Less screen time, more lifetime 📍 | Lara Varjabedian

I kind of always knew it's gonna be hard. And I guess that until you really go through those tough times, you can't imagine it. Like, it's like when someone that you know, that you're very close to, is going through some pain because something bad happened and you try to imagine it, how painful it can be. But then until it doesn't happen to you, you cannot feel that pain as much. So it's like a little bit. The same way. You have to really be in it to really understand how much like resilience, persistence it requires.

Most people talk about connection, but this week's Millennial Master builds it. Lara Vajabedian is the founder of Ubiquiti, a platform reconnecting people in real life. Lara spent 13 years in the global corporate world, then helped scale VC-backed startups before launching her own. She bootstrapped Ubiquiti from Dubai, raised $750,000 pre-seed, and is now building one of the fastest growing social products designed off social media. In this episode, we talk about how to build momentum When you don't have runway. What founders get wrong about fundraising and MVPs. And why the future of connection is offline, not online. Millennial Masters is brought to you by Jolt. Fast, reliable web hosting built for founders. Whether you're launching a WordPress site or scaling an app, Jolt gives your project a rock-solid home starting from just £3.95 a month. You'll get 99.99% uptime, support in under 30 seconds, and flexible payment options including Bitcoin and Amex, so you can rack up those points while you build. Get your first 3 months free at jolt.co.uk. Smart hosting for people building what's next.

Lara, welcome to Millennial Masters. How are you today?

I'm very good. Thank you, Daniel. Thank you for hosting me. I'm very excited about this.

Likewise. So I know, Lara, you've been for 13 years in the corporate world. Then you worked for some fast and scaling and growing startups. Then you worked with startups consulting them yourself before you started your own. Let's run a bit through this journey and some of your learnings and takeaways from that.

Sure. So I started my career in insurance in employee benefits. I was 10 years with Generali. They sent me all over the world. I was a little bit in the US and then I was 3 years in Hong Kong, came back to Europe. Was then responsible for quite a big portfolio and was super interesting because different markets. There is nothing better than working with the entire world, really. I think you learn so much from working with different cultures that I think that's the biggest value you can get to understand business development and how to position things. And for me, it was super interesting. I was selling in Japan in a market where all the prices were the same. From one insurer to another. You couldn't even make any discounts, which was quite interesting to, you know, win new clients and so on. Very interesting experience, super international. Then decided to, you know, learn something new in the insurance industry, moved to trade credit insurance and political risks back in London. That's what brought me to London with Coface and spent then 3 years there. Was very interesting. So that was the first time So before that, I was selling the same thing, but in different markets. This time I was selling a completely different product in the insurance world. And it's really like 180 degrees. And that was very interesting because I didn't have any expertise. So I had to find a way where I can speak with top risk managers from the largest multinationals and how to bring them the business home. So starting from scratch in that sense was, was a great learning curve. And, um, And after those 3 years, I was in total 13 years in corporate. I was feeling like I was always an entrepreneur. I was always like, you know, not the regular type of employee you can find in a corporate world. And I always felt like I'm more made to the, uh, you know, fast-growing, agile-based type of, uh, of environment. And I really wanted to move to the startup world. And I got this amazing opportunities with Prenetics then. In the beginning, I was a bit surprised that we called me for that because, uh, uh, it was an ex-colleague of mine that told me, hey, there is this company, they're looking for someone, I think you would be perfect. And I was like, what do they do? And he's like, genetic testing. I was like, really? Interesting. So for me, it was really, again, going in a totally different direction after Tricre Insurance, moving to genetic testing. People were thinking I'm a bit crazy. And I had a great experience there because being in a startup doing everything going so fast, seeing 360 degrees of your deal was a great learning curve with an amazing team as well. And that was, yeah, very fulfilling. It wasn't simply like joining the startup world. It was joining the startup world in a very high speed, you know, and jumping, jumping in on the train while, uh, what it was like full speed, which was very interesting. And we did great, uh, great things. And eventually in 2020, You know, when COVID was hit and they completely changed, you know, their product, they completely changed their strategy. And then it was time to let me go as a good leaver. The, and I started then, I was thinking like, should I go back to the insurance world or should I take this opportunity to do my own thing? And in this case, I thought, you know what, it's the perfect opportunity to, to try to do my own thing. And I launched a consultancy firm called Kojo. When I was back in London, I was working with insurtech and healthtech startups that were trying to partner with insurers, but don't understand the insurance world because they, most of them were not coming from the insurance world.

So your first business was merging your experience from the insurance world with your experience in working in a startup in the health industry.

Exactly, exactly. And I had a lot of insights, you know, from understanding what insurers have already tried, what they like, what they don't like. I knew the teams. You know, I could make like matchmaking basically. I was, I was a matchmaker between, between insurtech and healthtech startups and the insurance innovation world. And I've done that for a few years. Uh, it was going very well and it was very interesting because it was very various. I was supporting different startups at different stages, specializing in go-to-market, strategic partnerships, and even fundraising. And then, yeah, I moved to Dubai for 2 weeks. Stayed there, you know, until now, actually never went back to London.

And, uh, and, and I think weather played a part.

Yeah. And, uh, it was during the second lockdown in COVID in 2021. And I was thinking, you know what, uh, I arrived here for 2 weeks anyway. They, they, uh, British Airways sent me a cancellation of my flight. The ban was there at the time. So it was like faith and, you know, not having the choice anyway. So it was a mix of both. And so I was then thinking like, you know, in the region, in MENA, there was also a lack of support in the insurtech and healthtech world, and it was just starting as well. So I felt like I could face to face, like help the region while I'm also doing supporting like the startups., um, from all over the world from there. And, um, and yeah, fast forward, I also started a venture studio called Thought on Paper. And, uh, and Ubiquiti was, uh, one of the first ideas, uh, that came out of that venture studio because I actually met my co-founder at the time that I knew from before, but we kind of lost track from each other. We knew each other from a very long time. We have a very similar background. We grew up in Africa. We lived in Europe. We lived in Asia. When we were back in Asia, we were actually seeing each other whenever one was going to Shanghai or Hong Kong and so on. Um, and then we lost track of each other and, uh, and we just, when I was then in Dubai, he reached out to me saying, I can't believe you're in Dubai as well. It's been a year I'm here. And we reconnected this way. We didn't know that we were both in the same city for an entire year. And when that happened, it triggered something that, you know, we had an idea about before, but that really triggered the, the, the birth of, I would say, Ubiquiti.

And let's talk about Ubiquiti then, because it's an app and a platform for people to meet and arrange in real life to reconnect, but it's different from the feeds and the algorithms of traditional social media. Tell me, What's the special concept behind Ubiquiti and what's different about it?

Yeah, so Ubiquiti is designed for in real life only, and to design a solution for in real life, we get to understand where people are, when they will be, either now or in the future, to allow that reconnection in person. And when we say in the future, it can be either in a city you're visiting, a conference you're going to, It can be very different things. So the design of the app being to catch up with each other makes that it's very different because you don't have the same usage as when you consume social media nowadays, which is a lot of scrolling time where you have a lot of sponsored suggested content for you, which ends up to be more disconnected with each other. Someone gave me a very good example. Once I was having a coffee with that person and he said that, um, he went on Facebook the other day and he said that he went through 22 posts before seeing a post of one of his friends.

Mm-hmm.

22. Uh, a couple of weeks later, I thought about that again and I thought, really? Like, that's a lot. So I went on Facebook. Now Facebook is listening to us, by the way, so they're going to kind of change this for me. But when I went on Facebook and I really scrolled through what was sponsored, what was suggested, the reels in between, everything in between, and it was exactly 22 posts before I got to something that was from one of my friends. This makes that, you see, we're super disconnected with our current tool nowadays, just because they, they really moved into becoming something else. And, you know, we actually, when we first connected, we're talking about NCTification and that's exactly what's happening on those social media platforms is that by having a business model that is based on, you know, paid ads, being so strong on that monetization, it's very difficult for them to do it differently right now. And it's time to, you know, bring the in real life trend back with solutions where social is what we put at the core. And for social to be at the core, it means no media, no photos, no likes. You know, I have some friends that told me, I see sometimes like you're adding a trip on Ubiquiti and I'm going to, I want to like it. And I feel like frustrated that I can't. And I'm like, we did this on purpose because it's not about, you know, saying that you're going to be in London from that day to that day to show off. It's actually. To call, it's a call to action to catch up. And when you put your trip that you're going to be in London, what happens is that you see who's going to be in London as well, either people that are based there or people that are traveling there at the same time. The whole purpose is to catch up, which, by the way, when I was last time in London, it was amazing because I catch up with a friend of mine that lives in New York. He used to live in London and that's great because, You know, those moments that you can lose them, you can miss them. And Ubiquiti is all about not missing those moments, either for your personal life or for your professional life, which becomes, you know, an opportunity for you to make, you know, potential business networking and so on.

But also your business contacts and also personal contacts would need to be on the Ubiquiti app as well in order to see that you are going to a particular conference event or gonna be in one place.

Exactly. So what we have done to kind of break down that barrier is that whenever you get on Ubiquiti and you add a catch-up, you can share that link as an external link to someone that receives a catch-up, and that person will open a catch-up, will see a place, a date, a time, can either accept And by accepting is halfway into ubiquity, by the way, because now we have just launched our web app, which means that you don't have to download the app anymore. You can just log in and then sign up and then, and then be on the platform, which is, I think, a huge change and a, and a benefit because I think that a lot of people have this friction about downloading the app. And so, which means that if you add a trip, you can share the link. If you add a catch-up, you can share the link. If you're going to attend a conference, you can share a link. So we did everything so you can, you as a user, be interacting with non-users. The second thing we did to kind of go over that barrier of the network effect that we all know when you're starting a new social platform is that we created community feature. And this community feature is about allowing you to go on and if you're a community owner, or if you actually have some WhatsApp groups, which we all have, you can create a community out of that WhatsApp group and you can share the link and you can bring everyone on that community. And I give you an example. If you have a group called Founders in London, if you have a group called Guys Playing Paddle, whatever it is that your group is like, Female Founders, whatever it is. That you're part of, and most of us are part of actually a lot of group chats on WhatsApp. All this can become a community on Ubiquiti without replacing WhatsApp group, but by complementing it, because we're here for a very different pain point. We're here because on WhatsApp, as a group, if you say that, hey guys, who's around now? I'm at this pub. Who wants to catch up? It's diluted in a group of, you know, 250 to 1,000 people, depending on the size of the group, and completely lost. And a lot of people mute, so either they see it too late.

Yeah, because groups can be very, very busy places and you could get constant notifications on your phone and most people mute the groups and do a catch-up at a particular time.

Exactly. So when you are getting on Ubiquiti, you can not only use those features and share them as a link, but you can also create a community and just share it as a link to get those people from the same community to join and focusing on, you know, really catching up in real life and keep that community, getting them, giving them more chances to meet in person rather than just being a chat really.

So what's the hardest part about building communities then, Lara?

Well, the good thing with us is that we're not building communities, we're tech enabling existing communities. And those existing communities can be, I give examples, MBA alumni have all like WhatsApp groups, you know, the LBS, the INSEAD, the Stanford, they all have like WhatsApp groups and, um, they have the same issue we were just mentioning before. Uh, so by the way, next week we're doing a catch up with, uh, both Stanford alumni and Friends of Ubiquiti as a common common community catch-up. So this is a very good example. Then you have the Xooglers, for instance, that is one of our communities, the chapter in the UAE. It's all the ex-Google employees. Xooglers is quite a big thing, by the way. If you can see, xoogler.co is like a huge community of 33,000 ex-employees of Google, of Google. And they're like getting the leverage from being ex-Google to stay connected, support each other, really tap into their social capital. A lot of them are starting their own startup. A lot of them can come in, come in as teams, so they can team up to co-found startups. They can join startups. They can work together, really have a lot of business synergies, which is very cool. And so if you think about, think about also associations, you think about corporates. So we're talking with quite a lot of corporates right now because working from home has been quite a big thing and is growing. There is no going back to working only in the office. Really, even if some of the governments would like to push for that, or some of the corporates would like to push for that, it's going to be very, very difficult to go back to this. And with taking into account that probably working from home is one of the preferred benefits across generations in a corporate, it means that this is just going to be the way to go and it's going to stay like that. And by the way, UK are quite strong in, in remote working. I looked at some numbers and they're one of the highest You know, percentage of companies having hybrid working policy. And so when you think about—

It must be the transport, as we know, must be the transport and the commuting, especially in London, but even outside of London, you can be sat in traffic for a good hour just to, just to do 4 or 5 miles.

100%. And that's why we're such a good use case as well for companies in London. Because, so what happens is like all those 1, 2, 3 days remote working that is happening in a corporate. You never know which, uh, company, uh, like which employee is going to be in the office or not. You don't bump into each other anymore organically in front of the coffee machine. You don't end up eating your sandwich together or leave the office at the same time and say, hey, let's go for maybe a drink or something like that. So we need more social interactions to really make the company work more together because something very interesting. Very interesting data, by the way, Harvard Business Review article explaining that those moments where there are social, informal social interactions that are not planned are actually moments where employees share, share about what they're doing and then end up to be connecting dots that they wouldn't have connect otherwise and allows cross-pollination of ideas, boosts productivity and boosts innovation. And it has a much more like important impact that we think it has when employees from different departments are mingling. And Ubiquiti enters very well in this for the social capital, but also for the social wellbeing. There is like a very interesting Mercer Marsh Benefits Health Trend saying that 36% of employees feel lonely. 46% think that they have a cognitive decline and that's like mainly done to online content and low quality screen time. And so imagine like if you kind of bring a solution like Ubiquiti to a corporate where we are about less screen time, more life time, spending time together, having informal social interactions, whether it is to have a coffee down the office at, you know, the Pret that is near the office or going for lunch together and so on and so on.

You're right, because I hear it from a lot of friends and acquaintances as well who say that. Even on the days they go to the office, it could be an empty office because you don't know who's going to be there. So having a solution brought on the corporate side through Ubiquiti, say, does make sense because this way you'll know which ones of your colleagues, even from other departments, are going to be in the building that day, especially on the days if you can choose the days you go into the office rather than having particular set days, because I think that's how one, some of the businesses have changed. They made, for example, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, like their office days in order to try and get everybody in. Otherwise people can pick and choose and have different days in or out. But I'm wondering, Laura, because you're in Dubai and you started this business and this startup while you were there, and there's a lot of Talk about entrepreneurs from the UK and around the world moving to Dubai. Can you give us a taste of what is it like? What's the process to start a business and a startup from zero in Dubai?

Sure. You know, first, when you start a startup, the first, the most important thing is not to open your company. It's like you can, you can keep that for a little bit later. First is about knowing, you know, what's going to be your business about, what's going to be, you know, What is it for? What's your MVP? What's your audience? But you know, let's, let's say that all this has been covered and you already have like kind of a startup and you want, you want to think about where to, um, opening your business. Dubai has made like really facilitated, like trying to facilitate opening companies within either Dubai or Abu Dhabi through different free zones, through different, uh, innovation hubs. And they're even now trying to harmonize all this. So when you come to Dubai, you know, what's the best place to, to open, but also very quickly, the ecosystem is very small. So you can also very quickly, um, end up to an event where you can ask people, what do you think? Where is the best? And at the end of the day, it doesn't matter so much where you start, which license you, free zone you, you decide to start with because at the end, you can also put a holdco when the time is important where, you know, you will have then investors that are institutional that will come in. So most, most of the time, then you need to have a license in DIFC or in ADGM. But in the meantime, basically what it does is like you can find what makes more sense depending on the innovation support you can receive around that license. And you have places such as, um, D-Tech, uh, in Silicon Oasis, you have like places such as In5, you have places, you have so many different hubs that are well known that, oh, this is, if you're in crypto, this is better. If you are into Web3, this is better. And, and everybody kind of knows what's supposed to be, you know, the best place for them to, to open the company. And once you're there, honestly, it's just about the fact that there is a very strong ecosystem. There is so many events happening every week. There is so many support that is given by the government to facilitate. Again, they're always trying to make it easier to find what's the best place. At the end of the day, I think what makes the most of Dubai is that you have a very cool launchpad when you're a product. It's not a huge market, but you can quickly, easily access it. And by accessing this market very easily, it can help you test very quickly your product. And the reason is because it's on top of that super international. So when you're trying a type of product and you want to try it on a very international community, well, Dubai is really good for that.

And in a way, Ubiquiti is aimed at those global citizens like you were yourself traveling around the world with Ware.

Exactly. Dubai is 98% of, of expats. And without just counting how many conferences there are here a year, how many people it brings to Dubai, like how many people come, uh, pass by Dubai, also stop, uh, layovers from, you know, from between Asia and Europe, conferences, the, the, the number of people that pass through Dubai is just huge. And, and it's the perfect place as well to have a product like Ubiquiti. Why? Because when you're in Dubai and you have either a friend or a professional, like someone for your professional network reaching out to you and saying, hey, I might be in Dubai in May, are you going to be around? First, when in May? And second, I have no clue. Just add your dates on Ubiquiti and I know that you're, you know, going to come to Dubai and I, and I will just send you a catch-up if I'm actually here as well at the same time. And then what is great is that at some point, you know, in the year, I had this people near you soon, and I had Dubai, and there was this person from that day to that day, that other person from that day to that day, and I could see everything, like all the people that are gonna be here, and I can organize myself based on that as well, because when it's lost in a message on LinkedIn, or when it's lost in a WhatsApp chat, you will never end up remembering that.

If you don't action it straight away, no, you won't remember it. So collating that is important. How are you looking at expanding Ubiquiti so then you can maybe make new connections, especially for the business world? Because like you said, in a place like Dubai and even in London and New York, you want to make new business connections as well.

Yeah. So by the way, Ubiquiti is already global. So we are based in Dubai, but we're already a global app. Our top 5 countries are UAE. US, UK, France, and Belgium. And those have really like, it grew organically, but it's also because the DNA of the people using Ubiquiti are people that are all over the world as well, and that are global citizens that travel quite a lot and so on. So, so yeah, it's, and by the way, we had a very good example. It happens every day on LinkedIn, but that one was so good. It was someone from Dubai. That was saying that he's just like on board to go to San Jose and he's going to be in the Bay Area for 5 days and he would like to connect with VCs and entrepreneurs. And you see, when you have a community like the one we have created for STEP, for instance, which is a conference that happened in Dubai, but it's also happening in August in SF, where we're going to be, where we're going to be the official app of the event. So we have this community and What is amazing is that this committee started with the first event in Dubai and then is now growing with the other event in SF, which makes that when you join the STEP community, if you are a founder or an investor, if you then fly to another, after SF, you go back to Dubai, someone from SF visits Dubai later on, they can catch up with the people from the community. If they fly together to Doha to go to another conference or Riyadh to go to another conference, they can again bump into each other because they're going to know that there is an overlap and they're going to be there at the same time. And so I land somewhere and I see, oh, one from, uh, alumni from my university is here. Someone from, uh, this community is there and so on and so on. So when you, I feel, world of ubiquity is that you land anywhere in the world and you can see people that are from your meaningful communities, um, who's there at the same time, and you can catch up with them and create some magic.

Let's go back to a bit more practical stuff as well, building this Ubiquiti, because I know you bootstrapped the MVP and then you opened your pre-seed round. So I'm wondering, what were your lessons and learnings from this transition of self-funding to pitching to angels? And what made you confident or what was the need? To begin that journey?

Sure. So, I mean, for any startups, um, usually like when you want to get some angel investors, it's good to have already an MVP, right? The places in the world where you still invest based on an idea and just a pitch deck is in the US. But to be honest, the rest of the world, you will not see anyone really raising money if they haven't already something to show to the investors, right? Even if they're angels. So it's true that getting that MVP done first is important. And I think nowadays creating an MVP could be quite cheap as well, because it doesn't have to be something that expensive. I think, you know, we're, I was talking about the fact that we're launching our web app. We should have started probably with a web app. We shouldn't have started with an app. It would have been cheaper as well. But anyway, we did it this way.

So that's a good reflection for people to keep in mind if they're looking at starting an app or a platform of any kind. A good reflection to share. Start with a web app and then start adding your apps. I'm assuming building the apps, well, even from my experience, building the apps was the more expensive and complex procedure, especially if you do iOS and Android at the same time compared to starting with a web app.

100%. And I couldn't like repeat that enough because I have some friends of mine that are like, uh, you know, uh, founders of businesses and they say, oh yeah, so I'm going to create an app. It's like, no, don't do a web app. It will do it as well. You can use it on any devices. Just don't push now for the app, push it for later. So yeah, so once you have that MVP.

Or at least for the MVP stage, it's good to have a web app.

100%. And then obviously Ubiquiti, by the way. It's better experience on an app because you can have also the geolocation, push notifications, and a lot of things, obviously. But some other solutions can, you know, be completely fine without being an app. So yeah, so from there, when we started to pitch, we knew very quickly that we needed money anyway. We couldn't like, you know, we had to raise. And we started our pre-seed the day we launched the business. So, um, we pushed the app, we, and we started to talk to, uh, two angels and we've raised, uh, $750,000. $250,000 last year on our pre-seed. And yeah, it was an emotional rollercoaster really, because you never know, you know, are you going to be able to close, not close, close in time?

Were the funders in the pre-seed round, were they from the Middle East region? Were they from around the world or where did you focus?

So it really came first from, you know, family, friends, and people we were bumping into when we are, when we were like at an event, like I have one of my angels that I met at an event and then the week after he was in to invest when we met for coffee for 30 minutes. So, uh, so it's just like depends really, but most of them are really friends, I would say. And they were, it's, it's across like Hong Kong, Singapore, Dubai, Riyadh, um, London, Brussels. Yeah. Many different cities, they're all based from different places and they're very much, have very much this ubiquity DNA, as I call it, because they understand the problem we're solving because they have, they have it themselves. And, and so, yeah, we've been able to, to raise, to raise with them. And then with a few people that we knew less and that came in quite big, which also was very, very nice.

You would have to have some people going quite big if for your pre-seed you raise $750,000. Yes.

Yes, exactly. And those were not like, you know, part of our closest friends or whatever. So that's like nice as well to see this, you know, this trust and coming from those people. And, and yeah, our angels are, you know, have been great, super supportive. I actually just had a call with one of my angels that is, is in London now. And he's one of our most early angels. Investor. I met him for a coffee the week before we were launching. And I, I told him like, look, I'm going to be very busy because I'm doing this. And he said, oh, what is it? And I explained to him, he's like, okay, I'm in. Like, what? We were not even meeting for that. So yeah.

So Lara, you worked with founders for your own consultancy. You worked in a startup and then you built your startup. What was the hardest truth about building a startup that surprised you when you went through it yourself? What was something you weren't expecting?

Well, I kind of always knew it's going to be hard. And I guess that until you really go through those tough times, you can't imagine it. Like, you know, it's like when you, someone that you know that you're very close to is going through some pain because something bad happened and you try to imagine it, how painful it can be, but then until it doesn't happen to you, you cannot feel that pain as much. So it's like a little bit the same way, like you, you have to really be in it to really understand how much, you know, it has, how much like resilience, persistence. Um, it requires how important it is to have a very strong mental, because you literally go through so many ups and downs in half an hour. So it's like, it's not even a day. It's like within half an hour, you can go through ups and downs and, and really, um, you know, going through that roller coaster until you haven't done it really for your own and really, you know, sleeping, waking up, thinking of your runway, thinking of the things you want to close, the frustration you feel, you know, when you're progressing and so on, like things that you would like that go faster, contracts you would like to see signed. That frustration, keeping a poker face when you're talking to investors and potential partners, it's just really, I would say, very energy consuming. And, um, and because something is happening in the back, like, you know, and all the time you basically, now I got used to have two people in my head, the one that is literally has to pitch or have those discussions and so on. And the one that is thinking about, oh yeah, I have to do this. I have to do that. And, and, you know, and running through my head, like all the other things I have in mind. But I think also like when you're someone that is hard on yourself, and I think this is also a very female trait, by the way, which happens a lot to female founders. We're like so much harder on ourselves. It's also very, very bad because on top of all the pain you go through, you're on top of that, take a stick and beat yourself up, which is quite crazy because you always wish you have done better. You always wish you have pitched that better. You always wish you have said that and this. And so it always ends up not to be as good and, um, as you wanted it to be. And you have also to go through your own pain. So if I had to really give an advice to any founders, not only the female founders, but especially them, because they're very bad at that. You know, it's like the same way that when a woman or a man look at themselves in the mirror, like the woman, she will see all her flaws. She will be happy with nothing. And a man will like, well, okay, you know, it's fine. I look good. It's a kind of thing.

I wouldn't say that's 100% accurate, at least on the men's side. Everybody sees things differently, but maybe, maybe it's the outside confidence that they exude that might not betray their inner feelings.

True, true, indeed. And so, um, so yeah, so I guess that the rollercoaster of emotion, the poker faces, the, the being hard on, on, on yourself because you always want to make things happen and fast. And well is really, and really like constantly knowing that you have a runway and taking away that stress from your brain, really leaving aside, you have to leave aside the stress of the runway. You have to leave aside the stress of not having been happy enough with everything you have done in a day. And when you have something that happens that is bad, like, you know, something you wanted to happen and it doesn't happen. You really like, it puts you down. And I actually realized that, and it can really sometimes like come at a bad time because you're like, oh my God, really? Why? You know? So I think that what I've, what I'm doing is that everything, some like a bad news happens, something that I wanted to happen doesn't happen or is delayed. What I do is that I reach out to 10 potential partners or 10 potential investors. And then I'm thinking, okay, something bad happened now, but I just opened 10 more opportunities to sign a deal or, you know, to have a, a new investor. So in a new investor discussion even, but you know, at least compensate the bad moments quickly with something that can, you know, open you more opportunities.

And that's what I wanted to ask. How do you handle that? Because I know there's a lot of ups and downs and there's a lot of rejection that you have to get through, especially when you're fundraising. And how do you deal with that? But from what you told me, it looks like when, when that happens, you basically double down on it and go even further and reach out to even more people.

Yeah, that's like definitely one way. Another way is that I was thinking I have to go back to boxing because punching with a ball, like punching a bag would really be helpful. I think mental health-wise, it's one of the nicest things to do when you like boxing. I used to box a lot when I was in London.

Mm-hmm.

I loved it and I kind of lost it since I came here because you make an exercise, but at the same time you really, you know, like let everything out that is frustrating you. And, and, and, and that energy out is just like absolutely amazing. So I really have to go back to that. Otherwise I do like high intensity workouts. Um, I'm not a yoga person. I'm not a mindfulness person. I'm trying now to, I'm trying now to breathe more. Like, you know, when you take like deep breaths, um, to calm down or before something or whatever, just like. Trying to, to be more doing like breathing exercises, but I'm really not apart from that. I would, you would never see me, you know, starting to do yoga or mindfulness and like meditation. It's not my thing at all. I need to, to go hardcore on the HIIT exercise, boxing or something like that.

So what other daily routines or habits do you have, Lara, that keep you productive and sane, especially when things can go crazy in business?

Well, again, I think exercise is the, is the best thing to do. I would say I'm not very good at it because I, I used to be very good at it, but I kind of have been so busy, jump on the, you know, on the laptop, the first thing in the morning, working, working, working. So I think for productivity, really, as a founder, you have to be able to do so many things at the same time and just be okay with it. And if, you know, it doesn't matter that you have to, like, I have to answer to so many WhatsApp messages, emails, phone calls, everything at the same time, reach out to people, answer to people and so on. And I think that the best thing is to really get the maximum you can done in a day, but also at some point when you reach your limit of thinking, okay, I've done so much today, now it's time to stop. Is to find a time to stop because there were moments where I was stopping, that time was like 11:30 PM or midnight, which is crazy because then your brain is like, you know, heating so much and you have to calm down. So then you have to maybe have a half an hour of Netflix or something that brings you somewhere else so you can go to bed and, you know, have like kind of cleaned your head. And so it's much better to stop earlier. So you can clean your head by going and meeting friends or, you know, having like on the phone with one of your like family member, friends or whatever. Then really stopping working and just going to bed. That's like the most horrible thing. It usually doesn't happen. Then you're like, actually, I dream of Ubiquiti every single night for sure. Like I, and I even remember my dreams and it's all night long. I feel like I'm dreaming Ubiquiti and working on Ubiquiti all night long. That's like a fact, but at least if you can clean a bit your head, not worrying about what happened, but just thinking, you know, forward. It was something that I was applying, by the way, when I was a kid, you know, this first day before your first day at school after summer. When you're— yeah, you're always super stressed as a kid to when you go to bed the first, before the first day, because you're so You have like, you're a bit anxious. Who's going to be my teacher? Am I going to be in the same class with my friends? And so on and so on. And the best thing to, to, you know, and I applied this type of thinking always is that not thinking about the future because future brings you like anxiety, but think about I've done this, I've done that. I'm satisfied because this happened, that happened, and let's call it a day and really end the day with the thought that whatever you've been doing is good enough, but not think about the next day or the next week or the next month, because otherwise you just don't sleep properly. And sleep is very important for functioning like all day long at high, high speed thought and everything.

Well, I think that's a great thought an idea to leave people with Lara as we wrap up our conversation. Everybody I've spoken to told me that sleep is super important. If you don't get enough of it, then you're not going to be a productive human being the next day. And I think a lot of people will struggle with thinking, have I done enough today? Have I achieved enough this week? And in a way, it's reassuring to know that everybody feels the same way at the end of the day. But without switching off one way or another, you're not going to be productive the next day. So thank you so much, Lara, for sharing your journey and your lessons so far. And I can't wait to see where Ubiquiti is going to go next.

Perfect. Thank you so much, Daniel. It was a pleasure.

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