Kevin Koym talks with Jason Barnard about impact through innovation.
Kevin Koym is the CEO and Founder of Tech Ranch, a venture accelerator for early-stage technology companies. He shares deep insights from his journey supporting over 6,500 entrepreneurs across 42+ countries.
Kevin highlights the importance of vision-driven leadership, the role of community support in fostering innovation, and the critical need for durable, cross-cultural collaborations. He also discusses how disruptive innovation can drive positive global change.
Discover how strong, lasting networks are incredibly important for entrepreneurs navigating today's fast-changing world. Learn how working together across borders can help solve some of the world's biggest problems.
What you’ll learn from Kevin Koym
00:00 Kevin Koym and Jason Barnard
01:03 What Does Kalicube Specialize in?
01:15 Why Can’t Google Categorize Kevin Koym?
02:16 How Long Did Kevin Koym Manage to Move His Google Map Pin?
07:03 What is the Meaning of Innovation According to Kevin Koym?
09:10 Why Do You Need to be Vision-Driven When it Comes to Disruptive Innovation?
10:07 What Kind of People Does Kevin Koym Want to Focus On?
13:41 What is the Relationship Between Innovation and Business?
14:36 Why Do Some People Resist Innovation So Strongly?
14:50 Why Does the Current Focus On Innovation Excite Kevin Koym?
18:03 Why is the Number of Bankruptcies Increasing?
19:46 What is Aikido?
20:08 How Does Kevin Koym Apply His Aikido Experience to His Work?
20:30 Where are the International Projects in Which Kevin Koym is Involved?
22:07 What is “Senpai Kohai” in Aikido?
23:10 What is Kevin Koym’s Perspective on Mentors and Advisors?
This episode was recorded live on video December 17th 2024
https://youtube.com/live/Maqod-MULCk
Links to pieces of content relevant to this topic:https://youtu.be/V0rZ-C9HpN4?si=NorSQolLGaxRIcU6https://youtu.be/rQgcxO1wfHg?si=T7D6YKeQtO09PziHKevin Koym
Transcript from Impact Through Innovation - Fastlane Founders with Kevin Koym
Narrator [00:00:03]:
Fastlane Founders and Legacy with Jason Barnard. Each week, Jason sits down with successful entrepreneurs, CEOs and executives and get them to share how they mastered the delicate balance between rapid growth and enduring success in the business world. How can we quickly build a profitable business that stands the test of time and becomes our legacy? A legacy we're proud of. Fastlane Founders and Legacy with Jason Barnard.
Jason Barnard [00:00:31]:
Hi, everybody and welcome to another episode of Fastlane Founders and Legacy with me, Jason Barnard. And a quick hello and we're good to go. Welcome to the show, Kevin Koym.
Kevin Koym [00:00:45]:
Thank you. I appreciate it.
Jason Barnard [00:00:47]:
Brilliant. Lovely to have you here. We're going to be talking about the Impact Through Innovation. I'm really interested in innovation, business, how it all fits together, how we can make an impact. And from a business perspective, keep your business going while you're innovating, which is something you would imagine is really simple. But I found to be very hard at Kalicube, which brings me to this, which is your Knowledge Panel. This is where we specialize in the representation of people and companies in Google and in AI. And I thought it was really interesting that you don't have a subtitle of your name, so Google can't categorize you.
Jason Barnard [00:01:20]:
That's the thing at the top, the little arrow. So Google doesn't know which category to put you in. And because it works on cohorts, that's a big problem. And at the bottom, I'm in France and you get this beautiful big description in France, but you don't get it in America, which is strange. It's unusual. So you want. You are looking really closely there.
Kevin Koym [00:01:39]:
Yeah, no, no, I'm...
Jason Barnard [00:01:41]:
Generally interested, I would get more information where you are located than I would where I'm located. So this doesn't make sense. And it just means that Google is unsure. And that's a really nice kind of segue into the innovation thing is Google is, let's say, the smartest machine on Earth, and yet it's unsure and confused. And from our perspective, that means that your digital footprint isn't clear. So it's not that Google's stupid, it's that things aren't clear for it.
Kevin Koym [00:02:14]:
I can give. I mean, one of the interesting things that not, not that we necessarily want to spend a lot of time about Google Maps, but one of the things that's happened is it took us a year to get our Google Map pin moved. So if we were to talk a little bit about why that might be, why that might be like, I almost had to take Google to court to get our map pin moved. And I do not know why there's some, you know, I'm not so sure that I'd agree with the idea that Google is the smartest machine in the world because specifically on location, it took us a year and it's only been within the last couple of weeks. Interesting for you to pick up on this. I don't know that I didn't know that we were going to talk about that. But I'll tell you this, I'm extremely disappointed, extremely disappointed that Google hadn't figured out that because I own the I myself, not just one of my employees, but I own the business profile myself and we had to force this. It's interesting because I guess the thing that I would say about it with regards to your introduction is a lot of businesses are resistant to change.
Kevin Koym [00:03:28]:
And it's interesting that you know, on something like identity, whether it's a location or something like that as well, you know, since it's so easy to spoof so many of these pieces, it's important to have some rigidness so that someone can't just hijack my profile or your profile. And I can see this from a higher level perspective of why Google might have tried to block changes. Because for whatever reason, given the work that I've done around the world, my identity has been hijacked or tried to be hijacked to an equivalent a number of times.
Jason Barnard [00:04:07]:
Oh, wow.
Kevin Koym [00:04:08]:
The rigidness of the innovation, you know, the resistance to innovation that might create exposure, I can see on this specific thing, you know, it's an intriguing thing that there would be a problem with that identity. But one of the things I'll say is Google Maps with regards to this absolutely sucks and it needs to be innovated.
Jason Barnard [00:04:32]:
Brilliant.
Kevin Koym [00:04:32]:
I use it every day. But also there's some difficulties there.
Jason Barnard [00:04:36]:
Well, isn't the question is it was incredibly innovative and then innovation comes to a point where it kind of stagnates and it gets stuck and it becomes bogged down in its initial innovative push. Or is that me imagining things?
Kevin Koym [00:04:52]:
I think the thing that's happening, if we were to like target this specific thing, the only, only excuse that I can give for Google for the lack of rigor with regards to blocking us from moving our own pin that I set in place, you know, years ago. The only thing I can imagine is it's a financial problem that Google has a service that they don't know how to serve up and they're not making enough money to then dedicate more resources to.
Jason Barnard [00:05:18]:
Right.
Kevin Koym [00:05:19]:
And so they put it on a steady state, you know, just running it, not adding. There's not a lot of been a lot of new features over the years. There's never been anything since they actually did the initial innovation. There's not been anything revolutionary. We see revolutionary stuff happening on some of the other platforms with regards to Maps, but not the extensibility of what's there. The thing, this is interesting thing to be looking at and saying, okay, yes, there should be incremental innovation all the way through, but part of what we are seeing right now, and I'm sure, actually I don't know this for certain because I haven't asked them but. Or I haven't been able to figure out why there was a blog. But the thing that I do know is that typically people don't look at innovation because they're like, hey, we can't, we're not going to make any more money over here.
Kevin Koym [00:06:09]:
So let's just like ignore that and let the kids play with, you know, maps and all that sort of stuff. I suspect it's a financial issue. I suspect that the neglect that we saw on Google Maps was a financial issue. They probably had a big team that they whittled down to a small team that are now just watching the servers and doing the basic things without any investment being put into innovation. And I don't mean incremental innovation. I mean like, you know, the stuff that my career has been about is disruptive innovation.
Jason Barnard [00:06:39]:
From what I've understand at Google is it's divided into teams and if you have a strong team lead, things move forward. And if you don't have a strong team lead, things tend to stagnate.
Kevin Koym [00:06:50]:
Yeah, I don't know, I've never worked at Google and.
Jason Barnard [00:06:53]:
No, me neither. Anyway, but back on the topic, which is what do you mean by innovation? We've been talking about Google Maps. Let's get back to your core topic. What do you mean by innovation when you say innovation?
Kevin Koym [00:07:03]:
So in my career I worked for a Steve Jobs startup straight out of college. I went to University of Texas, got an engineering degree and then ended up working. I was based here in Austin, worked for that Steve Jobs startup. When we talk about innovation, the story that everyone's heard is, you know, Steve started Apple and there was the Apple 2 and then all of a sudden there's the Macintosh. When he built the Macintosh division, that was what you would call a skunk works.
