Welcome back everyone. This is theCUBE's live coverage here in Las Vegas. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE with Dave Vellante, SaaS Innovate 2024. Mike Blanchard, VP of Customer Intelligence at SaaS and Reagan Yan, CEO of Digital Alchemy. It's here in theCUBE. Great to have you guys on. Thanks for coming on, appreciate you. Thank you. Great to be here. Great stage performance up on the keynote this morning and you got a customer. I love the name of the company, by the way. Because I just think, in my mind, I'm thinking pulling LLMs, fusing them together, integrating and having value, so. Taking them up. Our logo used to have lots of ones and zeros on it. And I think Alchemy is a great way to look at how data is really interacting with each other. We think there's a lot of chemistry behind how data works. So, take a minute to explain what you guys do and then we can get in some of the chat. Yeah, so we're a global marketing services organization. We implement and manage marketing automation for organizations and in many cases, we're augmenting and supporting their existing capabilities. But we're very focused on automation. So, we do a lot of implementation, but our speciality is to get marketing automation implementations to automate. Because we, there's a lot more marketing automation implementations in place than there is marketing automation. You know, the ad tech business, market tech business is changing, those stacks are well known. By the way, they're also cutting edge. The database work involved over the years. I mean, it's a total platform, but in every revolution is an abstraction layer of new stuff. I mean, kind of puts a cap on it, but it's not really shut down, maybe changes some of the dynamics of what was before. But the new generative AI is not free program stuff, it's generating stuff on the fly, so that you need data and you need to have outcomes. So, this is a big part of the story here at SAS. How do you guys see that as a solution evolving because you're going to have net new components. The game is still the same. I want to put something at the right place at the right time, that's the contextual relevance for the people I'm trying to reach, and that's going to require, again, another quant jock-like automated system. What do you guys see for that? Because digital marketing, your CMO is all behind this. She sees AI being a real driver of change. I think you said it. I think I describe it as a sort of tornado of change, but actually the constant is still the same, right? And if you think back, you know, 30 years now consumers have had a lot of choice about who they do business with, and they will do it on their own terms, right? And there's also so many others that they can go to that the world has just got more complicated. So, at the end of the day, trust between the consumer and the brand is the most important thing for generating loyalty, share of wallet, but now the brands have got so much to deal with, right? They have all of the explosion of the fact that they've nowhere to hide, right? Consumers can go and find out about every product and service, not from the brand, but about someone writing a review, posting something on social. Read it. People like you, yeah, exactly, right? So that's just the first thing. Second thing, they've got people coming into their industry that are trying to re-engineer the business processes. Then you go to the technology, right? And then you have the whole, I mean, we're in probably the most innovative part of the market, marketing and advertising technology. It hits every trend, every buzz term comes to life first through these kind of technologies. So, you know, today you kind of got these poor brands that are still trying to do the same thing, manage consumer relationships. They're dealing with generative AI, cookie apocalypses, you know, all of these kind of CDPs, composability, marketing stacks, right? Clean rooms. Clean rooms, that's right. New regulations, EU's government, not that you're part of that anymore, but that's it. But yeah, and then they do all that and then the regulations are all changing at the same time. So it's not an easy life. But, you know, I would say the heart of everything comes down to what we're seeing now, generative is bringing it to life. It's the data, right? It's how you, the data is the lifeblood underneath. Talk about your relationship with each other, I can see that, I'm starting to connect dots on my head, just jump right to it. Talk about the relationship because I can imagine that AI is going to help with a lot of the data interchange because you've got a lot of different diverse data sources and types. You're talking about ads, different sources, got APIs, 85% of traffic on the internet is API-based. So that's the interconnect. So data's going to be exchanging. So talk about your relationship, how you guys work together, envision this being pretty cool. So I think SaaS is developing the platforms that create connectivity and access to the data. What we do is we help clients actually make the most of that data, right? So I think one of, there's two things that Generative AI is going to transform in marketing. The first is the analytics process. So at the moment, clients don't use all of the data they got, not because they can't access it because their brains just can't get to all of the data in a timely enough manner to actually execute. So Generative AI is going to significantly change the way we query and understand the data. You can ask a machine a question about my data and it'll come back to you. So that's going to increase the scope of data that market is going to be able to use to generate their campaigns, right? Because at the moment, you know, I've got this much data but I only use this much data. So it's not lack of data. It's not lack of data. At the moment it's not like data. The ability to leverage it. Correct. And Generative AI will change that by being able to. You think that alone covers in the near term, the lack of data, in other words, I need more data. I need to go to other outside sources.  Well, I think that's actually part of a separate trend that's going on with the deprecation of third party cookies is, you know, a lot of marketing organizations have kind of gone out and, you know, gotten third party data and connected data together and they've kind of neglected their own data, you know. And what we're seeing, you know, over the last sort of 12 to 18 months is organizations going, oh, these third party cookies might not be there soon. I better focus on my own data. So, you know, there's a lot of focus now on own data, first party data. There's a lot of... Like journey mapping, all that kind of stuff. Journey mapping on your own data, not journey mapping on somebody else's data, right? Yeah, because the cookie crutch or the cookie biggie is going. And it's suddenly just snapped in a lot of people's minds go, oh my God, you know. So what we're seeing, and this is where I think SaaS is really strong, is that SaaS is really strong in complex data. So, you know, a lot of the other platforms are really good in the digital data that is... You know, digital data is much easier to stitch together than digital to legacy data.  And I think that's where we're seeing a lot of focus from marketers now, suddenly waking up going, actually, I got to focus on my own data. And I think we, you know, we, our history in this space goes back well over 20 years to the old direct marketing days where actually there was good behaviors around managing first party data, you know, providing personalized communication that time through post, those kind of things. The digital world kind of people got lazy, right? Because they didn't have to manage first party data. But suddenly they're now coming back, it's sort of going full circle, coming back again and saying, oh, actually I do need to understand who this individual is.  So it's just, it's a kind of a world that's just spun back round again. Doesn't it also put pressure on firms and brands to actually rethink their content strategies? Is there now need, you know, original content? But I actually think that's the other opportunity for Gen AI is in content generation. So, you know, one of my hobby horses in marketing is A-B testing.   Right? And that's mostly borne out of our limitation to actually create content because it's been handcrafted. You know, the creative has been handcrafted. But with Gen AI, we'll now be able to create 20 or 30 different propositions and test them simultaneously. Scale it. And scale it. So we'll be able to test at scale and we'll be able to execute that at scale. But it's almost like getting the data, the micro segments alongside the content. Right? So, you know, if you know that there are multiple different variants of consumers or audiences within that same campaign, you can then break down your content into multiple variants of content. Right? So the two have to go symbiotic and hand in hand. So the content piece has to map also with the data. Talking about personalization at scale. Mass customization, but at scale and personalized. Yeah, that's new. Right. So I mean, as a concept, it's been there for a long time. Yeah, but it's exceedingly difficult to actually execute. But our ability to execute has been limited by our ability to create, you know, very targeted content or offers and very small segments. Let me ask you a question on this elusive goal to get the data. A-B testing might shift into more of how do I get actually good data in the organics market? So as a marketer, where are the customers? Where are those watering holes? I mean, LinkedIn is not great at analytics. Twitter has got an API. Who knows what's going to, that's going to be one day. Reddit. So as you start seeing where users are gathering, first party, I can see that being, will there be a shift back to company sites or is that already happening? It's already happening. Already happening. So you advise, get your first party watering hole, it's website, web application. It is what I tell people, right? If you're using third party data, it's like having a, it's like a Tinder profile, right? Third party data is equivalent to a Tinder profile.  You can meet somebody based on a Tinder profile, but you'll never build a relationship based on their Tinder profile. To build a relationship with somebody, you need to go on a date, you need to talk to them, you need to get information about that person that isn't on their profile, right? And so to me, a third party cookie is a Tinder profile. Your first party data is the data that you've collected going on dates. And that's what you need to build a relationship. You cannot build a relationship on a call. That's a great analogy, actually, the dating app relationship. Let me throw one more variable into your mix. I love that analysis. Let's throw the Coachella example in there. I love to go to festivals where all my tribe is, and there's different sections and different stages. So there's still that group dynamic. I want to be with my peers. I want to, I'll show you a relationship with the website. Do the, does the site turn into Coachella? Or does it, or is that going to be third party? And then that's a challenge. I mean, we're seeing a lot of people trying to go where their peers are. And LinkedIn is doing that right now. I think people think that's for business and they're growing because Facebook's changed and they get Instagram, what's that? But I think people are recognizing now, or brands are recognizing that those platforms, what they're ultimately doing is monetizing first party data, right? They're just doing it in different ways. And I think what you're seeing now is some of those brands respond and say, we could monetize our own first party data by providing, for example, through retail media. Why are Amazon and Facebook and Google doing all this monetization of advertising when people are coming to my website? I could promote other people's products. And that's what you see in this growth of this whole retail media. It's a monetization opportunities. Because people are spying now. People know the big guys have got big targets behind them because no one wants to kind of get caught up now in their ecosystems. And they're saying, well, they're just taking me out of business ultimately. So it's also the users of the product in that use case. So I think this is a good point. The shift to controlling the user experience seems to be the common thread here. Whether it's a dating app vibe or hosting Coachella.  People will probably... Is those that understand their customers better, whatever, will win. Because they'll be able to build better products, better services, better communications. So the faster you learn, as Brian says, the faster you'll win. But they have to do it in a governed way.  And so to the point, if you're part of the ecosystem and they're getting regulated, but okay, if you're going to take it in-house though, you've got to do it in a responsible way. Significantly higher burden on the partner. I think there's this movement. A lot of people talk about data ownership. Organizations say, data is my greatest asset, my most valuable asset, blah, blah. I actually think that organizations need to move away from that idea that they own the data to an idea that they are the custodian. The customer owns their own data. They own their own data. You are the custodian of their data, and as the custodian, you have a responsibility to that customer. And I think increasingly organizations are moving in that direction. And I think it's also part of this first party data because people are believing and understanding that they can control that better if they control what those customers are doing. So circle back to how you guys are actually working together to solve this problem. You need to understand that.  I'm learning a lot. Let's ask one more question. You don't mind. Before we do that, yeah. So knowledge graphs and neural networks are a big part of the AI conversation. And as you look at social graph, we see that it's also distribution and who you're connected to. So as you look at the value of the graph data, when you start looking at public open web or open AI models where, not open AI, but like open source, people want to connect to each other. Is there a data source or opportunity that you guys see where somewhere down the road there will be a graph structure of people communicating openly where they own their own data or... I think what they... Or is that fantasy? Yeah, well, there's certainly been movements to try and create those kind of open ecosystems. I've not seen them yet take hold in any shape or form. I think more the commercial entities kind of are doing their thing with them. I think what we're seeing is that idea. I think one of you mentioned the clean room example. The idea that how do we bring different parties data together and get the benefit where mutually we can unlock more value together. And so that is an exciting sort of when you see the sort of, I guess the advertising. The alchemy of the data. Yeah, exactly. The advertising and the kind of classic brand worlds coming together. I think you're right on that. I think that's right. How are you guys solving these problems and adding value to customers? So we provide effectively the technology and the platform to provide automated marketing campaigns at scale. And I guess our job is really to help brand. I mean, at any moderate scale, brands need to build technologies, processes and inside their ecosystems to get personalization right, to create the appearance that we understand you as a customer and a consumer. So we're providing that technology. It sits on top of our analytical capabilities. So what I would describe it is we connect to the data. We're then interpreting the data to build the understand. We're converting raw data into patterns of behavior. And then at an operational level, we create effectively audiences, segments for targeting and that delivers the campaign cycle through. Ultimately that ends up in posts on Facebook, direct marketing, digital communications. But that whole has to be sequenced into journeys. And it's bring your own data model or? No, no, so it's bring your own data. Okay, so it's bring your own data. So that, what if I don't have the volume of data? I got to go figure it out. I got to go get it and then call you guys or can you help me do that? So we can help you do that. So we spend a lot of time with our customers when they're, if they're starting on this journey, building data strategies for them. Where's the data that, because a lot of, there's actually a lot of data within organizations that people don't know about. There's this data sitting in all sorts of repositories around organization. So the first thing that we will generally do is go, where's the data? And how do we stitch that data together? And then look at the data gaps and then see how can we plug those gaps. We operate around the world and different geographies have different accesses to different second party data and stuff like that. But in the US, the second party data is pretty good. And image, I mean, you're talking about multi-modal. Google, next last week, I mean, image creation, obviously, it's moving fast, right? A lot of it was manual before I tried to prompt it, didn't work, I forget it. Chat, GPT can't spell, Dali can't spell. That's getting much, much better. You plug into that. Yes, so what we're, sorry. So what we're doing is we're enabling those processes. Yeah, right. Because whatever organizations want to do, you've got to set up the processes to make sure that that happens well, right? And there's going to be, the machines can do the grunt work, but someone still has to tell the machine what to do, right? I mean, they're not at that point where they know exactly what to do yet. And then you've got to think of things like exclusion rules, contact policies, all of the overheads that the team still have to manage, right? So, because obviously if I start over-communicating till you get those communications wrong, you're just going to have the backlash and the negative effects of what you're actually trying to achieve. But I heard a great quote yesterday that marketers are worried about that AI is going to take over their job and that the job is not going to be taken by AI, but it might be taken by a marketer who understands AI. A human in a loop driving the new toy. I mean, it's like, how do you drive AI and it's the data strategy? Yeah, I mean, even automation, you know, like if you look at the industrial revolution, the industrial revolution didn't create unemployment, right? AI is not going to create unemployment. It's just going to redistribute where the work is done. Yeah, I don't see AI. I mean, it's interesting conversation. It's the first time ever you're replacing, machines have always replaced humans, but now you're replacing humans with cognitive functions. Steve Cohen was on TV the other day, saying we're going to a four-day work week. I go, is he gaming the system because he's a workaholic and he just wants to be able to pick up three more days or is it actually going to happen? I think that's going to happen. Four-day work week, but the machine is going to enable that and the better you use the machine. So I'll get paid the same amount of money and I'll work four days a week because the machine's doing it the other day. Produce way more output. Yeah, and we're more creative with that today on. And we'll be more creative, right? Yeah. And I think that's, you know, I think, and that's why I think AI opens opportunity because it opens the opportunity to access more of the data. It opens opportunity to, you know, to be more creative. So John, six-day work week in your future. Because I know how you work. I work eight days a week. Guys, great job.  What are you guys doing? The big exhibits here, you got augmented analytics. You got all the innovation hub here. The customer intelligence piece is your piece. Yes. Give a plug for what you do at SAS. Yeah, so I'm responsible for the marketing and advertising technologies at SAS. So it's pretty cool. It's the front end of how we take data and analytics and apply it to consumer experience for, you know, many of the largest brands globally. So it's a fun part. It's the most innovative part of the industry. But it's also something that comes with a huge amount of responsibility from SAS. Safeguarding consumer data is probably, you know, goes alongside core banking data, health data, those kind of things. So we have to do it in a very responsible way. You're going to go to Mexico while you're here in the States, put a plug in for what you're doing and the firm. So, you know, what we do is we make it work. You know, it's as simple as that. There's a lot of marketing automation, but we're the guys who make it work. You come in, you do the fixer, and they give them the keys when they're done. We spend a lot of time fixing. You pass the keys when they're done. We'll stay with you. So in nearly all cases with our clients, we fix it.  And we've got clients that have been with us for 15, 20 years. Awesome, congratulations. Thanks for coming on the show. I appreciate it. I'm John Furrier, here at theCUBE, the leader at Tech Coverage with Dave Vellante, head of CUBE Research. More coverage after this short break.


Hi, this is George Cow. And here I am at an Airbnb. I'm taking a week off. I do a one-week break for every six weeks of work to renew myself, to think, to plan. And I just want to show you a couple of things here. There's the dog from the Airbnb, a Vishla, a very cute dog. And they also have something cool over here. They've got chickens. And there's, as always, there's my little dog buddy. You can see him right there. So today I want to take just a few minutes to talk with you about habits. I saw a quote today from Confucius that says, people's natures are alike. It is their habits that separate them. So if you want to have a different life, different outcomes, different lifestyle, you need to have different habits. If you want to have a more successful life, you need to have more successful habits. If you wanted to have a completely different life, you need to have completely different habits. Now, the thing about habits is that they take a long time to change. And unfortunately, good habits are very easy and quick to break. And so you need to keep them up. Just like, you know, when you, a couple of good metaphors is, you know, you don't just take one shower and you're good for the rest of the year. You take a shower every day to keep clean. Same thing with habits. You have to keep, keep it up. And another good metaphor, I think is vitamins. You don't just take vitamins once and then you're done for the rest of your life. You keep taking vitamins or supplements or, or simply, you know, eating very nutritious whole foods. Speaking of which, they have a really cool thing here. I've never seen this before, but that's, this is a pomegranate tree. Isn't that neat? Anyway, so I want to encourage you to develop your habits bit by bit. Okay. So here's the thing.  But if you're going to be, of course, most of us aren't going to be moving all the time. We're living in the same place day after day. And so you need to change your habits one at a time, probably one at a time, maybe two or three at a time, but just really realize that every time you're changing a habit, you're unsettling the equilibrium of your life and it takes willpower. It takes energy more than you realize to keep on, on, on changing that equilibrium until that action or thought becomes a habit. Okay. And so there are habits of thought and there are habits of action. And in the notes to this video, I will include a long list of habits of thought that you can consider.  So this is basically, I have lots of habits I'd love to develop in my life, but I know that I can't do them all at once. That would be foolish. Okay. So I do, I do them one at a time. Actually, I do them three at a time, but just keep, keep a log, a daily success log every single day. Did I do this habit? Did I, um, how did I do what's one thing I can improve on for this habit? And so until I, I create it into until I habituated until it becomes normal and natural to then add on another one, two or three habits, but always keep coming back of course to the original habits that you try to create and see how that's going. Cause just like vitamins, you got to keep taking them. Okay. So I hope this is helpful and until the next video, I wish you well.


Hello, welcome all. Today in this video lecture, we are going to discuss the properties of region of convergence. In short, we call it as ROC. At the end of this session, students will be able to explain properties of region of convergence. Property 6 states that if x of n is 2 sided sequence and if the circle mod z is equal to r naught is in the ROC, then ROC will consist of a ring in the z plane that includes the circle mod z is equal to r naught. X of z is equal to summation n equal to minus infinity to infinity x of n z to the power minus n. And the region of convergence appears has a ring like structure in the z plane as shown in this figure here. In this lecture, we are going to consider 2 sided infinite discrete time sequence. So, let us consider an example here. So, x of n is equal to 2 to the power n u of n minus 3 to the power n u of minus n minus 1. Now, find find z transform and ROC of the given signal. So, let us solve this one. We know that x of z is equal to summation n equal to minus infinity to plus infinity x of n into z to the power minus n, where x of n is equal to 2 to the power n u of n minus 3 to the power n u of minus n minus 1. By substituting x of n is equal to 2 to the power n u of n minus 3 to the power n u of minus n minus 1 in the above expression. X of z can be written as x of z is equal to summation n equal to minus infinity to plus infinity 2 to the power n u of n minus 3 to the power n u of minus n minus 1 into z to the power minus n, where the first term represents the right sided sequence and second term represents the left sided sequence. Therefore, the summation can be split it into two parts. Hence, x of z is equal to summation n equal to minus infinity to plus infinity 2 to the power n u of n into z to the power minus n minus summation n equal to minus infinity to plus infinity 3 to the power n u of minus n minus 1 into z to the power minus n here. Because of the unit step signal in both the terms, the limits of summation are changed here. We know that unit step signal u of n is defined as u of n is equal to 1 for n greater than or equal to 0 and u of n is equal to 0 for n less than 0. Similarly, u of minus n minus 1 is a modified version of unit step signal u of n and this one is defined as u of minus n minus 1 is equal to 0 for n greater than or equal to 0 and it is equal to 1 for n less than 0. So, we are going to use these two definitions in our example here. Therefore, the x of z because of these two unit step signals x of z will be written as n equal to 0 to infinity 2 to the power n z to the power minus n summation n equal to minus infinity to minus 1 3 to the power n z to the power minus n here. Because of these two unit step signals, the limits have been changed in both the terms here. In the first term it is changed into n equal to 0 to infinity whereas, in the second term it is changed into n equal to minus infinity to minus 1 here. Now, to understand how the limits have been affected because of the unit step signals, let us consider the graphical representation of the signal here. So, here summation are written as n equal to 0 to infinity 2 to the power n z inverse minus summation n equal to minus infinity to minus 1 3 to the power n z to the power minus 1. Now, to understand how the limits of these two summations have changed because of the unit step signals defined above here. Here you can see that u of n is equal to 1 for n greater than or equal to 0 and it is equal to 0 for n less than 0 and u of minus n minus 1 is defined as it is equal to 0 for n greater than or equal to 0 and it is equal to 1 for n less than 0. So, in the graphical representation, you can see that the first graph represents the 2 to the power n which is a growing exponential signal and in the second graph, it represents the unit step signal as per the definition on the left side the values of u of n is equal to 0 whereas, for n equal to 0 to plus infinity the values are equal to 1 here. So, when we perform the multiplication between these two signals, we get the resulting signal that is which is equal to 2 to the power n u of n. So, on the left side 2 to the power n is multiplied with the 0 therefore, the resulting signal will be equal to 0 whereas, for n equal to 0 to plus infinity that is on the right side we can see that 2 to the power n is multiplied with the 1 therefore, you will get 2 to the power n here. Therefore, in this representation you can see that the signal exists from n equal to 0 to plus infinity hence the limits of the summation are written as n equal to 0 to infinity. Similarly, on the second on the right side you can see that another set of graphical representations are given here. The first graph represents 3 to the power n which is again a growing exponential signal and the second graph represents the modified version of unit step signal u of n which is defined as u of minus n minus 1 is equal to 0 for n greater than or equal to 0 and it is equal to 1 for n less than 0. According to that in the graph you can see that on the left side from n equal to minus infinity to minus 1 the values of u of minus n minus 1 is equal to 1 whereas, for n equal to 0 to plus infinity the values of u of minus n minus 1 is equal to 0. So, when we perform the multiplication between 3 to the power n u of minus n minus 1 we get the resulting signal has shown in this graph here. So, here you can see that for n equal to 0 to plus infinity the signal 3 to the power n u of minus n minus 1 is equal to 0 whereas, on the left side from n equal to minus infinity to minus 1 you can see that the 3 to the power n u of minus n minus 1 is equal to 3 to the power n because 3 to the power n is been multiplied with u of minus n minus 1 that is 1 3 to the power n is multiplied with 1 therefore, you will get the resulting signal 3 to the power n here. So, that is why the limits of the first summation has been changed to n equal to 0 to infinity and the limits of the second summation has been changed to n equal to minus infinity to minus 1 here. Therefore, x of z is written as x of z is equal to summation n equal to 0 to infinity 2 into z inverse to the power n summation n equal to minus infinity to minus 1 3 into z inverse to the power n here. Now, in earlier 2 examples we have used the infinite summation identity that is summation n equal to 0 to infinity alpha to the power n the infinite summation identity that is summation n equal to 0 to infinity alpha to the power n is equal to 1 divided by 1 minus alpha. This infinite summation identity is valid for mod alpha less than 1 year. So, by comparing x of z with the infinite summation identity, we can see that the first summation is identical with this infinite summation identity whereas, the second summation is not identical with the infinite summation identity. So, therefore, we need to first convert this second summation the limits of the summation identical to this infinite summation identity. So, that we can use this infinite summation identity to simplify the x of z further here. So, first we will change that limits of that summation here. So, to change that one, so we are going to put k is equal to minus n in second summation here. So, k equal to minus n means minus plus n will be equal to minus k. And similarly, n equal to minus infinity minus n will be equal to plus infinity and minus n will be replaced by k. So, k is equal to plus infinity. Similarly, n equal to minus 1. So, minus n is equal to 1 here. So, minus n is replaced by k. So, k is equal to plus 1. So, these are the k values which we are going to use in the second summation here not in the first summation. Therefore, x of z can be written as summation n equal to 0 to infinity 2 z inverse to the power n minus summation k equal to infinity to 1 3 z inverse to the power minus k here. So, further this one return has n equal to 0 to infinity 2 z inverse to the power n minus summation. The lower limits are written below the summation and upper limits are written above the summation. Therefore, k is equal to 1 to infinity and this is written as 3 inverse z to the power k here. But, still the limits of the second summation are not identical with the infinite summation identity here. Therefore, we are going to use the concept that is a to the power 0 equal to 1 in this example here. Therefore, x of z is equal to summation n equal to 0 to infinity 2 z inverse to the power n plus 3 inverse z to the power 0 minus 3 inverse z to the power 0 minus summation k equal to 1 2 infinity 3 inverse z to the power k here. Now, we are going to merge these two terms here and this will be further written as x of z is equal to summation n equal to 0 to infinity 2 z inverse to the power n plus 3 inverse z to the power 0 is nothing but 1 minus summation. We are going to merge these two terms. Therefore, k is equal to 0 to infinity 3 inverse z to the power k. Now, we can use this infinite summation identity in both the summations here to simplify x of z. So, in our example in the first term in our example in the first term in the first summation alpha is equal to 2 z inverse whereas in the second summation alpha is equal to 3 inverse z. Therefore, x of z can be written as x of z is equal to 1 divided by 1 minus 2 z inverse. So, x of z is equal to 1 divided by 1 minus 2 z inverse plus 1 minus 1 divided by 1 minus 3 inverse z here. Now, in the first term we multiply both numerator and denominator by z. Therefore, it will be written as z divided by z minus 2 z inverse z plus 1 minus again in the in this term we are going to multiply in this term we are going to multiply numerator and denominator by 3 here 3 divided by 3 minus 3 inverse z into 3. So, 3 and 3 inverse will get cancelled here z and z inverse will get cancelled. So, this will be written as z divided by z minus 2 plus 1 minus 3 divided by 3 minus z. So, further x of z is simplified as z divided by z minus 2 plus 3 minus z minus 3 divided by 3 minus z. So, 3 and minus 3 will get cancelled. So, this will be written as z divided by z minus 2 plus minus z divided by 3 minus z. Now, this second term is multiplied both numerator and denominator by minus 1. So, further this will be written as z divided by z minus 2 plus z divided by z minus 3 and this summation this x of z is valid if mod 2 z inverse is less than 1 and mod 3 inverse z is less than 1 here. So, this can be further written as mod z is between mod 2 and mod 3. Now, let us plot the region of convergence on the z plane here. So, region of convergence is as shown in the z plane shaded part represents the region of convergence and this region of convergence is between the two circles of radius 2 and radius 3. Thank you.


Hey guys, it's Nate, AKA the Foot Accountant. Welcome back to the channel. We think we know what promo is coming up next inside of FIFA 22 Ultimate Team and it sounds like that promo might be foot birthday. So we're gonna talk about this promo because it's a massive one. Now it usually comes out around this time of the year but this is still a little bit early from when it is usually released. So we're gonna take a look at the leaks today, talk about foot birthday in general, what this promo is usually about as it is a really, really high promo inside of the FIFA cycle that we look forward to every single year. And I also wanna take a look at how the market might react to this, right? Again, we have some brand new interesting material to look at here on the transfer market search menu. As you see, icon moments are now searchable. They are leaked as well to be coming out this weekend. That could be intertwined with the foot birthday promo. We've seen it before. Icon moments and foot birthday have kind of coexisted together as a promo. And then of course, right now on the market, how is the leaks and how is this upcoming foot birthday potential promo going to impact the market that is very, very high at the moment. So we're gonna take a look at all of that today and how this foot birthday could impact things on FIFA 22. So if you're excited for foot birthday, make sure to hit thumbs up on the video and subscribe to the channel if you're new. Let's get right into it and let's talk about this information that is being leaked. Now, usually we would look at this and be like, man, foot birthday, let's go. We're excited. This is big. It seems almost too good to be true because in the past few years, foot birthday has always been at the end of March because that's when the actual birthday of FIFA Ultimate Team is, right? I believe this is year number 13 of FIFA Ultimate Team started in March, 13 years ago. And this is a big promo, right? There's always really good cards that are released. You guys remember some of these items right back from FIFA 19. Like look at how nuts these cards were. Stat wise, a left back Salah, a Marcelo right mid, striker Van Dyke, striker Gareth Bale, which we just had and wrote to the final. A Douglas Costa, right wing, I mean, you go through this FIFA 19 squad, FIFA 19, FIFA 20, even last year in FIFA 21, there were some really cool cards that were released as a part of this promo, right? A position change. And then also I believe it was a five star skills, five star skill move, a Dama card that was released as a part of this promo last year. It's just crazy these cards that always get released during foot birthday. EA always do well with this promo. They always seem to kill it with the SVC content, with the objective content and the card that impacts. That's why there's just a lot of hype in general for foot birthday, the promotion in itself. So let's look through some of this information that's being leaked and being talked about. Foot Sheriff, of course, the leaker here says, looks like foot birthday is the next promo. He already knows the objective and something you guys will like a lot. I believe that something that he was referencing there is a token system. Again, another token system. What this means is we've seen this three times now this year. We had the Winter Wildcard swaps. We had the Future Star swaps. And now it sounds like we're gonna have foot birthday swaps as well. That just seems to be like the new thing that EA is doing with promos this year for whatever reason is they're adding in these swap programs, which we don't have. I mean, they're great, right? You get some packs, you maybe get some cool players. It's just another part of a promo that they're adding in and it's seemingly in some of these promos this year. And we like it, right? It's great. So that's a big dub. Usually the promos that have those swap programs as well end up going over really well with the rest of the promo having really good content. So of course, him leaking this stuff about foot birthday and us knowing that this promo is usually towards the end of the month of March, right? He says here, we're all thinking this as we read these leaks, right? Yes, I agree. It's very early for this promo, but I don't think there's a reason for them to list the objective that early in the token system, right? He's kind of questioning that. Now, there is a small part of this. Again, with leaks, we always just believe with the grain of salt, there is a small part of this that might just be kind of a smokescreen and kind of EA putting some information into the game saying that, hey, foot birthday is gonna be coming, but right now we're gonna try to make you think that it's coming right away and it might not actually be. So that's just kind of one thing to think about with all these leaks. It seems like what promo would be next and if EA was adding stuff into the code and into the game to prepare for a promo this Friday, if we're getting information about it now, you'd think that it would be this Friday. So I'm on the fence, honestly. It doesn't seem like it should be this early because it doesn't make sense for how it's been done in previous years, but maybe EA is gonna switch it up this year. And of course it does make sense because we haven't had a promo in the last week that has been like a pack-based promo. So it would be a perfect time for them to get back into that rhythm with foot birthday. So continuing up the list, we get a little bit more guaranteed information about foot birthday. It will again be based around five-star skill move or five-star weak foot boost. And that was the big thing that was focused on last year in FIFA 21. You take a look at this squad, right? The Adama, as I mentioned, Kent, Atal, both five-star, five-star, Paulinho, with the five-star weak foot, Sterling with the five-star skill moves, the five-star weak foot, Modric, the Alar. And maybe if you even looked back I think we'd have to go to, let's go all team of the weeks. Let's go back to FIFA 21 and look at the squad there for team one since we didn't take a look at team one. It only shows team two on the website. You've got Jamie Vardy, you have the center attacking mid-sonnet, Anaki Williams, Lucas, Sambia, Tiago, Furlan, Mindy. So I think last year in FIFA 21 foot birthday was like a slight step downwards from where it was in the past. But still a really, really good promo and a promo that everybody gets excited about. Again, with the five-star skill move, five-star weak foot boost that everybody loves. So that's kind of the promo for birthday. Now, one thing to mention as well is, if you think, and look back to last year, I went back to one of my videos from last year because I remember this happening. They did this sort of thing last year twice. They did it during foot freeze and during foot birthday where they had these like hints of which SBCs were gonna be out. But we had leaks last year. This is kind of when leaks were starting to become normalized. Now they're way crazier this year in FIFA 22, of course, as you guys know. But last year they did these little teasers, right? And we knew all these cards like a day or two beforehand. It was kind of crazy. So it seems like, and I think even a foot sheriff mentioned it in one of his tweets, he says if foot birthday isn't the next promo, you can expect like last year when everyone knew all the SBCs the week before. So he's saying even if it isn't the next promo that will be dropped on a timeline, adding all these SBCs in, we're gonna know the cards that are gonna be added in as SBCs as a part of this promo, kind of like last year. So that's just kind of something to keep an eye out for and to keep a watch out for. But that just raises a lot of questions. When is this promo gonna be? Again, we talked about it potentially being somewhere around either this Friday or honestly two weeks. And one of the reasons that we think it might not be this Friday is just going off of what we have seen in the previous years of FIFA, especially last year, right? Yesterday on Tuesday, we had the Foot Champions Plus objective that was released. And whenever we saw this last year, this meant that it was gonna be a no promo Friday, basically until the very end of the year where they did overlap a little bit. This always meant that there was gonna be a no promo Friday on the game. So this, of course, dropping yesterday for some of our silver, playing with Silver Squad in Foot Champions playoffs or finals matches, getting a certain number of wins to get those extra player picks. We'll talk a little bit more about this later. That has some people thinking that Foot Birthday might not be this weekend or this Friday. Really what we're gonna have to look out for today and even tomorrow. But specifically for today on Wednesday, since the Silver Star series promo is ending, either today or tomorrow, we're probably gonna get a loading screen of what's gonna be next. I would be surprised that they would run two off weeks in a row. But again, one argument that's pretty convincing is last year right before Foot Birthday, they had two weeks off of a promo with no promo between the What If promo and Foot Birthday. We had two weeks off. So that's kind of how, you know, there's just a lot that is not set in stone. Now we could have a loading screen today and now it would, of course, satisfy and tell us, satisfy all of our rumors and our fears and we would know what's gonna be happening. So we'll be looking out for that loading screen and more leaks, I would presume that there's gonna be some more conversations on Twitter, people talking about Foot Birthday type items and stuff like that. So that's one thing to watch out for today. And just kind of the whole gamut of information that we know right now about Foot Birthday and then next promo coming to FIVA 22. If it's not Foot Birthday, then hopefully we would get some either loading screen and surprise information or we would get some leaks about whatever promo is gonna be right up next. If there is something that's gonna be before Foot Birthday, which honestly, I don't know, we're gonna have to find out today, tomorrow, what it's gonna end up being. So that's kind of the whole Foot Birthday situation. Now again, with Foot Birthday on the horizon, what's that gonna do to the market? Again, we've been talking about it for the past few days. Just the market is so high, right? You look at road to the final cards. I mean, even this like Ansu Fati, who is just incredibly rare on the market. This guy has 800,000 coins when he was literally 450K when he was in packs. He's almost doubled. And again, that's the most popular place to look right now on the market and to see these prices incredibly, incredibly high. How about a Compepe for 1.08 million coins? This guy is now 1.36, 1.37. He's ballooned in price, right? All of your road to the finals, people are making so many coins on these cards as they've exploded in price. And does Foot Birthday have a potential to drop these cards? Yes, five-star skills, five-star weak foot items, especially with a lot of these cards being investments for people that still might be holding. I know we have Champions League, Europa League and Conference of the Games come in this next week, but, and we're gonna talk about this more or so as we head into the weekend, these cards are going to be very, very interesting and very, very crucial to watch because these cards might start to dip, especially if we do get confirmed leaks that Foot Birthday is gonna be this Friday, you're gonna start to see the whole market drop a little bit because again, a promo with this type of hype, five-star skill move, five-star weak foot, you know, the knowledge of all of the cards that we have had, like back in FIFA 19, back in FIFA 20, FIFA 21, how hype Foot Birthday usually is as a promo, then that's gonna make some people sell, right? That's gonna make some people, even like me, say, hey, you should probably sell some of these cards because the market is definitely in a bubble right now and you're going to wanna get out of some of those cards as they're, you know, inflated and in that kind of like bubble stage. So, if you have any of these cards that you don't see yourself using after Foot Birthday or if you just kinda wanna get ahead of the curve, now is not a bad time to sell by any means. I'm looking at this Holland, 460K, that is so high in price. Foden 438, all of these cards are just up so much because this week has been kind of a quieter week or a dead week for meta cards in this game. So again, I say, I think that now is not a bad time at all for selling some of those really, really meta cards on this game with Foot Birthday looming. You know, you're gonna have a lot of potential for market movements this weekend with a brand new promo of this capacity coming out into this game. So that's the one thing I'd say about the market right now. SPC fodder as well. It's a sell, 100%. This is a sell. These cards even went up or maybe stayed around the same price yesterday after the mid icon player pick was released. 88 rated cards, 40,000 coins, 89s or 29K. So maybe just down a tiny bit after yesterday's mid icon player pick was very overpriced in a 95% downvote. People were not very happy with this being so expensive. But again, EA just refreshed that SPC and they didn't make it any cheaper even though SPC fodder at the moment is through the roof because there's no supply, but there's still SPC demand. And so you have this stuff that is continually going higher. So all fodder across the whole entire game, in my opinion, would be a sell today, honestly, today or tomorrow after a week of league rewards. If people maybe go out and do a couple more SPCs with that fodder, that would be in my opinion on that part of the market. Now again, like I mentioned, something other that's gonna, something else that's gonna become this weekend is potentially the icon moments. And now you can see them on the market, right? We were waiting for this to happen for basically confirmation that these were going to be dropped because once you can search these in the game, then you know that it's legit, right? And we didn't see these last week. Now we see them in the game here. Seems like Saturday is gonna be the day for some of these cards. There's also another very familiar face that has been added to the game, Danny Alves. Yes, he does not have a card yet, but he does have a name, a image. So that means he'll probably be getting a card soon as EA maybe do a last round of, you know, transfer players is still some transfer players that haven't been added from their new teams from the winter transfer window. It just seems like it screams foot birthday, Danny Alves, SPC, or promo card, one of the two. It screams that that potential is gonna be coming. So that's really cool. That's an SPC that so many people would wanna get in their club or a card that so many people would wanna get that'd be so hype and so cool. So just kinda keep that in mind. Not that it's guaranteed to come, but that potential is there and EA knows that potential is there. So I think they're not gonna be able to withstand not putting out Danny Alves special cards. So that's just kinda one thing I wanted to put out. And then also talking about the end of Silver Stars, if you're wanting to do any of these last few SPCs, again, I think this promo has been cool, right? It's been a different way of cool though. Yesterday we had the Danny Wellbeck, the re-release of the ICON Player Pick, like I mentioned. And then we also had the Podolski, which the Podolski is actually really, really cool, but this is one part of yesterday's content that maybe has us a bit confused, but there's some Ws and some Ls to this, right? Here's the first L with this, right? It's locked, at least as it says right now, it is locked from team of the week or two team of the week 23. So basically from this Foot Champions Plus objective, you have to win four, six, or eight games to get three extra player picks, one of three, one of four, one of five for each of the player picks. Full Silver Squad, including your substitutes, it can count playoffs or finals matches. Now the W part about this is is that it's spread over two weekend leagues because it's available until the end of the season. So it's gonna be available for 15, 16 more days until season three, what are we on right now? Season four, until season four is over, this is going to be live. So it's not just for this weekend, but the L part of this is, if it's truly locked to team like 23, which I think it will be, there's, I mean, what cards in team of the week 23 are really that worth playing for, right? The whole point that people were excited about for Foot Champions Plus upgrades during this coming team of the week is that Mbappe is expected to be in the team of the week 24 today that is getting released. And people are like, oh my goodness, I could get a red Mbappe, right? Of course, EACs right through that. I mean, how many players in this team in the week are that dope for having a red card untradable? This, especially at this later point in the year, extra team in the week red picks, it's basically just like you're collecting and hoping for extra fodder, right? Lewandowski, Kane, Albamying is cool, Sancho, cool, Ito is a cool card, right? But for most of this team, it's like, eh, you know, these cards aren't that great. If they were gonna update this, I'd be surprised. I really don't think that this is gonna update when the new team of the week comes out. I guess you could wait and see. But I think it's gonna be locked to team of the week 23, which is gonna be a bit of an L. And the other thing you're gonna have too is I actually went into Foot Champions playoffs. I was four-nil at the time, went in with my silver team to Foot Champs playoffs yesterday and matched up, I think, in like three or four games. And the first game I matched up against a silver squad, the next couple games, I matched up against people playing with their main team. And what you're gonna see is, if you're trying to play with your silver squad in Foot Champs this weekend, or in qualifiers between now and then, it's gonna be tough because there's no real way to separate the silvers from the God squads. And it's gonna be just how lucky can you get trying to match somebody else with a silver for an equal playing field or playing somebody's main team. So it does create some fun aspects to that, being an underdog and trying to win, but also definitely not fair from a meta and gameplay perspective. I understand what EA is trying to do here and get people to use those silver cards, but I think there's better ways to do this, right? Silver tournaments, again, everybody wants silver tournaments. We kind of have that with the silver gauntlet, but not really, it's a tournament, but it's also not a tournament at the same time. It's just interesting, it's different. It doesn't have that same tournament vibe or feel to it, where you are only matching up with silvers, but I think some people are gonna be happy that this Silver Stars promo will be in the background, in the mirror behind us because it'll be over and done with. And I think people are tired of looking at silvers and yes, the promo was cheap and cool, but I think people are ready for meta stuff to be back again. And it's felt like kind of a week off for some people, which I totally understand. And we did have the Podolski yesterday as well, which was dope. I did that objective really, really fast and got it done. So the Silver Squad, again, if you're looking over this stuff and like, man, I don't wanna do this, I would still recommend going out and doing a few of these. They're really, really cheap. I mean, you can do some upgrade packs. I mean, literally it costs you like 100,000 coins to do like four of these SBCs and it'll take you like a half an hour to an hour doing some Golden Gold Silver Lounge to get the rest of these cards. So it is a W in my opinion, it's just a different W again, kind of as we talked about all week long. So it's gonna be an interesting Wednesday today. The number one thing I'm gonna be looking for would be a loading screen. As we, again, we mentioned that Mbappe team of the week, Mbappe's gold card is up a little bit because people expect it to be out of packs. I still think that if we do have foot birthday, even if Mbappe is in a team of the week, I think that a big foot birthday promo with five star week foot, five star skill players would make this gold Mbappe as an out of packs item. If the leaks are insane and if the cards that are gonna be getting into the team are really, really hype, I think this card could still drop even though he's out of packs. I'm gonna keep a close eye on Mbappe's specials today just to see where they go. But the inform Mbappe is down. He's like 1.7 lows. He was like 1.72 earlier. What is he right now? He's 1.74. So I'm gonna keep an eye on this Mbappe and keep an eye on the headliner Mbappe as well because as of right now, EA still has this thing messed up and you can't search for these cards. Without using the special filter because for some reason, the headliner streak filter is not available and there's only one man of the match filter that's available too. So like I just sold a content man of the match card, right? If I wanted to search this guy on the market, I have to either find a card, watch it and compare price or I have to search special and do it the old way with the price ranges. So it's just that part of the game is a little bit confusing right now at this moment. But that's kind of all the information that we have about the market that we have about the content from yesterday. Today might be another bit of a quiet day unless EA have some sort of surprise up their sleeve. I really don't know anything else about content that's gonna be released today on Wednesday apart from the brand new team of the week. I'm sure EA will do something evidently two-footed. I think we're still waiting on a Musunda silver card. So we might see Musunda today. Two-footed probably refers to a five-star week foot. So we will have to see what they do with that. But fingers crossed for foot birthday. I don't care if it's early. I really don't mind. It'd be a dope promo to have early. I would just like to know if it's coming or not or if I'm gonna have to wait another couple of weeks to actually see the great promo of foot birthday on FIFA 22 Ultimate Team. So again, if you enjoyed the video today smash the thumbs up on a comment down below if you have any questions and subscribe if you are new. It has been Nate the Foot Accountant. I will catch you guys later. Peace.


We have the next session, which has caught my eye and I'm sure you all are also waiting for this session or at least are looking forward to know what's coming up in this session because the topic is such, don't invest in women, no, no, no, don't invest in women because you don't need those $3 trillion opportunity. Well, discussing this topic on the panel is Jessica Cook, Jesse Draper. She is the founding partner of Helogen Ventures, as well as the creator and host of Emmy-nominated television series, The Valley Girl Show. Draper is the fourth generation venture capitalist who focuses on early-stage investing in consumer technology companies led by females and co-ed teams. Joining Jessica on the panel is the co-panelist who is another woman of power, Ritu Maria. She is the editor-in-chief at Entrepreneur Asia Pacific and India. So Ritu and Jesse, we are looking forward for this amazing session and I don't think anybody wants to miss this opportunity. That's a lot, I am very excited to be here and having this talk here with Jesse Draper and you know, I think the very fact that today women are trying to help women entrepreneurs, that's one of the biggest things that can happen to the women in business community because that would make a lot of difference to essentially women who are looking to sort of break a leg in the field of business. So I think what Jesse Draper today is doing is something extremely fantastic because she's created a vehicle through which she is trying to help women founders in some of the most important aspects of their lives, which is really to build a business, find scale in their business and also be able to in some levels balance their family life as well as their career. So she supports them with funds, resources, tools, skills and gives them essentially the right foundation which will help them to prosper and succeed. So Jesse, it's wonderful to have you, to be talking to you over here at Thy Global Summit and you know, as a starting point, I would love if you can tell us a little bit more about halogen ventures and how are you empowering female founders by investing early stage capital in their startup organizations and especially, you know, what is it because obviously you've sort of put 50% of the human race outside of your investment criteria. So what is it that you look for in a women founder when you go out and make an investment in a startup which is essentially run by women or at least partially has women founders in its ecosystem. So I, first of all, I'm so excited to be here. I am so grateful to have been involved in Thai for many, many years. And the very first, I just like to say the very first speaking engagement I ever had was probably in 2007 or 2008 and it was to a women's group, the first I think women's group in Silicon Valley of Thai. And I interviewed Lata Krishnan who I met through Thai who is now one of my investors in my fund and I'm just, I love Thai, I'm so grateful to Thai, my entire family is grateful to Thai and my grandfather, my father and I all have been very involved with Thai for many years and so just a huge fan and honored to be here today. And I, yeah, so I run Halogen Ventures. We invest in early stage female founded consumer technologies. So there has to be a woman in the founding team of five. We have about 62 businesses right now and I like to say we have three male CEOs with a female co-founder just to, like we like men, we just wanna make sure there's women. It's funny when you run a fund focused on investing in women, you get a lot of very silly questions like, well, what if a man works there? And I say, well, we're building billion dollar businesses. So I hope that eventually a lot of men work there. I just wanna make sure that there are women in the founding team.  We're giving these companies the resources they need. But also women are an under, like they're underrepresented in terms of investment, in terms of investors, like holding investor seats. There's not enough women investors out there. So any women investors just get out there, go do it, raise a fund, we need more of you and it is, it's a $3 trillion opportunity. It's more than that. Women also in the United States, I know and I'm sure the statistics are very similar in India. They make, women make 80% of purchasing decisions in households. So why aren't we as involved in the building of these businesses since we're making most of the purchasing decisions? So yeah, we invest some of the things I look for. And I'm a former entrepreneur. I was a media entrepreneur, ran a tech news blogs that I started in 2008, the heart being this show called The Valley Girl Show. We were kind of like in those early days of distribution, acquired a few other tech blogs and now I'm on the investor side. And running this tech news blog site and The Valley Girl Show, I did five seasons of the show. And I quickly learned that after two seasons, I had only interviewed incredible men in technology. And that was a problem because I'm a fourth generation venture capitalist. And the first female in line, I grew up in Silicon Valley. All I know is startups and technology, but I didn't think I could go into that because I was female and I didn't see any women around me. And so I went into entertainment and kind of combined this technology entertainment background. And after two seasons of interviewing incredible men who I respect so much, I just realized that I needed to change something. And I was facilitating the problem I had seen as a young girl. And so I made an initiative to interview 50% women in technology on the show.  There is no lack of women starting companies. We saw nearly 5,000 deals last year. And I think it's because it's just like a magnet. It's really incredible to see how many women are starting these billion dollar businesses. And so I started saying sometimes you're a little too early for the show. I love what you're doing. I'd have a lot of them on. I'm forever grateful to the women of fashion tech back then because it was like Jen Hyman from Rent the Runway and the guilt group girls and Rebecca Minkoff. And I don't know if you are all as familiar with them, but they were early stage entrepreneurs in about 2010. And now they're running these enormous businesses. And they made it okay then for Cheryl Sandberg to come on the show and numerous others, Lata Krishnan, etc. And I started seeing these early stage deals saying, I don't have a lot of money, but I can maybe be a strategic advisor and get you immediate exposure. Or as I started making a little bit of money, I was in my 20s and I was just emptying my bank accounts into these companies. I was like $1,000, $5,000, will you take it? And some of those deals ended up doing really well for me. When I sold for a 25X return on the secondary market in less than 18 months. And then I came to a point with the show and the tech blog that I had to kind of make a decision because the investments were going so well and I thought, let's see if I could raise a fund. So I went out and I pitched 500 potential investors, as one does, closed maybe 50 of them and raised my first fund. We're now on the second fund and our companies are doing incredibly well. We sold one last year to P&G, went to Walmart. We're selling one right now. We've had about seven exits and returns and we're just getting going. And I'm just telling you, investing in women de-risks the opportunity, because there's so much data around this, but we're much more risk averse. Which I don't think we should look at as a bad thing. It just means we take much more calculated risk. So we're taking in many more data points than men are. But what we can take from men and learn from men is go with your gut sometimes. At the end of the day, I go through my 100 item diligence checklist in terms of you were asking what I look for. And I'll go through my checklist, but at the end of the day, I look at my team and I say, but do we feel good about this? Do we feel good about this deal? Because you're about to go through a 10-year journey with this person. And so I think you can take only so much into account. And when you're investing, you do need men and you need women. You need to de-risk. And then you need the gut check and the go for it as well. And so in terms of what we look for, we look for a very, like any great entrepreneur, we're looking for a fantastic entrepreneur, someone who can walk through walls, breathe fire. And we're looking for a first the product. Is it unique? Is it defensible? And then we look for product first. Is this something that in 10 years will be a billion-dollar business? Does it have some sort of traction? Is that a million in revenue? Is that 100,000 users? And if you're an early-stage investor, I mean, entrepreneur out there, don't stress about those numbers. We also invest pre-product. But what I want to see is some data around, why do people need this product? And then the third thing, which I should have put first, is obviously the founder. The founder is the most important thing. We love co-founders. We love complementary skill sets. We love it when you know what your strengths and your weaknesses are and that you figured out how to deal with your weaknesses. And we look for people who we can partner with for a long time. So you're sitting in Silicon Valley in your fourth-generation venture capitalist. So one of the points I would love to know more about is why did you pick up consumer tech as a category for investments?  But it says that halogen ventures focus on women founders who are particularly in women tech, consumer tech. So why consumer tech? What is the big opportunity for consumer tech, particularly within Silicon Valley that you see it as a great chip to make an investment? So while I grew up in Silicon Valley, we're actually based in Los Angeles. And we, in terms of consumer technology, we do about 25% CPG physical products that are typically e-commerce or market places that ship physical products with some sort of like defensible opportunities. So we have a company called Flex, which is a menstrual disc. That's an alternate tampon device, tampon's multi-billion dollar industry. And this is another option within that category. That's doing incredibly well. And then we do 75% pure tech plays. And so we have a company called the Squad app, which is like a Zoom type service for teenagers. They just partnered with Snapchat. You can screen share, watch movies with your friends. People are obsessed with it. It's been very fun. And then, yeah, in terms of consumer technology, I think it's a very, very vast, but because one, I came from media and I knew the opportunity of, like media I look at as simply a vessel for which to sell things through. So as a fund, I knew that what we could do for our founders is add media exposure. We do influencer strategies with all of these celebrity influencers and micro influencers all the way to full press strategy, all the way to go to market strategy. And so marketing is kind of our expertise. So when it comes to consumer, that is a real secret sauce. I think that we have specifically as a fund and being based in LA, that's very, very helpful. And then also, in terms of women, women are starting consumer businesses left and right. I think what I've realized is they're starting businesses in every single category. They're starting so many businesses that I actually had to really, really focus. And so we, right now we're very focused on beauty technology. We're invested in a great company called Prima Donna that is the inventor of the first nail bot where I can take a picture of all of you with my smartphone and print it on my nail from their printer in under two seconds. And then we're very focused on work from home, future of work technology. And that was even before COVID. So that's been going pretty well for us. And then, I'm sure you can attest that the United States government is incredibly inefficient. And so we are focused on companies that are consumer focused, but also can work with the government. We're really focused on childcare as a category, foster care oriented technologies and trying to actually solve some problems within the government. The government is a multi-billion dollar business. It's bigger than the Fortune 500 companies combined. And they have, all the technology exists to solve these problems. We just need to plug it in. So those are three of the verticals we're excited about within consumer. And then looking at sustainability and anything in FemTech. I love that space just in general. And I think you can go into consumer. There's so many different categories we really have had to focus. But you feel that the whole opportunity of building billion dollar companies is as high in consumer tech as it is in deep tech because we've seen practically companies start in three years back and now they're almost like unicorns. And it's just like you feel that it's sort of hit that mark in no time at all. Do you feel the same opportunity lies in consumer tech too? Oh, definitely, definitely.  And now our whole behavior in consumers changing. So we're seeing unique even B2B opportunities that facilitate the consumer experience that we're seeing as multi-billion dollar opportunities. But yes, we only go into billion dollar markets. Sure, absolutely, that's, so I mean, tell me that the pandemic has sort of changed the way we've been approaching our businesses. So particularly, being now in the investor, as an investor, how difficult has this period been for you? To raise your fund, to get exits, to sort of able to be able to balance your portfolio companies, keep them above the water so that they don't sink.  And secondly, how have you been helping other women entrepreneurs in your portfolio to stay afloat? Yeah, such a good question. And first of all, I know it hasn't been easy for everybody. So I hope everyone is doing okay and that they're healthy. It has not been easy, I think, for anyone. This is just a new way of living, at least over here. And I think everywhere is just weird. We're living, I've just convinced myself we're living in an alien world and we're like, eventually we'll go back to planet Earth. But it's been, in terms of being a fund manager going into COVID week one, because we're in early stage, we were actually seeing our companies take little hits to revenue much earlier than, you look at the public companies, they hadn't even caught up. And so when we were starting to hear 60% hit to revenue, 90% hit to revenue, I got all of my companies on a Zoom call. It might not have been all of them, it was about 50 of them because I think I only had the 50 Zoom thing. And I just said, here's what we recommend. Figure out how to make sure that you have 12 to 24 months of runway, become a marketing machine. If you can't sell, you might as well build your brand, apply for the PPP loan, which was the loan that the United States government was giving out. And we just made all these recommendations right away. We also offered a lot of business service provider hours and just helped as much as we could.  Like I was a few minutes late getting on our sort of pre-call because I was, I'm closing a deal right now. I mean, I'm usually like the 24 hour hotline, during COVID it's the, I don't know, 28 hour hotline or something. And we just tried to be available to our founders. We also helped them raise, a lot of them said, wait, I don't have 24 months of runway. I need to just like raise a quick bridge round. So we participated, we raised SPVs with our investors as well, they like to have direct investment access. And so I felt like we paused everything we were doing as a fund, re-strategized, tried to support our companies, tried to see who was, you know, taking a hit. Luckily, we only have about 2% travel and events oriented companies. And so we were doing okay. Some strange ones were taking off like the squad going into COVID had over a million users and because they're this Zoom type service for teenagers, like you can imagine the astronomical growth where one of my team members had to help go operate over there for a minute till we could hire and place people. And then we have like trust and will, which is an estate planning online service and sold more wills in the last year than ever before, which is so sad, but good for business. And so it's just, it's been fascinating to see what has done well. And we just tried to support them however we possibly could, but we actually were in the middle of our fundraise. I can talk about this now because I couldn't talk about this before. But we were in the middle of our fundraise and we had to pause because we wanted to make sure our companies were okay. And so we ended up fundraising for our businesses a lot more than for ourselves.  And I wanna share because it was the hardest thing I've ever done. I closed, we have 84 investors. We raised $21 million. So imagine how many people I spoke to. I mean, I probably spoke to 400 people in the last and it took me almost two years because we paused going into COVID, took six months off, helped raise for our companies. And then, it's no easy task. And I like to say that especially for women and for men, often entrepreneurs come to me and they say, well, everyone said no, no one's investing in my company. And I'm like, well, who's everybody? Like who's everyone?  I'm like, so plan on talking to 100 because then something will happen. If 20 in a row say no, you might need to like ask for some feedback and rejigger your deck a little bit and answer some questions that you weren't aware they were concerned about and then go back out there. But if you plan on having 100 meetings, something should happen. And it's just, I think it's important to know like you can't give up, you have to keep going. And yeah, that was the hardest thing I've ever done. And I think for a moment, I was like, can I fundraise through Zoom, is that possible? And then when I started, I realized, oh wow, like I can. And I think it's absolutely incredible. I mean, we're investing through Zoom, so, but I think it's incredible that I have like 20 new investors that I've never met in person. I think that's just crazy to me, but that's how business is being done and business needs to continue and we need to continue to support these companies.