The Tiger, Financial News Network. Update. Hi everyone, Basel Chapman here. This is the Tiger Financial News Network, 9am market update and we're looking at the Dow futures up 41 points at 35,841. Very interesting because yesterday the Dow went to a new all-time high and that's going to be very important because within the context of new highs we've got the Dow at the new high, you've got the S&P, the cash yesterday closed at a new high. The E-mini, I'll go to the continuous contract is up again this morning but it hasn't taken out yesterday's high. It's very interesting because I'll talk about this in a moment when I come back. I'm going to be doing, Tommy Jr.'s show, this is the market kickoff and I'll discuss the Chapman Wave methodology here but what's really important is that on the cash the S&P has gone to that fourth highest leg up, it's leg D. That's very important. Look at the Q. The QQQ has only gone to a leg C. It should have a pullback in the next day or two and then pop to another high and then we've got to be a little bit careful when we get to that leg D in the NDX100 trading vehicle. You're looking at the IWM, the Russell 2000 yesterday had a spectacular move. It ran all the way to the 233 and 96 area or just a little higher. 234.53 is the all-time high but if you go to the futures, you can see that the futures right now are at, I believe, yep, they're at a new all-time high. Let me just double check because we're talking pennies here. We're talking about in March the high was 23.58.60 and so far today we're at 23.64. Oh, we're almost there. It's just another couple of points and we'll get there in the Russell 2000 futures. Okay, let's go to gold. Gold to this particular point is down a little bit. It's down 4 at 17.91. It's just been stuck in this range between 18.13 and 17.70s. We'll see if it's going to be able to break out. If you look at the dollar, the dollar is actually held towards its highs. It's at 93.91. It's up two ticks at this particular point. 94.56 was that peak that was made in the 12th of October. So it's also within the range but really what we want to look at here is the TLT. And we'll talk about that when I get back for Tommy's show in a few minutes. It's at 146.44. I give you the parameters to look for for yields and even down the yields are stuck in this range and that's going to be very important. We're also going to be looking at crude oil. Crude oil is down just 6 ticks at this point at 83.98. Very interesting, fascinating week coming up.


So this presentation is supposed to be in English, but are there any English speakers? Okay, so then we'll stick with English. Great! So, welcome. I am I.O. I'm the CEO of Aspiring. That is one of the first legal supports for the digital entrepreneurs here in the city region. And as you probably know, I'm a lawyer.   And therefore this presentation would be basically a short guideline how to avoid lawyer as much as possible throughout the five rather easy steps. So this would be the outline. So we'll call five areas that basically every single digital entrepreneur experiences is his or her life cycle of the business. So first of all, when you do have an idea or a stabilizer on business, it's really easy for you to really start without any corporate presence. Just as a Friday night project with your friends, you can build up the product, then test it, maybe even introduce it. However, there's no reason for you to set up a corporate entity. But if you would like to really transfer the IP or you would like to receive an investment or you would like to really onboard some clients and get some invoices running, then the company setup is something you should really think about. And there are basically two things you should really think about. The first of all is the geography and the region where you would like to set up the entity. And secondly is the forum. So there are three usual suspects. First of all is the, surprisingly, C region. So there is a good news. The good news is that to have a corporation or a company setup here in the C region is actually a good thing. When it comes to the maneuverability, the ease of control, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Hungary are pretty good for that. In each and every single country, there is a limited liability company. And basically in every single country, you can set up it rather easily, run it very cheaply. Furthermore, when it comes to the C region, there are a number of other advantages for you to really set up the company. So first of all, as a C region tries to really interest and invite entrepreneurs and innovation and everything, there are a number of texts, basically, supplements or incentives for you to really set up your own business. So for instance, there is a text deduction for the R&D, especially in Slovakia, like one month ago. The text deduction was raised to 200%. So basically, if you are doing an R&D, for instance, also in digital business, usually it's a development of complex backend technologies, but it really depends. Then your basically amount of money that's going to be text is going to be decreased significantly. Also, there are favorable IP transfers and also there is a very fine text regime especially, for instance, in Hungary. So if you would dare to commute by the public transport to Raika, which is the closest Hungarian village next to Slovakia, then also you will face with a very favorable income text. Not mentioning that it's also envisaged that maybe an Estonian corporate model will be basically set up in here, saying that the text session will be not processed by the end of each and every year, but basically the text session will be basically withheld until the distribution of the profit. So basically, you will be able to keep your funds in the company, invest them to your growth or to the people or to the assets, and only text them while you would like to really distribute the profits to you so that you don't need to be anxious every October or November in optimization of your business. So the region is quite good. Then there is an offshore and we are not going to discuss any Caribbean adventures, but there is offshore within also EU regions. So for instance, Estonia, that actually is very favorable when it comes to the investment of new businesses that you don't need to tax your income every single year, but you need to wait only until the distribution of the profit. Then there are countries such as Malta and Cyprus. However, be careful because every single tax authority, actually when they see such company from Cyprus or from whatever, Malta, Luxembourg, Netherlands, there is a red flag basically ringing. Actually, you might have got the control, you might have got the double text, so be careful if you are sitting up a business somewhere outside Slovakia or somewhere else, make sure that actually real business operations of your company are happening in there. So either you do have a sales representative over there or some development or some marketing strategy or any other corporate presence because if you want to fake it, then actually you can really face a double taxation as one of the number of penalties. Thirdly, very favorite is the Western Europe and the US. Why? Well, because of the investors. Czechoslovakia, there are approximately 10 to 15 investment funds. Some of them are actually investing public money. For instance, this year around 30 and then maybe even 70 million of euros shall be invested in Slovakia, European money. These money, 10% are going to be invested here in the Slovak region, whereas the 90% are going to be invested in the regions of Slovakia, so basically central and eastern part. Alongside that, there is a lot of private money basically here. On the other hand, what I would say and what's our experience is that local investors do lack a good, I would say, strategic approach. Basically, it's a dummy money. So if you receive money from the local investors, very likely, they will not be able to help you to provide you a global scale, do some door opening, support your own business. If you would like to really search for smart money, investors such as Speed Invest in Vienna or some other investment funds or other angels from the Western Europe that can really support your scale, then it's much more favorable for you to really set up a foreign entity in the Western Europe or US where actually they really understand the jurisdiction, you will raise their trust and therefore you will be more likely to receive those funds. When it comes to the... So this is basically the distribution of the regions. When it comes to the basic forms, well, there is one trick. A few years ago, especially for start-upers and digital innovators, a simplified joint-stock company was established in Slovakia, meaning jednoduchá akcivová spoločnost. And then now many, many lawyers and many experts basically say, yeah, this is for start-ups, go for it. Well, but this is a trap. So limited, the simplified joint-stock company is actually tough. You need to communicate with four different public authorities. So not only commercial register, but also national depository of the securities and then the other authorities. So first of all, it's more difficult. Secondly, you need to really pay for the all accounts and every single transaction and the emission of the stocks. So it's more expensive. And also to administer such simplified joint-stock company, it's not simplified at all. You really need somebody who will basically support you on this one, provide the general assemblies, submitting, filing documentation, etc., etc. So it's not easy at all and you will definitely need a legal support. Therefore, first step to avoid the lawyer is to set up a SRO, meaning limited liability company. Basically, this company can have up to 50 shareholders. So basically with that, you can really support your business for years to come. Once you will scale, you will have hundreds of employees, dozens of shareholders. Then okay, maybe simplified joint-stock company may make sense for you. But until that, once you have a team of dozens of people, then it's really the limited liability company. It's a very simple, fast solution. You can basically found it via Firmarenska or any other non-legal user-friendly solution within a week or even days. Therefore, you should definitely go for this one and be aware of the simplified joint-stock company. Okay, so once you have a company, then you usually have some co-founders. Sometimes you are on your own, of course. Then this is not really relevant for you. But very often, you do end up with the co-founders of yours since you would like to really have a diverse know-how attached to your business. Now, very often the founders are friends. The usual assumption is I don't need a really agreement with a friend of mine or a family of mine. Why would we do that? I mean, we are friends. There is no need for us to really set up an agreement. The problem is once the money comes in, either through investment or through the first clients, then actually the agreements that were agreed a few years ago or a few months ago may have been differently remembered or actually some of them just would like to exploit the situation. Therefore, very often, and we experience very often, the dispute between the founders not having a proper agreement between themselves. The least you can do in order to basically prevent future disputes and keep good friends is to set up a good contract between yourselves called the shareholders agreement. Now, the shareholders agreement is a perfect thing because not only it prevents disputes, but it can even support your business. And we go through that. So, first of all, the thing is if you establish a company, and you have your co-founder, so what do we do? Well, first of all, you will split the shares, right? 50-50. And then, this is the thing. The other founder will receive a 50% of the company you are going to build. And visit or imagine the situation where the second founder, after six months, will have a child or something and will leave the company. But he or she keeps the 50% of the company regardless of her actions or inactions on your behalf. Meaning you can work for years and yet your co-founder that is passive will still keep 50% of the company. Well, this is not a fair, right? And also, not only he keeps the 50% of the company, those 50% will be missing to you when you like to invest the funds or distribute it to your employees, et cetera, et cetera. Therefore, you should think about vesting. Now, vesting is something that you agree at the very beginning that, okay, we get the company as agreed 50-50, but we commit ourselves to stay and work actively for the company for at least, I don't know, two, three, four years. Three to four years is the basically market standard. If one person basically leaves the company, then basically it's obliged to return the equity to the company or to you as the founder. Now, it can be very, very able. For instance, we can say that, okay, either you need to stay there for four years and if not, you lose everything, which is not really fair. But what we can do, we can say it can be proportionate and we can set up one-year cliffs, saying that if I leave after two years, well, I need to return only half of the equity promised to me. If I leave after one year, well, I return three-quarters of the shares. So basically, the founder is actually motivated and stimulated to stay in the company for the years to come and also in the bad times. For instance, previously, I'm from the vacuum labs, the company that has like 200 people right now here in mostly city region. But three years ago, there were like 20 of us and there were three co-founders. One was sales, one was CTO, and one was COO. If any of those founders would leave the company at that stage, the company would not be successful at all and probably would not survive at all. The best thing was one of the key, actually, stimulations for them to really stay together even if the numbers were not too good or even if the personal situation of one of the founders was not very good. So the best thing is good motivation to really keep the team together. And there are a number of ways how we can really make it. Secondly, founders' living clause. This is closely related to the best thing. So there can be some additional obligations. For instance, the founder would say, okay, I cannot quit like next day. My living period needs to be at least a year and throughout the year, I'm forced or obliged to train a basically substitution on my behalf. Leaving the company with a good other person, getting to the company on the particular role of the living founder. Such obligation is again one of the vital supplements of the company in the bad times. Also, there is a dilution for angels.  For that, the first money are really the most important ones. Of course, you have only slides and an idea and maybe one Excel or maybe just a few lines of code. And then the angels are reluctant for you to invest and they require a huge amount of equity, which is bad because then you will lose the equity for the other rounds and other investors and your other co-founders. Therefore, what may be done is that if new investor comes to the company, basically every single other shareholder is going to be diluted. So basically his or her share is going to be decreased proportionately to the increase of the share of the new shareholder. However, this might not be done proportionately and there are different ways. For instance, we can actually say that, okay, so if you are an angel and you really invest the first money to the company, you really show your trust, you may dilute your share slowly. Like your pace might be 50% slower than the dilution of the others, for instance. Such motivation will incentivize the new angels and new investors that give money on the table to really support your idea and can really help you in raising the funds. Thirdly, very often, you do end up with your employees having some shares or with these early stage founders and then actually you need to protect them because if you do have like 5% or 10% of the company, you cannot actually really steer it. You cannot really control it. But if in the shareholders' agreement, there are good minority shareholders' protection mechanisms such as take a long ride or I don't know, shoot out or whatever, then actually the minority shareholders can have a trust that although they are very small and they cannot steer the company, they cannot be fooled. So for instance, it cannot be done as it was done in Facebook that basically you will raise the capital of the company by a few thousand percent and then the shareholder from 5% will end up with 005%, right? So such mechanisms can be included in the shareholders' agreement and basically the minority investors can really have a trust that they cannot be tricked very easily. And there is a shoot-out for instance that can provide you and actually provide you with the tools how you can overcome a deadlock. So basically the situation where you need to adopt a decision but you do not have the necessary majority. So basically there might be a shoot-out which is a very complex mechanism but it can really work. Also what's really important is that you know if you divide rights 50-50 it's the worst actually division that can be made because you always need a second partner to agree. So either you have a casting vote so we say okay if there is a equal vote one should, the CEO usually should have the casting vote and say okay if there is an equality my vote prevails. Ideally should have at least a three co-founders etc. etc. Also when you are basically attaching the voting rights be aware that your company shall probably grow. New people will come, new shareholders will come, new investors will come and those will require some votes. Now you still need your votes to steer the company because without the votes your company is not your at all. Therefore when thinking about the rights please think at least two or three or four years ahead what may happen to your company and be able to keep as much voting power you need for the particular decisions especially for the entry of the new investors, exit of the company or all the other strategic stuff. Cool. So this is the founders. Now we have a company, we have a founders agreement and then we can come to the intellectual property. So basically in our business everything related to the code and to the digital stuff is basically transferred to your clients via transfer of intellectual property. Now there are different types of that. So first of all is a copyright and it's the best one, I really love it because basically it doesn't cost you anything to create, it doesn't cost you anything to register, it actually doesn't need to be registered and it can be actually registered and then it's basically created upon the creation of the code or the design or the website or whatever. The only thing with the copyright is you should be able to really track its origins. In Slovakia intellectual property and especially copyright can only be created by people, by entities made of flesh and bones not by the companies. Therefore if you have your company and you have some contractors via limited liability companies and everything make sure that those limited liability companies, those SRROS, basically providing the license to you get the license from the people on the first place because otherwise you have no certainty that actually the license was acquired by the limited liability company. Also the IP clauses are very tricky. Secondly the trademark. Now sometimes especially once you do have like B2C business you would like your brand to be recognized. For that you would need a trademark. Now trademarks are great because they don't cost very much but they need to be registered. Now it's impossible basically to register a trademark in every single country. It would be time-consuming, it would be expensive but there are some good shortcuts. So first of all if your business is only in Slovakia then it's easy. You'll find for 200 euros an application here in Slovakia. If you do have a European-wide business then you can file automatically a European-wide trademark. That's maybe not covering the UK in a while. But still for 850 euros you can get a trademark covering whole EU area. So like 27-88 member states which is very decent boost for your continuous business. Also what you can do there is a special regime covering like 120 countries which is called the international trademark. This is a bit more costly like 3,000 but then you can really cover most of the world. So really to set up your trademark significantly increases the value of your business protects your business against the competitors trying to really free-write on your brand and also it's not that expensive. When it comes to the patent it's a third usual type of intellectual property although there are some more. But the patent, especially in digital business is not widely used. It's mostly related to healthcare if any and this is rather difficult and expensive. So if there is a possibility for you to protect your intellectual property with a copyright or trademark go for it. The patent is rather not very user friendly. So we have company we have founders we have IP and now employee share schemes. So very, very beginning for you to really set up your own business and be able to compete with the competition out there you need the best people. Now at the very beginning you don't have that much money to really pay for the best people and therefore employee share scheme may be put to the place. If you have an employee share scheme it allows you to basically two things. Equals the pay of the great people working for you via equity not via money you don't have usually and secondly the employees of yours their skin in the game. So basically once the person is ready to accept your equity not only the person says I believe in your company but secondly he becomes also the co-founder or at least a shareholder of the company having said that basically the expectations and the intentions and incentives of yourself and your employees are pretty much the same are aligned and this is very important for your business. So the employee share scheme has significant benefits and there are basically four levels of how formally we like to be. Now the good news is you don't need a lawyer again for at least one or two two types. So most of the companies start with a trust me spreadsheet. Having said that having an Excel names of the people and some percentage written alongside their name. Such it actually is legally binding ish can work for a year or two or especially once your business is small and can really stimulate those people without making any formal registrations or anything. Number of companies in Slovakia run by this and actually it really works although it's not formal it actually there is some binding and you can really claim it on a court ish but also it really gets the you significantly get the motivation, incentives and skin in the game of your people. A bit stronger level is the basically you can include the people into your shareholders agreement so basically they can exceed to it and they become shareholders themselves being applicable all the westing rights, founders living clauses etc. Although they are not founders they may have a bit more lenient and easy regime. It's easy to set up but usually for the good shareholders agreement you should have at least some legal support but then you can really run for years without any change. Third one is options. Now options are tricky because basically what they do is that you receive an option that after completion of some conditions like in three years working for the company I may acquire official shares. Now the option is great because basically it pushes all the registration stuff all the costs all the administration for the years to come but usually when you have your business now today the business may be valued for I don't know 100k but in three years time the business can grow to like 400k now if you receive and you will try to distribute to really consume the option in three years time basically the your taxation regime may actually basically be much stronger because you receive more value for the share because the company is bigger and therefore your taxation obligation may be stronger so be aware with the options. Although they are easy today they may not be that easy in the three or four year time especially if the company is growing if it's stable then it's okay. Last thing is the real shares now the real shares of course are the most formal act it costs the most but with the limited liability company not that much and also it provides the biggest amount of certainty and commitment of your employees it's publicly accessible it's really hard for you to really trick your people so the minority shareholders have a good certainty that you are going to really keep your promises especially when distributing the profit comes to the exit so yeah from our experience basically maybe half of our portfolio companies and partners and clients usually use these and actually it works really really well and the last thing is that if you do have a company and the brand and the founders living clothes and even employees then you should somehow contract them the intellectual property is not passing to you without a written agreement therefore you should have actually some written agreement and there are basically three basic types there are a number of mutations and variations but the three basic types how you can really employ the person and these types are the same also in the in abroad so it's pretty similar so first one is the employment contract now the employment contract it's two-fold there are huge cons and huge pros so first of all the worst thing about the employment contract two things first of all is the taxation that is high secondly the issue is that it's not flexible now with the startup you often need a flexibility you will find out that okay I don't have my cash flow runways like two or three or four weeks then you really need to restructure your company with the employment contract it's not that easy because the people are protected by the labor court okay therefore it's not that great what is good employment contract is for the protection of your employees and they are very well protected and also it's great for the transfer of intellectual property you don't need to have any IP agreement any license agreement automatically based on the legislation everything made by your employees passes on to you even in the broader sense so basically this is very good for the transfer of the IP if necessary also there is a this freelancing regime which is widely used mostly because the taxation regime is really favorable and it's going to be even more favorable next year and however you should be really cautious when it comes to the transfer of the IP your license agreement needs to be drafted very well so that all the IP created as much as possible or as much as allowed by the legislation will pass on to you so that you can really sell it to the other third parties or use yourself or at least have exclusivity of the IP so that the IP won't be sold by your employee to the four or four or five other companies as well lastly there is a B2B relationship now this does not make any sense when you have just an ordinary developer working for you usually because it's more complex you need to have an accountant you need to file a bit more complex tax filings every year so it really makes sense if you have a significant income and then you can really play with the costs around so this is not widely used although when the income is high it might be what you should really think about and I've mentioned it previously is the IP beware of that because company cannot create the IP the human does therefore sometimes if you have a client that is regulated such as bank and you are developing something for the bank they may come and say ok so proof that you really acquired the IP right from your developers and then the agreement with their limited-level company would not be enough you would need to provide actually the contract between the company the limited-level company of theirs and themselves sometimes those contracts may not be existent usually they are not and then this might be an issue for you so really be careful either you can do a three-parties contract between the person or her limited-level company and yourself or there may be at least some separate IP transfer agreement signed between yourself and the person although it's for free so there are a number of ways how you can really deal with it but beware of that this is one of the usual mistakes we see in the innovation companies here in Slovakia and also in the region cool yeah so thank you for the attending now I believe there are 10 minutes for questions then after this talk and after the Q&A session I'll be outside there are some pillows in front of this hall and there will be like another 30 minutes for you to come and discuss via workshop we can discuss really the issues you have in mind and I'll be more than happy to advise and help if possible so thank you very much ok so thank you very much I have one question here would you recommend for employees to know each other's share portion is it needed or not that's a good question depends I've seen companies trying to be less transparent and really trying to basically not raise envy of the actual people and employees I'm working in the company that is very transparent so having said that all shares are basically public or salaries are public so that even the developers can come and say ok so I'm in the level I don't know 14 I earn 3000 here's more why is that so and then the city can discuss with the guy or the girl can really say ok so if we like to get the raise these are the KPIs of the knowledge or the team you should really be able to handle and get the raise this transparent regime especially here in the region is not widely used minority of the companies are that transparent when it comes to the salaries and the equities but on the other hand it has its pros if communicated correctly lastly some of the shareholders or equity regimes are transparent by nature having said that if you would say ok this is my excel the trust me spreadsheet but I would like to have the official shares registered in the register in the commercial register then actually it's really impossible for you to hide it because it's publicly accessible so then you should also take in the mind the way of the distribution of the equity for you ok so that's all thank you very much so thank you very much um


How do you think I got my board to work under water? Well, it's not actually water. It's mineral oil. I wanted to do an experiment to see if I could water cool my electronics. First, I tried water, which, as expected, fried the board. It actually smoked under water and when I took it out 30 minutes later, it was burnt to a crisp. So when I tried mineral oil, which doesn't conduct electricity, the board worked just fine. Want to see more stuff like this? Check out the YouTube channel in the bio.


Well, yes, I think that I don't think it's sort of a Ethereal exactly at least it depends what you mean by ethereal, but I think it's a field I think these things work through what I call morphic fields. Yes, and morphic fields are fields and In science we have quite a number of fields and as the magnetic field around the magnet It's you can't see the magnetic field. It's in the magnet and it's around it the gravitational field around the earth It's an invisible organizing structure that keeps the moon in its orbit and keeps us down on the ground Then there's the electromagnetic field of your cell phone which is active inside the cell phone but extends invisibly beyond it and Now all of these are fields and the point fields were first introduced into science in the 1840s they're not part of the original Newtonian mechanistic picture and and Most of our modern technologies are field-based technologies I mean right now we're talking on zoom the whole of this works on electromagnetic fields and transmissions and so on So I think morphogenetic fields probably the form-shaping fields and morphic fields Which is the generic term to cover form-shaping fields and behavioral fields and social fields I Think these are actual organizing fields invisible organizing structures their patterns or regions of activity in space and time And so it may sound the fact they're invisible and they organize things invisibly Some people would say oh, wow, this must be pseudo science is woo woo and so on but actually That's the basis of the whole of modern science the whole of modern science is explaining the visible in terms of the invisible and Once you get into quantum matter fields and the quantum zero point energy fields and the Higgs boson field We're dealing with a whole range of fields which under my reality. They're invisible They give structure and order and form to things morphic fields is another kind of field We've already got several kinds within science, but I don't think it's yet an exhaustive list Yeah, you give these though those are very important examples in the not only earth's Magnetic field the gravitational poles the all the technology in the last 150 years is now functioning off of these Invisible fields to the human eye. This is very important But also even furthermore when you look at even just something as simple as a tree The tree is not just the static tree There's a massive field around the tree that is constantly doing the the O2 and co2 Exchange that is it's just happening all over but from the leaf sections all the time And if you're next to it, you're inhaling that and exhaling seriously like that you're there's it So that's also a big funny thing with the whole identity thing if you identify yourself as just your ego Or if you identify yourself as also that tree that's a little bit of a separate thing But you you give also this really important point about social groups. I think is very important like you just listed There's just there's something else happening So we're going to coexist these concepts of genetics epigenetics and the way science is understanding the Collective inheritances of of memory, but we're also going to add to that picture We're going to add to that something else that is that that's occurring across Amorphic field for humans and there's got to be ways to do this better I mean we'll give this brief example in sports and then I'll make the the question here, but just it It's so true that in social groups There's almost some sort of a Amorphic field that happens if you've ever been around Especially in like northern california. What happens is you have an extremely Homogenized perspective about a specific topic and you basically can't you can't really enter a new idea into like a social group if they're have a homogenized idea and with athletes There's something going on with athletes Myself and one have played for so long different sports, especially in team sports where there's some sort of a collective intelligence that's happening that is it's it's in a sense it's it's some sort of an extrasensory perception and There's something going on between the teammates where they're able to be in complete surrendered flow to communication and Sharing so ultimately rupert what we can have science do to further prove this Is more randomized control trials around How our capacity to quickly learn around the world new ideas? And so this can be a way for science to further probe and understand that with all these examples um Yes, well looking at social fields, um Yes, I think that there are fields that organize social groups and I've looked at these in Animals because all social animals have social fields. They all have to coordinate members of the group And when you look at flocks of starlings, for example, which we have here in England in the winter huge flocks up to a million birds They fly around before dusk um And the whole flock can change direction It almost immediately without the individuals bumping into each other They know not only where the others are But where they're going to go and the same is true of schools of fish And so there's something about animal groups that they can be coordinated by some kind of invisible connection And the best computer models of these flock behaviors treat them as as fields as if they're a bit like iron filings In a magnetic field. Each individual iron filing is not doing the organizing itself It's within a larger structure of which it's part And I think members of social groups are like that I think that's why you were talking about a kind of Consensus views that you get in societies. I mean scientific paradigms are like that thomas kuhn Wanted out that with at any given time the scientists share a common model of reality a paradigm And anything that doesn't fit in is dismissed or ignored or treated as heretical But then there's a scientific revolution And another paradigm takes over another model of reality And and then the same thing happens again I mean his model of scientific revolution was rather like sort of old style latin american military Dictatorships where you have a kind of dictatorship that's replaced by a different dictatorship It wasn't scientific revolutions have involved replacing one dictatorship of ideas with another they haven't none of them's Yet been like the declaration of independence where there's sort of democracy hit science We're still in the old model of You know at any given time and right now the dominant world view is mechanistic materialism It's coming apart at the edges and it's as I show in my book science set free called the science delusion in the uk These dogmas of materialism are actually being outgrown by science itself. We're going beyond them So there's there's a sense in which social fields constrain our thoughts They also link us together and in team sports Um, they can lead to this coordination. That's sort of unconscious and almost automotive sort of automatic and Michael Murphy looked into this, you know, the founder of the ensaline institute who's very keen on on Looking at sports as an evolutionary phenomenon and in his book the psychic side of sports um co-authored with real white he um Talks about how interviewing he interviewed American football players And a lot of them felt they were sort of telepathic with other members of the team But none of them dared say so in the locker room Because they thought the others would think they were weird um But this is going on all the time. I think in in sports activities And it's this connection between members of groups within the social field that underlies telepathic phenomena Like dogs knowing when their owners are coming home and mothers knowing when their baby needs them When they're miles away from the baby So I think we're linked together with members of our families and members of other social groups through these social fields Ultimately, this is our responsibility to create randomized control trials to probe this


Coming up on DTNS Uber wants to be your app for everything, an alternate app store for iOS, no jailbreak needed, and drones that keep you safe from crocodiles. This is The Daily Tech News for Thursday, September 26, 2019 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Feline, I'm Sarah Lane. From San Diego, California at TwitchCon. I'm Justin Robert Young. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. If you don't know, we do stream this show on Twitch. And we start before the show where you can hear us talk about Justin's upcoming radio appearance and our thoughts on music cues on radio. That's all available on Good Day Internet, which you can also get by becoming a patron at Patreon.com slash DTNS. Let's start now with a few things you should know about technology. Indonesia Riot Hailing Company Gojek launched a video streaming service called GoPlay, featuring exclusive access to hundreds of movies and TV shows and some shorter clips in a library of its own. Gojek began testing GoPlay with select users back in June, focusing on local content in the country. Gojek has partnered with major local production houses such as Bass Entertainment, Kalyana Shira Films, and Warhana Creator for production of original titles. Cloudflare, Chrome, and Firefox are all adding support for HTTP 3 today. Cloudflare enabled the option on its dashboard and you can enable it in Chrome, Canary, and Firefox. They will get a nightly version of this or sorry, this autumn and HTTP 3 is a complete rewrite that uses Q U I C instead of TCP and builds in TLS encryption. Tech cards as Brian here reports his new and improved Samsung Galaxy Fold has an unintended brightly colored amorphous blob on the screen. After 27 hours of use, he guesses it happened from pressing the display to close the device. Samsung has since got the device back and will be taking it apart to find out what went wrong. Heater did not have a broken Galaxy Fold the first time around, so maybe they just didn't want him to feel left out. Microsoft General Counsel Dev Stalcop said in a blog post that Microsoft is challenging a federal judge's order that forbids them from telling a corporate customer about a warrant requesting its data, something referred to as a sneak and peek search. Microsoft believes that the practice is too widespread and is appealing a loss of its challenge to the secrecy order in September of 2018, arguing that the warrant for emails, text messages, and voicemails associated with two email addresses was overly broad. The account owners are accused of wire fraud and money laundering and conspiring to contravene U.S. sanctions. Huawei founder and CEO Run Zhengfei said Thursday that it will produce 5G base stations free of U.S. part of a thousand 5G stations per month, starting in October and plans to produce 1.5 million base stations next year. Huawei president of corporate strategy Will Zhang said performance of the new base stations is, quote, no worse than those made with U.S. parts. And Microsoft denounced the beta for Xbox Action for the Google Assistant, now available with a general release expected this autumn. This lets gamers turn on or off their Xbox launch games or apps and player pause content from a Google Home device or through the Google Assistant app. You can customize the name of connected Xboxes as well as assign them rooms designated in the Google Home app. Microsoft previously released Xbox skills for Amazon voice services and Cortana, so there you go. All right, OnePlus had their big announcements. Let's start by talking about one of those, Justin. You're gosh dang right, Tom. OnePlus announced that the OnePlus 7T phone, a slightly smaller and less expensive version of the OnePlus 7 Pro, the 7T has a 6.55 inch 1080p OLED panel with a 20.9 aspect ratio and 90 Hertz refresh rate. It has an optical fingerprint sensor in the display and a small notch in the front facing camera on the back. It has three cameras, standard, ultra wide and telephoto. It's wired charging is 23% faster with the 7T Pro, although it does not have wireless charging. It uses USB-C but does not have a headphone jack and they aren't going to give you a dongle neither. The OnePlus 7T with Android 10 will be available in gray or blue October 18th for $599. Yeah, man. Good price. Good price for the specs. We know a lot of folks in the audience love OnePlus phones. Great price for these specs. Pretty solid, well-beloved. Everyone talking about that 90 Hertz refresh rate. Most of the reviews I read just kind of gushed about how smooth the phone worked and how good it looked for $599. I think that price point just puts rose-colored glasses on people's faces. Yeah. Look, the feature to me about the new iPhone is the fact that those three cameras really do functionally change the way that you take photos. If you can get that for a fraction of the price, well, Renz, you got us still going. Yeah. OnePlus fans particularly were very proud of having headphone jacks for a while. I don't know how they're going to take this. It's not the first time they've sold a phone without a headphone jack, but this is the big entry into the US market. The OnePlus 7 Pro was sort of the international version of this. OnePlus is a Chinese company. I want to point out that Huawei, under the gun, ZTE has had its troubles, but OnePlus has seemed to carry on just fine without running into a lot of the controversies. It also doesn't make a networking gear, which I think attracts the attention of your governments for ZTE and Huawei. So that may be all the explanation you need right there. But well-reviewed and well-priced phones from OnePlus. Yeah. And without the wireless charging for the most part, this is any flagship phone. It checks all the boxes of the kind of phone that over the last six months, we've all been like, okay, well, everybody has to, you got three cameras on the back, lots of bells and whistles, in-screen fingerprint sensor, the whole thing. So yeah, the price is, it kind of makes you wonder why you'd pay more than $600 for such a thing. Well, but also this is getting to know you prices, right? Like, this is their big step out into the United States market. And so they want to make sure that there's a lot of people out there that are using OnePlus phones that are happy with not only the purchase, but the experience. It's not their first phone in the United States market. It's the first of the seven lines. So yeah, I mean, they're always pretty affordable though, I have to say. No, that is part of their brand. But I think that this is in line with how they want to work here in the States. OnePlus also announced its first TV, the 55Q1 Pro running Android TV, has a 4K HDR capable OLED VA panel, also has an eight speaker module that slides from behind the screen that contains two tweeters, two woofers and four full range speakers. A cheaper model called the 55Q1 has just the four full range speakers. The remote includes a prime video button and also a mic for using Google Assistant. You can also use an Android app from OnePlus called Connect Control the TV that way. At launch, it won't support Netflix, although OnePlus does say it hopes to fix that by October or November of this year. The 55Q1 four speaker model will sell for 69,900 rupees. That's about 985 US dollars. And the eight speaker pro for 99,900 rupees are about 1400 US dollars in India. Yeah. So this is a quantum dot. So technically a QLED panel and by all QLED, sorry. Yeah. By all accounts, a nice looking panel. Now, they're only marketing this to India. This is OnePlus's first venture into televisions. I think it's interesting that they're trying to split their loyalties by saying, yes, we'll use Android TV, so Google Assistant. But don't worry, Amazon will put a prime video button on our remote for you. That always kind of bothers me because those remotes age and eventually, I'm not saying prime video is going to go out of business, but at some point you're like, why do I have an M-Go button on my Roku remote? Yeah, I know. Big shout out to everybody with RDO buttons on their Roku controllers. Yeah, exactly. But it looks like a decent TV. So, you know, Godspeed OnePlus on entering the television market. I think I was expecting these to be at a little lower price point. This doesn't seem to really compete with the TCL price points as much to me, but it's close. I mean, but it's kind of like they go from one rapidly commoditizing market in smartphones to by far the most commoditized market in televisions, which has been, you know, at pretty much rock bottom margins for a decade and a half now. Well, and OnePlus can also say there's an included sound bar, essentially, within this television, which can drive the price up a little bit. That's a good point. That 8-channel or that 8-speaker sound bar is pretty sweet. That makes a big difference. All right. We have some research on moderation effects. In January, WhatsApp limited how often messages could be forwarded to five groups instead of the previous 256 groups. The idea by reducing the amount of groups you could forward to was to slow the spread of disinformation. MIT researchers have studied what effect, if any, that change had. Co-author of the preprint of the study, Kiran Jaramela, is from India and said the general consensus of people she talked to during the Indian election was that it didn't affect things much. So the perception was, I don't know that it did anything. WhatsApp says that when they put the limit in place, it reduced the total number of forwarded messages on the service by 25%. So what did the study do and what did they find? Researchers joined thousands of public groups across Brazil, Indonesia and India in order to be able to collect 6 million public messages. Remember, WhatsApp is end to end encrypted. So they had to find public groups to be able to do this. They used those public messages to rebuild the network and run simulations using different forwarding limits. So they knew what the messages were, where they'd been forwarded from, and they could model that network and say, okay, what if we had limited it more? What if we had limited it less? Under the five group limit, they found that 80% of messages died within two days, leaving 20% to reach the full network. So it definitely had an effect. However, the researchers say the data indicates that directly limiting specific messages or people could add to the effectiveness of this. So they're saying, yes, definitely had an effect, probably more than people perceived.  You know, this is a fascinating case because to refresh folks as to why these rules, these moderation rules were put into place, there were rapidly spreading mobs that, you know, at times could even like end people's lives. Like it was literal mob justice that was being round up because information spread as fast as it did. I think this was a very inspired thing, and I'm glad to see that it shows that obviously there is some net effect to these things kind of dying out a little bit quicker than they would with, you know, effectively unlimited gasoline to be poured on the fire. Yeah, I think this is a good study, and I encourage these kinds of studies to happen because I think we learn more about what's effective. And in this particular case, what they're saying is definitely reducing forwarding helped, but it didn't solve it, right? And that's the kind of thing you want to know, because if you just jump to one conclusion or another, you may spend your time doing a bunch of things that don't help at all, or you may think you've solved it and you have it. In this case, the perception was, I don't think this solved it. And it turns out, well, it solved it more than you thought. It just didn't solve it all the way. So that's good information to have. Good example of an app saying, all right, well, we took away features, basically, but those features were being abused more than they were being used for good. Yeah, definitely. At an event in San Francisco, Uber announced its overhauling, its ride-hailing, and food delivery services into one unified app with new safety features, new options for bikes and scooters and public transportation, and virtual restaurants. Uber CEO, Dara Cosversahi, is calling it the operating system for your everyday life. Now, when the app launches, users will see two boxes, either get a ride or order food. A new opt-in for digit pin verification system is going to help riders make sure they're getting into the right vehicle. A second safety method, which is rolling out in the next few months, uses ultrasound waves to automatically verify that you are indeed in the right car. A new on-trip reporting feature will let you as a rider report safety incidents that are happening during a ride. Maybe they're going the long way or they're not acting right. And then Uber says it'll follow up on after that ride is over. As for bikes, Uber is building a network of jump-charging kiosks in certain cities, which lets riders swap out a depleted battery for a fresh one on the go. The company's also rolling out a new rewards program for frequent food delivery customers. And also, this one's interesting, partnering with celebrity chef Rachel Ray to launch a new virtual restaurant that will only be available via Uber Eats, available in 10 cities for 10 weeks. It's Uber Eats pop-up store. Yeah. Well, it's something that a lot of these food delivery places have been taking advantage of. And a lot of people have been building them for things like Postmates and Uber Eats, where they're like, we're not going to have a place for people to sit. We've talked about that on DTS before. So this is Uber partnering with a big name to do that, to kind of make a splash. I think that's super important. The other thing that's really interesting here is that safety thing. Well, let me get to that in a second. The other thing that's really interesting here is that really Uber is trying to become a super app. We've talked about this multiple times on the show. WeChat is kind of emblematic of this, but there are other examples around the world where they are the app for everything that you do in your life. You don't leave home without your WeChat app in China because you can do so much with it, order food, pay for things, et cetera. Uber is trying to be the company that can be that app in the US. Facebook has tried it. Others have tried it. It just hasn't taken off here the way it has in China, but I think maybe this is a better way to do it, which is, okay, you don't want to pay for everything or do everything like that in this app yet, but you do like food delivery. What if we try combining the app? Now, if you don't see this combination, apparently Uber isn't rolling it out to everyone. It's kind of an A-B test, but I'm very curious how many people they can get inside the app because the other thing they're doing here is adding transit directions and adding a competing scooter service. Lime scooter is also part of this. So the idea being is when you say, okay, I want to take a ride. I want to go somewhere, you put in your address and it will not just help you get an Uber to that place. It'll tell you, oh, it's faster if you get an Uber to this train station and then take the train, maybe even get an Uber on the other way or grab a lime scooter on the other end. And that starts to sound like a pretty compelling reason to use the Uber app suddenly. It's also a diversification of Uber's business model, which is something that they made a very big point about when California passed that law that would reclassify their independent contractors that they work with as employees. So cynical rant over. I do believe that this is where they should be going. I mean, look, the idea that they were going to always make the ride-sharing part of this business, the core was dependent on a lot of things up to and including autonomous vehicles. Obviously, that has not shot up at the trajectory that they might have hoped five years ago. And so now they look at, all right, well, what works for us? And here's the reason why this feels like more of a good step than, let's say, Facebook stapling on a bunch of other services is that people like Uber, people like Uber eats. Now they might have moral questions about it, or they might have a different idea about whether it's good for them, but there's no doubt that a food delivery is something that people like. And reintegrating that along with the scooters is just a good idea. This is also something that Lyft has done. Although Lyft deployed their own fleet of scooters, at least in the Bay Area that you can get through their app. And now Uber's taking advantage of not only the scooters that they themselves own, but also Lyme, which has a tremendous footprint. Well, and it's advantageous for Uber who, yes, has had a PR issue for the last several years for a variety of reasons to get people to say more and more, oh, how should I get there? Uber will tell me. Is it a subway bus? Is it a competitor scooter? Is it an Uber car itself? It becomes sort of like the Q-tip or Kleenex of transportation. And then while you're in there, you might get some food and spend more time in the app in general. And so it's a big shift into we want you to think of us as a place where you do lots of things, whether or not an Uber driver is actually picking you up. Yeah, I mean, they're not really adding a whole lot of new features, honestly. They're repackaging them. And I think that's significant. I'm curious what other services they come with. Remember, Uber under the previous CEO was often trying stuff like, what if we do this? What if we do that? Let's roll out a test service. I wonder if some of that stuff has still been incubating. I'll tell you what's been incubating, Tom. Crocodiles in Australia. The Australian state of Queensland has been started a project to detect an alert tourist about crocodiles. The Ripper Group makes the West Pack little Ripper drones, which work with Amazon Web Services to reduce delays in transmitting footage. An algorithm developed with the University of Technology in Sydney identified 16 different marine life with 93% accuracy. It previously was used in a test to identify sharks in New South Wales and has been tuned to tell crocodiles from mangroves in Queensland. The Queensland Government data shows 11 crocodile attacks since 2011, four of which were fatal, Tom. I mean, no jokes, right? With a fatal crocodile attack. On the other hand, this is a lot of effort going to prevent a very small data set of risk. Most people in Queensland don't get attacked by crocodiles. No, I think let's keep it that way. Let's make it zero. I'm with this. 150%. I'm from Florida. I know what wildlife that can hurt you looks like. I understand that that is a low grade panic for some people. This just gives you a little bit of peace of mind. Tip of the cap to you, Ripper Group of Queensland, Australia. Yeah, this is, I can't find fault with this. I mean, yeah, there aren't a lot of people truly in danger from crocodile attacks, but nothing helps tourism more than peace of mind. And if Queensland wants to get people to visit and they're like, look, we have drones in the skies preventing you from being attacked by crocodiles. Most tourists will say, wait, I was at risk of being attacked by crocodiles. Why am I coming here? No way. They'll say, oh, I feel safer. I will vacation in Queensland now. I'm just saying if Amityville had this technology, Jaws would have been a short film. Yeah. I mean, it worked in New South Wales. It'll work in Queensland. This is, I believe Australians in the audience, please, please let us know if we're right about this. This may be the most Australian story we've ever covered. I want to add real quick too, I just made a note about like Uber incubating ideas and it struck me that we did not announce that Uber announced Uber incubator to encourage its employees and others to develop products and services on top of the Uber platform. So it would be interesting to see what comes out of that to show up on that new home screen that Uber wants you to use. All right, to get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes, be sure to subscribe to DailyTechHeadlines.com. Lastly today, I want to talk about something that reminded me the old days, the buzz out loud days of tech reporting. Just in a developer hacking away at the system to figure out how to deliver you a little choice. Developer Riley Test-It has released a project called Alt Store, which lets you run an alternative app store on iOS. That app store will include Test-It's own Nintendo emulator called Delta. And the clever bit is you don't have to jailbreak to do this. Apple lets you sign your own apps with your own Apple ID, usually only developers or schools do this for testing apps that they want to use in development or for schools. So Test-It created a Mac and a Windows app called Alt Server. You install and run Alt Server on your PC, plug in your iOS device, get an app specific password from the Apple ID management portal, so you're not sharing your main password, you're getting an app specific one that is only used for Alt Server. And then Alt Server will sign the Alt Store iOS app and add it to your device. Now that's perfectly normal. And like I said, it's used by developers and schools, but self signed apps like this expire after seven days. So here's the extra clever bit. The reason you want to keep Alt Server running on your PC is it will every seven days refresh the app for you so that it's good for another seven days as long as your iOS device is on the same Wi-Fi network as the PC running Alt Server. So if you're home, you're connected to your Wi-Fi, your PC is connected to your Wi-Fi, done. It'll just keep running, you'll never even have to know about it. Now Apple could shut this down, but it would be hard to do so without affecting the schools and developers that use it. Test-It thinks the thing they could probably do is block the refreshing of the apps over Wi-Fi. So that would mean you'd have to plug it in every seven days to refresh the app. But if you're worried about the security of it, the code is open source. It's on GitHub. Anybody's free to investigate it. And once it's ready for full launch on September 28th, the Delta emulator that Test-It has made will support SNES, Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, and Nintendo 64 platforms. And because of the developments in iOS 13, it'll work with Sony DualShock 4 and Xbox One controllers or any M5 supported gamepad. So I just had to say I thought this was a very clever and elegant piece of working around. I don't know how many people are really going to do it, but Roger Chang, our producer, I know is a big fan of emulators. And I thought this might appeal to you too, Roger. It is a very clever way of kind of getting around Apple's sort of walled garden. I'm curious to know what Apple's response now. Like if it were me, I would just kind of shrug and make sure and kind of keep it on the down low. But there could be some sort of something they could implement to help defeat this. But I mean, that would be a lot of work just for this one guy. It has always been my theory. And I think it will be tested here that Apple doesn't care if you do stuff like this. It also doesn't care if something they do breaks it. There's nothing obvious that they would do that would break this. So I think this will continue to be available. I think it's more likely that Nintendo gets been out of shape over an emulator getting this much attention. But I don't think there's anything that Nintendo can do about that because he's not including the ROMs, right? Well, he's not including the ROMs. I mean, it depends on how you wrote the emulator. And in some of the cases, they've nailed creators for basically lifting code verbatim. But I don't think that would be the case. And there's literally an arm length's worth of emulators floating around on the Internet. And the ROMs are super easy to get. Not that I would know, but they're super easy to get. You've heard. I've heard. I've heard on the forums. I've heard on the forums they're super easy to get. And tested isn't new to making these emulators. So I'm guessing he knows how to write his code to avoid any kind of risk of Nintendo coming after him because he's been doing this for a while. Well, all right. So here are the two reasons why this would get stepped on. Number one, you guys already identified, which is that people who believe that their IP is being infringed through this app now start complaining and ask for Apple to do something. Many of them, considering we just had a gigantic launch of a Mario Kart app, are partners with Apple that that want to see things continue to flourish on the mobile side. The other is Apple just not liking the precedent and just not saying like just not liking the fact that, OK, you want to know what this certainly takes a bunch of a lot of effort. It takes continual renewal and maintenance to make sure that it keeps going. But we're not in love with where this could lead down the road if it becomes popular. So we're going to squat on it. And, you know, I don't know, I would tend to believe that we're probably going to see at least what Ted said thinks their their next move will be to eliminate Wi-Fi. The Wi-Fi blocking. Yeah, just just make you plug in. Apple usually worries if it's something that they think their audience is going to do and hurt themselves, right? They're like, ah, they're very parental that way. That's why they they sometimes would fight jailbreaking. I always felt like they fought jailbreaking by just not bothering to adapt to it. Like pretty much any code change can hurt a jailbreak by accident. So I don't know. It'll be interesting to see. Well, I will say, at least in the case of Nintendo, sometimes they've gone after the creators, but most times they just go after the websites that host it. Host the ROMs. Or just the ROMs or even the applications. So maybe they might lean on GitHub. I don't know. I mean, it seems a bit much for one guy. I don't think so. Again, Test, it's been doing this for a while and has has avoided that sort of scrutiny. So I think I think I doubt that becomes the way it goes. But yeah, anyway, good. I don't know. It feels like 2008 again, doing this story just made me feel good. Hey, thanks, everybody who participates in our subreddit. You can submit stories and vote on them at daily tech news show dot reddit.com. We are also on Facebook. We have a group facebook.com slash groups slash Daily Tech News show. Let's check out the mailbag. Let's do it. Connor wrote in about our discussion we had on Tuesday with Patrick Beja about reselling software. Connor says, I'm a software engineer and this subject reminds me of the transition happening with a lot of enterprise and B2B software companies. Before business software started moving to the cloud, the software was mostly considered on-prem, meaning it was installed in customer data centers on servers or mainframes. A disk was typically shipped to the customer for them to install or a field technician would visit the site and install it for the customer. This is still pretty common, but is trending out with software as a service in the cloud. It wasn't the software that was sold to the consumer, but a perpetual license which gave rights to the consumer, allowing them to use the software, and that agreement typically came with somewhere between one to three years of updates and support. After the one to three years, a new agreement would have to be made. Patrick touched on this when mentioning selling a license to access a game for 50 years. By no means was the customer allowed to resell the software though because they didn't own it. As Tom expressed, reselling software just doesn't make sense. With the current trends in consumer software and gaming, including software as a service, game streaming, and other subscription models, I think this problem will quickly fade away. Man, no, that is a great analogy and bringing in that B2B perspective on it is very valuable. Thank you, Connor. I think Connor wins Best Written Email of the Week here. That's really well done. Three cheers for Connor. Yeah, keep those emails coming. We love your feedback. Also, thanks to Justin Robert Young, always good feedback on the show. Justin, where can folks keep up with the rest of your work? Oh, well, I don't know if you guys have noticed, but in the world of politics, there's been quite a lot of news. So here's what I would suggest you do. Number one, go to your closest podcast player or store and find the Politics Politics Podcast, and sign up for my free political newsletter at freepoliticalnewsletter.com. And if you are at TwitchCon, you might see me. But more than likely, I'll be at the lobby bar playing Hearthstone. So just come on and tap me on the shoulder. I swear I won't bite. Excellent. Folks, we are just in the waning days of the old Patreon rewards. October 1st will be the last time we deliver the old slate. And starting on October 1st, there's a whole new slate that people will sign up and get. If you want to know what that new slate looks like, you go to dailytechnewshow.com slash Patreon. I mentioned we love feedback, and our email address is feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. Keep those emails coming. We're also live Monday through Friday. That's 4 30 p.m. Eastern 20 30 UTC. And find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live. Back tomorrow with Lamar Wilson and Len Peralta illustrating the show. Talk to you then. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. Bob hopes you have enjoyed this program.


Welcome back, now from being a small start-up in Bangalore in the year 2011 to a company that's valued at over 100 million dollars today, Hector Beverages which owns the popular paper board brand has had a pretty successful run so far. In fact, paper board has made a mark in the beverage industry with their line up of traditional Indian flavors. You know that they have Ampanna, they have Jaljeera, even Golgappay Kapani and all of these have been marketed rather innovatively through these nostalgia and using ad campaigns that's happened over a span of time since they launched. In fact, it's most recent campaign, Hum Hongye Kamyam has won it many accolades including the coveted Grand Effie which was something we were talking about just before the last break. Today to talk to us about the brand and how they've gone about marketing themselves is Parvesh Debuka the head of marketing at Hector Beverages. Great to have you with us and many congratulations on winning the Effie this year. We'll come to that in a bit but I want to take a step back first to understand how the idea of paper board came about, what did you take us a little bit back in time? Yeah, so it was one of those hot afternoons in Gurgaon when Neeraj Kakkar, Neeraj Bihani, Suhas and James were having their lunch and Suhas would bring Ampanna from home and everybody would want to take a swig of it and they really loved it which was so yummy. One fine day when they were having their drink James happened to mention that guys this is such a great drink, why is it that, why don't we pack it something like this? All of us love it, all of you guys obviously love it, so why don't we pack it and that's pretty much how it started and thereafter each one of us have a specific drink that we all love and so from Ampanna then the name of Jaljeera came up then the name of Amrits came up and everybody started suggesting the drinks because we have all grown up with these drinks and it used to be made at home when we grew up so it was just something that followed as a train of thought and we kept going in that direction. So when you talk about product strategy are these new flavors likely to continue, the kind of flavors that have already introduced the nostalgia and using the kind that are so reminiscent of the India that we know in the past, is that likely to continue in the near future as well? So we will come out with and we are very excited about it, we will come out with this drink Neelmour, it's spiced buttermilk and that's going to be launched very soon and we are also planning to launch Panakkam which is a drink from Karnataka, it's had on Ram Navami and we have a couple of more that we are thinking about and we are working on. So you've been watching the market very closely, tell us about the kind of response you've had so far to all these offbeat flavors you've introduced, any consumer insights, any trends that you can share with us? Yes, so the response has been great honestly and you know because like I grew up with Ampanna and Amrits and Jaljeera and there are so many of us who have actually grown up with these drinks so everybody is loving them and one of the things that we've seen that if you look at for instance one question that is always asked is some of us have not grown up with some of these drinks and now we are in let's say Bangalore and Bombay, so what happens then? And the good thing is if you look at Bangalore and you look at the Pani Puri guys in Bangalore you know seven years ago when I was in Bangalore in 2007 I think there were far less Pani Puri guys in Bangalore than we see today. Today there's a Pani Puri guy you know everywhere so you know food is basically migrating and you know people carry their food habits with them and we've seen that worldwide as well so that's and that's something that we are also seeing with our drinks so for instance our Kokum does quite well in a market like Delhi because of course people have grown up with Kokum are there and they are having it and we keep getting a lot of you know males from people who've discovered this new drink and with each of these drinks then you discover something about that place something about the people you know you get you get to know about them a little more. Also why have you chosen to package this product in pouches you have so many bottles you have the Tetra packs out there but you've done it very differently is it to really stand out on the shelves? No actually it was something that so James he you know he was he came with a lot of expertise in packaging and it was just one of those things we wanted to you know do something which was and he had this in mind and we said hey why not there isn't something like this that's around and you can actually create something really spectacular with this kind of packaging so why not give it like a really good shot and that's exactly how it happened and when it came out finally I think everybody fell in love with it. Initially I remember Parvesh these were most visible on airlines was that a conscious move to kind of make them popular on flights and then kind of take it from there? Yeah so one we thought was that it's a great place like all the people who are traveling you know how can we they are they are also the right kind of people that they're making these drinks for because a lot of travel happens for work you know in all the metros and we said that what better place to sort of serve them these drinks than on airports and aircrafts because you're always looking out for something to eat you're traveling at odd hours you're tired after a long day of work at work so you know so it's a great place where we can actually serve you something and and that's how we decided that you know and you also end up reaching out to people from everywhere right so people from all the places and and because we have so many different drinks we said let's let's go to the airlines that's a good place all right let's talk about ad campaigns as well because since your launch paperboard has been known for all your innovative advertising the latest Hum Hongye Kamyab campaign that's in sync with the previous ad that you've learned so tell us sir what's the approach you've taken now with the Hum Hongye Kamyab campaign how have you conceptualized it? So Hum Hongye Kamyab is such a good song it's it's such a favorite song of ours and I think everybody in in you know in our company is always ready to sing that song so even in a get-togethers you know at office I think there are very few get-togethers where we haven't sung this song so it's extremely close all of us carried in our hearts and one day you know Neeraj said that hey you know we have Hum Hongye Kamyab you know we all love it why don't we create something with that you know why don't we create some magic with it and that's how it began we went and searched for it on youtube and we realized that there wasn't like a well recorded version of the song you know there are good versions of course there are great renditions of the song but we were trying to look for an original basically you know if you know what I mean and we didn't find that so we said that why don't we create something we love it so much why don't we actually create something which can stay you know which can actually become a a song that stays you know true to how we saw it when we were growing up so that's how the idea came about and and yeah and then the the whole you know the whole point of getting all the startup people into the song because they are such amazing people then they are they are really changing our country for the better so as far as I can see paperboard ads they've been based on themes that are related to childhood to nostalgia even the use of the mulberry theme it takes us back in time on a huge nostalgia trip tell us about why you've chosen this kind of positioning this kind of theme as it were you know again it comes from the fact that you know we all have grown up with these drinks and somehow for instance I am from Jamshepur okay and I'm in Bangalore right now I left home in 2001 and I don't think I've had an Aam Panna I had had an Aam Panna you know away from home in all these years till it got launched by paperboard so you know it's somewhere to me a lot about my childhood and how I spent my time during summer holidays and and and how you know my mom would you know sort of you know tell me not to not to drink too much of Amras or not to have too much of you know kacham keri so so a lot of stories are actually attached you know to our childhood with these drinks so we said that you know why not why not because that's that's exactly where it is from in our hearts so why not and Parvesh are you doing anything spectacular in the digital space to connect better with consumers on social platforms we know about the facebook memories and the instagram campaigns you've had but we haven't really seen anything very disruptive from you which is surprising because you're a young you're a quirky brand so you can carry that off as well so what's the thought process on the social media what's your strategy so obviously every time we do something the intent is to do something which is genuinely good and genuinely genuinely something spectacular that's always the intent and attempt so we haven't done that anywhere actually and anywhere else and and we keep doing right so so look at so basically digital is a lot of social media and you know and and basically your own website so facebook instagram i think we keep doing something there which only happens in that space because those kind of stories can only be told in that fashion in that space so so we keep doing that and we will always we are working towards a couple of more stories and we will see them very soon in the next couple of months and they're only for the digital space well considering as far as you've come right now Parvesh how are you planning to take the brand ahead how are you looking at growing this market over the next few years so we are extremely small right now right and and we have a really long way to go so i think one of the key things is how do we go to more markets how do we go to more number of stores within the same markets so that more number of people can you know discover us and i think that's a long journey so that's that's that's our plan you know going forward you know expand try and reach you know different kind of shops so considering that you're exploring newer markets now are going into tier two tier three cities even rural markets in the future how are you going to change no because i think the you know the whole idea is that we will continue to you know showcase the innocence and i think innocence is the same irrespective of where you are and where you come from so i think it's going to be exactly the same Parvesh i understand that you're looking at going beyond Indian shores as well and the process has already started tell us how you're looking at being able to tap the potential that overseas markets hold right now well i mean we are exploring so we we were exporting actually to the us in between and a couple of more markets but now we are just sort of getting our you know structures in place and exploring some more markets outside that as well


It was a day to remember for one man in particular in the final round of international series England at Close House in the northeast of England. Several players in contention today, including Jason Kochrak of the USA, who got the best possible start with this eagle at the opening hole in the end of 68 for 7 under for Kochrak. Abraham Ancer was fancied by many people to challenge for the title. The title never quite happened for the Mexican today, although he did hold this birdie pat at the 4th, a 71 for 7 under. Exactly the same score as David Peuge of Spain. Beautiful approach into the par 516 for the Spaniard. He would hold that for birdie, but 71, 7 under as it was for Matt Jones of Australia, this at the 7th for birdie. Beautifully judged, and he finishes tied for 4th with Kochrak, Peuge and Abraham Ancer. Three birdies, no bogies, a frustrating day though, the putter just wasn't behaving. A 68 for Lahiri, and Ian Polter had a terrific day. Six birdies and an eagle on his card, this an eagle at 16, a 64 best of the week. And at 9 on the bar Ian Polter finishes 2nd, but nobody could catch Andy Ogletree. Amazingly he started with a bogie at a fairly straightforward opening hole, but after that he played some stunning golf. This is tee shot at the 5th for the 2nd of 3 birdies in a row. And then with his lead growing by the hole, he counts a 16, hold the eagle putt, and he too shoots a 64 for 16 on the par. And a win by 7 shots. Remarkable performance by Andy Ogletree, his 3rd international series win here at Close House. Well done to the American.