Real Startup Lessons From FI Alumni Across the World

Welcome everyone to here, to this exciting event. My name is Chris Foltz and I'm one of the global entrepreneurs in residence at Founder Institute, which means I get to do exciting things like these events. And of all the things that I get to do in the Founder Institute environment, this is by far my favorite because there are things I learn every single time from our alumni around the world that I didn't even know that I didn't know before I got into the conversation. We have 3 amazing guests today, and for those of you that, that this is the first Founder Institute event that you've ever been to, you picked a good one. But I implore you to go to our website, fi.co. And I was looking, I know we have an event tomorrow, and I didn't realize we have about 15 events between today and tomorrow. So wherever you're at in the world, find something that matters to you. Today we're going to be talking about 3 success stories. We have a lot of success stories, but we've got what I would consider to be early-stage startup royalty here. And, and why am I saying that? Well, 2 of them are All 3 of them have been mentioned in our FI50 list of fastest-growing companies. We have 1 rising star and 2 people on the list for their regions today. So I implore all of you to go check out fi.co/50, the number 50, so you can read about these amazing founders and more importantly, the amazing things they're doing to change the lives no matter where you're at in the world for all of us. So I'm gonna go ahead and welcome, I see they're all on the stage today from 3 different parts of the world originally and their programs here, which is exciting. But believe it or not, they all impact each other's businesses. So the first person I'm just going to bring up here is Mario, right? So again, he's Italian, he lives in the Netherlands right now. We bonded on the fact of my 50% Sicilian nature, right? Of course, he judged me slightly for a moment, then he got over it. Um, but at the end of the day, what's interesting about Mario and GreenAnt, his company, and I'll let him explain it here shortly. You know, for those who don't know, I was an agricultural research farmer in the middle of the Mojave Desert. And what a lot of people didn't realize is it floods a lot in the desert. And of all the problems we had, it didn't matter if it was 350 degrees out, Celsius even, that's fine, we got that figured out. But when the water hit that desert, everything floods, there's nothing we can do. But imagine if your life depended on this as well, right? It's not just about agriculture, it's the idea that your home's gonna be destroyed. Maria in the back mentioned there's a super typhoon coming into the Philippines right now. And brands like Mario are out here solving this. And I'll get back to you in a moment, I'm just gonna go ahead and intro everyone time here, Mario. But I'm coming to you with the first set of questions, my friend. And Maria, Maria Suck Yang is somebody I interviewed before. I gotta tell you, and I mentioned this in the past, I learned more about HR and hiring people and how the industry works from my conversation with Maria than I had in my entire career as a human. And I sit as an advisor to HR companies, um, you know, she introduced me to this concept of employer of record. Didn't even know about this particular thing. And then it's like, oh my gosh, now it all makes sense to me. But what she's done in the Philippines with Remotify is breathtaking. I mean, I see consistent growth even since the last time that I had a conversation with Maria, but I see a brand that's constantly evolving with the ever-changing landscape we have when it comes down to pretty much the most important asset of any business, and that's the team members. And Maria and her company Remotify have found ways to get there in pretty momentous approaches, let me tell you this. And then Mustafa, you know, I love little cars, which is funny because I'm like a big guy, like physically I'm big. And I had no idea that Bangladesh was doing things in the EV arena, but actually in one of the more impressive things. I went and looked at some of the prices, Mustafa, of Palkee Motors, and try to compare them to anything that I could find equivalent around the world. And I'm dead set that now I gotta buy a damn car from Bangladesh, um, because frankly they were awesome. I think that the most expensive one was still under $30,000 US, right? You know, when I looked at it. Now, of course, my conversions can be off, but I'm pretty sure I'm accurate on this. And, you know, you've taken an entirely new approach to the EV market, to the automobile industry in Bangladesh, of all places. Now, this isn't theoretical. There's cars on the ground with $1 million of backing to help scale that already that has come in. So in addition to other backing, so Mustafa, really look forward to talking about Powki and how this all started and, and why you're doing it, because you've taken a different approach from pretty much anyone that I've seen in the EV market, and I want to dial in that today. So I'm going back to my buddy Mario here, and we're going to start out these questions. Mario, first of all, just explain a little bit about GreenAnt. Where did this even come from? This is such an audacious idea, right? Just because we're dealing with so many things— radar, satellite, farmers, personalities, all sorts of things. Where did this come from and why?

First of all, thank you so much for inviting me to be here. It's a pleasure to be back with the founders, the team to whom we owe so much since the very, very first day of our journey. So thank you, Chris, for the introduction. Thank you, Cassie, and the rest of the team for organizing, and pleasure to be here with Mustafa and Maria. Yes, about GreenAnt.

My name is Mario.

I'm the founder at GreenAnt, and we build technology to forecast floods. And the way we do this is through digital twins. Essentially, we build digital copies through GNN models of the Earth to identify the relationship of the objects within a space and quantify the amount of rainfall it takes for a given area to be flooded. And we associate rainfall-to-flood thresholds to objects, assets, houses, warehouses, railroads, roads, whatever, whatever. That when we know in 72 hours there will be enough rainfall or snowmelt across the hydrological basin they belong to for them to reasonably be flooded, we trigger early warnings and we enable people to know in advance that a flood is coming so that they can evacuate, move toward a safer space, evacuate their assets, evacuate their goods, change road, change their destination of their holidays, and decrease the damage. Because insurance is a powerful tool to compensate for losses. But today we need to prevent losses rather than running to them. Otherwise, the world is quietly but fastly becoming uninsurable and risk unmanageable. That's why we do this agreement. But we have indeed a longer story, and indeed when we reached here at the Foundry Institute for the first time in 2021, agreement, as the name can tell you, we were indeed farming ants, and from there we reach this place out of experience and pivots and changing our roads, understanding markets and people's needs.

Well, I'm definitely gonna have questions about this pivot on the next round here, but I think we can all agree hearing anything from an Italian, um, is much easier to digest. So thank you, Mario, on this. I'm slightly less scared knowing that somebody like you is on this, but in the next QuestionStream. I want to dive in a little bit about— because that is a heck of a pivot, right? I had no idea that it started from there. Now it makes sense. So I'll be back to you in a second, my friend. Thank you so much for sharing the reason why this was created. And it's such a fantastic place to be in society to make an impact. And let me jump over to you, Maria, real quick. You know, for those of you that have not checked out Remotify, you know, I think there's a misnomer on how easy it is to have employees, right? Or to bring people onto teams, right? It seems like that's the first step. But you see, nowadays we live in this global environment where it's not a matter of, of you have to just deal with people in your neighborhood. Some of the best talent that I've ever come across in my life comes from the Philippines. Creative talent, technical talent, you know, customer service talent. Like, it's, it's quite amazing. I'm biased here because I've had experiences, but when it comes down to it, I never realized the challenges that came into the lives of people in the Philippines when it came down to actually having the career that they want working with overseas providers and everything. There's a lot of hoops and ladders to jump through to even have official job security. And Remotify has thought about this in pretty prolific ways. So Maria, tell us a little bit about Remotify and why you even decided to go down this path.

Sure. Thanks so much, Chris. Thanks everybody for having us. So I'm Maria, I'm the CEO and co-founder of Remotify. And what Remotify is, is as Chris mentioned, we're an employer of record platform. And simply what we do is we help startups and mid-market companies internationally to extend their runway by building remote teams in the Philippines, right? So we founded Remotify in 2021, fully bootstrapped. And in 2025, we've been able to get to a pretty decent decent, uh, number there, uh, and we've created about close to about 500 jobs so far since inception, processed $4.5 million in salaries for Filipinos, for knowledge workers spanning the 7,000 islands of the Philippines, 68% of whom are women. A little-known fact about the Philippines is that our, uh, working age, uh, like the, the population that is in the working age, is about 50 million people. It's the same size as the entire population of Spain. People think that the Philippines is so small, right? Our median population age is 26 years old, 98% mobile penetration rate and internet adoption, um, 700,000 university graduates per year, most of whom are from it, um, first language is English. We're very, uh, westernized, right? And Our goal at Remotify is to get these talents ready really for the future of work, and as a result, hopefully get to the numbers we want to achieve by 2028 by going deep in the Philippines, consolidate the market, and replicate that in other emerging markets. Why we did this? It's during the pandemic, you know, I, before founding Remotify, I built my career having a job from the Philippines but leading teams in 6 different countries in a telco tech startup, in a UK-based telco tech startup. Had the privilege of working with a lot of awesome people. Most of my contacts or professional contacts are from Europe and from the US. And during the pandemic, I realized, okay, if we can do this and I have so much job not wasting 4 hours of my life in traffic, because by the way, 25 kilometers from my house to the central business district could take up to 2.5 hours depending on the day. We don't measure distance by time, but by kilometers, but by time. So during the pandemic, we realized, oh my God, if we could do this, then a lot more Filipinos could actually do this. And then we looked around and we realized that a lot of Filipinos working from home, working directly for foreign clients who have no entity in the Philippines, meaning no real employment record in the Philippines, typically don't have Social Security. They don't have health insurance. They don't even pay their taxes. It means they can't buy a home, they can't get a car, they can't get a loan, they can't even travel outside of the country where there are visa requirements. Cut to the other side of the problem where you're an international business and you don't have an entity in the Philippines. Imagine hiring 20 different freelancers. You can't retain them, you're gonna run payroll, you're gonna have attrition, and all these sort of HR issues. So that's why we founded Remotify. We want to make sure that, you know, we're good for the businesses that we're helping, we're good for the people that we're helping, we give them real actual, you know, Remote work, the freedom of remote work should not come at the cost of your employment security and feeling that you belong in a community where they can, you know, an actual team can support you as you go through your remote journey. So yeah, that's, that's why.

See, that's why I learned so much from Maria. For all of you that have never heard Maria talk about Remotify, like, I was shocked by every single statistic every single number that you mentioned in there. And, you know, I mean, it's amazing that you, that you broke down the problem so concisely as this kind of two sides of the equation and you literally are solving for both, but you're changing people's lives along the way, right? This isn't just about a job. This is about security. It's about the whole reason why all of us enter into careers. And Remotify has thought about this. Maria, I've got so many questions for you as we progress. Let me jump over to Mustafa. Now, again, for those of you that have not checked out these cars, you gotta check 'em out. They look cool too, right? It's not just about, you know, so many people make ugly things in the hopes of it being environmental. Mustafa's got this dialed in. But you know, Mustafa, I wanna hear a little bit about how you started this automobile company. And more important, why? I mean, with so many other chassis out here, K cars, all these different things out here, Why didn't you just back engineer something? Why didn't you just add your technology to something else? Instead, you decided to build something from the ground up in Bangladesh, and you actually have cars on the streets right now with real drivers. Something like thousands and thousands of people have been in trips in these cars. Everything about it's impressive to me. I wanna hear how this started and why you decided to go down the path that you did.

Yeah, thank you so much for inviting to this exciting event. So I started this company in 2022. So on that time, I kind of failed my first startup, and after that I was, you know, dissecting that what went wrong on the startup. And fortunately, I got a book on that time that was like Think and Grow Rich from Napoleon Hill. And I was reading that and I was like, you know, kind of like getting back to myself. I was like meditating. And one day I thought, okay, so what is the craziest thing that I can do right now? Because most of the time I was like holding myself back. And I had this like 3 dreams that I wanted to do was like from my childhood. The first one was that I want to build an electric car. Second one was, you know, I want to build something, those big business, like electricity right now that we use is, you know, it's like electromagnetism. So like by Nikola Tesla, I was thinking that, you know, this is like old, what could be new? And I was like working on, you know, wireless power transfer. So out of those, all those three, I thought electric car is the, less crazy than that other two. So, uh, that is the thing. And back in 2009, so when I was the undergrad student, I, I designed my first car. And when I graduated, when I was studying in Montana State University, so I used to buy an old car and sell it, sell them to the higher price. So I was like flipping them. So, uh, By doing that in 2022, I thought like, okay, so this is the thing that, you know, like everything that I did in my whole life connects here. All my startup experience, fundraising and official, everything like connects here. So that was the first one. Second one was that building car is, you know, it's like when I was in the US, people say, they go, where are you from? And very few people know about Bangladesh, and when they know, they know about, you know, the garment industry, the flood, the disaster. So I thought, okay, so I want to, you know, it's like introduce my country in a different way, that like, you know, it manufactures cars. So that would be, you know, something that I would be proud of, proud of myself. So that is another reason. And the third reason is that You know, it's like a building car when you have this, uh, you know, it's like motors, the chassis, the body, everything, and you have this idea that you want to build it, and after you build it, runs on the street. It makes me so happy. So, uh, and it's like, so all these things together, so I started, uh, you know, it's like the Punky Motors. And, uh, the thing is I didn't have money and I did not know that it takes like so much money. So the money I had, like I had only $4,000 on that time. I started this making cars. And with all of this, so far we delivered like 84 vehicles on the street and many people are using it. And the people who are using, they have their life elevated already. So it also makes me like very happy that, you know, it's like our work can impact other people's life in a positive way. Also, I know that the environment in Dhaka, that the air pollution is getting worse and worse. So, uh, so I was also like, you know, in my mind that like, you know, can you do something about that? Because people are not, uh, that much, uh, you know, like, uh, conscious about this matter. But like, if we can do that, it can, uh, help lots of people. Taking out this fossil fuel car and put it like electric can help reduce the carbon emission. So including all of that And also, the most important thing is that I was naive and did not know this must be difficult. That's another reason.

Yeah.

No, but I mean, I love that you said that, right? So many great things. I always call it the ironic wall. Right beyond this wall of irony is basically all the answers to the greatest things. But for all of you that just heard what Mustafa said, he literally started an automobile company at the beginning with $4,000, right? Like probably the most expensive labor-intensive thing to possibly do, right? You're literally building a vehicle that needs to meet safety standards, needs to be able to transport humans, needs to actually be reliable and not break down. I can tell you the amount of American electric vehicle cars that have failed on the altar of stupidity over the last few years is vast. And here you have somebody in Bangladesh. Now, while I'm here with you, Mustafa, you know, you obviously joined Founder Institute for a reason. I mean, here you already had skill sets. You're out at Montana State slanging vehicles left and right. You're doing awesome things. Why did you join an accelerator? Why specifically FI? What was your goal with joining?

So I planned my, you know, it's like a 4-year gaming plan, how I want to develop this company. So the first thing is that I know that I need to get education. Because the Founder Institute and so like, so I need to get education and startup is a lifestyle that I need to learn. So my previous experience told me that, you know, I must have to get an accelerator program, but like, you know, it's like Founder Institute is the first accelerator that any founder can get into. So there's no other accelerator program that would take you in. And teach you this most valuable lesson. So I read the curriculum and said, damn, this is the thing that I need. So, uh, you know, I, I joined it and, um, it was hard. It was hard to like, you know, graduate. But the thing is, now this is the, um, so I have like more than 258 pages of assignment, you know, that I did on the Founder Institute. And that builds the It was like, you know, it's like I had only $4,000 and this education that we got from this accelerator program helped me plan those steps like ahead. And so the Founder Institute is the, you know, like the foundation of Paltry Motors.

That's amazing. And, you know, like just like the way that you describe it, you know, for those of you that are new to Founder Institute, It is tough. Matter of fact, Jason Kalkanis, one of the best investors in the landscape out here, he says that we're the most street-aggressive program that you can possibly have here because quite frankly, it saves you time. And time is the most important asset for all of you that are starting off in this, whether it's time in your actual life, but wasting time going in the wrong direction, that's so easy to do. So thanks for sharing that. I'm gonna jump over to you, Maria, before I jump back to Mario. You know, Maria, you've got this, amazing career, right? Like, you came from tech prior, you came from places like Netflix, you have amazing partners, amazing leaders. You're like a person I would look at like, oh, they probably don't need any kind of accelerator. They don't, they don't need any help understanding things. Why did you come to Founder Institute? I'm genuinely curious here.

To set the record straight, I didn't come from Netflix, although Netflix was one of our big customers in that chapter.

Fair enough. And that's probably even more politically better to say anyways. You know, we get a lot of just wanted on here today. Thank you so much. I apologize for being wrong. You're still top tier amazing. Continue.

Thank you. Thank you. So why I joined? Well, just like Mustafa, right? Like I started it off. This is my first startup and I didn't quit my day job immediately. I still worked for a year until I could pay myself a salary after a year. Right. But so I was doing two jobs when I, when I started the startup. And one of the things from out of humility, I know that this is my first startup. I don't know how to be a founder. I want to be a good CEO. And so I mapped out my learning gaps, my skill gaps, my knowledge gaps, and then I planned out my learning path. And one of the learning paths is how to be a startup founder. And so I looked for accelerators and I found Founder Institute. The other reason why I joined Founder Institute is, like I mentioned earlier, my professional network, because the last job I worked there for 12 years, absolutely loved the business, right? It was super, super innovative, and I learned it's the best university, right? I learned, I owe a lot of my success also from the learnings from that. And, you know, how seeing good leaders, bad leaders, seeing, you know, downsizing, growth and how do you handle these situations, right? Like, I learned from that, but as the leader at the helm, this is my first time. And so I knew that I had to learn. The other reason why I joined Founder Institute is because I don't have a network in the Philippines. And if I'm to be a founder and you don't have, you know, peers, right, like, you're absolutely just, you know, learning it and building it on your own as you, as you as you fall, right? You're building the aircraft as you fall. And so one of the best decisions I've ever made is to actually join it on our second year. We already had customers at that time. We were like making half a mil USD run rate. And when I joined Founder Institute, because I could apply the assignments, because there were already customers, because I was already marketing, because I was already building stuff, right? It was so, so useful, the, the fact that, you know, it's not a theoretical learning. You can apply it, and then you can have other startup founders learning with you. So during our cohort, it was really challenging. The cohort started with 20, and we graduated with 4, uh, in the end. And then only I did the leadership, uh, the funding lab and then moved on to the Leadership Lab afterwards. And like that fulfilled a lot of my learning gaps or skill gaps in my learning, my learning design. So that's, that's why I joined Founder Institute.

You know, and I did not know that. I did not know that you came in actually already having traction and doing things, which is important distinction. You know, not everybody does. But you brought up some interesting points, right? Like it's clear that you knew that there are things you didn't know. I know when I got involved in the startup ecosystem, I came from the mainstream, right? That, you know, I was dealing with normal brick-and-mortar businesses and all of this, and I thought I knew everything about business. And then I get to Founder Institute where I'm a mentor, and I realized that, uh, I didn't know what GTM stood for. I didn't know AMA was ask me anything. I'm like, why is the American Medical Association involved in everything? Um, you know, I was just so off. But you see, I learned while being a teacher. I'll give it to you straight there, you know, building the car as you're driving it, as they said here. Um, and I've learned from people like even Joseph de Leon. He's one of the mentors down in the Philippines program. The guy's brilliant. I've learned so much from that individual. And, and that's why it's, you know, in today's global economy, it— what was interesting is you said you joined a program so you can extend your network in the Philippines as well. And I would immediately thought, all right, this is something that can extend our network globally, which of course it does. But thinking about the home base there, that's very prolific, uh, information there, Maria. I really appreciate it. Mario, I'm gonna jump over to you, buddy. So you caught me by surprise when you said that you originally were farming ants. Okay, so yeah, I mean, that is a— that means that you have a very descriptive company name here, and it just completely passed over to me. So you had a reason to come to Founder Institute in the first place. Um, when you came, were you actually in the ant business at the time?

Yes, absolutely. So I We got started with the ants because we wanted to address the health and environmental issues caused by pesticides. And I read an article, very interesting, about how ants could live in symbiosis with the trees and with mango trees and being a better pesticide than chemical ones. And so I teamed up with my then co-founder who has spent his life— he was from Denmark and he spent his life in building tech for farming these ants as an alternative to chemical pesticides. And when we started this, well, I was just 19. It was just my— I was out of my, of my university dorm, right?

We—

I didn't know anything about how to actually build such, such a thing, but I really wanted to address this. And therefore, uh, we joined the, the Founder Institute. And, uh, and during the Founder— during our time at the Founder Institute I reached out online to people on LinkedIn. At the time I was more active on LinkedIn, in Southeast Asia where this ant, the Oecophylla smaragdina that we were farming, is endemic. And we got our first grant from the Thai government while we were there. And in a week, we moved to Thailand to start our first project while still doing the Foundry program. And so for us was, for me, it was a transformative experience because we started when we started the Foundry, there was absolutely nothing. And by the end, we were already in Thailand with a funded project to pilot this. And yeah, and then while we were there, we learned that transitioning toward, toward sustainable forms of pesticides requires deep financial access and bankability, because financial access means having the resources to do this transition. And something which is not insurable is not bankable. And therefore we pivoted from the ends to data, because data can build insurance, can be in protection, and insurance can build bankability which in turn will lead to sustainable solutions.

That is absolutely fascinating. Not even what I expected, which makes it more fascinating. You know, and if anything, data is like a bunch of little ants anyway. It's always there. It keeps expanding and all of this. But that is a, you know, there are things in life where there's truth, but then people don't believe them. I believe that story and I believe that transition. I think that is so powerful and so strong. What was that turning point where you knew you had to pivot? Like, what forced that upon you? Was it that you had some investor interest over here? There had to have been something that was there that made the, the pivot decision final. What was that?

Yeah. So we, we started our first project in, in, in Thailand and, and the organization, the research institution that, uh, was supporting us, gave us access to their facilities, and therefore we will organize workshops and training to co-learn with the local farmers around the research station on how to farm these weaver ants. And the weaver ants are fascinating animals. I invite everybody to go and look at them online. They are incredible, incredible animals. And And yet many people will come to the workshops, hundreds of people will come to these workshops, and yet people were not transitioning. So there was a very huge discrepancy there. People were coming, they were taking the time to come to our workshops to co-learn how to best farm these river ants as an alternative pesticide, and yet nobody was applying them in their lands. And so I went asking to people, why, why are you here and yet you don't use this technology? People told me, yes, because for use this technology, large investment will be needed. But for doing that, they will need much higher capital access. And therefore, and therefore, we realized that data were so important. And when we started sharing the data we were collecting to prove our point that the ants could actually be more effective than chemical pesticides, when we started sharing them with our partner farmers that were attending our workshop, people— the number of people coming increased even more because everybody saw the value of knowing what's the relationship of the objects in your land. What's the relation? What's the amount of water that will flood you? What's the, what's the various conditions that, that are, that is possible to obtain from satellite data that we were using for our own understanding of the impact of the ants? And at that point, I understood that we had to pivot because I understood the product that we were offering was the last one of our much longer chain And that we should have started from much upward together with our partners to build a product that over time maybe will lead to something like the use of ants as an alternative pesticide.

I think it's remarkable. And, you know, I love how you haven't lost your passion for the ants in this process. Process. So many people— that's huge. And so many people, like, when they pivot, like, I noticed them, like, you can't even talk to them about their previous business. It's like an emotional scar of some sort. Some of the greatest things of all time are the results of pivots. I'll give you an example. Udemy, the online learning platform that all of you have used, I'm sure, at one point in your life— when they started, it was actually two different founders with two different business concepts, both in kind of education and learning. En Founder Institute. We partnered them up. That went on to be this multi, multi-billion dollar corporation that's now merging with Coursera. And it was those minor things inside the program. But I can tell you, they never lost passion for where they came from, right? They never forgot where they came from. They never lost sight of where they're going. And certainly that's why they're successful today. So thank you so much for sharing that, Mario. Gustavo, I'm going to jump over to you. You know, we're getting such amazing questions in the chat stream. So again, if you all have questions, put them in the chat stream. Cassia or one of the team members will make sure I'm sure I see it. I saw one of them come in here that was hardware-related, so I'm asking you, Mustafa. I believe that— sorry if I pronounced this name wrong— Taiba. Yeah, right. So they ultimately, they're developing a bit of hardware. It's Pink Pulse is what they're calling it. And what they said is in the hardware world, like in many cases, you've got tons of issues. You've got supply chain concerns, like if in the US you've got tariffs, which is part of supply chain, funding challenges. It's entirely different class of investor when it comes down to hardware versus software. I mean, it's, it's riskier even though it's tangible. Um, based on your experience, what would— like, should this person focus on perfecting their prototype locally before they go out here and start seeking global investment and all of this stuff? Like, what advice do you give to the early stage hardware company that's trying to go down the path from prototype to funding?

Oh, that's a very good question, so thank you. So the first thing is, uh, you know, it's like hardware startup is very challenging. And, uh, I mean, on my time, and I think like nowadays, you know, it's like, uh, investor don't want to invest on hardware company because this is a very, uh, capital It's like CapEx heavy. So this is very challenging to get funding in this sector and very early in the stage because you don't know how to build the product, you don't know how to sell it. And so there's like a bit of a bit of problem. So the way I navigated is that I found that investor, they are not going to invest on electric, I mean, car company. This is multibillion dollar company. And then a guy from Bangladesh with like $4,000, what the hell he's doing? So it's not like believable, so like that he can do it. So what I did is that I built a prototype, made the first one, the first version of the car, and I took it to the customers. So like I told my customers that like, hey, this is what I want to build and this is what I built. It's made in Bangladesh and it runs. So it can take you, it has the minimum safety that, you know, it's like required for running the car on the street. So you buy it, you take your kids to school, and that's the thing that, uh, it, it gets its job done. So the first customer was, uh, the people who take their kids to school because, uh, they have like, uh, they have the one car, but they need a second car to send us, send their kids to school. And it's a small car, very inexpensive, and they can buy it. So the first thing is that you need to build the MVP and sell it to the customers because for the hardware startup, Your customers are your biggest investors. So once they invest the booking money, it's like I took booking money before even delivering the product. So I delivered product maybe like after 8 or 9 months, the first order I take in.

And is booking money like a down payment or reserve or what? Okay.

Yes. Reservation money. Yeah. So they gave us the reservation money and then we deliver a car like after 5, 6, 5, 6 months. So that was the, you know, the de— there was lots of delay, but the thing is they believed in us and they believed in the product that, you know, it could work. So the first thing is, if you're building a hardware startup, before going to investor, go to your customer. They will tell you what to do and they will build your company for yourself. I know you don't have to do anything. Like they will just tell you what to do. You do it and deliver to, they'll give you money. And when they, Customer pays you, then the investor notes on the hardware stuff. So this is like what I did, it was like being in a developing country.

I mean, that is remarkably good advice. And again, I get to sit in rooms with phenomenal leaders. That is the most succinct way that I've ever heard anyone describe the advantage of being a hardware company, especially with the way that it's done. I mean, look at things like Kickstarter when people are putting things out here, people don't consider it. Like, it took me 2 years past the delivery date to get this smart ring, right? And the whole time, you know, people use words like investment, this, that, and the other. I never thought about it that way, right? You know, in essence, I made a reservation. Um, if it didn't come, it didn't come. But the way that you described it is the most de-risking thing you can possibly do. So for those of you in the audience that asked that question, when it comes down to hardware, you want to think about what's something that is so exciting that your initial customers are willing to put a deposit down. Knowing that risk. You're transferring the risk over to them. And what Mustafa said so eloquently then is, when you have this customer base, okay, it doesn't have to be massive. It's just proof that somebody is willing to buy your stuff enough that they're putting deposit down and willing to wait 5, 6 months before there's delivery. That is proof in point that there's a customer base stronger than a bunch of people signing up day one for your freemium app, but when in fact they'll never open it up again. These people had an actual goal to drive around. I would do anything to go back in time and drive around in your initial prototype. I always find prototype vehicles to be fantastic. And if you don't have a picture of it online, I want to see a picture of your initial prototype, Mustafa. I bet it's awesome. Thank you so much for that advice. Okay, going back to Maria here, because I'm sure you're gonna have good advice on this. I saw Victor Neo, one of the questions, and I think this is great, and it was actually addressed directly to you. They understand that you're in a very tough regulatory landscape, right? When it comes down to HR, dealing with human personnel. But on top of it being a regulatory landscape issue in one country, the majority of your customer base is around the world. So you're dealing with a layering of regulatory issues. Then you have human rights issues. Then you have local jurisdictional issues. You have all of the above. So a lot of people look at this like, well, the odds are stacked against you. The big companies out here, the natural monopolies, they've got this all figured out because they understand the regulatory landscape. How did you manage dealing with such jurisdictional challenges and real-world situations such as dealing with human resources for people? Tough space to be in. How did you manage dealing with all of that?

Learning it. So first, first hire. CPA, get your numbers right, get your taxes right. Second is coming from the right place. You know that the people that we're helping aren't paying their taxes, and therefore, you know, it's good for the government of the Philippines that we're actually doing it. And therefore, from a regulatory side, we were able to really, um, be on the, on the good side, ironed outside, right? And We got a grant from the government. Now also the other part of the government is looking to see if they're looking to invest. And so it's doing good for the country. So from that regulatory side locally, we're all good, right? We make sure that we designed it not only for the clients but also for the employees in the sense that because there's no at-will employment in the Philippines, We also educate the clients that you can't just fire people without a cost, and we help them to go through that layer without giving them the legwork, but us as their HR partner on the ground doing all of that. I think that learning also comes from, you know, 18 years of leading people, right? And so that also comes naturally as you learn through these things, and you like all of your learning from your previous jobs accumulate to this one moment where, ah, this is what I'm meant to be doing. So I had that luck. And at the same time, right, like, we have a lot of brands to compete with. But I think what stands out is the authenticity of the voice of Remotify that, you know, people come to us, we've not run ads for the good 4 years that we've been running. It's only SEO, right? And we're page 1 of Google search in Canada, in the US, in Australia, in New Zealand, and like, even without paying ads, we're top 1, 2, or 3, right? And then when people come to us, because we're very, you know, we've designed it for both sides, we've designed it for humans, founders recognize that. So when you look at the bigger players in EOR. Maybe they've designed it so much for clients that they actually, you know, if they've been told just, you know, fire people and give them like a month's pay, typically that's going to be the practice. But in the Philippines, you know, you got to build the case. And so we, and a lot of our clients really want to create a stable base. In the Philippines. So making that compliant while making sure there's no administrative heavy lifting for them. I think that's, that's why we have clients that have been with us 5 years with the same employee for the past 5 years, right? And the stickiness is there. We have a net revenue retention of 118%, which means if we don't, you know, sell to new clients, we have 18% growth year on year. But the good thing is we're able to sell. We, you know, on our second year, we didn't want to be delusional with a culture that we, we've designed for the employees, because, you know, everybody pays the belonging tax paid for the conveniences gained through remote work. So we said, okay, let's build a culture where even if they're remote working, they can still sense that community and belonging. And we didn't want to be delusional. So on our second year, we asked Great Place to Work to survey the people who we've never met in person. And 98% of them said we're a great place to work where we scored the highest community intimacy, corporate image, hospitality, and justice. And that only proves to show that in the future of work where it's remote, culture is everything. So put all of that together, all of that intentionality combined, and you focus on that, focus on designing those experiences for all your stakeholders, I think the result will just you know, just follow, right? And so if it's attracting the businesses that is a good fit for us, that wants good people, that wants long-term employees, that wants, you know, stability with their team, we're the right partner because we're never gonna, you know, leave you hanging there. You have a partner in the Philippines. Also, a lot of EORs like around the world, we met somebody actually, funnily enough, my partner is from the Netherlands, my co-founder is from the Netherlands. I know, Mario, you're from the Netherlands, or you're in Netherlands as well. We were contacted by so many other EORs around the world and they said, can we pass on the requirement to you? Like, we need to hire 100 people, but you're never going to meet the client. You're just going to carry the employment liability, but we're going to take care of the client. And we said no to every single opportunity because we wanted to make sure that we had the control of the experience from the client side and from the employee side so that we can retain the compliance. Structure, that it's always above board. And so yes, we might have said no to a lot of money, but we can sleep easy at night knowing that, you know, our clients, our employees are really all protected, right? And a lot— like, I met this guy that owns an employer record in the Netherlands. He didn't own any of the entities, but he was in 110 countries and he just partnered with different EORs. And so what happens there is who handles the compliance, right? And if you go through that aggregator model, what truly is, you know, you don't control the margins, you don't control the experience. So it was a very deliberate strategic decision to control end-to-end that experience. So yeah.

I mean, honestly, I spent many years being a speechwriter and I know if I'm ever hiring a speechwriter, I'm hiring Maria. From the Philippines, because at the end of the day, like, just so many tidbits of information that are just unbelievably valuable. A couple things stood out, you know, and what I could tell you from my experience observing Remotify, and again, I followed this brand for years now, is there's no gimmicks in this brand, right? Which is, you know, you don't see them jumping on, like was mentioned, to ridiculous ad campaigns and all of these types of things. You have authentic customers, you have authentic results, you have authentic everything, and So many people come to me and said, listen, I got this new disruptive technology, Chris, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, authenticity is the new disruptive. And, you know, every part about your answer there was authentic. But one of the most important words that you said in all of those amazing things that you said was intentionality. And I think a lot of people don't think about the intentionality of their work, right? So when you're doing something, you need to ask yourself, it's almost like you go to the mirror. What is my actual intention here? What is my goal? Right? You know, what is the way that I accomplish that and do things with intentional steps along the way? And it changes lives, right? So thank you so much for that answer, Maria. I'm gonna jump back to you, Mario. You know, so somebody, where are you at customer-wise, Mario? I mean, you've got active customers at what volume? Where are we at right now with Greenant?

Yeah, so Greenant, we launched our full product last year through our platform called the Sideram. And, and right now we have over 10 clients and we are running for half a million this year. And so Right now we are over 10 times the revenue of 2025 compared— by now in 2026, we have already 10 times the revenue of 2025. So it has been a very, very fast growing period The company is completely different than it was in December, as you can imagine. And we are experiencing a number of new needs that open for our clients as they integrate prevention into their operations. And we can clearly see how this will disrupt the current way in which the insurance sector operates in terms of, uh, um, helping companies with mitigating their losses, passing from a reactive approach to a proactive approach. So right now what we are mostly doing is integrating our technology to make sure that insurers can operate proactively and therefore that losses are not simply compensated, but they are just avoided. And therefore this entails cooperation not only with insurers, but also with logistics. And we are a lot into the humanitarian sector as well. Because of course anticipatory action in the humanitarian sector is fundamental and can boost capabilities enormously. And therefore, while we operate on the commercial side with the insurance sector, on the humanitarian side we work with the international NGOs across the world to deliver this in places that will be unreachable or insurable otherwise.

I tell you, you could be a college professor in this stuff, brother. I mean, your answers are so spot on. You know, shout out to Sammy in the question stream here. You know, Sammy asked a question. I'm going to give this to you, Mario. Um, what was the single action that, if you could distill it down to a single action, that caused you to get your first paying customer? What was that?

I think The main action here is listening because it's super important to understand what the client exactly is craving for, and the client usually doesn't know. So it's listening and study deeply the mechanics behind every single movement that cause consequences that for the people we speak with, they usually do not even seem relevant because it seems supernatural, but to an outsider, they may be very important to understand the cascade of events. And understanding an industry, understanding a client, understanding a company or someone and their operations, and how they, for example, how an agricultural company will interact with their insurer It's essentially important that you go speak with the reinsurer of the insurance, right? You will say, but my client is the agricultural company and I want to help them with their insurance. Why do I need to speak with the reinsurer and their broker? Yeah, because the decisions operate at a cascade. So understanding the mechanics, the regulatory environment, their needs, their constraints, their— why their problem fix and how they come, where they come from, that allows to structure a selling point that turns interest into, into purchase.

I think that was a phenomenal answer. I mean, in short, listen to your customers, right? I can tell within 5 minutes whether a company is going to be successful by asking a few questions and determining how well they know their customer. And it's shocking oftentimes how many people try to do customer discovery by sending blind surveys all of this. Well, Mario said, which is the most important thing of it all, is oftentimes customers and clients don't know what they want, don't know what they don't know, don't know how their lives can be better. And if they do, they don't believe you can do it. So by listening to them, it's a bigger, big win. Just a couple of weeks back, I got to interview a very awesome venture capitalist, Keisha Theobald von Gantt, And one of the things that she said that was shocking to me, you know, the question that came about is, what is the level of traction that investors are looking for in order to say yes? And she did not answer that question. Instead, she answered a better question. She says what they're looking for at their VC fund is a repeatable sales process, right? That they can believe that the CEO doesn't have to be the only person out here selling, and that what they're selling is repeatable by anyone. That's how they gauge whether a company's rather ready to be invested in. And it's much similar— that class of advice I would equate to the same class of advice that you just gave. It was an answer I did not expect. Listening was not what I was expecting. Couldn't be more accurate. Thank you so much for sharing that, Mustafa. I want to jump back to you, buddy, you know, um, and we're getting close to the end here. So for those of you that have a little bit of time. I believe that some of the founders here, if not all of them, are going to join some tables after for a little bit for some light networking. If you want to ask them direct questions, that would be your time to do it. Um, question for you, Mustafa. You know, we all spend a lot of money starting companies, right? We— and then, you know, sometimes we're like sick to our stomach when we spent something in a direction and it didn't work out to our favor. If you could go back in time and think about something that you spent a bunch of money on that you really wish you could have reallocated that money towards customer acquisition because it just didn't work out the way that you anticipated. Do you have any examples of that, Mustafa?

Yeah, I have a lot.

Yeah, that's honesty.

So what it is, is that in early, in the early stage, I tried to build the micro, like, autonomous microfactory, and I did not know that I don't have the fund, and I don't have, you know, like this kind of environment that would allow me to like automate because I was late, it was like too early, and the money that we invested on that, it was like, you know, complete waste. And what I would do is that it was like, um, it's like, you know, it's like coming from an engineering background is very difficult because you always try to build And I think it's better to build what it needs to be built, not building, you know, it's like if it's not making money, then, you know, don't invest in it. So yeah, I did a lot of mistakes and somehow survived. It's because I understood maybe like, you know, it's like too early that, okay, so this is a waste of money. So like, I pulled, pulled, uh, everything back. But, uh, the learning that, you know, from there is that, you know, it's like there is no success, uh, you know, it's like guidelines in startup. So it was like nobody knows that how a company would be successful. So, uh, only thing that matters is that if you know that you're not going to give up no matter what happens in the future And people can advise you in certain way on their perspective, but the thing is, you know the best. So even though you do mistake, if you understand that, you know, this is the way that you will be successful, or you can at least survive this stage. So I think a mistake can be, you know, it's I mean, mistake cannot be erased, but like, that's a learning process that, you know, this is— we should not do again. So maybe because like, when you have like little fund, you have a little scope to do mistake. But if you don't learn that, like, you know, that would be a mistake and you have a bigger amount of fund, so like, you are gonna do like, you know, waste like lots of— I mean, more money. So I think like, this is like a lesson. And yeah, I think my lesson is that you should not build what's not required right now.

That's such amazing advice. It goes well beyond the idea of advice for just where you would spend money differently, but that's actual advice that you'd give to slightly younger Mustafa a few, a few years ago when you were starting this off. And I got to tell you, I'm impressed with you. I'm impressed with your brand. I want to drive this vehicle. 15% of me wants to move to Bangladesh because of your damn car. You know, so thank you so much. And please keep sharing wisdom with people. It's so heartfelt and it's so accurate. Let me jump back to you, Mario, and then we'll close with Maria. You know, same thing, Mario. You know, chances are you spent money. I mean, heck, you were farming ants, right? You know what I'm saying? So you spent money in a lot of interesting directions. If there was some bit of money you could reappropriate towards customer acquisition, followed up by a bit of advice that you wish you could have received early on in this that would have made your life perhaps different now. We'll close on that with you, Mario, then we'll jump to Maria.

Yeah, I think what I wish they knew better is that is much better to have a product that is not fully ready and a lot of demand than a product that is fully ready and no demand at all. You must keep flexibility, you must keep improving things as you go, because the point is that nor us nor actually the client know exactly how a new thing should actually work. And I'm not talking about the backend, I'm also talking about the way in which information are conveyed. We are in the business of data building, analysis, and delivery. Now, the delivery might be the most complex thing because data have no value without context. And the contextualization of those data is the challenge, the main challenge, right? And so you need to figure out how to make a platform, a tool that can contextualize the data in a way that can be actually useful for the client. But you need to build that as you go. And while you build it, while you iterate over that, you will actually build something that it's actually useful not just to a client but can be indeed generalized. But if you start on and you build such a cool platform because you want to launch the market, chances are nobody will listen to it because nobody needs it, because the idea that you had maybe is of a non-existent persona. So I do believe that it comes back to the idea of listening, and it's better to be not fully prepared than being too prepared. On delivery, on building. And so, yeah, sometimes we've spent too much money before anything, and that has always backfired. And that's some advice that, yeah, I hope I get sooner. But yeah, also in this, the Foundry Institute helped us to exactly do this kind of direction improving.

Absolutely prolific answer, I gotta tell you. Like, now I'm gonna be quoting my buddy Mario from Italy, now in the Netherlands, uh, just like I quote my business partner Russell all the time. I mean, you nailed it, I gotta tell you. I've never heard it quite described that way, so kudos to you. And I can see why your company is, is getting more and more successful day by day. So happy to have you as a rising star on our list of FI50 as well. Um, I'm confident you'll be up in that and that 50 real soon, my friend. So thank you so much for joining us, Mario. Maria, I'm gonna end with you. You know, I've been a fan of yours for quite a while now. I learned more stuff from you today than I have— I don't even understand, like there's no limit of learning from Maria about the industry. But I know that, you know, in the process, you guys have probably spent a lot of money in directions here, but you're also very smart about how you actually roll out everything. If there was anything that you could change change about money that you spent in one direction that you would have put somewhere else. I'd love to hear that. And then that advice that you'd give to slightly younger Maria that you just wish you knew back then that you know now. That would be great. A great way to end.

Thanks, Chris. You're always so kind in your praises. So thank you very much for that. We've been very frugal. I mean, it took a sale of a house to bootstrap this business. And so we had to be smart how we spent it, right? We, like me and my co-founder, we shared one salary for the first 4 years, right? So we've been very frugal. And we really made sure that we didn't pay below market, we paid above market for our team. So we prioritize that. I would never regret that. I would also never regret the fact that the first things we invested in are things that allowed us to automate stuff that we've been able to grow the 4 and a half years with 5 full-time employees, including me and my co-founder, with just a lot of automations, right? And, and been able to create a lot of jobs and support a lot of, of business. Now we've grown our team, um, and, and, you know, built the platform based on the design of the systems that we've created at the start. We went to market with just third-party tech stack and a lot of automations. And then when we got the money, we built no-code and then we coded. And then so, so those things I wouldn't regret. I would advise the little younger Maria to, um, to maybe, you know, be absolutely impeccable with your standards when hiring. Because when you rush through it, it's painful for everybody. If you, for example, on our second, third year, we've grown 3, like 3x from the year prior, and we thought, hey, we're ready for another salesperson, and you know, let's go do it. And you're not running ads, and you know, it was too early and we flatlined and like, you know, flatline is like dead. Like we didn't want that. And so like, and it wasn't the fault of the person, it was just overestimation of where we're at, right? And so founder-to-founder selling was still working at that time. And, or for example, that we've overhired because we wanted the experience and the capacity where we're still at a stage where you're looking at potential, but you actually, your team needs somebody that could be with them in the trenches, and that could take me and my co-founder off of the vines, right? So as founders, you'd want to be creating and focusing your attention to high-value things. And if you're always in the thick of things, you're not able to focus as much on that. And, you know, hiring for, for example, 20 years of experience might not be needed, and you might be spending more, you know, money than you would need. And it's not the fault of the other person because the buck stops with you as a leader, right? But you gotta understand where you are as a business, where you are with your financials, be fanatically committed to understanding your unit economics and your runway. And yeah, so I think that's That's the advice I would give myself.

And the interesting thing is, my guess is that same philosophy goes into every single hire, every single company you work with. You know, the advice that you give when people are hiring their first remote workforce and everything. I believe that your own internal brand philosophies represent themselves as how you do business. And that's the gold standard in my book, Maria. Again, I'm always impressed. Thank you so much for sharing. And you know, that bit of advice that Maria gave about the importance of looking at automations, looking at how can you do more with less, but that less is the right people, the ones that you pick. And nowadays we live in this world where the solopreneur is an actual attainable thing. We just saw recently, you know, the creator of Open Claw, he had an, I guess it's an acquisition kind of, and a higher, an acqui-hire, I think Jonathan, our co-founder, drew attention to, where for more than $1 billion, they, OpenAI acquired something that was literally coded by a single individual. So the time is now. Even at Founder Institute, we're finding ourselves transitioning over to becoming AI-native company builders outside of just having the buzzword of acceleration. Now, the only way that you're going to get to where these three have done this on your own at the beginning when you're first looking at is thinking about how you can come up with things that are worth repeating, automating them. And I love how Maria described it. You know, it went from basically off-the-shelf tech stack, then a no-code, then a code, like this obviously understandable progression. And I'm sure that was the case for many of you as founders. So for those of you again that are new to Founder Institute, I implore you all visit fi.co. There's a couple pages that I love sending people to, fi.co/benchmarks. That's going to kind of give you some standards of where the funding landscapes align with the stage of where you're at in the company. I implore you all to look at fi.co/50, uh, in which you'll see all 3 of the companies here today on the list. In this list of fastest-growing companies in the world, we've had some amazing accomplishments over the last year at Founder Institute, and that's always so exciting for us to see the accomplishments of the people that come to our program. And for those of you that have not taken the Entrepreneur DNA Test, um, I encourage you to do this. Uh, it is a prolific indicator of self-understanding of where you fit in Amongst 200,000, perhaps a quarter million people have taken this test. We use this DNA test to basically help understand where people are at as entrepreneurs, because we know that there are certain skills that matter— curiosity, perseverance, self-reliance. So we built this test to help you understand where you fit in. And if you have not taken that, visit fi.co. It's part of the application process. We've got programs all over the world. We've got mentor pools all over the world. Heck, if you get into the FI programs, chances are I'll even cross paths with you as well in my role as an EIR for Founder Institute. But thank all of you for the amazing questions that you presented today to this group of absolutely, uh, impeccable leaders who do audacious things to change the world. I encourage all of you to stay after for a little bit for some light networking with any of the founders that are able to to stay and ask the direct questions. I'm sorry I didn't get to everyone's question today, but I think we grabbed the right questions for the right audience and the right people. So again, this is Chris Foltz from Founder Institute. Thank you all for joining us in this amazing conversation with some of our leading alumni from around the world. Take care and have a wonderful rest of the day.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Have a good day.