Episode #1 - Glen de Vries

*Please note: this episode was recorded prior to Glen's confirmed space flight on Jeff Bezo's Blue Origin flight. As you'll hear his passion for space travel has reigned true for a number of years, so we're delighted he has finally been able to fill his life-long goal :-)

Medidata's co-founder (& currently Dassault System's Life Sciences and Vice-Chair) dives into his ever exciting world of entrepreneurship, space travel, flying planes and pretty much anything you can imagine. He shares key tips and learnings that allowed him to turn a bedroom idea into a multi billion dollar corporation, whilst being able to fulfil personal (and fun) ambitions at the same time

Glen's book, The Patient Equation is available for purchase on Amazon using the link below - . Royalties from the sale of the book will be donated to Conquer Cancer, the ASCO Foundation

https://www.amazon.com/Patient-Equation-Data-Driven-Precision-Medicine/dp/111962214X

Please subscribe to https://edgingahead.buzzsprout.com as further episodes are released in this series

A special thanks to Nicole Pariser for her help with this production!

Transcript

THIS IS A RAW TRANSCRIPT THROUGH AN AUTOMATED SYSTEM THAT HASN'T BEEN SPELL CHECKED!

Glen de Vries  0:00  
Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Jonathan Stone  0:02  
Now Glen, most of the time I see you you're often hopping on a plane jetting around the world or just hanging out having a enjoying a beverage or two with friends. So this whole notion of locked out must have been driving you a little bit crazy. Has that been for you? Have you been bouncing off the walls

Glen de Vries  0:17  
I am bouncing off the walls a little bit. I I really like going across water but it's usually oceans and the Hudson River is the largest body of water I have crossed since March I think I am looking forward to broadening and spreading my wings again, hopefully soon.

Jonathan Stone  0:37  
Did you interact just join houses together so that you can wave at each other through the window? How did that work?

Glen de Vries  0:42  
Actually, we we maintained a like a little pot or a good part of the lockdown. So my friends and I were good about getting tested. Anytime we seen anybody but Tarik and I were seeing each other all the time. Now Alas, he is in the United Kingdom. So we just had our annual holiday lunch, which is normally had in between visiting metadata offices around this time of year. Um, but we did it over zoom like everybody else. So it is what it is. But we still hadn't lovely

Jonathan Stone  1:13  
numbers is a bit of a running joke in our industry that it's very difficult to explain to friends or family outside of industry exactly what we do. And Glenn, when people ask what your occupation is, or what do you do, or what metadata does, what do you what do you tell them?

Glen de Vries  1:27  
Or actually, I think that the pandemic is going to change this forever. Because I think now you can actually say to people Oh, I work on trials, they'll go, Oh, okay. Do you have any opinions about safety and efficacy for x, y or z? No, I I would say to people, so imagine you created a new cure for it, Mad Libs style, insert, whatever, I think that person is going to be interested in cancer, heart disease, the common cold is a so well done. But now you have to prove to other people that it actually works and it's not going to kill people. It's something else. I help you do that. That was my big explanation. I think vaccine development now means that the probably like the the people who I guess it depends on what news outlet you read, but those that are more focused on science, that they may understand the subtleties of different kinds of phase three research better than I do.

Jonathan Stone  2:25  
Yeah. interests. No, did you have any idols or mentors growing up glutton or like Who did you look up to in those early metadata years? And is there anyone you look up to just now?

Glen de Vries  2:33  
Yeah, well, I mean, before we met, it started I had Richard Fineman, like this guy. When I was in high school, I got totally obsessed with a physicist. And an interesting, an interesting person in the way he like to be, as an example, introduces a drummer before he was introduced as a physicist, it had a real kind of larger than life personality. And he was also an excellent teacher. One of the things I always thought was so cool is and I'll get the quote, wrong, slightly, but it to the effect of, if you can't explain something to a six year old, you're not ready to teach a graduate course in that topic. And I kind of went through these phases of wanting to be a physicist and want to be chemist is that when wanting to be a biologist, and he was really my first kind of science hero, um, there's also Richard Francis Burton, you're asking about travel. So not Richard Burton, the actor, but Richard Burton, the Explorer, who actually is the guy he translated the Kama Sutra. He also, along with Jonathan speak, is, I think, I think technically is credited for discovering Lake Victoria, but I'm pretty sure Lake Victoria was there beforehand. And that's probably a inappropriate social perspective. But he was just an interesting of Explorer, and geologists, and I guess a scientist that way as well, but also spoke like 20 something languages, just an interesting guy. So I'm kind of fascinated by people who are really dedicated to their profession but also had some some spunk and some nuanced approach to life.

Jonathan Stone  4:15  
So fair, that's really interesting. I wouldn't have thought of those two. Okay, so let's take a trip down memory lane. So back in the 1990s, when I when I think of that era or that decade, I'm thinking about Oasis, mullets, my Nintendo Entertainment System, Mariah Carey, not sure I can think about anything else. But back then you were working on the lab bench, you know, regular science scientist, scientist, loading electrophoresis gels hanging out at the centrifuge, but but there were no smartphones or tablets, then how didn't exist, the big data wasn't really a big thing. So all these elements that we rely on today just weren't there at that time. So how did you get from thinking there has to be a better way to capturing data to growing a business such as metadata back then did you have some sort of URI A moment or is the idea of something that came together over time?

Glen de Vries  5:03  
Well, so it's interesting you talking about lab equipment that that is really the beginning of Betty data story. I was there with all my data on paper with a shared windows 95 PC. It clearly right in the mid 90s. And I was transcribing all my data into either Excel or using SPSS on that machine that everybody in the lab was fighting for time. It was extensively connected to the, to the internet, but it wasn't like you get anything from our hospital information systems on that. So to get some of the data on the patients in the study, I was working on people talking about like sneakernet, I had like elevator, New York city street and sneaker net that I had to go through to get data and bring it back. And it was just like, This is crazy. And I was sharing a lab bench with edit Gucci who was one of the metadata founders, and now the CEO of AI cure. And he was doing a lot of the industry research, he was a resident at the time, and literally looking at each other all day between the test tubes and things in our lab benches. We started talking about how crazy this was, and the popularity of that Windows 95 lab machine wasn't lost on us. And the fact that people were starting to use the internet at home. And I always tell people, it's like a really dating thing to say where it's like, if you can buy a book on online on Amazon, why can't you do clinical trials online thing that day two is that the only thing you could buy on Amazon at the time was a book. Nothing else available yet. But we but it was really kind of the necessity of wanting to accelerate what we're doing in the lab. The the interest in computers and computer science that I always had. And honestly the naivete of not really knowing what about to start a business. That's what that's what led to any data, but all grew up out of those those test tubes and centrifuges, and micro pockets. That's really, really interesting.

Jonathan Stone  7:01  
I mean, back in those lab days, when you're hanging out with and chatting about business ideas, did you ever at that point think that this idea would grow to something a business worth $5.8 billion 20 years later?

Glen de Vries  7:14  
Yeah, I mean, absolutely. No, I don't, is it it were kind of naive, I don't even think I really understood what it meant from a corporate sense of financial sense to build a business to raise capital to understand this thing. But I did have the advantage of my mom who left her job when I was born. And when my my parents who were excellent co parents, even after this, we got divorced, you wind up being a single mom living with me in New York City, and decided instead of going back to her original career, to do consulting, in relations, and again, I don't even think I knew what any of those words meant back then. And I definitely didn't know the person was, was sitting at our dining room table when I came home from school one day, but it was her first assistant while she was doing consulting isn't intended. And as I got older, when I was in grade school, more and more people started working in my house. And eventually my mother moved into an office. But it just, I honestly think that's what popped into my head that Oh, people just start things and start doing them. And and Ed and I literally took the bed out of the bedroom in my fifth floor, walk up one bedroom apartment. And I didn't suddenly have an assistant there. But we turned the little bedroom into an office where we would hang out sometimes after work and work on weekends. And just the business part was naive. But the entrepreneurship spirit was something that I definitely got. Was

Jonathan Stone  8:48  
that a deliberate pivot then from the world of science, and I've always loved into the area of entrepreneurship and business.

Glen de Vries  8:55  
Yeah, I mean, it was it was the compelling idea of doing research of faster, better way that led to starting a business not a fascination with starting the company. But, you know, I, I think that when I realised that the science that I was doing in the lab, was guided by a certain amount of time and effort that was related to logistics. And then I saw that we could think about science in a different way. If we were doing things in a more modern fabric of interconnected systems, people and data, then actually, the science, art could be something that that theoretically, people could concentrate more on. I'll tell you that the most satisfying things happened in 20, whatever it is, 22 years almost doing metadata is that all of a sudden, I kind of stopped doing any molecular biology, really completely focused on systems for a while. And now you know, on Monday I get to be in cardiology mode, and to Today in oncology mode, or I guess right now on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday in vaccine mode. But still, the idea that you can kind of look at all this science in different ways, is is kind of one of the most fun parts of my job. So in some ways, I feel like I'm finally reaping the seeds that I saw two decades ago, and being able to enjoy being

Jonathan Stone  10:24  
back in the really scientific part of what I love. That's amazing. So to really back to the area that you're that you're passionate about. So we've also got Nicole on on the line on the on the podcast, as well. And we were chatting before about the unique culture that medidata had. Everyone There seemed to have a lot of fun, but they also worked really hard, and were really successful as well. But I feel like there is some level of commitment to this culture that has led to that you've committed to and Tarik as well, that has led to that company being so successful. How hard has it been to maintain that kind of family a ethos or a feeling? As you've grown and scaled the company? Do you feel like that culture has evolved? And what advice would you give to founders who are going through that sort of growth trajectory themselves?

Glen de Vries  11:06  
So I think that maybe David's evolved a lot from a cultural perspective, I mean, literally went from a couple people in the room to 1000s of people around the world, obviously, you go through different phases of being private, depending on the history of your company, maybe going public maybe fired. And the idea that one thing is going to be the same culture forever, obviously, it's crazy. That said, I think you can keep a lot of what has always defined metadata from a field perspective. And I will tell you, the people told me that it couldn't be done. I was told when, when we were 15 people. Oh, Glenn, it's great now that you have this kind of field company, but when it's 50, that's all over. And I know what what, you guys were in the hundreds, right? I think, yeah, employee counts. I bet maybe even after first 1000 Yeah. And you know, then was like, oh, when you go public, it's all gonna change. And this many millions of dollars, 100 million dollars in revenues can change. And it just turned out to not be true. And I think part of making that not true. And I think a positive way was just not believing that hype and realising that if you if you are committed to an environment where or friendship is part of colleagues ship, and I say to people, not an idiot, I don't think that everybody has 2999 other best friends they work with. But I think I can still say that if I talked to many data employees, they will say that they have more friends at our company than any other company they've worked at. And it's because we try to encourage that we try to create an environment of words that we try to make sure that we catalyse interactions with people even now, and we can do it in person, we can connect. And I think there's real value like this. And I also be just close of about it, if you could maintain that kind of positive, close knit culture. People just care about each other more and work better as a team. And and it's worth cultivating. The other thing I'll say is if you work in health care, Life Sciences,

I,

in my limited experience, which is one teaching hospital and one company, I think from everything else I've seen you kind of need that. Now I am, I feel like there's this you have like what a hospital operating room is, like you see on like cheesy TV shows, and they're listening to rock music. Well, it's kind of like that, you know, and and there's, there's humour that I think is part of the human condition. When you have people's lives in your hands, you have to have an outlet. And so if you realise that that's part of people really caring about what you're doing and needing to have this kind of friendly, fun, doesn't have to be work hard play super hard. But as you and Nicole well, though, I'm delighted to play relatively hard, but but having those things they can go together, you can work hard to have a good time. And so I you know, my advice to founders who are dealing with that are being told again, dude, like, bullshit, you can kind of say bullshit on your content. You can you can say whatever you like, like, yeah, okay, good. I just said bullshit under.

Jonathan Stone  14:21  
I think I was three times now. Yeah. And Nicole's. Just a few beats in there, right? Yeah. No, I think you're absolutely right. And and I love that phrase that you just said their friendship into college. That's really, really powerful. My dad was actually a military doctor, a Wing Commander in the Air Force, who was spending his days dipping in and out of war zones into some quite treacherous areas. But I have to say some of his friends and his colleagues within that Air Force environment where some of the funniest I've ever seen. So I completely agree with you about holding on to that level of humour, in times of seriousness. So you're continuing to bring in top talent all over the world to metadata Which is, which is obviously now part of the salt. But I've always wanted to ask you this, because I'm guessing as you scale as a company, you're not always going to get your way because the decision making processes themselves mature and you just can't be part of every single decision. How has metadata grown? Have you been able to handle? Not get in your way all the time? And what advice do you have for others on that?

Glen de Vries  15:22  
Yeah, so I'm actually delighted not to have my way. I think it's one of the things that has served me well, I mean, there are, there are two kinds of, I think managers and maybe being a bit unfair. But if I can make the world binary, they're the kind who, who like to be smarter than the people who they have reporting to them. And believe, maybe just pretend that they know more than those people, or have more skills, and there's a kind who, like, well, I'm gonna be successful. I'm gonna hire people who know their jobs way better than I ever know it. And we're going to be able to make way better decisions, and I'm going to be able to make because of their experience, and their intuition, and their education, whatever combination of things there are. And, and I definitely think that those people, I hope, myself included, ladder are generally more successful. You know, it's just impossible to actually know everything and get it right all the time. And then even if you're lucky enough to be that person, that certainly is not going to scale like by mathematical definition. And so I wish I could remember, and it comes up a lot. Who this came from, or who said it first. But there's some definition in someone's MBA textbook, of a company being the sum of all of the decisions of its employees up to right now. And so if you think about that, well, no saying from a mathematical position, if you're going to be successful, and your company is going to grow, you are going to be hopelessly outnumbered by the number of decisions made by other people, right? You can't make them all. And so you better find people who are going to make great decisions, we're going to do it their way. And know that that's going to be because you got people with those right skills and feelings, emotions, he cultivated the right culture, but they're going to be in line with the vision. And also, you know, I have, my best friend is my co founder. Everybody thinks that we agree about stuff all the time, because we never fight about anything. But we disagree about stuff a lot when No, don't fight about it. But I'm used to this environment of kind of respectful, let's, let's argue it out. Anyway, like that scientists do. And then you come up with a shared opinion, you go forward, I don't really care if it's my way, or you just want us to have

Jonathan Stone  17:40  
fun. That's really interesting. Actually, we were interviewing in Scotland and rugby international last week. And he was talking a lot about the learnings he's had from, like being a professional sportsman into business. And one of the things he talked about is learning to have a higher level of honesty, like pulling people up when they make mistakes, or they're not achieving the standards that you're looking for. But as long as you underpin that with the credit values of honesty, trust hard work, and that you will agree to those, then that doesn't become such a big problem, then you can actually have much more honest conversations.

Glen de Vries  18:15  
And also there's an element of growth of other people as well. If you try to control everything and do it all, you're never going to develop a great team. So you have to look around and say well, who's with high potential people who are going to be able to take bigger and bigger and better jobs in my job one day, right? And bring those people along? Right? And they're gonna make mistakes just like I do. And so getting comfortable that

Jonathan Stone  18:41  
I was trying to think of a suitable analogy there. I think it's a bit like me coming to metadata A few years ago, and you turning around and telling me that you're the in house Bagpiper. However you don't have a kilt you've never had a set of pipes. You've never done a Berlin you haven't got a blank Gary, I'd be like what's going on here?

Glen de Vries  18:57  
So By the way, I did go to a wedding when I was a kid you know so yeah. Oh, I'm not I'm not the house back bedroom. Yeah, yeah, I've

Jonathan Stone  19:07  
heard about the devries hirshfeld visits to school and this all the castles and everything in fact has gone down in folklore they they're still talking about their

Glen de Vries  19:17  
inside piece of data on that particular birthday, john, was so we're getting these like proper kilts, and somebody was asking me like, okay, what's your waist size? shirt size? what's what's your killed length? That's really personal.

Like I beg your pardon.

Jonathan Stone  19:40  
I can just imagine that being said the real Glaswegian. Tony, what's your kilt says Glen. Just another couple of questions on this on this topic. So from the outside in, it kind of sometimes looks like metadata has been fairly smooth sailing. You've had a clean run through in terms of founding, building scaling the organisation But, you know, reflecting on all of this, there must have been periods when there were more difficult times and others. What were the moments that challenged you the most? And what were your biggest learnings for them? Did you have some sort of mindset that helped you adapt and power through these difficult times.

Glen de Vries  20:14  
So the worst year of the entire thing was when we went from, like 75 to 150 people in one year. And spoiler alert, the lesson is, think about training your employees and think about, I don't mean in a way that has to be horrible and dry and boring, but procedures and scalability, because it was like, welcome to Medi data. This is your desk, this is your computer, I think this is your clients phone number, our software may or may not work today. And I'll take you for beer later. That was your training. And, and I just, it required so much sheer effort to get through bringing people on board and not really having the infrastructure. We had great advice in the really early days of metadata, um, at least on the HR side to get somebody who was in charge of HR earlier rather than later. And I think our first head of HR, and that was their only job was in the 20s. In terms of number of employees. I I kind of developed over the years, this litmus test of is something important enough that somebody should be thinking about it all day, when they wake up to when they go to sleep? And if the answer is yes, and you don't have an employee doing that, that's something you need to fix. And you have to think about your employees experience. And you have to think about making sure you do everything you can to keep them productive. And I learned that that year. And so I still think about that a lot like are we putting things that are headwinds or tailwinds in terms of making people productive, happy, able to be creative, whatever it is. Yeah, that was my learning that year. But yeah, that was a tough year, a lot of late nights.

Jonathan Stone  22:08  
You've touched a little bit on the unique kind of bond or relationship you have with metadata, his other co CEO and your co founder, Tarik. And you've had this amazing partnership together for well over 20 years now, I seem to believe you still saying share the same office, right?

Glen de Vries  22:23  
Yeah, we do not have a wall between our desks. And and we both travelled the world, we do two things. And we've scaled to the point that even though we don't have a wall between our desk, we do have a spare conference room that is kind of connected to our office to make two calls or have two meetings. We can do that now. 20 years later. But no, we still share the same room.

Jonathan Stone  22:43  
Is that when you're like, right, I'm leaving and just go into the

Glen de Vries  22:45  
boardroom? No, no, it's like it. Honestly, I think it sounds strange, and in COVID times to talk about open office space. But I think it served many data really well. And and I can tell you that being in the same room with a another person, my case photographer by a business partner, who has different perspective, who don't looks at the world in different eyes, and listening to their conversations is a really great way to learn and get other perspective. If if there's an investor meeting, you're probably going to call tar before you call me but I will totally blow the meeting. And I won't totally blow it because I've been deployed with him. But I've also listened to him, talk to our CFO, I've also listened to him talk to investors, and I've been there when other conversations were happening. And and I do think people learn things by osmosis in addition to being exposed to something and talk directly. And so I like that environment where you pick up on stuff, and we have great time together. So we don't mind hanging out. But But I just think it's a it's a good way for people to work. I actually wonder what will happen after all this. I hope we get back to that kind of I know, biologically, we'll get back to that being a possibility, I hope psychologically, people realise that returning to work and bumping into people in the hallways is, I think, really productive.

Jonathan Stone  24:09  
So it sounds like that carve out of responsibilities grew fairly organically over the years rather than being a sort of deliberate strategic move based on on some of your past experience or interest. Is that right? No, no, it

Glen de Vries  24:21  
was it was really organic. And I think the some of the most satisfying stuff is when it's almost like having a doorway, the conversation we just had, it's like, I don't want to be the only one who could do a particular kind of meeting. And so I love that the same way. I won't blow it in the investor meeting if some if the Chief Medical Officer of some company is coming in to talk and walk in and talk about the the future of life sciences and healthcare, right. You can get it from either of us. And it's because because we've had this, this shared experience, but then at the same time, like any good diverse team, people have the things that they gravitate to, or they're better at than other ones. So you know, I don't think this is a camp. have your cake and eat it too. You can, you can have your areas of specialty. But you can also have the Venn diagram of capabilities the same time always coming together.

Jonathan Stone  25:09  
Justice which tact a little bit and a pre match warning here, I'm going to be in the British in tooting your horn a little bit here, Glenn, but most people know you're you're a very multifaceted well rounded guy, you know, particularly for an entrepreneur and you've got so many interests, passions and hobbies just outside of your, your general day to day job. Nicole's helped me with a few of these, but I have a list of a few of them now, flying planes, travelling the world, including space one day, which I didn't know, dancing, playing the guitar acting on Broadway, and supporting your alma mater, see, and you mentoring young scientists, etc, etc. Were these always these always part of your life? And even in those early days and metadata, were you able to incorporate and balance all of these things in the first 10 years? Or with the things you have to sacrifice to help get your organisation up and running?

Glen de Vries  26:00  
So I wouldn't say that. They weren't always there. I mean, they were definitely always there. I mean, actually, by by going back to my mom, my mom is a great dancer. I mean, I think I'm sure I got that from her. And I was lucky enough to grow up in New York, where there was great theatre. But, but then, yeah, then at some point, you know, I was in my career to the point that I could be at a benefit, when they auctioned off a walk on roll on a Broadway show, I was like, okay, you know, I think I put my put my paddle up, but nobody wanted. And same with things like, like flying space, and I loved science. I loved astronomy, therefore, I was fascinated by space, and astronauts and everything, aviation. And then at some point, I was lucky enough to be like, oh, wow, I can buy myself a ticket to space for my birthday, I spend some time becoming a pilot, you know, and so even kind of mentorship perspective, as you and I've talked about right? Kind of scientists, right, you think you're gonna spend your whole life in a laboratory and wind up teaching biochemistry at a university somewhere, and then you wind up getting distracted by industry. But I always love teaching. And I kind of missed that. So you know, as time permits, then you get more into mentoring, or you're working in a University Board of Trustees or something that I do for Carnegie Mellon. Um, so I think it would be naive for me to say something. It's, yeah, I didn't have the money in the time. And until recently, you know, I, that was the situation. Now I can do these things more than I could before. But it wasn't like the interests weren't there.

Jonathan Stone  27:46  
Are there any new hobbies you got on the go at the moment? Like, are you learning the ukulele or anything?

Glen de Vries  27:51  
Yeah,

I'm not really I actually have gotten kind of interested in the combination of space and education. So like anything over time, kind of your interest start to, to use and evolve. And I have been lucky enough now to meet a few astronauts and get to hang out with them a little bit. And I certainly pursued people I could talk to about that. But I think even if you see people interviewed on TV, they all will talk about it, no matter how cool spaces, they will all talk about the perspective that you get, when you see the planet from orbit. And how it changes the way you think about humanity. It changes the way you think about politics, it changes the way you think about economics, it changes your view on what we spend so much time dealing with a day to day perspective. And I've even had conversation people said, Look, I can talk to you about a Glen, but until you've seen it, you won't really know what I'm talking about. And so part of my motivation to to get to space myself is because I want to have that experience. Yes, travelling experience is important. I think it's one of the few currencies that really matters, in terms of the richness of your life, but I want to have that experience. But then I think with all the bad stuff that's happening in the world, and I'm not talking about the pandemic and political things related to social justice. And I guess it doesn't matter what your opinions about politics are. The fact of matter is, there's so much divergence and so much anger and violence, like I you know, if you think that's a good thing, then I'm definitely not talking to you. I don't care if you don't agree with me. But as long as like you want to see people get along and be productive together. I can't help but think if we can get more people to space, we can get more people to think about humanity that way. Wouldn't that be an amazing thing? I mean, fantasise, but I hope that I'll be able to take some of my interests and Some my professional success, and be able to turn it into to whatever reason kind of vehicle where I can at least explain people that concept. And and maybe one day after we're all Long, long gone, your two year old as of today is upstairs. So hopefully they get to go on a trip to space while they're a teenager. And they'll grow up with a lot of people who had that experience. And they'll all grow up thinking very differently about the harmony that we need.

Jonathan Stone  30:30  
Wow, that's really cool. So So I actually thought this was maybe an idea or a concept that you're shaping, but it sounds like it could become reality, pretty soon or at least in the next few years. And from what I hear, you've got one of those Virgin Galactic boarding passes, right?

Glen de Vries  30:43  
I do. I do. I it was my 40th birthday gift to myself. So I've been waiting for eight years to get there. But yeah, but yeah, I don't think these things come easy. And like I said, this is the most ridiculous like luxury gift you could possibly buy yourself. And I think that people who have the ability to do things like that right now, are going to help catalyse this idea that space travel could become something that everybody gets to experience. So I actually think that there's also a really altruistic and important part of some of these commercial space ventures that are attracting people who extensively want to go for experiential, luxury reasons. I think these two lines don't actually diverge. they converge into that future we were talking about. Yeah, but yeah, I have the ticket.

Jonathan Stone  31:37  
That's amazing. So do you have it in like a safe or is it or is it an electronic version?

Glen de Vries  31:43  
It's just the contract but it like you walk around my house. There's tonnes of bottles of backup, there's like a Lego version of the other room? Pretty much everything in my house is this space.

Jonathan Stone  31:54  
Yeah, like space rocket, do they cover like,

Glen de Vries  31:57  
my, um, but my, my friend helped me design my apartment. And she got she found these lads, these lamps that are on the side of my bed. They're really kind of cool looking. Yeah, but actually, they're meant to look like rocket engines. And then she got them. So like, when I go to sleep, I can think about rocket engines and have cool dreams of space. So I like I confess people, it's like having like a 48 year old the Star Wars cheats like, like, that's the degree to which it's based on that.

Jonathan Stone  32:25  
That's like the equivalent to my Hulk Hogan, do they cover right shape? I think is still at my mom's somewhere.

Glen de Vries  32:30  
Yeah, you still got your WWF stuff?

Jonathan Stone  32:33  
Yeah, so jokes aside, I do actually still have all of the original WTF figures sitting somewhere in the eaves of my mom's loft. Okay, so it's actually really difficult to move a podcast on from something so interesting and visionary as as going to space, but had a couple of practical questions here. I reached out to a few people before this podcast to see, you know, what practical tips would they be interested in hearing from you? And one of our joint friends, Joe Dawson, who's also ex metadata, metadata alumni, he texts me to see, how does Glenn manage and prioritise his time from day to day, given that you've got so much on all the time, you're just so so busy? How do you stay so superhuman? Are there any tricks that you use to help prioritise or, as we all know, Joe's a bit of a tech geek, any apps that you use to effectively manage your day?

Glen de Vries  33:23  
Yeah, so actually, I love like, I love to do list apps and all these things, like hacks to make yourself more productive. But I will confess, none of them have ever worked for me, I just think I enjoy trying them more than anything. And maybe one, maybe one day, I'll find something better than like writing things down on a piece of paper and taking off and then throwing piece paper away. But actually, I think I certainly am not one of those people who never needs to sleep. And I certainly don't feel like I'm more productive than than the average person. I know, I tried to do a lot, maybe it appears like I do a lot. But it's mostly just because I have a lot of things that I want to do. And I just try to prioritise stuff that seems important, not always urgent. And I always tell people, like if, if you've got 10 things to do in the day, and you can rank them in importance from one to 10. And you know, you're only going to get half of them done. Now, if you, if you do a perfect job of ranking them, you're gonna have an average importance of 7.5. And if you randomly execute them, you're going to have an average importance of five. So the most important thing is to make sure you're doing the stuff that's important to you on whether it's for work is really important for work and including for management, or for yourself personally and just make sure you're doing the important stuff first. And by the way, if you've got a list of stuff, and it's ranked from 100 to one, and you can only do five of them, and you know you ranked them in order of importance and did it right, you're gonna have an average hordes of 97 and a half. Right? So actually, the more it trails off at the end of the list, as long as you're good about our ties, the more important stuff you're doing is so you have prioritisation. That is the key. That's the only answer.

Jonathan Stone  35:16  
And and moving into another Dustin s type question. When metadata was piloting and held trials, you were always keen to be testing out consumer grade technologies, modelling delays, wearables, trying out new apps, is there anything you're trying out at the moment? Any new apps or wearables that you're keen on?

Glen de Vries  35:34  
Yeah, it's actually, I've been using my Apple watch a lot. As soon as the lockdown stuff started, it was such a good way to keep yourself honest about moving around and doing stuff at home. I've really been enjoying the apropos to being productive sleep tracking, I am not sure how that is going to be connected to various diseases and health management from a final mathematical perspective. But I am emotionally convinced I that hypotheses related to that are worth spending time on. So I've gotten pretty into the sleep tracking with with the Apple Watch. And trying to use that on a regular basis. And I continue to be disappointed by the market not coming out with a wearable that does everything that the Apple Watch does without a screen. That would mean to me the perfect device. But

Jonathan Stone  36:24  
do you still have the ring? I seem to remember you wearing that for quite a while? Yeah. So

Glen de Vries  36:27  
I was I was really into the the motive ring for a while. Then the company I think sold itself to somebody, it still works. But it doesn't quite do as good a job with with some of the data that it looks like the Apple Watch. Continued, obviously to get better and better. But now the ring was great. It was the closest thing to somebody just forgot about it. The best tracking is tracking you don't have to actively participate in. Yeah. And so I still get annoyed that I've charged. Yeah, I probably shouldn't be annoyed about that. But you know, I would rather have the patch or an implant that just puts that data somewhere for me to look at later. What are you wearing? You got anything on.

Jonathan Stone  37:06  
In actual fact, I'm wearing a Samsung smartwatch. Now, I know if you'd ever discovered that in the early days of metadata, Glenn, you maybe wouldn't have hired me because I wasn't wearing apple. I felt like I had to maybe hide that from you for a while.

Glen de Vries  37:21  
We need a diverse environment. devices from different companies, we all make each other better. So choice is important. But I will tell you, it's the kind of thing delights me about Apple. So you have Apple stuff all over my house. And my alarm went off in my bedroom this morning, I was already awake. And I was in the kitchen. And I tried to as I have for now months to kind of throw my voice down the hallway to tell Siri to turn off my alarm in my bedroom. But for the first time ever, Siri in the kitchen device responded. And she asked me if she wanted me to judge if you wanted to if I wanted to be bedroom alarm to be turned off? And I said yes. And it turned off. And I thought that is why I love Apple like people, people look at the flashy stuff. But any company that invests in the little things like that, and finds ways to really make their products better, that will matter to people in subtle ways. I really respect that. So since we're talking entrepreneurs, in some cases, make Siri turn off the bedroom alarm from other rooms. Yeah, metaphor.

Jonathan Stone  38:32  
And then I guess you had like Facebook ads that appeared about 30 minutes later for alarm clocks that just suddenly appeared on your phone.

Glen de Vries  38:40  
Though Siri just heard me talking to words.

Jonathan Stone  38:48  
Just a couple more practical questions, as metadata has risen the ranks of this industry. You've been fortunate enough to give talks all over the world on all kinds of topics in all sorts of engagements, speaking gigs, and conferences, I think it's safe to say that you've essentially mastered the art of a speaking gig and you're infectiously good at that. I'm interested to hear a little bit about how much do you prep for for speaking gigs these days? Are there any rituals or things you do to get yourself on that stage and in that zone? And do you still ever get nervous before you go up on stage?

Glen de Vries  39:23  
Well, first, thank you. And no, I don't really get nervous. I will tell you the one exception to this rule in a second. But no, usually I'm not. And it has gotten easier over the years from a prep perspective because a lot of the stuff I talked about not today not knowing what we were going to talk about in a good way. But you know, if somebody asked me about the future of life sciences or something about big data products or strategy, obviously I've talked about it so much that I have a lot of material to go to. But I think I think one of the things that I've learned is, at least from me and people are different. Preparing too much is not helpful. And when you realise that you've got command of the material, and you got to know your material, you're comfortable telling people that you don't know the answer to something. An anecdote I, one of my favourite presentations that I gave was at a conference in cardiology, and I knew nothing about anything that was going on in the conference. And so I started my presentation by saying, so I'm just telling everybody that I know, cardiology, and then tried to capture their interest by giving examples of oncology that were related to what they were doing, and I've done my homework on that. But if you gotta be gotta be you, you got to be comfortable. But then, but then No, I don't get I don't get nervous. One time I do get nervous is we do a lot of stuff in metadata with, with high school kids, where they'll come in and do a summer internship programme, something like that, and find in front of them too. But then there's usually some kind of graduation ceremony, where it's them and their parents. I don't know why I would maybe some, some psychologist who's listening can tell me, but the idea of talking to kids and their parents for some reason. I actually find like, I'm like, oh, what am I gonna say? Am I get this right? Do I start crying? Do I know what I'm going to talk about? Do I have the material ready. Other than that, it just doesn't matter. And I think in in life, and this applies to, as you and I were, like, at the corner of a table one year talking about biology, I think over dinner one night, or you know, in a in a town hall meeting, or doing a podcast with friends or doing a TV show people you ever met, I think the more you're comfortable just being yourself. The probably the more engaging, it's going to be even when you introduce you're like I love this podcast, you know, super casually which obviously, we know each other we should instead of like a Linda breeze is the CO CEO and co founder of media data.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai