Identifying and Maximizing Your Startup's Unique Strengths with Shmuel Silverman

So in many cases, um, it's your responsibility is to identify from your com— what is your competitive edge. Then find somebody else who is expert who can help you. Not myself, anyone who can help you. Either you hire that person or is with you to help you figure out how to protect it. In the correct way. So here's what we're going to do today. We're going to talk a little bit about, uh, pinpointing what is unique for your startup and why it's important to identify what is unique for you. Um, then we are going to cover competitive edge, which is not only what's unique for you, it's something that your customers desire and really want to pay for. And then how to protect it in general. So what is competitive edge? Competitive edge is a condition that creates a potential for persistence, differential returns. And as long as you own and hold on to this competitive edge, you will continuously raise your value in the market. And become increasingly successful. And there's no stop for that. A good book to read about in general about powers and competitive edges, etc., would be The Seven Powers by Hamilton Helmer. Now, the idea about persistency, it's consistent and repeat of your performance. And it's a competitive edge, is something that no one can take away from you. Well, if you're building technology, most likely somebody else can build the technology. Somebody else can invest more money. If it's Google or Apple or any one of those large corporations, they have hundreds of billions of dollars that they can throw at any problem that they want to solve. And it's very little that you can do if you are a startup. So you need a way to protect yourself. And we'll talk about it as we go along. Um, let's talk a little bit, kind of like to understand competitive edge. We look at it for both positive and negative views. Let's start from a use case. This is, this is an old IBM, um, old IBM PC. So IBM were the first people in the market who developed or provided a PC. IBM does not control the PC market today. Other people do. So they had some control over the market at the beginning. Oh, people having trouble with videos. There are some, there are some, they had some control in the market, and then they've lost it. They started in the early '80s. I remember actually, as you know, being the younger me working on some of those big, big monsters. And can you please tell me, kind of like if you can throw responses, why, why did IBM or how did IBM lost their lead on the PC market? I'm throwing this question, you know, you can, you know, feel free to answer if you want to. Um, the IBM lost their lead on that market not because they stopped innovating, not because of the BIOS chip. No, no, the BIOS chip actually is a good— is complacency? No, not complacency. They, they've been— not bureaucracy. They worked really hard on their strategies. They actually understood the strategy very well, but they believe though that they own markets using operating systems. Yes, they understood the value of an operating system because of IBM 360, 370, and all the other machines. And for some reason, they looked at that small computer and thought, we can give away the operating system, we don't need to build it. And they gave it to Microsoft. Yes, they lost it because they gave up Windows and DOS. At that point, they lost the, they lost the market. And Microsoft was smart enough to understand that it's all about the operating system and the ability to deliver features and functions and functionality to their users. And therefore, they took the market. IBM thought that they will be able to continue on the hardware side, but that was a lost cause. The hardware continued to deteriorate in terms of pricing, and they just gave it up after 4 years. Let's go to somebody else who actually did it right. Intel made a right choice around the same time. I love this GIF. Intel made the right choice around the same time. Intel had a choice between continuing to push hard on memory and memory chips or CPUs. They've made a choice to go after CPUs. And they've made the right choice because what they've— they thought that their competitive edge has to do with building sophisticated systems and very sophisticated chips. And they understood that the more they move into memory, memory prices will drop to nothing at one point in the future. So they saw the picture of the future, right? And they've made the right decision for themselves. Let's go to somebody else who thought they got it right, and they build everything around it only to fail. Kodak. Kodak for about 40 years were printing money, not literally printing money. Every time you took a picture, Kodak printed money. And they've built their entire world around it. So Kodak motto was capture the moment. So what went wrong with Kodak? Guesses? I would love to see anything. I mean, Still looking at— type something. They own the digital photo IP. They own the digital cameras. They have— they had digital cameras years ahead of the market. They did not ignore digital transformation. Absolutely not. Yes. Okay. Organization. So they believed in capturing the moment. Before the digital transformation happened. And they own about 5,000 different patents on digital, digital camera, digital filming, etc. What they've done, they've built large installations worth billions of dollars to print films. And when the digital transformation happened, they could not let go of that investment, that investment sunk them. Yes, they were not agile, agile enough. But it was fundamentally a business model that crashed. It's a business model that put a lot of money into creating printing and printing capabilities. And when those went out of fashion, they end up with a lot of material, a lot of material and equipment. That the value of that dropped to nothing overnight. And this is how they moved from printing money to losing money. That's what went wrong. I would not— I mean, I can't imagine the CEO who understood that that's a situation and that they cannot avoid it. Here is another unavoidable situation. How did Netflix rise to power? How did Netflix rise to power? What was the key thing that Netflix did very early in the day? Yes, they saw the future. Culture. Great. Good. Streaming. No, before streaming, they already won the market before streaming. Okay, so Again, we'll go back to the business model because I'm, um, it's important to understand and work through business models when you build your future, where you build your company. You need to understand your competitor's business model and figure out if you can— late fees, great. Why late fees? Why late fees? Because their competitor's business model, which was Blockbuster, was you need to pay late fees. And when you look at their business model and how they made money, they've made money only on late fees. Everything else was a loss except for late fees. With late fees, they gained 40% income from their products. So this was their ROI for Blockbuster in general, high numbers, not very accurate, but in general. And once Netflix realized that, they said, let's build a business model that takes away late fees. That's it. If I can take the late fees away from the market, my competitor is going to crash and burn and I'm going to win. And they were right. So it was all about late fees. It was all about the business model. Later they had to change. So once you have like, you know, 30 million subscribers, there are other things that you need to do in order to be successful. And by the way, when you read The Seven Powers, it will be there. They show up in that book. I'll jump— I'll go to another one. I like to talk a little bit about desirability. Hopefully I spelled it right. So I have Airbnb over here just for fun. So we can use Airbnb to understand what it is. And the first question that you ask yourself when you build a company is, what's the problem that you're solving? Like, really, what is the problem? And is it a real problem? Is it a real need? Or maybe it's a better way of doing things? Or what is changing in the market that makes it this suddenly available for you. So, you know, affordable. I like the affordable, but, you know, can you please tell me if you can guess which technology made Airbnb successful and how Airbnb was leveraging that technology? What happened in the world that Enabled Airbnb. Circular economy, great. Ah, finding customer needs. Yes, GPS. GPS, that's— you're on the right track. Gig, uh, cheap travel technology. Well, first and foremost is rating, our ability to rate places that we go. So the number one problem for Airbnb would be, I mean Think about it. You do not know somebody who is going to stay in your house, so you have no idea who is going to come to your house, and they have no idea how you treat them when they come to your house to, you know, to rent a room for a day or two. If we can close this gap, which Airbnb did leverage and close it using ratings. So if I can, if I have enough people who rate this house or rate staying with me, positively, you may be more inclined to come and stay with me. So rating was a big deal, and obviously GPS and location, because how close am I to where you want to go, and more than that. So this was about Airbnb, and we'll talk about other technologies on Lyft very soon, but let's continue. So You want to think about in desirability, would customers who use this service would prefer to use this service relative to everything else that is out there in the market, or how other people are solving the problem, which was going to hotels in this example. And the answer was yes. I believe that since I started to use Airbnb and others like them in a market, I don't think I've seen an hotel in the last probably 10 years or 8 years. I've seen the inside of a hotel as a result. So it works really well for me, and I think it works really well for both sides. So it worked both for renters who wants to rent and make money, and there were plenty of those, and they provided the market for both sides to be able to connect and be able to receive the service that they need. Airbnb, unlike others, also defined a new category. So you need to ask yourself, am I defining a new category? And that's a big question. It's a very loaded question, because if you are defining a new category, then you need to truly understand what would be the drivers that will move people to use your technology and your solution compared with everybody else. Internet, it's also rating. Internet and rating. And it is a market opportunity. Airbnb created that opportunity. Um, they basically set it up in motion, and by doing that, they have defined a new type of category. Before Airbnb, nobody thought about, oh, um, if I want to go to Rome, I'm going to look, you know, I would going to stay with someone. No, they, they They thought, I'm gonna go to a great hotel, and let me research hotels. We didn't research other people's homes. One more thing, or last thing, as kind of like fun and discussion— picture of the future. So when you solve a problem, move yourself to the picture of the future. Just close your eyes, imagine here is a new future, and this is how people are going to use my technology or my solution. This is how it's going to work. This is what will make it awesome for them. This is why they're going to choose my technology relative to others. This is how it's all going to work. And by the way, here are my competitors. This is who will compete, either with names or not. This is what they need to have in order to be able to compete with me. And this is how I'm going to block them. You need to think about this future market. Um, I would say that most companies get, um, become very successful not overnight but over a few years. If you're really good at what you do, you'll get to be extremely successful about 4 to 8 years after you started your company. In many cases, it's in that window, sometimes on the late part of it. So think about the picture of the future and make sure that whatever you create is not being taken by others as you create it. Yes, 20 years and you're an overnight success. Absolutely, absolutely. It's easy to go backwards and say, here's what Airbnb did right. Here is what Lyft did right, or Uber, or here is what Netflix did right. When Netflix, you know, started with their strategy, they didn't know. They said, look, I'm going to compete by basically providing the same service that if you go to Blockbuster today, you can get a video. Okay, I'll send this video to you in mail. Well, Blockbuster could have sent it to you in mail as well. So that wasn't a big difference. Say, what I'm going to do, I'll create a business model that does not benefit from late, you know, late returns, and I will still make money without late returns. And as long as I maintain that, I will take away the business from my competitor. But they didn't know for sure that people will sign up to mail delivery. And the thing is that the market was so upset with late returns and late fees, most of the market, that they voted yes, we will go to this mail delivery system. And this is where it all started for them. So, you know, sitting in their shoes and making this decision is brilliant. For us to sit here today and look backwards and say, oh, they've done an awesome job, it's great. But can we be them? Can we be that, that team that thinks about the future and makes the correct bet? Say, here is our competitive edge. We know how to maintain it. We know how to differentiate, and this is what we are going to make, build it, and be successful. Well, Netflix did it. Airbnb did it. Lyft did it. Uber did it. Kodak failed at the end, but they've done a good job for many years. Intel is still a strong player in the market, obviously. And IBM, by the way, still exists. They do. They are flexible. They have changed the company a lot since since when they've— since the times they've started. So the challenge for you today and moving forward is understand what are those set of conditions that you are leveraging to create this potential for persistent differential returns. It's a lot of words in English, it's a mouthful to read, so let's call it competitive edge. What is that is so unique about what you do, or not necessarily unique, but importantly, or different either in your business model, in your technology, a combination between the two that makes you unique? Yeah, I, you know, I wish that my salary would be there, how they, you know, the numbers that Intel rounds on their cents. Beyond 0.0001. So yeah, they may not be in a good shape because there's a lot of competition out there, but there's, there's plenty going on. Let's jump to intellectual property, because once you understand your competitive edge, you need to understand how to protect it. If your competitive edge is in a business model then there is enough IP to cover that has nothing to do with patents, etc. But when your competitive edge is, I've created the new, a new mousetrap, a new thing, or I'm doing something in a unique way that is so desired by my clients, then you need to strongly think about how can I protect it and make sure that no one else who has enough money can jump into this market once they see me becoming successful. And this is where intellectual property comes into play. Let's talk about IP a little bit. So, um, why do you need to protect your IP? If you have any kind of intellectual property, means that it has hopefully has some value and you believe in its value. You want to protect it. In fact, the USPTO will allow you to protect your IP for 20 years. Not everything. Some things they protect forever and some things they protect for 20 years, specifically patents. IP is much easier to generate. Yes, speaktup invalidates 84% and 95% of the patents in the world are worthless. Zero. The average cost of a patent is about $45K, $45,000 to make it past the USPTO and maintain it for a few years. So $45K is a lot of money. Let's assume you just raised half a million to, you know, to build your company. For— it's, it's, it's a, it's a nice percentage of what you've just raised that may go to IP. So you need to think carefully before you ship this money to IP. So protecting IP— you are the sole responsible person for your company's IP and protection. So if your company created a patent that is worthless It's on your— it's on you. It's on you, nobody else. If your company created an awesome IP, it's probably you and the combination of your team that created it. And in order to create an awesome patent, you must make sure that it protects your business, not your technology. Yeah, the patent will be on technology, but it must protect your business. And the idea is that it protects your competitive edge. So identify your competitive edge. Once you've identified, and it's very clear to you that this is how you, how you're going to be successful for long term, develop IP that protect that specific competitive edge. If it's your name recognition, protect your logo. If it's your technology, protect your, protect your technology. If it's technology that somebody else can undermine by creating something that is not as good as yours, but good enough to compete in the market, make sure you create IP to block them. You always look at this picture of the future. You look at your competitive edge and picture of the future. Those two will give you an understanding if you guess correctly. Intelligently. By the way, don't look 5— more than 5 years away, it starts to be very iffy beyond that because of different technologies and things that you don't know, you don't know. But when you look at that, and you feel comfortable that this is an edge, you want to maintain it for the long term for 20 years, you start to create IP to protect that edge for the longer term. And you can create this IP very early or late in the stage, it's easier to create IP than create technology. There are companies who only compete with their IP. IBM, for example, compete a lot with their IP and make billions of dollars on the IP. So just think about it. Value of patents, as I said before, it could be zero. Actually, most of them is zero. The value of a patent has to do with whether it protects business. So people will pay for a patent if it's worth for their business, if it helps their business or it protects their business. Otherwise, they will not pay for an IP. As so, the value of IP is zero until somebody else is willing to pay for it. And people in— and yourself will pay for it as long as it gains market for you, it changes what your competitors can or cannot do. Or it helps you to exit. It forces somebody else to buy you because of this IP. Most of the bio, biopharma plays that I see in terms of startups end up being bought, being bought by large corporations, um, and they're being bought for their IP. So I think I've covered all those questions. I'm ready for questions from you. And again, if you need to reach me, I think there is enough information that they are being shared on how to reach me and, and ask me questions. And I do have an open hour once a week that we can all talk, so you're invited.

¡Ay, chamo! Thank you. Hola, hi again.

Wanna hear me?

Hi, can you hear us?

Yeah, I can hear you.

Yeah, thank you for presenting this.

30 minutes, I did it.

Yeah, exactly 30 minutes. So thank you so much for spending the time, but we have a lot of good questions, so I think now we can dedicate more time to the questions. So let me start with a simple one, so I'll put it on screen. It's, uh, it's on the chat, so I don't know who asked this. So the question says, how can you know if it's a real need before we built it and test it?

Um, I've been talking to a few companies who spend somewhere between 2 to 5 years walking around and asking questions, trying to figure out is this a real need by talking to potential customers engaging that need by asking. But asking is not enough. You need to really pressure test it. Okay, so what would you pay for it if it was available for you today? Would a $30 be sufficient? Would you like to subscribe for a year and to get this specific service? How do you operate today when you don't have this service? I mean, would you sign for it just because it seems to be better, or because you have a real need and currently there are things that you can't do without it? Ask all these questions, you know, be, be nosy, ask questions and spend the time. Take your time to figure it out. Guessing— if you just guess, you have a chance of one in many, many thousand to be successful. Um, most cases it's, it's, it's a failure. This is why many startups do pivots. They pivot again and again and again until they understand the market well enough to deliver something of value.

Yeah, it's never a linear journey. There's a lot of ups and downs. So, um, we have a question from Sarah, and she's asking, what are the most effective strategies for protecting a newly developed process in a service-based business?

So usually you need to be inventive to protect the process. It's hard, it's hard to protect business process because business processes are not patentable. But there are things that enable this process, that makes this process successful. So we need to think about an app or something that makes the process successful, that enables it, and then think about the set of features associated with that specific process and go and protect the features. I call it the prerequisite for the process to be successful. Instead of protecting the process, protect the prerequisites.

Okay, cool. So let's take another question from Sylvia, and she's asking, can you give us more examples of patents that really protect the business?

Okay, I can go to one of my patents in the past. So when I worked in Motorola, one of my patents was mobility between base stations. So the reason you can drive today on the highway and have mobility between We mean, meaning just drive and talk even though you pass many, many base stations on the way. It's because of that mobility. But patents that really protect business— another example would be machine learning. I have a good friend, his name is Steve Stubb. By the way, he authored, not invented, but authored over 2,000 patents himself. And the challenge for him when he was talking to me a few years back was that he was inventing a new machine learning model, and he did not want to patent the machine learning itself. He wanted to patent something that protects the machine learning. And we came with a concept on how to protect that specific machine learning. And the concept was, how do you find a needle in a haystack? And we figured out kind of like both through the mathematics and how it looks like, how to patent finding a needle in a haystack. So in many cases, it's your responsibility is to identify from your— what is your competitive edge, then find somebody else who is expert who can help you. Not myself, anyone who can help you. Either you hire that person or is with you to help you figure out how to protect it in the correct way. But start from the business model, start from your competitive edge. If it's technology, technologies can be circumvented. It's very easy to circumvent technology. It's very hard to circumvent a business model.

Interesting. Yeah. So, um, we have another question from Rahimi, and he's asking, how do you deal with investors that are looking for business model that they are familiar, comfortable, or comfortable with and are not ready to accept a new business model that has value but no clear monetization path yet?

Out. Um, I, I face, um, we are all facing, um, this, um, this challenge. Um, and I think the first thing that we want to do is listen to those investors and truly understand where they are coming from and ask ourselves whether the business model that we've created that does not have a good monetization path, um, is, is, is, um, is the right one. And if we truly believe in that, strongly believe that that's the right one, then these are not the right investors. We need to find those people who can value what we do and work with us in the long run. It's the same story with OpenAI. Yes, if you talk to OpenAI, you know, 10 years ago, they were— they needed to work only with people who could value what they do. Value where they're going with what they're going. Um, obviously now they're worth many billions of dollars. Yeah, good.

Uh, so let's take a question from, uh, Caitlin. She's asking, or does the USP change if you are hoping to be acquired by a larger company, or should you develop your position as though, uh, you were going to compete with the big players?

Again, what, what is USP? USPTO? Patents? So patenting? Can you please display the question again, Sanna?

Yeah, can you write something in the— ah, sorry, okay, I just need to— yeah, it's the question here. Here is the question.

Yes, so there are, there are times where you develop your IP portfolio to be acquired, meaning what you think that, let's say, uh, people are going to acquire us, or XYZ, wherever they are. This is our business model. Great. But they will not acquire us unless we are, we are very painful for them. And part of having patents is make sure that it's very painful for others to compete with you, because if they need to work around your patents, it may cost them so much more or can be so hard for them to go after that they rather buy you. It increases your value. On the average, the value of your company when you have IP is 2.1x higher valuation, higher than you would get to the same company with no IP.

All right, good, good answer. So, um, we have here a question from Gary. He's asking, do you have any suggestions on technology that is more of a social need where monetization is difficult to measure?

Um, well, even on social need technology, um, there's always other verticals and other ways of it to be monetized. So you can focus on addressing the social need and providing the value in terms of the social need, but from your IP perspective, look at the big picture. How else can this technology be used? Who else can benefit from it? Which other companies would love to actually take your ideas and create something completely different? So for example, I mean, I know it's very remote, but if you think about Lyft, Lyft doesn't exist unless they use a GPS. GPS is technology that came to us using phones. Apple didn't create Lyft, but they definitely enabled Lyft. Without Apple, there wouldn't be Lyft today. There wouldn't be Uber today. There wouldn't be tons of other technologies today. They do not have ownership on that. They've never even created IP associated with how Lyft is using their location, etc. Lyft is, is a very successful company independent of Apple. So when you create technology, if it's not as remote like this, I mean, I don't think that anyone could imagine what location services will bring. We always wanted, you know, when it started in the '80s, our dream was to figure out what's the value in location services and how can we make location-based technology, etc., etc. And, you know, and it's as vast as the internet itself. Internet is one enabler. Location is another. Just the mere knowing, knowing someone's location is a huge— is a big deal for providing services to that someone. And you always wanted to figure out how to do that. So here it is. Apple provides the means, the tools. Other people actually harvested the applications themselves when they've done it. So in terms of, again, of IP, when you create— when you create technology that benefits a sector that is not as not strong enough, or vertical not strong enough to pay for all of it, make sure that you create an IP that blocks other sectors strong enough to pay for your IP.

Cool. So we have another question here from the audience about IP. I don't know from whom this question is, but it's saying the current state of patent system is terrible. The PTAB invalidates 84% of patents and they are at the of big tech, big pharma, etc. What is your thought on how small guys can compete?

Um, hey, um, make sure that you create IP that will not be invalidated. So the way and the reasons for patents to be invalidated is insufficient prior art search before submitting any IP. So if you create anything, you need to have— not you, by the way, please do not do the prior art search yourself. You can do some things, but at the end of the day, you want someone who is independent of your company to do the prior art search because you do not want to leave any, I call it, technology and ID contamination on your computers in your company. Because if you ever go into any litigation, like this with the USPTO or anybody else, all this becomes evidence, and you do not want to have anything like this on your computer. So let somebody else do this for you. But you want, you want to understand the market, the technology, and everything that is at the point of your submission of your patent or your provisional. If you do it right, then you own this IP. If you don't, you'll get into contention. I've seen Several cases where, where a client of mine submitted patents and IBM had the same patent with half a year difference prior to this patent. It happens. Even the USPTO is not infallible. Even their prior art search, you know, they will make mistakes. So you need to do— you're responsible for your own IP. Nobody else responsible for it. Not the USPTO, not your lawyers, No one. You own your IP, so you need to drive whoever works for you to do it right for you and be very cautious when you make the decision to pull the plug. You want valuable IP, make sure it is valuable when you submit it. It's valuable for your business model, valuable for your competitors, and high quality in terms of how it's written and how it is executed.

Interesting. So let's have a good question here from Hadia. She's asking, what are some key considerations for startups to ensure their growth strategies are sustainable in the long term, particularly in terms of balancing innovation with financial stability?

Um, so usually, um, I like to look at what is the picture of the future first. Understand what would be the ideal solution in the market. And I'll give you an example, okay? So, um, let's talk about, um, so I've got a client, um, one of my clients who is doing, um, wind turbines. So he's got robotics that are climbing on wind turbines and fixing them. I don't know if you guys know, but when a wind turbine would move, the speed at the edge could be somewhere in the area of several hundred kilometers per hour. At that speed, raindrops, dust, anything that hit it at that speed start to damage it, and over time it is being damaged beyond repair and it can actually completely fall apart. As a result. So you need to fix it or correct it. Now, to put people up there on a wing like this, that is what, a few hundred feet, um, in the air, uh, to fix it costs a lot of money, many thousands of dollars per hour, um, to do those fixing. And we have many thousands or hundreds, or, you know, many in the tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of those out there. To fix. So now you start to have all these robotic companies who are showing up to fix those, those technologies. So the ideal way of fixed technology, yeah, if we close our eyes and we think about the movies, we would like, um, we would like a robot that is made out of memory metal that can shift itself and mold itself and move and create anything you want to as it climbs the wing and fix it. If you want to create this thing or this futuristic solution, you know, be my guest. No one is going to fund it unless you really know how to do memory, memory metal. We don't know how to do it yet. I mean, nanotechnology is advanced but not that advanced. So what you want to think is about what is the next best thing. The next best thing to solve the problem when you look at the business model is as follows. There are only 15 days a year that you can fix a wing. You have 10,000s of wings out there that you need to fix, but you have only 15 days a year. There aren't enough people or enough robots to do the job. So you need to do it very quickly. It takes somewhere in the area of 13 to 20 hours to fix a single wing. Guess how many robots do you need? This is another business model that you cannot, probably cannot comply with. So to optimize it, you need to create a robot that moves very fast up and down the wing, solves a problem, come down. And what is the best robot if you cannot do it right now? Maybe you have a few different type of robots doing different type of activities and you need to propel them up there as quick as possible. So you start to break it down to what is plausible What you can do today, what it would take, what's the business model, what's the cost. And then you say, if I can take all those robots, disconnected robots that are just doing only part of the job, and start to connect some of their capabilities, reduce my time on the wing, reduce my time coming up, this is how I start to compete in this market. If you can fix a wing in 4 hours You are best in class and you can win the market, and you're probably the most cost-effective solution out there. If you do it under 15 hours, you can compete in the market. The better you do, the better you compete. Now start build the business model around it. Understand the problem, understand the limitation, understand what can be delivered today that is cost-effective and better cost-effective and more competitive relative to others. Minimize your investment and maximize your returns. That's it on that, on that question.

Very, very insightful. Yeah, very insightful, Shmuel. Thank you so much. Um, I see like a lot of questions in the Q&A section, so here's what we can do. So we have the networking lounge starting like in minutes. I will take one last question from the audience. The other questions you can like, it can open up a lot of interesting discussions. So feel free to ask Samuel in his networking lounge if you can. He will maybe dedicate a few minutes from his time. So let's take this last question from Brad, and he's asking, I'm developing software for the volunteering market in South Africa, but I'm struggling to nail down a business model. Do you have resources or a book that can help me do this?

Yes, so when you start to think about volunteering, I'm not sure I have a book for you right now, but I have an idea about, and you can look at, if you, if you remember or know anything about microloans, it's actually started in Africa where, or in Asia or Africa or both, where small villages And, you know, people in villages needed something like $100 to create a very successful business in their, in their, in their world. And how can you, you know, and they didn't have $100. There's no way they can get $100. They can't even go to a bank who will give them $100 to start to do their business. So using mobile phones in micro, in microloans model, Few people started, or one person started it, I believe, in, in both Africa and in Asia, and it became extremely successful, and it made people in small villages successful in terms of being able to do more and deliver more goodness to their community. Think about from that aspect, how was that built? And by the way, it was financially sound and actually made money at the end. So think about it. I'll just put it out.

Well, thank you so much, Moel, for the priceless advice and the resources that you gave in this event. I think just in 1 hour you were able to cover a lot of important things. So for those who are asking about the recording, yes, you will receive the recording in 48 hours from the event. You can also find it on our YouTube page, like maybe in like also 48 hours. Feel free to connect with Shoaib on LinkedIn, with me, with FI team. Make sure to keep an eye on our landing page as well. We do host these kind of events on a weekly basis. So thank you so much, Shoaib, for today. It's really insightful. I can't thank you enough. There's an— yeah, there's like a networking lounge just after this session, so stick around. We will now end, let's close the event, but we will find me and Trimoal in the network lounge to keep like the discussion going. And yeah, thanks so much and have a great day. Bye.