In this episode of Innovators Inside Podcast, Ian Bergman and Layne Fawns sit down with Matt Higgins, CEO and co-founder of RSE Ventures, author of Burn the Boats, executive fellow at Harvard Business School, and Shark Tank investor, to explore what it really takes to build boldly when there is no fallback plan.
Matt’s career spans venture capital, sports, media, consumer brands, defense technology, indoor air sanitation, and emerging innovation ecosystems. But this conversation goes deeper than business success. It explores the mindset behind bold decisions, the difference between calculated commitment and reckless risk, and why the best founders often build before the market knows what to call their category.
From growing up in survival mode to helping build Performance Drone Works, investing in West Palm Beach, and launching Izyum, Matt shares practical lessons for founders, operators, investors, and innovation leaders navigating uncertainty.
Here are the five key takeaways from their conversation:
One of the biggest lessons Matt shares is that “burning the boats” is not about blindly going all in on every idea. It is about committing fully to the right goal while staying flexible on the tactics.
For founders, this distinction matters.
A goal might be freedom, impact, market leadership, or solving a meaningful problem. A tactic might be a specific product, business model, feature, or go-to-market plan. The mistake many entrepreneurs make is treating a tactic like a mission. They keep forcing a strategy that is not working because they confuse persistence with wisdom.
Matt argues that real commitment requires self-awareness. If the tactic is wrong, you need to be willing to abandon it quickly. Going all in does not mean ignoring reality. It means staying committed to the deeper goal while being honest enough to change the path.
Boldness without self-awareness becomes recklessness. Commitment with self-awareness becomes resilience.
When Matt evaluates entrepreneurs, he looks for more than passion or confidence. He looks for inevitability.
That does not mean the founder has every answer. It means there is something about the person that makes you believe they will figure it out. They may have to change the product, rethink the market, recruit differently, or survive hard moments, but they have the intensity and adaptability to keep moving.
This is where self-awareness becomes a major founder advantage.
A self-aware founder can see when the business is not working. They can make their own interventions before an investor, board member, or market correction forces the issue. They can separate ego from execution. They can keep the mission alive without becoming attached to every decision they made along the way.
The strongest founders are not just committed. They are coachable, observant, and willing to adjust before it is too late.
Matt’s work with Performance Drone Works offers a clear example of building before the market catches up.
Before drones became a dominant conversation in defense technology, Matt and his partners were already seeing the future. Their early work in drone racing helped them recognize the potential for fast, low-latency, high-performance drones in demanding environments. That insight eventually led to Performance Drone Works, a company focused on giving warfighters more capability in the field.
But early category creation is rarely obvious to everyone else.
Matt describes the lonely phase of building on the bleeding edge, when the market signals exist but the broader world has not yet caught up. There may be no clear category, no obvious customer language, and no easy investor consensus. That is where conviction matters.
For founders building in emerging markets, the lesson is clear. If you are early, you may have to live with ambiguity longer than others. You may have to fund the belief before the market validates it. You may have to build while others still think the idea is too niche, too early, or too strange.
That lonely phase is often where category-defining companies are born.
Matt also shares why he believes West Palm Beach has the potential to become a major innovation hub.
His view is not based only on tax advantages or geography. It is based on a deeper understanding of what innovation ecosystems need in order to become self-sustaining. Talent, education, quality of life, capital, infrastructure, and company creation all matter.
A real startup ecosystem cannot be built with a press release. It requires removing the objections that keep founders, employees, investors, and families from choosing a place.
Do people want to raise families there? Are there strong schools and universities? Can companies find technical talent? Is there a reason for founders to stay? Are new companies being built locally, or is the region only trying to attract companies from somewhere else?
Matt points to efforts in West Palm Beach to build companies from scratch, not just recruit them. That distinction matters. When companies are created in a region, they put down deeper roots. They hire locally, attract more talent, and help create the next generation of founders.
Ecosystems are not declared. They are built through intentional, long-term work.
The episode ends on a deeply personal note, with Matt reflecting on survival, hardship, and purpose.
Matt shares how growing up in poverty and watching his mother suffer shaped his understanding of powerlessness. Rather than letting that experience harden him, he frames purpose as a choice: you can deny others what was denied to you, or you can supply to others what was denied to you.
That idea connects directly to how he thinks about building, investing, and using resources.
For Matt, success is not only about accumulating capital, influence, or opportunity. It is about using those resources to reduce suffering, create access, and intervene where intervention can matter. That mindset gives his work a deeper anchor beyond achievement alone.
Ambition does not have to be empty. Building companies, creating categories, and investing in the future can be tied to a larger purpose. The question is not only what you are building. It is who your work helps, what problem it pulls forward, and what kind of impact your success makes possible.
This episode with Matt Higgins is a powerful conversation about founder resilience, bold innovation, venture capital, and the emotional reality of building through uncertainty.
The biggest takeaway is that bold commitment is not about ignoring risk. It is about knowing what you are truly committed to, staying flexible on how you get there, and building with enough conviction to keep going when the market has not caught up yet.
For founders, operators, investors, and innovation leaders, Matt’s story offers a practical blueprint for building what comes next: commit to the right goal, stay self-aware, act before the category is obvious, and use success as a tool for impact.
Have a question for a future guest? Email us at innovators@alchemistaccelerator.com to get in touch!
Timestamps
🔥 00:00 What it takes to build with no fallback plan
🎙️ 00:50 Meet Matt Higgins
⚡ 02:34 Rapid fire and finding inspiration
🧘 04:46 Intensity without anxiety
🏚️ 06:34 Growing up in survival mode
🚤 08:19 The original Burn the Boats moment
🧱 10:55 Rejecting systems that do not work for you
🎯 13:23 Goals vs. tactics when going all in
🦈 15:45 Shark Tank, imposter syndrome, and belonging in the room
📘 17:00 Why Matt wrote Burn the Boats
🧠 20:10 What Matt looks for in great founders
🚁 21:39 Building Performance Drone Works
⚔️ 23:18 Seeing the future of drones before the market did
📈 25:36 Living on the bleeding edge of a category
🏗️ 27:31 What Matt is building next
🌴 28:27 Why West Palm Beach is becoming an innovation hub
🧩 31:12 What it takes to build a real startup ecosystem
💡 33:18 Building companies from scratch in West Palm
🦠 35:27 Izyum and the future of indoor air sanitation
🏟️ 38:42 Who buys cleaner air technology?
🔬 40:35 Building the science, product, and market at once
❤️ 42:04 Moving from survival to purpose
🌍 44:11 Using success to reduce human suffering
🙏 46:04 Final thoughts with Matt Higgins
00:00:50:28 - 00:01:26:15
Layne Fawns
What does it take to build boldly when there is no fallback plan? Today's guest, Matt Higgins, has lived that question across business, government, sports and venture capital as the CEO and co-founder of RSE Ventures. Matt has helped build a multibillion dollar portfolio across consumer, technology, media, sports and entertainment. He's also the author of the SJ bestselling book Burn the Boats and executive fellow at Harvard Business School, and one of the few investors to appear on both the US and Dubai versions of Shark Tank.
00:01:26:17 - 00:01:47:12
Layne Fawns
More recently, Matt is a co-founder of Izyum, a revolutionary ceiling mounted air sanitation device designed to continuously eliminate viruses and pathogens in occupied indoor spaces. And today, he brings his perspective on emerging business hubs like West Palm Beach and so much more. Matt, thanks for joining us today.
00:01:47:14 - 00:01:57:00
Matt Higgins
Thanks for having me. I kind of want you to narrate my life story. By the way. Your voice is amazing. So I'm just that's all I was thinking was like, how do I hire you to narrate my, my, my make you.
00:01:57:02 - 00:02:03:27
Ian Bergman
You want that audio? You want that on the track in the in the background, the music track, in the narration of your life. I do, or I want to at least.
00:02:03:27 - 00:02:10:23
Matt Higgins
Everyone I know that voice to be the last thing they ever hear about me. Matt was a it's a it's a great voice. Sorry.
00:02:10:25 - 00:02:14:17
Layne Fawns
No, thank you very much. I mean, I am open to to to a side hustle.
00:02:14:17 - 00:02:18:12
Matt Higgins
So. Okay. Good. Excited about I, I would know about it I'd be gone.
00:02:18:14 - 00:02:30:21
Ian Bergman
But you know with us with him. Yeah Matt genuinely welcome to innovators inside. It's a it's a pleasure to have you. And I look forward to this conversation. You know before you steal a team member for the side hustle.
00:02:30:24 - 00:02:33:03
Matt Higgins
Thank you for having me. I've been looking forward to it.
00:02:33:05 - 00:02:34:18
Ian Bergman
So, Lane, what do we got?
00:02:34:20 - 00:02:52:20
Layne Fawns
Okay. Awesome. So, I want to start us off with a little game that we like to play called Rapid Fire. It's just a way to get the conversation going. So my first question is going to be for you, Matt, if you could teleport to one location to get inspiration for your work, where would it be?
00:02:52:23 - 00:02:58:23
Matt Higgins
On the beach and Saint Barts. Going for a walk with my wife, Sarah. That's where it would be.
00:02:58:25 - 00:03:00:24
Layne Fawns
Oh, love it.
00:03:00:27 - 00:03:05:27
Ian Bergman
That's peaceful. I like that you added the human context. It's not just the location, it's the.
00:03:06:00 - 00:03:14:23
Matt Higgins
Well, I feel most at ease with her. Most of these there and therefore my mind has a chance to roam. So that's where I would go.
00:03:14:25 - 00:03:17:01
Ian Bergman
So good answer. I like that.
00:03:17:03 - 00:03:21:21
Matt Higgins
That's it. Just one rapid fire question. That was no. Well, okay.
00:03:21:23 - 00:03:40:28
Layne Fawns
That was more like slow fire. Okay. Next. Good. Well, I don't know, because sometimes there was one time that we all ended up getting into an argument about whether or not a microwave was a cool thing or a not so cool thing. So, you know, rapid fire sometimes is a slow fire because, you know, the conversation that comes.
00:03:40:28 - 00:03:45:15
Matt Higgins
And my partner, David Chang would say it's a very cool thing, by the way, just for an.
00:03:45:18 - 00:04:05:07
Layne Fawns
I have never loved them. I don't own a microwave. So I think that that's I don't know, I'm starting to feel like I'm alone in this too. So I need to start talking about I am I need to stop talking about it is what I'm gathering. Yeah. Okay. All right. Ian, what's one phrase or mantra you find yourself repeating often at work?
00:04:05:10 - 00:04:26:01
Ian Bergman
Oh my gosh. I mean, the team is going to get stuck on this now. Like, get in the room. This is this is something that was passed down to me. It's be in the room, right? Like one of my mentors told me this, and I think I've talked about it on the pod before, but, you know, if you're not in the room, you can't complain about what happened in the room.
00:04:26:02 - 00:04:41:09
Ian Bergman
And I work with founders, I work with, I work with aspiring entrepreneurs, work with investors, I work with people who need to be in the room where decisions about their lives are made, so they are not subject to the whims of others. And I think that's something that everybody should think about.
00:04:41:11 - 00:04:46:18
Layne Fawns
That's true. Yeah. What about you Matt?
00:04:46:20 - 00:05:01:18
Matt Higgins
I'll give you something because it changes all the time. I'm always I love language and I think language is very important and helps people synthesize lessons to state the obvious. So lately I've been thinking about I read the same book over and over again. I have for years, and I move away from it and I return to it.
00:05:01:18 - 00:05:22:20
Matt Higgins
It's Buddhism, plain and simple, and I'm always trying to internalize so the, you know, central principles. I feel like they speak to me as truth and then I don't live accordingly. So it's like this endless battle. I know that's true. And why can't I implement? So I've lately I've been trying to reconcile how to be present and peaceful, but maintain the 110 hour workweek that I pursue.
00:05:22:21 - 00:05:45:13
Matt Higgins
You know, for what I'm trying to do. And and I've been using this phrase, intensity without an anxiety, maintaining intensity without anxiety. How do I be intense? And that they're they don't necessarily, have to be mutually exclusive, like, you can you can you can be intense without being anxious and sometimes I feel like I need the anxiety to fuel what I'm doing.
00:05:45:13 - 00:05:59:17
Matt Higgins
And I've been refining my relationship with that. So I've been repeating that trying to be present and not totally vested in things having to be a certain way, because that's where, you know, frustration comes from that you must have things work out, but at the same time pursue it with the same intensity.
00:05:59:20 - 00:06:20:21
Ian Bergman
Well, you know, I mean, that's something I think we could all adopt, right? Intensity without anxiety. But I gotta tell you, as I look, as I listen to your bio, as I look over some of your background, it seems like you brought a lot of intensity to most of the things that you've done in your career. So I assume that you're sharing this with with, this with us from lived experience.
00:06:20:23 - 00:06:34:16
Ian Bergman
But I want to ask you about, like, just set some context for our listeners. Like, tell us a little bit about your journey and what brought you to be sitting here having a conversation about innovation and change today?
00:06:34:18 - 00:07:08:19
Matt Higgins
Yeah, I, I well, the most important thing to know about me is, necessity is the mother of invention, including me. All right? Like I am born of necessity. So I'm not sure if I'm sitting here or who I am, but for that context and the necessity was a escape from poverty. But also to save my mom, as I like to think of, think about me in the context of a little nine year old boy who was living in a roach motel in Queens with a mom who was on her hands and knees cleaning floors, trying to trying to pay the bills, you know, divorced, for rotten boys.
00:07:08:21 - 00:07:29:11
Matt Higgins
And he had a fierce brain who was, significantly, severely abused as a child. Never had a chance to get an education. So my context is that little kid with Hero Complex potentially the obligation to rescue my mom and selling flowers on street corners and scalping tickets when it was illegal, and whatever it would take to sort of survive.
00:07:29:17 - 00:07:50:15
Matt Higgins
So that's the context, a sense of I don't really belong here. I like I don't know why. Thank God I was given this defiance like I am here, but I am I'm not of here. This I said to myself all the time, I am here, but I'm not okay here. So a little bit of, a deliberate dissociation, which I think a lot of disassociation, which I think a lot of people would trauma, respond to it that way by disassociating.
00:07:50:15 - 00:08:19:07
Matt Higgins
So that's the second most important thing. And then three, like, how do I both, satisfy my biblical obligation to take care of a parent? But how do I also, have a normal life? Those things were happening from a very early age. So those are my formative years. And then I created a single life hack, which we can which we can get into, which was, inspired by my mom, who went to get her GED as an adult and went to Queens College as an adult on a GD and very early on.
00:08:19:07 - 00:08:32:28
Matt Higgins
This is not hindsight bias of around seven seventh grade. I was like, wait a second, if I were to actually drop out of high school on purpose, I could start college two years earlier and by being in college, I could double my salary by being a college student instead of working at McDonald's, making three bucks an hour or whatever.
00:08:32:29 - 00:08:53:13
Matt Higgins
Three. So my my, my, my life hack was to make that one move. And, I burned the boats moment was not dropping out of high school and getting a GED as craziest that that sounds. It was giving myself no other option than to drop out and get a GED, and I did that by failing every single class for two years in a row.
00:08:53:13 - 00:09:08:03
Matt Higgins
Technically never got past the eighth grade, sat in the same room with kids, would beepers on back then that was the way you dealt drugs now? Probably more efficient, but but it was very, very analog. And so that was my room. I was not doing that. There was some this was intentional.
00:09:08:05 - 00:09:12:28
Ian Bergman
This was was an intentional burn the boat boats or did this come on?
00:09:13:00 - 00:09:30:03
Matt Higgins
It really is the inspiration for my whole life. So imagine a little kid and you come up with this radical idea, which seems so logical to me. And then when I surfaced it to guidance counselors and other teachers, I talk about this in my book, you know, burn the Boats. It was met with complete resistance because two things.
00:09:30:03 - 00:09:52:19
Matt Higgins
One, the people I'm consulting are ambassadors of the status quo. They're teachers. And. Right. So if my plan was viable, then their their life purpose is not as tenable. Right? Or just like there's a weird rejection. And the second thing is when you're, struggling and in pain, another important lesson I learned. You, you're the advice you got is corrupted because you're not sharing everything you're dealing with because you're in shame.
00:09:52:22 - 00:10:08:18
Matt Higgins
So I would consult these ambassadors of the status quo without them knowing. I'm living in a roach motel on a dog eating mattress from my mother's crying all night. We have no health care, literally. And I'm eating government cheese out of a cardboard box, so what do you. How do you like them apples? Yeah. What do you think about my plan to drive by now?
00:10:08:18 - 00:10:27:13
Matt Higgins
But because you're a kid, back then, you'd be shamed for being poor. Now you get. Now it's weirdly the opposite. But you know, I finally I become successful. And now everyone has to deny that they're associated with me and my family. But. But back then, it was a big deal. And so my burn the boats, you know, moment, my intentional moment was like, how am I going to have the courage to go through with this plan and plan?
00:10:27:16 - 00:10:44:15
Matt Higgins
And it was second nature to me, sabotage. If I take myself to the brink and I have no other option, then there'll be no choice. So I deliberately intended to be discarded by the system so they would get out of my face, because I used to get picked up by the Truman police and McDonald's and everything else. So that was my true.
00:10:44:19 - 00:10:55:17
Matt Higgins
And so that's I'm glad you're giving me the space to unpack it because people think, oh, you dropped out of high school. I was your burn the moment I was like, no, I was was getting left back so that I had to drop out of high school was my burn the boats both well.
00:10:55:18 - 00:11:25:14
Ian Bergman
And it's really fascinating. So like there's this concept that, you know, we always would talk about innovation. It's a concept of antibodies resistance, innovator's dilemma. It's got a million names. But the concept that the status quo has momentum and inertia. And you just sort of framed a really early life choice in some ways, in the language of innovation, you, you, you force yourself out of the system in a way, you force yourself away from the antibodies.
00:11:25:16 - 00:11:29:01
Ian Bergman
I did I mean, did you know what was happening at the time?
00:11:29:03 - 00:11:48:23
Matt Higgins
I did, but it was mostly borne of, of a sadness, of isolation, of feeling nobody cares. That was like it was like a revelation. Early on, feeling like, wow, nobody cares. I said to like, nobody cares. And the cavalry is not coming. It was this sort of this feeling of acceptance. You know, when you're a kid, what do you want?
00:11:48:23 - 00:12:08:05
Matt Higgins
Especially anyone out there who has a, divorced parent can understand this emotion. You really want them? A man or a woman to come in and rescue them? Because you want to be relieved of the parental ification that's happening as a child, right? So you're. That's the first Calvary, like, well, somebody please come in and make mom or dad happy, and then that doesn't happen, right?
00:12:08:12 - 00:12:25:10
Matt Higgins
And then you're in school and they're giving you a hard time because you're missing 40, 50 days, but they're giving you a hard time about instead of wondering what what dysfunction do you think I have behind those closed doors that you're missing? Right. So like, it was a feeling of like, oh, nobody cares enough to see the signals that are obvious.
00:12:25:13 - 00:12:41:29
Matt Higgins
And so the reason why that's related to there is the antibodies point. It was you know, there's another way to arrive at the system. You need to reject the system, which is the system doesn't work for you. Right. And so for me, the system fundamentally did not work for me. And so I needed an alternative.
00:12:42:01 - 00:13:01:06
Ian Bergman
And so that is a decision point that I think all kinds of people probably find themselves at, right? A belief that something's not working. I need to do something different, but it's a it's a very meaningful choice, right. Burning the boats I did I love that as a metaphor. And it's an analogy because it's a very visual. But be it's very real.
00:13:01:06 - 00:13:22:27
Ian Bergman
You're not going back. So you know, from your life experience, but also from sort of the lessons and the, the advice that you shared your book. How do you help people distinguish when it's the right time to burn the boats? What is the difference between bold commitment and reckless risk taking?
00:13:23:00 - 00:13:38:03
Matt Higgins
Yeah, something I think about all the time because I wrote the books, I'm like, oh, I've just unleashed a bunch of people to leave their friends there, to leave their delusions of grandeur. And now that you have ChatGPT and Gemini enabling everybody to believe their genius, you know, survive coding crazy stuff. So I do feel slightly responsible.
00:13:38:03 - 00:13:56:18
Matt Higgins
So I think a lot about this concept, too. You know, I always say number one principle of burning the boats as you burn the boats for goals, not tactics. And I find when people are repeating the same failing exercise and then they're proud of it, like I'm all in, I'm like, I will do this. What are you all in on?
00:13:56:21 - 00:14:14:09
Matt Higgins
Is the thing you're pursuing really just a tactical manifestation of a goal, of a goal? What's the goal? And I've seen this on Shark Tank when I was in the show where someone was like, why are you putting all your energy into this? People lose sight of the difference. And so for me, my goal has always been first and foremost, freedom.
00:14:14:16 - 00:14:33:27
Matt Higgins
I did not like the idea of subjugation. I did not like the idea of dependency. I didn't like the idea. I couldn't ultimately save my mother. So for me, freedom and autonomy remains to this day a central principle for which I burn the boats. But because I know what my goal is when I am pursuing a tactical mistake, I have no problem being mercenary and assassinating that terrible idea.
00:14:33:29 - 00:14:55:01
Matt Higgins
And I find that the second principle when to go all in. I find people are when they have an epiphany, that that gives them hope to change their life. They subconsciously are worried they'll never have a better one. So they don't pressure test it against possible other epiphanies they might have, and they go all in prematurely without asking a few fundamental questions.
00:14:55:01 - 00:15:12:22
Matt Higgins
Right. Will, is this idea big enough to feed myself? My family? Is this idea big enough to sustain the future version of myself that evolves in 3 to 5 years? Because everything takes five years, right? I might get bored of it, but probably what should have been first is am I running away from something, or am I running to something?
00:15:12:25 - 00:15:30:22
Matt Higgins
Decisions that are made and, to flee? Bad current reality never sustain you. And I think most decisions to start something create something I really just to escape something worse. And then when you get to the other side, you realize this isn't really all it's meant to be. So I spend a lot of time mentoring people on the formation phase.
00:15:30:22 - 00:15:45:03
Matt Higgins
Get first, give them the the the confidence to know if you have a good idea. Now. Ideas are like houses when you're using a real estate broker and one gets away, there's always a better one around the corner, you know? And then two really auditing. Like are you running from something or are you running to something?
00:15:45:09 - 00:15:53:17
Ian Bergman
When did you realize that you had a sufficiently formed thesis to write a book? And you know, what was the motivation to do? So?
00:15:53:24 - 00:16:07:24
Matt Higgins
That's such a great question. I love that you're asking that question, because I think it's such an exercise in self-aggrandizement. And like I used to think, I don't know the ending of the story. I don't even know the moral. How the hell am I going to write the book? What motivated what what inspired me is really Shark Tank.
00:16:07:26 - 00:16:27:10
Matt Higgins
And I'll tell you why. I you know, I went on the show and I had the most cringing case of imposter syndrome. And we can get into the story. But the bottom line is, I remember consulting, Damon, and the and the, in the green room and just freaking out, and he's like, what's up? And I was like, man, I'm just having a panic attack.
00:16:27:12 - 00:16:28:27
Matt Higgins
Like, I don't know why.
00:16:29:00 - 00:16:30:02
Ian Bergman
Why am I here?
00:16:30:04 - 00:16:45:08
Matt Higgins
He's like, what? Like, I kind of felt like Mark Cuban had X-ray glasses and could see into the Chase Bank account that there were an adequate number of zeros in there. And just. And I remember telling Dave and he's like, after he said, F everybody else after what we went through, he only grew up a couple miles from me.
00:16:45:15 - 00:16:59:28
Matt Higgins
But, the second thing he said is that, you are here because you belong here. And what I loved about that very Socratic statement is like, you know, there's no one's going to invite you in the room once you're in the room, you know, you're in the room. I'm getting to the point of this story. I got over that.
00:17:00:04 - 00:17:17:24
Matt Higgins
I performed very well. On this, if you watch the show, you might think I'm a natural. That would be the conclusion. But as I was out in the World post Shark Tank, there are certain assumptions people would make at a demographic out of among demographics I would really care about. So I remember I was at a as at a actually a homeless shelter for teenagers going through all sorts of terrible things.
00:17:17:26 - 00:17:32:26
Matt Higgins
And I walk in the room and we're talking about you know, what they think of me. And I'm like, you grew up in Connecticut. You got crazy money. Look at your suits. And I was like, this is a useless manifestation of my current form. That doesn't tell the truth. I feel alienated from my caricature, and it's not useful.
00:17:32:26 - 00:17:50:25
Matt Higgins
What is more useful is if I actually tell the story of what it takes to fully commit when the odds are against you, including your own mind, when you have anxiety, when you feel unsupported, when you have the baggage of shame, of trauma, when you don't know which fork to use because no one ever taught you, you know, like the little shit that messes your head up.
00:17:50:28 - 00:18:07:08
Matt Higgins
I felt like if I could write a book where I could pull back the curtain and use this muscular phase that people would think is all about go all in and burn the boats. My book is like an inside joke. It's it won't read that way. It has tons of pain and suffering and and and two steps forward, one step back.
00:18:07:10 - 00:18:25:04
Matt Higgins
I want to write a book that I helped by lowering myself in a way that could connect. I could relate to a woman in Saudi Arabia, maybe, who doesn't feel supported. Or I could maybe break the the color and age barrier, the generational gap that makes us live in a balkanized universe. And somebody say, I see something in your journey that inspires me to think I can do it.
00:18:25:04 - 00:18:39:05
Matt Higgins
I know that sounds so damn corny, but it was a feeling of like, I don't want to show up in a homeless shelter with kids feeling like that. I'm rich and I'm Shark Tank. I want them to know that I have a GED, and that's the proudest degree that hangs on my wall. Does that make sense? That's why I wrote the book.
00:18:39:08 - 00:19:01:00
Ian Bergman
It is a page that makes absolute sense. But it's not just like you're not just conveying a message. You're not just showing the side of yourself that you want people to understand. You know, the way it comes across is that you are really working to live, to embody and communicate a little bit of a life philosophy, right, that you believe has helped you.
00:19:01:03 - 00:19:14:20
Ian Bergman
I playing back your words that that you believe has helped you, become the person that you aspired to be, the one with freedom, the one with choice. But also, the one that is constantly evolving. Is that a fair statement? I hope it is, because it leads to no question.
00:19:14:27 - 00:19:32:08
Matt Higgins
It is totally a fair statement. And also the reason why I wanted to appropriate, this phrase because the word burn the boats while, you know, sounds great, is utterly useless without context and nuance. And so I wanted to appropriate something that has stood the test of time that in every society has the exact same story with different words.
00:19:32:12 - 00:19:46:10
Matt Higgins
In China, which is now on my arm, it's postlude. Chen Jo. I like every society in the world, but yet if you ask half the population, they would say, that's stupid, that you know that. What about risk? What about, you know, people reject it and I think it holds them back.
00:19:46:13 - 00:20:10:21
Ian Bergman
So I want to know what how you use this to, evaluate and interact with those around you. Right. You are an investor. You see people who want your support, financial and otherwise. You see people with big ideas, bold ideas, crazy ideas, stupid ideas. How does how does your, burn the boats philosophy and life experience inform what you look for in a great innovator and a great entrepreneur?
00:20:10:24 - 00:20:11:01
Ian Bergman
Yeah.
00:20:11:01 - 00:20:36:15
Matt Higgins
I think, first of all, I think the principles of burn the boats only works perfectly or whatever, with a high probability of success if it's also married with self-awareness. Because if you burn the boats for the wrong thing, you just, you know, definition of insanity, right? You know, repeat it. So I'm always looking for someone who is fully committed to their dream, but married with a degree, high degree of self-awareness because they make their own interventions.
00:20:36:18 - 00:20:59:17
Matt Higgins
Right. I think self-awareness actually scales well as an investor when you identify it. Because, you know, I don't have to be the one to call you up and be like, you realize your business is going under in 60 days. When I look at the run rate, so what I'm looking for as an investor, as somebody with that commitment, an utter commitment that and I guess if I had one word about how I feel it when I see it, it's the word of inevitability.
00:20:59:20 - 00:21:12:01
Matt Higgins
This person is inevitably going to figure it out or figure out something great. And then when I identify that, I want to make sure that they have enough self-awareness, that they can connect their own interventions, if that makes sense.
00:21:12:03 - 00:21:16:27
Ian Bergman
It absolutely does. Hey, Matt, can you hold up the mug you were holding earlier?
00:21:16:29 - 00:21:19:24
Matt Higgins
Yes, I can, all right.
00:21:19:24 - 00:21:22:09
Ian Bergman
There's three letters on there.
00:21:22:12 - 00:21:26:18
Matt Higgins
P.w performance drone works.
00:21:26:21 - 00:21:39:14
Ian Bergman
Tell us about that. Tell us about what that stands for. And, you know, you could probably guess the connection I'm going to draw here, which is sort of the burn of the boat style of entrepreneurship.
00:21:39:17 - 00:22:14:02
Matt Higgins
Yeah. This is that I'll keep this short. No, we can go. We want to take it. But Performance Drone works is, is a company I'm incredibly proud of. It worked on and one version of another for almost 11 years of my life at this point. But it's a, it's a defense tech. That is designed to really put as much amount of, capability, in a rucksack for a warfighter, manifesting in airpower, the ability to take a drone out of your backpack when you're in a hostile environment and be able to go ahead and call in your own air support, you know, deliver a critical supply signal intelligence can basically do
00:22:14:02 - 00:22:37:15
Matt Higgins
anything. It's a 200 pound what our hero product is 20 pound drone. It can deliver 10 pounds of payload, but it has many other products. But, it enables me to serve the warfighter across the US military. It's something that I'm co-founder of and to work on for a very long time. I love it because I started working on it before Ukraine, before everyone talked about drones, and I had to live on the bleeding edge for a very long time.
00:22:37:15 - 00:22:43:29
Matt Higgins
There's even a name for it. And the defense called the Valley of Death. So it's one of my favorite things I've ever been involved in.
00:22:44:02 - 00:23:12:10
Ian Bergman
Well, and so I'm glad to hear that, because you're speaking with the sort of the intensity and spirit, right, of an entrepreneur as a co-founder, as somebody who's helping build a business. But how did you take this? Is this is this is one of a number of, business ventures I've been involved in. A long number. How did you take your philosophy of burn the boats into the creation of this company?
00:23:12:10 - 00:23:18:22
Ian Bergman
As you said, it was happening a little bit ahead of the, new fads. And Julia's, like, walk. Walk me through that.
00:23:18:27 - 00:23:34:27
Matt Higgins
Yeah. So I out of everything I've ever done in my career, this is probably the best, greatest illustration of it because it was born of a sport called the Drone Racing League that my partner, Steve Ross, and I wrote the first check into a little, you know, nascent sport of flying robots. And did one of the first super.
00:23:34:27 - 00:23:38:14
Ian Bergman
Fun, by the way. I mean, we're trying, you know, every couple videos are a thing now.
00:23:38:21 - 00:23:56:29
Matt Higgins
No, it's amazing. We were we were early, but I wrote the first check and, and, we did one of the first races at hard Rock Stadium in Miami. But as I started working with the team and my co-founders, I think it's from Pattern Recognition, I started realizing, like, I think we just opened Pandora's box and we glimpse the future.
00:23:57:00 - 00:24:13:21
Matt Higgins
Let me tell you why. Early in my career, without going too deep into this, I was the first employee, the rebuilding of the World Trade Center site, one of the five and and stood up a federal agency to rebuild the World Trade Center. I was standing under the towers within. Yeah, 20 minutes of the, first attack on 911.
00:24:13:21 - 00:24:33:18
Matt Higgins
And so the a lot of the context of my life is like, what does it mean for the United States to be unprepared? What does it mean for people to do horrific things, like you just sort of live in a little bit of state of of awareness of terror and national security? You know, fast forward a decade later, I write this check and suddenly we're figuring out how to fly a drone at 100 miles an hour with almost no latency.
00:24:33:23 - 00:25:03:02
Matt Higgins
In a denied environment, people using their phones in a stadium was, you know, cinder block walls. And we're figuring we're winning the Guinness Book of World Records for the fastest drone. It it dawned on all of us, and there were some early demand signals with the government that this is the future both of terrorism and, and and warfighter, and that we were also watching as our near peer adversaries were cleaning up the market and controlling it, through technology, particularly China.
00:25:03:04 - 00:25:17:19
Matt Higgins
And, what I love about it from a burn the boat standpoint. Okay, so here are these demand signals, but there's no market for it. No one's buying drones, no one. There's no one. There's no one there I can talk about like do you agree? You know, so we had to create this company in Huntsville, Alabama, where it is right now.
00:25:17:19 - 00:25:36:13
Matt Higgins
Ten engineers moved down there. We self-funded it. My partner Ross and I, through our VR, tens of millions of dollars into it, through the Valley of Death. So much belief had to be invested in this company. But I felt that in every fiber of my being, I happen to have an amazing partner. You know, who agreed? And then the world begins to come around.
00:25:36:19 - 00:25:57:11
Matt Higgins
The funny part about it, if I'm being honest, as we're talking in 2026, right now, everything is about drones. We just raised $110 million, recently, that I, I sometimes I enjoyed it back in the, the period when I was alone. Like when you'll look back, anybody here who has had to go all in on a big idea and then it starts happening, you're like, oh, my God, I can't believe it's happening.
00:25:57:11 - 00:26:14:16
Matt Higgins
It's everything I thought happening. But then when it happens, it's a very different. It's a different journey now. Everyone else is seeing it. Tons of capital rushes in. You have to be more nimble. Your decisions are a little bit different because they have to appeal to a broader audience of investors. And when I, when I was, when I was alone, I could shape the world.
00:26:14:19 - 00:26:34:07
Matt Higgins
Yes, I was just yeah, yeah, right. It's just me. It's just me and my co-founders and whatnot. And now it's like, oh, and now it's everyone shares the thesis. But the measure of success is very different. And I interestingly enough, I've come to rise. I really enjoy the, the lonely phase, you know, the bleeding edge disruption phase more than I enjoy the maturation phase.
00:26:34:13 - 00:26:51:26
Matt Higgins
I guess I knew that already because I always leave big jobs. I ran the New York Jets as executive vice president. I'm like, oh, this is kind of boring. But anyway, now that I'm going through this cycle again and this is a massive category, I'm enjoying it and I will continue doing it. But, interestingly enough, I'm very comfortable being alone in the bleeding edge.
00:26:51:28 - 00:26:55:16
Ian Bergman
Amazing. Don't tell too many people how boring the Jets job was that.
00:26:55:18 - 00:27:06:23
Matt Higgins
I know it's not a specific to the Jets everybody listening, but sometimes you have to realize you have everybody's dream job, but your own. And, it was awesome while it happened. But I enjoyed building more than presiding. Maybe that's the point.
00:27:06:26 - 00:27:10:15
Layne Fawns
I like that quote. You have everybody's dream job, but you're right.
00:27:10:15 - 00:27:11:01
Matt Higgins
It happens.
00:27:11:02 - 00:27:12:09
Layne Fawns
It does very good.
00:27:12:10 - 00:27:17:16
Matt Higgins
And if you and anyone out there who has that, you're keeping it for ego or other reasons, but not good ones.
00:27:17:19 - 00:27:31:24
Layne Fawns
Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, kind of along that vein. So you've been busy and like you said, you've maintained a lot of intensity. So what are you running to next? What's what's going on for you?
00:27:31:27 - 00:27:52:19
Matt Higgins
Yeah, that's. So if I look at my everyone's life evolves. Right. So I have this this, holding company called RC ventures. We have incubated over the years. I've partnered, I've invested, we own businesses outright and a name. But at any moment in time, mass on target, right. Mass of my energy is being directed very intensely towards the thing that needs the most amount of energy and the thing I love the most.
00:27:52:19 - 00:28:18:19
Matt Higgins
So at the moment, that's I also carve out enough bandwidth because we are humans and we, you know, we are who we are. And I always need to be creating something. So the other work that I'm doing and devoting a lot of time is a combination of, investing in West Palm, which I truly believe is the next, you know, epicenter of innovation and so many tailwinds in Florida and particularly West Palm with my partner Steve Ross.
00:28:18:21 - 00:28:27:13
Matt Higgins
And then, one company in particular that I'm working on, which we can get into is called Visia, and it's around indoor air that came out of the pandemic.
00:28:27:16 - 00:28:35:20
Layne Fawns
I'm, I'm very curious why West Palm what is it about the, the energy there that you see it as an up and comer?
00:28:35:22 - 00:28:54:27
Matt Higgins
It's a couple of tailwinds that are converging all at the same time. One, Florida, I mean, post-Covid, every municipality in the country now has to compete, which is an amazing thing for all of us eventually. And and there'll be winners and losers in the short term. But in the long term, we all benefit. If government feels like they have to compete for our dollars.
00:28:54:29 - 00:29:19:06
Matt Higgins
So Florida happens to have a lot of tailwinds. Obviously no state tax and just a government that's very conducive to to building. All right. Everything in Florida is about supporting your desire to build. Second thing, my partner Steve Ross, who's a brilliant visionary, he just always sees things early. He went all in. So when you have a single catalyst who's behaving like a sovereign helping launch Vanderbilt, you know, they're, building things.
00:29:19:06 - 00:29:35:24
Matt Higgins
6 million commercial square feet of commercial space. I think he's putting in $10 billion of investment into one area. And it happened, started really accelerating during Covid, where a lot of firms decided, hey, we wouldn't mind having a second office and and with Florida. And I'm like, we wouldn't mind having a first office in Florida with.
00:29:35:24 - 00:29:36:09
Ian Bergman
The favorable.
00:29:36:10 - 00:29:59:10
Matt Higgins
Tax regime. And so for whatever reason, I think it's a lot of it, frankly, started with Steve and other like minded people, Florida in particular in the Gold Coast in general, which is Palm Beach County. Running all the way to Miami has become this incredible tech corridor. The recent change in the last 12 months is very Confiscatory policies in California in particular, have made a lot of, you know, conveners of wealth want to domicile there.
00:29:59:15 - 00:30:18:28
Matt Higgins
But what happens when a mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos moves somewhere, they get bought in an early? Seems like a pretty good place to build some companies. And so I not only set up there and, launched a company myself, but I'm also working with a group called juxtapose to create an engine to build companies from scratch in West Palm.
00:30:19:00 - 00:30:49:00
Ian Bergman
So and I want to follow up on this because I, you know, it's always really interesting to ask the question, what does it take to build a truly self-sustaining innovation ecosystem? I spent years of my life at Microsoft overseeing the startups business. I look to startup ecosystems around the world, and there's a lot of people that aspire a lot of places that aspire to be that next catalyst of innovation, that next the global attracted to talent, the next Silicon Valley of York, City of London, Singapore, whatever you want to call it.
00:30:49:03 - 00:31:12:04
Ian Bergman
You've talked about some of the macro trends driving, you know, West Palm forward. But my question for you is what has to exist to create a self-sustaining, entrepreneurial and innovation ecosystem? What are the what are the Lego blocks that the team has to put in place in your mind?
00:31:12:06 - 00:31:30:18
Matt Higgins
Such a great question and so many try right all over. Everyone wants that. And there's rhetoric everywhere, right? You know, and some do. Well, Abu Dhabi is doing a pretty good job. Some because they got the money and they have the intent. And a lot of that is just, a press release. I launched an accelerator. And, you know, so-and-so is open for business.
00:31:30:18 - 00:31:49:03
Matt Higgins
You know, I think they what I love about my what Steve Ross is doing, he started by working backwards from what are the objections that I would imagine a company or a founder, you know, he almost took like a vertical by vertical approach. What objections would they have? And let me knock them down in a way that maybe a developer doesn't normally do.
00:31:49:07 - 00:32:15:07
Matt Higgins
So if we need more, educational institutions all the way K through 12 all the way to universities, I'm going to, be a catalyst to create it, both using my own financial support. But my convening power. So he worked to get Vanderbilt to open up there. And now suddenly there's engineers. Right. So, I'm just giving you it begins with a paradigm of let me and knock down objections that makes that stand in the way of being a tech ecosystem, which is what he's doing.
00:32:15:09 - 00:32:32:28
Matt Higgins
And in terms of what what what what boxes do you have to check? One is it's got to be an environment to raise kids. Right. You got to feel good about your your family has to want to be there as much as you want to be there. So that's quality of life transportation, lack of traffic, amenities, restaurants, all that good stuff.
00:32:33:00 - 00:32:54:14
Matt Higgins
The thing that Florida, I think, the the barrier and this is more perception in reality because there's a ton of amazing educational institutions and engineers. There is this perception that you won't be able to get talent right. Like a lot of perception around talent. So number one, you have to make sure you do have the universities to you have to tell the story, which Ken Griffin and Steve Ross are doing through this.
00:32:54:17 - 00:33:18:10
Matt Higgins
I don't know any other advertising campaign of its kind. They're basically telling the whole country that Florida is open for business. You know, here's why. You actually do need a steady supply of engineers, which not only comes from schools but comes from companies. So here's the the role that I am filling with my partner is that, juxtapose this is a group of, of of, individuals in New York who have created, I think, 23 companies from scratch.
00:33:18:10 - 00:33:35:11
Matt Higgins
And they whiteboard in a conference room. They'll come up with, with an unmet need. They'll identify a partner who has the problem that wants to solve it. They become the first customer and launch partner, and then they literally build a company. And I was talking to Steve and saying, it's one thing to try to attract companies to come here.
00:33:35:11 - 00:33:54:03
Matt Higgins
That's that takes a minute, right? But he's done that successfully with ServiceNow and others. That's one thing. It's another thing to create like an accelerator program. There's like a Techstars and those things. But you know, that's giving some money to someone. They come in, maybe they stay, maybe they go. But if you were to build companies from scratch, you know, in Palm Beach County, they're never leaving.
00:33:54:05 - 00:34:18:19
Matt Higgins
That begins to create an ecosystem of engineers and talent. And so my role in the play and this is, again, this is going to take a minute, is to work and actually build these companies from scratch. So we create the ecosystem. That's not an easy thing to do. There are not a lot of companies who has successfully are engines like juxtapose in the US or anywhere that have been able to actually come up with a good idea, build the company from scratch, recruit the founder.
00:34:18:27 - 00:34:28:12
Matt Higgins
But that's the work that I'm doing on the ground. Why am I doing it? It's fun. I get to be around my partner, and I think it's a once in a lifetime opportunity. What's happening in West Palm?
00:34:28:15 - 00:34:37:08
Ian Bergman
Amazing. And roots and roots run deep of, if you do actually succeed, right. Boy, it's hard. Good luck. And so but, you.
00:34:37:08 - 00:34:54:29
Matt Higgins
Know, but this is one where you take the, the you play the long game and you partner with people who know what they're doing. Right? I remember when, we first started talking to juxtapose and I talk to my partner Steve. They both had the same reaction. Well, we do this. You build companies. I'm like, everything I've ever built has been in spite of something I probably shouldn't have gotten involved in in the first place.
00:34:54:29 - 00:35:13:00
Matt Higgins
Like, I have never actually had taken a whiteboard out and come up with a great idea and built it from scratch. I'm pretty good at, you know, grasping success from the jaws of failure. But the idea that you could actually take your time and methodically come up with a great idea and build a company on the ground is new to me, and that's what we're doing.
00:35:13:07 - 00:35:14:03
Matt Higgins
Together.
00:35:14:05 - 00:35:27:11
Layne Fawns
Yeah. I was going to ask how vision ties into all of this. Is this a part of that, that thesis that you're going to build something from scratch in West Palm and be a part of telling that story? Or where did the idea for that come from?
00:35:27:11 - 00:35:45:09
Matt Higgins
Yeah. So servizi, for anyone out there listening not to overwhelm you and geek out, but during the pandemic, you know, you always look for a way to get involved, like anyone, and you're watching everything around you get decimated. It's like, is there no other solution? I love to geek out on science and I came across this, this scientist at Columbia University.
00:35:45:09 - 00:36:08:28
Matt Higgins
His name is Doctor Brenner. And what he and his team have discovered in 2014 is that there's a wavelength of light in the UVC spectrum called far UVC. We know UV light can destroy everything, but it's not human safe a certain spectrum. Right? So it's been used in all sorts of environments, but that there was a spectrum of light 2 to 2 nanometers around there that, can eradicate viruses in the air.
00:36:09:00 - 00:36:31:09
Matt Higgins
And to an extent on surfaces, that is human safe. So we come across this, my partner Ross and I were like, and everyone listening to this first is going to think, this isn't true. And then second say, well, then why isn't it everywhere? Which is the right question to ask? And the one we did, and the answer was it was early in the proving of the efficacy that it won, that it actually worked with two, that it was safe and there were studies happening.
00:36:31:12 - 00:36:52:24
Matt Higgins
But also the form factor that it is in, was relatively expensive so that it wouldn't scale. And so we took it upon ourselves to do a couple of things. One, to figure out how do we how do we get this out into society, and tell the story of this version of light and to how do we develop it in a form factor that is much cheaper, which we have been working on now for six years.
00:36:52:24 - 00:37:18:25
Matt Higgins
Headquarters is in Palm Beach. I will tell you, we are very close to creating a solution that will enable. Cool. Let me distill it down to what would could happen because it's a it's relevant right now with the hantavirus outbreak that's happening around the world. Is that picture any room you walk into where right now you walk into a DMV and you don't even question the fact that you're probably breathing in air with all sorts of viral load bacteria everywhere you walk into any room, and these lights are on continuously.
00:37:18:25 - 00:37:41:03
Matt Higgins
It's completely safe. You don't really notice them. But what you do know is that if you were to sneeze, normally, about 10,000 droplets of a single sneeze infected with influenza would linger for five minutes. If those lights were on, it would reduce the amount of virus in that sneeze to 0.00002. So it it could be a pervasive layer in society where these lights are on.
00:37:41:03 - 00:37:58:00
Matt Higgins
They're everywhere. It sounds so grandiose when we pull this back up five years from now, you'll be like, wow, that's like kind of not everywhere. But it's a lot of where. So, you know, that I put the headquarters in West Palm, say, okay, where do I want to put this? What I want to just well, I want to do this in a place where already the society is looking.
00:37:58:04 - 00:38:24:09
Matt Higgins
What cool things that are happening here. Right. So I put it in the context where people will pay attention to it. And now I'm beginning to use it with my partner Steve to demonstrate. So if you go around West Palm right now, you will find many illustrations of this light called izyum in different places where the air is being, you know, clean to an extent, nowhere on earth does that make sense, that I unpack that in a way that somebody listening would be like, I know.
00:38:24:09 - 00:38:42:00
Ian Bergman
Our listeners or our listeners are going to get this. I mean, like, the nice thing is the technology can always be, you know, magic and dark arts, and that's totally cool. Yeah, that's the world we live in. But but it makes sense what you're doing. I'm going to flip the script on you, though. I know you're, you're an investor, but you're also a founder, so I'm an investor.
00:38:42:00 - 00:38:58:07
Ian Bergman
And the question that I've got for you is, who buys? I understand the pain point. I understand why we want clean air. But you're talking about putting a hardware, even if it's affordable hardware, pervasively across our live work environments. Who pays for that?
00:38:58:09 - 00:39:10:00
Matt Higgins
That's a great question for a number one reason why I, I, I haven't taken an investment from anyone because I don't want to have to answer that question. Yeah, because it's just to, you know, and certain things are just too early and like, I don't want to deal with you. I don't want to try to convince you.
00:39:10:00 - 00:39:23:08
Matt Higgins
I got a lot I don't want. Right. And to be honest, I'm like, I actually don't care if you agree with me or not. So you're going to feel that collective disregard for your opinion in the short term because I've lived there, so, you know, so I never want to have taken no outside investment. But it's a great question.
00:39:23:09 - 00:39:47:14
Matt Higgins
Who who care? The biggest challenge we've we've had, which is now changing, is you're talking about removing a negative that you're not aware of, who you don't see. Right. And not being reminded of danger, danger or viral load. And we can't swab every surface or, you know, measure the air. So you have to start number one with a progression of who has the greatest necessity to create an environment where the air is particularly clean.
00:39:47:14 - 00:40:07:29
Matt Higgins
So sports teams right will be early adopters. The zoom lights are now installed on the Dolphins. And now every day another sports team calls and says, hey, I hear that this achieving this reduction, it's really important to us that we keep our players on the field. That's one pig farms, animal farms where outbreaks have tremendous economic consequences.
00:40:08:02 - 00:40:29:14
Matt Higgins
Hospitals takes a long time to come into hospital. But now that the science is happening now, hospitals are reaching out. Soon we'll have a have a will have an operating room or be able to do compare and contrast. So you sort of move in a progression while at the same time lowering the price so that the conversation doesn't go for how much does this cost to how am I going to explain why I didn't put it in?
00:40:29:16 - 00:40:35:08
Matt Higgins
Like if you get the price low enough, it's very hard for a developer to say, oh, I'm the one building that.
00:40:35:12 - 00:40:37:03
Ian Bergman
Not the reason I love them.
00:40:37:06 - 00:40:54:23
Matt Higgins
Exactly. So, so so I, with my partner Ross, we're like, let's get the price down. So what we did is we created a lab. It's at a Cornell where we work on this with a team of scientists all the time. I wanted to build an operating company, so it wasn't like a science project. Because what happens if you invent it but you don't know how to market it?
00:40:54:26 - 00:41:12:24
Matt Higgins
Then you're like, I don't know whoever invented the VCR, but it sure wasn't the winner. Yeah. So it's like, I don't want I always say, I don't want to be the VCR guy. Like in the 50s in the US. I'm pretty sure it was in the US. And and it became a Japanese technology, so. Well, while at the same time as we're trying to create an affordable solution at scales, we are making sure that we're talking to folks.
00:41:12:24 - 00:41:31:06
Matt Higgins
So, but, you know, I'll tell you on this podcast, this is a recent phenomenon. A tipping point has been reached around awareness of the safety and the efficacy of these lights, while at the same time getting very close to creating a scalable solution. I can feel it in my bones, which is exciting and and I'll tell you why.
00:41:31:09 - 00:41:50:17
Matt Higgins
Why it was so. Why am I working on this with all this stuff on my plate? I like getting involved in things that by hopefully by me being involved and contributing, that I have pulled forward the natural arc of how long it would have taken for that thing to be adopted or implemented or perfected. Not from an ego standpoint, from a life is worth living standpoint.
00:41:50:20 - 00:42:03:29
Matt Higgins
So by virtue of Ross and I partnering on this and working on it with my other co-founders, John Rochette and, we've been able to hopefully pull forward probably by almost a decade. The adoption of this technology in society.
00:42:04:01 - 00:42:32:03
Layne Fawns
That's fantastic. Well, thank you so much for for sharing that with us and for sharing a lot of your story with us. We are unfortunately coming up on time, which is a shame, because I've been having a lot of fun, and I'm sure our listeners have been having a lot of fun listening to this conversation. But I do want to end this conversation a little bit more on a on a personal note, just because your story resonated with me so much.
00:42:32:05 - 00:42:57:01
Layne Fawns
And I think as someone, and I think for a lot of our listeners that have had to overcome a lot of, like struggles in their life, there's a point where your life becomes about survival and just overcoming that trauma and building like almost a stable life within. Or, you know, you get focused on the struggle of just building stability.
00:42:57:03 - 00:43:14:10
Layne Fawns
So my question is, is you wake up every once in a while and you've been grinding so hard to create that stability that you look around and you think, what's the point? What's my sense of purpose? And so I my question for you is how do you find that sense of purpose? Is it running to the next thing.
00:43:14:10 - 00:43:31:16
Layne Fawns
And continuously building is you know, that like that's that legacy that you're leaving or how do you kind of move from building stability mode and survival mode into that next part of your life where you're actually thriving or are leaving that legacy?
00:43:31:18 - 00:43:48:26
Matt Higgins
Yeah, it's, a multi-part question. It's tough because I do think when you are born, when you are born in survival mode or you live in survival mode, the longer you spend, time you spend in survival mode, that's the only thing you know. It does rewire your brain. So how does that work? Why are you brain? You perceive threats everywhere.
00:43:48:28 - 00:44:11:05
Matt Higgins
You never feel safe. Everything is is as an existential crisis. So you approach things with a degree of, intensity that is maybe not warranted always. So I'm still working through a lot of that. I'm married. The most regulated human being. Brain is pristine, clear response, everything with the perfect emotional responses I. So therefore I have a control group where I'm like, that is a better way to respond than I am.
00:44:11:05 - 00:44:30:18
Matt Higgins
So I am still trying to create the stability within me that I that I seek. But in terms of purpose, I am so grateful that I always think about this. We have a simple choice. We can deny to others that which was denied to us, or we can supply to others that which was denied to us. So it's like what's going to be your take away from suffering?
00:44:30:20 - 00:44:49:10
Matt Higgins
I witness the most important thing, that anybody could ever witness, which is, human suffering and powerlessness up close. I watched my mother deteriorate in a chair until she ultimately died when I was 26, with no health care. Alone in a chair. Right. Like that is burned into my brain. So I witness what powerlessness and apathy can do to a person.
00:44:49:10 - 00:45:22:27
Matt Higgins
And rather than let that, harden me, you know, I leave that as an open wound forever. And I draw inspiration that the highest and best use, I think, of any moment in my day or in my life. And I'm not Mother Teresa, but the highest and best uses to ameliorate another human being suffering. Right. And and so what gives me purpose is and it's a little grandiose is like the more resources that I accumulate, whether they're tangible with money or power and influence in society, I can redistribute those resources to ameliorate suffering somehow.
00:45:23:00 - 00:45:40:15
Matt Higgins
And that's what anchors my behavior. Sometimes I look at some of these titans of the universe. I won't name names. I'm like, you have so much you could do to intervene. The power of intervention is so extraordinary, right? In small ways, in big ways. And yet you spend so little time intervening, if that makes sense. So what motivates me?
00:45:40:15 - 00:46:00:08
Matt Higgins
What my sense of purpose is. The more I can accumulate the market, redistribute, in terms of ameliorating suffering somehow, some way. Because that's what I witnessed when I was young. And I I've come to believe that that witnessing that was a gift. And choosing to never let that wound heal is a choice and a gift that empowers me every day.
00:46:00:10 - 00:46:04:18
Layne Fawns
Thank you for for that answer. I really appreciate that.
00:46:04:20 - 00:46:06:05
Ian Bergman
Well, this was a great ending.
00:46:06:05 - 00:46:22:28
Matt Higgins
I was super fun. Loss of a philosophical note. We went from drones. We went indoor air. This all sounds totally crazy. If you think so, you you must first check out AI and you must check out this zoom one. I'm not making any of this up, although a little bit a little, you know, a little out there. But that's what I like to do.
00:46:23:01 - 00:46:42:21
Ian Bergman
You know, Matt, thank you for coming on Innovators inside. Super fun conversation. We did cover a lot of ground. The show notes are going to have to do a lot of heavy lifting in Lincoln, but, really appreciate you sharing the way that you're working to supply to others. Really appreciate you sharing your life story and can't wait for the next interaction.
00:46:42:22 - 00:46:45:01
Ian Bergman
Thanks so much for coming on. Innovators inside.
00:46:45:03 - 00:46:46:21
Matt Higgins
All right. Thanks for having me. Have a great day.