Strategyzer Webinar: Biz4Kids - A Business Comic For Kids

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Hi, everybody. Welcome to another Strategizer Strat chat session. We're going to start the broadcast in just a couple of minutes. In the meantime, while everybody is coming into the webinar room, we'd love for you to think about what you want to learn from today's session. And you can share it in the questions box or the chat box, or you can tweet it to us at Strategizer and use the hashtag Strat Chat. We'll be starting in just a couple of minutes. Sa. All right, let's get started. Once again, thank you, everybody. Welcome to another Strategizer Strat chat session. Today's topic is an interesting one. You might have seen it around on our blog, in the email newsletter, or even on social media. And it's a new project that Strategizer co founder Alex Osterwalder has started with a few collaborators, including his own family. And that's the Biz4Kids business model generation comic for kids. We're going to be talking about the journey in creating this new project in this new book, the learnings, the challenges, and some of the successes along the way. As always, I'm your moderator, Kavi Gupta. I manage content and community at Strategizer. Our host is Alex Osterwalder, co founder of Strategizer, with some surprise guests. He's also joined by his family, his son Lateef and his daughter Melina, who will also be answering questions and talking about the journey. And of course, our good friend and frequent collaborator, Holger Niels Pol from Work Visual Institute. If at any point you want to share a comment or a question or feedback, you can tweet us Rategizer, use the hashtag Stratchat. You can, of course, also use the Questions box in GoToWebinar. And we also encourage you to check out blog.stragizer.com for more content, especially stuff that we've done around the Biz for Kids announcement and Kickstarter. With that, I'm gonna hand the share screen to Holger Alex. In the meantime, while Holger's getting prepped, I think my first question for you is, where did this all really start? Where did the idea for this project in this book come from?

That's a great question. It actually started on a family vacation. We were away with fall vacation for the kids, so we went to the beach in Morocco. And, you know, I thought, well, I want to explain a little bit more to My kids, what I'm doing. So I explained the tools that the center of my work and at the center of Strategizer, of course, I explained it to them. The business model canvas and the value proposition canvas to start with the basic tools. And we sketched out some business models. So letif you remember which business model we sketched out. Ermolina, do you remember what we worked on?

Yeah, I remember I chose a snowboard shop because I thought it was something that I liked a lot. And then you started explaining and I started to understand. And that's kind of how it started with me.

Was it difficult to do the business small canvas?

Well, yes, because I had never done it before and I really didn't know.

A lot about business.

But now I understand it a bit better.

It's really surprising to me how quick Latif and Melina actually picked it up. Melina, do you remember which business model we worked on?

Yes, at first it was the candy shop, and the first time you explained me, I didn't really understand. And after the second time, so they.

Picked it up pretty quickly. And I think if children can understand it so quickly, it should be an easy thing for managers, but it's actually the same kind of quest if you want to better understand business models. So that was a starting point. And then we kind of came up with the idea, I don't remember exactly, to come up with a comic book. Do you guys remember when that actually emerged, just all of a sudden was there?

Yeah, I'm not sure, but it might have been when we came back that you thought about it, and then we said, yeah, why not? But I'm not sure exactly.

So we started out with the comic book project. And for me, it was really important because I could spend more time with my children, and not just in quotes, you know, going to the movies or going skiing or just really working on something. And what made it important to me is I wanted to teach my own kids entrepreneurship so maybe later in life they can realize their own projects if they want to. So that was kind of the origin long question, but it was really something that kind of emerged and that we're now doing all together. My nephew is involved as well, Luca. And then, of course, Holker joined. So that was the beginnings of this little project.

So I know one of the things that's important to you, Alex, like in our work at Strategizer, is the visual component to the content and the stories that we create. And you said that the comic book kind of appeared as an idea what did you guys know about even putting a comic book together? Or what did you have to learn?

I guess my kids are avid readers of comic books. So what do you guys know about comic.

Well, I know how to read them. I don't know much about how they make comic books or stuff, but, yeah, I guess I had to learn pretty much everything about making a comic book.

Me, it's a little bit the same as Latif.

Yeah. And of course, we have other family members. You know, like my niece also joined in the story part. We just started looking at all of the stories that they had. I remember a little session that we had where we looked at, you know, what's a good comic story. And I'm pretty sure you guys are experts on what do you like, Right. So one of the things that we talked about is we need to figure out what customers want.

Right.

Consumers. And you're big consumers of comic books. What do you need to have in a good comic book? Any ideas? What are the things that are important for you in a good comic book?

I like when it has action and the suspense.

Yeah. Yeah, perfect.

What about you?

Well, for me, the story is important. It has to make sense and it has to be interesting. I also like it when it teaches me some stuff. Like, for example, this comic book. I would like it for sure. And I also like when the characters are interesting and they have a cool story or stuff like that.

Yeah.

One of the things that we did do, this was actually the second time at the beginning, it was really a vacation project. We sketched out a customer profile on a wall that was on ski vacation. And they put up the jobs, pains and gains of comic book readers. Because my kids are big comic book readers. I remember very memorable thing that was a surprise to me when I asked, what's a big pain? And then Latif said, well, if it's too predictable, you know, gets boring. Right. So now Holger and Benny and Lucas, from the visual side really started to put some surprising aspects in there.

Before we bring Holger into this mix, I just wanted to ask one more question, and I think this is something that the audience has asked as well. What's it like having your children in this project trying to create a product for children?

Yeah.

So I'm going to answer from my perspective, but probably the more interesting question also for the audiences, and we'll see if my kids kind of answer honestly. How is it for them to participate in a project with their dad? Right. At the end of the day, you know, it's still work. Right. So there have been moments where, you know, everybody was a bit tired. Some sessions can get very long. You might want to talk about Berlin a little bit. So fun ups and downs. Also pains. You know, it's still at the end of the day work. But it was really awesome so far, I think, to do stuff together. I enjoy doing things with my kids. It seems that they enjoy quite a bit doing stuff with me as well. But I remember one particular session in Berlin. It was pretty long. It was pretty difficult. Maybe you want to share how it was for you, Latif, at the Berlin session. Then you. Maybe, Malina, what did you enjoy? What was a bit more difficult?

Well, at the Berlin session, it was pretty fun, but it was very long. And so I remember we had to work like 10 hours, and at the end we had a three minute video. So it was fun, good times. But it was very, very long.

Yeah, so it was about creating this Kickstarter video, and it just took very long. Right, but that's particularly what I also really want to give my kids. You know, we see all these cool videos online and Kickstarter campaigns. They're two, three minutes long. They look amazing and they look like kind of seamless, but, you know, we had to put 10 hours of filming in there. So to get it. To get it to work. Melina, what was one of, you know, the things that you liked or disliked in the project so far?

I didn't really like, because sometimes I didn't really know the questions, and I liked seeing people drawing really cool things.

Cool, cool.

Holger, when you joined the project. So just for the audience to know, I mean, Alex, we have a very long relationship with Holger and the visual work that he does at our master classes sometimes or at the boot camp and as well as for other types of content. When you were approached with this, Holger, how did you know where to start? I mean, like, where did you start?

Yeah, that's a good question. I'm not so sure. So Alex told me about the idea that he had after the vacation. So he said to me, like, yeah, I tried to explain the big, small canvas to my kids, and we kind of like got the idea to create a comic. Would you be willing to explore what we could do with this idea? Could we scale this? Could we do something with it? Would it be worth spending our time on? I mean, I'm a regular comic reader still, so. And I would assume that a lot of parents, and even not parents, but adults are reading comics too. And of course, I was directly, like, sucked into the idea to say, yeah, let's. Let's try to make something in it. I think it was pretty, pretty sharp. After the first idea came up in the vacation, Alex sent me, like, an sms, like, I have a cool idea what you're doing.

From that point onward. I'm kind of curious to know. Maybe, Alex, you and Holger can both talk us through this. The process by which you decided what the Kickstarter project was going to be, as in, what were you going to promote to the audience for them to be interested enough to want to fund it.

Yeah. So maybe just one starting point, which I got my nephew and my niece involved as well. Then my sister was always asking, okay, so what are all the stories? What's the finished product? And what I'm trying actually to kind of get my kids to embrace and to teach in general to executives, the same way I'm trying to teach it to my kids is that, well, first we want to get some evidence that people actually want this, that kids might be interested, that parents might be interested, that teachers might be interested. So the Kickstarter campaign, and even before, just a landing page was really a way to test. Is there any interest? So before kind of executing and making the stories and Holger and his team drawing them, we really wanted to first create something relatively lightweight. A little bit of story aspects, a little bit of the concept, some of the characters, just to test the idea, to see if there's enough traction to really realize this idea. Because this is really counter to how people do innovation and entrepreneurship today and how things are taught at school. In general, we teach kids to find the right solution and then execute by being really careful. Now, innovation is a bit different. You don't know if things are going to work. So before kind of refining your idea and making the perfect thing and spending a lot of time and energy, you actually just want to get feedback from the market, from the stakeholders, from customers, consumers, if there's any traction. And only then do you want to continue with the project. So this is what was really important for me to say, no, no, we're not going to just make this thing. This is entrepreneurship. We're going to figure out if people want it. We're going to do a little experiment. The Kickstarter campaign is an experiment to see if this has traction. Just last weekend with the kids, we were hanging out in a park and looking at the statistics and kind of debating, how much traction does this project have? We funded the project, but are These enough people, do we think there are enough people to really get this out to in a larger market or is this too little? So we really had conversations around this experiment. Is this working or not? So the Kickstarter campaign for us was, well, of course a way to fund the project, but definitely also a way to really see should we even pursue this project. That of course is fun, that we love and we all love creating stuff, but we don't know if the world needs this.

Right.

There are a lot of comic books out there. Our kids have a lot of comic books. Maybe that doesn't need another one. So this is really a way of testing. And then together with the kids and Holger, we really started to sketch out a couple of stories, try to get the concept across in video. So maybe Holger can talk a little bit about that process. And now we have some first evidence. So we were able to get the campaign funded, but it's not finished yet. Now we want to see how far we can push it, right?

Yeah, that's absolutely true, Alex. And I mean, just to get the participants to understand what we are doing is hopefully you see the comic spread now on screen. If you see this kind of comic spread, I could compare it with a very complex corporate products from whatever kind a car industry or pharma. Of course, we don't need years for it. But to get to the point to show something like this, only two pages of comic spread. This takes hours and hours, days and weeks to get there. Right. So the comic book itself, when you're talking about visual communication and getting something visual, a comic book is that thing that is most complex and complicated to produce. So the way we approach this project is quite interesting because we had to produce something that people can kind of like build a relationship to in terms of we have a good character, we have kind of an idea of a story, but actually we don't have it yet because we first wanted to prove if this is a good idea. So we had to produce something that is kind of finished without having all of the backbone yet. Because we are going into a co creation process after this. Right. So it started with a lot of sketches and a lot of tests and I don't know how many sketches we delivered to Alex and his kids in terms of look, we have this idea and could we do it like this and that and always back and forth. It's a quite complex process project even before we're doing the real job. And I think that's quite important for corporate innovation as well. That you sometimes feel you're doing something very solid, but you have to be prepared that you can throw everything away again. Right. So what we see here as a comic spread could be that we see nothing that is on here in the final comic because you found a better solution. Yeah.

Let me jump in for a second because I think there's a couple of things that were very surprising to me that I learned from my kids. So I remember I started having this idea in my mind. Oh, a comic book to teach business. And of course, I had the adult perspective. And then all of a sudden, I kind of realized, just talking with my kids and just sensing what they found important, what they didn't. Realizing that no kid ever would buy a business comic. They're interested in the stories and we need to put that at the center. So this is one of the iterations where we say, okay, story is the main thing. We're not going to make it boring, educational. There will be business aspects, but we're kind of separating them out. So here we have the story of the surf shop that Latif actually came up with and developed together with the sketcher. So maybe, Leti, if you can tell us a little bit, you know, how you came up with what that story is about and what are the important aspects of the story? What was the challenge for the surf guy and how did he overcome that? Just maybe a couple words on that.

So basically, the story is about. The story is about the main hero that goes to Australia and then she starts. Then she goes to a surf shop and she sees that the surf shop doesn't actually work that well because the owner actually only sells boards with his face on them, which is not good because not everybody likes his face. So not everybody will buy his boards. So basically, that's one of the. One of the aspects of business is that if you don't sell something that customers want, then you won't get to sell enough. And that is something I remember, I learned, because I didn't. Well, I knew that if you wanted to sell something to people, they had to like it, but I didn't know it was that important. And that is a story that I think explains pretty well what happens, what could happen if.

If you don't.

If you're not careful with your business.

But. Right, that was the business aspect.

Right.

But I remember you're kind of pushing back on the. Oh, it's just about the business. So the superheroes work on the business aspect, but then they also fight somebody else.

Right.

That's one of the Ideas that came really from you guys around the villains. Maybe you can kind of touch on that. What's going on with the villains in this story, beyond the business aspect?

Yeah.

And so the part the villains play in the story is that they're the ones that actually told the guy to put his face on every board so that then he would go bankrupt.

That's pretty cool.

Right?

And then the villains, because they don't get the business part kind of, you know, to fail, what else did they do? Right.

The real villains then they just decided to do, destroy the whole shop and pretty much everything around it.

And then the superheroes come and rescue them.

Right.

So, Melina, what was the story that you kind of got excited about?

My project was on the Wax Museum.

And what did we go do so you could better understand that?

We went to London in the Wax Museum and some. And we speak with some people who knew the story of Madame Tussauds. Of Madame Tussauds. And after we saw the walk.

And then there's going to be a whole story that we still need to develop. Right. One of the things that we have to do now that the campaign is funded is to kind of really, you know, figure out those stories. Right. And, you know, without, I think without Holger and the team, Benny and Lucas, I think the stories wouldn't have taken the same shape.

Right.

Maybe. Maybe you can talk a bit about how this process worked, Holger. You know, we gave some input, some of the kernel of the stories, and then you guys took over and really brought in the creativity to bring these stories to another level.

Yeah, it's true, Alex. So it's always. I mean, this project is like other projects too. So we have some stakeholders, your kids and yourself and your nephew, who are bringing in ideas, and we have to kind of like, put them together and massage them and create something from it. And creating a story like this is a bit of a chaotic process. You have an idea, you start with it. Actually, when you see our story first, we really focused on Sheldon and had a whole story around Sheldon for weeks. And then somehow, in the midst of the project, I don't even know why we switched to Anna as the main character. Right. It totally shifted. So everything we created up until then was kind of like for the trash, so to say. But so for us, it's quite important to do things like you see hopefully on the screen, mapping out everything that's kind of interconnected and therefore understanding how the pieces will link together and create kind of a story and story Flow in the end, sometimes it's a very structured process. So when we decided on one of the story streams, we go into it and say, like, how could we tell that story, right? How could we build that story in a visual way? How could Ana, for example, transform to a superhero? All these kind of, like, you can take small pieces and then create those without thinking about the whole project in itself. Because that would kind of overwhelm you in the workload. So just focusing for few days on just how could she transform into Business Woman? But the most tricky part is, and perhaps I might explain the overall plot here, is to say, how is this all fitting together in the end? How can we make something that is, as you said in the beginning, not predictable? How can we create something that is kind of surprising, that is complex enough that people don't understand everything from the first page on? So we had to Design villains like Mr. Bankrupt, for example, and Martin Dax, who are his kind of, like, working workforce, to destroy everything that other people do in terms of funding businesses. We have three kids that are transforming into superheroes, and we have the stories where the supervillain kind of wants to build evil, plans to destroy businesses, and then kind of like the back and forth in the traditional story. But always trying to, as I show you this year, always trying to see what's the flow, what's happening here, what is happening behind the scenes as well, and what do we display? So the process is always, I mean, of course, very visual, but especially in this kind of things, it's so complex. So we have all of our walls covered with sketches, nodes, ideas, sticky notes, all that kind of stuff to keep an overview. Because if you lose that kind of big vision, you're kind of lost in the process.

Holgo, I have a question regarding some of the characters. Why was it important to have, like, the good guys and the bad guys in this process? And what role do they play in helping readers understand the business stories?

Yeah, it's a good question. So, first of all, to have. I mean, we have two customer segments, so to say, here. So we have the readers who are kids, but we might have readers who are parents as well that are reading the comics together with their kids to explain what's happening, for example, if the kids are a bit younger, and to walk them through the comic as well. So we had to have something that everybody can identify with. First of all, superheroes are a great way to transport something that's kind of, like, educational or insightful, because everybody of us perhaps wants to be kind of superhero or at least feels like I could be a superhero in some parts of my life. So this helps us to identify ourselves with the story more. We needed like main characters as kids because we have the kids in the focus. So it should be a story that is mainly drawn to the kids perspective that are then transforming to superheroes. So we have the kids as the characters because we need the kids to identify themselves with those characters. And then having a fantasy world of superheroes on the other side. But then as you see in business as well is everything works better if you have something you can hate. It could be another product, it could be a competitor, it could be customers who are not behaving like you want to. But it's always helpful to have someone you can blame for. Right. So villains are especially very good for that one. You can build those characters that everybody is saying this is. So like why do they do. They shouldn't. But they still. And how can we get rid of them? And somehow you need something to identify with. This is the bad side. Because otherwise you can't tell a good story. It will be boring if everything is nice and smooth. It would be not tangible enough if it's just not selling surfboards, for example, but having villains kind of like consulting that guy selling the wrong surfboards and therefore he is losing money. That's more of a story that gets interesting then. So that's why we choose to have different characters on different levels of the story.

Yeah. And if I can add to that. So I think one of the things that was really a surprise to me is or that just kind of came up throughout the project is, well, this needs to be a great comic. So it's not just about the education. It really needs to be a comic that kids want to read. And then it happens also to be educational because there are two customer segments, if not three, the kids number one consumer. If they don't enjoy it, not very cool for the parents to read something to them that they think is important for their life. But you know, the kids don't really care. So then you have the parents, you have the teachers and so on. So I do think, you know, one of the things that has been kind of undervalued so far is the real consumer. So if we do want to teach our kids business and entrepreneurship, well, probably it shouldn't be too educational. It should be really fun. It should be about villains, superheroes, and then just happen to have an educational aspect in business.

Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. That's very important.

Let's talk a Little bit about just some of the aspects of what the audience is going to be doing. Some of the questions coming in from the attendees today is they're curious about the co creation aspect of the book being published. What are you looking for in the people that are going to be funding that element of it? Because I know co creation has been a big part of all the books that Strategizer has done in the past. What, what role do you want these backers to play for this project?

Yeah, so one of the, one of the big things that we did with Business Model Generation, you know, which was a book that Eve Pinier and I co authored for business people, you know, from entrepreneurs to executives. We thought if we share these things and stress test them at a very early stage, when the things, the concepts and the content is still raw, we would stress test it and have better content. So we will push out some stories, we'll push out some ideas and really look for feedback from the people who participate and hopefully some of the people who made that pledge to join the co creation process. And we don't just have adults, but we have both. We have adults, children. I know a couple of friends, they joined this call with their kids. So that's really awesome. Really want honest feedback, you know, this is great. This is boring. No, that doesn't make sense. And I would never buy this really straightforward content feedback when we share the raw chunks. And I think that's very important for us creating the book. It's for the, you know, for Holger and the team creating the visuals. The earlier you test, the better we're not going to get it right in a room, in a corner. We need to really kind of get feedback from everybody out there and then hope that everybody who has their name in the comic book because they co created is so excited that they will help carry out the message. It worked extremely well for Business Model Generation because I think there's a. It became a better product because we involved people very, very early on. It does make you vulnerable. So we wanted to do that here as well and make it special so people can be part of this adventure. Not just adults, not just kids, but together as a family project. We're doing it as a family project and we would love to have more families joining and giving us feedback together.

When we look at the.

Actually.

Okay, I'm going to ask you first, Alex, and then I'm interested in hearing what Melina and Latif think about this. But for you and Holger, what was it like having to bring the business model canvas and the tools that are quite heavily used by adults into a context that would make sense for younger kids and children. Did anything have to change? Did you see new ways of looking at the tool, or does it stand up regardless?

Yeah. So I'll answer the first part of the question, then I'll ask my kids. I mean, for me personally, it was trying to figure out, how does this have to change? Do we just teach the tools like we teach adults, or do we do it differently? And we actually iterated a bit. And this was really between Holger and myself figuring out that probably we don't want to talk about the canvas, the business model canvas up front, because it's too conceptual.

Right.

It's not that easy to package something conceptual like that in a story. So it will come at the very end of the book. So we're gonna sprinkle in little business learnings from the comic. You know, like Latif just explained before, you know, the surf guy putting his face on the surfboard, you know, because he's misled by the villains. Then he doesn't sell, but then he learns about selling. So just a little bit, little business aspect, and then at the end of the comic book, we weave it together with the canvas, so little chunks up front. So I'll ask my kids the question if they actually learned anything about business. Maybe not in the story, but just by making the story, working on the project. If there's anything that you learned. Melina, did you learn anything about business? Some things you enjoy about business or something that you don't enjoy.

I didn't enjoy making myself known because I was kind of shy and I liked when.

Yeah, I remember. You didn't like the selling part very much. Right. But the thing you probably enjoyed most was the creation. Right.

When I could create stories.

So I think, you know, just to connect this back to entrepreneurship education. Not everybody is born to be an entrepreneur. So I think the earlier kind of kids can play around with project and learn what entrepreneurship is really about. The faster they can figure out is this something for them or not? Not everybody should be an entrepreneur, but this is a way to experiment in a fun way. Latif, is there anything you learned about business that you kind of didn't realize before, which is by doing this project?

Well, I thought that business at first was just selling stuff and getting money back, but now I realize that there's much more behind it. Also, one of the things I learned is that actually failing in this kind of thing is actually Pretty good, because then you gain experience and you know, what you're not supposed to do anymore.

Yeah, I'm happy to hear that part because that's one of the things I would hope my kids would kind of get out of it right out of this project, that they would really get a sense of what is business and entrepreneurship and innovation about. I'm super happy to hear getting the understanding of the failure part. I think if we can do these kinds of things with kids earlier on in school at an early age, you know, we'll get a lot better entrepreneurs. I think, again, not everybody needs to be an entrepreneur. We need people who work in businesses and enjoy that part as well. And just like we need accountants, like, not use Steve Blank's word. Accountants might not create startups, but, you know, they create value elsewhere. But I think, you know, understanding early on what this is about is really important. You know, there's more and more opportunities in the world. If you're, you know, excited about creating jewelry, guess what? You want to start selling jewelry. That's kind of an entrepreneurial journey. You can learn that at an early age. So, you know, there are a lot more opportunities out there. So this was an important part for me personally, and I did hope that, you know, my kids would get something out of it. And we're just getting started, right? So the journey is only at the very beginning.

I want to wind down the conversation now, but what I'm really curious about from all of you, Holger, Alex, Melina and Latif, you know, you guys have talked about, like, this project so far has been funded, but there's still so much more to go in terms of understanding if it's the right book for the customers that you want to go after. I guess let's start with Melina and Latif. What's it going to feel like if you know that the book doesn't work out because you learned that you guys were completely wrong in the direction you were going, how's that going to make you feel?

I will be a little bit sad, but kind of not happy. But I would learn something. I learned something that I don't need to do.

This just. You just got started, right?

Well, kind of like Marina, of course, I would be a bit sad that it didn't work. But on the other hand, then I would have gained experience on stuff I didn't know before. And that would be one thing that would kind of balance it up.

You know, one of the things. Caveat. I like this question that you asked because As a parent, you know, I got to meet Seth Godin personally just the beginning of this year. We've had exchanges by email quite a bit, and he was talking about, you know, failure and projects, and then he talked about his kids, you know, how he educated them. So I was pretty inspired. I mean, that was definitely also one of the drivers, you know, other parents that are trying cool things. I want to make that accessible for my kids. And I just heard, you know, got an email from somebody else two days ago or so who said, oh, Alex, this is cool. Like, that's an inspiration of what I can do with my kids. So I think as parents, you know, this is part of our, you know, job at the end of the day, to educate our kids, you know, about certain things that are not, you know, not in the curriculum so far. For me, entrepreneurship is one that I would want to give my kids so they can at least explore it. And as you ask Kavi, well, if it doesn't work, how are they going to feel about it? Seth Godin says he tried to get his kids to fail as often as possible so they get immune against this fear of failure. I found that just spectacular because, you know, the educational system does exactly the contrary. We're training kids to fear failure to find the perfect solution. Well, the reality is most problems are messy, and we will fail. Actually, we'll fail a lot in order to figure out what could eventually work.

Awesome, Holger.

Yeah. So I will be hugely disappointed and very sad, to be very honest, because we're spending a lot of time in it and a lot of passion. And the interesting thing is that, yeah, learning to understand how it feels like to invest so much time in something that could possibly fail. I think this is kind of the. It's not the biggest project, but it's something that I would feel the most for because it's very like. It's very near to my heart other than other projects I do, even if they are cool. But this is really something different. So I feel making myself and us very vulnerable by putting this out and creating something that we like so much and, yeah, running into the danger of a big disappointment. That's.

That's for sure.

It will be very hard, but I think if we fail with this and see that nobody wants to have it, there is another learning in it for sure. I'm not yet. I don't know yet what it will be, but I'm pretty sure that we will find another way to kind of change the way how we teach entrepreneurial thinking. So I try to talk myself out of the answer by saying, if we stay with vision of changing the way we teach our kids entrepreneurial thinking.

If.

That is still the mission, hopefully we find something else when we see that this is not working. But still, I hope it will work and the people will help us doing it.

Yeah, maybe. If I can add to that. Right. I mean, obviously, we would all be hugely disappointed if. If the whole thing failed. But failure, if it's small and managed, is a good thing, right? So it's inevitable that we'll get certain things wrong. The question is, how do you rebound from that? Right. And that's the thing that I think we need to teach our kids also a lot more. How do you get up after a little failure and see that it's actually part of the journey? So my question to everybody in the audience would be, what are you doing then to help your kids actually become immune to that fear of failure? Right. What are you doing to help them experiment, to try out things? And I'm pretty sure a couple of the parents out there are doing a great job. Others maybe not even thought about that. But I do think in a world where problems are difficult, it's not about figuring out the solution in a theoretical way. It's about trying out new stuff. And our kids, you know, they're born creative. We kind of educate the creativity out of them, I think, sometimes. So what are we doing to kind of keep them creative, to keep them exploring, to not fear failure, to, you know, they're the ones who are going to find the big solutions to the big problems and experimentation. Failure and learning and iterating is going to be a big part of that. So question to the audience. You know, more philosophical to take home after this call is, you know, what are we all doing as parents, as educators, to help our kids explore new things and not fear that, oh, it might not work out? It doesn't matter, because it will most certainly not work out. But we're gonna learn, and we're gonna be able to figure out a great.

Solution before we end the call. Alex, Holger, Latif and Melina, what's the timeline moving forward? Now? You guys have been funded, and I'm sure it's still okay to keep funding the project. What are your next steps?

That's a question nobody wants to hear when you're writing a book, Holger.

So let's say it like this, honestly. We want to reach the first stretch goal. So you guys need to help us to get to the funding of 80,000 Swiss francs. Because we want to add augmented reality to the comic, right? So that's our next step. So thinking in terms of steps is first, we really want to reach that stretch goal, and hopefully people out there can help us with it. Because nowadays it's not enough to just create a comic book. We all know that, right? It's nice to have a comic book. But the generation that is now raising, they need something more. They will have digital devices from birth on and at least some augmented reality in it would, like, help us to make this vision possible, to really change how we think and how we learn entrepreneurial thinking. So that's the first one. So next step is stretch goal. Second step is gathering together all those offerings for collaborations, which we're talking to ministries of education about bringing this approach into the curriculum of a country. Speaking to schools, speaking to universities, private schools. All this has to be like, kind of like get a place to land and then talk about it. And in the moment that we finished Kickstarter, we will launch the collaboration platform and we really deep dive into designing the story, making the comic happen. Actually, that's kind of like the next steps to do.

Okay, kiddos, when do you think the big part of the work is gonna be done?

I guess it's going to be during summer vacation because now we still have to work for school. So the only, like, long days we'll have to work will be during summer vacation. So, yeah.

You can hear the suffering in that, right? One of the. I mean, one of the facts of this project, you know, it's fun, but it's still quite a lot of work. So part of the summer holidays are going to go into the book, and some of it will be fun, some of it will be tiring. So deadline that we set ourselves is September, that we're going to get the content out there.

Awesome. Okay, that's it. Thanks, everyone for joining the call. Thank you, Alex, Latif and Melina for joining, especially Lateef and Melina. I think this is probably your first webinar session. And Holger, as always, for joining in. Just a quick note to everybody on the call. We will send a recording of the session in about 24 to 48 hours, and it'll include all the links that you need for the Kickstarter project for ways to contribute, but also if you just want to learn more. Thank you, everybody. That's going to be the end of the call, everybody. Have a great day.

Goodbye and thanks, everybody for supporting the campaign.

Thank you.

Thank you.