Miniseries Tech for Good, Episode 3: From Vision to Vastness

Welcome to Empires of Innovation. We're diving into the worlds of technology, education, impact and more with the dynamic Ozan Sonmes. Ozan has an impressive background ranging from finance to environmental studies, but is most well known in the startup world as a mentor, accelerator builder, corporate innovator and entrepreneurial educator. Throughout this podcast, Ozan will be polling on his decades of experience living and working as angel investor, program director, and more throughout the Middle East, United States and his home country of Turkey. For this series, we're bringing it all together to talk about Tech for a Better Tomorrow, where we question the impact that technology is making today, how to fund and grow more of this impact in the future, and how founders in this field of technology can make it all happen. So let's jump into this episode. Welcome back. Happy New Year. We're recording in 2024 now, which is great. We made it to another year and to another episode to talk about everything related to startups innovations. Tech for a Better Tomorrow. We've already talked with you, Ozan Sonmez, about startups and innovative solutions. We've talked about funding for those innovative solutions, how founders can go about it, how we can work with VCs, investors to prioritize, you know, better ideas for the future. And now we're going to be talking a little bit more about startups and talking about scaling. So that's going to be what, what our discussion is about today. Thanks so much for joining us again.

Pleasure.

Great. All right. So of course, one of the hardest challenges for startups is growing and gaining traction and widespread adoption for their solution or solutions. I think this can probably be an even larger problem for startups who have an impactful mission, where businesses or consumers also sort of have to adopt that impactful mentality to engage with the product to or the solution that that startup or provider is providing. So I think we're going to be talking about scaling solutions, innovative and impactful or not. And I think I want to kick off by asking a pretty broad question, but with someone with your expertise and your global experience, what would you say to how we can bridge the gap between innovative tech for good and their practical implementation on a global scale?

So the big difficulty, I mean, we touched upon this a little bit before. Impact startups have to do different things at different scale than technology startups. So technology startups, of course, for them it's important to be able to plan for scale as well. But impact startups need to also understand the dynamics of customer segment or user segment more detailed in a more detailed way in A more deeper way, because people are people, problems are problems, problems are global, people are generally irrational anywhere. But even that irrationality is regionally focused. Even that irrationality is culturally biased. The difficulty for impact startups is always to spend a lot of time trying to figure out what are the differences in culture, in regulation. That's also same for startups, technology startups, and also different for business models. Most impact startups focus on local impact first, which is perfectly fine. Most technology startups, however, when they want to go to scale, they start thinking about scale very early on. That's not a luxury impact startups have. Impact startups have to focus on local impact, local culture in order to have traction. Most of those impact startups will not survive unless they figure out how to solve a problem in a very limited domain and then scale it different geographically to different geographies. SDGs have 17 different items and of course each one of them has different challenges underneath them. But impact startups especially that are trying to do something on education, which we discussed before, that are trying to do something on healthcare, they are trying to do something on woman issues, that are trying to do something on environment, that, that one especially is very local. So it's very difficult for impact startups to scale. It's more difficult for impact startups to scale. And for technology startups, again, this is not a walk in the park for them either, but it is a little bit more challenging for impact startups, I should say.

So how do you approach startups because you're a mentor and you speak with so many on a daily basis, on a weekly basis, how do you approach startups that haven't considered scaling yet? At what stage do you recommend technology startups to consider scaling and what do you do when it comes to impact focused startups?

So for technology startups, it's easier at the end of the day, they have to have users, they have to have repeat customers, they have to have built a model, an economic model that would work if they choose to scale geographically or vertically in a different business sector. For them, the first priority is figuring out how to go to market in different industries, how to go to market in different countries, even within the same country. They should be thinking about how to go to market in a different city. We're talking about the US US is not a unified market. If you're talking about Europe, Europe is not a unified market. So even if they're in US or in Europe, they can't just say, okay, I'm going to be a European star very easily. So they really need to understand the behavior of customers. And in order to understand that, marketing tests, go to market tests, partnership tests, those take time. So they should be able to spend that time to figure out what worked in one country, will work in another country, will be repeatable in another country. Operation wise, technology wise, it's usually easier because if you have a kind of core operation model, you can take it to somewhere else. Finding people is usually what takes time and what sometimes startups do wrong and then need to fix. But if the core model, core unit economics is working, then there's time to try different things. That's true for technology startups. So those who are able to tell me their go to market strategy that worked, how they're finding customers in their local market or local domestic industry, whichever they chose, if it's replicable, then small tests will do. For impact startups, it's usually very, very difficult because most impact startups start by relying on grants and donations. There are very few impact startups that I've seen over the years that truly start with 100% commercial model. They usually start with a grant, they usually start with an award they got from a social focused competition, or they got from a donor, or they look for donors, individual donors, if it's not B2B donors. And of course for any donor to feel sympathy or to even be eligible to give money to an impact startup, they will need to prove they are on the ground, they're providing local impact, especially grant institutions, government institutions. They will not give you any money if you're just trying to figure out how to impact another geography, another population. So it's very national, border oriented business when you're doing impact. And that's the challenging piece, operations wise. It's more challenging because most impact startups are registered as not for profits in one domicile. And in order for them to operate in challenging environments, they need, they are asked to get regulation approval, regulatory approval, or they need to incorporate their structure in that domicile in order to be eligible to operate, in order to be eligible to ask for funding. And that also requires some time. So technology startups don't have that problem. They're a for profit company, they can operate whenever they want, taxes become an issue, but that's manageable for impact startups. Those kind of limitations and those kind of hurdles are also very important. That's why most startups are trying to choose different models of operation. They try to figure a for profit company which is easier to scale geographically and then attach an impact measure to that. For Profit company. I have seen startups that are zero profit mentality. They're using everything they have to create impact, but they are a profit company on paper, but they have a policy of zero profits. I have seen startups that are having two different entities. One is a not for profit entity, the other is a for profit entity. I have seen startups that are not for profit infrastructures, but underneath them they have economic impact for profit institutions as subsidiary. So social founders, impact founders need to think about these structures. A lot of some countries are able to accept B corps for benefit corporations. That's a different structure of a corporation, but not all the countries allow it. So impact startups have a lot to think about when they want to scale in terms of operations, logistics, regulation and infrastructure.

For sure, it's not easy. It's way more complicated than just making a product and selling it to people, which is complicated in and of itself. Of course. Don't, don't lessen that impact there.

Absolutely.

You've kind of touched on sort of partnerships or grants and some of those avenues that startups can pursue. Can you comment a little bit more about how startups can leverage partnerships and alliances to really like amplify their impact or address global challenges more effectively?

This is a double edged sword for impact startups because they risk being seen and perceived by greenwashing or SDG washing elements that are used by corporations. A lot of multinational corporations have their foundations, their legacy foundations from which they like to do social impact work. Some of them are 100% honest about it, have Chinese roles between how the corporate operates, how the foundation operates. Some of them have endowments which are not going to be taken away a year after of their operation, so they're secure for a certain amount of time. And their mission and vision might deviate from the mission and vision of the corporation. And they usually choose to increase their impact by working on, working with NGOs in the field, working with impact startups in the field. So startups have those opportunities to work with large corporation foundations, which is a really good way to increase partnerships, to increase impact and to increase the focus of their work on a certain niche, certain domain which is important to set a base. If you're an environmental startup, you can't just go around and try. So every environmental problem you need to focus on one thing to start with. And whatever domain you're starting with, there's of course always a larger foundation that has an interest on that domain that you might align yourself really well, or there might be grants, there might be opportunities where it's a little bit more open ended. But you need to tweak your own business model, you need to treat your own application process and impact model to fit into that category to be able to get some resources. So resource efficiency is very difficult for impact startups. Most of these impact startups are living on the edge because if they go corporate, if they go commercial path to become more sustainable, they become mostly ineligible for grants. If they choose a structure only eligible for grants, then it's very difficult for them to focus on commercial activities because they need to get the grant, fulfill the grant and everything should be working towards it, which is usually not scalable. Grants give you room for operation excellency, but they usually don't allow you to invest in a product that you can commercialize afterwards. Grants are short term, not very much of them are long term capacity building grants. It's like this year's grants are going to go to this, this much amount of money you apply, you get the money you finished in a year and towards the end of the year you start panicking because you have spent a lot of time in building that project and finishing it. Now either the corporation foundation or the grant foundation, or the government decisions or projects, priorities change. Now you need to tweak it a little, do something else that you carry forward the human capacity but usually don't carry forward the product itself. And that is a big issue with the technology founders, technology impact founders, because then they just need to feel they're chasing a ghost or chasing their shadow. And those are also very difficult when building partnerships because partnerships want you to create a certain impact and having 100% alignment with what you started as focus to impact might not be there. And this is where it gets tricky. When impact technology, technology impact startups or social entrepreneurs try and figure out how to do partnerships, they might get consumed by that foundation. They might look like they are the second level to that foundation, they might look like they are fed by that foundation and they might lose credibility if that foundation is attached to a company where its main business is not doing well for the society or for for impact. A recent example was in Turkey. UNDP had to withdraw a program from that's been built in partnership with the foundation because the foundation's main holding company was doing everything possible in their hands to destroy a certain, certain area of Turkey for mining practices. So it was really difficult for that project. Even though it's undp, it's not like the smallest technology impact foundation ever. They even had to just consider the foundation is the foundation, but it's carried forward, it's managed, it's owned by the same family or same infrastructure where they're doing something, something very harmful and one hand for profit and then trying to do something completely in a different area. One is an environment, the other is in education. Those, those decisions are very difficult. You want to create impact on education, but the main holding is doing something harmful. So you don't really want to associate yourself with that structure. And that might be very. If this was not your ndp, a normal ngo, normal technology founder would have even more difficulty figuring that out. So partnerships are really double edged sword. But that's usually the safest way to scale your operations, safest way to scale your impact geographically and even topic wise. But it's very dangerous at the same time.

Yeah, for sure. I mean there's also a lot of skepticism I think even in like just generally in the global north with all of these large corporations that always have this foundational offshoot because it's like you look at what their primary business is and it's like okay, pollution is involved or you know, know, bad working practices are involved and their foundation is trying to rectify the bad that they're causing. So I think that's also really tough. Like how can startups kind of manage, you know, the feelings that, that their impact that they're trying to produce is also in alignment with the foundation for sure, but not necessarily the corporation that they get the money from.

That's yeah, really hard, especially when the resources are very limited. And this is when I advise founders to diversify resources. There is no other way to make a healthy organization than diversifying resources. They need to be able to understand what will be at stake. We do it for technology founders as well. Same structures, same problems happen. They try to get a renowned holding company to become their first client. And the holding company does everything in its power, usually, which, I mean that's a topic we can talk about later. The holding company does everything within their power of procurement of structures, of legal to dictate what that partnership will look like. They will dictate what the terms of payment will look like. They will dictate what the legal terms will look like. And founders usually don't have any leverage. So they just want the product, the name and to be able to scale. They need to prove they can work with a large entity, especially B2B, especially industrial technology startups. And they do that. And then all of a sudden they start seeing they've been thrown other things. Yes, some of them are Shiny projects, but that deviates them from the product mindset, but turns them into a third party technology developer for a large holding company. And if they do not understand this risk, they get stuck with that holding company not doing a product, but doing service which is not scalable by default or very hard to scale. Even services are scalable at one point. But they start getting sucked into this relationship and they got fed by this large entity. They can't find other resources to kind of break loose and do what they initially thought would do, which was a product company. Same structure happens. I mean I choose not to name names. But holding companies or large entities who are selling something with sugar inside will fund everything possible on water preservation. And that's a strategic alignment. The foundation is working towards these strategic alliances with lots of NGOs and foundations to be able to make sure their raw material is secure. It's good for everyone, there's no question about that. So it works for everyone. So that's a very clean win, win win situation in a way. But at the other hand, some corporations are using foundations to create a license to operate. License to operate in the sense that license to infiltrate, like mining companies, especially when they want to do an operation or something else. Destroy the earth basically for the sake of materials. Then they start building schools, they start building social projects, they start funding things that have local underground impact and they start hiring people from the local community. And all of a sudden that's a very proven mechanics and tactics most companies have done. And then they start to create this friction within the local community. Oh, we got this nice school, we got this nice hospital, we have some people working in this. So would you like them to be unemployed if this company goes away or doesn't do this? And all of a sudden what will be the purpose of this whole practice is becomes just justification for the large company and NGOs. Technology founders impact. Founders need to be aware of those risks. And the best way to be aware of them is not like not getting in, getting into them at all. Finding resources that do not come with strings attached. Finding resources that actually create value. Win win win value for multiple partners and sticking to that ground. But of course it's easier said than done.

Yeah, and I think that's a good segue to kind of start discussing how you can find those valuable partnerships or collaborations. Is it about depending on your network, finding a good mentor? How do you recommend new founders or startups that are looking to scale? How can they go about this kind of daunting process?

So for technology founders the traditional paths of heavy networking, value creation, doing pilots, getting outreach, finding people that are door openers, that are not hired full time for the entrepreneur, but that will be maybe compensated by commissions or compensated by success. Those are more important. And always and always and always using referrals, always and always using people as champions within institutions. It takes time, but the first 5, 10 in the B2B space, first hundred into B2C space, these people will act like the catalyst to become more scalable. But founders need to be very mindful about those, especially technology founders, engineering oriented founders, forget about these relationship. They feel like, oh, I will build a product, I'll just set it out, I'll do social media, I'll fundraise, I'll do marketing, I'll hire a salesperson. I don't need to deal with this thing called the consumer or the user. They are usually mistaken. Those hundred people are usually very, very, very influential in what the company will be able to achieve going forward. And there are proven practices that that's, that's doable, like having a clear value proposition, having a clear niche, starting with a benchmark, going after, not going after large companies to begin with before it's the product sits well and the product does something tangible, even kind of delaying that conversations with investors until there's like positive unit economics that are going to be proven. Those are very important things for the technology founders. Of course it's difficult geographically to do it, it's difficult to vertically to do it. But it takes time. But it's very doable. There are hundreds of examples that have successfully done that. Impact founders on the other hand are, need to be, are the types of people who need to be much more careful because their impact is at the core of things. So what they need to understand, and sometimes this is, this hurts a lot. They might want to create impact on one domain which might be overcrowded. Technology founders face this problem of overcrowded competition. A lot of people trying to do the same thing with the similar technologies. So that's financial competitive matrixes they need to figure out. But on the other side, impact founders also need to understand where they want to focus their impact on. If they want to focus their impact on environment, they will need to have a much better detailed scan of which elements of environment have been attacked to be sold, which prompts our attack to be sold by the impact technology founders or by NGOs. So all of a sudden if they don't do this, they will start competing with NGOs that are in the field doing Impact for years, more established, more structured, more funded, more operationally resilient. They start going to that direction that all of a sudden they're not competing with something else, they're competing with their own kin almost for the same impact. So they need to be more careful on where they want to focus their attention. And sometimes it's very difficult for them to twist, sometimes it's very difficult for them to pivot. For technology founders, it's much easier. They pivot the industry they want to work in, they start working with construction and all of a sudden they understand manufacturing is the customers they reach out are more keen to start using it from the manufacturing sector. So they can't pivot to manufacturing. But for impact startups, that's very difficult. It's much more difficult than technology founders. So they need to do the preliminary work much deeper. They need to take more time so they don't start competing with people they just want to work with actually. Because eventually technology founders work for money. They are competing for budgets, they're competing for revenue. But impact founders are also competing for the impact itself. They're competing for people that are going to be working for the same impact. They're competing for very limited resources, especially if they're grant seeking enterprises, social enterprises, they're competing for much less resource. And if they choose an area where it's more dominated by larger players, even though that's where their heart is, they will need to pivot, they will need to find other ways, otherwise it will be hard for them to survive, let alone scaling for sure.

Yeah. And I think, you know, we sort of commented on this when we discussed funding in one of the previous episodes. But let's say an impactful startup has had, you know, the opportunity of a lifetime and really does have the opportunity to scale and grow internationally, have impact, you know, globally. How can they make sure that, you know, their core mission of that impact remains intact throughout that scaling process? You know, if they have influences of large corporate foundations, you know, coming into the picture, how can they stay true to that original mission and vision?

It's usually founders oriented, the answer to that question. But the founders need to make sure they have an advisory system, people who would hold them accountable, even though not legally, they might not be legal parts of that institution. They need to work with advisors, they need to work with mentors, they need to work with people that they will get advice from more so than technology founders would. Because when technology founders are scaling, it's usually the same product in a different setting, in a different geography. Maybe in a different regulatory environment, but the product side doesn't change too much, the vision doesn't change too much, the sector doesn't change too much at the first instances. The technology founders also need to have good mentors, good advisors, people they will rely on to help them navigate growth, help them navigate new hiring, help them navigate new market access, help them navigate how to get more funding. But impact founders need to have that ingrained in their decision making process because at the end of the day, it's harder for impact founders to resist some things if they got stuck on resources they feel more responsible for to survive. And I think that's one of the major differences when technology founders fail. They fail at building a product, they fail at building a team, they fail at financially, they usually fail at this. If they got investments, investors lose money, but it's the investor's job to make investments, so they don't mind losing money. Founders take it seriously, especially when they need to downsize, fire people. It's really painful to commit 3 years, 4 years of your time and say it's not working and shut it off. But it is recoverable much easily. If the founders have the right mindset, right support system, they can pick up, they can build something else. When it's the impact founders, their mission is almost like a life machine. Their mission customers, their beneficiaries are people who are having a different life, a more quality life environment is having a more positive growth. Things that are impacting becomes very near and dear to their hearts, more so than their customers of technology entrepreneurs. If a technology stops working, if company stops working or delivering a technology, yes, the users will be upset, but they can live on, they can move forward. But when an impact startup fails to deliver a product, to continue its operations, to stop working in a certain geography, to stop doing a certain technology, or to stop doing a certain operation, the parameter of impact is much larger. That's why for the founders, it becomes more personal. For the group that's in that it becomes more personal. It becomes more difficult to just stop doing whatever they're doing. So they usually give everything they can, their health, their financial means, just to keep it going. Although it's sometimes very obvious for external people like me that it's not working, it's not going to grow or it's not going to work, they're not going to get funding. And if they rely on external funding, it's like they're leaving, they're giving the gun to somebody's hands, they're filling the gun with ammunition. They're gaining kind of putting in their own head and waiting somebody to either shoot or not shoot. If they rely on external funding, sometimes this feels more stressful. Of course, fundraising for technology founders is also stressful. I'm not saying it's easy, but for impact founders, if they feel they let people down, they let the impact down. And that's why they need to be more careful in surrounding themselves with advisors, mentors, people they will trust. When they need to go and make hard decisions on scaling, on working with different partners, they need to have that kind of second and third check embedded in the process of decision making.

Yeah, I mean, I think if anybody's dedicated to making a change, you also have that emotional attachment and involvement. And probably it's. I mean, for a lot of people, it's a problem. For a lot of founders, rather, it's a problem that they face themselves, that they want to see rectified. You know, I think that's a really honorable path to take, but it's, it's not easy when you can't make it happen. And I think, you know, with how the world functions today, how the global economy is, this is not always, you know, the easiest thing to do and it's not always going to happen for sure. Yeah. So I think I have a general question for you. There's sort of a debate going on about like, scaling impact, if it's primarily like a numbers game with, you know, the amount of people that you're actually impacting and giving a benefit towards, or if it's like a qualitative transformation. So where do you really stand on the balance between reaching a wide audience with this impact and this solution versus versus creating deep and meaningful change, maybe in a smaller area or group.

So for technology founders, we tend to focus on a few numbers depending on the business model. Of course, one of them is like monthly recurring revenue or annual recurring revenue. So putting numbers towards growing impact is very easy for technology founders. Usually easy year, nothing's easy but easier because then they can say, okay, last year our annual run rate or annual recurring revenue was 1 million. Now it's 1.5. Next year we're planning to become 2. It's okay. There's an expectation of hopefully exponential growth with technology startups that are have a time element in their growth. Time element is very important also for the impact startups because their impact is usually not quantifiable, as easy as any recurring revenue is quantifiable. We discussed this in one of the previous episodes on output, input, input, output outcome, Impact. So that correlation, some are very easy. You can measure it as equally, as easily as mrr. Like how many people have we trained, how much, let's say food related or waste food related startups, how much waste would be eliminated, how much we prevented. So there's prevention, elimination and creation. So there are different elements. So you can be solving a problem of not being deployed or like solving a problem in a different way. So, so those are easy, but the impact, quantitative impact is very, very difficult to measure within a short amount of time. These things take time of its own, especially when you're dealing with humans. Most easy examples like kind of education, I will create a skills program for underemployed or under educated populations, okay? I will train people, I will fund them a little so they create their own enterprises, micro enterprises, okay? So again like not. We're not at the impact level, at the outcome or output level. And those people who get the training and create their own micro enterprises will become more. Their life quality will increase, okay? Once their life quality increases, they will need to spend less time sending their kids to work and they'll send their kids to school, okay? And those kids will learn and then they will break the cycle of poverty, okay? So the impact is breaking the cycle of poverty, but it takes maybe sometimes generation. There's the famous examples are especially, I mean I worked a lot with environment and waste related projects and I invest in them. Zambalan I think if I'm not mistaken, like there's this group of people in Egypt that are waste collectors. They have a name, they have neighborhoods, they, they survive at that. So there was one person who was really focused on helping the children in those families. And the way she did it was very controversial because she started providing young adults, kids under the age of 18 who are, whose fundamental job is to help the family collect waste to be recycled. She started creating impact by giving safety gloves, by giving these people computer lessons. So they start figuring out, they accumulate how much they're collecting. They start drawing routes on which are more efficient. So from the outside it seems like she's giving them more resources. So they still keep on becoming waste collectors. And that's a big controversial, like, oh, there's our kids. Kids should not be in school, should be in school, should not be on the street. So why are you making these people do waste? Recycling documentation on computers or giving them safety gloves or giving them equipment so they collect better. And her argument was really strong and I was really. Those are one of the few things that I remember in the Social entrepreneur scene that kind of pushed me into that domain. It's like these children will need to eat, will need to have a roof over their head. They cannot break the cycle themselves. They cannot break the cycle. They have to do what their parents said. They can have better health doing it, they can have better negotiation power doing it. They can earn more money doing it because the companies who are working with these recyclers are making a lot of money, intermediaries and everybody else. So her argument was if I make them suffer less while doing a work, it's their work. Now it's their career. If they, I help them do something better in their career. Which makes sense because we do this for all young people. We try to make them better in their career, we try to give them resources so they become better at doing what they're doing, make more money, be more safe and healthy, etc. And if they make more money, if they have access money as supply money, they're not going to survive. They're going to build, accumulate wealth, they're going to accumulate infrastructure, they're going to accumulate know how information. And then, and only then, maybe their children will not be zabali, their children will not be waste collectors. So that's a generational impact. And it's very difficult for technology entrepreneurs. It's easy for technology entrepreneurs to figure this out, but it's very difficult for impact entrepreneurs to figure this out. Human impact takes time. Environmental impact takes even longer time because of the cycles of rebirth and growth. And change takes more time. So technology founders have the easy, easy route on that one. But impact founders will take it really to their heart when they need to quantify impact. But there's nothing here like they can sell the impact in the future. They also have to be very careful in doing that.

Yeah, I mean that's a perfect example for how to think about this and what the difference really is between a regular old technology startup and what a lot of people are trying to do with impact. I think that's a beautiful story. I'm definitely going to look into that because I haven't heard of that, but I have a soft spot for, for waste projects as well. So that's really interesting I think, to really kind of close out this, in my opinion, very thorough conversation about scaling and the differences that are out there between startups. You're an angel investor yourself and you've had the opportunity to proudly fund startups, some that stayed local and some that had the opportunity to scale and grow global. And I think of course Founders should be proud of both, right? To have any sort of impact, to make any money off a product, that's incredible in and of itself. But for startups that are really looking to grow their impact, to grow global, what would you say is like the key point of advice that you would want to leave them with after this conversation?

I think if I need to choose one that's definitely building a global network, whatever impact area they have, they might have, they might become very myopic looking into the same problem in the same locality, in the same structure, years and years and years and years. They might become very myopic and very disconnected from the rest of the world, where they might have moved differently, built different solutions that work in their domain. So it's difficult for technology founders to live with this, of being, let's call not stealing, but being inspired from other technologies out there in other domains, other countries, other geographies. So they don't like to kind of say they got this inspiration. They have seen this somewhere else, they wanted to replicate it. Now they're moving away, they saw something else being done somewhere else, they're bringing it here, or they're taking this and then getting inspired from other things and they're applying for something else. Technology founders tend to become a little bit more proud and saying, oh, we built this on our own, and then it's hard to argue about that. But impact founders, on the other hand, have this opportunity. Like, there's at least one advantage impact founders have, which is everyone trying to solve that problem in every other geography, every other niche, every other locality will be very happy when their models are replicated because their heart is on the impact their heart is not on. Okay, I want to be the first to do it. I'll get the most rewards about it. I'm going to get the most financial applications on this. So they're not incentivized with the financial results. Impact founders are motivated with the impact results. So it's easier for them to build a global network of solution makers or change makers. Like Ashoka has this wonderful community and there are many others that are bringing international social change makers together to share best practices and to create these networks. They need to strive to get into those networks. They need to start talking to those people working in the same domain in similar domains and start asking questions regularly. Even when they don't need to find an answer to a problem, they need to have these conversations, contributions regularly, which will feed them their thinking, their inspiration, sometimes their motivation, sometimes they solve their own depression. That becomes a really big issue as we discuss this becomes very near and dear to their hearts. So they can, they should build global networks of people who they can bounce back ideas, learn from, literally imitate the crap out of everything they're doing with joy and with pride. Everybody will be very happy if you go and say, I want to do what you did here, tell me how to do it. Hardly ever they'll get no answer, saying, oh, I can't show you how we did it because we want to get into your geography and make more money with our technology and social. It doesn't usually happen that way with technology. Founders are of course like, what the heck will be probably the right answer and there might be an even legal trouble for even asking that. But it doesn't work the same way for technology founders and impact founders. So impact founders must get out of their shelf more frequently, must build a global network more quickly. Even before they start building anything, they need to surround themselves. And now these days, it's much easier than it was before. Online tools is much easier. Education is more accessible. Networks are more easily easier to build and kind of get into. It's harder to get deeper with connections. Of course, nothing kind of beats breaking bread or sharing a warm or cold drink with people that are like minded. But at the other hand, it's much easier to find a similar wavelength of thinking length with people. So I think that will be my number one choice.

Yeah, I think that's, that's a great way to end it and I think it's a good reminder for people who are, who are so focused into what they're trying to solve. It's always good to have people to bounce it off of, to talk about it with. It's the same as making friends and just having a good conversation. So.

Exactly.

Yeah, I think that's perfect. Thank you so much for your time. I think this was a great conversation about scaling and startups and impact. I really appreciate it and I think it's a lot of good food for thought for people.

Yeah, hope it helps. Thanks so much.

Okay, take care.

Bye.

We hope today's conversation with Ozan Sonmez has enlightened and inspired you to think about how technology can shape a better tomorrow. Don't forget to subscribe for more insightful discussions and join us next time as we continue to explore the transformative power of tech. For more information about Ozan's work, go to www.mrozonsomez.com. this is Empires of Innovation signing off.