Hey guys, how you doing? This is your boy Rich from RichTVLive and you too can join the club at richpakesdaily.com where you can learn how to win and trade. Hey guys, how you doing? This is your boy Rich from RichTVLive and our new ecosystem and website RichTV.io an ecosystem built by investors for investors and want to bring your attention to Amazon. Full disclosure, I had two shares of Amazon before the forward split today and I told everybody in our community, everybody in our ecosystem, anybody that was listening that I felt like Amazon was a screaming buy for a lot of different reasons and I'm gonna talk about that in that video right here today exclusively on RichTVLive. Now make sure you subscribe, don't touch that dial and if you like these videos, smash the like button, comment down below, share the video everywhere and subscribe and Amazon having a big day today and I'm gonna look at my crystal ball. I'm gonna make a prediction. My crystal ball says in the next 12 to 24 months, the price of Amazon will reach $200 a share. Now let's talk about it exclusively here at RichTVLive. Let's take a look, shall we? All right, so full disclosure, I have two shares of Amazon and I'm gonna show you why I'm buying Amazon. So two shares of Amazon pre-forward split were at $24.40 a piece and now after the forward split, today Amazon was at $122 and I really felt like this was a great buy and I'm gonna explain to you why. Now for some reasons, it's not a great buy. For other reasons, I think it has a chance to be just an amazing buy and I'm gonna explain to you exactly why. So this is the chart of Amazon. You can clearly see it's gone way up. In 2010, it was a $5 stock, right? It was just trading a high of right before the forward split. It was at $24.47, but before that it went as high as just under $4,000 a share. So it's been a huge success story. Now there's some reasons why I think this continues and it goes higher and there's some reasons why I think it might be a little bit overvalued still. So as an investor, I didn't want to go crazy. I do have two shares before the forward split, which today now after the forward split, they did a $24.1 forward split, which means if you had two shares like I did after the $24.1 forward split, the stock goes from $24.47 a share, $2,447 a share to $122 a share, which gives all the investors that didn't want to buy Amazon for an opportunity to own them for $122. And now anyone that had one share of Amazon will get 20 shares at $122. Because I had two shares, I will have 40 shares of Amazon now today when it opened at $122. But look at this, it's already up to $128. It's already up almost 5% on the day and this is because investors are buying. Investors are looking at Amazon like, hey, this is one of the biggest companies in the world, one of the richest companies in the world, and I want to get on Amazon. But I want you to look at the PE ratio right here, the price to earning ratio. It's at $59. It's really high. So this is one of the concerns I have with Amazon. Even though I love this company, it's a money-making machine. It's one of the fastest growing revenue companies in the world. And I see their Amazon Prime everywhere here in Vancouver, Canada. My issue here is the price to earning ratio, which is really high. The average price to earning ratio in America for a company is about 16 times price to earnings. This is at 59 times price to earnings. Now, for good reason, it's a company that's been a huge success, a money-making machine. But I just want to make sure you guys are aware of this. This is something I like to look at is I really like to break down their financials. I like to understand exactly how much money they're making. So they had a tough quarter. That's why the stock has come down a lot. And other companies that have done forward splits previously last year, Microsoft, Apple, and Tesla are all up. And Tesla at one point was up huge. It's come back down. It's still up over 100% since they did their last forward split. And Tesla has a crazy price to earning ratio. But the thing that I really like to look at is their revenue. The revenue is massive. And when you compare them to some of the biggest companies in the world, they are right up there with just enormous revenue. Net sales increased 7% to $116 billion in the first quarter. It's a company doing $116 billion a quarter. So the revenues are just outstanding. They're huge revenues. This is an opportunity to get into a company that was at $2400 to share, which was just too expensive for a lot of investors. They go down to $122, and I felt like it was a great buying opportunity. We also have an Amazon chat room at richTV.io, our ecosystem and trading community built by investors for investors where you can go set up an account absolutely free or upgrade and become a VIP member and go to trading school and learn how to trade. And be on top of the markets like we are every single day making good decisions about great companies. So this is our Amazon.com group where you can go and put in information and talk with other members. And this is the price earning ratio, which I think is really, really important. So it's one of the reasons why I'm a little concerned. But like I said, I've got a small position on Amazon. I do plan to get more. Obviously it's up today on the daily. So I'm not going to go and buy it today after everyone else did, but you can see it kind of opened up up already. People buying in anticipation of these lower prices. And my prediction is that we're going to see Amazon go back to $200. So anyone that got in at $122, if this goes back to $200, which I believe it will, that's going to be huge return on your investment. I believe that this is going to happen in the next 12 to 24 months. That's my prediction with Amazon. Like I said, I have now 40 shares of Amazon after the forward split. I bought two before the forward split at around 2,450. And now after the forward split today at 122, I have 40 shares and it's already up now to 128. And my prediction is in the next 12 to 24 months, we're going to see a $200 stock price on Amazon. So investors will get a chance to make some huge returns in their investment. I'd love to know what you guys think. Do you agree with me? Do you disagree with me? Do you own Amazon? Did you buy Amazon? You can clearly see it is clearly going up right now with lots of momentum. So this is very, very bullish in my opinion for Amazon. I always like to chart it and mark up the chart and you can see this is the daily chart. It's the high of the day right now, the highest it's been on the day, which just means that people are just buying it and buying it and buying it. And my question is, are you buying it? Let me know. It's your boy Rich from Rich TV Live. Remember Rich TV Live is strictly for information and education purposes. Please do your due diligence, do your research before you invest in anything we talk about or discuss here on Rich TV Live. And saying that, I think this is a company that even though their price to earning ratios are really, really high, there's good reason for it because they are one of the fastest growing revenue generating companies in the world. And money and cash is power. So it's going to be exciting to see what happens here, but I believe this is going to be a $200 stock in the future. Let me know what you guys think. Do you agree with me? Is your boy Rich from Rich TV Live? If you like this video, smash the like button, comment down below, share the video everywhere and subscribe. Amazon, I own it. I got 40 shares. Let me know if you do too. Is now the time to buy. Are you waiting for a dip? I'll let you know if I get some more. Your boy Rich from Rich TV Live in our mode.


Thank you for joining us today for the GIST Tech Connect on how to develop your roadmap to start up success. My name is Ivy Schultz and I am the Director of Entrepreneurship at Columbia Engineering. I'm also an ICOR instructor at the National Science Foundation and an Innovation Coach for Giant Innovation. Today I'll be the moderator of this discussion. Whether you are in the ideation stage or looking for your first round of investment, having a clear roadmap can ensure a greater chance of start up success. But at each step in the roadmap, there are has its own challenges, and that's where building and utilizing a strong network or community can be of such immense value. How do you find team members who complement your expertise, mentors to guide you through your difficult decisions, customers willing to work with you through your products initial bugs, or investors who are a great fit for your solution. We're going to talk today about these questions and more on today's GIST Tech Connect. Today's discussion is co-hosted by GIST Innovation Hub, the 55 Group, an Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Builder and Incubator based in Shambay, Tajikstan. Let me begin by welcoming our panel of experts. Rabshan Kabanov is the CEO of the 55 Group. In addition to providing the vision and direction for the organization, he has worked to encourage the growth of entrepreneurship in Tajikstan through incubator programs, investment and public policy. He has been instrumental in facilitating partnerships with international entrepreneurship organizations to support the Tajikstan innovation ecosystem. Don Baths is a Capital Strategist for the Tech Town, sorry, for Tech Town, Detroit's Entrepreneurship Hub, and co-founder of Commune Angels, a diverse group of investors who seed scalable consumer enterprise and life science companies. Arun Venkatesan is the co-founder and CEO of Vilgro USA, a global network of social enterprise incubators. He has over 15 years of materials R&D, device development, and forward integration of technology into tangible and marketable entities. Thank you all for joining us today. I'd like to point out that you can use the chat window on this page during our live discussion to submit your questions directly to our panelists. You'll notice under the chat window a downloadable worksheet created for today's discussion. We'd like for you to download it now if you haven't already. Our panelists will be walking you through this worksheet step by step, guiding you through answering the questions on it. At the end, we hope to have helped you establish an action plan, or as we've been referring to it, a roadmap. Let's start with each of our panelists telling us a bit more about yourselves. Arun, let's start with you. Hi, my name is Arun Venkatesan. As Ivy was mentioning, I'm the co-founder and CEO of Vilgro USA. Before we started building a global network of social enterprise incubators, we cut our teeth doing social enterprise incubation before those terms social enterprise incubation were coined. Vilgro was founded by Paul Basil in India, and then we've grown into a few hubs in Africa based in Kenya and Southeast Asia based in Manila. I am in the US now coordinating all the hub activities and building this into a formal network. I was the health sector expert during my brief eight years sabbatical in India after doing a lot of these device research and development and all that in the US. While I was the health sector lead for Vilgro, we incorporated quite a few enterprises, I would say 12 to 15. And we form explore different sub sectors and all that. So all this knowledge that is being given here is sort of a condensed version of what we had to develop and frame and all that. So I'm really excited to be here. Happy to guide all the innovators on this call along their journey to social impact. Thank you. Thank you, Don. Hi, thank you. It's a pleasure to be here today. I have had in my journey and opportunity to be a founder, you know, as well as an investor so having both sides or having that experience really helped me help entrepreneurs. What I love to do is strategy and helping entrepreneurs understand this roadmap and how to navigate the roadmap. Capital strategy is a tech town. I get a chance to do that. I get a chance to identify relevant resources for our startups and that may come in the funding or it could be specialized services. I also get a chance inherently with working with them to help them prepare for funding. And as a co-founder of an angel group, I help manage or manage the angel group and help identify opportunities for investment. So it's a pleasure again to be here today and hopefully after we walk through this, you will have a lot more information as you start your journey. Thank you, Ravshan. Hello everybody. My name is Ravshan, Ravshan Kurbanov. I'm a CEO of the 55 Group. 55 Group is a management company. We are managing more than 20 companies in four countries and more than 1500 people work in all these companies. By the way, I'm the Director, Country Director of Sella Network, Central Eurasian Leadership Alliance. And I used to work as a national consultant for the UNDP, trying to develop the whole startup ecosystem and participated in almost all startup development and entrepreneurship development projects here in Tajikistan. With the government, with international organizations, with donors, with private sector. And now we are trying to be an investment company. Just we are lacking a transformation from the management company to investment company. And we now also have some projects on development of venture investment culture here in Tajikistan. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. So for those of you just joining us, we are talking today about how startups can develop their roadmap to success with a particular emphasis on building, utilizing a strong network. Our experts are sharing their perspectives on this critical topic. So please download the worksheet from this page to assess where your startup is in its journey, and answer some key questions regarding networking and community building. So let's start with an overview of the primary stages a startup goes through beginning with the idea stage. And Don, can you please walk us through the main stages. My pleasure, Ivy. So Ivy already mentioned the ideal stage. We also know that five other or five stages after you have that initial ideal. What's really important to note is that while these stages are numbered, oftentimes they may have they may have no they may overlap. So just understand that these stages can overlap as you're going through the roadmap. The first stage is team and market discovery. In this stage, you're really looking for what is the opportunity for the youth. In other words, how are you going to use this and how many different ways can this particular product or this particular technology be used. You're looking at the pathways to get the market. Sometimes we call that go to market strategy. How are you going to find or get to the people that you need to sell. You also sometimes you may have your team already, but sometimes you may not have your full team and I'm sure we'll talk about that later. But you're looking at making sure your team is aligned, as well as beginning to identify if you don't have already advisors and people who can sit on your board to help guide it. The second one will be market validation. You're getting a lot of information at this point. You're looking at potential customers. You're looking at your competitive analysis and what is the value? What is the value proposition for this particular company and how does it position itself in the marketplace or in the full industry? That's very important. Included in that data analysis or that data gathering would be customer discovery. Wanting to know who is that potential customer that you're trying to sell to and oftentimes I hear founders saying, well, we can't find them. And my response is if you can't find them to interview them, you probably can't find the sales to them, right? So make sure customer discovery is extremely important and upfront so that you will know what the customer needs are. The third one is the business model. Really, what are you trying to sell and how are you going to sell it? So you're validating a model, looking at a model and you're identifying and testing assumptions. Because all of these really are assumptions until you start working with customers or clients. They're assumptions and you want to test them as much as you can beforehand but without over testing. And we'll talk again about that later on of how do you go about taking something to market. The fourth one is investment readiness. This is the one that everyone loves to hear about and want to jump to. How do I get the money? I will tell you, traction or what we call traction is extremely important. But even more important is understanding your key milestones and aligning that with the type of resources. And I'm sure you have many, many questions and we'll get into that a little bit more as well. But the important piece here is being ready for the type of funding that you're asking for. And not all funding go with every stage. So it will be very important that you understand that. And then the last stage that we have listed is early stage growth and market penetration. So once you have the testing, your model and your revenue model, which I didn't mention earlier, you want to start looking at how do I scale this? How do I grow? Sometimes we use the term commercialization. That is also another way of saying how do you scale and grow beyond that initial customer or beyond a particular one market or one area. So those will be the five stages that we're highlighting today and I'm looking forward to diving into them even more. Great overview. For our viewers, you can use your worksheet to figure out where your startup is on the entrepreneurial journey. This will help you identify the next steps you need to take. You might also see that while you've moved on to a next stage, you may have forgotten some aspect of a prior stage. Utilizing your network can be one of the most powerful tools for achieving startup milestones. But how do you begin to build that network to then utilize it? And what resources might you already have that you weren't even aware of that can jumpstart your efforts? So who would like to go first? I can. So Ivy, when we talk about utilizing a network that you already have, a lot of times in the incubator community, we say that the first three places that a startup goes to help for are friends, family, and fools. And we belong to the third category. I'm proud to say incubators and accelerators are one place where we take very early stage ideas and we actually run these lean experiments and validations that Don was talking about, even at the idea stage and get them to a proof of concept. So thinking about building a network, I would say I would start with my friends and family. That is to say the professional network. Whatever may work for you, LinkedIn or Facebook or something is a place to start with. But you can really jumpstart that cascade of reactions as I call it. If you tap into a local entrepreneur support organization, be it an incubator or an accelerator, there are plenty of us around who were just waiting to help impactful startups succeed. Really great innovative ideas succeed. So that is some place I think I would encourage all of our innovators to start looking at. If you ever have any doubts about where to begin, you can go back to some of the resources at Venturewell's page or at Willgrow's page or reach out to any one of these entrepreneur support organizations in your country. They'd be just more than happy to help you. One other thing that's critical at this point, I think even at the early stages to identify and resource mentors. The early stage mentors are some are very critical resource because they can map out the path for you and they can actually point out huge gaps in your business model or in your product design that you need to overcome before even you get to the proof of concept stage. And so I think using your network to find somebody who's aligned, who's empathetic to your situation and actually has let's say emotional buy-in and also has this spirit of giving back to the ecosystem. I think finding that person, the initial mentor is very important. That becomes a pathway. Again, not to beat the drum, but to emphasize that incubators, accelerators and other entrepreneur support organizations in your country will help you source mentors. It's great to leverage your network to reach out to them. So this is sort of a virtuous cycle that starts working in. So you try and find an ESO, connects you to a mentor or find a mentor, connects to an ESO, and then you get to keep refining this cycle. I think that would be a great path to go on. I'll pause here and let the other panelists answer this. Great. And as a follow-up question, we'd like to hear from Rav Shah about the role incubators play in supporting a strong entrepreneurial network. Especially your perspective, building and supporting the innovation ecosystem in Tajikistan. Thank you. I just want to add to Arun's 3F, Family, Friends, and Full, 3Gs. It's also from the practice here in Tajikistan. First G is the grants. Go and find the network in the grants organizations, then go to the ground. Ground means just people who are already in this business, the similar startups, the similar spheres of entrepreneurship, the private sector, and the third government, especially in the East countries, governments are very powerful, so they have much opportunities to help you too. So except of these 3Fs, you can also begin your network from 3Gs too. Just a small note. And coming back to your question, I just want to say that here in Tajikistan and I think that in the Central Asian region, the business incubator and all other incubators, not only state business incubator but all incubating platforms, they are platforms where the network players are, first of all, are created and developed because we didn't have five, six years before such terms as VC, mentorship, accelerating programs, incubators, so donors, investment funds, founders, startups. This is all absolutely new for our community. So the incubator was a platform where all these players are accurate. They were created. The second role of the business incubator is it's a place, it's a platform where all these players are communicating and cooperating with each other. So this is the role of the business incubator in ecosystem, innovation ecosystem here in Tajikistan. Thank you. Great answers. So let's put this idea of using your network to meet your startup goals into practice. For example, team building. Firstly, what should founders be looking for when they are building their team? And secondly, how should they leverage their network to find those team members? Who would like to go first? When you are looking for the team, please be very careful about choosing the first people in your team because first opinion, first steps are very important for any startup. Three main rules I advise you. Firstly, choose the people who believe in your idea, who believe in your business idea. It's a very sensitive point. I don't know how to evaluate it, but you just have to feel that this person believes in your idea. Second is find the people with experience because the experience is already investment. Any experience can be evaluated and calculated to the money too. So it's already investment into your startup. And then just try to make a puzzle of your team. So if you have a good finance person, you should have a good technique. Make a team of all people are good in technique, but you don't have any sales person or marketing. So just three simple rules of building the team, I think. Thank you. Great. Aranya, Don, would you like to answer? Yeah, I would wholeheartedly agree, making sure you feel those gaps. You know, sometimes it's easier to find people exactly like you and it's comfortable. And we don't want to do that. We want to make sure we have the core processes or the core areas that, you know, covered. Sometimes you have to go deeper in other areas. You know, you might need more developers if you're developing a platform. So that's understandable, but you want to make sure you don't have just a full team of developers as you begin to build out. And that's something that the funding sources will also look for. Well, we are making an assumption here that you have a team. So let's go to that's the underlying assumption and it's a good one. Particularly when you start looking to grow or funding sources. A one person shop is often not encouraged or not looked upon as a positive because it is difficult to grow a business is to start a business by yourself. You will need help when you're trying to start a business and when you're trying to grow a business. I really resonate with what Ravshan said and Don said. But I'd like to add like the stage color to this and actually pull the curtain back and show the innovators what investors and incubators look at and make decisions on when a team presents their business model to us. It's not the product. It's not the accuracy of the business model. It's not the revenue projections. It's team team team because everything else changes, but the core team is what we believe can leverage whatever resources are available to them, you know, we focus on social impact. And so the resources are very limited. And so we realize that the business models to that product designs change service models delivery models change but the team is the one that delivers impact. So to sort of piggyback on what Don and Ravshan said, if you're in an early stage, I would focus on passion. Alignment like with your mission like Ravshan was saying is great balancing with expertise is great. So but you want to look for passion so that they are able to sort of bend with the wind and not break and deliver this these results that you want. In the early stage progresses to slightly more evolved and advanced enterprises, I would focus on effectiveness and efficiency, not just expertise but ability to deliver on the targets that you need. That's where this puzzle building and this complementarity that Don and Ravshan talked about comes in right where now you've more investors are grants in and you are going to deliver on the promises that you made. And that comes critical and you want to have this complementarity but effectiveness where they don't consume too many resources and efficiency where they make use of time and whatever you can give them in delivering that particular impact that you want to do. You want to you promise to deliver. And I think those those are the things I really wanted to focus on passion initially, but shift towards effectiveness and efficiency as you hire. The one thing I wanted to add was to leverage your network right how do you leverage your network to build this team. Let's say you are in the early stages of building your enterprise. I would say, if you're looking at early stages and passion and then eventually effectiveness. I think you should be a good storyteller. You should take every opportunity you get to interact with your network of friends, family fools, and the three G's that Ravshan talked about and tell your story and tell your story well. And that is how I've seen startups build teams and attract talent, because talent is a big, big barrier to overcome for early stage enterprises because you have to know how do you convince somebody to come and devote a good chunk of their lives in helping you build the stuff. And the way to do that is to be able to communicate your goals, your mission and look for this passion by telling your story widely and deeply. And I think I'll pause there because I think that's what I want to want to leave you with. Great. So let's move on to the topic of investment. We know investment can be critical to a startup success, not just investment, but the right kind of investment and investor. What should founders do to prepare their startups for investment and how can they use their networks to find the right investor. I will try to answer just my personal view. First of all, divide all your investors in the two groups, the testing one, whom you are sure that are not going to give you money, just use them as a test platform. And the second who are possible, who are already in this sphere. So if you know that this investor we see invested into math tech and you have a math tech, don't go to him first, go to testing investors. This is very from the practice I can ensure about this advice and how to prepare your team. The presentation 10 t most important Q&A with the investor. And as I said, we are trying to be a venture investors here in Tajikistan. From our point of view, we are strongly as investors we are strongly looking for three points. First of all, is it is a team, the come how the team is competent, the experience of team is everybody is in his own place, the connection inside the team so when you are going to investor show the potential of your team. Secondly, please make sure that you clearly, clearly transported the idea of your business model to investor. So here's the money, and the money goes to your pocket. The road should be very clear and understandable. The second is business model. And third is the market size. Usually market size goes first or second. When you say that I have a startup and the market size for this startup, for example, $15 million. And I want to start from the 10% of this market. So this is about the money and investor will continue to listen to you. So three things that your team should be prepared when you are networking with the investors. And as I said, divide them into two groups, the testing one, if we can use this word, the testing investors and second is the real investors who are already investing in this sphere. Thank you. Great. Don or Erin? Yes, indeed. I would like to add to that as Rune said earlier, kind of open up and see what really happens behind the scenes. So totally agree with what we shared. This is where some of the things we talked about begin to overlap. So storytelling goes throughout your journey. So as you're talking to investor, there's still another form of storytelling. The storytelling with data and information is not storytelling for the sake of storytelling. So this is where we talked about gathering data, your custom discovery. That helps you tell the story beyond your ideal stage. It helps you begin to bring it to life. It means a lot more when you say to an investor, I spoke to 100 customers and based upon my custom discovery, this is what I've learned. That's very different than I think this is a good product. So as part of that storytelling, you're integrating the data as you're learning more about your product. I also go back to alignment or milestones. So in addition to what they fund, which we mentioned, is also when they fund. So sometimes they are pre-CEC, they are series A. So depending on where you are in your funding cycle, that's when you want to align what you're trying to achieve with those funding sources. And to go even before a pre-CEC, we mentioned government funding. Why is that for grants? Why is that important? That's non-dilutive funding. That means that it won't be debt. It won't be equity. And it's a way to help fuel your business while you're trying to get the traction if you choose to go in front of investors. So bootstrapping is still a thing and it's still very, very much something that you can do if you choose not to go the investor route or definitely not early on. And then to last, the cost of money. Really understand it's a two-way street to me. You're looking at investors and they're looking at you. You want to make sure that you understand what you're getting into, but you also want to understand the cost of money. Sometimes it's not just the money they give. It's their experience, their expertise. Can they maybe introduce you to that next round of funding? And sometimes it may not be an investor. You might be able to get the resources you need particularly early on in stage one and two and even partially in stage three without having that investment. And then lastly, start those relationships prior to needing money. You want to start establishing those relationships before you need the money. That way, they know you begin to understand what's required and then you can align better. I mean, from the horse's mouth, here's an investor talking about what's important. I totally agree with what Don was saying. I think it's important to understand what stage you are in. Are you in the early stage idea, the proof of concept where non-delayative is better? You have some trickling revenue in and you would like some strategic support, then you want a strategic investor. I think that mapping one needs to do to sort of introspect objectively and see where you are. Again, goes to the storytelling point that Don brought up. Passion is really important even at this stage, but data and data-driven decision-making, showcasing that you have actually based this on some data and some experience is very important. What I want to color this discussion with again is think of this conversation with an investor, not transactionally, but as a relationship. Because I know these models that have been presented to you where you have to have an elevator page, etc. These are all important, but investment into your enterprise is not a simple transaction. It's a relationship building. There are many conversations that happen. Deeper dives that happen as you engage with the investor. Be ready for that. Yes, you have to waive them in the first 30 seconds, but it also takes a lot. It's a marathon after that. Like Don was saying, I would even put a number out there and say it takes six months. Plan for six months of runway from the beginning conversation of the elevator pitch to the money hitting your bank account. I would say that. Look at it as a transaction. Map it to your stage and then to Raushan's point, you have to be very clear about who are those serious investors and embark on the journey and cultivate them. I think that's very important. So keep saying the story as importantly. But the key point I want to leave all the animators with is that your investors are also a specialized kind of customer. So do your research on them. So do customer discovery of investors. Understand what value you're going to deliver them, what they want from you, what stage they come in and what stage they exit. People don't think of exits, but really at the bottom line is the investor thinks of a way to exit. Some of them may be pure impact like an incubator with grant, but still there is an exit point where we grow you to a particular stage and we want a particular level of impact delivered. So think about your customer as a investor as a customer and make sure you are communicating those values that you are giving to them like you would to a customer of your product or something like that. So along this journey, that means you have to really do your research on where investors have invested in, what are their investment thesis and mandates and look for the kind of company they're investing in and what is the kind of stage, be ready with those kind of answers and map them. And I'd pause there. I think that's the message I want to leave you with. Great. These are such important points about investment. So let's get a question from the just community that is really good. How do I ensure that my business model will actually work? Is that possible? Okay, I will take that. I would say lean experiments, lean experiments, lean experiments. The mantra is, I think, fail fast, fail often. That doesn't mean you close your company and go. It means you do a lean experiment, see if you fail, if not, integrate it into your learning and go. There are so many tools available. Business model canvas is a great, great one where you refine, refine, refine. Next is refine. You take it to your, let's say your friends and family customers first, check it out, propose a few models and see if that works.  Take a look at them and see if the extended family validates it. With each increasing circle of customers, your risk is higher, but then your experience is much greater and then you'll be much tested. So lean experiments is what I would start with. Maybe I should explain a little bit about lean experiments is to clearly formulate something about one aspect of your business model that you want to test. For example, does do all the product features really offer benefits to customers? That's one. The other thing is to say is payment potential. What is the price point? Whatever I'm selling, will they really pay money for that value? Then is a service model or a rental model or an outright buying better or a subscription or a freemium? These are all different kinds of pricing models. So I just plant these seeds for a discussion and I'll let the panelists take this further. So I'll pause here. Yeah, I would add to that. Particularly early on, don't try to sell your product when you are going to these family friends or extended or potential customer. They should not really know what you're trying to do. You are trying to see if you're solving a pain point. So that's part of that learning and bailing fast and asking questions. The other piece that I would reiterate is all that is good data. Sometimes again, I said earlier people say what no one is responding. That's data and it's good data and it helps you to pivot. If no one's responding, it really helps you to pivot your business model so that you can see if you're really solving a pain point. All right. Let's go to a question from Daniel who asks, what is the minimum number of board members or advisors a startup will need? I can give a feedback to this question. As much as possible, I think, because the mentors and the people in your board, the quality and the quantity is very important. As much as you can, you should add them. Don't make it short. Make it as wide as possible. I would add to that, everyone does not have to be a board member or advisor. So you have mentors, that's a category. You have advisors and you have board members and they each have a different role, even though those roles may overlap and integrate, but you do want to make sure you understand those roles. Typically, particularly early on when we're talking stage one or step one and two, even though you're looking for board members, you may or may not have board members at that point. And the moment you began taking investment and or board members, you also want to recognize that you are asking for input and sometimes you are giving up control. So it just depends on what your business is as well as back to those milestones and just understanding when to map and align all of those pieces. Excellent points. I just wanted to add that as Don rightly pointed out, there are directors in the board, there are advisors and there are mentors and each one has a different kind of an engagement with you. But if I want to go back to the original question about the board, I don't want to touch upon too much on the quantity, that's really your comfort level and there are maybe regulations dictating that five is a good number, but seven is as good as five, whatever. But what I want to say is, remember I mentioned odd numbers because it breaks ties easily, but what I want to say, talk about is the quality of the board. Board is a group that you go to for strategic direction and I want to emphasize that, you want a critical board, but not a board that's going to make life difficult for you.  So there may be a board member who has a spectacular resume, but if the chemistry is not there and the strategic value is not there, it becomes a liability as you progress. Now, typically investors sit on the board, they may not. So remember that subsequent investors look at the board and talk to the board and keep that in mind because a really fragmented board, if I may use that, where people are pointing in different directions, is a tough choice for an investor and actually it's actually an easy choice where people will just stay away from. So the thing to remember is the quality. And then I know I'm not, I don't know if there's a magic formula somebody has for a number of board members, but I want to touch up on one more thing about the board. We always go to, and this is a good learning for me and there's enough material out there. When we think of the board, we only think of them as deriving input from them, but there is also an output point of view and you have to clarify that to the board. So a lot of times board members have such high value and they're busy persons with so much experience and doing many other things. We forget to clarify our asks from the board, be it, hey, share my story, repost my LinkedIn post, or please connect me to this investor and being very specific in the asks would really be good. Even that leads to further discussion and understanding about your own operation sometimes, but I think quality of the board as in strategic input, giving you the proper directions, critiquing whatever you're presenting to them, but helping you along and not creating barriers, that's important. Second is clarifying the asks from the boards, not just inputs, but how you leverage them and their network to go further is important. Thank you. So here's another one. My ecosystem doesn't have a lot of investment resources. How can we reach out to other networks outside our country to find investors? One thing I will say, excuse me about that, is something we said earlier, look for investors who invest internationally. All investors don't invest internationally. So that's a key piece. That's different than just resources or support. That's where accelerators and incubators may play a role. Particularly now, one of the good things if I can say that about COVID it did open up access to things that sometimes we did not have access to because of locale. The virtual aspect has opened up opportunities to participate in accelerators, incubators, or find resources that are outside of the physical location of the founder. It's a tough one. If the ecosystem doesn't have an investment sentiment, then somebody has to build it and a startup is not the best place to do this. So Don's advice of look for an incubator even in an adjacent geography or a favorable geography where people can bring in is good. Now, there is another thing to do. If you have a really cool business model that works in another geography and there is an investor there, it's probably a good lean experiment to prove it in that. Then when you come back in and say, I really want to create impact in my own ecosystem, you will find people. I reiterate Don's point that COVID one of the good things is it has opened up A, many other channels of contacting investors, B, transformed investors' outlooks. They are looking at international investments. And more importantly, C, even in your own local ecosystem, more people are looking at impact investments. So you may be the rainmaker who goes in and starts building awareness. I know it's a tough, tall ask for an enterprise and innovated to do this. But it might be necessary to raise awareness saying, look, only impact investments will move this needle along. And it has worked in many of our programs where as incubator, we seeded companies in new states where there was not impact investment. People actually swarmed around them. And so this is known to happen. Maybe you're going to take your entrepreneurial spirit one step forward and start some awareness-building exercises. I just want to add, according to experience here in Tajikistan, if you don't find investors here, as Arun said, don't be afraid of moving to another country. I know there are much start-upers here who were not successful, not in the business model, but in finding the investors. They moved to Moscow, to Istanbul, to Dubai, to Almaty, and are successful there. So don't be afraid of moving even. Secondly, again, based on the experience here in Tajikistan, search the successful people of your community abroad. So I know the start-upers here who find good successful Tajiks in Russia and find investment from them. So this is also a good way of finding from abroad. But if we go to the classic ecosystem, go to venture funds of foreign countries, neighboring countries, go to accelerating programs, participate there. I know there was a start-up here in Hujan. He participated in accelerating program in Kazakhstan and found the investors there and already make exit, I think. And also this is just from the experience. And if you are not successful in your country, as I said, don't be afraid of moving to that country, to another country. Great. All right. So Philip asks, how do I know my product is actually unique and how unique does it have to be for investors to be interested in it? I can start off. I'm going to say it depends on the type of investor, right? In the Fs that we talked about, the three Fs, as you move further along, there are people that we call forensic investors. They'll get into the details of your accounts and see, and for them, the type of product doesn't matter.  So it goes back to my point about, think about your investor as a customer and do customer discovery and you will know who are those investors who invest in unique products. Now, more important than the uniqueness is the value that it delivers, right? A lot of our medtech products are not earth-shattering innovative technologies, especially in resource-limited settings and impact delivery. It is what I call a soft optimizer. It's innovation, right? It's taking a three or four ideas, packaging them and delivering a particular value to a base of pyramid segment and that's where success lies. So think of it as how well are you delivering value to your customer and that's what basically leads to revenues and that's what leads to investment. And so I would reframe that thinking to looking at do your homework on the investor and see what kind of an investor they are and what kind of products they invest in. And then go back and really refine and see what is the value that you're delivering. So I say that product design is not complete until cash exchange is hence or digital transaction happens and money hits your bank. What that means is somebody really sees value in what you're offering and is buying and is ready to part with their hardened cash so that they support you. And so I would go back to reframing that as is my product unique? Yes, but is it delivering value and are you able to scale and that's what the investor would look for. I'll pause here. I want to add to that. You brought a really good point of room. So investors only a piece of this puzzle, right? They are investing in something that they believe will scale. They want and expect sometimes 10 times what they're investing in. So it's really about the market for it and then your uniqueness, the value, where's the market for that? Is it scalable? And that's a big piece that sometimes we often underestimate that value or that particular piece of it when we're talking about investments. So investments are great. It's even better if I have people who are willing to pay for it, right? And if I have a lot of people willing to pay for then the rest of it will become a little bit not easy, but easier. Great. And this is another question from Nicole, a great question about the change happening in our world recently. So Nicole asks, has the best way to take advantage of incubators and accelerators changed recently? Are virtual programs still as effective? As an incubator guy, I'll take it. Yes. Yes, we actually pivoted to largely virtual programs. And investors are warming up to that too. Grantmakers are warming up to that too. And many of our grantors actually extended deadlines, pushed milestones to adjust for a virtual delivery. Are they still effective? Certain things like customer discovery, some aspects of it have suffered. But a lot of the successful startups actually dug in, leaned their teams. So put them on sort of a maintenance mode so that they don't burn up a lot of their resources. But actually listen to their customers. I'll give you an example in MacTep. One of our companies actually said, instead of saying, why don't you buy my product? We said, do customer discovery. So they changed the questions to, what can I help you with? What is the biggest headache you have during this COVID? And they found a product. They pivoted their manufacturing, they redesigned their manufacturing presence and started delivering without disclosing too much. They started making swabs for COVID tests instead of selling some meter stuff like that. And that became a great bottom line because they actually pivoted and listen to the advice we gave them about customer discovery and actually delivered some value to the customer. There's another company that is making some devices for screening a not so critical part. So they again critical health challenge. So they pivoted. They said, you know, I understand you cannot, this is not a priority now, but here is something we can make for you or help you with. Use a virtual platform for logistics. And then when you are ready, come back to us. And this came out of what we call a diagnostic panel, a solutioning session. And that session was held virtually. So yes, there is still value. Are they exactly like how they used to be? No, because the world has changed. But the appetite for riskier business models and innovation has gone up. And hence this virtual thing has been, we've been able to tune. We've been able to get a lot more experts on our panels internally to our solutioning panels. And they've been quite open about what challenges they are facing and why don't you try this and try that and all that. So that has happened. A conventional investment has gone down, but people are now more aware about supply chain, local supply chain and are open to building local supply chain. Not everything goes to three countries in the world or anything like that. And so I would pause there and say, yes, they are still effective, but I'd really like to hear from the investor on the panel and the consultant on the panel. Rapshaan, can we go to you and hear about the programs that 55 group has run? Have you successfully moved over to virtual? Yes, we had a very huge experience of developing our startup ecosystem here. We had a project startup stand. Now it's on pause. It's like a platform for startup ecosystem players in Central Asia, in stunt countries. We had the first ever done a startup cup here in Tajikistan for one million so many. And we were like one of the first players of developing all this ecosystem here. And then the incubator and accelerating programs that we launched. We have very much successful startups and also teams who are now working very successfully, I think. Great. I was just going to add, we have also a tech town. We have been very, very successful with moving what we used to do in person online. Of course it's an adjustment that you have to look at, how you're interacting, how you're delivering the content, how to keep people engaged, making sure that that is extremely relevant for them. But it is definitely something that we've been able to do and do successfully. All right. It looks like we are almost out of time. And before we go, we'd like to hear some final words of advice from our panelists regarding building and utilizing networks. So each one of you, please go ahead. Arun, you can have us go. Sure. So I would say that recent times have been very challenging for entrepreneurs. They've had to tell their story better. They've had to rethink their entire product or business model or even shut down operations and completely correct. But my suggestion, my advice, my passionate plea to them is don't give up. Name one successful innovator who has not had to pivot their thesis entirely. There is none. Everybody has gone through challenges. Having said that the real successful entrepreneurs have shined in this trying period are ones who went back to the network and listened and were open and said, you know what, if I have to throw out my entire set of assumptions out the window, I'm ready to do that. There are entrepreneur support organizations here, like that Tech Town, like Raushan's 55 group, like Willgrove, who are willing to guide you through the path if only you are open. So don't give up. Continue on your journey. If anything, impact is needed a lot more now in a post-COVID world than before. And investors and other support agencies are a lot more open to locally delivered impact than before. So please, please, please rethink, re-engage with anyone who had dismissed you before and try again. That's great advice. Totally agree. One of the quotes that I like to say is success is not final and failure is not fatal. So whether success or failure, you have to keep going and definitely engage in that ecosystem. There are hidden gems in most ecosystems. In order to find them, you have to talk. You have to meet people. You have to go to some events, you know, so that they will share, not because they're trying to hide, but because they just may not know that you're in the ecosystem. So please, please engage in your local ecosystem, find those hidden gems and keep going. I just want to say thank you for the super platform. It's very important to go back to your experience and think how it's useful for the community around.  Just find yourself. I'm talking from the professional point of view, from maybe psychological point of view. There is a Meyer-Briggs type indicator test. Please go through this test and realize who you are.    This test will show who you are. And when you realize and understand who you are from the professional point of view, it will be very easy for you to make a networking. For example, if the investor doesn't understand you, maybe he's an intuitive person. So go and show the values of your start-up. If he is a censoring person, show the facts that you, as Arun I think said, that you already talked with 100 customers. So this is very important.  There's very much tools how to understand who you are from the networking point of view. But I can advise this Meyer-Briggs type indicator. Google it and go through this test. And two main rules about the network. If you don't utilize it, if you don't use it, you will lose it. And the second, if you don't maintain it, you will lose it. Networking is active, but it's very liquid. If you don't use and maintain it, you will lose it. So be very careful with all the network that you have. Thank you. Wonderful advice. So thank you, Rob, Sean, Don and Arun for joining us and sharing your expertise and experiences. I also want to thank everyone viewing today, especially to the viewers around the globe for bringing entrepreneurs together to be part of this conversation. Even though today's program is over, we don't want the conversation about entrepreneurship to stop. Reach out to us on social media to continue your entrepreneurial journey. Also check back here on justnetwork.org for information about other upcoming just events, including programs like this. Thank you, everyone. Thank you. Goodbye. Bye. Thank you. Thank you.


Hello everybody hooded Cobra Commander 788 here and we are back with Cobra Convergence. We were talking with another Cobra Convergence presenter. This is Ken from Toy Connections. Even though I just introduced Ken from Toy Connections, I will ask Ken to introduce himself and say something about himself and what he does here on YouTube. Well first off, when you abbreviate the HCC 788 and don't go by the full name, I could just selectively read it as helmeted Cobra Commander 788. I think I've just given you an alternate alias and a troll account for myself. If I ever just want to sneak into the comments and I need a lot more free time, but sorry, you wanted me to introduce myself. So on top of that icebreaker, my name is Ken. I'm with the Toy Connections YouTube channel. This will be my second Cobra Convergence. Been a GI Joe fan my entire life. Been a fan of toys my whole life. I've been watching hooded Cobra Commander 788 channel ever since I needed to learn well just just to know stuff about GI Joe want to learn something about pterodrome. When I needed to assemble my flag. I went there so it's cool to be part of Cobra Convergence right now because it feels it's that big community collaborative event that I look forward to because of just the length of how long it takes over the summer it takes basically the entire month of July. As for me, I do a lot of like deep dive and history type of videos for a lot of toy franchises GI Joe and Transformers being one in one a on my channel. Big wrestling fan bit of a mo to guy. Star Wars you name it. I'm probably into it. I have a weekly podcast that I call TKO that Hans Chow named this toy connections online or TKO actually the last time, but he was there it was with Hans. Hans is a good friend. Hans is a good friend and we'll talk about him a little bit more later. Are you listening Hans are you are are you in the comments right now typing and all caps even though this is yeah pre recorded. So, yes. So, well, you said this is your second year. Can you remind everybody what you did last year for Cobra Convergence anybody who hasn't seen that may want to roll back and check it out. Yeah, so one of the patrons of my channel Mark Mark Olson who coincidentally I was just texting minutes before this this this interview started was he had 3D printed a three and three quarter inch gold Cobra throne that I really like it. It's his craftsmanship. So I made a video about it. I made a video just showing Sir Pentor on there Cobra Commander on there, whether or not Destro and Baroness take over whether the Crimson twins take over and I tried putting it in that empty room in the terror drill which I didn't do this last year in the video but I did it recently. And if you take out the base, the throne does fit in that. So that could be Sir Pentor's throne room that Python breaks into if you're trying to reenact the scene but that was that that that throne video is was last year's Cobra Convergence video. So yeah, that was last year you were in another one. Last year because I believe you joined me and a couple others with with Sergeant slaughter slaughterhouse. Yeah, the representing representing the slaughterhouse. You remember about that. I could tell everybody because I was there but I would like for you to recount regale us with with the other Cobra Convergence video that you were in. Yeah, I mean, I've been on Sergeant slaughter slaughterhouse quite a bit so if I recall correctly Steve from Joe Bird was on that one. I hope I'm not mixing two videos together but and we did talk about the GI Joe movie. Yes, from what I recall. And I remember saying that I wasn't a big fan of Cobra law. We did voices like yeah we did. We did a reading and I got to be I got to be Cobra commander that was exciting.  Yeah, with a pre recording on Zazel's Sergeant slaughter slaughterhouse channel than later on so technically I was in three Cobra Convergence videos last year. You were quite the veteran. That was to make up for CC five and CC four. All right, so yeah, you're, you're, you're now a full veteran. It will will let you know what the secret handshake is now. I'll see you later and say by the bell. You have one coming up you will you have one you should it should be available now as people see this for Cobra Convergence seven in 2023. And can you tell us a little bit about about what you've got presenting for us this year. The idea of GI Joe toy line in the year of 1983 was my choice this year for CC seven video. And I like the idea of covering the key toy lines that affected my life in a year by year basis you see some channels have done it. Michael Mercy's done it on on his channel as well. I've got, for example, when I look at the history of LJ and WWF wrestling superstar there's six years of that franchise I've covered four out of the six years, not necessarily in chronological order. I did a history of GI Joe 1982 last year with Chad, who I believe is participating this year on this year CC, and we did that collaboration together. And when I did GI Joe history 1983 I want to do it a lot sooner because there's 12 years worth of GI Joe so it's like, it's hard to cover all the years if what do you call it. If you don't do, I mean it might take me 20 years at this point to cover them is just if I did one in 2022 one in 2023, how am I going to get the whole series done, but shows like the toys that made us they do a great job of covering like a 45 minute episode to give a franchise review. I've watched that episode like 10 times, but I'd love to give like a deep dive recount of each year. Some years are better than others. 83 is one of the more standout stellar years. I've elected them this time to collaborate with Hans Chow. He's got a great voice over, not voice acting literal voice over from a script and everything. He's very good to collaborate with if he sent his lines, not only did they send them very quickly but like, he sent multiple takes with different inflections on each one and typical Hans detail oriented fashion and the couple people I have shown it to just to get just to get a feel for what they think they're like, he's good, bring him back and do more and by the way can do more videos like that so Yeah, and I know if anybody watches it I know it doesn't bug you but like, because at the time in development I wasn't sure if it was going to be my CC seven video even if I'd already been invited to CC seven. So I didn't shout out Cobra convergent in the video, but I will shout it out in the description and in the title but I also thought it was a good way to include Hans and Cobra convergent so I said, let's just let's just run with it let's just roll with it because we need to have Hans and as much as we can get him in I think there we go. I'm all for that. Yes. So 83. Now obviously you're going to share your thoughts on 1983 in your video, and we want everybody to go check that out. But just like an overview of fly by. What are some high level thoughts that you have about it. And then people can go check out your, your video for more information. Well, I mean, a couple months before I actually filmed the video was when I finally got the 83 headquarters. So put it that way like getting that covered in the video was something that I was like okay if I'm going to do this video. I don't want the raw footage of the 83 headquarters right because it's the first like plastic base headquarters. I know the missile command headquarters was made in in 82 but it's a cardboard base rather than a plastic base. Excuse me. Well, while I don't have every vehicle, you know Carson from 3D Joe's is great for sourcing information. You just credit the site. And but I the headquarters was important enough to me that I wanted to get that so as for an overview of the rest of 83, it did a lot to expand the cast you know the adding of the swivel arm just made for better playability as a kid which you all know. Right. You see some of the, some of them right here. Right. In fact, there's flight there's even flight suit scarlet from the sky striker which I do show my has lab sky striker and a couple of clips just because I don't have the original sky striker. But yeah, as as for highlights, I mean it's, what can I say like the first year introduces Gio to the world 83 is to me where is the launch off point, you know, it's a it's a big introduction in 82 and then a big launching take off point in fact, people ask me. You know where transformers and you've seen my channel Brian you know that's a hard choice for me that's like mom or dad. Right. Yeah, you know, I've only got one kid but that's like pick your favorite kid type of thing right and for me as a vintage toy line. I actually think Gio is the better line, vintage line. 82 you mentioned 82 that there were a lot of cost cutting measures and 82 lots of reused parts. It obviously was a huge success but 83 they, they actually introduced a lot that they just couldn't in 1982. You mentioned the full alarm but like more characters more interesting characters, more, you know, variety. That really was, you know, kind of when it sort of came into its own. 82.  But yeah, 83, 83. They really, they really took off they really hit their stride and the thing about about toys from back then is, you know, if they reused heads, they reuse torso, we didn't mind. Right. Like today, yeah, we see the, you know, whether it's classified or Marvel Legends they'll reuse parts and then they'll put webgear over top of it to make it look a little different different pain apps. But like with Joe's, like one figure look exactly like the other sometimes and they're facing everything. You know, but that was the innocence of toys at the time.  You weren't that detail oriented. Right. In fact, I released a video recently called the Renaissance era of toys which I consider as today's era and I consider that 80s era as the golden age, because to me a golden age, you're already at the summit. You just want to be there in perpetuity. Renaissance, you're striving for more. And in this artisan era that we live in, I feel it's a Renaissance, but the 80s with 83 arguably, well, I think 85, 86, 87 was more of a peak, but a lot of people think 83 was just as good if not better. To me, that's like the height of that golden period. Right. Because by 8990, Transformers and GI Joe are both going downhill, He-Man's out of the picture, they're paving way for Ninja Turtles.  So anyway, sorry. But I mean, that 83, though, whether you consider it to be like the pinnacle or the beginning of the ups, it's still like a steep curve. You know, that's, that is when, that's about when GI Joe started to take over the world. The animated series comic book was, had been going for a year by that point. I did want to ask you something you touched on, Transformers, but I wanted to see if you would talk to us about your other toy interests, because I know you have some. So what are some other toy lines that you are passionate about? Well, I've talked about Transformers, GI Joe wrestling and a little bit of Motu, but Star Wars mask, a little bit of Ninja Turtles, what else is around here. I have a couple of visionaries, have a few thundercats, but one thing I'm really into right now, I move my head. What do you see behind me that you wouldn't normally see in those real American hero collections? It looks like a 12 inch. It's the 12 inch action soldier with the combat attack set. And some of the field equipment set pieces are there as well but it's a, it is, it's also got the original fatigue cap not just the combat hat or combat helmet. So it's, it's a complete action soldier with a complete combat attack set and pieces from the field equipment set like that's. Okay, I'll tell you I'm going with this before I go all fan boy is that's where GI Joe started. It's not the Joe's I grew up with. In fact, I don't even think it's a Joe you grew up with I think you're a few years older than me, he didn't grow up with those Josie. Yeah, yeah, that was before my era. It was yeah, it was, it was before you so, but I love studying toy history. And I like, I respect where we came from, right. I'm going to try to point the camera way up there and this answers your question to some degree but it also puts a spin on on your question you see the optimist there. Yeah, that's not optimist. That's the diaclone. You remember the diaclone line of transformers. Yeah, that's the diaclone battle convoy that came before optimists. There's a textbook case there. If you remember Zora and screech from Masters of the Universe. I've got the big Jim Eagle, not complete just the bird. Right. Yeah, but I like to study the time before the golden age. Right, before the big properties got big before the deregulation of television standards. That's kind of what I'm into right now. Right, like I've got a 66 green beret upstairs. Right. That's not because reminds me of Falcon, even though Falcon came after but I'm Canadian I'm up here I'm not a military person Falcon was my introduction to the green beret. So the 66 green beret was like my predecessor right this action soldier. I think in theory Joe Colton was one of the action soldiers. Right, yeah. Yeah, may not be that action. But yeah, connect those two. I think Con he was one of the action soldiers who eventually became a green beret so he could be the green beret. Right. I know he looks like the adventure team commander but the adventure team commander has a different name so anyway we're getting really deep deep diving here hope you don't mind the, the, you know the 15 layers layers deep of nerdyness on on this. But like, I was looking at the 12 inch Joe in the dress marine outfit which is one of the less desirable sets. And a fraction of the price of that, and a fraction of the price of the green beret but why do I like it. 87 gung ho. Absolutely. Right.  And most people take that and look forward. I look forward forward forward. Now I want to look back and see where we came from. Now where we started. Right. There's a lot. There's a deep gold mine of history that can be uncovered there. I mean you can go back as far as you know the the 50s, the 40s, the 30s. I had a phase where I was collecting the promotional toys that were in like Dick Tracy radio shows in the 1930s. Products made for kids have been around for a while for a long time as long as there has been an entertainment medium. There has been an entrance entertainment tied to it. So that's fascinating. Now I know that we're we're cobra centric here. Yeah, but there was those early Joe's they didn't necessarily have a bad guy. Did they they had like the soldiers of the world. Yeah, yeah, exactly the the enemy bad guys but yeah, you could because they were from other nations you could make shift them into the villains. But G I Joe was your own head cannon back then, right I tried talking to fans from that era and it's always the same thing it's like those are the real G I Joe's and I'm like, you don't have Cobra. I got to argue like we came first we could stomp on your Joe's and looking at them yeah that that giant action action soldier can stomp on can stomp but to me G I Joe will always be a real American hero that predecessor I look at the same way as I look at the diaclone and micro change toy lines of of transformers like even the Macross Valkyrie that I have which gas is a big fan of that toys like oh my God you got a Macross Valkyrie in the box and I'm like yeah but to me that's that's the pre jet fire I've watched the Mac that one of the old Macross movies I forget the name of it shows how big a fan I am, but I get that because it's the pre jet fire, get the big Jim stuff like I still want a big Jim Tiger as the pre battle cat, but it's expensive, and I haven't come across one yet, but like I just love the history like so yes what else am I into other than the toy lines I'm into, I'm into like the early history era of action figure specifically but you're right there's toys from the 40s 50s 60s that point this action figures or function like action figures but they exist. They kind of filled the same role though in in I guess marketing to kids and tying, giving kids something that tied into something to like their favorite character or something like that. So, where where in your collecting sphere does Star Wars fit in because Star Wars has a niche in that in that history as well. Yeah, so I got into Star Wars a bit later than other people. I sometimes blame the year I was born but technically I was born before return of the Jedi so you know and I just didn't get a chance to grow up with Star Wars with a circle that I was in like by the time I was like a functioning human being in terms of you know being able to just understand stuff it was already like 1986 way past the Star Wars craze I'd hear about it. My introduction to Star Wars was the Muppet babies spoof on it. Right, that's where I learned most of my Star Wars initially until I was about that was a good one though that was a good one though until I was about 13 and somebody's like, we're watching this episode for a new hope right now and I've always called it episode for a new hope but sometimes I get a comment in my videos and live streams that we know that you're not a Gen X or because you call this a new hope you don't just call it Star Wars, Mr Millennial, that's what I get sometimes. So, yeah. Yeah, it is true. It wasn't technically called that at the when it was first introduced that's that's true. That's true but it hasn't been called that for a long time. Well, Transformers wasn't G wasn't G one for the longest time either. Yeah, right. That guy wasn't Joe Colton until until the 1990s so they right, right. Rep cons help. Yeah, all about it sometimes helps you helps you make sure you're on the same page and talking about the same thing. So, yeah, Cobra Convergence coming up. We've talked about your interest we've talked about what you've, what you've got coming up for Cobra Convergence now I know we're recording this fairly well in advance but do you have anything coming up on your channel anything you're talking about or working on in the future that you'd like to kind of drop a hint about to give people a little teaser or maybe an idea of why they should check you out. Yeah, I mean, I just did that Renaissance era of toys video at the time of this recording work technically in the spring even though this will air in the summertime. By the time this comes out I will have aired a history of the Transformers 1986 movie, which I was literally just working on tonight in the hours before this interview. And by the time this really, this is released, I will most likely have dropped my evolution of toys, the green beret video where I talk a little bit about the history of the green beret in the military, just through research and also other people's videos Wikipedia I don't I don't have direct. I don't have a direct line to military service but because I got the 66 green beret I wanted to look at the evolution in the toy line through the years, which is, you know, Lieutenant falcon and then the controversial head sculpt the Joe Colton figure that features basically the action soldier fatigues with the green beret hat which I found out in a hooded Cobra Commander 788 video. That was the case that he was the early release of the green beret with the action soldier fatigues and the green beret hats, and also just talking about just just basically showing all my green beret figures all my renditions the falcon. So guys, if you're if you're watching I forgot to mention Lancer so I'll mention him now Lancer in the call sign longboat line is is a green beret so this is my, this is my addendum mentioned to that. But yeah, that's a video that Gio fans will probably like that's why I'm taking a little extra time to talk about it because I know that Cobra convergence is Gio centric so yeah. I talked about this being kind of the Renaissance of toys and action figures. And you mentioned call sign longbow. We are in kind of an era where there are a lot of independent action figure lines coming out. Is that kind of in the Renaissance that you're referring to, because that is really happening now with some really cool people making some really cool things. Okay, if you if you get a chance to watch it because it just launched on my channel literally hours before like that was the most recent published video on my channel which is literally just hours ago. If you get a chance to watch it I will I exactly talk about that I mentioned that the fan has become the creator so for example, pixel Dan is now making books. Carson the taxes from the 3d Joseph making books and then operation recall I talked about the Renaissance of military figures whether it's six inch whether it's three and three quarter inch I talked about how you know we started a bit of a Renaissance in the early 2000s with Marvel legends because because that scale became really popular later on and that's where it started, but the four horsemen studios later on got their own original IP. And then you got animal warriors with the kingdom you got savage crucible so basically the Renaissance, boom, like the peak of the Renaissance is when the fan becomes the creator, you're in the artisan space now. You strive for more you strive for better. You're never happy.  Right, you're always striving for better. So, yeah, and I think we're in an era where you can do better I mean you're trading. Lower production runs and maybe a slightly higher cost per figure for the kind of figures that we could never have gotten. Look, over here the innocence of toys in the past is gone it's all about the detail. Now, right, detail innocence right here, right golden age Renaissance like that's just, it's right around me. Right though someone did ask me a loaded question today does that mean there was a dark ages in between and I'm like, I do think there was but it wasn't dark ages isn't a bad thing. Right it's dark ages like the middle ages kind of kind of thing which I think is that 90s era after our 80s and early 90s toys died off and before the launch of Marvel Legends. I think that was kind of that middle age. And the whole reason that started is because I said we were in a golden age now about a year ago and both Adam from Go Figure and Zazel from Slaughterhouse said no, no you're it's your golden age but it's not everybody else's and I'm like let me let me go through this with a fine tooth comb and I came back I came back with Renaissance. That's, I think that's fair. And nobody will hold you to it. It's, you know, you don't have to strain the metaphor beyond, you know, reason but I think that it makes sense as as you applied it here that dark ages that you mentioned or the medieval period. Obviously there, there are good toys made in every era, but there was that that time when there was a shift to electronics that was really becoming a thing. And then, but it was before we started seeing kind of like you said the resurgence of larger scale figures, more detailed figures. Maybe I'll make a video on it someday but like I think that that middle age period is kind of like when we got sergeant savage GI Joe extreme. You know, there's a few good things that came out of it like Beast Wars came out of it but that's that's from a character and continuity perspective I think the Beast Wars figures look really dated by today standards with the, you know, which is with just their aesthetic. Right, but that's around the time spawn came out because spawn was an outlier at that time we didn't really know what we're looking at when we saw spawn. Right, that's why I think it was created in the middle ages but it's responsible for the Renaissance is kind of how I look at it. Yeah, I remember spawn spawn was like the McFarland toys that was a little bit of a revolution at the time because it still it did straddle that era, when we were still getting, you know, your more standard action figures and that was just something totally different. Right, like even like the playmate Star Trek stuff right like they're not they're affordable because as much as everybody like Star Trek, those aren't the most popular collectible type of figures. Right, and I've been asked as well by people. Hopefully we're not too far off topic here but like, if I consider the golden age from like the start of Star Wars to like the end of GI Joe the reason for that is because Star Wars revolutionized things. GI Joe ended in 94 transformers ended a couple years earlier though generation two was ramping down power Rangers was kind of getting going so there was a change there. He man was long gone even new adventures that he man was long gone but I got asked the question what about that inception of GI Joe from 64 to 78 where you've got me goes world greatest greatest superheroes you've got Hot Wheels is kind of its own thing but you've got Fisher price adventure people and I'm like, here's the thing that was before the deregulation of children's television. So to me, I don't know what I would call that but I consider it something like a Genesis period that that makes sense. You know, Genesis, golden age, middle age Renaissance am I being too metaphorical here, but to me it makes sense. I mean it was where things got started I'm literally things got started there. That's why Genesis. Maybe it's too physical some trends that that carried on to other action figures, like me go carry that forward smaller scale, but they wanted the articulation, they wanted the costumes. So, yeah, this that was the Genesis of what eventually evolved into right into the golden age that that we experienced post Star Wars. Yeah, I can dig it, I can, I can get behind that. It's really really metaphorical and it's like there's nothing official like I can't authorize the these terms but when I talk to someone in a similar mindset they're like yeah that makes sense, you know, right. You know, there are these things like this these these metaphors are useful just for conceptualizing things. So, you know, you don't want to strain the metaphor too much but for just for the purpose of conceptualizing things I think that's not a not a bad idea. There you go and anything before that arrow is kind of like the prehistory period. Yeah, yeah, like like those, the Dick Tracy stuff that I was talking about. Yeah, some of this, some of the string puppet figures because I think there was there's some string puppets Superman type of figures. As well. Yeah. I mean it's interesting because there there is an evolution, but it's not just like a steady curve. There are moments where with what did you call it punctuated equal equilibrium where there's an event like Star Wars, or like GI Joe in 1964 that kind of shifts the entire industry.   You know, the Turians, you name it, there's so much out there, right because you were buried under the big three and Star Wars, and when the big three started to fizzle out you got turtles. And then in there you've got this wild card called real ghostbusters, you know what I mean, like, that's why it was so blissful at the time. It was blissful. Even though, like you said, they were kind of under the, the weight of the big three for a kid, then and a collector now. The toy companies were willing to take a chance on something like mask or or sectars or whatever and these things are out there. They're not as big as the big ones but they're still out there and we still have them so that's that's right so yeah, there you go. Well, we're about, we're about at the end of our time and I want to wrap up I want to thank you for being here. Do you have any parting words for the folks who are watching. I want to make sure everybody knows who you are and knows where to find you. And hopefully I didn't go too far off topic here because you'd like me to talk GI Joe you end up in Transformers you want me to talk Transformers you end up in wrestling. Anything we want to talk about so you can just find me on toy connections here toy connections one word on Instagram. I'm also on Twitter. I'm on Facebook. So, yeah, just hopefully you enjoy people enjoy my stuff. I'm going to keep cranking it out. And yeah, can I just keep participating as part of the community, and always just want to be one of the boys, you know, well, thank you for being in and I look forward to seeing what to do in the future. Thanks for having me. All right, thanks. And good night everyone and we'll see you again soon. Cobra.