We meet Cameron Clarke who explains how he studied computing after being inspired by early PCs, but immediately pivoted into industry where his software engineering skills could be put to immediate, practical use. Through explaining his career and experiences Cameron imparts incredible wisdom hard won through success and failure. He tells us how he finds himself today combining an obsession with scientific rigor, with entrepreneurial spirit, and a deep-rooted passion for natural healing, to build products that improve people's lives.
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Matt Egan ( .962) Hello, hello, hello.
Welcome to First Person, the show where we meet the most interesting people in IT and learn from them what makes them tick by focusing only on their firsts. I'm your host, Matt Eaglen, asking you to enjoy, like and subscribe wherever you find us.
And if you are an interesting person in technology, let us know because you might be the next First Person. The next voice you hear will be today's guest. He is Cameron Clark, serial entrepreneur, adventurer, startup expert and philanthropist.
Cameron is driven by creating products and companies that are deeply rooted in culture, history and science. They add to consumer choices for health, happiness and well-being. Cameron has a stellar track record of launching successful, innovative companies with high impact applications.
I would say because he has a knack of leading technology teams to solutions that people actually want and need. So you'll see, Cameron is definitely one of the most interesting people in the wider technology world, and we are delighted to have him as a guest on First Person.
So Cameron, welcome and first of all, what is the first thing people should know about you? Cameron Clarke ( .793) Thanks, Matt.
Happy to be here. Looking forward to this podcast. So I'm a little bit different than your normal tech person or entrepreneur. You know, what I think is really great about how I work and what I'm excited about is that⦠I love technology, love science, I love engineering.
It's what I studied at Stanford back in the day, but I never formally really used that. I used it informally in a lot of different businesses that I've started over the years, but I also love plant medicines.
know, Today we have Sunda Storm, is the company that owns the Kana brand of edibles in the cannabis industry. So we are delivering those to consumers all over the world, primarily in the US, but we also operate out of Thailand.
But we use technology in very interesting ways, and I'm sure we're going to get into that today.
But the thing is, that I think is really interesting for people to know is that What I really love is blending the best of mankind, the science, the technology, the engineering, with the best of mother nature, what she can produce on her own, making, delivering products and solutions to consumers in really compelling ways.
So that's what drives me every day, and I think it's good for your audience to know. Matt Egan ( .883) Yeah, awesome.
Absolutely love that because one of the themes of our little show here is the application of technology to real problems, To actually impacting and improving people's lives. And we haven't had that specific spin on this before, but I'm really interested to get into this conversation with you.
And we'll move straight to section one, first things first, because this is where we do get to know about our guests by understanding some of their first times. And in that context, Cameron, I'm really interesting to ask you about, your route into this role.
Like, normally we ask about the first job in IT and to your point, you qualified and studied technology, but you've done many different things in many different roles.
So I'd love to know how you got into what we might call the technology space and how that brought you to where you are today. Cameron Clarke ( .639) Yeah.
So, so I have, I have a fun little story right out of college in the eighties dating myself, but right out of college, I actually took a job at a steel trading company in New York. And, you know, I wasn't quite sure what the job was.
And they threw me into this project, which was an $80 million a year project of shipping steel from, from California down to Mexico and then back, back to the U S for, for, know, there, was being processed at a market door and then shipped back to the U S and so sold all over the US.
Well, this project was being run by a secretary and she was tracking everything in columnar pads and pencils.
So, since I had done software engineering, I'd studied software engineering at Stanford, I came in there and I said, my God, we got to write some code here and automate a lot of this stuff and be able to give the sales reps information that they needed, track inventory and all that.
So I wrote a platform back in Dbase in those Matt Egan ( .795) Yeah.
Cameron Clarke (
.519) days that actually tracked everything, got and allowed the sales reps to put all their orders in and, you know, streamlined everything because it was a mess when I came into it.
And that was a very exciting time for me because that's when I really got the chance to apply software and tech in a compelling way that truly changed something overnight.
mean, literally within about two or three months, we went from being a colossal mess to actually being very, very organized and well structured. So it was an exciting time, but I couldn't believe we were doing $80 million a year in this little project. Matt Egan ( .176) See?
That was real money back then as well. So immediately, even though you're not in a quote unquote technology role, you're applying technology to solve a real world problem.
Although I do want to go a little bit further back because you kind of brushed over it, but you went to study technology, computer science, software engineering at a prestigious university in the 1980s. So something must have driven that.
What do you think was the impetus behind that choice? Cameron Clarke (
.645) yeah, well, well, you know, I was always a tinker. So, you know, I'm the guy that had the little, the little TRS 80, you know, from HP. I recall. Anyway, the first little incarnations of little computers and started writing basic code back in the 70s.
so I was hooked.
As soon as I saw, like all of us that are in this world, as soon as I saw how you can track information and use software in compelling ways, I just loved to sit down and write code, which is kind of odd that I never really fully became a developer or fully ran development teams and got it, you know, being in Silicon Valley in that day was, was, a very interesting time.
But in the end, I ended up using these skills in a different way, right? I used it in, in really just applying them into whatever I was interested, you know, or doing it at any particular time.
So, yeah, I mean, so, so what really led to led that was it. Matt Egan ( .266) Yeah.
.437) I was already doing it and I started studying at Stanford and I just fell in love with it. And I knew that I knew I was in trouble when I spent 24 hours writing a program at the lab one day. straight through. Matt Egan (
.87) Yeah, in trouble or yeah, maybe a sign of good things to come. So we left you kind of working for this organization, know, applying technology today to the task of driving sales of steel. But that's a long way from where you are now. So what happens then?
How do you continue to apply technology to solve problems that you are passionate about, which is where you've got to today? Cameron Clarke ( .811) Yeah.
So what was interesting was that I started doing a little bit of computer consulting on the side and was involved in a lot of different types of projects, helping small businesses with their needs, application needs. There was a lot of that going through the 90s.
One of the things, and then I stumbled across some guys that wanted to create the world's first computerized electronic courtroom. Matt Egan ( .942) Mm-hmm.
.393) So they needed someone to come in and write the code with them and run the team and all of that. So I volunteered.
put in, you know, we were, there were five of us, you know, we all took 20 % and I put 10 K in the business and, you know, started writing code and we ended up building the world's first electronic courtroom.
And it was interesting because what we actually did was we took, we took videotapes of depositions. Matt Egan ( .941) Huh!
.511) and we digitize them, which is very difficult in the early to mid 90s. And then we synchronized the transcripts with the video so they made the video fully searchable.
So we had this platform launched in 94, 95 and had it in some of the biggest cases worth hundreds of millions of dollars right out of the gate. So it allowed the attorneys to be able to access any moment in a deposition just by doing a text search.
So it was very compelling and it was incredible technology, but it was also ahead of its time and actually ended up taking a good five to ten years before it was really fully adopted, which is a problem because that's a long time to wait for a startup.
Matt Egan ( .091) Yeah.
Matt Egan (
.062) Yeah, I mean, especially in an industry like, mean, law is notorious, right, for being slow to digitization and transformation because everything's kind of written in books. How does one survive that if you've got to wait five years for your, for your startup to really hit?
I presume you were doing other things at the same time. Cameron Clarke ( .803) Yeah.
Yeah. So yeah, I mean, I was doing other other projects, but I was fully dedicated to that, you know, mostly dedicated that to that, to be honest. I mean, we were selling, but the business, but the business never really, we were too early.
I mean, that's the bottom line. And I actually, this is one of my, one of my topics that I like to tell, you know, I'd like to talk about it in the tech world is whether it's molecular biology or IT or whatever, it doesn't matter to me.
If you're too far ahead of the curve, you have to wait too long for the adoption cycle, for consumer adoption of whatever that thing is, right? Sometimes like email, even though it's radically different, the adoption cycle is pretty fast.
But I think for me, most times, consumers just take a long time to actually adopt new technology, and you have to be aware of that.
And so for me, I've realized that through a lot of the experiences that I've had that You need to be a half step ahead, not a full step ahead of where the market is today.
So that's one of the things I encourage people to think about is make sure it's only a half step. So it's easier for consumers or companies, whatever, to adopt the technology and then drive it further along that. actually, I think that was a good lesson for us.
We created this incredible technology, but in hindsight, we should have structured a little bit differently to cater to the market that was ready for certain features earlier than others, if that makes sense. Matt Egan ( .846) Yeah.
Yeah. Matt Egan (
.866) Yeah, no, makes total sense. mean, in my previous life, I was a consumer technology journalist and I couldn't tell you the number of people who showed off incredible things that actually were, you know, later on successfully adopted.
But just to your point, were not in the right sync with consumer behavior. And then on the other side of it, you've got an organization, Apple, being the principal one who has rarely been first to market with things, but somehow seems to figure out how to.
or certainly in the past, how to apply technology at the right moment, at the right time. The iPhone is a classic example, right? There wasn't a huge amount of new technology in there, but it was just packaged in a way that was exactly at the right time.
A great learning to make, right? But I guess during this period then, so you have this organization which was selling, but was a slow burner. But mean, that's something's given you the platform to be able to be a serial entrepreneur, right?
So I presume⦠Cameron Clarke ( .01) Correct.
.164) over this period of time you had enough success that it was able to kind of give you the freedom to pursue things you were passionate about. Cameron Clarke (
.879) For sure, for sure, for sure. And I actually took that technology and when the internet came around, we applied it to the internet, right? And so we became a webcasting platform. Matt Egan ( .536) Right.
Yeah. Cameron Clarke ( .501) Right.
so we, everything went online and we were able to go and, and deliver all kinds of applications to, to, to businesses and nonprofits and educational institutions. So we created, you know, educational applications for, for learning, right.
That used, you know, tech search and integration of documents and video and all that. You know, we had customers, you know, many of the big, we were based out of Washington, DC. So we had many of the big departments in Washington, including the CIA and the department.
of Defense and Department of Labor using it for a variety of applications of internal trainings and external webcasts. So that was successful for us. We ended up selling that company in 2007, 2007 timeframe before the crash, which was very, very lucky. that was good. Yeah.
So that was good. Matt Egan ( .658) Yeah, that's handy.
Yeah. Yeah. And also really interesting learning there. It's not always the, like recognizing the value in a, in a product or solution. It's not always the thing you initially intended it for. Like, like, like the best example would probably be AWS, right?
Like Amazon was building its own infrastructure and then realized it could sell it to the rest of the world. but it sounds like you had this, this, this, set of tools and applications that was intended for.
online courtroom but guess what you kind of invented webinar software and that was the thing that kind of took off. Cameron Clarke ( .059) Yeah, exactly.
education, right? So it was kind of interesting. Here's another lesson, right? So when we first started approaching Stanford and Harvard and Yale and the big universities, Columbia, we said, at this great new technology. We can stream your classes online.
And they were like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, we don't want to do that. This was in 2000. Matt Egan ( .253) Right.
Matt Egan ( .998) It's there.
Cameron Clarke ( .845) 2002, right?
So, you know, they just weren't ready for it. So we, we pivoted, right, and focused on other applications until the educational institutions were more ready to adopt it. That wasn't, you have to look for the right markets. Matt Egan ( .701) Yeah.
Matt Egan ( .411) Yep.
.194) to adopt the technology or the widget that you're building. I think that's one of the mistakes that I learned the hard way. And I think a lot of folks in IT and technology have learned that as well. You gotta look for where the early adopters are.
Matt Egan ( .038) Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Matt Egan ( .732) Yeah.
Yeah. And we're going to come onto mistakes in a minute. So hold that thought. But just to round out kind of the first section, so many great learnings here.
One of the questions I like to ask around about this time is, is the first great boss or the first name that comes to mind when I ask about a great boss?
I'm wondering with your career, like so much of it has been, you you pursuing things on your own or in teams with other entrepreneurs.
Like, like, do you have that kind of great boss story or do you have a mentor figure or has it been more kind of about the collective learning from people around you. Cameron Clarke (
.989) No, actually I have a great story. And it's not really IT in particular, but when I first started with that steel trading company in New York, the business was doing about $2 billion a year in revenue. There were about 200 people worldwide.
It's like a six or seven year old business. They were totally crushing it. The owner was a very interesting guy and he taught me a really good lesson. Matt Egan ( .733) Yeah.
.681) He, whenever, you know. I wanted to learn all aspects of the business. wanted to be an entrepreneur. I wanted to learn all about marketing and about sales and about technology, all of it. So I worked really, really hard, very long hours.
And he was happy to reward me when I was sitting at the water cooler with him, for example. I'd ask him all kinds of questions. Well, tell me about this product and tell me about this, what's happening in Brazil.
And he would be happy to spend five or 10 minutes sitting there explaining this stuff to me. And I realized.
that he was an invaluable resource of knowledge and information that would help me later in life not only to just learn about the business that we were doing, but also learning about some of the pitfalls in business and how to sit in the CEO chair one day, right?
So that lesson has carried through to me through every business that I've ever run. And right now here at Kana, I tell my team only 50 % of your compensation here is money.
The other 50 % is your ability to learn new skills so you do whatever you want in life.
if someone in marketing wants me to tell them about what's happening in production or wants to learn some accounting, I'm happy to talk to them about it because I think it's really, it's something that I enjoy sharing and I enjoyed learning that from my mentor, the CEO of DeFerico back in the day.
So I'm quite passionate about that actually. Matt Egan ( .405) Hey Matt Egan (
.922) No, it came across actually, even as you were saying, even as you were talking about the value of those conversations, my next question was going to be, I bet you pay that forward, right?
Because the value of the network is one thing, but also like, you know, I find in my professional life, I've had similar experiences and I find now, like, I love when someone wants to ask me questions about my experiences.
Two reasons, one is because it's great to pay it forward. But also you learn yourself from having those conversations, right? Curious people are so valuable and like it's like everybody benefits from that kind of information sharing.
So this is wonderful, Cameron, so many learnings in from every question I'm asking you. Cameron Clarke ( .885) 100%.
Cameron Clarke ( .303) For sure.
Let me add one more thing there though, and that is I think in technology, whether it's a research scientist doing molecular biology or whether it's a software coder writing code in Facebook, oftentimes they get pigeonholed in these very narrow, very focused jobs.
And I think it's hard on those people. in my mind, the more that we can round them out and give them access to other knowledge and information, allow them to tinker and explore it.
know that Google, for example, allows people to have 10 or 15 or 20 % of their time, whatever, to be able to tinker. I think it's really valuable for them, for a person individually. And I think as a society, we should definitely drive more of that.
Matt Egan ( .068) Yeah, totally.
Totally agree. It's another theme of this series is we sit here talking to successful people.
And so often they will talk about the fact that they were able to succeed because they had technical chops in one area, but they were encouraged or given the space to explore and understand how that fit into the wider organization.
And then it allows you the ability to give more, to figure out more.
I mean, do think as a slight counterpoint, I think there's also a role for the dedicated technology specialist who chooses that route and wants to stay like just that's you know that is an important thing but I think in order to kind of maybe it's the thing about strategy versus tactics in order to move things forward you need those people right who are able to think beyond their their pitfall in your technology.
Cameron Clarke ( .971) Yeah.
I'm not necessarily, I'm not saying that everyone should have a broad, you know, should focus on a variety of different things. What I'm saying is you can go, you can go hard and you can go deep and that's fantastic. We absolutely need that.
But there's value in having someone who's going deep and hard to also understand a little bit about what's going around them, right? This cross pollination of ideas is invaluable. Matt Egan ( .138) Yeah.
Matt Egan ( .31) See ya.
Matt Egan ( .527) Totally agree.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, totally agree. And that came across. Maybe I confused it. So again, Cameron, this is wonderful. We're learning so much. It's a really cool conversation. It's too positive, though. So I want to hear about some failures. You already hinted at one before.
But I personally believe that we learn as much from our mistakes as we do our successes, if not more. You mentioned earlier the mistake of kind of the wrong time for a solution.
I don't know, if I asked you what the first big mistake is that comes to mind, would it be that or is there something else that you can think of? Cameron Clarke (
.405) You know, one of the big mistakes, and lots of engineers and IT people know this, is that at some point someone comes up to you and says, oh my God, I've got this incredible idea.
If we could just build this thing, this widget, I can sell the hell out of it and we're gonna get rich. Matt Egan ( .804) Yeah.
.513) So, so I learned that lesson the hard way. what someone that I knew pretty well actually, came to me and said, you know, I've got this application.
It's, know, and if we build it, you know, just, I, I swear we're going to, we're going to make a ton of money on it. There's no, there's no, nothing out there like it, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
So I spent a year and a half writing the code, working with him, you know, and we ended up selling three, we ended up selling three copies. so. And of course it was unpaid, right?
So, you know, because we were partners in the business and the business failed, right?
So I learned a lesson the hard way, like engineers and people in tech, you do have to be careful that you understand and think about the applications before you invest your time and energy in something.
mean, great opportunities are out there, but you do need to think about it a little bit ahead of time. That was a hard lesson. Matt Egan ( .187) Yeah.
.671) That speaks to a lot of the themes of what we've been talking about, right? Which is again, the application of technology to solve a real problem, to improve people's lives. bit like timing being everything. Also just that concept of having a wider understanding beyond the technology.
Again, if I go back to my consumer tech journalism days, number of people who showed amazing things that could do amazing things, but weren't necessarily going to actually, you know, be popular or successful.
Like, so, you know, I think there's a theme here, Cameron, and I think maybe, you your personal success or what you bring to the table is this understanding what actually drives value and then being able to apply technology to resolve it. Cameron Clarke (
.595) Yeah, I have an interesting story about that. At one point I was starting a business, was very excited about the technology and all that. And I learned another hard lesson.
We were pitching into VCs, I think probably the fifth or sixth VC that we were sitting in front of. He was kind enough to give me some advice.
And he looked at me and he said, what you have to realize is that you've built a race car engine here. Matt Egan ( .162) Yeah.
.217) but it's only an engine. You got to build the car, you got to find the driver, and you got to know what track you're going to run it on. Right? so that was, that was also a very good lesson, right? Because in tech, right?
We love these, we love cool things, right? But you have to wrap it with the whole enchilada to actually be able to deliver a full solution to the market. Matt Egan ( .47) Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Matt Egan ( .979) Yeah.
Yeah. Matt Egan ( .229) Yeah.
And if you wanted to extend the metaphor as well, like maybe people don't need race cars, right? Maybe actually what they need is like a Honda Civic or something, right? know, like I've seen that in technology as well, where the underlying tech is incredible and next generation.
But actually the problem that needs, what people need is something that's scalable and priced correctly. Basically, I'm torturing your metaphor, but there's a lot in that, I think. And that was great advice from that VC. Cameron Clarke ( .899) No, it's red.
Cameron Clarke ( .857) Yeah.
.774) I wonder if as well, one of the questions I like to ask is, because you're someone who has definitely learnt from mistakes, but also seems fairly clear sighted and sure footed in what you want to do.
Is there a first time you realised something that you thought you knew might actually be wrong? Cameron Clarke (
.981) Yeah, and that was also a very hard lesson. So I started a business, a consumer products business, nothing to do with tech, but a consumer products business with a very close friend, actually a couple of very close friends. Matt Egan ( .848) Yeah.
.597) And we ended up launching the business and we spent three almost four years building the business and and we not only do we get do we get it off the ground we got it into nationwide distribution that was about to take off and then my partner decided to steal half the business or steal the business and and drive it into the ground and destroy the entire opportunity.
the company was worth at least $10 million at that point and it went to zero overnight because of the issues I had with my partner.
And what I've realized, and I've known this for two decades now, and I've been talking about it for two decades, is that in my mind, there's a lot of challenges in business, but for me, the single hardest thing in business is partnerships.
And for a variety of reasons, ethos, know, morals, philosophy, exit strategy, implementation, just, you know, how you work together. So, you know, I think it's, you know, the lesson is pick your partners very carefully, but make sure you're very transparent and open about everything before you start.
because it's very difficult to launch these companies. And so you've got to be fully aligned. And so we do that every day here at Kana and it's worked out. Because we're operating in that mindset, all of our partnerships, thank God, have been rock solid. So it's very helpful.
Matt Egan ( .829) Yeah.
Well, it's interesting because you said, you know, make sure those things are straight at the start.
I think in my experience as well, and you just said it, that it's an ongoing thing as well, because the exit strategy has to be aligned or at least everybody has to get what they need from their various exits kind of thing as well.
So it sounds like you've got a very strong organisation there because⦠Yeah, right. Got to keep checking in, right? Cameron Clarke ( .193) And timing.
.555) Yeah, I mean, some people may want to continue operating for 10 years and some people may want to be out in five years if that's even an option. Matt Egan (
.638) Yeah, and you've got to be really crystal clear with each other, like that's what's happening. Cameron Clarke ( .712) Yeah.
.915) Yeah, and I've had numerous problems with partnerships, yeah, for sure. Matt Egan ( .657) Yes.
Yeah. No, I can imagine. mean, it is, is like to your point, it's probably the most complex part of that aspect of running a business, right? Yeah.
I appreciate, and appreciate you sharing that because that's kind of personal, you know, but a good and important learning for anybody watching or listening to this. We're going to move on Cameron, because we want to get to know you beyond your professional life.
And we do that by using our random question generator to ask some completely random first questions. So would you, if you could, give me a number between 1 and 15? Cameron Clarke ( .333) 14.
Matt Egan ( .348) Number 14.
okay. Like, we're going back for the origin story here. Can you tell me something about the first time you earned any kind of money doing anything? Cameron Clarke (
.072) Well, that would probably be my lemonade stand with Sam, my neighbor back in the 70s. We did have the good old lemonade stand. I don't remember what we charged, but I know it wasn't much. Yeah.
I think one thing is when we⦠Matt Egan ( .868) There you go.
That's what we wanted. Thanks very much. Matt Egan ( .564) Love it.
Yeah, but it was probably 100 % perfect because I think it worked. Cameron Clarke (
.229) We did it on our own too.
didn't have any you know a lot of parents are pushing their kids to do this kind of stuff We we just thought it would be cool So it was we had we had a blast that we had as much fun building the damn lemonade stand as we did selling the lemonade so Matt Egan ( .613) Yeah.
I mean, I think it maybe foreshadows your entrepreneurial career that that was something you went out to do. And I will say to those of us of non-U.S.
persuasion, it is the perfect answer that you built the lemonade stand because we presume all American children do that at some point because we get all of our culture from movies and TV shows. Go on then, give us one more number between one and 15.
Cameron Clarke ( .961) too Matt Egan (
.55) Number two.
Ah, okay. I wonder if you could tell me something about the first vacation that you remember. Maybe it was a family vacation or something you did on your own. Cameron Clarke (
.418) So my first job out of college was actually working for the US government, right? which I quickly soured on for reasons I'm sure a lot of people can imagine. So after 11 months, I decided that I needed a vacation. My parents thought I was crazy.
because I incurred a lot of expense and going to Stanford and all that, and got a couple of friends together, we ended up going to Africa for six weeks. And it was an amazing trip. The funniest part of the trip actually was that Matt Egan ( .476) Yeah.
.839) But when you're young and just out of college and you're a guy, right, you think about going to beaches and hanging out with girls in bikinis. But my other friend, he's like, no, let's do something more interesting. Let's go to Africa.
And I didn't want to, but I decided, you know what, I'm going to do it. And it actually ended up being a trip of a lifetime. was an incredible experience. We did amazing things that no one can believe we did back in the day.
And I wouldn't trade it for the world. Matt Egan ( .051) Yeah.
.821) It did cost me an arm and a leg and I ended up taking I think three or four years to pay back the debt. But it was great and I came back to no job and moved to New York and started a new career.
So, you know, sometimes you got to wing it. Matt Egan ( .839) I'm Matt Egan (
.682) Yeah, yeah.
But to your⦠Right, and to your point, like, you you probably can't do that most times in your life. And what experiences like to have, like, and it almost speaks to this idea of kind of broadening your viewpoint as well, right?
You saw a whole different part of the world and presumably had experiences that you would never have had, like, had you remained working, certainly working for the US government. Cameron Clarke ( .605) Incredible.
Yes, for sure. it honestly, it led me it led me into a much more it is the it is the path that actually led me to a global view of humanity.
And that was and that's really one of that's really just one of the things that's led us to where we are today, like really feeling, you know, passionate about wellness and helping people and understanding what, you know, how changes that we can make. Matt Egan ( .979) Yeah.
Cameron Clarke ( .366) for humanity globally.
And I think, you know, I learned an incredible amount as a young person just in those six weeks doing crazy things. Matt Egan ( .928) Yeah, amazing.
And yet again, we ask a random question and it elicits a really insightful and almost philosophical answer.
I sort of feel like I wish we in the West had the capability to send every child to have an experience like that, because I think the world might be a better place potentially. Cameron, I'm sorry. Cameron Clarke (
.857) You know what, I will use this as a moment. Let me just say something because I'm very passionate about this.
I actually believe that if every child, everybody that comes out of high school could spend one year doing social work somewhere around the world, just get out of the country and go do social work somewhere around the world, this country would be incredibly different than it is today.
Matt Egan ( .952) Mm-hmm.
.981) and have a much better understanding. And if other countries did it as well, the global community would be a much better place. I think one of the challenges we have in our culture is there is a lot of us and we don't understand each other.
And I think that's important for us to take the time and energy to do so. Matt Egan (
.256) I hard agree from my side and as it relates to my country too.
We're going to have to move on and I'm sad to say we're going to our final section but I'm really excited to ask you Cameron, what's the first piece of advice you would give to someone who was just starting out today? Cameron Clarke (
.281) You know, you know, number one, I there's, there's a couple of things actually. Number one is only be a, if you're going to create something, only be a half step in the head of the market, not a full step. We talked about that earlier.
And then secondly, you know, pick your partners, pick your partners wisely. Be very careful and have good, open, transparent conversations. if you're developing partners, on anything. I'll throw a third word in there and I kind of mentioned it earlier.
If you're an engineer or you're a tech person, be careful when salespeople come up to you and tell you that you're going to get rich if you just build this thing for free for them. Matt Egan ( .738) Yeah.
.346) Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Really, really wise words that I think actually apply to kind of any career, right? It didn't have to be technology at all. And final question, Cameron, you've done so many things, had so many experiences.
If I put you on the spot, what's the first project or achievement that you would want to tell people about? What is your masterpiece? Cameron Clarke (
.601) You know, I'm going to give you two answers here. I'm really proud that we built the world's first electronic courtroom.
You know, I think we learned a lot in the process, but I think it was very, very compelling to actually drive that innovation back in the day because the application is so powerful. But secondly, I'm really proud of what we've done here at Kana, right?
Matt Egan ( .054) Okay.
.635) you know, what we're doing in the wellness industry and using cannabis to change people's lives.
And I just want to mention that, you know, this integration of the best of mother nature with the best of technology and being really innovative and using nanotechnology and, and scientific rigor and engineering and all of that to make these products really amazing. We're very proud of that.
And we're proud to be. quite different from most of our peers in the industry because we don't cut corners and we deliver products that people love.
And to be honest, all those challenges that I mentioned earlier, we've⦠avoided those pitfalls because of the experiences that I've had in the past and we've been able to navigate this crazy industry much better, I think, than a lot of others.
And it's because of these experiences that I've had in past. And I'm very proud that we're delivering these beautiful plant medicine products that are helping consumers with sleep, with pain, with anxiety, having enjoying lives with their friends and not waking up in the morning with hangovers. So. Yes.
.095) Well, these are great sentiments to finish on and thank you so much, Cameron. And these are pretty laudable things to have achieved, to take all the experiences you've had and to reach this point.
So my thanks to Cameron Clark and thanks to all of you for watching or listening to First Person, the show where we meet the most interesting people in technology and learn from them what makes them tick by focusing only on their firsts.
I have been your host, Matt Egan, asking you to enjoy, like and subscribe wherever you may find us. And if you are an interesting person in tech, do let us know because you might be the next first person.
But I have to finish by giving my sincere and heartfelt thanks to today's guest who has been, as I'm sure you'd agree, absolutely incredible. So many insights, so many interesting stories. I feel like we could have spoken for hours, Cameron. Maybe we will at another time.
But my sincere thanks to today's guest, Cameron Clark, and goodbye to everyone.
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