Emerging Technologies and Entrepreneurship with James Harder

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Travis

When it comes to emerging technologies, the first place many of us encounter them is when they actually go to market, when they become a product or service that we tap into for ourselves or perhaps we even give to a loved one. But I'm curious how that process of entrepreneurship actually works. How does a person go from having an idea to being able to put it together in a creation that another person finds so useful that they're even willing to pay money for it? And thankfully Virginia Tech's James Harder was willing to let me ask him those very questions.

James is a project manager and executive director of CSRoot, which is program out of Virginia Tech's Department of Computer Science that supports both campus and community entrepreneurship from idea through startup and beyond. James and I talked a little about what entrepreneurship is, what are some myths that people have when it comes to that process, and What are some things that CSRoot can do for both folks in and outside of the Virginia Tech community who might have a really good idea they'd like to try to take to market? We also talked about the latest emerging technologies that he's currently seeing students and other entrepreneurs show interest in. And while many of them are promising, he did unfortunately decline to share any of their secrets. I'm Travis Williams, and this is Virginia Tech's Curious Conversations.

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Travis

I think maybe a really great question to start with might just be, what is CSROOT?

James

CSROOT is an opportunity for our department to think about ways that we can help students, faculty, and people in our community learn about the process of entrepreneurship. We see computer science as being at the front lines of innovation and how companies are being formed, how existing companies are doing their business now, and we really think there's an opening for helping people learn that process of entrepreneurship so they can apply interesting ideas that they have about how to use technology in new ways.

Travis

What is entrepreneurship in your mind?

James

Yeah, I mean, great question for sure. I'll start with kind of a basic what I think it is. To me, it is applying novel ideas or something that you have stumbled across or something that's always kind of been a problem that you've hoped to address in a way that can be applied into a business model and one day make money. that's what entrepreneurship is.

Travis

But maybe a better question is, what in your mind is entrepreneurship not? What isn't it? What are some misconceptions out there about it?

James

Yeah, I mean, I think one of the biggest misconceptions is that entrepreneurship is someone who has an idea that really just kind of can't be stopped and has had a sudden burst of inspiration. To me, entrepreneurship is much more about a process that can be learned. It's oftentimes a really thoughtful process that doesn't immediately have you jump in two-footed to start coding or to build a company or to get a minimum viable product, if that means anything, out into the field. Oftentimes, it's taking a step back and thinking about, you know, what is my initial market? What are the things that...what are my competitors look like and things like that. And that's really what we're doing with CSRoot is providing people opportunities to learn, you know, how can I intentionally do this in a way that can lead to greater success. Yeah, I like that idea that it's a process.

Travis

What are maybe some of the initial challenges when people first enter that space with you all that they have to overcome?

James

Well, I mean, you'd be surprised by how many times people haven't even taken time to look at what competitors are out there, has anybody tried this type of an idea? What are some of the niches that I can immediately start to use as things I differentiate the work that I'll be doing? So, you know, trying to make sure that idea is novel, you know, but I should also say that that's not to mean that competition is a bad thing. Most of the good ideas that we see are sometimes twists on existing markets or even just new angles on existing markets or capitalizing on a very small niche within something that somebody's doing bigger. competition can be good. I think that's definitely another misconception is you have to have this kind of complete burst of inspiration that comes from left field. Oftentimes thinking of a way to rejigger some existing idea in a novel way can be quite a quite a useful way to tech company. Yeah.

Travis

Well, I know you're in the you said you're in the you're in the Department of Computer Science. And so you're dealing with a lot of emerging technologies and entrepreneurship. And so I guess I'm curious when when what types of I guess companies, what types of emerging technology are folks? Coming to you all with ideas at this point, are they talking to you about stuff like Bitcoin or cryptocurrency? I guess I'm looking for what's the next hot thing that are still around in people's minds right now?

James

Yeah, again, another really interesting question that I've really enjoyed getting to do within this work is to see where students are heading, what faculty are emphasizing. We have some companies that are definitely focused on those top of headline of most newspaper style technologies. AI is definitely kind of dominating the things that students are thinking about. They're imagining new ways that they might use chat GBT and other kind of services that are kind of now available in the world. One of our other really interesting companies that's in this existing cohort we have is on virtual reality. So they're a grad student and Doug Bowman's lab that's doing a lot of new kind of cutting edge virtual reality applications. And this is a student who's thinking about ways they might bring some of their prior experience to bear on those problems. You know, the other thing I would say too is we do have a successful company that was in our first cohort of people who was a community member and they're actually using a very existing software for architecture design. But their angle is to fold into an existing software package, which is a software as a service to incorporate green building practices. And, you know, they've set up an office out at the CRC. So they're actually starting to get business and heading to conferences to help people in that industry learn about the work that they're doing. And really what the idea is there is to take an existing software package, but to help make using green building practices easier to help it get folded into the budget features that are in that software. So, you know, it's an interesting twist on something that's been a part of the architecture for a long time. It's fascinating to me that you're at kind of this intersection between this technology stuff and entrepreneurship.

Travis

How did you get to this position? Like, what led you to get involved in this type of work?

James

Yeah, I I actually have had kind of a long arc of time here at the university. I've been in strategic planning. I was in experiential learning for a bit of time, but I took this job in computer science to start working on a grant that was economic development focused around the blockchain technology. We've had a couple of years there where we were offering a certificate program on blockchain. We started a student club. We had a Blocksburg conference that we did a couple of different times that really kind of got us thinking about how do people found companies within the context of blockchain? And one of the things we realized during that grant is we really could do a lot more with this if we broaden the aperture, if we made it just the entirety of computer science. You really never know where new technology is gonna go. And even within the context of that two-year blockchain grant, we saw like an incredible peak and excitement kind of surrounding NFTs, cryptocurrencies especially during the pandemic, those things really became buzzwords that kind of popularly were being used in media a lot. And then that technology kind of had a bit of a cycle downward. And we realized that some of the people who were founding companies would struggle in that area and things pivoted to AI, virtual reality became more important. Technology just kind of moves in ebbs and flows in that way. And we wanted to offer a just broadly construed any type of technology could be the way that people might start a business. And so that's how CS Root was born is that's effectively a very technical computer science term, which is really what we do is we were focused on entrepreneurship with a computer science flavor that really could take any specialization and help the students, the faculty, the community member apply. Yeah, and tell me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like that you all went from being focused on one specific thing to creating like a platform in which many different emerging things could just come and use the platform and the structure to be successful. Yeah, exactly. We just kind of knew there was a lot of talent, a lot of interesting and novel ideas that students and other people in our community had. And also I should say some of the things that we do if you're accepted into the cohorts for CS Root are we pair you up with a mentor who's usually one of our alumni who's in the field that you're in. We have a board of advisors who are kind of help to advise our companies. They present at the beginning and at the end of the work that they do. And so we kind of match people up to people who can be trusted advisors and provide them that technical expertise. There are other parts of campus that provide some of the kind of more broadly construed entrepreneurship. The Apex Center for Entrepreneurs is probably something that people who are involved in Virginia Tech are aware of. And we trying to partner with them, work with them, and allow them to do some of the more kind of business facing side of entrepreneurship. We definitely see ourselves as someone who is helping you become, you know, get into the technical nitty gritty of computer science and the ways that it can affect businesses.

Travis

Well, one of the things that I am curious about, I've heard a lot about AI and chat GPT and, know, it is an emerging technology, but I've heard kind of this hurdle in figuring out how to commercialize that and make it successful. Do you all have students that are curious about that right now?

James

Yeah, I mean, we definitely have students. I would say that's the area where students show the most interest and is thinking about ways that you can apply AI to various subsets of computer science or even just ideas and how to ask good questions to it. It's not something I've seen them hit out of the park yet, though. I think it's still something that everyone is grappling with like how to get those meaningful, useful answers out of. But we've definitely seen students apply that to kind of their worldview, the problems that they see, whether those be some of the technology platforms they interact with students or just problems that they see in the world. And, you know, I don't feel I can go too much further because a couple of those are kind of still about germinating, get excited. I don't want to spill the beans kind of phases, but I do think that there are students who are definitely taking this new technology, just turning it over, kind of looking at it, seeing what could kind of be reflected backward and, you know, how they might apply it in the world. And I think that's a really fun space to be in. Even if they make mistakes, I think they learn a lot.

Travis

Yeah, I mean, absolutely. And that's fine if you don't want to share all the secrets right now, but I will hold you to once they do solve that problem They're going to come back on, all of you are coming back on the podcast and we're going to talk about it.

James

That sounds good. I think it would be fascinating to hear what they are.

Travis

I am very curious about emerging technologies and how younger people are going to use them. I know there's a lot of fear, at least maybe not from younger folks. I don't know, just from folks in general about emerging technologies though. And so I'm curious since you've now been kind of working in this space for a little while, what do you see in this field that gives you hope?

James

Well, I share that fear too. I mean, I definitely think it will be interesting to kind of see how AI works. I certainly think that there is going to be kind of another shoe to drop at some point in time. I certainly think some of these lawsuits with like the New York Times suing them about the idea of like, how did you get access to all of our content and plug that into the model without compensating us? I think there's definitely another point there. But, you know, I'm heading back to your question which is, know, what gives me hope? I think that if used correctly, AI really can be an interesting way to approach problems. I actually use that in our class. I have a disclaimer in the syllabus for the class that I teach when I'm starting a computer science business that says, I strongly encourage you to use AI as a way to think about problems, generate ideas, generates, you know, some of the assets that we'll need in this class. One of our students made their logo using chat GBT this past semester. We've had some really interesting questions about like market share. If you're trying to establish, you know, a business's market share, you know, you can do some really interesting questions and ask a chat GBT and it's like functionality. You could take things pretty far and asking, know, if you wanted to set up a business for students or for fraternities or something like that, you could ask it how many students are at ACC schools or how many students are in the South. And it can be used to kind of ask, I don't know what you would say, stimulating and engaging questions that can kind of take you further than I think you could have done even just two years ago. So it sounds like you find hope in, I guess, maybe how these students will be able to harness this technology for the future. Yeah. And I think a lot about what that hope is based on is that helping students see how AI can be a complement or a tool in a toolbox of what they're approaching, but not as like an end-all, be-all, final solution. I think everybody now has heard about how AIs can hallucinate or not give correct information and we could have a podcast about that alone. But I do think that if students have a little bit of a cynicism that they're carrying around as they're approaching these things or even just using it as an input but not the input of what they're trying to generate, I think there's some real potential there. Yeah, I've been interested in the ways that I've seen a couple of them use it and helping them generate ideas about what the business might be, taking twists on what the business might be. yeah, I think it's a fascinating technology that worries me and gives me hope almost in equal parts. guess to circle back to the entrepreneurship kind of beginning this, sounds like maybe to sum that up is entrepreneurship is a process and it's not just...coming up with a random idea like you might see in a movie or a TV show and suddenly it's super successful. Yeah, and I mean, I think there's a lot of interrogation, a lot of critical thinking and a lot of things that students need to bring to bear before they found a company. I think they're definitely ready to instantly kind of jump into the pool and thinking about a process like what's going to be your beachhead market is one of the modules I'll be going through this coming week in the class that I teach is, you know, how do you identify the first marketplace that you're going to, to attack it? And why is that an important one to helping you claim market share in the future? And being intentional about those kinds of things is really an interesting way of going about it. And I think you mentioned Netflix a second ago. It's odd as we think about the kind of current conception of Netflix. is very different than their kind of early stage, their beachhead of delivering DVDs as a way to effectively disrupt the DVD rental blockbuster market space. And they have allowed that as a way to pivot into producing their own content, delivering this solely through a streaming-based platform. Amazon's another good one there too. Initially a bookseller, but now they've kind of sold just about everything. They're producing contents. They've got lots of different things. That's process of entrepreneurship. I don't think Jeff Bezos had some sort of incredible idea that nobody could ever think of in delivering books through the internet. But that has taken an incredible...Amazon's market cap, I think, is approaching 2 billion now. They definitely have, I guess I'm actually missing something there, it's 2 trillion. And, you know, I think when they were first delivering books, it would be hard to imagine that that would be where they landed in, you know, 20, 25 years.

Travis

Yeah, I don't imagine when they were delivering Lord of the Rings, they imagined they would be, you know, developing the TV show of the prequel to it at some point.

James

Fair enough. That's an interesting circle.

Travis

Well, thank you so much for talking to me. I really appreciate it.

James

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for having me on. And I definitely encourage anyone from the community, alumni, students, faculty, people from the local region can all participate and see us roots. You can find us if you search us on Google. We're a part of our department's website. And we accept people into cohorts every year. I believe at least once a year, sometimes twice a year, we have a rolling application process. So if you do have an idea for starting a business that's kind of right in the computer science space, please reach out to us. We'd love to hear about it and how we might be able to help. connect people to mentors. We have some classes and some content that you can participate in. And yeah, we'd love to have anybody who is interested in founding companies, developing businesses and thinking of interesting ways to use computer science to be a part of our work.

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Travis

And thanks to James for talking to us about entrepreneurship and emerging technologies. If you or someone you know would make for a great curious conversation, email me at traviskw at vt.edu. I'm Travis Williams and this has been Virginia Tech's Curious Conversations.