This is Think Tech Hawai'i. Community matters here. Aloha y bienvenido to Hispanic Hawai'i and Richard Concepcion. Today's guest is Mr. Dante Toner. He is a professional bodybuilder with the International Federation of Bodybuilding Association. Also, he's a personal coach and a professional actor who works in many films, movie, television show and commercial right here within our community. He's right here in the studio and I want to say welcome to Hispanic Hawai'i and want to say thank you so much for taking time out of your busy, you know, sketches to come in and talk to the Latin community to Hispanic Hawai'i. Such a pleasure, Richard. Thanks so much for having me. All right, let's start it, but tell me a little bit about yourself. You was in the Navy. You retired. Tell me about what you used to do when you was in the Navy and what you do now right here in Hawai'i. Great. Well, first and foremost, I've been in the Navy for about... I spent 20 years in the Navy. Wow, that's a long time. Actually, it went by really fast. I'm from Kansas City, Missouri, moved to Lawrence, Kansas, grew up there, started my college career at KU. I ran track for a little while there and then I joined the Navy. Started there and I tell you what, joining the Navy was a great opportunity for me. It opened up so many doors. Educationally, I was able to delve into fields that I probably wouldn't have had the opportunity to. I spent 10 years in the medical field. Nice. And then later on, I became a commission officer and that sort of got me into the business realm of the military. So it was really great. Love the people. If you ever... This is sort of like a military town, but if you've ever been around a military a lot, like you have, you'll notice that it's a cross-section of the United States and excellent people, the culture. You learn from so many people from all walks of life. And we hold the branches right here in Hawaii. Exactly. We depend on one another, right? We do. But let me ask you, why do you retire here in Hawaii? Well, the military brought me here. This is one of my dream stations that I wanted to come to. That was my dream. I probably got it. And my family loved it. We got here. We fell in love with the weather, but we stayed because of the people quite frankly. We moved downtown and our neighbors are the best neighbors on the planet. And just the people in general, the spirit of Aloha is for real. It's alive. It's alive. And it trends in throughout the communities, through the industries, even the workforce. Some organizations actually utilize the spirit of Aloha as their customer service foundation. It's so effective, you know.  But it actually goes into business to where they utilize that culture that is instilled in the people. That's awesome. You see how big this is. So you like Hawaii. I like Hawaii. All right. Let's talk about you as a bodybuilder, professional and also about personal trainer. So why you got into bodybuilding? Well, I originally went into bodybuilding because when I retired from the military, I figured that I wanted to gravitate towards a career that engulfed my passions. And fitness was at the top of that list. So I went to bodybuilding because quite frankly, I couldn't figure out how to make money in fitness. And I knew bodybuilding was one of those sports that yielded a lot of attention. It attracted a lot of attention. And I wanted to prove that I can do something. You know, if I'm going into personal training, a lot of people that will be looking for personal trainers are looking to kind of change their physical appearance. And I was thinking to myself, I was like, hey, if I can do the things correctly and do them right and change my own physical appearance, tap into something that I love anyway, fitness, and if I can show people I can do it for myself, maybe that'll give me credibility. And I just kind of started. Did a competition locally, and I received some success in that. And then I just said, you know why not? Let's try it for the next level. And they have shows that are pro-qualifiers. So here in Hawaii, they have national qualifiers. So if you do well, you get like top three or something that will make you nationally qualified. And the national qualifiers can go to a pro-qualifier. And if you do well at that, now you're talking about international. You compete internationally against people from Mexico, from I went to the one where I was competing all the Americans. So South America, everywhere, you're competing in one location. And I won. That's secure, right? All the stars aligned. And I won that competition, and that gave me the qualification as a professional athlete. So that sparked a new career. It sparked a whole new career. And I'll tell you what, it's just been on fire since then. Well, I'll pose, you know, that we were going to do this interview today. And many viewers have different questions for you. Here's one.  Like me? I still got baby fat. So how does people can work hard to lose some of the fat around the ways? Is there how to do with food or the way they train? Well, I will say there's a lot of ways to reduce your body fat. And some people think that you can target fat, but targeting fat areas to burn specifically, it just doesn't work like that. But what people can do is they can, first and foremost, start moving because fat is an energy source. Fat is your stored energy. That's all it is. So if you can tap into that energy source and start utilizing your body's accumulated energy, that's going to allow you to reduce the body fat. Those fat cells start to shrink. So you're going to have to put yourself in a deficit somehow, right? Wow. So you can either consume less calories or you can increase your energy output by moving your body. And I suggest to a lot of my clients, let's burn a candle on both ends. Less consume less calories. And that doesn't mean eat less food. Maybe that's my problem. You find that you're eating more food because a lot of, I don't like to take things away from people because that, you know, people are like, no, no, no, no, no. Don't take from me. Just give. So I like to say, okay, let me include more plant-based products into your diet. And naturally you're going to eat less of the things that's causing the huge caloric intakes.  So I'm talking about, plant-based, I'm talking about things like even potatoes. Of course, the leafy vegetables and things like that bring those in. And then you're going to eat less of all the processed foods that we just love. I like malasada. I like malasada. But you know, eat too many, right? Eat too many. But certainly the fat will leave as it came on. So if you start noticing it in certain areas of your body, it'll probably leave those areas first. And unfortunately, our abdominal area and our glutes area, are the areas that will leave less. Okay. I thought it was baby fat still. It is. So I got another question for the viewer. He wants to know what is the best exercise to burn fat? Oh, wow. That's a smart viewer, man. That's a pretty good question. He owes me. She owes me. No, I'm just playing. The best exercise to do are the ones that you like to do most. Really? Really. Because that's going to cause you to do them.  So for instance, walking. I'm a big proponent of walking. Walking is going to put you in an aerobic capacity to where you're still going to be breathing normally.  Okay. I want to put you in an aerobic or a lack of oxygen state.  So walking is one of them. If you can walk, if that's too easy, start to jog. Okay. Or biking on a treadmill or a real bike or even swimming.  Although, I love my weights. Okay. So therefore, the people out there that are listening, lifting weights, resistance training, that's great because if you do that, you're going to increase your lean muscle mass. And the more lean muscle you have, the more calories you burn while you're moving your body. Okay. So you're a personal trainer as well, right? Yep. So you're still training just adults? Or do you go to youth or children? That's a great question. I started my career training adults because they got the money. I started training adults because as a personal trainer, that's how the curriculum is set up for adults unless you specifically learn more about children, but it's usually the adults first. That's how you get certified. So I started training adults and I loved it. I trained adults since 2012 all the way up to about a year ago or recently because I was owning. So when I was training on base, in military base, I trained at the Crock Center. I trained at the, I own Hawaii Fitness Center. So I had my own fitness studio where I was training people and that was predominantly adults. I've switched my focus. My children are getting older. Oh, wow. They're in high school now and I wanted to figure out a way that I can be a part of that process a little bit more because they're always at school. They're not at school. They're with their friends.  You're part of the first part.  So I was able to get the proper certifications. I'm a sports and conditioning coach now. So now I train student athletes and that's a passion within itself and that's been my focus lately. Wow. That's a bless. Now, I want to talk about something. They call it Blue Zone Project. The Blue Zone. Yeah. Please explain to me about what the Blue Zone Project is all about. The Blue Zone Project is an awesome, awesome thing. It'll take me a while to go into the whole process and I don't really know about the whole process because in fact, I just got hired today. What a bless. Yeah. Long interview process, but it's well worth the wait. But the Blue Zone Projects basically, Blue Zones was created by, we had a very, very enthusiastic pioneer go all over the world and kind of figure out how are people living the longest and he found five areas in the world that they call the Blue Zones. And Hope will probably, they can Google Blue Zones and pull up a picture or map. And see the map with different locations. Blue Zones, certainly. And we took, and the Blue Zones founder, they took characteristics from each of those areas and said, hey, if we can utilize these areas because the Danish twin studies, they prove that the longevity is only 10% of the answer. It's the other 90% that we're dealing with. So that includes what we do, our environment, our lifestyles, right? So we took those nine traits and the Blue Zones basically implements those into communities to make healthier choices easier. And when I heard about that, about a year ago, I have a good friend that told me about that concept in this program. I was like, I have to be a part of that. And I've been trying ever since, man. And today, today I'm going to join the team. I saw the part that, you know, drink wine, right? I was drinking wine. So I think I'm going to add a few more years into my life. Okay. Good. Wonderful. Wonderful. So the Blue Project is implemented by individual or by companies? Actually, the Blue Zones Project, I don't know anymore. I just got on board and there's a lot of training that I have to go through. So I don't know everything, how we do it and how we implement it. I'll learn that pretty soon. But I do know it's the three P's. It's the people, places and policies. So you engage with the people of the communities and then you go to the places, the places where they worship, the places where they work, and things like that. And the policies are, policies are governmental policies or, you know, for instance, how does a city function? We have roads. We have parks. We have things like that. And we have policies. Just recently, here in Hawaii, we passed a no smoking in vehicles laws. True. Which is pretty cool. You know, it looks out for the cakey. Cakey your kids, for the people that are in the Midwest. They know you don't want to, right? Yeah. We call our children here our cakey. And it says that you can't smoke a cigarette while you have children in cars. And that's part of what the Blue Zone Initiative is kind of all about just making healthier choices easier for people to do so that we can live a lot longer, happier. Wow. That's a lot. But yeah, I was looking at the different, there are nine different area principles that you can utilize. So I'm going to be looking into detail and hopefully I can add a few more years into my life. I think with the wine I'm doing all right. Hey, Richard, we're friends and I'm going to hook you up. Okay. As I learn more. Coach me. I got you. I got you. All right. Okay, we're going to take a quick break and we're going to return after this commercial. This is think tech Hawaii raising public awareness. I'm good. I'm good. I'm good. But I have a story and I don't know where to start. I feel alone in a crowd. I can't sleep. I feel overwhelmed. I don't even know who I am anymore. I still have nightmares. I can't live like this anymore. I'm really not so good. Are you ready to listen? Listen here folks. You're a host on where the drone leads our weekly show at noon on Thursdays here on think tech. We talk about drones, anything to do about drones, drones, remotely piloted aircraft, unmanned aircraft, whatever you want to call them, emerging into Hawaii's economy, educational framework and our public life. We talk about things associated with the use, the misuse, technology, engineering, legislation with local experts as well as people from across the country. Please join us noon on Thursdays and catch the latest on what's taking place in the world of drones that might affect you. Welcome back to Hispanic Hawaii. I'm here with my good friend, Dante Tanner. He is a professional bodybuilder and a personal training and a professional actor. All right. Let's talk about acting. Awesome. Who inspired you to become an actor? Wow. Man, I have so many inspirational figures out there. Out the top of my head, you know, people like Denzel Washington, people like Eddie Murphy, people like Kevin Costner. People like Robin Williams. There's so many different actors and actresses that inspire me to just like, wow, if I can put it down like that, I'm doing something. But so many different actors. The list to go on, I can't really put one in front of the other because there's so, so many. Well, you're doing well. I'm inspired. Yeah, you work in many different films and television show and commercial. So you was able to land a job in Hawaii file. Talk to me about that. Wow. Richard, you're an actor yourself. So you know, it's not easy, but you know, I'm finding that persistence, hard work, and being focused and having that drive and not just being interested in acting, but having being committed to it. That means that when obstacles come up, you're going to try to just push straight through them. And I think what got me lucky with landing the job in Hawaii 5.0 was just persistence and feeling a lot. When I say lucky, I'm talking about laboring under correct knowledge. Robert Kiyosaki from Hawaii said that. Correct. And he's right, laboring under correct knowledge, and you only get that knowledge through action and actually acting and just putting yourself out there and just getting turned down a lot. I auditioned for Hawaii 5.0 a lot. They called me down. I did my best. I didn't get to call that. And finally, I was on a set of Jurassic World, and I was performing there, and my agent called me up, and my agent was like, hey, congratulations, great job, Dante. I was like, oh, thank you, but we haven't rapped yet. We're still going. And it's like, no. Hawaii 5.0 called us and said that you got the part. And I auditioned like a month ago. I felt like a month ago because of the holidays and all that stuff. And they picked me. And the takeaway for me trying to figure out why did I get it this time was I was better. When I practiced, I took out my iPhone. So I got all the script and everything. I kind of read the other person's part in there and kind of read both of them. And then eventually, I took out my part to where I had to save my part on my own at the memorizing. And which I got so good at doing just that I was able to not just reiterate or just regurgitate it. I was able to put filling into it. I was able to be that guard number one. And not only that, kind of like Will Smith. I don't know if you Will Smith's another actor. Yeah, it's another one. And the dude was so smart. And he learned everyone's lines. And going into this audition, I don't think I was trying to do that at the time. I wasn't that, you know, what we're thinking. But I ended up learning all the lines to the three different characters that was in my scene. I learned all the lines. I learned all the lines to where when I went into that audition, I wasn't as nervous as I was. I wasn't as nervous as I normally am. And we were only going to get away, no matter what. Right now, you're making me nervous now. We're only getting nervous. But I got in there. I was able to get my lines out with the appropriate emotion. And then she switched it up. She's like, OK, now do my part. I guess she kind of saw me lips and, you know, she was saying that. And then I said my part. Her part, and I was able to execute it just as good. And I think that gave me an edge. My putting in work, that focus and putting in work, I think that gave me an edge. Well, I tell you, we want to show that video. Really? Yes. So let's do that real quick. OK, cool, cool. Wow, that's a great performance. Congratulations. Thank you so much.  That is wonderful. So I saw your picture in the newspaper and I read the whole article. So what is the feeling that you feel now? Like, well, I was on Wi-Fi. Oh, now I'm on the newspaper. And people get into know who you are. I tell you, I'm still on Cloud9. I still get butterflies thinking about it. I tell you what, I have a lot of goals with it. I still feel nervous about it a little bit. You know, we start thinking about things that are goals that seem so lofty. It's like, wow, man, I would never be on a silver screen and talking and actually portraying another character on an international setting. With goals like that, it gives you butterflies. But to also think back in hindsight, it's like, man, I was just on the Wi-Fi of 0. That's an international show. Why can't I put myself in a position like that? And the thing is, I just said it. When I say put myself in it, I get freaked out because I know I can do it. It takes other things. It takes positive affirmation. It takes a belief in God or whoever people believe in to be like, okay, you know, I can't really see a way, but I'm putting out the energy out there and team works make dreams work and things like that. So it's not just me. So I don't have to be that freaked out by it. You know what I'm saying? Don't be a cider, right? Being excited is good, but being fearful to where it impedes my steps because it does take me stepping towards it. It takes that hard work and the port of two to push forward. So yeah, I am nervous about it, but that's not stopping me from doing it because fear is a factor that can get into a lot of people's way. And I think that don't let fear stop you from performing or trying. So have you found anybody to say, hey, I want an autograph? I want a picture? No, no. Let me be the first one right here. I'll sign this if you can sign one. We do that. Oh, okay, bad. We'll teach you right here. My first autograph signing right here. It's the first autograph right here in Hispanic Hawaii. And the first request of questions. That's it, that's it. Thank you so much. Wonderful. Let me ask you a few more questions that we have from the viewers. Oh, cool, cool.  Is it really my dad now or is he just the performers in the house? I don't know. Try your second part now. My kids inspire me. Everything they do is just so... Man, have you ever followed me like on Facebook? Man, you don't know. My kids are amazing. I have four kids and I'm proud of each and every one of them. Two of them are still in the house. And they just inspire me to no end. And I'm trying to one-up them. My son thinks he can beat me running and he probably can. But I'm telling you, so I'm just trying to keep up with them and it's making me better. That is great. Well, I want to tell you thank you so much for coming to Hispanic Hawaii and speak to the Latin community. We love the Latin community. We continue working hard so you can give us more autograph, more pictures. I got you. Okay, perfect. Thank you so much. Well, I want to say thank you so much for being synchronized with Hispanic Hawaii and those who missed the show, you can go to thinktechhawaii.com and re-watch the show. And if you want to get in contact with me, reach Concept Gmail.com Gracias and Aloha.


I'm Mehdi Razavi, one of the electrophysiologists at Texas Heart Institute, Baylor College of Medicine. I've been tasked with the subject of rhythm versus rate, has the tie changed since Affirm. Specifically, I've been tasked with kind of going back and revisiting the data that's been accumulated since the seminal study in 2002 that was released in the Affirm investigation. This was an NIH-sponsored study that looked at rhythm control strategy versus rate control. And it was a seminal paper because it essentially, at the time it appeared, it settled the discussion in the argument with regards to management of atrial fibrillation. It found that rhythm control strategy offers no survival advantage over rate control. As a matter of fact, there's a lower risk of adverse drug effects with the rate control strategy. And the study also found that anticoagulation should be continued in this group of high-risk patients. And based on that, this data that you see right now, you could see that there's really no obvious difference in terms of outcomes with these patients. And if anything, there was a trend that the rhythm control patients had a slightly higher risk of mortality. Keep in mind, however, that the statement to the right of the screen, no survival advantage with DC cardioversion and antiarrhythmic drugs. And if you note, something else is missing there, and that's catheter-based ablation. Just as the study was coming out, catheter ablation was starting to get its feet under itself and taking its first steps. So, at that point, the conclusions of the firm trial, which were stated as follows. Management of atrial fibrillation with rhythm control strategy offers no survival advantage over the rate control strategy. There are potential advantages lower risk of adverse drug effects with the rate control strategy. Anticoagulation should be continued. This conclusion was essentially an edict that was followed for many years in clinical practice. However, it really is time to revisit the conclusions of this study. As I noted a second ago, the biggest limitation of this study, it's simply that it's not relevant these days. The vast majority of patients are undergoing catheter ablation for rhythm management and not pharmacologic use. And we are going to kind of dive into the details of some of these studies to make the point that catheter ablation should not be precluded based on the firm study. So, why go beyond the firm trial? Rate control is different than rhythm control for all patients. And rhythm control strategies are continually improving. We also can't lose sight of special populations, those with coronary disease, those with heart failure, and those with valvular heart disease. These patients often tend to have the greatest benefit from other types of interventions, and perhaps catheter ablation is the same. So we're going to review some of the more recent data. We're going to go in chronological order, and at the end we will try to tease out our conclusions based on more recent clinical studies. So, couple of things. First of all, the endpoint, as we said with a firm, was one of mortality, and quality of life was not something that was necessarily looked at. However, if a retrospective analysis of that data, quality of life in patients with atrial fibrillation, found that actually in those same patients, the post-hoc analysis of a firm, more symptomatic heart failure occurred in the rate control group. And patients were less symptomatic in sinus rhythm. So in terms of quality of life, that was something that was clearly missing with a firm, that those patients who did manage to control their rhythm actually felt better than those who were in a rate control strategy. Shortly after the firm trial was released, another trial was published in the New England Journal of Medicine looking at catheter ablation for atrial fibrillation in those patients with congestive heart failure. And this really was the first study that gave us an inkling of how critical rhythm control is important, is in these group of patients. What you can see here is that in those patients who had rhythm control and heart failure, over time there's a progressive improvement in left ventricular ejection fraction, left ventricular fractional shortening, left ventricular endiastolic and end systolic volumes. And this was seen across all categories of patients in this trial, all the patients with heart failure. It did not matter whether or not they had ischemic heart disease or not. The benefit was real. You can see a dramatic improvement in LV fractional shortening, in a number of echocardiographic parameters, and again the ejection fraction itself. The next study is the CAMTAF trial, which is a randomized controlled trial of catheter ablation versus medical treatment of atrial fibrillation and heart failure. This study found that catheter ablation is effective in restoring sinus rhythm in selected patients with persistent AF and heart failure, and it can improve left ventricular function, functional capacity, and heart failure symptoms compared with rate control. In this slide we can see the Kapler-Meier curve showing the survival frame from atrial fibrillation or other atrial tachycardias after the last ablation procedure. At six months this number was 81% and at 12 months it was 73%. Here we can see a number of other parameters that we can see were significantly improved when you compare catheter ablation for atrial fibrillation versus medical management. We can see that the New York Heart Association class, BNP levels, LV ejection fraction, all these variables were significantly improved in the catheter ablation group versus those who underwent medical management. Based on these preliminary studies, the so-called CASL-AF study, catheter ablation for atrial fibrillation with heart failure, actually asked the hardest question, do patients benefit in terms of mortality from catheter ablation of atrial fibrillation if they have heart failure? This patient enrolled patients who had ischemic and non-ischemic cardiomyopathies, heart failure, and not necessarily symptoms related purely to the atrial fibrillation itself. And as you can see here, the patients across the board in terms of probability of survival, in terms of probability of hospitalization, and in terms of the combined probability of both ablation was superior to medical therapy and the difference was actually quite striking in some cases as low as P values of low as 0.004. This set up the stage for what was probably the largest EP clinical study in terms of catheter ablation in atrial fibrillation patients. It was an NIH funded spearheaded by Dr. Doug Packer at Mayo Clinic. This was an extremely important clinical trial and it showed the primary endpoint that catheter ablation is not superior to drug therapy for CV outcomes at five years among patients with new onset or untreated atrial fibrillation that required therapy. The study additionally found that there was a significant reduction in death or CV hospitalization with ablation and on as treated analysis, ablation demonstrated superior efficacy to drug therapy. In addition, recurrent AF and atrial fibrillation burden were lower with ablation compared with drug therapy alone. Catheter ablation was associated with a significant reduction in recurrent atrial fibrillation compared with drug therapy. Similarly, among patients with NYHA class 2-4 symptoms, most of whom have heart failure with preserved EF, there appeared to be a benefit in the primary endpoint and all caused mortality with ablation. No clear sex-based differences were noted in overall safety or efficacy in this large randomized trial. Further results from the cabana trial showed that in patients with atrial fibrillation enrolled in the cabana trial who had clinically diagnosed a stable heart failure at trial entry, catheter ablation produced clinically important improvements in survival, freedom from AF recurrence, and quality of life relative to drug therapy. This was looking at the recurrences and quality of life and not focused on primary endpoint of mortality and hospitalizations. So they looked at a subgroup with heart failure and they found that there is a mortality benefit. So that's the take-home message here addressing this special group and we see this repeated across studies, even in cabana that overall was a negative study, that it seems that patients with heart failure really do response to this intervention quite nicely and quite effectively. You can see here that compared to drug therapy, the incidence of overall events was lower. Again, this is the cabana data in those patients who had catheter ablation. Similarly, overall, the event rate of all-cause mortality by intention to treat among cabana patients with heart failure, the incidence of mortality was lower with ablation than with drug therapy. Also, cumulative incidence of first recurrence of atrial fibrillation in the post-blanking period among cabana heart failure patients used the cabana ECG recording system. You can see that the freedom from recurrence was much higher in those patients who underwent catheter ablation as opposed to drug therapy. Finally, the question may be, well, okay, we have kind of settled that perhaps patients with heart failure should have catheter ablation, perhaps catheter ablation in and of itself. We've seen even in a unselected group of patients that cabana actually improved quality of life was associated not necessarily with improved mortality but a number of other end points such as even recurrent hospitalizations. So let's say that we are interested in approaching these patients using catheter ablation. When should we do this? Should we do this early on or should we wait as the atrial fibrillation progresses? So to answer this question, another study was performed and it looked at early rhythm control therapy in patients with atrial fibrillation. And in this case what was done is all 1,300 patients who were randomly assigned to early rhythm control received an anti-arhythmic drug or underwent atrial fibrillation ablation. This really replicated clinical practice patterns. Of the 1,400 patients, about 15% had a triggered visit to adapt rhythm control therapy. At 2 years, 900 of the 1,400 patients or about 2 thirds of them were still receiving rhythm control therapy. Usual care consisted of treatment with rate control therapy without rhythm control therapy throughout follow-up in the majority of patients assigned to this group. Initially about 95% of the 1,400 patients in this group had their condition managed without rhythm control therapy. At 2 years, about 85% were still not receiving rhythm control therapy or anti-arhythmic drugs. And you can see here that the cumulative incidence of the primary outcome of death or cardiovascular causes, there was a lower incidence in the early rhythm control population than there was that using the usual or standard care. This is another study. It's not really addressing the question of using catheter ablation in patients to improve mortality outcomes. But I think it's really important to take a step back and remember that a firm once again was not a trial really of rhythm control versus rate control. It was a trial of drug therapy versus rate control. And that's very important because what you can see is if you look at a number of larger studies taking ablation and comparing it to drug therapy, anti-arhythmic drugs, it frankly is not even close. The success of ablation as compared to anti-arhythmic drugs is essentially settled and there really is no debate these days that there is a significantly higher maintenance of normal sinus rhythm when undergoing catheter ablation as opposed to anti-arhythmic drugs. And again, this segues back to the original finding or the original population and the original firm study that really did not use catheter ablation. Again, I keep emphasizing this point because a firm is really not how clinical atrial fibrillation rhythm control is performed in 2021, not even close. Another study comparing anti-arhythmic drug therapy and radiofrequency catheter ablation in patients with atrial fibrillation reinforced the same message again. I'm not trying to beat a dead horse, but I'm trying to make sure that the message is getting through that what we're looking at is a comparison of catheter ablation and if you replace catheter ablation for drug therapy you should expect significant changes and differences in outcomes. And certainly we don't want to retrofit this data to affirm, but it's something that every clinician and every patient should keep in mind when making these very important decisions. Another study again looked at ablation versus amiodarone and I like to use this study because as we know amiodarone is by far the most powerful anti-arhythmic drug and even when using amiodarone there really it was not even close in terms of the incidence of recurrence of atrial fibrillation. The amiodarone group did far worse than the catheter ablation group for maintenance of normal rhythm. I'm going to make a slight change in direction right now to close off this talk because we've talked about catheter ablation of atrial fibrillation and Dr. Coulter tasked me with looking and revisiting a firm and that just doesn't mean that we have to consider catheter ablation of atrial fibrillation. You can actually perform rate control and one of the most effective ways of performing rate control is abenode ablation and pacing. Abenode ablation with permanent ventricular pacing currently is reasonable to control heart rate when pharmacological therapy is inadequate and rhythm control is not achievable. It's actually a class 2A indication in the guidelines. Abenode ablation provides highly effective control of ventricular rate in patients in whom pharmacological rate control has failed or the pharmacologic attempts have been associated with unacceptable side effects and or toxicities. Abenode ablation improves quality of life. It reduces mortality and in patients with reduced left ventricular function who may require biventricular pacing after abenode ablation their outcomes have also demonstrated to be excellent. As we said, a firm we're not trying to critique simply or be advocating for catheter ablation in all circumstances. There were other more subtle differences between a firm as it was done then and our clinical management these days. We now have a well-established chats to VASC scoring system to precisely, more precisely, risk stratify patients for the need for anticoagulation and very, very importantly, novel anticoagulants such as Dabigatran, Riveroxban, or Epixaban were simply never used in the affirm trial. So that's a very significant difference between current clinical practice and what was seen in affirm. So in conclusion, rate versus rhythm control strategy, rate control does not equal rhythm control for all and that question has to be significantly revisited. The affirm trial, its validity in current clinical practice is perhaps more limited and I would say confidently at least a bit more limited now than it was in 2002. Ablation is increasingly demonstrated to be safe and effective in selected patients especially in those patients with heart failure. Avynode, ablation and pacemaker is reasonable to control heart rate when pharmacological therapy is inadequate and rhythm control is not achievable and the novel oral anticoagulants are safe and effective. I would like to thank the organizers for providing this opportunity and thank you very much.


What's up everybody, Jason here with jazzyberjazzbeadscasebreak.com just sold out 1920 a bedeck engrained hockey. It's a five box casebreak picker tunes number 12 So here you go Land with the wild I know no honestly though. I mean I've heard people I've heard my customers say that like I'm saving up now because I Know it's just gonna drop on me. I'm not gonna be prepared so That's a good idea to just start saving up a little bit right you know put away like 2050 weekly just just sort I don't know what the budget is for everybody, but Just so that way when cup comes out and you have to buy like 10 picker teams cases of whatever team you're just like You're not shocked because it's just gonna drop Oh, this is a thick mama right here thick thicc Think it's one of those carbon fiber cars It is We got Jimmy Schult This is why I don't think over dick did a good job with this quality control type stuff It really damages Patterson right here for it being kind of thick and then then at the top So I'm sure over dick will replace this stuff Sean Sorry about that buddy, but just came out that way All right, Ryan poem it's a 299 and we got ourselves a out of 249 Sam Lafferty It's a little dinged over here, too But for the most part it's pretty solid and we got a synthesis Don't really like this guy. I think this guy's a punk 12 out of 25 matthew kichuk cool looking card though.  Hey the whole family Really, right? Brady has nothing to do with it. Just just hate him, too That's right. Rez. That's right You actually I think has two gold medals, doesn't he? Or at least I know he has one, but I thought he had to Cody glass Now it's cuz Doughty likes to chirp. We all know that So someone like a Chuck gets under your skin. Oh Chris Chagallos out of 10. That's nice and tarot half rose heroes Is that right William? Check this out guys nice signature legendary shot of Bernie Nichols Nine out of ten. That's cool Josh proves with my Kings Niko Sturm for the Minnesota wild Liam Lasbaum. Oh That a Jersey number for Nichols. Damn that is That is that's nice That added bonus there, too 735 Kirby Dodge That's right Jack, that's right You know how crazy it would be now if we're I think we're just talking about this like what two days ago or last week How create Adam Oates?  I don't know if that would that look good right now like he You probably like get arrested or something Capitals going to res they go man. Oh, well, I mean, that's not a good hit then res hate that guy too, man No, I think a lot of you know that right it's just if The player wasn't on your team.  He's a very talented player I mean that he is the end of the day, but I don't even think I like him if he was a king And that's just to be honest. I don't even know if I would like him That's like, I don't know Billy Smith the Valorant is That's what I'm coming up to Alexander Volkov tonight he died for the lightning Dylan Sakura man a lot of Dylan Sakura update in this case But a black house Liam without Piece of the stick remnant auto Relic Martin Broder 13 out of 15. That's a beaut A beaut Yeah, that's another one where it's kind of hard to think that someone's gonna catch his wins to Like he's just played for so long Where do you hear this information man, I was gonna be our third carved in In time Anthony du Claire. Oh, this is legit them. I mean, I don't know I don't look I don't look at Martin brother, but Harry Price to 299 and Cody glassboard at 10 And damn Josh cruise I'm gonna get you that gratsky or that big David, but we just keep on getting Leon dry sideals for you Which is still not bad though three out of 13 out of 25, but I just want to get you one of those two players What another signature shot Rasmus Aspilin to 99 for the savers and And whoo this carved in carved in time. It's actually autographed and again Why can't this been a gratsky for you man? But still look at that mark messier carved in time that it's autographed Oilers edition. That's awesome for you Josh. There you go. Very nice Small love the smell of those cards called runs from my brother works for For a company that does metals for a why souls around the United States and MLS and whatnot and they also do plaques and So he does a lot of the engraving so I remember that was like my first job I used to work with him. I did the warehouse and When he would engrave plaques or wood plaques like this, they laser them So I have to wipe them off, but I can just remember the smell It smells exactly the same when I when I smell the car Well, I think we said the Senate to your eyes, but hopefully that's not the case man Hopefully we get you a little bit more than just Adam Oates last one guys penguins Josh You got Leon dry-side. Oh Nathan bastion 249 for the devils and Yari curry Kings edition that piece of the wood right there Josh proofs with my Kings as well and Brandon Shanahan 200 the one for the devils and Steve And whoever this card is it looks like it's a little damage there on the chips in the corner it is Paul coffee For the penguins Maybe not you know what maybe not actually Actually, no, it's not it's actually like someone's piece of like their white jersey or something actually it just looks like it's damaged But it actually looks like it's actually just fine. It's just lovers in the stands Just looks like it is Penguins flexures Penguins that is Josh There you go guys pretty solid five bucks in her Paul coffee Curry bastion carved in time mark messier grunge from We got a splint You got Leon dry-side nice Martembro Dura the 15. I'm gonna take a photo that Sakura lowcloth Dutch Bernie Nichols adds a jersey number for the Kings Synthesis of Matthew Kachuk the 25 Pedersen and everything else here as well You got Kerry price right there to 299 Claire Nichols term Eric Johnson Lafferty Ryan Paul and Ricky for the mantra Canadians and Jimmy Schulte for the Vegas


It has reserved to provide legislative support for the policy of the central bank of Nigeria to redesign the Naira. The upper chamber made this resolution after a heated debate and a motion moved by Senator Ubasani on CBRIN's policy to redesign the three Naira nodes. Majority of the Senators across party lines supported the redesign of the Naira but suggested the extension of the deadline for compliance and wanted the Senate to invite the governor of the CBR to throw more light on the policy. But Senator Gabriel Suswa disagreed with other senators claiming that the CBR governor has always shunned their invitations. Available statistics show that cash outside the banks consists of over 80% of currency in circulation CIC as at the end of June 2022. All data indicated that 2.72 trillion out of the 3.26 trillion currency in circulation was outside the vaults of commercial banks across the country. One month and a half is extremely short for what we are about to do because if you withdraw 1 trillion from this economy at once in a month the ripple effect will affect everybody. So longer there is an approval from the president and in matters like this you don't need to overflog it and over publicize it.  That announcement alone our inflation rate has moved from where we are said to about 51%. About 51% is the president and so when you are taking a position such as this you must be mindful if the CBR had wanted our support we are going to just take orders in the economy of this country. Meanwhile Senator Basi abandoned stressed the need to support the CBR governor are then there should be no discussion on the matter. In Israel in the deputy senate president Senator Omar Gegei who presided over Wednesday's plenary said it was the prerogative of the CBR to redesign the Naira and put a deadline for compliance. We must be in tune with current global realities all over the world. We now have digital currencies all over the world. As a president the volume of the current Naira outside the central bank control system can never all go away for economy. It can never all go away for economy. People are touching away billions of Naira cash, trillions of cash all over the world in this country so we must support the central bank of Nigeria. From 17, 18 and 19 most especially in 19 one A and B of the CBR act even though not specifically cited but I think the content has been alluded to all through the debate. It is within the exclusive preserve of the CBR board on the recommendation based on your recommendation to Mr. President and their approval of Mr. President to carry out this redesigning the form and the max is within the exclusive preserve and this also applies to timing.


Well Thursday and Friday all led to this championship Saturday for the college bassmaster anglers on Lake Bemidji. Jacob Fouts and Jake Lee of Bryan College inserted themselves at the top of the leaderboard each day. Could someone finally dethrone them on day three at Paul Bunyan Park or should they get out the brooms with a clean sweep? Well they picked up right where they left off. 15 pounds and six ounces of five bass netted for the final way and that kept them in front of Floyd and McNeil of Bethel College. Just over three powers a three-day grand total for the winners. 49 pounds and 15 ounces and their crowd as a new college national champions. This feels amazing this is what we've been looking forward to all year long. To be able to come here and perform it feels absolutely amazing. It was a whole lot harder today and it took us until like 1.30 to catch a limit and that's a whole lot later than we'd liked it to be but it's alright. Well just a little down the leaderboard BSU's own Thor and Mitch Swanson finished the tournament ninth overall after placing in the top five each of the first two days. The dynamic duo pulled in 29 pounds and nine ounces total five pounds and 14 ounces on Saturday to complete the run in their home city. This caliber of anglers these kids are really good so anytime you can get inside the top 10 at a national championship you really you really can't complain at all. Obviously we're hoping is gonna go a little bit better but it's still a good week and be able to drive 500 feet from our house to the ramp and then come in here fishing familiar water fishing familiar techniques and then seeing every ounce here I was not expecting this many people to show up to a tournament especially a bass tournament in northern Minnesota. So congrats to all those team here's look at the top five. Bethel puts three in the top five and of course the Swanson brothers come in ninth at 33 pounds and five ounces total. If you've enjoyed this segment of Lakeland news please consider making a tax deductible contribution to Lakeland Public


Perfect. Dear panel, welcome. And dear audience, welcome into what you've always wanted to ask the VCs. We have the distinct honor to hopefully have and earn your attention during the next 30 minutes. And we will do so by talking about a subject which is very close to my heart. Super brief intro for myself, because then this is what we'll want to hear more about. My name is Oscar. I am a serial entrepreneur. And I run a company called Epidemic Sound. But that's basically it on me. It's now my distinct pleasure to introduce our guests. And I'm actually going to let our guests introduce themselves. So I think maybe Huey will start here. Thank you so much all for having me. I'm Huey Lin. Previously, before sitting in the seat as a venture partner at GGB Capital, I was an operator. First, I started my career as one of the first product manager at PayPal. This is way in the early days. I end up staying there for about 12 years, helping it expand across Europe and then Asia. Subsequently, I actually joined another effort called Affirm. I was the founding chief operating officer and helped build it from the ground up from basically no customers to millions of customers. And my latest operating role was with a company called Flexport, where I led Asia. And so I joined GGB recently for about a year now. So this is still fairly new to me. And I just wanted to share a little bit about GGB itself. It's a fund that is over 20 years old. And what I love most about it is that it's ambidextrous. It knows East. It knows West. A little bit like me. And so the other thing I would say about GGB is that with 20 years of history, it actually has learned many, many lessons. I've seen many ups and downs. And it's able to actually help a lot of entrepreneurs apply those lessons across the world. The other thing that we pride ourselves is that we are sector focused. We are nerves to the core. We're unafraid to go into the detail and really, really understand a particular sector, including just how much capital is really needed to help shepherd it all the way through. And the last one that leads to the other thing that we're very proud of is that there's a platform team there that is willing to support and able to support companies through all the ups and downs with us. So that's me in a nutshell. Very glad to have you. Ted. Hello. Pleased to introduce yourself. Hey. I will.  X product person, X designer, X entrepreneur that stumbled into venture capital. And I did so eight years ago after having built both companies and digital platforms for companies that I did not found. I work at EQT and EQT is a big product equity firm, one of the top 10 investors in the world in terms of size. And we're kind of like the kids table of this big firm doing venture capital investing. And we got going back in 2015, 2016. Now we're on our third fund that we announced last week. And I think EQT is now 2,000 people. And on the venture side, we're 40 people. So we do everything from early stage investing, venture, where I work, growth, mid-market. They actually invest into Epidemic Sound, which is your company. Infrastructure, private equity, basically like a buffet of options. And just since you didn't plug your own company, I will do it for you. So Oscar founded Epidemic Sound, which is the place to find music for whatever you want to do on the internet. Royalty-free, super smooth, YouTube, gaming, TV, whatever. That's not the official pitch. I'm sure you would have done it better. It's a great pitch. But we're here to talk about all of you. And Judith, I'm very excited to hand it over to yourself. Please introduce yourself. Thank you so much. Judith, I'm with a venture firm called La Familia. We are not the mafia, but an early stage venture platform based in Berlin, investing across Europe and the US. We have a portfolio of 70 companies, including companies like Deal, Personio, Forto, really specialized in B2B. So we like to think we can help our entrepreneurs go to market in various industries. We have really, really deep industry networks. And so in B2B, it's most often going from 0 to 1, that kind of first customer, that big enterprise sale. We can really kind of supercharge our founders with the platform that we've built. I have a background in sales and data. Used to work at Facebook. That's probably also something we could discuss today. But just looking forward to all the questions. Cool. Thank you for joining and for introducing yourselves. And as I'm sure the audience can acknowledge, this is an incredible panel because they both have an operator side and a VC side. So last night, I was living my best life in downtown Helsinki. I was in my hotel room. I was watching East European male gymnastics as they were doing somersaults across the television. And the thought hit me, which was that I find that there's this interesting dynamic within entrepreneurship. Because as we all can attest to, being an entrepreneur is about treading your own path, building something unique, and doing something very different. However, I found over the last couple of years that the VC investing is less unique and it's becoming more of a process. This is a C, this is an A, this is a B round, this is a C round. It's becoming very structured and well-organized, which you could argue is the opposite of why we started to build companies to be unique and different and a flower. So do you agree with this way of that perception and that's happening? And are there ways to try and mitigate this and work arounds? And have you come across this as a trend? And maybe Judith, I'll start with you. I love that you just said a company being a flower because in March of this year, I backed a company called Flowers and they literally think they are kind of a flower, workflow, automation platform to SMBs, check them out, they're amazing. But so, I mean, overall I would agree with you. I mean, there is kind of a professionalization curve that VC has undergone and I think there's more maturity in the ecosystem. I actually still think that the most important thing when it comes to connecting with founders is not being too schematic, right? For me it's about having a conversation. I hate the kind of pitches where founders come with 20 minutes of input and then I'm supposed to ask three questions about your town and defensibility, maybe kind of a couple of questions on team. And so for me it really is finding that one common connection. And I really try and take the time to get to know the person and to really kind of have that conversation because honestly that's the best use of my time and that just makes days really special, right? But if I get to talk to four or five amazing personalities that most founders that we encounter are, I think that's really kind of the magic that I try to preserve in VC, even though of course with deal flow increasing, more and more amazing companies being founded in Europe and the US, there is a certain schema that we kind of also have to adhere to because otherwise it's just quite impossible to get a hand of all the deal flow. And so I think what you're saying is right in some way, but I do think there's like ways of keeping the magic and just connecting with the person that's most of the time a face in a box on Zoom and trying to find kind of emotional connection as well that is then what forms relationships. We actually have an interesting little feedback form that we have. So every single founder that we interact with, we trigger an anonymous survey where they can give us anonymous feedback and some of the feedbacks are really hard. I mean, they're like basically the conversation sucked for this and this reason. And many feedbacks are, the conversation was amazing for this and this reason. For us it's really important to have that anonymous feedback kind of ingrained into the culture so that we get a real kind of mirror in front of our faces to make sure that we can just be the best 30 minutes that a founder can spend and we really make that a meaningful interaction not just for hospitals but for them. Ted, what about you? Do you feel that this is turning into more of a process business? Or can you highlight examples like, no, no, no, the really exciting deals, they always go off on a tangent and there's something different and weird and crazy about them. I think it's interesting. So pattern recognition, that's our most important tool as investors and investing in many ways is about finding those patterns. But I also think that pattern recognition can be your biggest enemy that you try to sort of shoehorn stuff into this process. And I think to me, usually happens when you have too much and you're trying to process a lot of companies or a lot of intros or something. It's easy to say, ah, this company's like that or it's the wrong face or, and then I think one has to remind oneself that if you look at the companies we all look up to, the journeys of those companies are very seldomly up and to the right all the time. There's always a twist or a turn like M Night Shyamalaya and movie like you didn't see it from the beginning. And now I've been an investor for eight or so years and looking at the most successful companies we have in our portfolio, it's the same thing. It's like the portfolio constantly surprises us. And so you just have to be humble and realize that, yeah, you have to use it and also be aware of that it's not everything. Yeah. So you both touched upon professionalization and Hue thought I'd go in that direction. So if we look at the industry going back a bit, there was a period in time where it seemed to be enough to have a pitch deck to come and present that. But as the market has matured and we've become more sophisticated both operators but also investors, that's shifting more. And the norm I would argue is it's much more about evaluating the team, the founders, how they sit together and how the entire package basically works. And so if you subscribe to that, could you maybe elaborate a little bit more, what for example of the three most important aspects that you evaluate around teams and individuals? Yeah. Well, to sum it all up, I'd say that the thing we're ultimately looking for is one of trust, right? Can I really trust this team to really do what they say they're going to do? And will they trust me to ring me up when they need help the most? Now, when it comes to trust and the characteristics that actually creates trust is one of care. Do they really, will they really obsess over that problem that they've actually signed up to actually take on? The other one is of character. Now that takes a little bit longer, especially during the dating phase, you don't quite know. But ultimately consistency. And so going back to your earlier question, right? I'm a bit more old fashioned and I actually do like those routines in terms of those processes. But quite often what I will tell the founders, don't do it for me, do it for your team. Instill in the good habits of knowing how to convey clearly what you're dreaming about. How do you go and share that with your team and make sure the data that you're presenting to me, it's not just for the dog and pony for me, but use that as a way to go back to your team to make sure that you can all row in the same direction. So that for me is that type of consistency. Whatever you share outside, you're able to do it internally. And that itself is what lets me trust the team more and hopefully that them trust me more and that's what I will look for. Got it. Judith, would you like to chime in in terms of what are some traits that you look for in teams and in founders? Like building on Huey's point. Are there other things which you think are super crucial? No, I think he said it beautifully. And I would subscribe to all those characteristics. One that I would add is really energy. I think founders are kind of conveyors of energy, building structures, building teams. And no matter if the times are good or the times are hard, keeping the faith. And thinking about, for example, Alex from Deal, who was also at Slush this year. I mean, we met him very, very early on and he's just incredible in terms of injecting a room, injecting everyone around him with incredible energy and kind of leaving a room and everyone has it to do and everyone's aligned. And I think that is really a scaling and leadership quality that a lot of founders bring. And I think sometimes we confuse it with being extroverted and we think extroverted people, they're kind of out there and they're bam, bam, bam and that's what injecting energy is about. But it's not really that. It's really the communication that's the nuances and it's the ability to paint a picture, align people on that. And then basically lift a battery that was at 60% up to 80, 100, 120%. And so that's a really qualitative trait. It's very different in every founder that we meet, but really kind of this ability to inject energy and you feel that immediately after the first call. I think for all of the founders that we've met that we get really excited about, it's almost that you remember where you sat, you remember kind of that first conversation and what it was that made you excited. And I would say that for many founders you feel it very, very early on in the call. You kind of know it in the first 10 minutes. We always say you have a hunch and then you want to find data to back up the hunch, but it's that kind of injection of energy and there's something very physical about that that I think can be felt. This is such a good layup for the next question. So I'm gonna build on Huey the trust. I'm gonna build on Judith energy and I'm gonna put Ted on the spot here because the question I wanted to ask was, typically in a relationship like the one we're talking about, when do you know as in how fast is it? Cause I find myself the big decisions I make in life, the smaller decisions that can be Excel and you can do pros and cons and it's like an extended period. But sort of in terms of when I met my wife or you walk into an apartment and you just go, this is it, like I wanna die in this place. I wanna get old here or she's the one or he's the one or now is the time for kids. Like the bigger the decisions, the more it's a gut feeling. So building on these two traits, like when do you know, so this is, wow, this is amazing.  I mean, in our team, we have all sorts of processes and non-processes, I guess. But I mean, to speak about processes, we have all the different frameworks and derailers and all those things. But to me it's in many cases an emotional response or reaction or something like that. It's like you feel it and in a way there's no real formula for it because it's looking for outliers and then it might be that you don't really know it, exactly what it is, but you're getting excited about something. And to be honest, I'm struggling a bit with it. I'm Swedish, we're very sort of collectivist in our mind and in a way, my dream VC would be VC that are not centered around specific partners and people, but we are centered around people and I'm one of the partners and in many cases it's like my interest or deep dives that we have done or patterns that I've seen, that makes me excited about something. I think it was different when I was like eight years ago when I had zero portfolio companies to work with than I could have way more time in going deep into different things. Now when I have a dozen give or take companies that I work with, something has to kind of catch me in it. It's hard to say energy or the problem, I'm on a journey in my head and then a founder comes in and just adds the missing 45%.  So there's trust, there's energy, there's pattern recognition, there's the impossible mission of both going with tested principles but at the same time trying to find these outliers. So these are all examples of the things that you are looking for and that in a magical way come together. Let's flip it around and look at the glass half empty. What are some of the red flags? What are some of the things which you go, ooh, that's not necessarily a great sign. Hugh, would you like to start? Oh yeah, there's a couple I can share. Hubris, vanity, you can sense that. So sometimes too much positive energy tends to show up the wrong way. And it often shows up when you actually probe into some of genuine curious questions and it shows up a bit more defensive. So that's definitely one sign that I'm aware of. And then also maybe it's a bit of a nitpick but where the slides, the numbers don't quite add up, believe it or not, it happens. Or for instance, the page numbers are all numbered. I know it's silly but I actually noticed those things. But ultimately what matters most to me is that when you actually speak to senior management at the top level and they share their dreams and their thoughtful wishes. And yet you talk to the folks that all roll up to them and they're saying something else differently. That is a big, big red flag. Inconsistency then. Inconsistency, the two are not singing the same song. They're off tune a little bit. And that's the things that really will worry me. Okay. Judith, how about yourself and your experience? What has been the pattern recognition that you've seen in terms of flags which are caused for alarm or where you pause and reflect a bit? Yeah, I mean, since we invest very early on, I would say a recurring red flag is a bias for analysis versus a bias for building, right? And we have some amazing former consultants as part of our team but I always call them the kind of ex-consulting teams. They come with a pitch deck of like 40 slides and all these theoretical analysis and then you ask, well, tell me about three conversations with customers like the one insight that you walked away with. And they're like, well, that's something that we're gonna do once we will have raised this funding and once we will have hired this team and I will have the latest thing as this founders associate that will then do the heavy lifting for me and I'll basically just be the orchestrator sitting on top and making sure that all my sheep are in order. And so I just have a bias for action, a bias for building.  And like there is a certain kind of hustle that comes with that in the early stages and that is something that I prefer when it comes to, you know, it's a little rough around the edges but I can see this again, energy and I can see this bias for action, bias for building versus this theoretical, you know, perfect analysis but you know, it's all built on some argument that potentially does not even hold true in reality. Yeah. I hope you're all taking notes. I know that I am mentally, this is good stuff. Let's zoom out a little bit. I think it's fair to say that there has been a valuation reset in general in the world and in particular among growth stocks and growth companies. Typically, that's a prefix for then going on and talking about doom and gloom and why we all should be pessimistic but hopefully this is one of the few panels where that's not the case because from a VC perspective if you're looking for builders and new companies couldn't you make the argument of it's the worst of time but it's also the best of times? Like, what's your reflection on where we are right now as VCs and I'll maybe throw this to you Ted. No, I think along those lines it feels in some ways as the end of a cycle and the beginning of a new cycle. I don't know if we're in the pause in between the two cycles but if you take one such cycle I think is we're clearly the start of a climate tech cycle and a lot of people who go on and found climate companies come from the internet era could be operators or founders or something like that and it feels like the formation of something that resembles the internet back in the mid to late 90s. So that to me is a new start. At the same time I feel like when I became an investor in 2015, 2016 I could kind of know every startup in Europe or at least in the Nordics, I knew of them I didn't need any tools for that that is not the case at all anymore there's just so much and for every problem there is not just one approach into solving that there are several approaches and I think it's why is that? It's digitalization I guess, it's role models it's way simpler to get going it's a financing ecosystem that works but that also means that the bar gets way higher something that I would have gotten super excited about back in 2015, 2016 now just get lost in the noise so to me I'm less interested in those like same-same software as a service someone's patched together a couple of APIs to solve something, could become big and I'm more excited about this bigger, bolder solving something big. Judith, do you agree with the statement that as there are, for example, a lay of some such happening in big tech there's a flip side, there's a silver lining to these difficult things going on in the sense that there's tons of exceptional talent which is now freeing up and being made available for entrepreneurs to create the teams we're talking about who are able to build this energy and the trust and so that there's oxygen arguably being poured into the system hence from a VC perspective there is something very productive that could be done right now is there truth to that claim? Can you find energy in what's going on despite everything which is challenging? Yeah, absolutely. I think we're seeing two things already believing in two things the one is talent consolidation so we already see that a couple of amazing individuals that we've been in conversation with for nine months, six months that were operators at companies and wanted to start companies themselves and we were in early conversations ideating with them they're starting to join our businesses instead of becoming entrepreneurs and now you could argue well, we're just gonna have less startups but I actually think that's a good thing because you have this talent consolidation and you suddenly have this nucleus of insanely strong talent where before it would have been three startups that now come together as one startup with one startup that's really strong and so I think that can be a really, really good thing for the industry in terms of high quality teams I think a second thing that we really strongly or I really strongly believe in is culture at some point I think can no longer be fixed but it can be built and so taking big tech as an example I think and we're seeing that also with a lot of growth stocks right now I think is once you hit a certain scale as a business and you have inefficiency baked into your business model even if you do layoffs it's very, very difficult to fix the culture of inefficiency that you've built over years and years thinking about salaries when you pay someone salary X it's very difficult to tell that person the next year you're only gonna earn half of that right so because once you set culture it's very difficult to completely re-engineer it however what's currently happening for a lot of the companies that are still earlier stage and I would say kind of for me the cultural cutoff point would probably be a couple hundred employees right if that's when you pull the brakes and that's when you get back to a model of efficiency that you can then grow from I think that's actually making for better and stronger companies and kind of in the last couple of years because money was basically free we completely lost sight of what is the actual cultural core of efficiency and of a strong business model that we can then scale with and what we're now trying to do is we're trying to patch up a lot of the inefficiencies that we really baked into the system and I think for unfortunately many companies that won't be possible but for the new beat of companies that are currently scaling I think really going back to basics and then growing from that kind of core strength I think it's gonna make for a beautiful vintage which is what we're telling our LPs but I really do think we'll make for some fantastic companies I'd love to share another silver lining in all of this and that is while there's a lot of layoffs the talent that are released now are taking on jobs at the incumbent and so in fintech specifically no matter what we still have to work with the banks and for a long time in order to move forward quite often what we're seeing that the folks on the other side are just so different from us where we just couldn't move forward and so while yes you know there's a lot of lives being impacted many of the traditional companies are still hiring and so the silver lining is that there are now more folks on the other side that can actually work with us to move forward and so that's something that I'm actually quite excited about and the incumbents are actually thrilled to actually hire these folks that they normally wouldn't be able to in a normal you know happy happy days so to speak. So I think that's super interesting and this is the last question I'd like to ask within this area which is and maybe this is for you Ted how do you help founders and teams transition from like good times to let's call them bad even though we're in agreement that they're not all bad and so how do you balance the drive for results and growth but also the need to survive to get to live to fight another day like what are some of the things that you're seeing and that you're telling and please chime in but I'll launch that towards you Ted. As an investor I have maybe I know 10 or 15 relationships that I can manage or something like that so each every relationship is super important and you go through a process where you vet and you really make sure that everything is great and should work out so if one of these relationships or the company that one of these people is running does not work out it's also on me of course and we shook hands to do this together and if it doesn't work we gotta fix it together and then in many cases it becomes like internal discussions on the VC side where I have biases towards the companies that I backed and then other partners have biases towards companies they backed and then there's a negotiation and sometimes you win sometimes you lose in those discussions and you have to prioritize but no matter what it's about trying to do things in an as good way as possible and to me the core of that is the relationship between me and the founder so even if we disagree or something like that I always try to sort of keep that almost sacred and then sure there could be situations where our views differ so much so it becomes almost like a personal conflict but hopefully you don't go there. I hear you and so I'm gonna transition to a question where I would love all three of you to chime in so we're gonna take this in turns and it ties back to the fact that we have this huge opportunity since you're all VCs and you have been operators and so I'd love to focus in on the term ferocious learner and the act of learning so I'm convinced that there have been multiple examples of where you've been able to provide huge amounts of value to the companies that you're looking to help but also vice versa that there's been huge amounts of learning from the companies to yourselves. I'd love to hear you reflect a little bit around that and maybe Huey if you start first now that the rest have a think. Well we know that part of this journey is actually to be exposed like new ways to actually connect with customers and so I've spent most of my career in fintech and so quite often the go to market, how do you embed, how do you make one plus one equals three is like my name of the game and recently I've had a founder actually come back to me and actually just share other ways in which you can even further bridge. For instance, rather than just helping an SMB I have a bias for SMBs because I just think that I think the world of them and what he's actually been able to show me is it's not just helping them how to actually manage cash flows but quite often they genuinely need a help, need a way to actually know how to run their business better and how do you actually have those conversations that are not intimidating because quite often we've actually learned some of our words and how to actually convey like we have our own credos and the swords and the way that he actually showed me how he trains his staff to have a conversation with businesses that are less than three people to get them to actually know how to better run their business, adapting to software, a willingness to pay for SASS was eye-opening to me because it wasn't something that I'd ever worked on before. Cool. Judith. I would say it's one thing and it's actually Hannah from Personia who said this. Not lying to yourself, never lie to yourself. It's very, very, very hard. I find it very hard not to lie to myself. There's lots of psychological studies that show that humans are really good at lying to themselves. We always think we're slightly better off even in the current market. We think it's going to hit all those companies. It's not going to hit us. It's going to hit those portfolios. It's not going to hit us. And not lying to yourself while keeping the faith. Doing those things in parallel is the hardest thing possible. And in VC, as a FOMO-driven industry that we are, even though we lie to ourselves and we say we're not, we are, actually not making the highs higher and not making the lows lower. Really kind of being supportive to entrepreneurs, not lying to ourselves while keeping the faith in terms of like the long arc of history, the long, if we look at the current decade, all the amazing things that are happening. Doing those two things in parallel is incredibly hard. I'm still struggling. I'm still learning. I'm not enlightened. I've seen the light and now I'm perfect at this. But I think there's some entrepreneurs that do this really well. And I do think it's like almost the, that's perfection of the human craft. Being able to hold those two truths within yourself and excelling on them within your company. Ted, last comment. Do you have something similar that you want to share? We're out of time. I will tweet my answer instead. We're 31 seconds out of time. So you should initiate your outro now. Thank you for moderating for me. Thank you everyone for showing up and for listening and for participating with your ears. Thank you Judith, Ted and Huey for sharing so generously with all of us. Thank you very much.