George Goldsmith On Building A $360 Million Business By Accelerating Patient Access To Innovation In Mental Health

In a recent insightful interview, George Goldsmith, the visionary entrepreneur and founder of Compass Pathways, shared the rich tapestry of his life and career. He has had a journey that unfolded in unexpected ways, defying conventional norms.

Compass Pathways has attracted initial funding from top-tier investors like Christian Angermayer, Mike Novogratz, and Peter Thiel. other backers include Hercules Capital, Aisling Capital, Vivo Capital, and PFM Health Sciences.

In this episode, you will learn:

• The journey began in technology but evolved into a pioneering force in mental health care with the creation of Compass Pathways.
• A unique blend of psychology and technology has been the hallmark of a career, shaping his ventures from the Human Interface Group to Tomorrow Lab.
• The acquisition of Lotus by IBM provided valuable insights into leadership and corporate mergers, shaping an understanding of navigating dynamic landscapes.
• With ventures like Tapestry Networks, George showcased his commitment to bringing leaders together to address societal challenges, emphasizing collaboration and innovation.
• The genesis of Compass Pathways was a deeply personal mission driven by a desire to help his stepson and a commitment to transforming mental health care globally.
• A vision for a future of mental health care in 2030 that is evidence-based, data-driven, and seamlessly integrated with AI and digital technology, extending beyond treatment-resistant depression.
• Advice to his younger self emphasizes resilience – “It’ll be okay regardless of the outcome. Sometimes you win, and sometimes you learn” – coupled with a focus on mastery, persistence, and attention to detail in entrepreneurial pursuits.

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About George Goldsmith:

George Goldsmith is a Co-Founder of COMPASS Pathways and serves as its Chief Executive Officer and Chairman. He is an Angel Investor.

His early training and experience were a multi-disciplinary blending of cognitive psychology, clinical psychology, and computer science.

George’s first company, The Human Interface Group, was a pioneer in collaborative software and was acquired by Lotus Development. He led the Lotus Institute and developed software and services to support high-performance, distributed teamwork.

George then created TomorrowLab, which provided strategic guidance to Internet businesses in the late 1990s. At the same time, he became a senior advisor to McKinsey & Company’s leadership and eventually joined McKinsey as CEO of TomorrowLab@McKinsey.

Subsequently, as a member of the Young Presidents Organisation (YPO) and its International Board of Directors, George founded YPO Networks.

In 2002, he founded Tapestry Networks, an organization committed to improving leadership performance and governance effectiveness in regulated sectors. He still serves as Tapestry Networks’ Non-Executive Chairman and also serves as a Board Member at AnaBios.

Connect with George Goldsmith:

• Bloomberg
• Crunchbase
• PitchBook
• LinkedIn

Read the Full Transcription of the Interview:

Alejandro Cremades: Alrighty hello everyone and welcome to the dealmakerr show. So today. We have a really exciting guest. You know we’re going to be talking about building scaling financing and exiting. He’s done it multiple times you know the last one actually you know a rocket ship that they at the peak. You know was two point two billion in valuation talk about value. Ah, but again, you know we’re going to be talking about all the good stuff that we like to hear we’re going to be talking about mission building mission driven teams we’re going to be talking about also the creation of sectors versus the creation of a company also understanding your role as a Ceo when you’re maybe 29 versus maybe your. When you are 68 and then also succession and legacy so many many many more thingsites this. So again, brace yourself for getting inspired so without farther ado let’s welcome our guest today George Goldsmith welcome to the show.

George Goldsmith: Thank you all hondro I’m really excited about today.

Alejandro Cremades: So originally born in Philly so give us a walk through memory lane. How was life growing up.

George Goldsmith: Well life was great. Growing up. It was I was born in 1955 which is forever ago for most people who are listening I’m sure um I was adopted adopted by a great family and ah. Put into a school that was a very high intensity athletic school and I was not a jock so I turned to technology and reading and ah kind of had a different kind of life than many of my classmates did who were very into sports. And that seemed to set the trajectory for the rest of my life.

Alejandro Cremades: Now it’s interesting that you mentioned that because I mean you see people like Michael Jordan not making it to the high school you know basketball team and then becoming one of the best you know athletes of all time I guess like for you not being such a great athlete and and going to other routes. You know how do you think that that. Build you up, you know for who you are today. George.

George Goldsmith: Well I think it was incredibly important because it got me focused on things that were interesting to me in the late 60 s like computer programming when we were using cards and forad and that led me to. Going to a summer program for kids at wharton school where I ended up actually teaching and mentoring Mba students that summer when I was 14 um it led me to. Really be exposed ah in the late sixty s to all the campus unrest and psychedelics and we’ll pick up on that a little bit later I’m sure. Um, so for me, it just gave me a completely different trajectory and I was always hanging out with people who are maybe 4 to eight years older than I was. Um, and so that accelerated my learning in many ways.

Alejandro Cremades: And how do you think that the the blend of psychology and then also perhaps computer science came together like how do this come together as an interest for you.

George Goldsmith: Well look I think one of the interesting things. The reason I mentioned I am adopted is I think that you know for me one of the hallmarks of that is you’re always kind of part in and part out. You’re never really part of the family but you’re never out of the family. You know it’s always you’re you’re kind of in this one foot in one foot out and I think that’s been a theme in my life of combining different things so I was always interested in how do people think and you know what happens and where feelings coming from and so I was always kind of a curious person psychologically but I was also pretty rigorous in terms of. And like things to work and I love the problem of computer science and I love the idea that you could either do something that would work or not and you would know whether you got it right? That’s really hard to do in psychology so to get both of those things with sort of an interesting blend for me.

Alejandro Cremades: Now Eventually you know after you got your degrees. You started your first company so walk us through what were the sequence of events that needed to happen for you to bring to live the human interface group.

George Goldsmith: Well, it was pretty simple. Um I was and this will have people realize that I’m not very smart at times. Um, so I spent 5 years in a ph d program in clinical psychology and I was just getting ready to the very last step which is to go get an internship. And the more I thought about that before I completed the dissertation and so forth the more I realized I really did want to work 1 person at a time and that for me was a really important moment. It was a very disappointing moment for all the faculty and so forth when I decided that actually. I didn’t want to become a psychotherapist and researcher I wanted to have a greater impact and then I started thinking around what could I do and I was always interested in technology and psychology and trained in clinical psych. And at that time there were some really big computer projects going on in some of the biggest companies looking at how to computerize manufacturing and the more people I talked to who were working in business and this was kind of ah a very foreign environment for me I was an academic in academia. So I was 29 um I think what. Became very clear to me was that no one was thinking about the people side of technology and that led me to create the human interface group with other psychologists and what we did was really look at how do we help people learn how to use the technology more effectively but far more important.

George Goldsmith: How do we work with leadership to understand how people and technology need to work together to improve performance and that really became the the basis of human interface group which then grew into I had a fascinating project supporting the largest nuclear power plant manufacturer in the world. And they were based in Connecticut in the us and the plants were being built in Korea and I would see these poor project managers drowning in fax as it came in overnight and I said can’t we do this differently and I started looking at technology and that connected me into Lotus which was. Early early project team looking at lotus notes and that led me to start looking at pivoting from doing psychological kind of process work to actually building software that included the process and then I ended up selling that to lotus and leading something called the Lotus Institute which was really the. Advanced applications group at Lotus software for collaboration.

Alejandro Cremades: So you sell the company to loaders then loaders gets acquired by Ibm. So obviously i’llton of m and a action there. So what? What did you learn about I guess you know really coming from from the starting point all the way to the finish line like the full cycle of. Building scaling and and getting that company to the finish line.

George Goldsmith: Well I have to say one of the things that was really fun was having the company acquired a year before that company being acquired by Ibm Lotus being acquired by Ibm was wonderful because all of the things that were earnouts over time accelerated. So. That was a nice thing about having Ibm come in and take over lotus for some reason must have been for some of my sins I was actually on the leadership team overseeing that merger process which was an incredible cultural conflict if you will the lotus a very fast moving. Ah, software company taken over by Ibm which was not that at the time and so you know I learned a lot I was really responsible for looking at the strategy of how do we do the merger successfully and so forth and um. That was a credible learning experience and it also made me realize despite the fact that my father finally said he was so happy I had an Ibi finally worked for a company. He he recognized you know this was the big thing about being bought by Ibm. But I said no I’m going to go do something new again because.

Alejandro Cremades: And that was tomorrow lap at what point as tomorrow lap come knocking.

George Goldsmith: That’s what I do.

George Goldsmith: Ah, tomorrow lab came knocking because I was always really interested Nolan Bushnell who founded Atari has this wonderful quote and it’s the best way to predict. The future is to create it and I’m that kind of guy. Um, and. So tomorrow lab for me. This was 9096 again. Ancient history for most people, but it was the time when the internet was starting to become seen and known and obviously my work at Lotus notes and collaboration software before the internet really gave me an interesting vantage point for this. Um. And so and I was also a senior advisor to Mckinsey and company helping them launch their ecommerce and mobile commerce practices in the 90 s so I had this interesting vantage point of seeing the future being born all around us and so what I wanted to do with tomorrow lab was create an organization. That would essentially provide guidance and service to how you go onto the web as a big business. Um, how you cultivate customers, etc and I did that and um I really became fascinated by. How the ecosystems of customers could come together whether it is something like the app store that Apple did or way before that the lotus app store of how we can create communities and networks and that was a lot of my work at Lotus tomorrow lab said let me do that for others and then the relationship with Mckinsey strengthened and.

George Goldsmith: We created tomorrow lab at Mckinsey ah, in the late 90 s and I was the ceo of that and the first Ceo of the first division at Mckinsey and company. There’s a lot that could be learned from that but I’m not allowed to write about any of it has happened so often in these kinds of transactions and transitions. Um, so that’s. That’s tomorrow lab but I learned so much about I mean this was 99 and we were creating online video portals for education of of Mckinsey clients right? So this is I’ve always been kind of a leading edge kind of guy and I’m perhaps a bit too early. Um, which I finally got right with compass.

Alejandro Cremades: Absolutely now I guess being involved with you know, an entity like Mckinsey I’m sure that you really learned a lot when it comes to problem solving because I find that all these consultants you know they’re amazing at really being able to grab one really big problem. You know break it down into small problems.

George Goldsmith: Ten years later but we’ll talk about that in a minute.

Alejandro Cremades: And then you tackle 1 by one I’m sure that that gave you a ton of perspective too to be able to have that exposure.

George Goldsmith: It it really did and it also helped me understand what’s great about that and what gets missed by that and so it often leads to. Much more kind of operational focus and sometimes being really really good at cultivating and nurturing the trees and sometimes you miss the forest and so I think what became really clear to me was. Thinking about how to apply problem solving but to areas not of operational issues cost reduction things at Mckinsey really did amazingly well for mature companies. But how do you apply that sort of rigor to a really broad open space. Um. And for me one of those areas in the late early two thousand s late 90 s um was what I did after the bottom fell out of the dot coms at mckinsey where we’ building a product for the dot coms. There wasn’t much of a market. Wasn’t a typical Mckinsey person. So I went off and created something new called Tapestry Networks I was also very involved in something called the young president’s organization I was on the board of directors there and launched ah one of the most successful products in ypo’s history called ypo networks.

George Goldsmith: And that was really all based on the concept of bringing leaders together and having them share their experiences learn from each other and then look at how to do better themselves and that that went into the creation of tapestry so you know and to do that at a commercial scale but to take the problem sets that were really big like. How do we deal with ethics and fraud inside corporate America which I started with at tapestry. So lots of steps.

Alejandro Cremades: So tapestry. Actually yeah and tapestry actually still exists. You know is say now a company that you’re Chairman of at the same time you know being Chairman of Compass you know pathways. So I’m I’m wondering here like when it comes to a board like.

George Goldsmith: And.

Alejandro Cremades: Effective dynamics and then also being an effective Chairman What does that look like.

George Goldsmith: Um, one of the key things I’ve learned over my life that I think it looks like is really believing not just saying we are smarter than me. Um, it’s to really understand what you are good at. What you’re not good at how to surround yourself with people who compliment you who challenge you and being open to feedback while at the same time staying true to yourself and that’s a hard balance. Um, but I think in in creating boards of directors or supporting boards of directors tapestries. Main business is actually providing leading edge thinking to boards of directors. We have about 60% of the fortune 100 directors involved in our work meeting multiple times a year etc and it’s really a safe place much like young presence organization to share things confidentially and to look at how to improve process and what I learned for doing that at tapestry or doing it before that at tomorrow lab at mckinsey at ypo is that. Creating a safe environment for people to be themselves and to express their perspectives is really important listening and learning is really important. It’s probably more important at a certain point than telling and selling.

George Goldsmith: And that’s one of the things that you have to learn as an entrepreneur is that the start is always tell and sell it has to be.. It’s your vision but there gets to be a point where you have to really temper that with listen and learn and so I think getting that balance right? and picking the right people around a board table. That’s really important and it’s never finished never never never finished companies grow their dynamic boards need to grow. They need to be dynamic and I think that’s one of the main challenges with lots of boards of directors is that the dynamism of the sector or the dynamism of the company. Really need to be matched by a steady hand but also dynamism of the board.

Alejandro Cremades: Now in your case you did develop this interest for psychochedelics more on the research side you know and I guess you know obviously living in the sixty s seventy s you know, like when when all of that the crazy you know, ah nest was happening you know and it kicked In. You know, really you you really developed that interest on the research side around it and ultimately you know certain family events that happen really triggered and pushed you to bring something to life called Compass Pathways so walk us through the origins of it. How did you decide to take action. And what were the sequence of events that needed to happen.

George Goldsmith: Well being a geeky kid at the University Of Pennsylvania 69 70 there was a wonderful researcher named John Lilly who was working actually for the Us defense department contracts at University Of Pennsylvania who was doing sensory deprivation a wetsuit. Completely covering his body water temperature equal to his body temperature complete sensory deprivation then he just added lsd for great measure and did a lot of writing about this and I actually had the interact was able to interact a little bit so I was always really intrigued by this. Kind of out their work right? That’s just kind of the theme you probably are picking up so I thought about that I read it I had a couple psychedelic experiences in my teens there in that time frame but was more always interested in not going to grateful dead concerts but more about just what the experience was like and kind of how it could help people see things differently. Took a 38 year holiday um I got married and remarried to amazing doctor woman ikaterina modievska she had an incredible son 16 who went off to university and really started suffering with depression and Ocd and we’d never seen anything like a alejandro. Far it far too many kids suffer with this um and nothing was working as a matter of fact, all the traditional treatments were actually making them worse through side effects and it was just tragic and Kacha who is an activist she was one of the first doctors on the ground 0 and was the basis of the.

George Goldsmith: Ah, health effects of nine eleven study so she she really leans into things she runs toward things not away from things so she was doing research on how to help her son and came across research on psilocybin that was done in 2006 people who one of the things our son suffered with was ocd it was terrible. Terrible issue. Um, and what happened was she woke me up one morning in February of 2013. So I found this thing about silas cybin or not sure what it is. What do you know about psychedelics. And you grew up in the 60 s and seventy s and I never told her about this I never there’s no reason to I forgot about it I said well actually quite a bit and um, that rekindled our getting interested in this. The scientific results were interesting. They were promising. There were small studies. And it was something completely different from the traditional antidepressants and therapy. So it appealed to that like this could be leading edge. Let’s let’s dig in and we became donors to a lot of the research going on at and nyu hopkins ucla you know London Imperial Zurich so we just said, let’s let’s get smart about this and see what we can do but but meanwhile a few years before I had been working with major pharmaceutical companies at tapestry to look at how do we get medicines to patients faster and I had been working with 9 governments across Europe and the european medicines agency which is like Europe’s Fda

George Goldsmith: And we actually created a whole kind of collaborative process to develop a new way for research to be conducted so we understand what we have to show in order to get approved and reimbursed and if you can’t get reimbursed people who are suffering cannot afford the treatment so you really need to do that. Well so there I was finishing up that. Project for 5 years and our son became ill psychedelics emerged. No one knew what to do was this like the craziest idea you’re giving what to whom for what and but the research started look promising. So what we did is we ended up. Creating a company to look at how to bring this forward not through legalization and decriminalization that all is going to go on its way but to really help people like our son and the more people we talk to. We realized almost everyone had a story of someone suffering from mental health issues. Almost everyone and so it’s a huge problem. A huge unmet need current models only work for about 30% of the patients maybe 40 huge unmet need. We’re talking about millions of people right now. The estimates are about 320000000 people suffering from. Depression. It isn’t helped by anything else around the world. So we said let’s go for it and you know we we used the process I created with European Medicines agency co-created with them and countries.

George Goldsmith: And we took the idea to them and they said looks pretty interesting. Why don’t you focus on treatment resistant depression now. We realize that treatment resistant depression is a huge problem but it’s not really the problem. These are patients who’ve been failed by the lack of innovation. Okay, they’re not resisting treatment. No one said no no, don’t do that they’re saying give me anything that might help and we just don’t have what we can give to them and we thought that psilocybin might be an approach that could work in Psilocybin Therapy um so we built a company. We found 3 initial investors. Actually our first meeting with investors and 15 minutes in that investor was calling a friend of his in California very early in the morning and that investor was christian ongarmeyer. His friend was Peter Thiel um and

Alejandro Cremades: Wow wow.

George Goldsmith: Mike Novograts sister introduced us to everyone so Mike Novogratz was in so we had an amazing group of seed investors that were just it was a complete accident. We were introduced to Mike by his sister while we were on a retreat trying to figure out what the heck to do. And how we would raise how much money we needed his sister Amy introduces to Mike Mike introduces to Christian and that was our seed round done. Um, and.

Alejandro Cremades: That’s unli you that’s un bolio now now now you guys race ended up raising for the company about 600000000 so yeah

Alejandro Cremades: Um, what has been the experience of going from financing cycle to financing cycle with a company like this.

George Goldsmith: Um, it’s a huge responsibility. Um, it’s a huge responsibility that we are taking on for our patients. Um, and we can’t ever lose track of that and it is this may be touching into. Building a sector right? because think about what we’re doing. We’re working within illegal drug that’s illegal and has been illegal since 1971 all around the world yet. There’s some promising research that’s been done and allowed by governments and particularly in the last decade or two decades. So. We are looking to address one of the largest problems on the planet right now. People’s worldview their mental health we’re starting with depression but looking at things like anorexia bipolar disorder ptsd and what we want to do here is to work on the hard stuff. Not the easy stuff because the easy stuff. Others can do. And so what for us has been really key is appreciating how to tell the story and how the story has a consistent golden thread. We’re here to the mission hasn’t changed since 2014 we’re dedicated. To accelerating patient access to evidence-based innovation in mental health care evidence-based is critical. We’re not talking about I had a great troom experience last weekend. That’s great I’m glad you did, but that’s not scientific. Evidence. We’re not talking about legalization so people can go.

George Goldsmith: A concert that should happen. But that’s not what we’re doing what we’re doing is saying we’re operating in North America and Europe total population about 850000000 and we want to make this available for anyone who’s suffering as a potential tool in that. And that’s just the beginning because then you expand to the rest of the world and so we have we’re thinking big about how do we transform patient experience and mental health care. How do we transform their life experience and that story has been consistent but it started out with 3 of us. And now it’s a couple hundred of us in the latest financing round plus hundreds of researchers and others 150 sites of doing the research so you know it takes a huge amount of time. The story has to stay consistent and it also has to grow and change as the company change and the world changes around us.

Alejandro Cremades: And as we’re talking about changing to you know in your case, you know how has been the experience due of executing you know and and the mindset when you were maybe like in your twenty s and thirty s versus now being in your sixty s you know how have. Things Change. You know when you look at execution too.

George Goldsmith: Um, it’s amazing. You know it’s really, um, so my attraction to big issues has not changed. Um my ability to execute against that has changed. Um, my ability to inspire others but rely on others has changed and grown over time. Um, because one of the things I learned is you visions are easy. Super easy. Um, one might call them dreams. Um. But actually getting stuff done in the world requires teams that requires a lot of different people perspectives and so I think one of the challenges is that as Ceo you almost have to be heroic to like it’s kind of a crazy idea. For any of us to say we’re going to go make a difference and you know we’re somehow we’re going to be the 1 right? So that’s kind of a crazy idea and you need to have that crazy idea to recruit the initial team and get people bought in. But then you have to kind of hand it off right? and I’ve just gotten a hell of a lot better handing it off over time so that I can do what I’m good which is at which is to really ask a very simple question of people on problems of scale can’t we do better.

George Goldsmith: And might not this work and that enables me to get really interesting people into the problem with me. We sit next to each other. We don’t negotiate across a table. What we’re negotiating with is the problem and the opportunity and that becomes a much more ingrained process in me as I grow older because I see how well it works and it really is encapsulated in that expression I used before which I think is so important for. Mission Driven leaders is we are smarter than me, you just have to make sure you pick the right way.

Alejandro Cremades: Absolutely now if you were to go to sleep tonight George and you wake up in a world where the vision of compass pathways is fully realized what does that world look like.

George Goldsmith: Well, it’s a beautiful question and I think it’s way beyond the view of compass pathways and it’s probably the view of anybody who’s a parent or a conscious human being which is that. We don’t get stuck in suffering. We have a human experience which has ups and downs. But we don’t get trapped in depression for years on end where we can’t engage with the world where we become incredibly internally focused. Um. That we have a world where we can predict who will respond to what types of medicines therapies based on data that we collect now that we wear on both hands and that we can actually predict and prevent relapse. So for us the future of mental health care is evidence-based data- driven always on there’s no difference between being in research and being a patient because we’re always collecting data. We’re always looking at how to make it better and that we are. Not wringing our hands because we don’t have human resources or on enough therapists. We really lean into how do we think about ai mentors for patients Ai therapy patients to train therapists to look at really? how do we? Leverage technology.

George Goldsmith: Including the medicine technology but also the digital technology so that we can live healthier and happier lives informed by data and that we stay we can help people get well and stay well and I think that the area that we’re working in and many other companies. Whether it’s the digital area the Ai or the medicine these all need to come together seamlessly around a patient to help them in their life Journey does that make any sense.

Alejandro Cremades: That does that does now let’s say that the you know we see now you know like you’ve passed the button and you’re you become the chairman of the company. What’s next for you. George you know what? the What do you think you know the audience that are listening. You know, kind of expect from from what’s coming.

George Goldsmith: There’s a wonderful haitian proverb. Um, it was actually the title of a book called mountains beyond mountains that when we climb a mountain suddenly we realize we’re either at the summit or we realize we’ve just climbed a foothill that we couldn’t see the summit beyond that. And I think that’s been how I viewed my entire life that when I finish something I kind of look around and I see wow. There’s so many other things here to do I think the compass has done an amazing job and will do amazing job through our phase three clinical trials and hopefully those will all turn out. Well and patients will have access later this decade to these new models of care. But it also points out that we still have a lot of work to do in terms of how do we transform care? How do we? integrate digital. How do we integrate information. How do we handle privacy. How do we make sure that we can integrate Ai in a way that you have a mentor who’s always available twenty four seven not an appointment I might have you know at 11 a M next Wednesday every week. Um, because that’s not how life works so the next phase I think is really. Stepping up and looking at that landscape I often think about it of how do we create mental health 2030 today and so that’s some of the stuff I’m thinking about then I’m also working on a passion project right now which ah for those people who ah psychedelic therapy is.

George Goldsmith: Not going into a pretty field. It’s actually going into a clinic with trained professionals taking a high dose psychedelic and eye shades in a music soundtrack for our clinical trials. Kaci and I developed my wife and I developed the soundtrack with neuroscientists. That’s all cool. But for me, it was always. Felt like a ransom note with lots of different music and tones. It wasn’t coherent. So I’ve been spending the last eighteen months working with an amazing musician named Dominic Miller to create a 7 hour soundtrack for psychedelic therapy and wellbeing. So that’s been taking a bit of time Dominic has had the privilege of being stings lead guitarist for 33 years um worked in lots of bands. This is not that type of music and so we have 14 musicians and are excited about concerts and releasing this about a year from Now so and to really use it to help people become grounded and supported through the psychedelic journey and I’ll just say one other thing. The unique thing about the psychedelic therapy is something that happened Johns Hopkins A Research Institution in the us asked the following question of patients. How meaningful was this. 4 to 6 hours in your life. People would get a little confused. What do you mean by meaningful and they would say well like think about the birth of your first child your wedding day and sadly if you’ve had ah the death of a parent That’s what we mean by meaningful.

George Goldsmith: And about 70% said it was the top 5 most meaningful experiences in their life nearly a third said it was the most meaningful experience. So here we are we have the opportunity to curate and support these experiences.

Alejandro Cremades: Wow.

George Goldsmith: It’s a huge responsibility and something that I think you know we really need to look at and whether that’s with music or thinking about mental health 2030 it’s a huge opportunity. We need lots of people working on this and we’ll do our little part.

Alejandro Cremades: I love it now. Imagine I was to put you into a time machine George and I bring you back in time I bring you back in time to that moment where maybe you were thinking you know about starting your first company you know and they.

George Goldsmith: This Rot row. Yeah.

Alejandro Cremades: Let’s say you had now the opportunity of having a sit down. You know, right? before you know you came up, you know with the idea of what ended up becoming you know that first company and let’s say you were able to have a chat with your younger self right? before you know getting started with a human interface group. And let’s say you were able to have a conversation with that younger George and you were able to give that younger George 1 piece of advice before launching a business. What would that be and why given what you know now.

George Goldsmith: It’s a really good question and I think I might do 2 pieces of advice. 1 piece of advice is very simply It’ll be okay regardless of the outcome. Because sometimes you win and sometimes you learn.

George Goldsmith: The second one is maybe and a little odd but I think it’s super important for early founders and it’s that god is in the details. Not the devil and mastery. And the persistence for mastery on the details of what you’re doing really matter. It’s easy to get big visions. It’s much harder to execute one of my favorite Steve Jobs quotes and I believe it is an actual quote is real artist’s ship. So I think whatever happens with these things you learn you live. You may be poorer. You may be richer but you keep on going and then. Just really pay attention to what you’re doing and do it at the highest quality with the deepest level of persistence because that matters.

Alejandro Cremades: Wow! Very profound George for the people that are listening now that will love to reach out and say hi. What is the best way for them to do so.

George Goldsmith: Um, well I guess Linkedin works for me. So I probably just do Linkedin George Goldsmith Linkedin and then they’ll be able to follow the next crazy things I’m up to.

Alejandro Cremades: Amazing, well easy enough. Well hey George thank you so much for being on the deal maker show today. It has been an honor to have you with us.

George Goldsmith: Thank you appreciate.

*****

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