It's my pleasure to welcome you to this GIST Tech Connect event. My name is Jonathan Margolis and I am the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Science, Space and Health in the Bureau of Oceans, International and Environmental and Scientific Affairs at the U.S. Department of State. The State Department leads the Global Innovation through Science and Technology Initiative or GIST. I want to start by thanking the GIST team here at State and at CRDF Global, our partner in the GIST Initiative for their hard work in putting this event together and for their efforts to build innovation ecosystems around the world. As President Obama has said, we believe that entrepreneurs can create jobs that fortify relationships between countries, build global markets and help fulfill the dreams of all who desire the freedom to make of their lives what they will. The GIST Initiative is based on a simple idea. When young innovators have the skills and mentoring they need, they are more likely to take the risks that can turn their ideas into startups and ultimately successful businesses. Through a range of competitions, bootcamps and programs like this Tech Connect event GIST provides skills development, networking opportunities and financial advice. The GIST network extends through Asia, the Middle East, Africa and includes over 150,000 entrepreneurs. We work with U.S. and local experts to ensure that GIST participants have the support that they need to help take their ideas and innovations to the marketplace. GIST celebrates those innovators and entrepreneurs who, even though they may fail, are willing to take the chance to make their dreams a reality. I want to thank our panel of experts for joining us today to share their experiences and answer your questions. And now I'm pleased to introduce Ovidio Bujaran of CRDF Global, who is today's moderator. Thank you Deputy Assistant Secretary Margolis, we're very excited to welcome our viewers to today's Global Innovation through Science and Technology, also known as GIST. Tech Connect, global conversation about sales and networking for your venture. We have an incredibly knowledgeable and dynamic panel with us today to answer some of your burning questions about how to sell your vision and your product. They will also share their thoughts on how to network effectively and how to build quality relationships and partnerships. Today's session of the GIST Tech Connect series is pleased to be part of the Global Entrepreneurship Week. I'm Ovidio Bujaran and I'm the lead for the GIST initiative at CRDF Global. We're very proud to partner with the State Department on this initiative that empowers youth from around the world to turn their science and technology ideas into viable ventures that catalyze economic growth. CRDF Global has been proudly supporting technology entrepreneurs in more than 60 countries for the past 15 years. Our programs are centered on fostering the most promising tech entrepreneurs globally through practical venture development training, in-depth mentorship and access to networks, capital and global expertise. Today GIST is thrilled to host a virtual Connex web chat connecting entrepreneurs and investors and innovators across geographies and continents. We have a big number of viewing sites around the world in Africa, Middle East, Turkey, Asia and Latin America. This level of outreach is possible because of the partnership between the U.S. State Department, CRDF Global and a big number of local partners that we work very closely to implement our activities. I would encourage you and the audience to use the hashtag at GIST Tech Connect when tweeting about the event today. And we are collecting your questions to ask your panelists later in the program. So please start sending your questions right now and throughout the program by typing in the chat space below the video. So with us in the studio we have Landria Kinola, editor of This Is Africa for the Financial Times. We also have Chris Schroder who is the former CEO of Health Central and also author of the book Startup Rising that is about the entrepreneurial revolution remaking the Middle East. And we have Wisam Yafi who is founder of TIDWIT, an educational technology company focused on online learning.  It's a pleasure to have you here. I would like to start by asking each one of the speakers a question. Before that I want to provide a little bit of a context. This is like a fourth of a series of Tech Connects. We spoke about ideation, how you come up with ideas, we spoke about bootstrapping your venture, we spoke about raising capital. We decided to have a specific one on sales and networking for your venture because we realized that selling is a key skill that an entrepreneur, a founder, a team of founders need to have in order to kind of advance their vision. And basically when an entrepreneur promotes his vision, he needs to recruit a lot of human talent. So I would like to start by actually asking Chris from your own experience, how do you go about articulating a vision and selling that vision to the initial group of core stakeholders in the process? First thanks very much for having me here. I think it's an amazing event and gathering which you all do here. So I appreciate it. It's a great deal. It's funny, a lot of times when people think about sales, they think about it as this very tactical thing. I have a good or a service and I want to sell it to someone and I think what people miss which is to the essence of your question is that we're always selling all the time. And the two mistakes that I think people make when they want to frame their idea is forgetting that one, most people don't have the context we have as entrepreneurs. We have many things going on in our mind. A lot of context about the market and what we're trying to solve and we know it so well that we think everybody around us knows it also. Inevitably one they don't but secondly they're also thinking about their own context and what they're doing. So the ability to really shape any idea or thing that you're having about not only why it matters macroly but why it matters to the person or group that you're talking to is incredibly important. And I think the second thing that people often underestimate is that a lot of times we make it about us. This is my thing. I got to figure out how to get you to do something. Whereas in a lot of respects if you think about it as serving them, whoever your audience is, they have a problem, they have a context and I have an idea that can help them solve that. So their lights go on and they engage with me in a very powerful way. Makes you think of yourself almost in terms of being in service. It's in service to your idea, in service to the good. But it's also in service to whoever you're pitching at any given time. And that way you've got them locked in. And then you can make I think a very, very tight presentation of what you offer. Great, excellent points. I would like to ask Landry, you have a lot of experience in communication and also how you leverage social media. And when going about selling your vision, one of the key stakeholders is the mass media and how you are able to build your profile, to build the buzz around your product. How do you see the role of actually communication in the process, articulating some of the core messages that you have, that you will go like what Chris said in front of all the key stakeholders? Can you share with us some of your experience? Sure thing, firstly I'd like to echo what Chris said. Thanks very much for having me today. It's a pleasure to be here. And I'd also like to just comment on the point of we're always selling. You're always selling. And this is something that's really important to understand. We're selling right now, even though we're not in a formal selling setting. But on the issue of communication, communication is absolutely key. The ability to articulate your vision in a compelling way. The ability to articulate that vision to the right audience is absolutely essential. Now the role of the media is an interesting one. And in media, communication is our lifeblood. And one of the things that always astonishes me is just how many people underestimate the power of communication. I get a lot of story ideas and story pitches and propositions that are sent to me. And a lot of them have something in there that's probably worth covering and probably worth looking at. But what tends to happen is that people, and I think this goes to what Chris was saying, is that people are so kind of subsumed in their own context. What they're not thinking about is how does the other side of the equation need to understand what it is that I'm trying to, what my story is here. So media is an interesting game because a lot of our work, believe it or not, is turning mundane everyday stories into very engaging and quite fascinating stories. And what you realize after a while is that most people have a really interesting and fascinating story to sell. The difficulty is in capturing that story and articulating it properly. So I would say that communication is something that has to be so fundamental to what you do as an entrepreneur. And you always have to be communicating because you're always selling. And in terms of building buzz and social media, I think by now most people have understood that social media, as we call it, is kind of important in digital media and the internet and so on and so forth. It's absolutely vital, I would say. My key piece of advice would be get on Twitter, understand Twitter, and know how to use it. People, I think, misunderstand social media, the real value of social media. If you're an entrepreneur, if you're trying to win business, if you're trying to drum up buzz around your business, I would say get on Twitter, ASAP, but also understand how to use it. Don't use it the wrong way. Again, it's all about effective communication. Formulate your message properly, figure out what you need to say to the appropriate audience. And there's a lot more I can say about that, but maybe I'll stop there for now and then we can come back to it. So two points I take from you, one is empathy, trying to put yourself in the shoes of the other people that you try to communicate. And second, try to learn as much as you can from media, from the point of view of formulating an exciting story about your product, connect it to your point, how you solve the various pain points, have a number of stories that will actually attract more stakeholders into kind of your world and potential founders. A key thing is you have to understand and then it is actually possible. You have to understand how journalists think and how editors think. And if you're able to figure that out, it gets a lot easier in terms of getting through and I can talk about that a little bit later on as well. That's great. We sum, part of this program is also focused on networking and it's very important to kind of network your way to the right key stakeholders. Sometimes it's easier, sometimes it's more difficult from your own experience in actually building your programs internationally. You had to navigate a lot of international networks, local networks. Can you share with us some of your experience in powering up some of your projects through networking? Sure, so Tidwit, as you mentioned in the beginning, is all about basically learning. And what we do is we service global communities with e-learning technologies that can help them. And in the sentence, I think the most important word is service. So just to the point of my fellow, I guess, colleagues here, I think sales is a very important function but also servicing, even before you sell, is a very key point. So the sale will come or the selling will come but the definition of selling is kind of like a very broad. So servicing and making sure that you service the client is extremely important in one way or another. Coming back to the networking, the networking is in one way or another, hopefully you have a service to provide. So when you are networking in one way or another, you're kind of going to the market and saying, I'd like to service you in one way or another, whatever your service happens to be. In our case, it's learning. And so we found some gaps in the marketplace and we try to service it. And in a way by you finding this niche, this service, this utility for whatever it is that you wanna provide, in a way you're selling. And in a way the market starts perceiving you as a provider of the service and therefore they wanna try and purchase. So the networking element in a way is organic. Sometimes it could be done in a massive, there's a lot of marketing and merchandising and all that kind of stuff. But at the end of the day, it's going back to the simple messaging of what it is that you service and who you market to is basically who wants to receive or needs to receive the service. So the networking element is you wanna try and bring those elements that will benefit from your service. So they could be local. So you see a lot of local events that you might kind of spread the message of what they do. They could be a little bit further out using technological tools, Twitter was mentioned, but there are other tools out there. One of the things that I find that's extremely beneficial when it comes to networking is to hone in on what it is that you wanna get out of this networking. Is it, are you networking towards investors? Are you networking towards potential clients? So in our case, for example, we have certain projects that we work with in learning that we're very passionate about. For example, one of the projects we're currently working on is to help refugees, Syrian refugees. And so the people or the organizations worldwide that we network with have a potential benefit by helping these kinds of organizations. So we're dealing with organizations such as USAID, State Department, OTI, but we're also dealing with European Union foundations. A lot of organizations that perceive a benefit from the service that we wanna provide these refugees, which is emergency education. So again, you go back to, what is it that you're trying to service the market to? Who are you targeting? And then who do you network to that fits into this entire scope of what it is that you're trying to do? All great points. Moving to Chris. The hardest is to get the first customers. If they are paying customers or non-paying customers, that would be really interesting to have a distinction on how you build your way from non-paying to paying. How do you get to your first customers and how do you actually learn from the interaction with the first customers? You know, it's interesting that conventional wisdom is the hardest is the first customer, but I actually think for a lot of entrepreneurs, the first couple are very easy, because not unlike the way that you describe network and so well, all of us have networks or people we think about, if we've done our homework, we talk to people to ask them what problem that we're solving for them. And so we have people who have a vested interest, again, understanding their context, that are willing to try it. I think what gets very difficult are two things. One is how can you get people to effectively take your free consulting, i.e. you're selling to them, they're willing to try it, they're willing to test it, but how much are they willing to pay and when? And secondly, how do they need to take it to scale? How do you actually then to break it out and other things? And my view is two-fold. One is a success breeds success. So if you pick friends of yours who really are passionate about what you want to do, who you trust will follow through on their tests, we'll talk about it, we'll give you good advice, we'll be good marketers within their organization to sell your thing, that's a very good place to be. But secondly, if you also partner with or sell to organizations that have good brands, good associations, the next one is not afraid to take the risk with something new. Oh, I can do that because Google is doing that. I'm doing that because someone else is. So that's a great point. So when you are an entrepreneur, you start the new company, you don't have that much of a brand recognition. Some of them, of the entrepreneurs, maybe serial entrepreneurs, they already have a brand. But let's assume you don't have. So basically getting a customer that is a bigger company that can potentially lend some of the credibility that will make your path easier for the future customers. It can be a bigger company, or it just can be a company that people know about, or it can be a young person that the fact that she or he has success with it, she's well known or well regarded both within her organization or elsewhere. I don't think you need to limit it too much. But the real question is that we entrepreneurs don't live in a world of neutrals. Every hour we have has to move the ball forward or not. A neutral hour is not good for us. And you can get lost in long sales cycles. You can get lost in people who want to tell you, we'll do this for you and everything else. And your ability to get people who won will execute quickly, will give feedback, will give you answers efficiently is an amazing first step early on to be able to use your time well, to use their time well, and then build the learning and successful examples for which you can expand quickly. That's great. One of the questions though, okay, you identified the right organization. And I know we have entrepreneurs from a diverse number of industries. Most of it is in the IT, but also healthcare energy. Who do you target in the organization? Well, it really depends where your idea came from to begin with. So some of the better ideas or the easier ones to hit the market are ideas that were organically born out of a need within an organization.  And so that kind of organically and naturally provides a potential market because you could go back to that same client and tell them this is, or they may already know that this is a specific need. And then you take this need and you turn it either you productize it or you turn it into a service that could be applied across different clients or industries. There's another, I think, important point to keep in mind with this is whenever it is that you're trying to sell a new technology, let's say this is something that you've just conceived and you do not have anybody yet as a potential client. I think there's enough success stories out there in the world, such as the Googles and those kinds of organizations that indelibly their starting point was needing to give a lot of it away for free. I'm not particularly of the idea that everything has to be for free. Everything at the end of the day has to have a certain value. But in a lot of cases, particularly within technological initiatives, it has to be, you have to kind of give before you can get. So this is a very important point that entrepreneurs, I think, everywhere around the world should keep in mind, which is try to be in the mindset of being able to give before you expect to get there. How do you think about, in your copy, in your experience, because it's such an interesting sell early on in this market, how do you think about the decision maker within a copy? So it's all well and good, like I say, to find people you know and you trust. But at the end of the day, the question is, do they have influenced themselves? Are they decision makers themselves? The purchase decision. Do they have purchased decisions or economic decisions? How have you navigated that in the success that you've built? So it's a great question because it depends on the organization. So it's not always, it's not a kind of a one size fits all. So sometimes you can navigate at certain levels. Sometimes you have to go all the way up. If we're talking within the context of certain regions, it can change as well. Certain regions in the world, you know, the, I guess decisions get done at the top and other regions, more developed regions, decisions are delegated to a little bit, you know, to some of the lower echelons, management, et cetera. And they have economic power to make decisions. And one has to kind of navigate the politics of organizations to be able to do it. That brings us back to networking. So as long as you're networking within the right context of who you're trying to reach, I think you can kind of manage, but never go in with a prior, you know, kind of, I guess preconceived notion that this is the only person who can make that decision. I couldn't agree with him more and it's unbelievably important because I think that we forget that again, the context of an organization is as important as the individual. And it goes back to this power of listening, that when you go and you talk to someone you know and you network, to be able to almost interview them about, so who has this problem? Where do they solve the problem? What is the process to make a decision? Why have you used this and not that? And to be able to sort of understand the navigation of one, the pain points they feel, two, the context by which they make decisions, and three, who are the decision makers? Actually takes work, which is part of building the relationship in the two-way reciprocity, which makes for a great sales relationship. All great points just to put a little bit more context. So we started to implement the Lean Startup methodology and a key part of that is the customer development interview. And basically with our entrepreneurs, we started to kind of interact with them more and at the center is this customer development interview. To contextualize it a little bit more, basically our entrepreneurs are early stage idea and early stage entrepreneurs in all the geographies that I mentioned. So most likely at the beginning they won't like have to deal like with regional or global. Some of them may but at the local level you find that like who are like usually the decision makers in an organization? Like from your own experience in actually selling some of the things because you may not go straight for like a global sort of partnership. So I want to cover that part where you kind of locally you see what sort of potential customers you have. Who are you kind of targeting, not targeting but who are you hoping to connect with for this purpose? Again, I think the point that we were trying to share a little bit early on is it depends on your target market. So let me give fellow entrepreneurs some ideas so that they can kind of... So if your target market are small businesses then it's most likely that the entrepreneur and let's say they're SMEs or small and medium sized enterprises. In most cases it's going to be the owner that's going to be the decision maker. If you're dealing with a slightly larger organization such as a hospital it might be the head of the department. If you're dealing now with multinational corporations then it might be someone a little bit more on a regional level because it might be a regional decision. So at the end of the day I guess the starting point of what was being stated which is who has the need is the first starting point. That might be kind of your way in the door which is who has that need. And then you have to navigate your way as an entrepreneur to find out exactly, okay so if this is the need there where does the need lead to and who has in a lot of cases I think the financial where does it kind of the financial trail is where they need to go to. And so who has the pain basically and who's having to pay for that pain ends up being the same person or group that makes that decision. So if you can understand or identify that need and trace it all the way to who is really having to pay for that pain you're probably identified the decision maker. That's in a general sense. So if it's a small business, it's a small business owner. If it's a large corporation, it's a region or maybe an office or a department. Great, you want to answer? I would just add that the businesses I've run are media businesses which means that my sale has mostly been advertising put aside the other constituencies of investors and employees and so on. And one of the things that I have found both early on and even ongoing never ends is that I have friends in the industry. I have friends who are in the agencies, young people or old people, doesn't matter. And the ability just to have a cup of coffee or a drink with someone and talk to them about who it is and who's up and who's down and what does it mean and how can I solve their problem is very powerful as he says. What you learn when you have conversations like that is that for example, some people may have budget authority but they're not really experimental. Talk to this person instead because they'll test it and if it works then maybe they'll move it up to the person who makes the decision. Some people may have a decision to make a $10,000 decision. Other people can only make $200,000 decisions or greater. And then you know that the smaller decisions are actually the place to start. And it literally is these just conversations of reciprocity to get the lay of the land as you describe that makes all the difference. That's great. Do you start with the ideal customers or you are learning your way through kind of not the ideal customer so that there's a potential that you will kind of fail? What do you mean by ideal? Let's say if you have a business that could have like a major customer, like a major customer that could buy your product. And then you have some smaller companies that could use your product but the potential for revenue is not that high. I think the answer is a very good question. I think the answer in a way is yes. I mean, obviously back to my comment about we don't live in the world of neutrals, getting two people where you think there's a likely ability to close is the way that you can load balance your time at any given day. But I found that in the early days, the single most important thing is someone who's gonna tell you the truth, right? Someone that you have something to connect to, someone that at least you've been referred to by a friend of a friend, you can get them out of their office and really kind of talk to them where they're gonna tell you the honest lay of the land. And then once you start to get the lay of the land, really making very sharp decisions of the likelihood of timing, speed, and real dollars to close, or a path to get there has got to be the criteria you keep coming back to over and over again. To that I'd add, perhaps the ideal customer is the one who buys. Buys, yeah. As long as they buy, that's buy, buy. I wish I always needed that. But I'll add to that actually, an important, in technology, the ideal customer actually might not be the first to sign up. Let's say if there is an ideal customer outside of the context of who buys, because they may not have yet identified their need. And so, at least in technology, what a certain experts, for example, have determined is that the early adopters are actually techies that may not, in the long term, be the most ideal, or that can grow as a customer. But they're ideal in the sense of that period of time because they are the ones who the others look for, for thought leadership. So, I guess what I'm trying to say here is, and without going into too much of the theoretical sales cycles, et cetera, is your ideal customer, if there is one, very early on in your company's, I guess, life, might end up, or in your product's life, might end up being very different from the one later on. As your technology develops, as your offering develops, as your service becomes to become more and more complex. So, you wanna be careful about idealizing a certain customer. First of all, I think it's, as I mentioned, kind of like in a humorous way, your ideal customer at the end of the day is the one who actually buys, right? But at the same time, also kind of keep in mind, as an entrepreneur, that it's important to kind of understand that certain early adopters might not, in the long term, be the ones that are gonna help grow your companies. In fact, with technological initiatives, and I'll add this point, because it's important, within technological initiatives, some of the early adopters have basically risk certain young entrepreneurs, kind of back to the point that was mentioned, taking so much of your bandwidth or time that they end up hurting you more than helping you. So you have to be careful in how you manage your time and manage your growth from that early customer into a whole market of potential customers that can help your company grow. Those are excellent insights. I wanna encourage our audience to continue to send us questions below the screen. This was one of my questions, is basically you have the first group of customers. How do you actually leverage this first group of customers to get to the next group of customers? Because basically, and how are you aware, based on what you just shared with us, of the various inflection points when you are building a business? Because some of the initial customers, you test your product, they could use it a little bit. You can grow as much, let's say, with some of the initial customers. If you're lucky, and then in the initial customers that are paying customers, you kind of grow the account, let's say, with them. But sometimes you migrate, like you said, to the next set of customers. How do you leverage the initial, the various groups of customers at different stages of the company growth to kind of move to the next level? You know, there are a lot of customers who are innovative and forward leaning. They really wanna push their organization. And if you can find them, it's a certain kind of a dialogue, which is very important. But a lot of people that you sell to at the end of the day, there's an old saying that no one got fired for buying IBM, right? What is meant by that is that they can be very conservative, they can be risk averse. They can see the upside, but what they really wanna make sure is that the downside is protected from whatever it is that they're building. And so, particularly in tech space, which is where I am focused, I have found at the end of the day, if I'm not dealing with someone who's very lean forward, but someone who's a little bit conservative about their career, they're two things that speak for themselves, other than the listening, which is what we start for. One, to leverage, as you say, an existing customer who's very successful. Case studies matter. The ability to say, here's something that we did with these people, here's what they bought into, here was a result. And to be able to talk about those, I think are very powerful, particularly early on. And secondly, in this day and age, nothing talks like data. Your ability to go to someone and really show hardcore results, not just anecdotal results, not just reference results, but to be able to say, if you're spending X by using my service, you're gonna spend half X. If you're doing Y by using my service, here let me show you in the data why you're going to twice Y. It is very concrete. And both those things, one, take away any of the insecurity someone might have to try something new and at the same time make them look like heroes, which is always a great context.  That's great. One question for you, Larry, building on what Chris mentioned. The importance of actually documenting the case studies and creating stories out of that that actually could communicate really well with your potential next set of customers. Any advice on how you kind of craft those initial case studies in a way that's both compelling as a story, but also has a lot of facts in it? So from a media perspective, I mean? Yeah, I'll get to that in a minute. I just wanted to touch on a couple of points. One on the networking side. So you've got two kind of seasoned entrepreneurs either side of me, but on the networking, one thing that I would say is important to bear in mind is that media can help a lot. It can, one, it amplifies your message. And if you're good at leveraging media, it can get your message to the people that really need to hear it. So in terms of networking, if you have an effective media engagement strategy, what you find is that you can actually sort of get people to come to you. And the reality is, if you're an entrepreneur, especially if you're trying to start something up, odds are you probably don't have that much money to crisscross the globe, and you can only be in so many places at a given time, right? So anything you can do to amplify your message, amplify your story, and especially getting it to the people that you really wanna reach is key. And that's where I would say media engagement should be part of your DNA from the very beginning. And in that respect, there are a couple of things that I would say you really need to do. One is you have to build relationships in media. You can't just, you know, and you should, I think it's very important to not think of media as some sort of like add-on to your networking activity, some add-on to your stakeholder universe, because media might not necessarily be your first client. It might not necessarily invest in your venture. It's not your VC and so on and so forth. However, media can be a conduit to all of those things, and it can be a very powerful conduit. And in my experience, you know, I get a lot of story pitches, a lot of story ideas from people who are starting various ventures all the time. And those people who make it through the system are people who build relationships. So I would say, you know, don't kind of just do the mass email to media of like, hey, here's a press release. Do you wanna run it?  They get pitched all the time. Media gets pitched all the time. So identify the right editors or journalists. Identify the right media and build relationships with them.  I would say, don't be afraid to contact people. Don't take it personal if you don't get a reply. Odds are either people are too busy or the story just doesn't cut it. How many times you follow up? It depends on the approach. It depends entirely on the approach. With media and beyond, it's like when you approach a potential customer. What's the line between annoyance and good tenacity for you? It's, for me, it's all about tone. I have nothing against people following up and chasing. It's all about the tone. So, you know, be as, just do your research, do your homework. Figure out what it is that the journalist or editor or media outlet that you are targeting is interested in. And they're practical things you can do there. One is just read their stuff, follow their content. And this is also where social media can be incredibly helpful, especially Twitter, again. Follow the people in media that you're interested in because they will tell you what they're interested in. Ultimately, a good pitch is one that captures the interest of a journalist. Ultimately, all journalists are motivated by the same thing, which is, I want an interesting story and I wanna write about something interesting. So, what you gotta do is figure out what is it that this person's interested in. And thanks to Twitter, you can do that now. You can follow me on Twitter and I will tell you what I'm looking at. I will tell you. It's at Akinola Landray, one word. And I'm sure- We will have your Twitter handles there for our audience. Feel free to bombard me. They will take it seriously. Yeah, absolutely. But I mean that. You should not worry. We have a very entrepreneurial audience. Look, at this point, maybe I can, I know I'll regret this, but I'll extend an invitation, contact me. And if it makes sense, I'm more than happy to follow up because the more personal the more thought through the approach, the better. And you know what? You have to work at these relationships.  It's not gonna happen. You have to. And I would say that it should be an indispensable part of what you do from a networking perspective right from day one. You have to think about what media can help me get my message out there because I don't wanna have to chase every single customer. And that ultimately is what exposure and brand building is all about, right? People come to you. Great. Great point. I'd add to these couple of points the following. The human element, and I'm coming from the virtual world, right? So I find it both a great plus, but also in a certain way, a key differentiator, which is there's nothing like being able to talk to somebody face to face. I mean, I love every social media, kind of outlet out there and email and all that kind of technology inside out.  That's one point I wanted to make. Another point I wanted to also share with you is on the point of how do you move from one customer to several? It's a very, very, very important point. And I think segmentation without getting into too much detail of marketing and all that is key. Because I don't want to limit it to technology, but in a lot of ways with technology used as an example, people look at success stories. And your success story is more relevant to people who are in the same industry than others. And if you jump around all over the place, it's gonna start sounding irrelevant to potential customers. So the more you can stick early on to certain segments where you learn their needs, you service them, you service them well. And you grow within this segment. The more likely your success rate. Some people just go kind of like are lucky enough to go global from the outset and service multiple industries. But those are kind of few and far in between. Most of the success stories, even the likes of large companies, even the oracles, et cetera, they started with highly segmented markets. And then they moved from there and they crossed that chasm and this is a book I would... Crossing that chasm. For, you know, just for full disclosure, I'm not getting any royalties off of that. But that's a great entrepreneurial book. Crossing the chasm, right? Crossing the chasm, or the chasm with Jeffrey Murray. That's a great technological book that explains some of the details to young entrepreneurs. So if you haven't picked it up and if it's in your local market, take a look at it. And it's segmentation that can help them make that jump if they haven't already. That's great. Let's move to the questions from the audience. I just want to, because I think it's important, I want to speak as a venture capitalist now and not as an entrepreneur, because I wouldn't change a comma of what he said and the importance of media and blogging, social media, relationships, and the physical matters. But I will tell you, there's a caution. And VCs look at this caution, which is, are you a media hound? Are you about yourself? Or are you really about building your company? And when you stop to think about some of the best companies that have been built in the last 10 years have actually not been aggressive promoters in media. And there's a line between doing it and doing it well. And then, you know, I've looked at entrepreneurs where they're on all the TED Talks and they get on all the television stations and they're actually not focused on building their company. And I think there's a very fine line where we as entrepreneurs can justify a media strategy as building the company when it may actually be more about your ego or more about just being out there. And you have to be very cautious about the line between wanting to self promote for a purpose and taking your eye off the fundamental structures of what you're doing as a business. I'd love to just comment on that really quickly. I agree. I would say that, you know, don't do media for media's sake. Be strategic. Identify media that is actually going to support you in building your business. You know, you have to be... For the business purpose, not for personal. Exactly. Because noise for the sake of noise is pointless. And people notice it. Let's move now to questions from the audience. Question from Shaquille in Pakistan for everyone in the panel. Would recommend one of you taking a question. Is sales an art or science? This is an easy one. It's both. It's both. There are some great, you know, sales guys that are just, you know, they're artists with it. But at the same time, I think technology such as CRM technologies, customer relationship management, et cetera, have diced it up to a certain level where it can also become a scientific, you know, kind of approach to sales. But at the end of the day, if the person who's buying from you doesn't like you, you could have the best CRM system out there. He's just not going to buy from you. So it's both an art, in my opinion, it's both an art and a science. I would say it has to be both as well. It has to be both. Okay, next question is for Landry from Arachmat in Pakistan. How do you use traditional and social media to advance your sales strategies if you want to elaborate on some of the earlier points? Focus on the business side, not on the personal. So, you know, social media is an interesting one because everyone kind of understands it's important. Not very many people know how to use it. Not very many people sort of contextualize it properly. What I would say is first of all, got to be very careful about what platform you use. That depends entirely on what sort of market segment you're in, what sort of business you're trying to build in our space. So, you know, we cover kind of, you know, very high level sort of business and policy and development issues. In our space, what you don't want to do is be on Facebook and you don't want to try to get through to us on Facebook, what you do want to use is Twitter. Now, when it comes to Twitter, I mean, here's just, here's literally just practical advice. First of all, follow people because people will provide you with so much insight and intel on what you need to do from a sales perspective, from a networking perspective, from a media perspective and so on and so forth. How do you choose who you follow? Well, that depends entirely on what you're trying to achieve. You have to be clear about your objectives. You have to be clear about what kind of people you need to meet those objectives. And then from there, you just start filtering. And, you know, that's a fairly straightforward exercise. It's nothing terribly complicated, but it does deliver an enormous amount of value. Now, the great thing about social media is that it allows you to communicate directly. But the key thing there is, you know, don't span people and be authentic in your message. You have to be authentic in your message. And if you aren't able to do that, then, you know, you'll get very low value out of using social media platforms. But if you're able to tell your story properly, you'll be surprised how effective it can be. That's great. Question from Chris from Mauritius, IRC. I've just launched an internet TV company in Mauritius and even did live streaming of two Indian Ocean conferences through Ustream. I feel that I'm on the cutting edge of my industry. How do you convince other companies to invest in new technologies like mine? Tell them you're from Mauritius. They can come for a visit. Oh, yeah. Just kidding. Look, I mean, the beauty of the age that we're in now is that technology allows us to do things that we could never do before and we can build things. The two-edged sword is there are lots of people coming up with great ideas. And investors have opportunities to compare things overall. And so I really don't think that the answer to that question is different than what most of our conversation has been today, which is if you have a compelling proposition, if you can build the right relationships, if you can prove that in the noise of ideation around, for example, in this case, things like streaming video, you're doing something that is unique, that is meeting a market need, then the success breeds success. But it actually, the answer to the question goes back to the essence of the first 30 minutes of this talk, which what does it mean to build a relationship, cultivate a great sales proposition? That's great. We have a question for Wissam from Peter in Nigeria. What's the best strategy to price the product? Do you think it's a good idea to give the product for free in the beginning? It's going to be... Thanks from Nigeria for this question. Well, it's not an easy question at all. It really depends on the product. And I'll go back to my Arabian ancestors from a very, very long time ago, which is basically they used to sell carpets, right? And we do that a lot in technology. So the way that it used to go is they would bring these caravans across the deserts. And then when they got to the market, they would want to be able to sell basically their carpets. Now, one of the strategies that they used to... They have these carpets and they need to have their caravans back. So there's a certain time period. So would they sell it at a high price or at a lower price? In their case, the interesting thing, which kind of taught a lot the technology industry in the modern age here, is they started at a high price and eventually lowered it so that they can just offload it. So there's a lot... This is one sample type of a pricing strategy. It really depends on a lot of other factors. Certain industries in the internet, for example, and I'm sure my colleagues would agree, started with a free offering and what they do is a freemium pricing strategy where they start with a free offering and they go into premium products that they sell for much. It really depends on the product. It depends on the versions or how you can version a product. It depends on a whole host of... But the question, I think, points very important and the entrepreneur behind it is smart in putting thought into pricing because that's really the main point. So whatever pricing strategy they end up choosing, I think the main point is that they do put thought in it and they do test it with some of their clients. Great. Question for Landry from the Modern College of Business and Science in Oman. How can you stay on top of industry trends and be the first to recognize one before everyone else catches on? Wow. Is that easier? Well, the first thing to say there is read, read, read. And don't assume you know. And then just meet as many people as you can, talk to as many people as you can, and just read. To stay on top is, with anything, you gotta stay on top of what's being discussed around whatever issue you're looking at. Immerse yourself in it, I would say, to some extent. And don't assume you know the answers because otherwise you might find that you're not on top of trends. You're kind of heading down a direction that you wanna go. And one other add-on to this is aside from research and reading, if you have a certain budget to allocate to go to one of the kind of congresses or exhibitions, et cetera that happen, it's a quick shortcut into realizing what others are doing because one of the common mistakes entrepreneurs who are naturally very optimistic in their inclination is for them to think that their idea is the first one and there's nobody else doing it. But there's always someone out there doing a variation thereof. And so it's very important for them to go, maybe if they can invest a little bit of money and go to one of these exhibitions within their region or global if they can afford it, is to go and see what's going on, talk to some of them, kind of carry a bag around and have certain conversations. I think that's a shortcut to staying on top if they can afford it. Maybe I didn't mention it because I'm experiencing a distinct sort of case of conferencing fatigue because I do a lot of Africa conferences, but conferences or exhibitions are great sort of treasure trove. It's a concentration of all the key people in the industry. If you go to the right sort of venue and platform, you can probably pick up a huge amount of insight about the short period of time. And networking. It goes back. There's a very simple question that it stuns me when I ask this of people who pitch me business, they don't have a great answer to it. It's almost a common sense question, but common sense is often uncommon. And that is, how does your idea make somebody's life better, easier, faster, cheaper, more beautiful, more efficient in the way that they're doing it now? From time to time, unbelievable things come that change behavior. They're literally a new behavior comes. But the fact is most of the great successful companies if you look at them at the end of the day could answer that question in a sentence. You may or may not know that you've got the right thing for a big thing in the future, but at least if you can answer that question with an affirmative and describe it, you're on the right side of history. That's great. Another question for Chris from Mr. Hunain from Modern College of Business and Science in Oman. How do you keep selling during economic slowdown? Yeah, this is a wonderful question because it puts all sorts of challenges upon you. It can psychologically to an entrepreneur make you wonder whether or not maybe your idea is bad. It puts a lot of your sellers in a buyer's in a perspective where they don't want to take risk or they have smaller budgets. And I think what you really have to do is to, as the old saying goes, tie yourself to the mass. If you believe that you have a great product and you believe you have a great service, if you believe you're solving a problem, you may have to lower your expectations of the speed of velocity of moving forward. You may have to be more compelling in your pricing. You may have to do lots of things at trade, but there is no difference in the truth of your product in a slowing market or a growing market. Your idea will sustain and you have to believe in it over time or not. And I've been through some of the worst recessions while running companies and I've had to cut sales force, not sales force, but I had to cut employees, I had to retrench, I had to stop and breathe and reposition, but I knew I had something for the long run. But that talks also about the importance of the relationships that you built with the customers because you support yourself through the hard times. And I mean, there are a lot of cases studies. Could not be more important what you're saying, right? I mean, studies will show you that people will, in the end, more often than not, buy who they like to buy from.  And this goes back to the essence of what everyone here has said at one point. If you think of yourself of service, if you think of yourself really as a partner, a co-author with the people who are buying your service are good, not only is that better for you under any circumstances, they tend to have your back when things get tough. That's great. The question for we some from Francis in Nigeria, what are the key strategies for getting the initial customer for your company? So I think we addressed that a little bit earlier. And I think one of the main things is to provide a value add to that customer. So if you're just coming in and providing what 10 others are doing, I think that might not come across as well as trying to understand the specific need and attend to it in ways that are better. And if you could provide certain metrics to back it up that they could do it quicker or cheaper or attract a wider audience, et cetera, that could help to a large degree. But I go back to a very point which is kind of like, see yourself as an entrepreneur as kind of like a tree. And then throughout your life as an entrepreneur, you're gonna be growing branches.  So whatever you've been doing in life so far, if for example you've been working within the healthcare industry, then you've probably established a certain amount of contacts and a certain understanding within your industry that you could start understanding the problems and how to solve them better. If you do, if you take that approach as an entrepreneur, I think the likelihood of your success are gonna be basically better and the customers that you're gonna get are gonna be easier, quicker, with a lower risk. If you kind of go really far away from where your trunk is, your comfort zone or your contacts, et cetera, it might not necessarily be a totally bad idea, but it's gonna make life a little bit more difficult for you and to be able to attract customers, going back to the customer issue and convince them that you are the person with the idea to help them solve this issue. And I'm not trying to say here that totally revolutionary ideas are not good or that should not be undertaken by the entrepreneurs. They should, but these are not the norm. So they need to understand that. That's great. Thank you, Wissam. Question for Landry from Munzur Moshe from Bangladesh. What sort of communication is more effective? Mass communication through media channels or partners in your network who are more influential for the specific target group that you focus on? In general, I'd say it's probably always gonna be both. I think the key thing to understand, it's not either or, it's all about your strategic objectives. You have to, you know, I think I would say you start there, you start with understanding exactly what you need to achieve. And from there, you can work back and figure out whether or not mass media is the way to go, whether or not specialized media is the way to go, whether or not your network is enough to amplify the message. So I wouldn't kind of start from the point of, hey, do I go to CNN or do I, you know, go here? No, not at all. Think, where do I need to get and what is the most effective route to what's getting there? So it's always the same thing, be strategic. I just want to add to that. I can't think of a great internet company in my space, a great internet company that got built on mass media, right? The mass media may have come, it may have helped along the line, but it hasn't done it. Whereas I can think of lots of companies that were in more targeted niches that knew it's niche and knew the media that was attracting those specific niches that really did, in fact, concretely, measurably move their dial. So that's not to say anything bad about CNN, it's lovely, you get on it, your parents may love you for it. But in terms of really moving the dial of your operation, I wouldn't need to be shown data to prove me wrong what I just said. And I would add to that the importance of storytelling. If you have a story to tell, you know, the journalists are gonna be interested with it. If you just have a product to sell, it's, you know, they're not gonna be as interested. So come up with a story that's passionate and that's compelling enough for these guys to wanna pitch it. And then you're gonna get free advertising, basically, from what, you know, from the mass media. And on that point, you know, and if people are sort of have doubts about their story, you know, you may not know it, but almost everyone has a compelling story to tell. You just really need to figure out how to articulate it. That's the key. Like, you know, don't think that, oh, who would be interested in this? Because you'd be surprised how many, you know, stories we look at that on the surface are completely uninteresting and might seem mundane and kind of boring, but it's all about how you tell them, right? There's an interesting story everywhere. So you really gotta work on that. And if you can do that, as long as you have a story to tell, there aren't many people who won't listen to you, to be honest. So story to tell, not product to sell. Let's not. I mean, I wanna add one thing about thinking creatively about where things are going. So there's a friend of mine that you all would know wrote a spectacular book about a year ago that was a very impactful book and still is. And this is a book, but it's still an illustrative thing. This guy got on all the top TV shows in America, all of them. And you can look at the data on Amazon, almost none of them really moved sales. And he actually did a slideshow that he put on one of the top social network sites that there is. And it just blew his doors down. It was 50 to one. And so it's just a good reminder that it's wonderful to tell your story. It's wonderful to get on media. It can have ramifications. But in this day and age, you can really measure results. And I think you need to be thinking about that as you fine tune what your media strategy is. Where you put your energy. Let's move to the next question for Chris from Michael from Malaysia asks, the big fish swallows the small fishes. How can small fishes stay above and beyond the challenges without being eaten up? And better still, how could they eat up the big fish? Yeah, so a couple of things. I mean, one, every big fish was a small fish at some point. So in a lot of respects, this is a psychological question. More often than not more, every time a big fish was a small fish. And secondly, every big fish that's been disrupted has been disrupted by a small fish. I think that sort of worrying about that kind of stuff. There are things in life that you can worry about that you have control of. And there are things in life that you can worry about that you don't. And I think what you need to worry about is having awesomeness in your product and getting it out into people's hands. That's great. Question for Wissam from Mokhtar Dembele from Burkina Faso. How do you build a distribution network outside of your country? Partners, it's a straightforward answer and it's worked throughout for the past decades, I guess, for a lot of companies, particularly in technology, but outside of technology. I think the Japanese and the Germans do it actually very, very well. The Americans do it as well. But the Japanese and Germans, through their distribution networks, have been able to sell trillions all over the world. I think establishing partners. And this is a key part of your selling strategy is come up with partners that if you have a good enough product or service, it's easier on a product than on a service level. They will put their time, their effort, their networks. It's a very inexpensive, low risk manner to get into new markets with partners that are already established there. So I think it's a great question. And I think establishing these kinds of partner, either strategic alliances or partner agreements and reseller agreements, I think is key for any small company trying to grow outside of its region. Thank you very much. A question for Landry from Gabriel Wald from Venezuela. How do you create trust in social networks if no one knows you? I'm assuming social networks here are the digital kind of social network. It's a great question. And it's a really important question because a lot of people get very excited about social media and social networks and they make a lot of very basic mistakes. One thing I would say is the key thing with any social network, any channel of communication media is you have to be authentic. Your message has to be authentic. Your voice has to be authentic. And that's trickier to get right than a lot of people think. So you can't, you know, it's sort of like, you know, if you're applying for jobs, don't just send CVs to a thousand different companies, right? Target opportunities you really want to engage with. Develop an authentic voice, that's a key message. Also, you know, be careful about which networks you choose. Make sure that you're choosing a network that's actually relevant to the kind of audience that you want to address, the kind of community that you want to address. But, you know, sort of have good content, have relevant content, have an authentic voice. Have something to say, you know? Don't just put content out there that's flat because no one will engage with it. Have something to say and make sure it's credible. Make sure it's authentic. And, you know, and be patient, I think as well. Be patient.  And a lot of people sort of go on to Twitter or Facebook and they're like, okay, so where are my thousands of followers? It doesn't work that way. It's a marathon. You have to build it. You have to treat it in a very strategic way. You have to be really strategic about it and build that authentic voice and identity, I think. Thank you, Lanre. Our last question for Chris, our viewing group at the embassy in Colombo asked, at what point do you pivot if your sales strategy is not working? So when you, if your sales strategy is not working, you have to ask yourself why it's not working first and foremost. It could be your sales strategy. It could be the sales. I mean, the real hard question for all of us entrepreneurs to really understand is whether your idea is something that's not working. And at the end of the day, the only way I think to really do that is to, you have to be painfully, brutally honest with yourself. You have to surround yourself with a team and a board and advisors who are painfully, brutally with you. You have to look at the data very carefully to see about what's working and not working and why. And then there's no substitute to talking to your customers. And at that point, then you have to ask yourselves almost like a restart, like a start up again. What is it that we have that we can leverage is the thing not a good idea at all or can we, as you say, pivot it to a better outcome? And that's a hugely strategic issue and not merely a sales issue. That's great, please. Can I ask you something? Yeah, and it's sort of going back to the last point. The reason I think an authentic voice is so important is that social networks, people following you is a voluntary thing. It's not like conventional advertising where people don't have a choice, they don't have a say in the matter. People can choose to follow you, they can choose to unfollow you. So that's where you have to be really careful about being authentic in what you do. And another thing and just a final point for me is that digital media, social media, anything digital is never gonna replace the real world. And it should never lean too heavily on technology and lean too heavily on social networks. I see this in the media business at times where people think, hey, as long as we're on Twitter, all our problems will be resolved, doesn't work that way. You have to contextualize it, it's a tool. It's a new tool we have in the toolkit now. You need to understand how to really use it. That's great. I would add one last point to this is I think the question, in a way, points to a certain comfort zone that entrepreneurs should not fall into. In other words, they should not pivot only when the strategy goes wrong. They should constantly be pivoting, whether the strategy is going wrong or not. Not so much to change what works. No, I mean, what works keep it going, but always be on the lookout because others are. So you're always gonna face competition. If you're doing something right, they're gonna run to you.  So in a way, you have to always be pivoting. So always be on the lookout, not too much paranoia, but have a certain healthy kind of degree of paranoia as an entrepreneur, and hopefully you'll be successful. Thank you all. We have time for two, one or two short questions. For we, Sam Danica Pereira from Sri Lanka, will not having an ideal minimal viable product affect the first impression of clients and users if we release it at the early stage and it is not ideal? Yes and no. You don't wanna launch something that all of a sudden is perceived as bad quality, but I think the Japanese proved a better model than the Americans in the automobile industry. And it was an American actually that made them do that funny enough. And they basically, their philosophy is not to wait until they have something perfect to launch, but rather to have something good enough and then improve it. And I think the IT industry followed this lead, which is why you see so many, you know, betas and alphas and then you have release one and release two and all that kind of stuff. So, you know, from a product perspective, launch something that's good enough that is acceptable by the market, but work very hard on improving it constantly. That's a better approach than launching something you think is perfect, which is probably not gonna be perfect anyway. Never, never gonna be perfect anyway. So launch something good enough and improve it constantly. That's the best approach. They're two things I look at when someone pitches me. Now talking from a investor, which is what the question was. First and foremost is the person. I mean, this shocks people, but when they pitch me the other deck, they're ready to go. I ask them to put the deck aside and we spend concerted time understanding your story, your tenacity, your hunger, why you are where you are, why you're thinking about what you are, why your team is what you are, what you've learned from past mistakes. Because at the end of the day, that to me is the most central issue of all. Then we can talk about your product and I may make a determination that the product is right or wrong, but the fact that you can set my expectations of where the product is, what you think is missing, what your product vision is on a going forward basis, all that to me in these early days, as they point out, it's going to look different in a year in any event. In those early days, those two factors, expectation setting and who you are as an entrepreneur are the two major gating factors for me to have any serious engagement thereafter. That's great. And also their ability to execute, most likely, that's why you are looking at the first part. It's not just an idea. So that's two of them together. Absolutely. The last question for Landry, how does one build a relationship with the journalists? Your top three key advices. One is research them and tailor your approach. So actually approach them with something that they're going to be interested in. Secondly, listen to journalists is really important. This is something I would say to people. A lot of people come to me with story ideas that don't quite work. And what I do in that situation is I explain to them why it doesn't work. And it's nothing personal. It's literally every media outlet has its sort of brief. It has its approach to how it covers content.  It just has to do with the fact that you haven't ticked certain boxes. So listen. What I find is that a lot of people don't listen because journalists will tell you exactly what they need in order for them to pick up on your story. And often I go through this cycle of telling people exactly. If you do X, Y, and Z, I will run your story. And people just don't listen. They just keep talking at you because they've convinced themselves the story is great. Then what they don't get is you've got to filter it if you want to get it through a media channel. And then the last thing is you have to work on it. It's not a quick win. You have to build relationships with journalists in the same way you build relationships with anybody. You have to make sure you stay in regular contact with them. You have to make sure that you give them a reason to stay in touch with you and so on and so forth. So be patient. And don't be shy and don't take it personal. That's really key. Don't take it personal because it never is personal. Just by default.  The journals could be wrong. Your story could be quote, unquote right. But it doesn't matter. The journalist is the final arbiter of that story. The decision-making of buying the story or not. Yeah, you can debate it or you can argue or you can smooth it. But if she or he articulates their need, just forget it. Give them a need or don't. And then move on. But he's dead right. I mean, there's no question. That's great. I'm afraid we are out of time. Thank you so much to all three of you, Chris, Lanrey, and Wissam for the special program today. A special thanks also to the hosts around the globe for mobilizing their entrepreneurial communities. We can continue to help each other in our local entrepreneurship communities by staying involved with the GIST Initiative. To find out more about how to get involved with GIST, please visit the GIST website, GISTinitiative.org, or click one of the links inside of the chat window. A little bit about GIST. We build the capacity and strengthened entrepreneurial ecosystems around Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, and Turkey. The initiative, which is led by the US State Department and CRDF Global, identify and supports the most promising young entrepreneurs through skills, development, networking, and financial advice. The GIST activities includes the Tech Chi competition in conjunction with the Global Entrepreneurship Summit, as well as the Tech Connects. And we have today one of them, which are interactive webcasts like these that bring together the great entrepreneurial minds, and also on the ground startup boot camps that provide in-depth training and mentorship. The next one we will be organizing will be in Jordan, 16 to 18 of December. We connected 2.5 million people around the world with our entrepreneurial resources through the State Department social media platforms, as well as trained directly 3,500 startups. And we just celebrated the landmark 200,000 members on Facebook and the global entrepreneurial community. Thank you. So members of our GIST community are very eager to take on new challenges and joys of translating their innovative ideas into new companies that generate new jobs and prosperity at the local level. To close, I would emphasize again how important it is to sell a network for your venture. In the end is the ideas that translate into action, and values and ventures are those that matter. History is full of successful entrepreneurs that have tried, failed, and tried again. And it's not easy. It's critical to find the right people to help you, the journalists, the investors, the founders, the customers. But they are out there. These connections won't happen overnight. We at GIST know that you, our entrepreneurs, can do it. And it's all about making the most of your opportunity. And that's what we hope to provide, the tools to make your dreams come true. We hope that you can join us for our upcoming next Tech Connect in the end of January, 2014, on crowdfunding your venture. And stay informed about this and other GIST programs by signing up for our newsletter using the link on your screen or joining our Facebook community. Until then, take care and keep in touch. And thank you, everyone, again. Thank you. This program has been brought to you by Kinex.


That shrimp paste was the strongest shrimp paste I've ever had in my life. Yes. Haha! Yo, what's going on everybody? Thank you so much for clicking on that video. Real quick, I want to give a shout out to our sponsor, Hymns. They are providing solutions for a lot of the male issues in life, hair, skin, other things. But anyways, more on that later. Enjoy this video. Yo, what's going on everybody? Fung Bros here. We're here with Richie and we are in the hometown of Kent, Washington, inside of Lambs Bistro. In this video, we are about to show you guys what's beyond, beyond fun. We're going to show you guys even some more dishes that you guys may have not heard before. Hey, it makes sense because the Asian-American community gets more and more advanced every year, so you start to see more and more advanced dishes every year. Let's go. You guys can't smell it right now, but this is a very punch-it table right now with a pineapple shrimp paste. This is crazy. Round one. The beef stew. Oh, that tastes really western. Oh, really? Yeah. The tomato base right now. Okay, you guys are somewhat pretty familiar with Vietnamese food. I would say for a non-Viet and a person who doesn't speak Viet, I'm pretty familiar. And even these dishes I've never had before. I think you went with the triple pork belly. Oh, yeah. Triple pork belly. All right, guys. That is pungent. That sauce right there. I hate to compare it to stinky tofu, but it does have some elements of that. It is fermented shrimp paste sauce, so I got the piece of pineapple in there, hopefully it'll offset it. But the things you guys wrap it with. No. All right, hold on. You see it. You see it. I'm going to swish this around. I can take some funk. It's good, but it's funky. It threw me off a little bit. That shrimp paste was the strongest shrimp paste I've ever had. I might just take a spoonful. I'm not going to. That's okay. You're doing it. You're doing it. Wow. You've got to isolate the element. Of course, you said you were going to do it. I did. You said it. You said it. You said it. I said it, and I kind of like took it back. No take-backs on the take-backs? No take-backs on the take-backs. Yo, he ate that like some soft serve. Yo, I just noticed that Andrew started shaking. That's why you have the pineapple to offset it. That's why you have the fresh greens. Everything kind of blends together and is a balance. The sourness of the pineapple really did help, actually. I'm not going to pour this sauce all over the clam noodles, but let's serve up the clam noodles first. Taste it without the sauce and see what we want to do with it. All right, who's first? David? Please. I got you.  I never even had banana flour, so I don't even know what that is. Richie, have you ever had this in Vietnam? Never. The clam noodles. Never. I feel like you've got to search for this. Like I've been to the, you know, traditional weddings at the house and whatnot. I've been to the street food. You don't see this. I just tried the clams. It's pretty subtle. It has some nice flavor to it. It has a lemongrass taste to it. We've got the mango and onion. We've got the lemongrass clam. I thought the lemongrass clam was the flavor I've never had before. It's like stir-fried or grilled lemongrass clams. Put a little bit of the house special sauce in here. That house special sauce completely changed the complexion of the clam vermicelli dish. First time clam vermicelli. Mmm. Yeah. You know what? I could totally see taking people to come get that vermicelli clam dish. It is different. It is different. It was just people who were like, oh, I haven't had like, I've had this and this, but not all together. And it does have some elements that you are kind of familiar with. You have your traditional noodles. You have some, you know, like fresh greens in there. The clams, those are flavored in a way that you might not expect, but I'll say it was a nice surprise with the lemongrass and everything. Woo! All right. That's it for round one. Definitely tried some stuff that I had not had before, but round two is coming up and we got some very, very interesting rolls. Yeah. Spring rolls. All right, you guys, these are appetizers that I've never had before, especially this one. What are we looking at? Man, we're looking at like a, you've got a wonton shell right here with the outside and then you have like, I think that's pork and then inside of that is a quail egg. This is a quail egg. That is a quail egg right there. It looks like, almost like a, like a little eyeball. Yeah. When would you eat this? I've actually never had this. You've never had this. I've never had this dish. I've never had this dish. It tastes a lot like chicken eggs, except the yolk actually makes up more of a bigger portion of the egg. And I would say the yolk is a little bit creamier, maybe? Yeah? No? Both of you guys are big fans of quail eggs. I like quail eggs. I like quail eggs. I'm dipping it. So what do we have here? Like a, okay. This is almost like, this is almost like that. This is like the Vietnamese crab rengoo. All right, man. Yo, when I bit into that quail egg, actually it oozed all the yolk, the creamy yolk that you were saying into the bag. Yeah. This is a lot of textures going on. Yeah. Crispy shell. Pepper in here. Pepper. Me and me. Yo, you guys, we have two types of fresh rolls I've never seen before. Yeah. For the people that are ordering at home, I know sometimes there's some miscommunication between what's an egg roll and a spring roll. So you've got the spring roll right here. This is non-fried rice paper, and then you've got an egg roll, and that egg roll rice paper actually has egg mixed into the roll as well, and that's deep fried. So it's a little bit fresher. A lot of people like this as an alternative. They have this at a ton of vegan spots and whatnot, but- This is a lot healthier. A lot healthier, obviously. Yeah. This fresh roll has mango in it. It has mango in it. This has coconut shreds right here. This is crazy. And the thing with spring rolls is you can eat this with fish sauce or a peanut dipping sauce right here, but with egg rolls, not a lot of people eat that with the peanut dipping sauce. I like the coconut one. It has the fresh jicama, it has the fried tofu, and it's got shredded coconut. I just haven't had coconut meat rolled up in a spring roll before. Nah. Can I have some cup of it? I like it. You like it? I like it. That was my favorite thing I had so far. The coconut one? Yeah. Okay. I like the fried fritter with the shrimp pot in it, because it looked like the shrimp was jumping. Richie, tell us about this one, because if you're not via it, you may not have had that fritter. Yeah. I don't know too much about it. I just know my mom makes it during special occasions. They put the shrimp, they deep fry it, just floats, and then you put it on the plate. Those are not french fries. These are sweet potato fries with batter, and then you're going to wrap it in this lettuce and then dip it in. Richie just made a sandwich roll, y'all. It's huge. It's huge. I'm going to go ahead and first, man. Oh. Hey, that's the more modernized version. It's our flavor. Can I just dip it in regular? Without the lettuce. Dip the head in first, like this. Eat everything. I would say this dish right here kind of embodies what a lot of Vietnamese dishes have. You've got the fresh element, obviously, with the lettuce. You have the saltiness from the fish sauce, but then you have the deep fried inside right here. That is something, that combination right there, you're going to see pretty commonly done. Almost the most, maybe out of any culture. That's a deadly combination that has made the food baby, baby, baby. A lot of people, I think, that are used to eating Vietnamese food growing up, especially the parents and whatnot. They have this term called nyang, which means kind of like it's only hitting on one cylinder. You know what I mean?   It's creamy noodles with creamy sauce. Yes, exactly. So nyang is the term that I'm talking about. Vietnamese food, definitely not that. Hey, Rich. Yo. That went a perfect transition into fried shrimp chip paired with shrimp salad. A lot of people like eating this while they're drinking, they call it nyang. Well, you mean drink it food. Drink it food. Yeah. Oh, you put it on the chip. Are we treating it? Man, leave it up to David to put the whole branch on there. You know what I mean? I'm trying to achieve the freshness.  These chips even look different. That was really good. Yeah. That was really good. Yeah. I'm not going to lie. I was skeptical. It was good. It was really good. Snail pork pops. Yo, this is actually one of my favorite things to do is eat the native food with people who haven't had it before. And I would say that this is a common theme on our channel because I don't know if you guys know it. Sometimes it's kind of unfair because the internet kind of judges us on this like super authentic scale. Yeah. But being raised in America, you don't eat as much of your motherland food as somebody who was born and raised there. Oh, for sure. Yeah.  I had a lot. Okay. But I didn't have that. Oh, man.  Very critical. But it is what it is. You know, you just got to enjoy it. No, it's fair. You know what? I take it. It's fair, but we did not have access to this growing up. I do not think there was a restaurant that was serving this dish until maybe Lambs Bistro in our area. Yeah. Yo, we got to give a shout out to Gabe Tran behind the camera because he just came back from Vietnam for two months. All right. I'll try this. Bye. Gucci man Gabe. Snail. That looks tender. That looks juicy. It just tastes like meat. What? Wait, let me. What? Maybe I didn't get enough. He said it tastes like meat. You got a lot of pepper in here. That's for sure. There are definitely some bits of snail, but I don't think it's that strong. Yo, these smell like dessert right now. Smell one of these sticks right now. Tell me that one. Does it smell like French toast? Yeah, like a French toast stick with maple syrup on top. Yeah, it does. I'll try that after this. I'm going to go in on this nook mom wing. This almost tastes like buttery popcorn. These are very heavily glazed wings. They are. They are. This to me almost tastes like kettle corn tofu. I haven't had a good nook mom wing in a while. That's really good. All right. That was the end of round three. Do not worry guys. All that food is getting packed up. Woo. It's going to somebody. We're not wasting it. It always does, always does. Between the three rounds that we had today, I definitely ate a lot of things I have never had before. My personal favorite, it was the coconut tofu spring roll. Oh, okay. That was good. That was good. I already thought spring rolls were fresh. Mm-hmm. That was one more. Okay, I see, man. You had never eaten coconut with tofu before, right? No. Especially fried tofu. For myself, my favorite had to have been the quail egg with the pork and the wanton. That was interesting, man. I feel like it all came together, especially with the chili sauce and everything. Had a nice crunch to it. Anytime you add pork to something, it's going to add a nice moisture to the dish. My favorite was actually the clam vermicelli. Oh, okay. You know, each little clam packed a lot of flavor. You could tell by almost how dark and how deep the flavor had embedded itself into the clam itself. For me, my biggest takeaway, I think it's just so dope to see, you know, when we were growing up in Kent, Kent wasn't necessarily known as the most diverse place 20 years ago. Me and Andrew just did an interview with NPR recently that said that Kent is the most diverse city in King County. I believe it. I believe it. Mm-hmm. One road, all you got to go down it, and you'll see a bunch of different types of cuisine. For myself, man, more of a personal standpoint. If you see something on the menu that catches your eye that you've never had, I would suggest trying it out because it's going to add an experience to your meal. It's something that you're going to remember, you know what I mean? There's actually really, really good food in your neighborhood sometimes, you know? And I know what I'm saying. Not every neighborhood has this diversity of food, but man, definitely look out for things. Keep your eyes open. Stay open-minded. You don't know what you'll find. For me, now when I go to Vietnam and I have the clam vermicelli, it's going to be a whole different experience. Yeah, definitely. Because I'll be like, man, I had that a long time ago. I'm going to recall to the video. So, I think those are the little moments that you don't really necessarily think about. They are like, man, I cherish that. Aren't you guys? Thank you so much for watching that episode of Beyond Beyond Fuh, featuring our special guest, Richie Lee. Man. Thanks for having me. Man, this was good. I'm full. Definitely. In the comments below, let us know what other Beyond Beyond episodes we should do of other cuisine. Yo, all right, everybody. Thanks for watching that video. And again, shout out to Hymns for sponsoring this video and sending us this kit. So as you guys know, we've been doing YouTube for years now. And to be honest, we probably look a little bit different than when we first started. These are hard conversations that a lot of people don't want to have. And you don't even have to go into the doctor to have them anymore. They will give you real doctor recommendations through the website for prescription and non-prescription remedies. And all this stuff that can help you is a lot more accessible now. Welcome to 2018. Personally, I've been using the shampoo lately, and it's supposed to reduce the hormone DHT, which causes hair loss. Basically, it prevents hair loss, feels good so far. So if you guys are interested in a one-month trial of the comprehensive hair kit, it's only going to cost you $5 right now. If you click on the link below, it also contains prescription and non-prescription elements. So for $5 for hymns.com slash fung bros, check it out. Thank you for watching that message. And until next time, I'm out. Peace.


Everybody forced here ripping a box of the 2022 top scrum F1 sapphire for Rids yes here. We go Ridsy That's the luck Yeah, Vaughn. I think we all I think we're all kind of getting there and it's gonna get even more confusing now that 2023 stuff is starting to come out as well. I'll be honest. I'm ready for some for some more soccer products Got Pierre Gasly Is a Yuma Iwasu They're stopping and Joe rookie Marcus Armstrong Take a pack doesn't a color parallel. It's an aqua Oscar Piaz three F2 award winners 79 and 99 Andrea Seidel and Valtteri Boutas Pierre Gasly Lando Norris Max Verstappen and Max Verstappen That's the image variation right there. Nice Max Verstappen is the image variation good stuff Yeah, Vaughn. Thankfully prison real leagues finally coming out Sergio Perez Got a chartreuse Sebastian Vetzal Grand Prix driver of the day Azerbaijan to 199 Revolutions all right, I guess 95-199 for soccer. I love revolution basketball for soccer. It's all right Alexander Albon Sebastian Vetzal Yeah, yeah George Russell Lando Norris Mick Schumacher and Sergio Perez those image variations to that's a variation And that one of those other ones is variation to a lot of variations here. Yeah, it was Sergio is Toast a gold Nicholas Latifi Good box here 26 of 50 on the Latifi good box for the variations for sure Marino Sato and Charles Lecler. Do they give an odds on variations? You seem fairly common. I believe maybe I'm wrong It's weird every year with Sapphire F1 George Russell Lewis Hamilton portrait for sure and signs This is only like the second box. I ripped it. I don't ever get to break this stuff Sebastian Vetzal Valtteri Bultas on the black and white 14 of 15 That's awesome There we go awesome Bultas Max Verstappen and Pierre Gasly Thanks again, Redsie. We will get these out to you. Congrats on the pretty solid box there