In recognition of Tough Tech Week (organized by The Engine), we hosted a Careers in Tough Tech event on Oct 30th. This is a recording of that video.
Whether you’re a student, a seasoned professional, or an aspiring founder, this session provides a roadmap for building a career in this industry. We answer all of your burning questions:
- What is Tough Tech & what industries fall under the umbrella.
- Why Tough Tech Matters.
- Exploration of various roles within Tough Tech (e.g., scientist, engineer, sales, finance, operations, marketing, founder, investor, product management).
- Valuable Skills: the most crucial skills for success in this field (e.g., technical expertise, rigorous problem-solving, resilience, interdisciplinary thinking, adaptability).
- How to make the shift to Tough Tech with examples.
- Major companies in this sector.
- Resources & Organizations to follow.
- Q&A
Speakers:
- Alec Page – Investor and Head of Operations & Strategy, Charge Robotics
- Lexi Kantor – Senior HR Consultant, Insource Services
- Chris Berkner – CEO & Founder, Berkner Group
- Keith Cline – Founder, VentureFizz (Moderating)
Video Transcript
Keith Cline – Founder, VentureFizz (Moderating) Thank you so much for joining us. My name is Keith Cline. I am the founder of VentureFizz. If you’ve never heard of VentureFizz, we are a website that is really a community hub focused on the tech industry. So we support Boston, New York. It’s a place where you can go to find jobs. We have a lot of content that we create that showcases companies and what it’s like to work there. So a lot of videos. So we do a lot to support the ecosystem. And our world is a lot of like software of course AI robotics but not heavy in the you know more hard tech side. So I am just as excited to spend time learning today from our three panelists that are going to talk about careers in tough tech. When I look at the funding announcements out there especially if I look at Boston there is a ton of capital going towards tough tech companies. So that just always draws me in to say, “Wait, there’s a lot of opportunity here. There’s companies that are hiring. They’re growing. So what’s the career path for people to actually land in one of these companies?” You know, if you don’t have that traditional background that perhaps one would think would be a fit. So anyways, we’re going to dissect lots of details today to help you on your path and journey into a tough tech company.
Now we are doing this event in correlation with the engine which is an amazing I guess I call it a firm cuz it’s a VC but also they have like an incubator accelerator like Lexi you probably know better of like they have a whole area where there’s just lots of hard clean tech companies that are working on really cool stuff but they’re not funded by the engine venture so there’s two sides to their world but they are super supportive and they had this whole tough tech week they’ve been putting on so this is happening this week. There’s been events going on in Boston and online events. So, there’s been so much good stuff going on. So, anyways, let’s get started here. So, I want to have each of the panelists walk through the details of your background and kind of your world in this tough tech climate. So, Lexi, let’s start with you. Talk about your background.
Lexi Kantor – Senior HR Consultant, Insource Services Sure. Yeah. Thank you, Keith. Um hi everybody. I’m Lexi. I have been an HR team of one since I started my career back in 2016. And I was in sort of the software world up until about 2022 when I joined a biotech startup that was funded by and resided in the engine. They’re called Kaidipin. They’re still in the engine. They’re awesome. So I sort of dove into the tough tech scene pretty hard in 2022. being located in the engine is really great because you also get access to all these other like really smart people and leaders and companies and that are doing really cool things. So I not only was working in at Kaidipin as their first and only HR person but also was consulting for some of the CEOs in the engine ecosystem as they were sort of getting ready to bring on maybe their first team member or scale a little bit after series A or something like that. I left Kaidipin at the beginning of this year and right now I am consulting an HR consultant at Insource Services. We’re a local consult business operations consulting firm based in Welssley. And I still have a few what I would consider tough tech companies on my client list doing anywhere where from like climate tech to advanced materials like quantum and those types of things, biotech, etc.
Keith Cline – Founder, VentureFizz (Moderating) Here’s a fun fact about Lexi and I. We go way back. So Ventric supported Cambridge sematics which that was like an early data heavy like machine. Yeah. Big data visualization. Big data visualization. Yeah. Like like early to the market. Great company. And I failed to mention something before I went into the intros. I have the chat function open. So if you have questions, you can put them just in the chat. There is a Q&A part of Zoom and Zoom that we can save questions towards the end. I’m a fan of if you have questions, please add them to the chat and I’ll try to work them into the discussion that way instead. So, all right, Chris, you’re next.
Chris Berkner – CEO & Founder, Berkner Group All right, Keith, thanks for having us and it’s great to be here. I’m Chris Burkner. I’m the founder and CEO of Burkner Group. So, we’re a executive search firm. We also do technical search in the sort of toughte arena which really encompasses a lot of different verticals some of which are more or less related but we’re talking about you know uh climate tech like green steel and green cement and you know grid tech energy storage next generation solar you know next generation building materials and so these kinds of things this is what we do. We’re a firm of about 35 people and we’re mostly focused on you know kind of sea level and VP roles for startups in the US and Canada. We also have a technical search group so we know a lot about placing engineers and scientists as well. That’s about a third of what we do.
And my own background is kind of secuitous. I had a securous career path. I actually started out in software but realized you know and I had an econ degree and my I realized my passion is green tech doing something for the planet. So I went back to school for a second bachelor’s thinking I’d become kind of an ecoin inventor PhD type person and I was doing chemical engineering at Berkeley and I dropped out to start a venture capital firm. It was kind of an an unusual situation where I I had an opportunity to to jump in and get involved sooner than I thought in 2007. So I did a a VC stint for a few years in climate. One of our portfolio companies was a an agg bio organic biopesticide company called Marone Bio that went public on NASDAQ and there’s another company called Pure Sense that needed a lot of help and the company asked us to find them a CEO. We hired a search firm. Search firm didn’t find anyone we liked and my partner said you go run it. So I was a turnaround CEO at a a tech startup hardware software startup helping large farms manage their irrigation energy for about three years. So I did a lot of you know actual operating and growing and hiring in the space and I just never found a search firm that I loved. So I started my own. So that was about 13 years ago. So that’s kind of how I got here and been working with the engine since about I think 2018 2019. And I’m officially the CXO at the the engine accelerator and also work with a lot of the engine ventures portfolio companies.
Keith Cline – Founder, VentureFizz (Moderating) Well, just being in the search industry when you partner with somebody with the operating experience that you have, Chris, that is next level service. Like, because you don’t just kind of like, yeah, I kind of understand. No, I’ve lived in this role before. I’ve done this. I’ve scaled this. I’ve built this. I’ve invested in this. You’ve done all pieces of the equation. So, that’s impressive.
Chris Berkner – CEO & Founder, Berkner Group Yeah. Thanks. It’s it can be a double-edged sword because, you know, I can have very strong opinions about, you know, what decisions should be made, etc. So, I try to, you know, just be be supportive and let call give them lots of great options.
Keith Cline – Founder, VentureFizz (Moderating) How about you, Alec?
Alec Page – Investor and Head of Operations & Strategy, Charge Robotics Yeah. So, so, my background kind of comes from the the finance side of things. So, started my career in investment banking about 10 years ago. Went from that into venture capital. Helped start a fund focused on real estate tech. So, so not particularly tough tech. A lot of kind of proven technology and and in other industries getting applied to to real estate, which as as some of you may know is tends to be fairly antiquated in terms of technology. did that for about five years and switched into to an industry I’m far more passionate about which is climate and quickly realized climate tech is is quite a bit of tough tech there’s there’s a lot of hardware there’s a lot of science and technology risk outpacing execution risk. I started an angel syndicate called Sunroad Syndicate we invest in seed and preede companies B2B industrial decarbonization clean energy both hardware and software and you know realized in the first few years of of running that syndicate that yeah that there’s a a real gap in terms of technical expertise and founders want to work with with investors who understand their technology who aren’t just writing a check. And so I went back to school, went and took a whole bunch of engineering classes at Columbia in their sustainability science and and earth and environmental engineering departments to to try and get smart on on some of the the technology side of things, the engineering side of things. And then so have not finished that program but was convinced by a portfolio company to to jump in and run finance and operations and and so that’s where I am now. The company is called Charge Robotics. And we manufacture largecale robotic systems that we deploy way out in the middle of nowhere in the desert to do the mechanical assembly of utility scale solar farms. So advanced robotics.
Keith Cline – Founder, VentureFizz (Moderating) Wait, wait, break that down. Like what? What?
Alec Page – Investor and Head of Operations & Strategy, Charge Robotics Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. So so there’s a couple other companies that that are similar doing kind of pieces of automating the solar construction process. And so, we basically have a big mobile assembly line and some semi-aututonomous delivery vehicles that, you know, the assembly line assembles bays of solar panels and all the hardware that they’re mounted on. And the delivery vehicles take them out into the the field and mount them on piles, and, you know, operate that around the clock for a few months and you have a couple hundred megawatts of solar built. So very difficult. But in this building are some extremely smart engineers. and as the non-engineer I feel lucky to be here and and and working on on really cool problems. So happy happy to have pivoted into a situation where I’m out of my depth but somebody’s got to run the spreadsheets.
Chris Berkner – CEO & Founder, Berkner Group True. So I just can I just point this is a you know a great example of a unique you know career path where you know Alec was a very successful VC but he wanted to get into a specific sector green techch and and so he started his own small investment fund making you know preede investments and then one of those companies saw how great he was and said come on board right so that’s that’s one way to go if you’re a VC and you’re not in clean tech or or deep tech or, you know, etc. if you can afford to spend a year or two of your life, you know, running a a small, you know, preede fund or or, you know, that’s one way to get in.
Keith Cline – Founder, VentureFizz (Moderating) And okay, now I’m just kind of going off off script here. I think of Jason Jacobs, right? My climate journey like what he did. So, I know him as Runeper. I still use Runeper for for running and you know it was a very early tomarket iPhone app and now he’s like the guru of all climate tech but he started out doing some investing but running a podcast and became this media juggernaut in that space. So there’s so many different ways to get there that we’re going to hopefully break through. When I hear what your company’s working on, Alec, I I’m just like there, wow. Like, there’s so many things going on that you don’t even dream about. And the use of autonomous systems to do what you’re doing is just so unique. I never even would have thought of that, but there’s a company that that we’ve been working with recently called Blue Water Autonomy that is autonomous ships for the open ocean. They’re basically building autonomous ships for the Navy for autonomous delivery of cargo and, you know, military supplies and things like it’s just like that is insane. Anyways, it’s so cool. All right, Chris, I think you’re probably the best one out of the three to break down tough tech and the industries, right? There’s we just were talking about some companies as examples. What are the different elements that make up tough tech?
Chris Berkner – CEO & Founder, Berkner Group Okay. Let’s see. And Lexi, feel free to jump in here. Since you have lived in the engine for for years. Gosh, really tough tech is is anything that’s addressing sort of a fundamental scientific breakthrough. So you know we normally think of it as things involving you know chemicals or biological innovation or you know semiconductor kind of photonics type stuff you know anything that’s really cutting edge breakthrough that’s going to change the world in a really big way if it makes it. That’s kind of how the engine I think came up with the term toughte but they also have you know stuffing quantum right so it’s not all hardware as long as it’s sort of this fundamental science the original idea of it as my as I understand it is that MIT realized hey there’s actually the I think the treasure of MIT who said we’ve got all this amazing innovation happening here you know at MIT and there’s no real easy pathway for commercialization there were a few couple things that were going on in commercialization back then but so they actually seated this fund the engine and and so really it’s like anything you can think of coming out of a school like MIT that’s going to be you know groundbreaking in in a in a very difficult sort of scientifically oriented arena. So you know like our you know I think if you just look at the engine kind of u residents and and investies you know you’re talking about anything from you know green cement to next generation metallic alloys all kinds of you know AI for materials you know circularity of you know recycling new ways of recycling plastics all kinds of you know biological innovations, etc. So, anything you want to add to that, Lexi?
Lexi Kantor – Senior HR Consultant, Insource Services Um, no, that was beautiful and exactly what I would Well, not probably not exactly, but you covered what I was going to say. I I would also add like the biotech piece as well, like there’s a lot of like cell and gene therapy. There’s a lot of like medical innovation going on in toughte as well that is really cool. Yeah, I I think of it as just like disruptors working on like worldchanging problems that have to do with science and and technology.
Keith Cline – Founder, VentureFizz (Moderating) Yeah. Alec, anything you’d add too?
Alec Page – Investor and Head of Operations & Strategy, Charge Robotics No. Yeah. I mean, the way I break it down as an investor is just kind of thinking about the type of risk, right? and and thinking about there are lots it may be most companies out there that are not bringing necessarily novel technology and the innovation is a business innovation and tough tech may be everything else where where where the risk is engineering and is science and you’re actually doing something that’s first of a kind and those things tend to be challenging and exciting but but you’re bringing something new to market.
Keith Cline – Founder, VentureFizz (Moderating) Yeah sticking with you Alex so you mentioned and hey, I was in this software world and made the the the change. So, what what was it like? Why does tough tech matter to you? Why did you decide to pursue that that industry change?
Alec Page – Investor and Head of Operations & Strategy, Charge Robotics Yeah, it’s it it really just comes down to, you know, I I think the the most important problems, the hardest problems to solve tend to require, you know, large difficult fundamental solutions. And so you know most of the companies that I get very excited about investing in and ultimately you know there’s no bigger investment than you know all of my time as well now in this company are are companies that are yeah building challenging expensive large solutions that that are not trivial and are not proven software technology in another industry already.
Lexi Kantor – Senior HR Consultant, Insource Services That’s kind of how I feel too is like is sorry to interrupt you Keith is it I was gonna ask you next. Yeah. It adds this sort of excitement to work. I mean just thinking of about like the dayto-day working in a tough tech company like people are coming in every day. Like talk about being out of your depth as like an HR person. like I have never been around smarter people in my whole life and it’s that’s where I love to be because pe l literally people are coming in every day inventing things that have never existed before and so it’s just so invigorating and exciting and it makes it a fun challenge for someone in an operational role like HR to say like okay my job my mission here is to like make it as easy as possible for these people to do their jobs and that’s like such a clear mission that’s really easy to latch on to for like the greater good.
Keith Cline – Founder, VentureFizz (Moderating) Yeah. Chris, what like you also made the transition from and I thought that was interesting. All three of you have made this transition. So, what was it that was the the key element that brought you into this world?
Chris Berkner – CEO & Founder, Berkner Group Um I love nature. It inspires me. And so I’ve always been really fascinated by any kind of green technology. You know, when I was in college, there wasn’t much of a green tech economy. You know, I think there were a few companies, you know, kind of right as I was coming into the workforce that were starting to take off like Sun Power and First Solar, you know, but it just wasn’t really much of a thing, you know. I was I I was excited about hydrogen-powered cars, you know, way before there was any such thing. And and we’re still, you know, maybe 25 years later, we’re still, you know, waiting for it, right? For the most part, except for the maybe the the Mirage, whatever. So, I was just passionate about it and I couldn’t really find my way, you know, without an engineering degree. So, if you have an engineering degree, you’re way huge leg up. It’s it’s really easy to get into deep tech or climate tech if you have a an engineering or science degree these days. If you don’t, then, you know, you have to be a little more creative. So, that’s kind of why I went back to school to get a chemical engineering degree. And then I kind of leveraged a lot of coursework and knowledge that I gained in that pathway as I got into the actual sector through a kind of more opportunistic career route.
Keith Cline – Founder, VentureFizz (Moderating) Yeah. I mean I think what a lot of people here are interested in knowing is like what is that you know the different career path. So you know we’re going to talk about the how to get to that position but what are different like what is the typical makeup of these tough tech companies? When I think of software, it’s like you’ve got a software engineering team, you’ve got product management, marketing, user experience, sales, customer success, and then some type of operating structure. Typical toughte companies, and I know it’s going to vary depending on sector and whatnot, but Lexi, is there general frame of functional areas within these companies, or is it really just vary?
Lexi Kantor – Senior HR Consultant, Insource Services Yeah, I mean I I would say there’s, you know, the technical side and the non-technical side is the way that it’s generally structured. Especially like the pre- series A recommercial organizations that don’t really have like a lot of space for non-technical roles. And so when a company’s just starting out, you usually have like a super technical CEO, founder, who probably has a PhD, and is doing a lot of the work themselves. And then the people that they start adding first are like the PhD scientists or the the u mechanical engineers, those types of people. And then as you continue to grow, they’re like, “Okay, all the administrative stuff is really hard, so like let’s hire a chief of staff or an office manager/hr person.” And that’s usually one of the first operational like non-technical roles that comes in. Marketing usually comes in shortly after as they’re like starting to think about how they’re positioning themselves. And then once you get past series A, all of those teams are growing, but then you need more people to like manage them. So, you have like project managers, product managers, coming in. And then building out a commercial team as well. They’ll usually bring in like a pretty experienced commercial executive to sort of set the strategy and then start to build out from there is my experience. I don’t know, Chris.
Keith Cline – Founder, VentureFizz (Moderating) Yeah, Chris, what have you seen?
Chris Berkner – CEO & Founder, Berkner Group I would just add in, you know, some of a head of business development is or commercialization is usually like pretty early on. It could be from the very beginning. It could be you know um you know right as they’re coming into prototype development etc. Sometimes they wait till later, but usually, you know, investors want to see commercial traction and so, you know, either the CEO is really good at getting the commercial traction, in which case they may wait, you know, but even if they are, they still might bring in a head of BD fairly early. And head of sales or whatever you want to call them. And then on the finance side, you know, they’ll probably bring in, you know, some kind of head of finance around series A as well. and they might have a fractional CFO somewhere along the way early early on just to kind of manage all the administrative and and financial aspects.
Lexi Kantor – Senior HR Consultant, Insource Services The other thing I would add is early stage companies in toughte especially rely heavily on interns and co-ops. And so that’s also a really good way to get in if you’re like a technical you’re if you’re a college student getting some sort of a technical degree. Internships are like a really good way for startups to get cheap labor from really smart people early on in their career.
Keith Cline – Founder, VentureFizz (Moderating) It’s Well, in this market, it’s a win-win because they’re getting experience that they need to hopefully land full-time employment or maybe land full-time at that current company. Alex, how is your company structured?
Alec Page – Investor and Head of Operations & Strategy, Charge Robotics Yeah, so so I mean I think what what Lexi and Chris said is is spot on. I mean, at the very early stage, things are very different in tough tech companies than than others. it’s you know you have a bunch of engineers and the bare minimum required to you know get them funding and maybe a pilot customer and typically a CEO you know or you know founder can can do all of that but as you get past series A the companies you know they need all the the other functions right whether it’s supply chain that that scales first or finance or BD kind of depends on the skill set of the founders but you know you fast forward to a series B company and there are teams there are entire teams that our non-engineering teams. So, when I joined the company, you know, it was basically 20 engineers with credit cards. And that was earlier this year. And now we have probably five or six non-engineers on the team. And we’re starting to grow out a supply chain team. And and a finance team and soon a manufacturing team that’s a little bit separate from from the design engineering. And so you know a as these companies grow the concentration of of just engineering starts to dilute a little bit but now we’re we’re about 30 people and maybe 15 of those are engineers and another 10 are are kind of technicians. Both of our founders are engineers. And then we have now yeah maybe five non-engineers spread across chief of staff myself supply chain and that group can do lean on you if you’re not playing by those rules even if you have great ideas even if you deserve to be there so we fractional bookkeeper eventually we’ll have a certain set of rules of how we play this game that need to be HR is another example where where people try and kind of lean on maybe fractional help or outside help until the company’s big enough and then that’s going to become an entire department.
Chris Berkner – CEO & Founder, Berkner Group And can I jump in on that because yeah go ahead Chris like to answer I saw Judith’s question love to hear more about getting into the field and you know one way to do that is if you have a really marketable skill like you’ve been a CFO with other startups but you want to get into the field right is you can kind of hang your your shingle I’m a C I’m a fractional CFO or I’m a fractional you know head of HR chief people officer etc. fractional chief marketing officer. Those are the most common ones that we see. And I see that being a really common and and successful way for people to make a transition where you know people companies are more likely to take a chance on a fractional person that doesn’t have the exact background that they need because there aren’t as many fractional people and it’s hard to find one that’s going to you know be willing to do that. And and if if it goes well, right, then they see your capabilities and they naturally start wanting more and more of your time until, you know, they get their next round of funding and they give you a full-time job.
Keith Cline – Founder, VentureFizz (Moderating) And I was going to like ask, there’s different jobs that are kind of like non-negotiable. The the the engineering component, right? Whether if it’s like mechanical engineer, chemical engineer, electrical engineer, like there’s all like like you need to have that skill set. You need to know what you’re doing. But what are the other functional areas? You know, you just talked about some of them, but how desirable is it to have someone with some level of domain experience versus someone that’s, you know, like when I think of the finance function, it’s like, well, numbers are typically numbers and that could be any company, but marketing maybe, do they care about the domain experience as much or sales or, you know, operations? How much does that come into play?
Lexi Kantor – Senior HR Consultant, Insource Services I I I can speak from my experience as an HR person who tries to widen the funnel to create diverse candidate pools as much as possible. It’s very frustrating because often tech top tough tech startups care deeply about the domain experience. because they again are inventing something new and they want all of the help that they can get from experts. And the other thing I do see is like if you have domain expert in it, domain expertise in an area that a CEO cares about, they’re going to figure out how to get you in. Like even if there’s no position posted, they’re like, “Oh my god, I met this person. Like, is there something opportunistically we can do to get them in or draw from their expertise or something like that?” So um especially early on people do find that domain expertise really really valuable.
Alec Page – Investor and Head of Operations & Strategy, Charge Robotics Yeah I think in in all of our open roles you know robotics and solar I don’t think well aside from engineering I don’t think it’s a must-have in any of our hires. Obviously it helps somebody who comes in and understands the market or the type of technology we’re working with. But you know in a supply chain role we might care more that they’ve stood up a team from 0 to one and have rolled out PLM software even if it was in a different industry. And you know I think the same is true for a recruiting role. We care that they have technical recruiting experience. But maybe it doesn’t have to be in robotics or clean energy. Those are nice to have but they’re not always a deal breakaker if they’re missing.
Keith Cline – Founder, VentureFizz (Moderating) So what are the core skills that you look for if they’re transferring to this industry without that domain experience? Like what are those common problem solving skills? Like what like like what are you looking for then, Alec?
Alec Page – Investor and Head of Operations & Strategy, Charge Robotics Yeah, I mean I think having worked with engineers is is important. You know, having project management experience and being able to interface with, you know, company leadership because we’re such a small company that pretty much any role is going to have to get buyin from from leadership on on something that they’re working on. and and and having worked with engineers and understanding kind of the the project management and the resourcing that goes into that is super important. And then it depends on the role whether it’s more of an IC role or if it’s somebody who’s going to stand up a function and lead a team then we care about you know whether they’ve done that before. So so it it definitely depends on the role. But yeah, there’s a number of things that aren’t technical that that we do care about.
Keith Cline – Founder, VentureFizz (Moderating) Chris, like what how about you? like is you’ve seen things as as an operator, investor and you know in in search. So so like what are those skill sets that people really need that are like the non-negotiables? There’s the domain experience, there’s the technical stuff, but outside of that
Chris Berkner – CEO & Founder, Berkner Group Yeah, skill sets are going to vary according to the specific type of role of course, but I’d say more fundamental is an entrepreneurial mindset, right? You need to show that there are all kinds of of leaps that you might be having to make, right? If you’re trying to get into a toughte job, right? You might be having to make the leap from a big company to a small company, for example. So, if you’ve ever done anything entrepreneurial in your big company background, that’s a huge plus. If you know, if the highest growth rate you’ve ever been exposed to is 10% per year, it’s much harder to take the risk on putting you into a startup, right? where you’re trying to get 100% you know annual growth rate. Um so it’s about that entrepreneurial mindset. It’s about sort of a team orientation, right? We we try to one of the the the things we try to look out for is sort of a me first orientation in a startup. It’s sort of all hands on deck and it’s like a like a basketball team. Like you don’t want the the guy who’s always um you know just making the baskets by themselves, right? Not that I’m a basketball expert by any stretch. I’m kind of going on a limb here. It’s really about the team like working together, right? So those are the fundamentals and you know being smart, being hardworking, being organized, like all those things matter. Taking a lot of initiative, demonstrating all that. You know, and let’s I want to be honest, you know, as a recruiting firm, we are very much focused on people who have the industry experience already. Like we go to we go for those people first, right? That’s kind of what they pay us for because that’s it’s harder to find those people. But if you have the other stuff, you have the motivation and you have the track record of success, right, to in some way, shape, or form, then you should be able to network your way in. You should be able to kind of part-time your way in or advise your way in or volunteer your way in. You know, or start lower, maybe, you know, start at a lower position and work your way up to prove your prove your worth.
Keith Cline – Founder, VentureFizz (Moderating) Okay, so couple great questions. and in markets like this where it’s a little challenging a little it’s very challenging so fractional is a a real possibility and and I I see a lot of very senior people like hey I’m doing fractional work but the questions that people propose like where do I even find fractional work other than hey I’m highly but if you’re just trying to branch into this industry you’re probably not well networked so how do you even find these fractional roles and at what level do they tend and to look for for fractional you know experience for the seauite or the VP. So Lexi what what do you see?
Lexi Kantor – Senior HR Consultant, Insource Services Yeah. So I can talk a little bit about my experience with this. I just for transparency I’m 31. I left Kaidipin my last role at a director level. And now I’m consulting I would say at a roughly director to VP level depending on the client. But people were coming to me when I was at Kaidipin looking for fractional support in standing up an HR function which I’ve done three time I had done three times at that point. And so I think that was a really good opportunity for me. I I still sort of consider myself relatively early career, maybe mid early to mid. And I sort of get those requests. Mostly because I’m less expensive than a CXO, CHRO, CPO type of thing. I will say it’s the the difficulty there is you have to be willing to not um have a full-time job or to work outside of your full-time job. Which and benefits, right? Yeah, you’re not earning a full salary, you’re not earning benefits. Sometimes they’ll give you equity, but that doesn’t pay rent. And so I think that’s that’s sort of the hardest part, but if you can sort of creatively figure out like, oh my my full-time job left me moonlight, as long as it’s not, you know, a direct competitor, that could be a really good way to just get some hours in, earn some extra cash, and build up that portfolio of tough tough tech advising or fractional support. Which is what which is what I’ve done in the past. But my my take on this is like it doesn’t really matter what your seniority level is. You just have to be able to be really clear about what value you can add to them from day one. They’re just looking for value and bang for their buck. So if you’re able to articulate that by understanding what their challenges might be and like being really clear about what skills you have that can solve those challenges, then you have a shot at fractional support for for a tough tech startup. That’s my take.
Keith Cline – Founder, VentureFizz (Moderating) Okay. And like like but how do you even find these roles? Like how do you network your way into these types of positions? Like Chris, there’s no recruiters, right?
Chris Berkner – CEO & Founder, Berkner Group I’d say you know a it it tends to be people who are in between roles and they say, “Okay, I’m looking for full-time roles, but I’m open to fractional roles.” And they might put it on their LinkedIn like or you know, open to fractional roles or something. And then it’s really about networking. I mean, everything everything is networking, right? So especially when it comes to your your career, if you, for example, like if you know someone who landed a job at a company that you want to work for, you have a huge leg up, right? You should be taking that person to lunch like every couple months, right? And you know, read that book, Never Eat Alone. you know, just always be meeting with people that you know and putting the word out that you’re, you know, that you’re available. and learning more about the industry, going to events, you know, meeting people at events. That that’s uh if you’re not wellletworked in the sector that you want to be in, your first job is to become well-nworked. And that means going to every event you you can afford to go to.
Alec Page – Investor and Head of Operations & Strategy, Charge Robotics And a lot of them are free. I mean, like New York Climate Week, San Francisco Climate Week, there’s deep tech weeks, a lot of those events are free and they’re they’re put on by sponsors and you can go and be in a room full of a bunch of operators and investors. and vendors and and have conversations that that lead to things. I think thinking about it in terms of those aggregators, recruiters and investors that can kind of help you start build that building that list that you then want to go network and and outreach with. There are funds that have you know lists of their portfolios on their websites that invest exclusively in in toughte or deep tech or or or whatever you want to call it. and you can go, you know, download that list of of their companies. And sometimes they even aggregate job boards for their portfolios and that can be a great place to start. And even if something isn’t listed as fractional, you can look at a job board and get a good sense of of what a company is struggling with and where you might be able to come in and add value. Because keep in mind, early stage startups are very chaotic places. And just because there isn’t a strict job description listed for exactly what you can bring to the table, doesn’t mean that they don’t need your help.
Keith Cline – Founder, VentureFizz (Moderating) So, hypothetically, let’s say some hard tech company’s looking for a head of marketing and you can tell it’s early stage because they’re calling it head of marketing because it’s probably not like the sea level yet. Maybe VP director, who knows? Depends. Do you approach the the founder of the company to offer, hey, I’ve been in this I’ve done this job before, but not in this industry and I’m willing to learn and do something fractional. Is that the best inroad? And if you have a connection to that person, obviously that would be preferred, but if you don’t, is it okay to go cold to the founder? Is that and is that where you should start or should you start elsewhere?
Alec Page – Investor and Head of Operations & Strategy, Charge Robotics Your hit rate is going to be very low. But if there’s a lot of companies you’re interested in, sending emails to founders, heads of operations, chief of staff, like the the the folks at these companies, if they don’t have somebody in a recruiting function, again, pretty low hit rate for cold emails. So absolutely work for a warm intro if you can. But you know, you send a hundred of those emails out and you will get a nonzero number of replies.
Lexi Kantor – Senior HR Consultant, Insource Services I also wonder too like I I obviously have never looked for a technical role, but I imagine if you’re an engineer or a scientist who can bring like a really valuable skill set, reaching out to a technical leader in those organizations who’s probably understaffed and has been asking for more staff for many months might be a really good inroad because then they can like go present it to the CEO with something like actually tangible. I don’t know. Just a thought.
Chris Berkner – CEO & Founder, Berkner Group So cool to just do the blind outreach maybe on LinkedIn or figure out the email structure of the company. I I I would vote against that personally because I think it’s demoralizing. Like Alec, you’re probably right. You probably would get a response if you sent out 100, but how many people are actually going to send out a hundred, you know, connection requests after they get rejected or ignored by after the first 20 people kind of get demoralized. So I would say focus on your network, focus on the people you know and going to events where you can meet people face to face and and it’s just relaxed and casual and easy and and there’s no like you know feeling of isolation and and desolation out there when you’re you know but that that’d be my suggestion would be a better use of your you know effort. Follow follow the people that you are interested in and and look for connections look for introductions you know it’ll be you know a lot more gratifying probably.
Keith Cline – Founder, VentureFizz (Moderating) Yeah. And you know, Chris, you mentioned Never Eat Alone, right? Not Never Search Alone or which one did you mention because Oh, Never Eat Alone. I I didn’t know. So, that that book is amazing. I listened to it over the summer. I’m I’m an audio book guy and immediately had both my kids in college like you need to understand this book and it’s so powerful in terms of how to network and that’s your your connections are your gold. So, get out there and meet people face to face. go to events. Like Alex said, a lot of these events are free. That’s how you start to build inroads into these events. The other thing that has been super useful, I’ve gotten great feedback from, if people haven’t heard of it already, it’s never search alone. So, Phil Terry is the founder of this. It’s a nonprofit. It’s all volunteer-based, and they create these search councils. And it kind of goes along the lines of what you were saying, Chris, where it’s like you create I forget the title. It’s it’s almost like your ideal customer profile, but it’s like your ideal job profile. So, you basically create a narrow instead of boiling the ocean and just reaching out to a 100 people. You kind of go very targeted. So, it’s kind of like more what Chris was saying. So, you can join these search councils. So, I’ll put the link in here. You know, I do think they kind of randomize who you’re meeting with, but it’s all supportive. And if anyone knows Lenny’s podcast, he’s like the product management guru of all product management gurus. He had Phil on his podcast. It was such a great episode. So I would definitely recommend that too. So anyways, hopefully those are some broader tips regardless of of industry to help you out. Now what what what success have you seen of people making that transition? Are there specific examples like oh I remember you know the three of you did right? So I there are three examples but if there’s other people that you would be like oh I remember so and so like I mentioned Jason Jacobs what he did like what examples would you have of people successfully making this transition?
Chris Berkner – CEO & Founder, Berkner Group You’re asking any of us, right? I kept it open, but I would think you would know, Chris. Okay. I mean gosh, I don’t want to repeat myself but I think it’s you know it is about networking and getting out there and meeting people and learning as much as you can, right? Actually, I had I I had a really good friend who you know was a mechanical engineering guy from from he got his design masters from Stanford and you know he was making like ice cream machines etc. and and he really wanted to get involved in climate. So he went and just created a program for himself where he just read everything he could find about climate for like six weeks and and really became knowledgeable. So then when he would go to events and network, etc., he actually had something to to talk about, something to offer, right? So it’s it’s not that hard to come up to speed on a new sector. You know, if you probably put in 10 or 20 hours, you’re already, you know, halfway there. So that would be one suggestion. And of course it depends on the specifics. So anyone who’s on the call like you know if you want to put in any more details about like I’m hey I’m coming from a a marketing background or a finance background in you know paper paper goods you know how could I get in or or and and then if you have ideas about which sector you want to get into like are you interested in nuclear power or you know space technology or you know photonics or energy storage systems. So if you have any specifics, you want to throw it in the chat, then you know, we can kind of tailor the our our our direction for you because it really does depend. You want to leverage your existing background as much as you can and learn as much about where you want to end up and then try to find the connections, right? find find the people and the events and the companies that are you know kind ofworked in the area that you want to land up end up in and and and start working those connections whether it’s you know educating yourself or spending time with people or conferences etc.
Lexi Kantor – Senior HR Consultant, Insource Services I’ll I’ll add on to to that really quickly. Sorry to interrupt you case. That’s right. My dad is the CFO at Invio. And they’re a climate tech like a tech company. And he came I mean he’s had a really obviously a long career. But like worked up the ranks from public accounting and was in like a million different types of industries and this is his first foray into a tech which I don’t know if you would consider that tough tech. I kind of do. But he did similar to what you were saying Chris is he just educates him like numbers are numbers but he was able to educate himself really deeply about the industry and what the challenges might be and then the other piece I would add to that is he is an executive that has experience rolling up his sleeves and being super hands-on and doing all of the stuff that he’s not going to have a team necessarily to do even at least for the first couple of years. And so he would he’s also been able to market himself in that way when he’s networking and talking to folks and job searching by saying like I’m a I’m a player coach, right? Like I’m willing to get in the weeds and I also am able to sit at your board meeting and like give the high level. And so he’s he’s been able to sort of like yeah leverage leverage his strengths, get get really knowledgeable on the industry and then also be willing to sort of do some of the dirty work which is you know apparently his company found really attractive because he’s working there.
Keith Cline – Founder, VentureFizz (Moderating) Well, I I think we have an opportunity to do a like a a live individual. One of our attendees is providing some information about their background. So real consulting on the fly here. So Judith says, “I’m coming from climate reporting and consulting in the corporate world. Mid-career want to serve climate tech suggestions. Was a professional services founder very early in my career.” So when I read that real quick, I’m like, sounds like she’s got a shot. She’s not like completely outside the world. So obviously we want to know more about the climate reporting that she was doing, but what advice would you have for Judith?
Chris Berkner – CEO & Founder, Berkner Group Yeah, I want to know what what kind of professional services, Judith. um cuz you want to leverage that whatever it was like um so if you were doing sustainability consulting itself then I would say my first thought is well I probably have you check out the world of you know carbon capture right unfortunately that sector is taking a beating right now in a really big way with the Trump administration headwinds etc um but it’ll be back you know and you know you should start, you know, planting your seeds now for when it does make it its comeback. There all these companies like actually I just saw today, this is not one of our clients, um, unfortunately yet, but um, but ARCA uh, just got 300,000 a 300,000 ton order, um, a carbon ton order from Microsoft today. Um, so, you know, Microsoft’s still going. They’ve got their climate pledge and despite, you know, the headwinds, they’re they’re still buying. And there are these various technology companies that that um that are involved with capturing carbon, right? So, and corporates, right, that you’re where you’re coming from corporates and there’s all this sustainability reporting on on carbon credits. It’s a carbon footprint, etc. There’s probably a job in there somewhere for you. Um it could be, you know, policy or BD or something like that.
Alec Page – Investor and Head of Operations & Strategy, Charge Robotics Yeah. Not not just leveraging that experience, but leveraging the actual projects and connections that you may have worked on. If if you’re reaching out to a company that you want to work for and you say, “Well, in my prior role, I actually consulted for one of your customers or one of the companies that’s on the list of customers you’d like to target.” That can definitely catch attention. If if if a BD team is being built out and and you have experience with the market that the company is is going after, that’s a really attractive thing to have on your resume that that others might not. So, so thinking about, you know, who did I consult for, who are their other companies or companies that are trying to pitch to them and going after those may be an interesting avenue.
Chris Berkner – CEO & Founder, Berkner Group Yeah, and that’s a great point, Alec, and I would I would even segue that to to say, okay, let’s say you’ve exhausted all of your carbon capture, climate tech opportunities because it’s kind of a depressed subsector right now. Well, what about all the other climate tech companies that are also kind of thinking about carbon credits in their future, right? or or maybe even in in near-term you could potentially um you know interface with them, offer an hour of free consulting to have them think about uh their their corporate strategy, right? On how they’re going to engage with corporates to to further the corporate sustainability goals by you know potentially becoming a customer or partner with the early stage company’s technology. If that makes any sense.
Keith Cline – Founder, VentureFizz (Moderating) Yeah. And Judah shared her LinkedIn so you guys can do a deeper dive if there’s any next layer. Like I think Chris, you were totally on target with her background. So you you like a good recruiter you knew immediately. So good next. So what as an extension of that like what companies come to mind? Like there’s a lot of people here from Boston. Are there Boston companies that you’re like wow you know they just raised they’re building something really cool. they’re at that scale level where they’ll probably be looking for people either fractional or transferable skills in different functional areas that we already talked about. I think of like Commonwealth Fusion Systems, they’ve raised billions a lot billions, right? Bill. So that’s like I mean what they’re doing is Yeah. So a company like that are they do you think we don’t have to go through their specific careers, but do you a company like that would be logical to target, right? because they’re probably building finance, they’re building marketing, go to market, like they got to build everything.
Chris Berkner – CEO & Founder, Berkner Group Yeah. Actually, you can go on LinkedIn. I don’t know if this I think you have to have a a paid account to do this, but you can go on LinkedIn. You can click on a company if you think they’re interesting. You click on insights and you can see if they’re if they’re employee count is going up flat or down. And if they’re going up, that’s a great company to reach out to. You know, that’s a that’s a good nugget that I don’t think people ever if I don’t know if the paid account thing, but if it’s not that’s a that’s a nice little hack that I don’t know if people really know about, but you never know. I mean, even after a layoff, sometimes they still need to hire a key position. I wouldn’t recommend go I mean, going into a company that’s kind of going downhill because that’s probably not good for your career. But anytime you a company just raised a whole bunch of money, right? like who’s raised lots of money recently? you know, Group 14 just raised what 450 million or something a billion 450 million in the energy storage space or you know just follow go on LinkedIn and follow all the companies that you think you might be interested in and read your LinkedIn post every day and you’ll see who’s raising money.
Keith Cline – Founder, VentureFizz (Moderating) And then to find the companies that are raising capital so there’s two two emails that I subscribe to. One is Axios term and then or PRA I mean not term and then there’s another one from Fortune that’s called term sheet. So this is PRAA and what you’ll get is I mean you can subscribe to both of them. I do, but they’re basically repetitive and it’s just the roll up of all the funding activity across all sectors. It’s not just clean tech or biotech or software. It’s it’s everything. So, it’s and it’s everywhere. It’s not just Boston. It’s so these are where you see uh companies raising. How much did they raise by who? And you can start to see some patterns of sectors that are getting capital. They’re the hot sector. What firms are funding those companies? And those firms sometimes have a job board on their own firm website that aggregates all their portfolio company jobs that you can sign up for an email list there or you can just comb through the listings from there. So, um I think the common thread of what everyone’s talking about is just get in the weeds. Like if you there’s something that you’re excited about, deeply interested in, you just got to sink your teeth into the knowledge. Listen to podcast. There’s so much information out there that you have access to. Um start going to events, meet people. Um, so anyways, does anyone like I went on a tangent. So, but anyone else have
Chris Berkner – CEO & Founder, Berkner Group I threw on Latitude Media onto the list. Um, they used to be I don’t know if they used to be, but the same people I think who used to do Green Tech Media started Latitude Media, right? I could be wrong on that, but it’s it’s a good site and there probably a few others, you know, that are good to follow. And any company that you see mentioned in Latitude Media, if it’s a positive article, like that’s that’s a good thing, right? Or if you’re interested in nuclear fusion or next generation nuclear fusion, you know, find uh you know, podcast, associations, etc., and follow them and, you know, just watch who they’re talking about. Those are the hot companies.
Keith Cline – Founder, VentureFizz (Moderating) Are there resources like emails that have just hard tech jobs like or websites like venture fizz is mainly software AI cloud for Boston and New York like so we’re very specialized is there other resources website emails anything that would have that sector for jobs?
Alec Page – Investor and Head of Operations & Strategy, Charge Robotics Thinking about climate specifically there’s a couple of of fantastic Slack channels actually MCJ has one um let’s see what are some of the other ones ones. Um, let’s see. I’ve got a list here. New Energy Network, which I think you used to be new energy nexus, work on climate. They all have job boards in there. And they all also have great channels where it’s a very collaborative environment. You can you can post in there and and ask for advice on something or ask for an intro to somebody. Not I think at least two of those three are are public that you can just join.
Lexi Kantor – Senior HR Consultant, Insource Services Yeah, I think a lot of the maybe some of the aggregators have like job boards or things like flagship has a job board and like a pretty robust website and blog. I’m sure the engine does too.
Chris Berkner – CEO & Founder, Berkner Group Yeah, the engine is a job board. Those are good ways to get info as well.
Keith Cline – Founder, VentureFizz (Moderating) Yeah. So, just get into the weeds. Charlie’s post there. Yes, Charlie. Charlie’s adding a ton of value. He should have been one of the panelists. He knows a lot of all the resources. I didn’t know discipline entrepreneurship was going to have an addition for climate tech. I just I learned something there too. That’s an amazing book. Um what else should people know? What other resources or like organizations? Are there you know different groups? You know the Slack Slack communities are great, but are there you know the Boston climate tech group type of stuff or the global something that I should sink my teeth into?
Chris Berkner – CEO & Founder, Berkner Group Gosh, there there there’s so many but I think you know start we’ve been talking about green tech you start with the climate climate week and um I if you um if you are interested in in in toughte try to figure out which sectors right because you know getting into quantum and getting into nuclear fusion are and getting into like you know biotech are completely different like they’re bunched together in certain ways right under the you know accelerator uh umbrella or the or the sort of sometimes you know there are a lot of venture funds that will invest across those types of sectors but from a a career perspective um you want to become an expert in the sectors that are of interest to you as much as you can right yeah um so so I would start there yeah but did you see Charlie’s request request there about his his own personal background um used to do strategy consulting for large philanthropies and impact investors. Um yes, that to investor engagement roles. Alec, you might have a good one on this, but my first thought is just, you know, yes, sounds great if you’re good at making powerpoints. you know, oh, there’s a lot of startups out there that need help in making decks and and if you can, you know, if you have any investor relations or or you’re good at interfacing with investors, then yeah, start reaching out to startups and going to conferences and meeting early stage founders that don’t know what they’re doing with investment and, you know, offer to help for equity to start. You know, just give me 1% of your company and or half a percent or or use an advisory agreement and and, you know, get involved. Mhm.
Keith Cline – Founder, VentureFizz (Moderating) His background speaks very chief of staff too, right? Isn’t that the type of strategy consulting background that done a lot like like strategy consulting, impact investors, multi-year AI, emerging tech ventures, like actually Jeff Bus gang from Flybridge had a post on LinkedIn today that talked about every company needs a chief of staff and he kind of talked about the background and the experience. So I’ll put that in here, too.
Alec Page – Investor and Head of Operations & Strategy, Charge Robotics Yeah. and and project management skills. I mean like are so crucial again I I think it was Chris who was saying most of the founders of these companies are engineers or or Lexi you’re saying most of them PhDs right they’re they’re focused on the science they’re focused on the engineering they’re not management consultants they may not know how to put together a Gant chart there’s a lot of just chaos into order that needs to happen at these companies and man the chief of staff role is such a great one to land in if you can and then from there you can grow into whatever you discover there’s aptitude for the company needs. Not always easy to land those roles but it is kind of you know often the first generalist role at an otherwise technical company. so so definitely worth jumping into. um yeah
Chris Berkner – CEO & Founder, Berkner Group I totally agree and and chief of staff can be anything. It’s it’s a catchall, right? So, you know, their chief of staffs get could get hired for, you know, 140K and chief of staffs that get hired for 300K. where it almost becomes like a COO, like sometimes we’re doing a chief of staff search and some of the candidates get considered for COO instead because they’re so senior, right?
Lexi Kantor – Senior HR Consultant, Insource Services Yeah. And and some of some of them are just looking for a glorified EA. So make sure you read the job description really closely. Figure out how much headroom there is.
Keith Cline – Founder, VentureFizz (Moderating) Yeah. Um any like last So Charlie actually had a question way before about for students like they’re still finding their way like any advice for students trying to land in this industry where they don’t have that experience to back up the value yet but are are trying to get into that industry?
Lexi Kantor – Senior HR Consultant, Insource Services There’s a ton of like intern specific grants especially in the state of Massachusetts. The I’m working with like the mass CEC right now and I can’t think of what the acronym stands for but it’s climate related where they offer grants for the fall semester and the spring semester for companies to bring on interns. So you can apply like they post directly on their websites and then you can apply as an intern for these companies looking for engineers, scientists etc. The one for life sciences is like math life sciences MLCS C MLCSC I think it is I forget the exact what it means but very similar they offer grants for for paid internships. So that’s a that’s how most of the organizations that I’ve consulted for find interns is through those opportunities. And then of course like if you’re in um an or uh a school such as Nor Eastern that has partnerships with organizations for co-ops and that sort of thing, like really leverage your universities career office because they often will have like funnels into these types of startup companies that like we we as the as the companies trust them to give us quality people. So, if you kind of go through them, you’ll have sort of a better shot.
Keith Cline – Founder, VentureFizz (Moderating) Well, we’re already at time, which is crazy. If anyone wants to put their LinkedIn in real quick, you know, I’m happy. I just put mine in there to connect. And it flew by. Like that hour just like flew by and I learned so much. Lexi, Chris, Alec, thank you so much for walking us through all those details of, you know, tough tech and the journey in and I think the upshot is anything’s possible, right? And if you sink your teeth into the industry, get to know the players, the investors, the companies, absorb yourself, it’s just a matter of time before you land that journey. So, you know, I’m going to leave on a very positive note that hey, make it happen, but it’s going to take some effort.