Ladies and gentlemen, good evening to this press conference from the 49th annual meeting of the World Economic Forum here in Davos, Switzerland. Thank you for joining us here in the room and thank you for joining us on the live stream, whether you're watching on Twitter, Facebook, all the usual channels or on our website. We're very happy that you're joining us. Thank you very much. You are joining the press conference titled, Are We There Yet? The Status of LGBTI Inclusion. And I'm very happy to introduce now a wonderful panel to talk and hopefully answer that question in the next 30 minutes. To my immediate left, I'm joined by Saadia Sahidi, who is a managing director of the World Economic Forum and the head of social and economic agendas. Next to her, we're joined by Michel Bachelet, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights based in Geneva. To her immediate left, we're joined by Sander van Nordtende, the group chief executive products of Accenture. And last but definitely not least, we're joined by Karl von Rohr, who is a member of the managing board of Deutsche Bank, of course based in Germany. Thank you very much for being here. Without further ado, Saadia, why is the World Economic Forum engaged in this debate about inclusion, LGBTI inclusion, and why is it such an important topic here at this annual meeting? Sure, thank you. I'll try to be very brief. In October of this past year, we launched our Global Competitiveness Report, and it included a new updated framework, a new updated methodology that tries to take into account social equalities that tries to take into account the value of technology when measuring competitiveness. And when we built a much more diverse portfolio of what competitiveness truly means for different societies, it becomes incredibly clear that competitiveness can only occur for countries that provide opportunity for all. And that opportunity for all has to include women, that has to include people who have disabilities, that has to include people of different socioeconomic groups, and that absolutely has to include LGBTI diversity as well. And so there is a clear economic case. It's very clear that countries that do this well tend to be the ones that have faster growth, that have better productivity, that have better competitiveness, that have better long-term potential for all of their people. But there is also a moral case. There's a very clear values case. We have to ensure that every single person, regardless of sexual orientation, regardless of gender, regardless of race, regardless of religion, has equal opportunities. And so that's really the main rationale. And what's also interesting is now with the World Economic Forum being much more of a platform for public-private cooperation, we have an opportunity to take this movement that was very much started by various businesses and by civil society organizations and international organizations here at the forum, provide a platform for that movement to go forward, and employers in particular have such a strong role to play in providing better standards, providing better ways of accelerating LGBTI inclusion. Thank you, Sadia. And what a wonderful bridge, since you mentioned standards. Michelle, the United Nations has its own standards on LGBTI conduct. Tell us a little bit about them and what you think the way forward is. Well, I welcome really to be here with the launch of this platform for LGBTI inclusion, accelerating LGBTI inclusion, and it's no better place than in Davos to do this, because it was here in 2016 that my predecessor talking and activities company realized that company did not understood it was their responsibility to ensure LGBTI's rights, and they even thought that LGBTI issues were not human rights issues. So the decision and the reality is different. The UN believes that the private sector has an important role to play in human rights because companies make decision, being it on human resources or investments, supply change, or marketing that can have a real and profound impact on human rights. And of course, we all know the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states clearly that all human beings, despite all their diversity in religious, geographical diversity, gender, ethnic, et cetera, they all equally need to be respected with dignity and need to be considered their issues. And at the other hand, we understood that LGBTI community was very vulnerable. It was very vulnerable, it was discriminated. So the standards where they look after, and we work those standards, since 2016 at the Office of the High Commission of Human Rights, we work also with corporates, with civil society, with LGBTI organizations. But what meant to be is to engage companies in ensuring policies, anti-discrimination policies, to ensure to sensitize managers and to ensure also to equalize benefits of the employees in terms of being LGBTI community or not. So I would like to also take this opportunity to, I would say, to recognize the huge support of the seven members of this project. They have done a fantastic thing, and they have been do advance a lot. But are we there yet? No, we're not there yet. So now it's the time for implementation and also the time to reach out to more companies and encourage them to support the project that will permit to accelerate people's rights. So I think that I will finally say that I would like to recall that support for human rights of LGBTI people must be part of a broader corporate social responsibility agenda. So there is another agenda or it's part of the agenda called business and human rights that is also very important. And of course LGBTI community has to be part of this broader approach to human rights. Thank you, Michelle, and you mentioned the partnership. I should spell this out, especially for our online audience. We're launching here as well the partnership for global LGBTI equality. And we have two of the partner companies represented here, Deutsche Bank and Accenture. But I should also mention that involved in this and also present here in the room are EY, there's Omnicom, and also this is supported by other companies like Mastercard, Microsoft, and Salesforce. So it's a pretty broad coalition and we're hoping, of course, to get more partners. But Sander, as a representative of one of these partner companies, what is the business perspective here? And how do you think business can develop a culture that helps to end discrimination in the workplace especially? So we like, and that's why we call the initiative also, we like to speak of a culture of equality. And we use that word because we are moving on from diversity to inclusion to equality. And it's really important because we, as Accenture, we've done some research and the research shows clearly that companies who have a culture of equality and Michelle already alluded to it are much more innovative and ultimately more successful. Also, because they create a more trusting environment for their people, and I always say in Accenture, there's no one who has to leave anything by the door. You can come to work, be yourself and focus at the work without having to hide, think, what am I gonna do? So I think that's really, that's that culture of equality that we're looking for. So the culture of equality is really a business imperative. I mean, obviously there's the human rights aspect that Sadia talked about and Michelle, but also from a business point of view, if I just look in our business, our clients are diverse. They bring different people to the table. They expect us to bring different people to the table who can be their selves and who can collaborate in the right way with their clients. It's my strong feeling, but it's also backed up by the research that diverse and equal teams have much better ideas to ultimately bring to the clients and to the business. So that's where the innovation point comes in. And then last but not least, from a talent point of view, we are Accenture. We want to have the best people on board of Accenture. And if we do not tap into different pools of talent and have that culture of equality, we're not gonna be the best for our clients. So what to do or what would be my three pieces of advice for a CEO or anyone at the C level looking at this? I would say the CEO commitment or the C level commitment goes beyond signing up for the standards. It goes to operationalizing the standards and that's what this initiative is all about. But it also comes to visible commitment at the C level. And I always say showing up matters. You have to go where the LGBT people gather. I mean, you have to set the right tone from the top. You have to be out in the field setting the right tone day in, day out and not shy away and just saying, yeah, we signed the standards and that's it. So visible CEO commitment, day in, day out. And if I say CEO, it's leadership commitment at large.  I think you're gonna say a bit more about it, but that's really important because that is translating the tone from the top into real life action. And last, but not least, I would say it's very important to stimulate and I call it grassroots movements in your company, LGBTI networks and other ERGs to stimulate those to exist, to connect with other organizations to learn, to bring IDs to leadership to implement because the real improvement or the real progress I think comes from the grassroots. So we need to ensure that we stimulate that to happen. So, I mean, we are very excited to be here today. We are very excited to have seven companies sign up. I think we should strive. I don't know if we have an official target but to get to the 100 companies sooner rather than later. And that's the objective that we as an initiative have here together with the World Economic Forum. And let's say, I couldn't be more excited to be here today.  So let's talk about investment, but I mean specifically investment in talent diversity. So what from your perspective are the steps that need to be taken within the company? And for example, which role does the HR department play there? So let me probably start by saying that of course, like also the other participant firms, we really welcome the World Economic Forum's decision to make the LGBTI issue part of their agenda. And as Sander said, it's a simple human rights issue. It has a business imperative and that's why we are very supportive and we're very committed to do our share in order to promote that topic. Now, we published this morning from Deutsche Bank a small video that hopefully you will also have access to that released nine important, what we think are very practical tips how to promote LGBTI inclusive business practice. And we hope that that's something that will be widely distributed because I think it could serve as a means to help HR departments, to help companies, to help government agencies take a look at the topic and I'm not gonna bore you with all the detail but maybe I'll just give you some of them and then I'll pick out two that well are very dear to my heart and the first thing is in all the business case of true inclusion and I'll come back to that. The second one is word choice matters. That's something that I think some always struggle how to actually use the words and there's nothing wrong with it making mistakes. Just try to get it right and over time you will and I think that's something that people just should try to not be shy about. Then the third one and I'll get back to that as well is allies are important and that is very much going back to Sander's point you need senior support for the topic because otherwise things don't move. I think we know that if leaders don't move topics it's difficult. Then investigate the laws in the places your company operates in. You have to understand as an HR department well what's the environment you're dealing with. Then make the LGBTI inclusion topic part of your strategic agenda. I think very important to get it to the company's topic to the company's top. Then understand the company's policies and benefits something that is very important for the real life of LGBTI people. Then consider offering opportunities for people to self-identify. Again, not everyone wants to self-identify. However, you have to give possibilities for people to identify also in the HR systems. Then of course an obvious one ensure inclusive people practices something that is very important. And then again coming back to Sander's point influence your company's executives to become engaged. That's something we take very seriously as a board of Deutsche Bank and we have had a number of initiatives on that. So let me come back to two because I would like to leave you with a few numbers. You said I'm a banker so I have to give you a few numbers and that's the business case. And there was some research that was done and that I think gave very interesting numbers. So 72% of the respondents of a survey that was done I think among 30,000 people or so are more likely to accept a job at a company that is supportive of LGBTI employees. 87% of millennials believe that the success of a business should be measured in terms of more than just its financial performance but also its inclusion practices. 82% of the respondents are more likely to purchase from companies that support LGBTI equality. And what the research also told us is that LGBTI inclusive organizations are more innovative. Concretely, they are more likely to have innovative products, 75% more likely, 45% more likely to improve market share and 70% more likely to succeed in new markets. So inclusion really, really matters. Now the second point that I find particularly important and I've in many discussions with some of our LGBTI employees that's something that has very often been raised to me is the third topic that I mentioned before is allies are important. We know that LGBTI people are much more likely to be bullied at school in their business lives, sometimes even in their private lives, that they are much more often treated unfairly or that in some countries they even have their lives at risk. So I think having to hide their identity and orientation, we know that that very negatively impacts people's well-being, their performance, their relationships. I've had someone in our bank who's actually a young man who always has the picture of his sister on the desk because he doesn't want to be seen as gay. So what I think our responsibility as leaders is, is that we create an environment where people know and they can have the trust that they're safe and that they can be what they are. And I think that's our responsibility to create this room of psychological and unfortunately in some countries even physical safety. And I guess that's what I would like to leave you with. I very strongly believe that these topics are important and if we can contribute to that, I think we have done something very good. Thank you very much, Carl. And I think you also both agreed with Michel that we're not there yet, as the title suggests. We have some time for Q&A. If I can see a show of hands. If you still need some time to gather your thoughts, we received by email a question earlier from a fellow journalist to basically the whole panel. It's from Hugo Greenhalt. He is working and writing for openly, that's the LGBTI platform of the Thompson Reuters Foundation, and his question is with an increasing number of reports on abuses, how can media ensure reporting accurately about LGBTI? Now, obviously none of you are journalists, but I think the culture aspects that you mentioned before speak very much to that as well and maybe you can share your thoughts on Hugo's question. Who wants to take a stand? Well, I think to some degree you could almost put the question to the audience because I think we have a number of journalists there. But I think, as always, I find... Well, if the media managed to stay as fact-based as possible and neither tried to scandalize the one side or the other, then I think we can look at the facts of the issues and then I think it's very important, and I think we've all said that before, that what senior company leaders, that senior state leaders, that senior societal important people step in and make statements. I think also what is important for people and for companies, but also for people, and I hope so for governments, is to understand that this is an issue of numbers. These are people with stories, with things that are happening to them. So to show people stories, it can be very helpful. I mean, to show it in different ways. I mean, in my country, there was a huge discussion and a lot of groups of people were against to promote. We were promoting a qualitative marriage and so on. And but then there was this Chilean film that won the Oscar, that is called Fabulous Woman. And the actress is trans and she tried to see the movies very good.  But on the other hand, how she's a fantastic human being. So I think we need to be very factual, as you say, but also we need to see what really happens to people that are real people, that are people that can be our colleague, our neighbor, our brother, our sister and that we need to think on how we give them the dignity and respect that they reserve. I know that the media had much more experience on this, but I do believe always that to talk in abstract doesn't help, we need to put faces to the situation of the people. Thank you. Yes, we have a question there. If you could wait for the microphone and state your name and organization, please. My name is Steve Ehrens, Bloomberg News. I have a question to you. When you say, you know, it's obviously an advantage if a bank or any other employer is a good thing for millennials, I think you said 70 or 82% would prefer to work for a company. Does this ever come up actually in a job interview? I mean, inclusion practices of a bank? Absolutely. I mean, that's a topic, inclusion practices, of course, for people concerned is something that they're interested in, but also for others. I think we see among the candidates that we're interviewing, we see much more interest in cultural aspects and that includes inclusion topics and that's, we get very concrete questions on that. So it is, right? And maybe to add to that, this comes up before the job interview because what do you do before you apply for a job?  So the policies and the statements on equality and inclusion are, I mean, they're out there and I would suggest any company if you haven't put them out there because people will look for them and if they're not there, people will not apply for your company and they won't even get to the 78% or what it was. So, I mean, I think it's a real issue and you need to be out there because the millennials are looking for that, they're looking for your purpose and they're looking for your work environment and if your purpose is make a lot of money for shareholders and your work environment is, we like this type of people, whatever the type of people is, don't think they will apply. Thank you. There's a question from the gentleman on the left there. Thank you. Yeah, hi, my name is Michael Engmann from German Newswire, DPA, AFX. Just one clarification from Mr. Von Rohr. The study you mentioned is that the study or survey Deutsche Bank conducted. Okay, and to everyone on the panel, you all say you're not there yet. So, how much are you there? To which degree can you give us, is there ever the possibility of getting there? Do you have a measure what you can apply to the question? Well, to give my fellow panelists some time to think, I would start with the simple fact that the forum has about 1,000 partner and member companies and we have represented in this partnership less than 10. So, I think that's maybe a clear indication that there's definitely room for improvement, but I'm sure my fellow panelists have much more to add to that. Well, when I said we're not there yet, it's because 226 companies are sort of signed for the standards. But one thing is to sign for the standards and other is to implement it. But what we also have seen is that you sometimes the headquarters of the companies do implement it very well, but if you go to the local level, it's not implemented. And we had the experience when the standards were launched in 16 different places in the world, in one place in Africa, none of the companies came to the launch because in that country it's a very controversial issue. It's against the law. And of course, and we understand, understand them, don't pretend to, I would say to tell the companies they cannot evaluate the risk in different countries. But on the same time, we believe that companies not only had to go out because of the millennials and so on, but also because and one of the standards that what it says is, I mean the standards mainly have five key points is no and show respect for human rights, eliminate discrimination, provide support, and prevent other human rights violation and act in the public sphere. So it's more to the companies go and act in the public sphere. That's why you were mentioning that it should be a visible commitment. And also because companies can be very important when in their engagement with governments to try or with parliament, parliament's to try to insist on stopping bills that discriminate people and trying to include laws that really include people, all human beings. So that's what I wanna add. Yeah, maybe to put some thoughts in your mind. What we are there would mean everybody, wherever they are, in whatever country they are, whatever company they work for. When they go to work in the morning, they find an equal workplace. Now think about that. We have seven billion people in the world. Let's say half of those people or maybe a bit more are the working population. So that's four billion, maybe five billion people. We may be with all these companies, with all the multinational companies, let's say the top 100 companies in the world. We have maybe now, 50 million people working for us. That's probably generous. Now then we have many good ones. Let's say 100 million people wake up in the morning and go to work and they find a workplace with a culture of equality. And even I would say in Accenture, as Michel alluded to, we are not perfect. We also have our challenges. So in terms of are we there yet, I think we're just scratching the surface. And that's why we need to keep at it. And that's why we are here. And that's the intention of the project that we're launching today, to do that too. Thank you very much. Since we're a Swiss organization and mindful of the time, if there's no further questions at this point, let me just add one more thing maybe from the forum's perspective. We had a lot of emails from the community in last days that were asking us why a certain public figure speaking here that have been outright hostile to the community. I think let this be a clear sign by the World Economic Forum that the allies that's under mentioned are here at the World Economic Forum and we're trying to support the community. And I want to thank everybody here on the panel for showing their support, everybody here in the room for being here and everybody for watching. Thank you very much.


This is Caitlin since last August she said that her hearing on both sides Have been messing up and it's been muffled ever since and you called it out You said the Lord is healing somebody's ear. That was her How do you know you're healed and when you said someone to my left you're healed in your ear I just felt it. I just felt it open. I can feel this This beautiful stream. Can you describe that? Okay? No There's no better description than that and you can hear better out of that ear. I just felt it. It was you Beautiful testimony. Thank you Jesus Can we give the Lord a hand of praise for this wonderful testimony?


So my question is you know India is a young nation and you know one of the biggest problem which we are facing today is the health disorders which the young nation is actually you know going through the lifestyle disorders are increasing by the day and and this is actually going to affect the productivity of the nation as we go forward so my question to you is that in spirituality and according to you what can we do to manage the stress and manage these lifestyle disorders and lifestyle issues as we go forward because that's the least time which we give to ourselves thank you very much I would like to correct the question we are not an young nation we are the oldest nation on the planet okay because if you're only looking at India's constitution or a political setup as nationhood yes we are a young nation but even ten thousand years ago people outside this country though inside the country we had over 200 political entities people from outside call the entire nation as Hindustan or Bharat or whatever people recognize both inside and outside this is one nation though it was ruled by many political heads or systems as such because we became a nation not because of our political bosses not because of a certain constitution we became a nation because we never had a belief in anything we have always been seekers we always wondered about life we sought what is the truth every generation has to seek what is the truth about my life well Krishna has already said it maybe what he said is true for him with all due respect we have to explore for ourselves what is the nature of the truth of our life this is the freedom that this nation offered to us so we were bound by these strings of seeking not believing usually most nations are made out of sameness we did not fall for that mediocrity that we have to be all same to be one each one can be different within the same family five people worshiped five different gods but no problem with us so this is a unique nation this should not be destroyed its ethos of everybody can be whatever the hell they want to be and still we are one nation this nation has existed for the longest period of time simply because of this lack of rigidity within itself now we are trying to put rigid lines if you do that it won't last long it's very important to know this about health we always known how to be healthy if you believe for this 1.2 billion people you are going to create a health care system like United States has you you don't know what you're talking about you just not seen the country nor have you seen United States nor have you looked at the systems that United States has in spite of that three trillion dollar bill of their health care is going to sink that nation if they continue the same way for another few years yes it's going to sink that nation cuz three trillion dollars it's bigger than our budget so if you think you're going to create a health care system like that it's going to be a disaster I think the present government has done one significant thing that is the Ayush ministry it is still not well funded but once it is well funded and if we manage to roll it out the way we should because Isha Foundation was the first pilot project of our Ayush about eight years ago in the Namakal district in Tamil Nadu it produced phenomenal results for one restrict just teaching people how to be healthy in rural India and we started hundreds of herbal gardens with which people are thought in public places these gardens were raised where people can go and make use of the herbs for different day-to-day ailments that they come to something very serious happens they can go to the hospital I want you to know just one or two generations ago when your grandmothers were alive if a child got a stomach ache nobody went to the doctor child got little fever nobody went to the doctor they knew what to do today for everything you're going to the doctor because it's become an industry as you say it is not health it is medicine okay it is about fueling for me pharmaceutical industries I'm not against pharmaceuticals pharmaceuticals means you're chemically bombing the system okay it's chemical bombing when it's really drastic and it's necessary we must do it but if we do every day we know today what is the harm we are causing to the system by doing that if you want to bring health to this nation you must bring back ancient systems yoga and all levels on this international yoga day we're taking yoga to over ten thousand schools in India Manisha is saying that she will take me to Nepal and in all the schools in Nepal so because this has to come at an early age your health should be your responsibility not your doctor's responsibility isn't it to stay healthy is it your business or somebody else's business government's business to keep you healthy no it's my business to keep myself healthy how what should I eat how should I live how should I sit how should I breathe what should I do with myself is something that I must be concerned about


But I have seen the crocodiles that hang around on the beaches here, the hammerhead sharks that swim through here. It looks great but yeah, it's fraught with danger.


Okay, gentlemen and gentle ladies, I'm going to start with my presentation. This is going to be a nice story because the original title of this presentation was different. I'll explain you later why. But that doesn't mean we're going to tell a nice story about it. So I hope you enjoy this presentation and let's continue. Like I said, first of all, it's about how implementing services in a large telecom, what went good, how we continued. So we're talking about the partners, the transformation, what is learned and the ideal roles. And most important, like I said, it should be a story here about two people, two guys who met in early this year and did something together. Unfortunately, on Friday, we discovered that one of them was not allowed to speak.  He's even in the room here, so it's okay. So who am I? My name is Frank Vines. I'm, to put it bluntly, I liked open source software. I'm in the business for 20 years with Linux. Last year, I went to OpenStack because I liked the idea about when you work together, you can create something unbelievable. And also, the last years when I'm in the sales engineering side of the business, I think if you want to sell something, it's about teaching. It's about educating your customer how you can use your products in the right way, how you can create value with the things that you deliver. Like I said, it's about explaining. It's not about preaching what's good or what's right. Decide together with it. But also, from a customer side, especially what I would call in this open stack world, you have to be open to learn. If you're able to learn, also be open, be critical, challenge it, give feedback to your suppliers, but also be a teacher in your organization. I can honestly tell you the implementations we did at Mirantis with OpenStack that were successful were the ones where we talked with the customer, we went together to implement a project where we created together value. I'll give you another example. Two weeks ago, no, two months ago, I received an RFP from an insurance company, 40 pages or something, and everything in that RFP was impossible almost because somebody had read a book about OpenStack and they said, I want 10,000 virtual machines running on SDN with software-defined storage in one cloud. That was a summary of it. I said, right, just do it, but not with me. When I want to do something, when I want to implement something, like I said, I've been in the Linux business, I've been the OpenStack business, and normally the model in the OpenStack, in the open source world, it's not licensing, it's subscriptions, and subscriptions has to be renewed every year. So if you create something that's not renewable after a year, you're stuck. So that's my mission. So like I said, I work for Mirantis. My mission is to build automated clouds, mission critical, and we are open to feedback because OpenStack, as everybody knows, is a rolling thing going on, and it's not one product that you ship in a box. Now, a large telecom, which I can't name. So in October, they decided they want to implement OpenStack in the data center and because they didn't have the eNAS experience, they decided to go with a partner and they selected the Mirantis for the anti-patient study. Like I said, this is a study what we did together. This is the journey to grow.  With OpenStack, you combine it to one situation. And not everybody loves that at the same time. You have to make sure, like I said, also when you want to implement OpenStack inside your organization, that you align also those organizations because otherwise it ain't be a success. So what was the idea about the transformation? Cloud infrastructure as a service based on OpenStack, software architecture designed for the cloud, the tooling and automation. The objective was to reduce the time to market in the life cycle. That's not what I would call big science, but that's the fact. At the moment, most of the customers, they have virtualization inside. But virtualization is what I would call a deluxe version of infrastructure. It's not an automating thing. So if you... Good afternoon, welcome. And also what you see in traditional infrastructure at the moment is a completely separation between, I would call the hardware, the service between test, acceptance and production. If you want to build a new agile infrastructure, one of the things is indeed is to make sure that you can deliver self-service. And with self-service, I mean not to the end customer, but internally to your project to the people. That when they need something, it's filled in. This is like in the real world, you know. If now you want to book a travel, what you do? You go to a website, you book the travel. You don't need the travel agency, the people sitting there like this slowing down the process. So also please use that self-service as one of the key features for new agile infrastructure. That also implements what I would say a more responsible responsibility about security but networking because it's also done automatically. The nice thing is if you implement OpenStar Clouds or Clouds in general in the right way, there's no difference anymore between the infrastructure for test environments and production environments. So the risk by moving from test, acceptance to production is much less than you go in the traditional environment. Also with the new application designs, sometimes they call it what I would call the cattle and the pets. Anybody heard about that? Cattle pets? Some people. It's one of the terms invented by Tim Bell, I think, from CERN, with a pet, I mean a virtual machine or a machine that needs to be kept alive. Whatever happens, it must be kept alive, you know? In the early days, you had nonstop tandem computers, make sure that everything was up and running, old thing for that only virtual machine. Now, when you design with new application, cloud applications, it's the size, the number of virtual machines which will create a high availability. Why is everybody opening my door? Is this a movie? Okay, we continue, like I said, oh, nice. It's like if you design new infrastructures, make sure that you scale in a horizontal way. Also, what I would say with OpenStack is it's better to have 500 virtual machines where 10% can die than five where only one can die. So that's the thing. Also, the nice thing about this is one of the nice things about OpenStack, and that's why I believe in OpenStack, it's the open APIs. And the nice thing is with OpenStack, because it's now really what I would call, I consider it myself, a standard in the industry at the moment, is that you can deliver APIs, programming interfaces to your internal customers, but also to your partners. That when they deliver software, when they deliver applications to you, that you are able to save on gentlemen, we are using those APIs from OpenStack. The high-style, the UNO, whatever. But at least you can say to them, this is the way you have to develop and deliver your software to. Also, the nice thing, if you go about virtualization and when you talk about it, it's in the early days of computers and service, you want to consolidate as much as servers as possible. Don't do it. Try even to get more modular instances, more things than creating big monsters. Also, one of the things with OpenStack is, and we did it with some other customers too, is gentlemen, you want to deliver as fast as possible. And because you have indeed, what I would call, no separation anymore between the test, acceptance and production environment, it's very easier to deploy things in production. Also, you can automate and make rules that for example, when you deploy it in production, you don't have to deploy it in production everything at the same time. You can create, for example, for these customers or these internal projects, we're going to keep the old version, but for 5% of the users, we're going to use the new version. And if everything works all right, we're going to grow the instance. That's the way how you deploy in a new way. Like I said, when you want to implement those things, you really need also to understand that also internally the organization has to transform. You have to indeed get those integrated teams, you have to know more silos, but you have to keep what I would say, even from smaller projects, you have to make it a complete entity. Like I was talking about, automation of tasks, testing development, exposed what is produced as a service. Also, one of the things that you see in the OpenStack world is when we speak as a service. Everything is going to be as a service. What does it mean is with traditional applications, you have an application and it requires some things, some kind of networking settings, a database, what I would call the add-ons to deploy and deliver that application. Now what you see in OpenStack environments is that those add-ons will be more and more delivered as a service, like I'm doing, a door as a service. But that's really the thing. You've got applications, I mean, users coming in, they need something, they open the door, they take it, and afterwards, with a good OpenStack environment, you also clean up the leftovers. That's also cloud automation, close the door. Also, more important, and that's also a key thing, is when you implement something new, when you deliver something new to a customer, to an implementation or whatever, is to make sure that the end user experience is good, it's better. So, for example, don't try to over-commit, create a big monster in the beginning, it's better to start with a small installation for a selected number of customers, but where they can make that project inside Atelko a nice success, so they can spread the good news. If you introduce what I would call sometimes a Franken-Stack in the company, it's going to fail. It's getting to get those guys with you. Also, what you see is indeed the physical architecture must be simplified. Also, more important to see and to do, is, like I said, the nice thing about OpenStack in Cloud is that you can start using commodity hardware, that you try to keep it as simple as possible. One of the things is you can't fix everything with anything, but you have to make sure that you start with an environment on commodity, which can be extended. Like I said, the NFVs, the services are key things in an OpenStack environment, because those are the add-ons. For example, Firewall as a service, the Groups, Load Balancing, L3, DNS, those are the things that in the early days with applications you had to deliver and to create manually inside the organization. From now on, you're going to deliver it by the Cloud. So, the telecom has chosen OpenStack. Why? Yeah, it was very easy. It's becoming the standard. I'll be honest, in the early days of OpenStack, last year, for example, there were still choices. Is there anybody in this room who doubts that OpenStack is going to become the standard? Gentleman gets up and leaves the room. Okay, nice. But, like I said, this is what it is. You've got the partners, you've got the ecosystem. Three weeks ago, I was in Barcelona at VMworld, and even there they were telling OpenStack OpenStack like in OpenStack, from VMworld, VMware's one. Okay, nice. We do it. So, that's no discussion anymore. So, what has the telecom learned the last 15 months? 50% of the value in what they did in the test phase is indeed coming from renovation. Like I said, a full automation is key of rapid delivery, improving procedures. If you can improve the way how you deliver, how you develop, how you create new services, how you go forward, this is improvement. And that's the most thing. So, OpenStack, it's not always about the money. I would say, and it's even what I've shown in service, it's about the flexibility. The renovation, where you also internally can rejuvenile your IT departments. 20% in the value in the network is the network fertilization, flexibility and scalability. I would even call that the most important difference between virtualization we have at the moment and cloud. It's the virtualization of the network. Because what we see more and more is that even networks in data centers get connected with other data centers and things like that. So, what we also see with global companies is make sure that how those networks are configured, also from a security standpoint of view. The thing is, in OpenStack at the moment, the change in networking components, how it grows as possible, is changing in a very rapidly speed. So, the nice thing is indeed, is also what I would say is, remark here, you have to reconsider almost, I wouldn't say not every six months, but every year that's coming, am I still using the right tools in OpenStack? The nice thing with OpenStack is also, for example, you can replace one part of OpenStack, for example, part of the networking of the storage, replace it by another component. We go from software-defined storage to a NetApp box or what, or we're going from an Arista switch to VXLan, those are components, can be swapped, can be used without interrupting your OpenStack cloud. But also, when you implement OpenStack, like I said, dearly, think about it. The changes, the decisions you have made six months ago can be different than what you would do now. Thirty percent of the value is a switch to open source. Like I said, I'm a PR advocate for open source. I've been in the Linux thing for 20 years. I hack my kernels personally. But for some people, it's still a change what open source is. Open source is you're going from a licensed model to a subscription, so you're paying for free software. I sell free software. And even my mother-in-law approves it. Yeah, what's free, even I tell, ketchup is free, you know? You can make your own ketchup, you can grow some tomatoes, you add some spices in, you cook it and you get ketchup. The nice thing with open source is the fact is, it's an open way to look at it. But for most of the people in the room, I suppose their business model is not making open source. It's using a product that delivers value to them and creates more value for them. However, because it's open source, multiple companies, multiple parties work together. And one of the things that I learned when I was in military school was when you work together in a group, the answers you create together in a group are better than when you do it alone. And that's the same with open source. If you see how many people at the moment are working together on open stack, are discussing it this week what they should do, that's not something that one company can do and learn. But in one company alone, you've got one vision. And when multiple vision clash, you get the creation, the value of the open source. Also, what I see is, for some people, and I truly, inside companies, developers inside companies like to contribute to open source. Not everybody, but most of them like it. Why? It gives them in what I would say, some presence. They are all alive. If you're just developing in a small room and you never, nobody knows what you're doing, that's, yeah, it's nice. Also, the fact is with open sources, there is no no. If there's a feature you need in your company and it's not really in open stack yet, there are two ways you can develop yourself or you can have it developed. But impossible is not yet there. Most of the time, like I said, we are top three contributors, we can recommend our customers what to do if they have to develop it. Maybe sometimes they have to wait because it's on the roadmap, but at least we can have a discussion about it. But that's also the nice thing about open source. Yeah. That was a conclusion about the telecom what they did about open stack. It's, like I said, they joined it. And the most important thing is what I say here and that's what I like about the learning here. After 12 months, we must challenge ourselves against the choice of the architect because we now we have the maturity to review our choices. Do you see the circle? And if you adapt to that circle, but if you're really saying that, okay, we're going to learn what we have done, we're going to improve it, we're going to do it again, we're going to improve and we're going to improve. So when I was talking about the insurance company who sent me an RFP of 40 pages for a five-year view, they had one idea. They want to implement it and there was no thing that we're going to review it. And that's not the way how open stack works. Bless you. Also, what they learned is major commercial players are now implementing enterprise-gride services. And that's like I said, you have to check out what your business model is, what you want to do yourself, what you want to have done for you, how we can do it.  So yes, you can deliver code, you can upgrade. It's even more easy than most of the people think. And we from Marentis, we're also happy just to help you to do this. Other things that we also see around open stack is that you get complementary communities are emerging. They are relevant for the telecoms. What we see is, for example, we have now OpenNV, so network function virtualization. I got this gentleman in the room from NIV, which creates standards about it. I got a slide later also. And now, I think what my friend and I we learned the last 10 months, is indeed is when you're going to implement OpenStack, is that you clearly define on the beginning of this journey, because I call it a journey, it's not a project, it's a journey. What are the roles that you want to play on both parties? And I think, like I said, if you're the customer, you have to define the scope of the project, you have to define what's missing in your competencies, define the overall architecture of the project, prototype, learn, think. And we, as an integrator, we as the expert on OpenStack, as to advise the customer what to do or not. Like I said, if I got an RFP, which is fixed, line number one, ain't possible. I can't challenge you to say what's good and what not. We can't go into discussion what we think with our experience is a valuable solution or not. So that's what I do. So to be honest, if we can't do line one, it's a success or failure. The thing is indeed also for identifying the missing components, provide trainings, that's what you get best practices like that. Also what you do is some teams are thinking we're building on our own OpenStack, we're going to support it. It's your billing model, but at least that are the things what you do. So when you create and even you can shift one component to another site or whatever, but when you start a journey on OpenStack with an integrator, define those roles in the beginning, not during the project. This is the start of everything. Like I said, last slide on OpenNV. Like OpenNV, it's for telecoms. It drives closely with EtsyNV in the industry specifications. That's more technical side. But at least what we see also on that side is that we have corporate contributors to OpenNV. Companies like Ericsson, Huawei, Orange, all those guys, but also software vendors like Mirantis, and we work on that one. Gentlemen, gentlemen, ladies, this was my presentation. Any questions? Oh, thank you. Any questions, any ideas? Yeah, please. Hi, I'm Yuri Kutana and I've got a question. I was kind of intrigued by your intellectual challenge and the assertion that a group does produce actually a richer or more intellectual result. And I have been actually many times witness of the situation where a group was actually causing poor result just because it was a group and just it completely killed any possible intellectual outcome which could have been there if the work was a result of an individual or some high concentration of intellect. So I would actually doubt that as a general statement. But let me get me to the point. So let me present it as an area which kind of one may have different opinions on if I say it, just leave it more or less open. But this is what puzzles me. I mean, I began to look at all of these open stack things like three weeks ago and everything else was out there. And I found out that this great group effort is my opinion just trying to copy what Amazon is doing and is by far still lagging. All the things I hear here about, I found on Amazon and they were cool and great and working on the first side on the first try without all of these debates about some VNF and Yadi Yada and what Etsy does. And Etsy is, by the way, in my opinion, another example of group which has a great and long tradition of failures and ocean boiling. So trying to implement this ocean boiling activity doesn't almost sound to me like an example of how this group activity is going to lead to little result. So I don't mean to bash now open stack. It's just actually I'm attracted to buy it very much. That's why I'm here. But this is something which constantly keeps me puzzled. How come that actually it's still lagging behind Amazon? So you guys are probably longer in the business and can enlighten me why this gap is still here and what's going to happen to the gap in this great community. Okay, thank you. And sorry, I didn't. No, you can continue, but I'm going to give you an answer. Otherwise, I forget my brain is a little bit fried at the moment from the party yesterday. First of all, on the group thing, I did I did military school. And one of the things I learned is indeed how to create good groups because you can have groups with a poor result and good groups with good result. Rule number one is if you want to create a group which delivers better quality than individuals, create a hydrogen heterogene group, that's the thing. Otherwise, we can discuss it by beer about group things. The other thing is about yes, for some purposes, even maybe 80% of the purposes, Amazon is a good platform. And I'm not going to say that you have to go back from Amazon or whatever. The only thing I can say is at the moment, OpenStack is ready for some production workloads. Not everything. It's now about choosing your battles, see what's possible, what's not. If somebody says to me, if I'm frank, I got a VMware form of 2,000 servers, migrate me now because it costs too much money, I'm going to say next month it's going to cost you too much money because I ain't going to do it. But if somebody says I got developers who want to develop something or create new Cloud2 applications, they don't have to do it at Amazon because that also costs money, then you have a business case to run it on OpenStack. And that's what I say is in the beginning of the project, define your scope, define what's possible, define what it will deliver. I mean, of course, that's a good argument. You cannot run your own Cloud with Amazon. That's the point of control. I take it, sure. Gentlemen, gentlemen and gentle ladies, thank you very much.


African startups got off to a sluggish start in 2024, raising just $83 million across 31 disclosed deals in January, but that's according to data from Africa, the big deal. But these marks has tipped the client from the $545.1 million raised in 20 deals during the same month in 2023, representing an 84.8% year-on-year drop. The January 2023 fundraising activity was, however, heavily influenced by a single large deal. That is the $403 million acquisition of AI company, instituted by Beontek. Excluding this out here, African startups in January 2023 raised roughly $99.1 million, bringing the year-on-year decline to a more moderate 16.2%. This suggests that the underlying growth of the African tech ecosystem remains relatively stable despite the headline, Grab & Fund & Slowdown. Now, my guest, Darlentino Nyagor has a diverse work experience in various companies and roles. He is currently the co-founder and CEO of Aladdin Digital, and after that supports Africa's economy by providing an ecosystem of solutions for gig workers and SMAs. Prior to that, they founded and advised Blacklistin, an alternative database for chronic debtors and fraudulent individuals reported by verified online lending firms in Nigeria. Darlentino also served as the MD of Okash, Nigeria, under Opera Software AS, where they handled business development, product development, strategy formulation and execution and people management. Many thanks for joining me on Business Insight. Darlentino. I'm excited to be here. Once again, happy new year. Yeah, happy new year to you. All right. Now, Darlentino, how's the African startups looking this year from reports that we have so far? Is there really anything to go by from what you have seen and heard? Yeah, in every year, it's every year comes with its own challenges and excitement. What matters to us is that projections should be showed that we all, the investment that we have experienced in 2023 might still continue in 2024. If there's anything to go by, the funding in January, about $23 million actually in January into Africa, showed that the majority of the bigger needs were going to other sectors like architect, architect and health tech, which means that the future space is seeing a really decline in funding. All right. I mean, we might experience further in Africa, because investors are becoming smarter, they're really away from having a start-up to actually be proper valuations, and they're for starting businesses that actually need profit or that turn out to be not just creating a start-up for start-ups. All right. Let's move on now according to Tech Cabal. The three sectors with the highest funding that is the AgriTech, which I'm $26.3 million in raises. ClinTech was about $18.1 million, and HealthTech, which are more than $13.5 million. Their sectors, most notably FinTech within the ecosystem, have observed a decline in funding compared to the sums raised in previous year. What are we expecting to see, really, and why is this so, really? What are the first three sectors that actually gaining momentum? Thank you. Somebody mentioned that there are over 20,000 start-ups in Africa. I'm sure after that 20,000, if you take it very closely, you realize that probably 60, 70% of them are actually FinTechs. So FinTechs have had their base, and there are so many FinTechs everywhere. In Nigeria, there are so many FinTechs. So many digital brands, so many mobile money start-ups, so many start-ups in Nigeria, which we know are trying to solve SME issues. So FinTech space is already, as I said, saturated. There are so many guys doing the same thing, the same similar after this, the same thing with the two generations of innovations around the start-up area across Africa is the same story. So the truth about the matter is that FinTech is hard. FinTech is not easy. For you to turn the profit in FinTech, that means why did you go out? You begin to hear very, very few FinTechs that are profitable around the world. Very few. For example, you see the story of Time Bank, who turned the profit of 2.1 billion dollars recently after the 20 losses for some time. All right. So then you see the level of new bank, and you know, in that time, a couple of banks just sparingly, just seeing a couple of users, and they're about to be FinTechs that eventually become profitable. So it takes years of hard work, innovation, creativity, and a lot of funding to turn that corner where you go from either making losses to becoming profitable. So investors are beginning to see that FinTechs are using more of a valuation game than a profit game. And they're not putting their funds where people are selling more critical issues. For example, agriculture will always be very important. People must think. Whether you are good looking, you're hungry, you have to be on there or you're on there. Everybody must think. So, I mean, why would I invest into an agri-tech startup that is solving real issues that has to do with agriculture, you know, food production? Health is very important.  I mean, lots of people are going to sickness, so you see, I think about a constant idea to stop the particular sickness disease or to improve the particular process for health care, I believe. And I'm happy with that. But I see people are looking at real-life issues right now, not just the hike, you know, of the FinTech things and all the harassment as a consequence of FinTech at the moment. Okay. Let's leave the African stage right now and narrow it down as we come closer home. How is Nigeria playing really in the sector, FinTech, agri-tech, health tech, generally, specifically, what are we supposed to watch out for in this year, 2024, from the key players? Okay. So, in 2024, we are going to be seeing a couple of things in the Nigeria space. First of all, the reality is not done in the people. Nigeria's are very smart. What anything that we do, we do to the uttermost as in we are, when the FinTech is, sorry, when the start-up is started, you see a lot of young smart people, they see start-up as a ticket out of poverty, you know, the ticket and the ticket out of hunger, you know, and to put those in the pockets of start-ups, you know, my office is in a place where we have so many start-ups in that really is a co-working space. That's the same thing as when you have all mighty flutter where they stay there downstairs. You have a lot of start-up, the different ideas, you know, every room is a start-up. Every room in that particular building is a start-up. So, because of the kind of funding, start-ups we are getting in 2021 and 2022, yeah, you know, we are raising hundreds of thousands of dollars, millions of thousand dollars. I saw young people, 27 years old, 26 years old, raising $60 million, $70 million. It's a very young person, not yet married, not even understanding what they want. But we are raising a lot of money. So, it was a ticket out of poverty. But now, the bubble has bursted and, you know, investors are becoming smarter and some of these investments are never going to come back. All right. So, the truth about it, we're going to receive a lot of measures and acquisitions. A lot of smaller start-ups will be brought in by bigger start-ups. A lot of smart start-ups that are struggling with cash now are putting bigger players, commercial brands to see how they can be acquired or how they can, you know, be powered by those people that have the financial measure, especially if your product makes sense. All right. We're going to receive a lot of people resigning from start-ups. In the last few years, people were resigning from commercial brands and they are moving into start-ups. I know that I was in banking, so I know a lot of my friends left banking to go out and start job in start-ups. But now, most of those start-ups are running out of cash. So, we're going to receive people going back to tear codes, going back to banks, going back to other sectors that are most sustainable because they want to keep their jobs and put their head over their head and then on their table. So, we're going to receive a lot of that happening. We're going to receive a lot of start-ups also. We're shutting down because, I mean, we're all struggling. Everybody's struggling. The mantra right now in the start-up series, do not die. You don't do everything possible to survive. And that's what everybody's doing. A lot of start-ups are all scratching. We're all, you know, biting our fingers to see how we can survive and see how we can keep the business going. So, that's just more in the scene. So, people that are going to be innovating are going to make it and also, founders with experience are going to be sought-after.  Yeah. Are you happy? Yeah, I can hear you. I was just going to talk about bringing innovation and those with experience who are going to stay and some people, some start-ups that are going to go on there. But specifically, last year, you and I were talking about some things. You talked about some innovation that you were going to bring into the system, the FinTech system. So, specifically, what is Aladdin doing differently in the year 2024? You talked about innovation that would actually drive those who will remain in business this year.  January 9th made us three years. I mean, the last three years had the top six, top eight, had the top eight, and it was not easy. We are not among the fortunate ones. There are millions of dollars. So, we have to be strapped with the little funding we've got in the last three years. It has not been easy. So, what we realize is that we've been in the Nigerian space for a while, although we're a U.S. company, also the same in the U.K. But our major market has been in Nigeria. And with the most type of the Naira, the Naira not going to $1,000 for $1,500, Naira per dollar, we realize that anything that we need in Naira is no other sustainability. For example, the investment gives you half a million dollars as investment, and it's especially a return, right? And then, you are earning half a Naira for transfers or 10 Naira for transfers. In some cases, because you want to compete with the big boys, you make your own transfers on your app free. You know, the loans are not being paid, but there's so much hunger in the land. Give out loans, Nigerians take your loans, and they don't pay back the seats as God's blessing and God's reward for prayers and all that. So, I mean, it's really tough. So, that's why we say we're going to be moving away from not just depending on the Nigerian economy, but diversifying into entire Africa. And that's why this year, we're launching an African app, the Aladdin Global app, that allows you to actually onboard anybody from anywhere in the world. So, whether you're in Africa in diaspora or Africa within Africa, we're trying to connect Africans everywhere. So, our mantra now is that we're connecting Africans or Africa through payment.  We're trying to create one ecosystem. The Africans can transact. They can do trades. They can do, you know, payments within the same ecosystem. They are reducing the cost of payment within Africa. The other cost of payment within Africa is about 15%. Sometimes, within some corridors, it's almost at 60%. So, we're trying to crash that particular cost down to probably 5% or less, or within some places, 0%. We're going to do a login to a login payment within the same login ecosystem. So, that's the innovation we are bringing. But, like I said, for this to happen, we also need investors. We also need people to come on board, to partner with us. M&As are open to M&As. We're open to web shares. We're open to all kinds of financing models to ensure that we carry out this engagement for Africa. Yaka, you can... Yeah, I can hear you so far. I can, yes. Okay, so, fine. Even last year, we also talked about Afro-global expansion in the midst of a struggling economy. I want us to talk about that again, because right now, Niger is really, he burned all the pinches in terms of the freefall of the Naira. And you talked about loans not really being paid back. And of course, the interest, when you actually deal in Naira and all of that, you have to transact in dollars. Let's talk about how we can actually expand Africa to be global in the midst of all of these challenges. We have one Niger on the one side and, of course, Africa on the other hand. Okay, like I mentioned last year, the same thing, it's becoming more and more important, but I mean, African businesses, SM is going to think about how they earn money as a Naira, how they earn money in dollars, how they earn money in pounds, if possible. How they diversify their revenue streams. It's very important. And one of the ways is that, I mean, the Nigerian market is one of the biggest markets in Africa, over 250, 60 million. But there are other African countries, so who do you need your services? About African countries, there are other African countries around the world that may need a particular product that you have or that service that you have. So it's time for us to do to take aside the books. I mean, need to research what can I export outside Nigeria? Now what services can I export? What tangible or intangible goods can I export out of Nigeria? You forgot to have to be kind. Somebody else in Ghana buy that product. Somebody there in the public is there for that particular product somewhere else across Africa. So we need to start thinking about just matters in Nigeria. But even in the Nigerian market, if you're already in the North, I mean, because I'm thinking about how can I do well in the South? If you're in the South, how can I do well in the North and in the middle belt? So apart from the Afro-Global expansion, they can also do the expansion within Nigeria. For example, I realize that most of the startups are concentrated in Lagos. Everybody's in Lagos. Everybody wants to do their free tech. They are stuck in legal statement. But when I went for a conference in Abuja, people were telling me why not build my company and allow me to add those things. For example, so if I look at if we come up and build across Africa, right here in Nigeria, there are some states that don't have some of these free tech services. So you can actually go there and become a dominant player in those states. But at the same time, if you have the capability, you can also spread your business across Africa and aim in a different way. Sorry, currency is a part of the matter. Just before we go, despite the report that we got for late last year and January specifically as per the growth of startups, how do you see the startup industry before the end of this quarter and maybe subsequently in the second quarter of this year? Okay, so in this quarter, everybody's trying to find their seats. I mean, I believe that before the end of the quarter, we're going to be getting a mass base of different M and A's. So a lot of medias and acquisitions are those that come to fruition when we announce because there can be a lot of startups that don't have cash. Most of us have run out of cash, thousands of it, and everybody's struggling. So they're all in prayer mode. I'm telling that if you can get somebody from abroad, there's going to acquire somebody in the ecosystem that has more to acquire your technology or acquire your customer base or something. So we're going to be seeing a couple of M and A's, a couple of acquisitions that are going to be happening and you'll be spending one or two fundings with no risk of it happening. So the tickets are becoming smaller. For example, out of $3 million, the premium in general, I mean, more than 70, 80% of them are just three views. The rest of these are just very small ticket size. So we hope that these improve in this first quarter. That's our hope. And let's see how it goes. All right, thank you so much, Abdaleddin, for all the useful insight that you have provided on the show for today. I would do appreciate them. And let's just hope that we'll see the desired growth in the way expect in the startups and FinTech and all of them generally in Nigeria. Well, many thanks once again for your time. Thank you so much, James. Thank you so much for having me. All right. Good luck to you. And that's the size of the show for today. Many thanks for being there. I am Justin Akadunian, business insights will return to your screen same time. Bye for now.


In the year 1926, George S. Clayson wrote the book The Richest Man in Babylon. The ideologies in this book are based on the principles and parables of the ancient Babylonians. Regardless of the number of decades that have passed, since it was first published, the lessons from this book are still relevant today. In this video, I will share with you 10 best ideas from the book The Richest Man in Babylon. 1. Save a portion of your earnings In the book The Richest Man in Babylon, a tale was narrated by a certain rich man, Arkad, who was invited to teach his fellow men how to amass wealth. The first lesson that Arkad taught his students was, For every ten coins thou placest within thy purse, take out one for use but nine. Thy purse will start to fatten at once, and its increasing weight will feel good in thy hand, and bring satisfaction to thy soul. When it comes to saving, there are two categories of people. The first set is those who spend first and save what is left, whereas the second kind of people save foremost and spend what is left. Almost 80% of Americans leave on a paycheck. That is, they follow the first approach, savings equals income minus expenses. However, the interpretation of the above lesson is that for every amount earned, you should learn to put out a portion, 10%, for yourself first. This concept is known as paying yourself. Many people save, but only few people pay themselves first. This book teaches us that we should learn to see the value of your work and prioritize paying yourself first. 2. Know the difference between your necessary expense and mere desires Budget thy expenses that thou mayest have coins to pay for thy necessities, pay for thy enjoyments, and gratify your worthwhile desires without spending more than nine-tenths of thy earnings. In this book, George Glaser noted that people feel like their income is not enough to cover all their expenses, because they confuse necessary expenditures with desires. When you cannot differentiate between your wants and your necessities, even if you receive a higher wage, you will always be in a position where your supposed necessary expenses proliferates to equal your income. This book suggests that you will be able to separate your needs from your wants through budgeting so that you can spend only on the things that matter and live within your means. 3. Make your money multiply Put each coin to labor in that it may reproduce its kind, even as the flocks of the field, and help bring to the income a stream of wealth that shall constantly flow into thy purse. Otherwise Babylonians saw money as a seed, which, if planted correctly, can give you a fortune. In order to multiply your money, you must make it work for you. If you would desire to be wealthy, then you must earn beyond your income. Instead of spending money to acquire depreciating assets like cars and big houses, this book advises that you invest in assets that will appreciate, like stocks, real estate, and building a side business. These passive long-term income streams will eventually generate money for you to live off when you are no longer strong enough to work for long hours. Through the power of compound interest, the money invested will yield more money for you. 4. Increase your ability to earn To cultivate thy powers, to study and become wiser, to become more skillful, to so act as to respect thyself. This lesson is one vital practice in the financial equation. If you want to be rich, then you must develop strategies to spend less and earn more. Experts have even suggested that it is better to focus on your earning ability and to pay attention to saving more. An increase in your earnings should imply an increased saving. The idea portrayed by this book is the importance of personal development. There are many ways to get more income. However, it all boils down to, as much as you can, you must invest in your skills and gain knowledge. 5. Guard your money from loss Consult with wise men. Secure the advice of those experienced in the profitable handling of gold. Let their wisdom protect thy treasure from irrational investment. George Clayson states the need to be conscious enough not to lose money. Many people argue of this point because, of course, no one gets rich by playing safe. However, successful entrepreneurs do not just take risks, they are known to take calculated risks. One in Buffett, two roles of investing, are 1. Never lose money, and 2. Never forget role 1. This principle of Warren has made him be among the top 5 richest men in the world. The idea that this lesson gives is that you should take out time to seek the wisdom of people who have experience in the area you want to venture into. Building real wealth is usually a slow, steady process. Thus, you must be patient enough to solicit the advice of not just anybody but also an expert in that specific field of your choice. 6. Ensure your future income Provide in advance for the needs of thy growing age and the protection of thy family. This lesson asks, if you are sick and can no longer work, how will you survive? Or if you suddenly lose your job, how will you cope?  Well, it is so easy to be spiritual and say, God forbid. Nevertheless, the reality of life is that it is a mystery. Hence, it will be best if you endeavor to make adequate plans and preparations for unseen situations. Making plans may include having an emergency fund, considering various forms of insurance such as health, life, homeowner, etc., and creating a retirement scheme. 7. Make from your dwelling a profitable investment Thus come many blessings to the man who own at his own house and greatly will it reduce his cost of living, making available more of his earnings for pleasures and the gratification of his desires. The wise Babylonians emphasize on the importance of owning a home. According to them, it makes more sense to make payments that will eventually become equity rather than giving money to a landlord. Also financial statistics have revealed that on average, homeowners accumulate more wealth over their lifetime than renters. However, this point is quite debatable as it is subject to personal finances. owning your own home is a good idea but it is also expensive to maintain as well. Thus, you must think carefully and choose only the method that makes sense for you at this point. 8. Good luck favors only those who take action Opportunity is a haughty goddess who waste no time with those who are unprepared and good luck waits to come to the man who accepts an opportunity. Many people believe that there are specific individuals who are born lucky and destined to be wealthy. They assume that luck is a supernatural force continually working in secret to weigh the scales down on one side or another. This book disputes that assumption and proposes that those who were favored are the ones who were able to see opportunities and take action. It iterates that only those who are hardworking will receive the reward of good luck. If you want to be successful, then you must always be prepared to grasp opportunity by the horns and move towards gratifying our deepest desires. Only then will you be able to attract good luck. 9. Pay off your debts No man respects himself if he does not pay his debts. The book suggests that you must try as much as you can to stay away from debts. It points out that debt can be avoided if spending is controlled and debt already accrued can be easily wiped out with consistency and discipline. Through one of the ancient Babylonian stories, George explains that the best debt solution is not to run away but to face it. Get a list of people you owe, meet with them and solicit their patience. Afterwards, you must develop a strategy for the repayment and stick to it. A practical method to pay off debt is to live on 70% of what you make. With 10% for yourself, use the remaining 20% to repay your debts. 10. Learning how to build and sustain wealth is more important than being wealthy. A man's wealth is not in the coins he carries in his purse. It is in the income he built it, the golden stream that continually flow it into his purse and keep it always bulging. This lesson summarizes all other ideas contained in this book. You are probably confused about the difference between building wealth and being wealthy. Well, here is what I mean. If for instance, two people have an equal amount of wealth, let's say $100 million. While one builds his wealth over 20 years by starting and growing a successful business and wisely investing his profit, the other won the lottery a few weeks ago. If both of these people suddenly lost all of their money, who do you think would have a better chance of rebuilding their wealth? Yes, you guessed correctly. The former has a higher probability of acquiring wealth again than the latter. Learning the habits that lead to wealth is an essential skill that would pay many dividends, irrespective of the amount of money you have at the moment. Babylon was the wealthiest city in the world at the time of its height because its people appreciated the value of money. If you want to amass wealth, then you must understand and abide by the laws of money.