From NASA to Innovation: Dr. Alex Mehr's Journey in AI Entrepreneurship

Well, after a major business exit, you had already achieved success that most entrepreneurs dream about.

So talk about what this taught you about money, happiness, and what life has to offer.

You know, my perspective on it has changed so much.

I'm in my forties.

Now, when I started entrepreneurship, I was in my twenties.

Um, I didn't grow up in a family that cared about money.

They were more about academia.

And when I started entrepreneurship, it wasn't really about money either.

It was about the challenge of building something new.

But when you go into the competitive world of business, the world around you makes you focus on money.

And I'm not saying money is not important.

A business obviously needs to make money to survive, but it's easy to get drawn in and confuse necessity with goal, okay? So revenue and money and income for people and businesses is a necessity, but it cannot be a goal.

Like if you are thinking about becoming an entrepreneur just to make money, I think the likelihood of your success actually goes down.

I think the right way to think about it is I always tell people, look, I'm in my 40s.

I've done a lot of things.

I've lived many lives.

And I've come to the conclusion that the thing that gives me pleasure more than anything else is creation.

I think the purpose of life is to create things and hopefully create things that outlast you.

They remain after you're gone.

So when I think about business, I don't think about, oh, what should I do to make money? I think that's a bad question to ask yourself.

I think the question you have to ask yourself is that given what I'm good at, my unique talent and gifts, what is something I can create that other people will appreciate? And as a side product, byproduct of that, it will generate revenue and income for you.

That's I think the right framework to think about these things versus, oh, what is the next thing I should be doing to make money? Every time I fell into that trap because of the atmosphere that entrepreneurs are in, I failed.

Every time I went back to my roots, which is what is a cool thing I can create that helps people? it succeeded a lot more often when I went into that mode.

Does that make sense?

Yeah, it actually does.