Last Friday, on a frigid February morning, ninety Michigan leaders arrived at Zingerman’s Roadhouse to mingle and to learn. They were there to attend Rob Pasick’s Leaders Connect breakfast and listen to Ann Marie Sastry, President & Co-Founder of Sakti3, Inc.
After a 17-year career, Sastry gave up her tenured professorship at the College of Engineering at University of Michigan to become CEO at Sakti3, which she had founded years earlier as a student laboratory project. In 2015, Sakti3, a solid state battery pioneer, was named as one of MIT’s 50 Smartest Companies and a 101 Best and Brightest Company. Sastry sold her company in 2015 to the British inventor, Sir James Dyson, who built the vacuum and the company that bears his name. Dyson plans to keep and grow Sakti3 in Ann Arbor. Sastry was one of 30 early-stage tech entrepreneurs from around the country invited to the first White House Demo Day in Washington, D.C.
At the end of her talk, I asked the participants to share with me their major key learnings from the morning. Here are the top 10 key learnings from Dr. Sastry:
1. Don’t ask, “What are you achieving?” – Ask, “What is your contribution?” (a good way to
reframe the idea, since focusing on your contribution connects you with your passion).
2. In order to innovate, you cannot play it too safe – you have to LEAP!
3. Core of Entrepreneurship: “The belief you can pull off something impossible”.
4. You can develop and build empathy: empathy is a set of competencies.
5. The need for sufficient empathy is to understand your audience.
6. Courage is not being afraid. Courage is doing it anyway.
7. Embrace failure: it is a part of the process, but at the same time understand the science of pivoting.
8. Always think about who you are developing and helping to grow.
9. In order to retain people and build authentic relationships, you must take care of them
(wages, benefits). It pays huge dividends to the company by better morale, commitment of
employee(s), creates lifetime friendships and creates community, in house and out.
10.There is an art to knowing when to pivot and when to stop beating your head up against the wall.