what is wrong.

ROB
Agree.

WILL
So that is clearly a problem.
ROB
But I guess the challenge goes back to what you said. And I don't have the answer either but you're one of the smartest people I know on this so I’m just putting it out there that artificial intelligence is also, I think, accelerating the issues that we internally have.

WILL
There’s no question.

ROB
It's accelerating the pre-existing conditions of the human condition that we don't want to accelerate. And this is the question we may not be able to answer now but I think there needs to be some thought process into this: How do we use artificial intelligence to help us rise to our higher selves and not just our most instinctual selves?

WILL
That’s a really interesting and important perspective. And I’ll tell you, machine learning and artificial intelligence at its most base form is just taking like a human operation and accelerating it. So let's say I'm going to have you look at a million pictures and tell me which one has a red hammer in it. You could do that. It's going to take you a while. Well if I train a computer to do it, it can just blast through it. So again, it's an extension of kind of us. So to your point, it can exasperate problems.

There's two things on that. I mean one thing that I will say is… Back to sort of the Facebook examples. I get that how you police these types of situations is hard -- whose content do you allow; whose do you not. But there is one thing that Facebook can make a decision on -- and they have all the rights in the world and no one can question them -- where do they go to monetize? Are they taking to your point, that thread, and are they the ones pulling on it because they see an opportunity?

They can use their own discipline to determine that, “You know what? We're going to stop this particular practice even though it's good for business, it's good for eyeballs, it's good for traffic because it perpetuates a negative behavior” without having to judge that individual post or piece of content. They know where things are being put in by state actors, externally. They know when things are being blatantly dishonest but are spreading at a rate that's incredibly high. They know what they do to place those things that are spreading in terms of the algorithm and the ranking. You can control all that. There's no bias in doing that. That's just the way you think about your business.

Where I do think they have a problem or a challenge is they can't determine what you, Rob Richardson, are allowed to determine as truth. That's dangerous, right -- trying to actually monitor you.

ROB
Yeah, that’s dangerous.

WILL
Again, there's more responsibility. How we turn AI into good… Let's be very clear. AI is--

ROB
I want to talk about that -- how we turn AI into good -- as I let you transition into your answer. Just keep going there.

I do believe the Facebook… Facebook mostly but there’s some other data in tech companies, too, that have made people question, that have made people suspicious of AI, that has people nervous about AI. And I think that is dangerous because… I do believe we need to keep moving and keep innovating but if there's not trust built in and if there's a natural reaction from the public to think everything is about controlling their thoughts or is just about eliminating their jobs, it becomes harder for us to innovate and move forward as a society. So I do think building up trust in AI is really important and how AI can be good. -- You were going there.

WILL
And that's an easier one to be honest because… I’ll come back to the AI for good, just on that. And that’s really important point. Trust relates, in my opinion, entirely to privacy. And where people start to get really turned off where they start to get really nervous is when they start to recognize that “my information is being used kind of without my knowledge.” It’s showing up on an ad. It's showing up here. I swear I was having a conversation with my wife and the next day, I started seeing Facebook ads for it.

The other day, I went in to a store. I was shopping and I was hungry. There's this jerky thing. I’ve never seen it before. I just grabbed it because it was there and it looked good or whatever. And that night, I started getting ads on Facebook for that jerky and it freaked me out. I'm in the industry, right? I know these things. I’m like, “Whoa. Wait a minute. How the hell?” And then what I realized is I used Google Pay at the grocery store. I'm talking like within an hour, I'm getting served up ads on something that I just did physically in person. That's creepy.

So here's what I think is going to happen on the creep factor is we are going to experience a revolution around privacy and it's going to focus primarily on the idea that privacy is a commodity. We are exchanging it for goods and services.

Look, I think most of us today are not naive to the fact that Googles and Facebooks and these things are free because they're using our data. We think of them as ad machines. So that part is pretty well-understood. What we don't understand is, “What exactly am I sharing and what are you doing with it?”

ROB
We don't have informed consent.

WILL
We don't have informed consent. And the next piece of informed consent is, “Okay. I hear you. But you know what? I don't want my face scanned. How much is my face worth to you? 25 bucks a year? Done. Here you go, Facebook. I will pay $25 a year to continue to use your service but instead of trading you this piece of my privacy, I'm just going to give you money” -- because, again, these things are all a commodity.

ROB
Right.

WILL
Now, today, nobody really understands the value so nobody wants to go down this path because they're still sitting here, “I'm just hoarding and hoarding data because I think one day, I'm going to win.” This is the new arms race, right?

ROB
Right.

WILL
But we, as consumers, need to demand transparency then we need to demand optionality which says, “Look, you can do whatever you want. It's your service. I'm the one using it. But you need to show me a full disclosure of where all my information is going and I should have the ability to opt out.” Now if I opt out… Let's say I turn off facial recognition on Facebook, Facebook goes, “Okay, that's cool. Guess what? You can't upload photos anymore.” “Okay.” Again, we're making an exchange, right? So this is a crucial piece--

ROB
And I think most people, they will still probably disclose as long as they're informed about what's being disclosed.

WILL
This is what people need.

ROB
Most people probably will.

WILL
Make the decision. “Hey, you know what? I'm good. I don't want to pay $100” or “I want to use the photo thing. It's worth it.” Again, it's a commodity. We're trading. You know what I'm saying?

Today, it's very one-sided because we're trading but we have no idea… There's no table that tells us the value. I have no idea whether I just handed you… Maybe I'm paying a million dollars a year for Facebook. I don't know…
ROB
Right.

WILL
…you know. So that is definitely key. And I think when you do that, you start to build that trust.

Now, you talked about the next piece of this which is jobs and just these other more insidious things -- law enforcement. I mean there's a lot of conversations--

ROB
Oh yeah, law enforcement, definitely.

WILL
Facial recognition. I mean there’s--

ROB
It’s already being used in protests right now [inaudible - 45:43] people.

WILL
There you go. So that is definitely a concern. But I do think people also need to understand how many great things have happened as a result of this technology as well.

ROB
I agree. And I also tell Black people this. The fact is we have to participate in some level, I think, of the facial recognition because machines learn through experience. So if they don't see us, they don't understand it.

WILL
Yeah. It’s happening.

ROB
And it’s not like we’re not going to use technology.

WILL
Exactly. That’s a really good point. And this goes back to, again, the way these models get trained. You know, the whole image—

ROB
There’s still going to be Black people in. They go over to your greater point. But we need to participate in the process, too, and know that it doesn't help. You can't opt out. That’s the point.

WILL
You can't opt out. No, no, no. And we need to do a better job.

I laugh… and this is probably maybe going to sound controversial. But the way image recognition works… It is actually harder with the darker complexions because there's less reflection. A computer doesn't look at you and understand all the nuance of what makes you you. A computer is actually measuring how the light is bouncing, the shadows. If I see two shadows, I know kind of how large your nose is. I can tell you have hair; you don't have hair.

ROB
I actually had Brian Brackeen… You know Brian Brackeen?

WILL
Of course, yeah.

ROB
I had him on the show. He went through that. He’d tell how it's got the pale… The pale male it's good at but it's not good at anything else.

WILL
This is very true. So it's frustrating. Now, again, the companies are not necessarily responsible for the technology still being developed but why’d you put something out as a consumer product that doesn't work for Black people?

ROB
Correct.

WILL
Again, who was in the room?

ROB
Especially in law enforcement. I'm just saying.

WILL
Come on. Again, not having inclusive voices in the room making these decisions is how these mistakes occur, first and foremost.

ROB
Absolutely.

WILL
Again, you could avoid so much of this by just having a more informed process. And so this is what people… And again, in terms of AI… Look, we talk about all the terrible things that can happen -- an arrest and this. There's also just simple things like language. Let's just say, for instance, you're a retail shop and I want to go shop for some sneakers. And you've got tennis shoes and you've got this and you've got that. Well look, if I live in the Northeast, I’d buy sneakers, man. That's what I wear. I don't know what a tennis shoe is, right? So right there. If you don't adapt to that language that's regional, you miss a sale.

ROB
Absolutely.

WILL
So, again, having broader inclusive kind of involvement in these things is… It's just better for everybody let alone just the right thing to do. But again, I’ve given up on talking about the right thing to do. I'm just going to talk about pure economics because that is a language that everyone should--

ROB
Yeah, it’s that pure economics because doing the right thing can lead to more money. Let's just get it--

WILL
There you go.

ROB
Yeah, exactly.

WILL
Look, if you don't think diversity inclusion is important because it doesn't mean anything to you, well guess what, it is statistically proven that you have a higher performing team.

ROB
Yeah.

WILL
Let that be your motivation.

ROB
Exactly. And I love the part about technology connecting and making sure that your company is having empathy and understanding for the end-user and those who actually use the product.

Let me get to some final rapid questions as we wrap up here. So what's an important truth you have that few people might agree with you on?

WILL
Oh wow -- an important truth that few people might agree with me on? I go back to just curiosity, being, probably, the most important trait that I think, as an individual, that you can have -- just that open-mindedness, that willingness to just learn and ask questions and assume that everything is a teacher. I could meet the most racist, biased, awful person in the world but if I'm going to sit in a train car with them for six hours, I might as well turn that into an experience to try to understand…

ROB
Absolutely.

WILL
…what makes them who they are. That is really important. I think the more controversial side might be to apply it in that train car scenario.

I had somebody say to me one time, and this is actually the seminar… And it was again a very controversial thing. And he was a Jewish guy which makes it even more kind of interesting. He’s like, “I’d like to forgive and have an objective conversation with Hitler, an open-minded curious… because I want to really understand…” That is such a foreign concept to me that… just evil, that it… Almost like part of me is fascinated. Like I want to sit and I want to engage.

So being able to look at somebody like that, to look at just something that is just pure hatred and violence, say, “You know what? I'm going to see what this person is really about. I'm going to engage them.”

ROB
I actually agree on that. Here's the reason though because I think, to add to that point, people are saying, “Well, okay, Hitler did that because clearly he was evil” but a whole nation followed him.

WILL
There you go.

ROB
So there's something there.

WILL
There’s something there.

ROB
Was it something unique to all the people in Germany or is it in all the human condition? And we need to understand how that happened to make sure that we’re self-aware--

WILL
And what he did in particular to go unlock that, right?

ROB
Correct.

WILL
Again, it's easy to be like, “No. I hate that guy. I would never even step…” No, of course. That's like our natural human reaction because we're mostly decent people. But again, if you can hack your brain to go, “I'm going to turn Hitler into a teacher and I'm going to try to understand…” It's a really gross thing to think about but again, to me, that's a mastery of that curiosity, right, that I will let every preconceived notion and emotion and opinion dissipate and I will be purely an open-minded sort of fact absorption. Again, it takes a mastery.

I can't say that I could do that. I think we all have these moments. But there's an opportunity for all of us to just completely let our guard down and completely absorb the world around us. And I think it'll make us just richer human beings, ultimately.

ROB
I completely agree. You have a committee of three, living or dead, that can be your advisors in business and/or life. Who would those three people be and why?

WILL
Oh man. Let’s back it up. Going a little more historical, I find Malcolm X to be one of the most fascinating characters and it's actually not for the reasons why I think a lot of people are attracted to just his words and his energy. His transformation multiple times throughout his life is… Again, back to that curiosity. Do you think Red, back in the early parts of his life, thought he was going to become who he became? And then even then, when he was in the nation and kind of was leading that effort and then as he evolved through the trip to Africa, that level of self-awareness and evolution, to me, is amazing.

ROB
Yeah.

WILL
And I think that the world and the universe, in particular, when somebody has that much charisma and ability in learning, in mind expansion, they tend to live a shorter life. I feel like they accelerate through life so quickly and I think that's what I find so fascinating. I think Tupac is a very similar character in a sense that he was a very transform--

ROB
Agree.

WILL
His entire life was reinvented.

ROB
I love your committee here. Malcolm and Tupac.

WILL
Malcolm and Tupac. And again, it's just back to that theme of that transformation. I could say that I find Malcolm X's words inspiring. I love Tupac's music. But to me, it's actually not about the artist or the speaker or the leader. It's really about that journey that I find to be just fascinating.

And I think in kind of a more sort of modern setting… It's funny… because I read a lot. I tend to gravitate towards just different leaders based on what I'm dealing with. I think Tony Hsieh from Zappos is a fascinating leader, the way he thinks about culture, the way he defined his company -- a shoe company -- as a customer service company. And that was the mission. That was the goal. “Let's provide the best customer service. So if we're selling shoes or we launch an airline, it doesn't matter. Zappos will be all about customer service.” That's so powerful.

I look at the story of Phil Knight. Oh my god. I just read that book so it's a little top of mind. My goodness, I mean he talk about just being on the rope and just having the most awkward… I mean he had a guy in a wheelchair. He had a guy that was 300 pounds. I mean this is Nike Rebuilt. You know what I'm saying?

ROB
Yeah.

WILL
I know I gave more than three but those first two, to me, are just such iconic and just amazing individuals for their transformation and then just look for people in industry that can give me some advice would be my committee there. And the industry…

ROB
That’s a very good committee.

WILL
…rotate depending on kind of what I was dealing with at the time.

ROB
That's a really, really good committee.

WILL
Yeah.

ROB
Final question here: You have a billboard, a Google ad that… It's a saying or displays your belief, what would that say and why?
WILL
“Fortune favors the bold.” You got to take risks in life. You got to have courage. I don't think anybody has achieved anything notable ever by just kind of being timid and just sort of being reactive. You got to put yourself out there. You got to make big bets and make big decisions if you want big outcomes.

Look, not everybody is in the same mode of where you want to get to. But if you want a big outcome, you got to take big steps. It doesn't just happen by just playing it safe. So be bold.

ROB
Absolutely. We have Robert Greene on the show, best-selling author the 48 Laws of Power. I think one of the laws is… He talks about being bold. He said, “Everybody admires the bold. Nobody admires the weak.”

WILL
There you go. There you go. That’s perfect. I should go check that out, actually.

ROB
Yeah. Will Hayes, Lucidworks. I appreciate it having you on the show. I appreciate it.

WILL
Ton of fun, Rob.

ROB
It was brain content.

[END OF TRANSCRIPT]