Henry Sang is the founder of Innovation Refinery and a self-described tech elder. He trained in experimental nuclear physics at MIT (the Massachusetts Institute of Technology), then spent 15 years at Xerox PARC (the Palo Alto Research Center) and 16 at HP Labs doing research and taking new technology into new markets through primary customer research. After retiring, he started mentoring and has worked with more than 300 tech startups in the last six years, including many Korean tech startups.

In this episode, Henry joins Maria Pienaar and Katie Whitcraft to talk about why technically brilliant founders stall on the business side. They cover consultative selling, the "kill to have" level above must-have, how to meet the right people at a trade show, why war stories build credibility with customers and investors, the Harry Potter wand test for spotting a weak plan, and why fast followers are the customers who carry a new technology across the chasm.

Guest: Henry Sang, Founder of Innovation Refinery.

If you reach out to Henry, make sure and give him some context on how you found his information on our podcast and ask a few follow up questions.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/henry-sang-techelder/

Innovation Refinery: https://www.innovationrefinery.com/

Ops or Die is the ScaleSpark podcast, hosted by Maria Pienaar and Katie Whitcraft. If your product is ahead of your operations, and the hiring plan, finance, and handoffs haven't caught up, we build the systems that close that gap. Find a time with us at https://scalespark.ai.