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Thomas Tull, welcome to Stanford University in Systems Leadership.
It's nice to have you back.
>> Thanks, Rob, great to be here.
>> So tell us a little bit about Tulco, you've started this new company.
What are you up to?
>> Well, one of the things that struck me at Legendary,
in my last company, was using technology.
In that case, data analytics and
data mining to have a pretty profound impact on our business.
Principally, what we started with was advertising in a different way,
deploying our capital in a different way and using data and
analytics to insert ourselves into the decision-making process.
So one of the things that occurred to me is if you could use technology,
whether it's data, machine learning, artificial intelligence.
To go into businesses that are not normally known for
innovation, you could have a pretty material impact.
So that's really the thesis of Tulco, looking for
companies in traditionally large but sleepy spaces.
Being able to use innovation and technology to change the way
they do business, and hopefully get a material impact.
>> So how do you find these companies, and how do you know that they're right for
digital transformation?
>> Well, I mean, there's no garden variety way that we're finding these companies.
We're getting inbound phone calls.
We're looking also, different sectors that we think are interesting.
But as important as anything, is finding managers,
finding management teams with very deep domain expertise within these industries,
that then you can back with capital wherewithal and technology.
>> So how do you find these companies adapt to and bring in new technologies,
like artificial intelligence and machine learning to improve their businesses?
What's that process like?
>> Well, as part of that checklist you have to make sure the management team
embraces using technology.
And in cases where we feel really good about the match it's
somebody that says, look we're really good at our business.
We know our market inside and out.
But if we just had not only the right capital, but we know there's probably
a smarter way to do things, but we just don't have that expertise.
So when you can then empower those management teams and work with them,
because we don't run the companies, they do,
that's where we're seeing pretty great results.
>> You have a team behind you that's got a strong technical background and
technical expertise.
How do you get comfortable knowing about the company,
whether it's a good acquisition target when you're not from that sector?
>> Well, I think it's a number of things.
We've developed sort of a checklist to at least be a bit
of a candle in the wilderness for us.
Now none of these things are ever going to be perfect, right?
But for us, there's a number of different attributes that make sense.
And as you can imagine, in most cases we're not moving ahead, right?
It's not a venture fund where we're just laying bets down.
We typically buy entire companies or big stakes in companies.
So we don't want to do so many that we can't be effective, but
it's hard to come up with sort of a one size fits all.
You sort of know when you see it.
You want to make sure that it's checking all the boxes that are important.
You love the management team.
You have a shared philosophy on how you're going to go forward, and
then at the end of the day are big this is can we cause outcome, right?
Not be good pickers, but cause outcome.
Please you're moving your family from Southern California back to Pittsburgh
where you're from originally.
Why'd you chose Pittsburgh as opposed to the bay area or Boston or
some other part of the world?
>> Well, look I'm an East Coast guy, I bleed black and
gold obviously with the stairs.
But one of the things that has been unbelievable,
Is to watch the transformation that the city of Pittsburgh is undergone.
Really pivoting from industry in to a bio-med, incredible technology hub and
Carnegi Mellon University is really right in the center of that.
And is doing some incredible work around machine learning and AI
>> So you went from laundromats and
the movie industry, and now to factories and automation, and industries.
Some of them you said were non-sexy, how did you come up with this idea to go from
what you were doing before with Legendary to this particular opportunity?
>> Well, I think, in my mind, almost every sector of our economy
is going to be touched in some way by AI, robotics, technical innovation.
And watching it both in terms of what we did at Legendary and
then in some of the personal investments I had made,
If you can really force multiply, it got me really excited about it.
It's challenging, different problems every day.
I get bored easily, so being able to have different problem sets to
try to tackle all the time was exciting to me as well.
>> So Thomas Tull you're on the tip of the arrow looking from the financial and
investment side of the digital industrial transformation.
We really appreciate your coming to Stanford and
telling us a little bit about what you're up to.
>> Thanks, Rob. >> Thanks so much.
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