Είμαι ο Κόλος Λαμμμπορής. Είμαι ο πρόσφυρδρος κομμάτις από το ΙΟΚ. Σήμερα θα σας παρακολουθήσω ένα σχήμα του ΙΟΚ. Αυτό το δίσκομα είναι στην συγγραμμή με τον Μερτοαραπίνης, ένας κομμάτις από το ΙΟΚ. Και από Μαζαχαρίας, ένα πρόσφυρδρος κομμάτις από την ίνστητα. Οπότε πρώτα θα σας δώσω την εξεκτική της σχέσης της Λοκογραμμίας. Πρώτα θα σας παρακολουθήσω την εξαιρετική δίσκομα στον επόμενο πρόσφυρδρο. Στην τρίτη εξαιρετική μου, θα συγχωρήσω την εξαιρετική μας και τελείωστοι δίσκομα στο επόμενο πρόσφυρδρο. Οπότε πρώτα, πώς είναι η Λοκογραμμία. Απ'ήρχομαι, το σημαίνιε το θες, μέχρι που η Λοκογραμμία εξαιρετικάδει τη δίσκομα με την κομμάτι της Εξαιρετική. Και το results είναι η δίσκομα. Ώστε, η Λοκογραμμία που διεξίδει τη κομμάτι να κατα erstmal στην κομμάτι, εξαιρετικάδει η δίσκομα και όλοι μπορεί να εξαιρετικάδει την δίσκομα για να συγχωρεθήσει το πρόσφυρδρος πρόσφυρδρο. But what happens if that voter doesn't actually provide the secret key? No one can actually retrieve the initial message, and then we have fairness issues, and specifically in self-telling protocols. So with time-lock encryption we can solve such difficulties, because again, let us consider the same scenario. Then someone encrypts the plaintext with an encryption algorithm, and instead of using a public key, it uses a specific time that this ciphertext should be open. The result is a ciphertext, and then after this time has been reached by using the decryption algorithm and time proof. A time proof is a proof that the time has been reached. Everyone can retrieve the initial message. There are certain types of time-lock encryption. The first one, it is called relativistic time, and it is based on computational puzzle. So everyone that solves a puzzle can actually retrieve the initial message. The second one is called the absolute time-lock encryption, where a witness naturally occurring from, example, the blockchain, and with an encryption witness-based scheme, someone can encrypt and actually decrypt the message. Finally, we have centralized time-lock encryption schemes, where a centralized authority releases time tokens, and acts as a secret key for decrypting messages on specific times. The Astrolabus, the construction that we actually provide in this work, is a relativistic time construction based on computational puzzle and specifically based on hash function that realizes our ideal functionality. Despite the fact that Astrolabus is a relativistic time, our ideal functionality captures all of these three types of time-lock encryption. So, I refer earlier about a time-proof, but what is a time-proof in a computational puzzle case? So, in the computational puzzle time-lock encryption schemes, we have a puzzle that needs to be solved in order for someone to be able to retrieve the initial message. This puzzle can be based in hash function or in arithmetic, for example, the repeating squaring problem. So, next, the party actually tries and solves the puzzle and obtains the solution. The solution is the time-proof, the proof that some computation has been done, and by providing the solution to the decryption algorithm, any party can actually retrieve the initial message. But ideally, in the concept of time-lock encryption, we want to create an asymmetry between the puzzle generation time and the puzzle solving time. So, ideally, the puzzle generation should be small and the puzzle solving should be big. Of course, there are cases and construction with these two times are equal, but are not so much of interest. So, the puzzle generation can be efficiently, can be done efficiently because the computations can be parallelized or there is a trapdoor information that can be used for speed up the computations. On the other hand, the puzzle solving is slower because no parallelization can be occurred or there is no trapdoor information or the entities that actually solves the puzzle are not aware of the trapdoor information. Now, I'm going to speak to you about the related work in the field of time-lock encryption. So, first, there are time-lock encryptions based on arithmetics. The first and the most well-known one, it is based on reverse at all. By that time, the author didn't provide any formal treatment and operates as follows. The initiator of the puzzle actually encrypts the message M with a secret key K by using a symmetric encryption scheme. In that case, IS. Next, the key K is hidden into a puzzle named CK. And specifically, on the key K, we add the A power 2 power T, module N. And because the initiator of the puzzle is aware of the factorization of N, can actually speed up the computations by computing first the E, which is equal to power T, module Phini, where Ph is the Euler function. After that, can compute the B, which is the A power E. And the resulting ciphertext is a tuple, where the first argument is the composite number N. The second one is the base A. The third is the difficulty of the puzzle T. The next one is the puzzle itself, CK. And the last one is the CM, which is the result of the IS encryption. Next, we have HUSB-based time lock encryption puzzles. This one is proposed by Mahmoud Yatoll. And it is based on sequential hushing. So we have a secret X0 until XN. And the puzzle itself is a tuple, where the first argument is the value X0. The second one is the HUS evaluation over the value X0. XOR, the second part of the secret, which is the value X1. And this goes on the same until the value XN. It works mentioning that this time lock puzzle C scheme was not intended for encryption, as you can see, because obviously semantic security does not hold, because the puzzle, the secret, is revealing in a progressive way. Neither composable security was provided. There are also time lock encryptions based on the witness encryption. And specifically, this one is proposed by Liu et al. And it's based on blockchain. So we have a statement, XT. In that case, the statement is that I know a blockchain of length T, a Genesis block G, and starting difficulty D. We have a witness of that statement, which is actually this blockchain. We have a relationship U, which is actually equals 1, if the WX is the witness for the statement X, and 0 if it's not. So if someone wants to encrypt a message M based on a statement XT, it uses the encryption algorithm, which is parametrized by our relationship U, and the result is a ciphertext CT. Next, in order to decrypt that message, someone used a decryption algorithm with that ciphertext and the witness for that statement. If indeed, this is the witness of that statement, the resulting value is the message M, else it is bottom. Unfortunately, the proposed construction is not efficient, there are lack of crypto libraries that actually implement it, and the authors didn't provide any composable security arguments. Another TLE construction is one that is based on time token release. Specifically, a trusted party releases type tokens on specific times. So for example, if we want to encrypt the message M and that message will be retrievable on Monday, we use the information Monday and the result is a ciphertext C. So the trusted party releases some tokens on Monday the blue one, on Wednesday the green one, on Friday the orange one. And by using the decryption algorithm with the blue token, in that case the Mondays, anyone can retrieve the message M. These constructions are based on public key infrastructure and unfortunately are centralized. So a natural generalization of time lock puzzles and time lock encryption in general are the verifiable delayed functions. So in a nutshell are time lock puzzles, but on top of that they provide a way to verify that the resulting solution is the correct one without resolving the puzzle. Most of these constructions are based on repeating squaring. Regarding the security definitions on time lock encryption, all of them are game-based definitions and specifically they assume in their thread model that the adversary operates in a concrete number of steps. In contrary, if we want to study the time lock encryption primitive in the UC framework in order to argue about the composability of our protocol, someone needs to study the adversary in an asymptotic way because this is the way the universal composable framework works. Another work in the same line with ours recently presented in Eurocrypt is TARDIS, a foundation of time lock puzzles in UC. The authors provide a UC definition of time lock puzzles, a construction based on a repeating squaring and also they prove that the construction satisfy a public verifiable notion based on a definition that they provide. Despite our similarities, there are fundamental differences between our works. The first one is regarding the modeling. So they assume that a message is revealed after specific numbers of computation has been done. We assume that a message is revealed in an epsilon time when a specific time has been reached. We believe that this captures more natural the concept of time lock encryption because a message is opened when a specific time has been reached rather than when some computations has been done. Another difference is regarding the generalization. The TARDIS functionality only captures time lock encryption schemes based on computational puzzles. So the TARDIS functionality cannot model centralized constructions or witness-based encryption constructions as we have referred. The second one is that their construction cannot model adversaries that possess an advantage on opening a message in comparison with the honest parties and specifically in witness-based encryption constructions which is based on blockchain, the one that I referred earlier. Because of the selfish mining, the adversary can construct a witness faster than the honest parties, and that gives it an advantage. TARDIS cannot model this. And the third one is that the construction that TARDIS provides is based both on the Radomorockel and the generic group model. In our case, our ideal functionality is more general because it's just, it's related in the absolute time rather in the computational time which means that it captures all of the mentioned time lock encryption scheme constructions. Also, we captures this kind of situation where the adversary possess an advantage with the leak function. Ideal the leak function is equal to the identity which means that the adversary doesn't possess any advantage in comparison with the honest parties. But there are also constructions which are very useful where the adversary possess an advantage over the honest parties. So we can capture them by parameterizing our ideal functionality with the leak function. And last, our construction, the Astrolabus, it is based only in the Radomorockel model. I'm going to present an attack on the public verifiability notion presented on TARDIS. So first, let us assume that we have a puzzle creator on the left, a puzzle designator on the right and we have the server that actually solves and provides the proof of correct computations to the designated party in the middle. So the initiator of the puzzle encrypt the message M along with the travel information and the result is a cypher taxi. It sends that cypher taxi both to the server and the designated party. The server solves the puzzle and obtains the solution solve and next, with that solution, encrypts the cypher taxi and obtains both the message M and the travel information. Then the server sends to the designated party the message M, the travel information and the solution solve and now the designated party with a verifying function can verify that indeed the solution was correct. But what happens in case that the server is malicious, which means that solves the puzzle with a solution decrypts the cypher text obtains the correct message and the correct travel information but instead of sending them it sends another message another travel information and another solution. Now the designated party when uses the verifying function in order to verify that the provided solution was correct the verification will fail so far so good but the problem now is which was the malicious party was the server or was the initiator of the puzzle and unfortunately this is something that the designated party cannot answer In the third part of my talk I'm going to speak about our research contribution So, first we define in the universal composable framework the concept of time lock encryption by using an ideal functionality and specifically the FTLE and we capture certain security properties the first one is the privacy we capture it because the simulator doesn't learn anything about the message but instead only learns the length of the message second that's related with the asymmetry between the puzzle creation and the puzzle solution that I refer earlier because encryption also takes some time and special in the concept of time lock encryption we manage to capture it by parameterize our ideal functionality with the function delay So, if delay is 0 it means that the encryption takes 0 rounds if it's 1 it means that it takes 1 round next is the correctness where if a ciphertext is obtained twice the functionality returns an error message as in the case of classical public encryption and finally we have our leak function where the simulator possess an advantage during encryption time over the honest parties like the bitcoin construction that I refer Ideally the leak function should be equal to the identity one which means that the simulator does not possess any advantage in comparison with the other parties when using certain encryption schemes Of course there are challenges on defining a puzzle based UCTLE protocol that realizes our ideal functionality the first challenge is related with the fact that all messages are eventually open and specifically the simulator receives the length of the message so the simulator needs to encrypt a ciphertext based on something that we don't know so for that reason the simulator just encrypts a fake message but in the concept of time lock encryption that message will eventually open after some time and then when that message opens it needs to be open to the real message to the correct one so how this is possible how the simulator can manage to encrypt a fake message and opening to the correct one is using a cryptographic primitive which is called non-committing encryption and it is based on the other moracri model the second challenge is that the concept of time lock encryption as I referred earlier it is based on the concrete time so in nature the time lock encryption operates in a concrete time but we need to capture the concept of time lock encryption in an asymptotic model so first we need to guarantee that the computation for solving the puzzle cannot be done locally because then a Turing machine can actually solve the puzzle any difficulty actually in just one round so for that reason we based our puzzle in the other moracri model and of course the access to the other moracri model should be restricted for that we are using the functionality wrapper so the extended time lock encryption construction that we use is as follows when when we want to encrypt a message M with difficulty T the resulting ciphertext is a table where the first argument is the result of the time lock encryption scheme we are using with R to be a random string T to be the difficulty the next argument is the random moracri call or the hash evaluation over the value R XOR with a message M here as you can see because the random moracri is programmable the simulator can equivocate and actually change the fake message to the real one this is why we made this one of the reasons we made this extension and the last argument is just the random moracri call on R concatenate the message M and this actually guarantees that our scheme is non malleable so this is a part of the actual protocol its party can done two queries both for puzzle creation and puzzle solving the puzzle creation queries can be polynomial many because they can be parallelized in contrast with the puzzle solving where it can be at most Q because they cannot parallelize next the ciphertext must broadcast it immediately because the puzzles needs to be solved and this actually makes the connection between the absolute time and the computational time because our ideal functionality captures the concept of time lock encryption in an absolute time but with our construction in our protocol that you see realize our functionality we use a computational time one so that's why the parties needs to receive immediately the resulting ciphertext its starting to solve it so that when the time comes the computation will be done and thus the message can be opened so in order to link the provided algorithm and the you see definition we define a game based definition which is called Q security Q security states that it is hard to reverse the challenge message before the time comes this captures only one wayness and not semantic security but with a equivocable extension in the random oracle that I refer earlier is enough for having a you see realization so we have our first theorem which states that if the provided time lock encryption algorithm satisfies our game based definition then we have a you see realization so now I'm going to present your strollers the idea behind the strollers is that we combine the time lock puzzle of Mahmoudi and specifically we hide in the time lock puzzle a key K as in the first argument of the table is the value X0 until the value Xn and in the last argument is the XOR of the last of these axes XORed with a key K so in order for someone to retrieve the key must actually compute in a sequential way all of these has evaluations like in Mahmoudi but instead of hiding the key K across all of the puzzle and retrieving a part of it each time we hide it at once in the final argument and secondly we use a symmetric key encryption scheme for example IS to hide the message M by using the key K like in reverse and the result is they are strollables as you can see it is based solely on the random miracle model in contrast with the reverse that is based both in the generic group model and the random miracle one it is public verifiable without the knowledge of any trapdoor information because the entity that actually solves the puzzle can provide all of the hash evaluation and any third party at once and in parallel can evaluate them and actually see if the solution is it matches also the puzzle generation doesn't require any knowledge of any trapdoor information because all of the computations can be parallelized and the time is proportional to the number of the CPU cores regarding the security of Astrolabus we have a theorem that states that Astrolabus satisfies the Q security so Astrolabus if it is included in the protocol that we refer earlier can you serialize our ideal functionality but what happens if we want to study the security of Astrolabus outside of the UC framework for example in a standalone setting is the Q security enough the answer is no because as I refer semantic security does not hold because Q security only stress the one way in property so for that reason we define an in-CPA style game based definition but in the time log setting and Astrolabus satisfies it in the last part of my talk I'm going to speak to you about our future directions so first is to improve the scalability of Astrolabus and specifically we have the puzzle generation which can be paralyzed and is proportional in the number of CPU cores based on an early benchmarking we found that for an average computer which possess 4 to 6 cores a 12 hour puzzle can be generated in 1 to 2 hours which is not practical so our idea is instead of using a CPU we can use a GPU where the number of cores are many more but the architecture and the way that GPU solves a problem it's way different so for that reason we need benchmarking regarding our second research direction when we actually create a time lock puzzle with Astrolabus we need to be sure that someone will not take advantage of the hardware acceleration and solve the puzzle faster for that reason we will enhance Astrolabus and make it memory hard which means that the CPU fetches data from RAM all the time because cannot predict which data is actually the correct one and this is expensive even for a dedicated hardware we are going to borrow ideas from the balloon passing paper so that we can predict more safely the correct parameters for the puzzle creation but more research needs to be done not for applying and enhance Astrolabus with this construction but also we need to be sure that the puzzle generation is efficient this is the reference and thank you for your attention


So, since the beta for Back for Blood dropped, I have seen the game receive some negative reviews. I mean loads of them. I myself have liked what I have experienced so far, but in regards to some people and what people are saying, they aint really wrong. Is Back for Blood good enough to be labelled Left for Dead 3? Well today guys, we get into it. Has it gone people? My name is DPJ and if you enjoyed the video leaving a like really helps out and if you like what you see I want to see more be sure to subscribe. So, the Back for Blood beta has been out a few days now. The open beta starts on the 12th of August. I myself have played the beta. I haven't butchered it as I do want to wait for the full game before I give my honest opinion on it. As judging the full game of the beta in my opinion just isn't fair, but in saying that, we learn a lot from the beta in terms of the way in which this game performs and feels. Now like I said, I have enjoyed what I have played so far and will be picking it up, but this isn't the case for many folks out there and for me it seems as though it is the majority of people who have played it too. I'm not saying more people hate the game than they do like it, it's just from what I've seen they are definitely louder. So the game itself, is it what we expected it to be? Us fighting through levels of zombies, basically a bloodbath of zombie killing action. It ticks the boxes there. It also feels like how I remember Left 4 Dead feeling, something I have never really liked with other zombie games, like Cod. This to me just feels better in a sense of it being more arcadey, how I remember Left 4 Dead. The game has like a card system which right now I haven't dug too deep into, as within the beta I don't feel it impacts like it will within the harder stages of the full game. So this I won't judge right now, but other than that that's what that for blood is. Now the reason people are being negative towards the game is because what, since 2009-2010 when Left 4 Dead 2 was released, we have had many many many amazing zombie games, some in my opinion even better than Left 4 Dead by a country mile. Although they are different kind of zombie games, they have taken that zombie killing madness to whole other levels. Games like Dead Island, dying light just to name a few. These are just incredible games, which take more or less most things Left 4 Dead offers and just evolves them up to newer and better levels. So in a way we've kind of been spoiled rotten with zombie games. Then going back to back for blood, yes it feels like Left 4 Dead which isn't a bad thing, but it is in reality levels below what we have experienced with zombie games since Left 4 Dead 2. And that's how people are judging it, even if they don't think they are. I personally when I remember Left 4 Dead, I remember struggling to a point of almost giving up, but because it was so addictive trying to just complete the game, just being crazy hectic playing with my brother. It was fun, crazy madness. It was also within a time where games as such were rare, nowadays these kind of games attend to a dozen, which offer that same form of excitement when playing with friends. So it isn't something we are missing. And although people think they miss Left 4 Dead, when they eventually play back for blood, which will no doubt be a better built game than Left 4 Dead ever was, it just won't feel it. Now I will add I'm going off the beta here only, and this is just my opinion on what I'm seeing. I personally like that for blood, and I will be playing the full game for sure. But will it fit the shoes of a Left 4 Dead experience like back in the day? I'm not sure it will. And on that note guys, we have come to the end of the video. If you guys enjoyed it, leaving a like really helps out, and hopefully guys I will see you on that next. One.


Are you ready to hear an update on Metroid Prime 4? I mean, it's a good update, but it's also an interesting update because based on what's happening, it's almost another double-edged sword. If you guys remember, I did a video some time ago about a dev update that's like a double-edged sword. It's really good, but also kind of worrisome. Here we are with another double-edged sword update on Metroid Prime 4. Before I get into that, I got to remind you, we got a couple big giveaways going on right now. One giveaway is for a Switch Lite with two second-place winners winning a Game of Choice. To enter that giveaway, go down into the description.  There'll be a laundry list of things you can do, including joining our Patreon at patreon.com. For as little as $1 a month, you do that, you get 15 entries into this giveaway in every giveaway we do, including a second giveaway we have going on through a gleam.io link down in the description. We are giving away three copies of Super Mario 3D All Stars. To enter that, hit that gleam.io link, join our Patreon, all that jazz. And I wish everyone luck. That's six winners. All the winners will be announced on October 1st. Alright, let's get into this. As you see here, I'm on NintendoLeft.com. I want to be on NintendoPrime.com. I just don't have this story up yet. For those of you who don't know, I do have a website, NintendoPrime.com, where I post Nintendo news. I just don't have this story up there yet. So here we are at NintendoLeft. And it says, RetroStudios has hired an interesting veteran to help steer Metroid Prime 4 development. Now, anytime RetroStudios hires people from Metroid Prime 4 and hires good people, people with lots of big games on their resume, that's typically a good sign. You want high quality developers working on Metroid Prime 4. But who this person is and what their job is, is a little bit worrisome. To hire someone for this position, I guess at this point, doesn't bode well for where the game is at. And maybe that's par for the course for RetroStudios. And we'll get into that here. So it says here, RetroStudios has hired veteran Dylan Job to aid the development of Metroid Prime 4. This is from Video Game Chronicles. It's the original source. It says, Job's resume is pretty impressive. During a 25-year career, he's worked on titles like Doom, Twisted Metal, Black, and Call of Duty Modern Warfare. He also served as a director on Sony's extremely ambitious PlayStation 3 title Warhawk. It was a very ambitious title. Job joined Retro earlier this year, and his role on Metroid Prime 4 is listed as director of development. Which means he's ultimately responsible for the titles schedule, scope, and product quality. As well as performance evaluations of team members and liaising between departments to meet goals. Job's arrival comes after Retro has also hired a host of other new talent, including, I can't say his names. I'll just say Bat, who worked on Call of Duty. Adod Morales, who worked on Battlefield Hardline. Brian Irk, who worked on Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Nicholas Wilson on Borderlands 3. Mark Capers on New Super Lucky's Tale. James Beach on Crisis 3 in the DC Universe Online. Stefan DePri on Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze, which is interesting because he already worked at Retro. I guess they re-hired him back. And then Kyle Hefley, who worked on Halo. These are all big names. But to focus on Job. So the thing is, his role as director of development. He's responsible for the title schedule, scope, product quality, and performance evaluations. Why would you need to hire someone to do that job if this game is really far in development? This is a beginning of development kind of job. So this is really good because he's good at what he does. He's good at running projects. Warhawk was actually a pretty decent game. He's really good at what he does. The issue isn't the quality of the hire. The issue is why do they need to hire someone for this position now? That's where I'm a little worried because they've supposedly been working on this game since 2018. We're in 2020. This is the kind of person you hire back in 2018, early 2019. We're in midway through 2020. Over midway through. Why are we hiring someone for this important of a position that handles the schedule, handles the scope, and the product quality? That is insane to hire someone at this point unless the game is having problems. And this is where we need to start being concerned about Metroid Prime 4.  We don't need to be worried about it. Give them a break. The game's not coming until 2022 anyways. Who cares? That's fine. That's fair. But Retro Studios hasn't made anything since Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze. And we, you. We have not seen a single product come out from this company in what, five, six years? Seven years? It's been a long time since this company has done anything. This is Nintendo's premier Western video game studio. We have seen nothing from them. We've heard rumors. We've heard that they were working on, say, a Star Fox racing game. Never actually saw that game. Don't know if it exists. Maybe it was canned or maybe it was set aside when they took over Metroid Prime 4. We heard that before the Star Fox racing game, they were working on a different game that ended up getting canceled because the progress on it did not go the way Nintendo was okay with. So for all we know, Nintendo has been dumping millions of dollars into development at Retro Studios. And they have nothing to show for it. Now, according to rumors and reports, Retro Studios is running this project now because they made a pitch to Nintendo that looked more impressive than what was happening at Bandai Namco. Bandai Namco supposedly took Metroid Prime 4, split it up between three different studios or four different studios that were doing different parts of the game and they were trying to bring it all together. And Nintendo didn't like, not only did they not like that development process, they didn't like what they were seeing from the end product. Which is why the pitch from Retro ended up being something Nintendo was willing to take seriously. And Retro Studios is the originating creator of Metroid Prime 1 through 3. So them working on Metroid Prime 4 actually makes sense. Now, why they weren't originally hired for it is probably because they were working on a different game. It's not as if Retro Studios was doing nothing until they got Metroid Prime 4. They were clearly working on other projects that have never seen and may never see the light of day and already spelled trouble for what a Nintendo's premier and really only western owned studios. Retro Studios has a reputation for making amazing games. But they haven't been able to make one in a long time. And here we are. Supposedly at least a year and a half minimum, if not two years into full development of Metroid Prime 4 and just now they are hiring a director of development. They are also recently this year hired all those other big names we previously mentioned. Why are all these hires happening now? Shouldn't Metroid Prime 4 be so deep into development at least halfway through that the primary people you would have in position to make key decisions on the direction of the game should they already be in place, should they have been in place at the very beginning of game development and to hire someone like this as awesome as he is and as much as I think Job is going to bring a lot of experience, a lot of know-how and an amazing direction to this game. I truly believe that Dylan Job is going to do an amazing job and going to ultimately produce a really really good Metroid Prime game in like 2024. Next-gen, well after Switch. It's not going to be an OG Switch game, not at this point. That's why I say it's kind of a double-edged sword because he's going to make an amazing product but it's almost like they're restarting the development again. That's the crazy thing. Hiring this kind of person is almost like resetting development all over again and this seems to be a running theme based on every report which is backed by the fact that we've seen nothing, not even a trailer from Retro Studios since the release of Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze on Wii U. It's supported by the fact that Retro Studios has given us nothing. So whether or not you want to believe rumors and reports, fact is we've seen nothing from Retro Studios and by the time we see this game might be a decade in between seeing something from Retro Studios. Retro Studios has major issues. I don't know why Nintendo can't seem to get them solved. I don't know what it is. Maybe it's because there's this western culture of making games doesn't clash with Nintendo's culture where Nintendo likes to have employees that stay, not these temporary contract employees, but all the western developers are used to working on smaller contracts. Hence why they hired back someone who worked on Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze. If this would have been at Nintendo, like someone who worked on a Zelda game, they would still be there because they're not just contract employees. They are full-time employees, salaried employees, whatever, that stay with the company until they don't want to be there anymore. That's not the case with Retro. They have guys rotating in and out all of the time. Most of the team that made Metroid Prime 1-3 is no longer at Retro Studios. So it's good to hire all these big-named people with all this experience. That's nothing but amazing news. But the sad part is that they need to hire these kind of people when they're supposed to be two years into development and ready to potentially give us a reveal trailer. So if you're looking forward to a new Metroid game, a new Metroid Prime game in some way, that doesn't mean we won't get some 2D Metroid game or something else. If you're looking forward to Metroid Prime 4, it sounds like we're still going to have to wait a long time. So I'm excited for the hire. I really am. Looking at his resume, some impressive stuff. Just like the last guy they hired that gave us a double-edged sword. So the double-edged sword here is great hire, but you shouldn't need this person right now. The fact that you do means the game's in trouble. So take that for what you will. I really hope that I'm wrong and we get much of a Prime 4 next year and all as well. Maybe this is just an additional hire because they wanted a second, third, fourth set of eyes in a similar position to look at things. But I don't think you hire... This isn't the kind of guy you hire as a second, third, fourth option. This is someone you hire as a primary option. So that's just me. Here's what I'm going to think down in the comments below. I hope for the best for Metroid Prime 4. I believe that Retro Studios, when this game finally does come out, it'll be a fantastic game. I just don't know when. I don't know what's wrong and why Retro can't get their act together. So thank you guys for tuning in. I am Tender Overjazz from Nintendo Prime. A little bit of a downer here on some news. But hey, you know, it is what it is. Let's move on to the next one.


What would you love to see for your brand? So would you love to see you guys being like NHL affiliated or MLB affiliated? What, you know, what does that look like? I think our answer isn't so much like we want to, you know, pioneer in the MLB or the NHL, the NFL. We do. I think at a higher level than that, we say we actually got it from Billy Horschel, who in an article with him said, you know, beam's going to be the Nike of wellness. This is Started to Storefront. Today's guests are Matt Lombardi and Kevin Moran, co-founders of Beam, a line of THC free CBD products. Beam was born from the aches and pains of athletic competition. You see, both Matt and Kevin were professional athletes, and though there are many rewarding aspects to that achievement, it is not without its drawbacks, namely the physical toll it takes on one's body. When the two of them concluded their professional careers, the CBD market was still in its infancy, but Matt and Kevin were quick to see the potential for CBD in both overall wellness and market growth potential. Looking back on their decision to start a CBD company, it seems like a no-brainer, but as you'll learn in this conversation, it has been far from easy. So listen in as we cover everything from busting all the myths and misconceptions about CBD, the trouble with opening a bank account for their business, and why they decided to shun the THC market. Now, back to the episode. Alright guys, welcome to the podcast. On today's show, we have the founders of Beam. Matt, tell us a little bit about your company and who you guys are. Yeah, thanks for having us. So I'm Matt and co-founder Kevin with me, and we are a wellness company, and at the high level, we're a wellness company really focused on helping people reimagine their path to health and wellness, and that all began about three years ago. We're trained for Boston Marathon together, and we, you know, even back dating a little bit more, Kevin and I both met at Boston College where Kevin played hockey, and then we're both fortunate to play profession for a number of years after. We both retired. We had different injuries that, you know, forced us out of sports a little bit sooner and earlier than they thought we would, and we were friends back in school. We weren't that close, but just we had a few classes and whatnot. We'd see each other in the weight room. But the fun part of the story is that we overlooked probably two or three years after we both retired, we overlapped an apartment building in Seaport of Boston, and it's funny just like instantly became best friends. Kevin was training for an Iron Man with his now wife at the time. I tried to jump in and hang with him in a few workouts. I'm not an endurance athlete, so it was pretty tough for me. But we just immediately bonded over our post sports, our passion for wellness and, you know, still trying to stay fit and active and all things health and wellness. And we decided to train for a marathon together. And it was during that that we started to just become interested and curious about CBD.  We just never really had a role in our lives because we used to get drug tests and things like that. And so I think, you know, roughly three years ago, like most consumers are just like, what is this stuff? Does it get you high? I don't understand how it can help with 50 different things. How can it help us sleep at the same time, you know, help you focus? So we just, we started to read a little bit more about it, really skeptical, you know, being athletes are pretty diligent about what we might put into a buyer or try and consume. And long story short, we both ended up, you know, I was an LA at the time, actually. So I was at Air One and I went in and I looked at the glass cabinet that has all these very medicinal medicine, looking things behind the cabinet. And Kevin, I think you ordered something online and that, and that we just, we both realized some really cool benefits from it, you know, relative to some chronic injuries. And Kevin had some chronic migraine issues. So we just realized, wow, this is, this is pretty profound, these benefits that it has. And not all products were giving us benefits and, you know, solutions to some of our pain points, but, you know, we went that. And again, you know, we just took a step back and we looked at the space and saw, you know, there's a really interesting opportunity going on in this category. You know, one, it's just you have just an emerging market. It's going to be maybe the one of the most popular health things in the next decade or so that really has a unique and beneficial way to help people be, live healthier lives. And at the same time, there's nothing happening in this athletic active lifestyle space. Like everything looks so medicinal and apothecary.  The names of these companies were kind of weird. There's very just cannabis related, obviously, because it's in the canvas category. But, you know, we thought there was a really interesting way to build a unique brand, you know, build innovative products, because everything also is very saturated in terms of tinctures and topicals and pet supplements and vapes and patches you put on your arms.  And so Veeam was born really out of this unique personal experience with it. And then, you know, just seeing a really big opportunity to do something different and pioneer something in the space. Kevin, if you want to fill in some gaps there. Just for context, what year was this when you either were at Erwan or even the seed existed around, hey, maybe this could become something. 20, this 2018, I think, or like early into 2018? 2018. This is like probably more back in 17. Okay. I'm sort of having some early discussions about it. Well, before we really thought we'd, you know, started business, but more just starting to be interested in it. Yeah, you were looking at it like it's something that's helping your recovery, obviously as professional athlete, that's something that you guys would spend a tremendous amount of time on. And this is a unique perspective. And I want to dig into this because it's obviously we talk about recovery all the time we had the Farragun founder on. And so percussive devices and, and basically recovery is a huge component for two people, both of you who had, I would imagine spent a tremendous amount of time doing all sorts of stuff, cold baths, stretching of all right, cryotherapy, maybe once you started testing or going down the path of CBD, was it something that was just immediately instant for both of you in terms of how you felt? Or did it take some time? Yes and no, I would say it's a really common misconception that CBD like you take it and all of a sudden like, you know, aha moment in your life. And I'd say over the course of like a couple of weeks, it was, you know, Matt as an example, say, hey, my knees and ankles are feeling better when we've been running so much. For me, Matt mentioned I had chronic migraines and it became like, Hey, I used to get these every once a month, it's been, it's been three months now and I haven't had one. So it was more something like that. I mean, the way CBD works, if you can get into probably a subsequent part of the conversation. No, to Matt's point, it's very closely related to its, its cousin, THC, the both cannabinoids, but works very differently. So yes and no, it's kind of a tough answer, but both. Yeah. Got it. Yeah. And I think that's important because I think there are people who think, oh, let me put this in my cocktail and I'm supposed to feel something immediately. There's a lot of places here in LA that they'll give you a couple of drops of the oil in a cocktail and I'm like, what's the point of that? I'm not sure what you're trying to achieve. Yeah. It's a good marketing strategy. Our, a lot of our thesis from the beginning was like, what kind of informed the branding and us getting to market was this is just so misunderstood. There's not an opportunity for a brand to create a really transparent, beautiful brand and also educate people. It just wasn't happening.  It's true. I think the hard part of this too is like, so you see an opportunity, you realize there's a lot of, let's call it bad products or bad marketing in the space. You're thinking maybe we can do something different at the same time. The barriers to entry in this market are zero in some ways, right? It's like, anyone can do it and so that poses, right? And then we have science, which plays an interesting role. Let's jump into kind of what we were just talking about, right? So give people a sense of what it does, why it works, what is the science, why does it take, I think it takes different for different people. I've also heard that, especially, I guess there are some combinations where some people do use THC and some people will feel that effect, but if you remove the THC, some people don't feel that. And I just want to jump into the science. I know a little bit, obviously not nearly as much as you guys, but would love to jump into, obviously you guys have done some research. So if you get deep fast, so I guess I'll start and... Yeah, let's do it. I'll start not deep and I'll trivialize it and we can kind of go from there. Where do we want to start? So cannabis, right? Hemp and marijuana are both part of the plant family of cannabis. Our CBD is extracted from the leaves and flowers of the hemp plant. The way CBD works, and again for any of the science buffs out there, I'm sure I'll get some messages, but this is not exactly how it works and I'm trivializing it, but think of your endocannabinoid system, which is a system in our body that it's pretty interesting. We didn't even know as humans that we had this in us until like the late 90s. It's called cannabinoid A, right? I think cannabinoid A, yeah. So think of that system like almost regulating everything going on in your body. I use to trivialize that I call think the brain-body connection, if you will. And over time, when we're stressed out, we've had tough workouts, whatever's going on in our life, that connection gets afraid and broken. And there's a lot of science now that's pointing to the fact that when that connection is messed up and those receptors aren't finding the way that they're supposed to, it leads to a lot of chronic issues, inflammation, stress, anxiety, insomnia. And what's really unique about CBD and what's been so profound about it is we've seen that high quality CBD has the exact same receptors in it that we have in our bodies. So think of them almost like these little spark plugs that are reigniting this broken system within your body and putting everything back together. The analogy we always use is think of it almost like a premium engine that you take throughout your day to bring your body back into balance. That's why there's so many profound issues and why it's so transformative to Matt's point, you know, could be the biggest wellness supplement of our decade or even of our lives. It's helping people with stress and anxiety, with chronic inflammation, it's helping them sleep deeper. It's all these things. So at the same time, when you're early on in an emerging market, you get, oh, this is snake oil, but really, it's just, it's bringing your body back into balance into the state of mind it should be. So that was like part science, part storytelling, but that's, that's like the, I mean, we can get a little bit deeper if you'd like. I mean, the thing I saw, so it's funny, we have a lot of experts on the podcast and somehow I've managed to learn from all of them and then regurgitate it. But the best example I saw, it was, I'm pretty sure as part of the research paper in the 90s. And it was, the example was, it was being given that today, if you, if you think about your body, just like a set of like light strings or something, right? And if this light string over on this, in this quadrant call it light string six is out, then we create a medicine. So a medical company comes and they say, oh, you look depressed. Okay, here's a little depressive, right? So let's click light six is for depression. Here's a drug, essentially that that makes you kind of numbs that area. But in that, there's a bunch of symptoms. And so light four or five and eight aren't feeling as good anymore, because the thing that you're trying to do to solve light six is problematic. And then let's say light one is now out. So now I'm taking another drug. And basically my, what ends up happening is my whole system, right? And so my whole brain, my whole human being this is, is being is off because I'm treating one thing, but I'm getting all these side effects. And effectively what CBD does, according to the research paper is it kind of helps the system, but it completely heals it without any of these negative symptoms. And so today, the market exists where problem A, take drug A, create problem CDEFG. And now by the time, you know, now I have like a supplement pack of multi not vitamins drugs just to get through the day. And it seems like CBD is, right? Is that accurate? That's, that's kind of the way to, yeah, okay. It's a cool analogy. Yeah, just, you know, think of your ECS is just like its response for keeping everything in balance and working to heal different, you know, whether it's inflammation, digestion, stress, sleep, all these different things. And so CBD helps your ECS, which is then helping like what you're describing as whole web of stuff. So that's why it can be, I don't want to call it like a fix all or cure all, but that's why it helps with such a menu of things or why you see so many benefits associated with it. Because it's, it's impacting something that is then impacting such a great like your operating system in a way. It's very confused view though, from an education perspective, there's all different types of CBD in the market that, you know, there would be, we can talk about too, which from a consumer perspective becomes really complicated in a space that there's no barriers to entry to your point. Let's do that. So if I, let's pretend that I decided to start a CBD company today. And so maybe I go on Alibaba or maybe I just Google like CBD oil and I just see stuff. Man, I don't even know if there's like a quality assessment, probably not, but how do you, how did you guys go in your process of getting to either high quality or high functioning, whatever it is, whatever the label is? I would say first, good luck getting a bank account. That was the first, that was the first thing that we were just blown away. How difficult it was just to get a simple business checking account. I mean, you could literally walk into a bank and set one of those up in five minutes, pretty much how to go to the ends of the earth. Now we don't have any banking issues given the size of our business and the capital and the funding and things like that that we have, but it was really, really difficult because we wanted to set everything up and do everything the right way. You can obviously not do that, but you run the risk of your assets getting frozen. We've seen these happen to companies in real time, when we're early stage and we still see it today. Did you guys have to go to Canada? No, we're lucky to find something domestically. We don't even share it still just because it was like a competitive advantage, but we literally just, we found a bank that had a big THC practice with dispensaries and things like that. And we were their first CBD company. THC is actually easier to set some of those basic business things up just because it's actually, there's just a big structure put in place. And if you want to open a dispensary or story, there's just like a very specific way you go about doing that CBD is just such a gray, open ended thing that there really wasn't a process in place. And so a lot of, you know, banks just weren't touching the category and pretty much still aren't. So the, to go back to your question, though, in terms of just like finding product and, you know, where it's sourced and all those things. So when we looked at the space and, you know, started reading and doing a lot of the diligence on it, it was really obvious that not all CBD is the same, meaning from how the plan has grown to what ends up in a bottle that a consumer, will consumer take home. And for us, we really wanted, again, because we were going to have this athletic focus and we understood athletes are so interested in trying it because recovery, sleeping, inflammation, like those are huge things for athletes to focus on and they're constantly looking for the edge and how could, if I can sleep better, if I recover faster from a workout, that's massive for them. But they're like, I'm not touching this stuff. Like I can't fail a drug test because my career's over. So for us, it was hugely, hugely important to find the right partner in process to take a set, you know, a very high quality product and to make that we could put our stamp for approval and say, like, you will not fail a drug test if you use beam. I would just say like, we have a lot of trade secrets in our process, but we go through a very diligent testing and filtration, all these different things that our standards in terms of like THC and other stuff in it is way below just what the industry standards are in terms of like, what can be in the product. So we go even below or what allows, you know, technically, you're allowed to have trace of THC and all these different things. We test it to a degree stronger to go way below those standards, just because we pretty much ride the whole brand on that in terms of the transparency and cleanliness of the products. When you say lower, you literally mean like the parts per million or something. You mean yeah, you mean you're getting parts per billion parts per billion ppbs. Yeah. Okay. So you don't mean lower like your standards are lower. You mean the trace. The standards are higher. The parts are higher. Yeah. Yeah. Got it. Got it. Yeah. It's interesting to me because and maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong. In my head, it's just a plan, right? So it's like how complicated can it be? But apparently it's really complicated for some reason. Why is that? Do people just start adding things to it? It's all about the process. Like I'm trying to think of a good analogy. I don't know.  It's getting a piece of steak at, you know, a really great steakhouse and getting a beef patty at McDonald's. Like it's just or like even like a hamburger bun to get at McDonald's. I mean, I think you can leave that thing out and it doesn't go bad for like years. Yeah. That is that actually is a good analogy. I mean, it's it's all beef, right? But like how did it get there? Where did it come from? How was it sourced? How was it processed? Who touched it? How did they touch it? All those things that just are just mind numbingly detailed. Yeah, that makes sense. I want to thank McDonald's as a sponsor at this time. Where's the beef? No. All right. So totally makes sense. What's the first step? So once you guys do all the research, you got your banking set up, all that's good. What is the first product that you guys did you focus on? What did you know you wanted to roll out a few products, a line of products? Or did you just want to hit one and get some testing? What was that first step? We didn't know much in the beginning. Yeah, there it really it wasn't so kind of like where we are today with our, we can talk more as we get into this, but you know, our family products today, the brand where it's at today, we kind of had I guess more like a startup mentality, you know, to use the term the MVP, like what's their most what's our minimal viable product? Like how can we get, you know, not slacking on anything from a brand and quality and all that stuff? Like how do we just get to market? Like especially in Boston, people really were skeptical about CBD, you know, versus the West Coast. So how do we just get some product out here and start talking to people without putting, you know, a ton of capital in this and just make sure that there's interest here, and then we can evolve and grow from there. So I'd say it started, we launched with an oil and a salve, which, you know, are more traditional products in the space, you know, those are also products would say they're much more saturated and easier find and common. But, you know, we created those it was really just like that was our, we thought our most intelligent way to launch beam, which was again, get some market feedback, talk to people, see if our brand resonates, our messaging, our story of being athletes. And then from there, we always had this idea that their insight or hunch that innovation, the space is going to be really important because it is so saturated to your point.  So we really have been harping and working towards this broad idea that one, what are the pain points really that people are experiencing?  It's more like I know this is healthy for me, it'll help me recover and make me healthier. The CBD, it's like I can't sleep, my, you know, my knees are killing my inflammation, pain, anxiety, stress, all these very acute things. We understood that people have these pain points. Like how are they communicating them? And then how do we go in a unique approach? And how do we be really thoughtful about what we put CBD into because people put it into sports bras. And I saw like, I think it was Carl's Jr. had a CBD hamburger, like there's a CBD going into everything cocktails and restaurants. So we have this approach that, you know, we have our four categories of families that we refer to as balance, performance, recovery and sleep. And within each of those families, how do we then build functional products to really meet those needs with those, you know, overlying family products are. And so we wanted just to test the market and then really lean into this functional 360 model of here's our approach on impacting your wellness. Yeah, it took a long time to get there, I think, and a lot of feedback from customers to get to those four categories. Yeah. And I'm just curious about this and this is kind of a deviation, but what was it like raising capital given this, this new market, right? Was it easy because in some, in some ways, you know who the players are, right? And they're committed. And so if I'm an investor in CBD, it's like, here I am. And there's only so many of us and we're kind of on this island. But at the same time, it's like, what was that process like for you guys? I think as counterintuitive as this might sound is we wanted to be in the cannabis space, but really far away from the cannabis space. So like we actually got away from people that were interested in investing in CBD from a fun perspective. What was great about obvious ventures who led our last round of funding, they shared a very similar thesis to us on with some education, this would become a mainstream lifestyle supplement. And the no THC thing. We really lean into that versus compared to a lot of other companies in the space. But raising money is just hard in general, I would say. A lot, you get a lot of no's and you got to be comfortable with that. But there's probably some people that, you know, it scared them off at the line that I always talk about it. It's like, you know, when you talk about the risk in the space, because of what it is, there's also more opportunity because we're in an emerging market that's not super saturated. So you can look at that from whatever lens you are. Yeah, I guess the way I look at it as like a startup person, it's, it's super exciting because you're, you're moving into, you're almost like a pirate, right? It's like, oh, here we are discovering a new land kind of a thing. And that's exciting. But at the same time, it's like you, the education of, of a new market, it takes so much time to educate people. And so as you guys think about that component, let's do two things.  It's a big part. And I would say in a couple of ways too, and Matt, you can elaborate on this, like a big part of it is, hey, read this blog. This is how the endocampinoid system works. This is what CBD is. This is how it's different than THC. And then there's doing it in a, in a not as a direct way where we bring in partners to the business, like Danica Patrick's and investor Billy Horst on the PGA tour or some other professional athletes where, you know, we part of our thesis is we believe that people trust and listen to people that they emulate. So when folks like that are helping us educate the brand and bring the product to market, that's education anyway, in kind of a different way. So really I'm, I think the majority of our marketing strategy to be candid is some very direct education, but really a 360 education with all these different kind of pillars of marketing, I would say. Some less obvious ways, but in our mind, like it's just getting the messaging across that this isn't going to get you high. We regulate our products these ways, all of those things. The question I have, so we had Theragun on and their strategy was basically like the football world kind of grabbed them and took them in no direction. Then we had a company called Art of Sport on, which Kobe Bryant was actually the co-founder of. And in that scenario, obviously having Kobe and they ended up getting James Harden. And basically in doing that, they got the entire NBA market. And so when I looked at that as an outsider, it was like, one seems like the product is leading the marketing. The other seems like these guys are sitting in a boardroom being like, we're not going to market until we have all the players. And I look at Theragun today and now they have Colin who just won, he just won a major. He's a golfer and they have athletes, they have tennis players. And so I think about it. And I don't, I'm not judging these strategies because I find them both incredibly fascinating, but also purposeful. And so when you guys think of, obviously you guys, Danica Patrick, you mentioned as an investor, but as you think about like, what would you love to see for your brand? So would you love to see you guys being like NHL affiliated or MLB affiliated? What, you know, what does that look like? Or how do you guys even think? And I know it's hard. I know it's a hard question, but it's something that it's, that's the, that's the hard part of startup. It's like, do you choose, do you not choose? How do you do it? I think, I mean, I think our answer isn't so much like we want to, you know, pioneer in the MLB or the NHL, the NFL. We do. And we're doing things to, to be in that position. But I think at a higher level in that we say, we actually got it from Billy Horschel, who, in an article with him said, you know, beam's going to be the Nike of wellness. And for us, why we love that is that when we think of, it's kind of merging what you were just describing. So, and I'll generalize this a little bit, but typically when you see a really good supplements that athletes use, you know, it's a, for the most part, generally speaking, you know, the people that make those are very scientific and the product is great, but they just completely miss the marketing on how to communicate that to the masses. So a lot of people just seem like, I'm not a professional athlete, so I probably don't need what that person's using. Or just like the packaging is, you know, not really resonating to a mass audience. And then the other side, again, generalizing for the most part is that a lot of great consumer brands that have mass appeal, aren't the highest quality products that like the best in the world that what they do use. So we've taken this approach of how do we build products that the 1% want to use and meet those demands, you know, again, around these idea of balance, recovery, sleep and performance. But then at the same time, how do we pair that and communicate it and package it and build the brand so that the mass audience still resonates and doesn't feel like, oh, that's way too intensive a product or brand for me because I'm not, I'm a yogi. So I don't, I'm not like a CrossFit athlete. I'm not the fittest person on earth. So that's how we thought about, I think what you're asking, which is we want to build products that the best in the world use because it's that's how high quality products are. And then at the same time, we want to be able to express that and have the masses resonate with our brand and create more of a mass appeal to it. Yeah, to be honest, this might sound like maybe cocky or overconfident, but like the NHL and the MLB are great. Like those would be tremendous for us. But like we think the brand can be can really be multifaceted to a lot of different groups of people. Yeah, no, I love that. And I think you're branding, right? And even the way the product looks actually speaks to that. It seems very it was very intense, all of that. 100%. It looks very friendly in nature, which is obviously purposeful. You guys chose that for a reason, right? You could have went with something that looked like, I don't know, Formula One oil. As a brand started to evolve, I think when we started, I was working full-time. I had a full-time job and that was doing in some other ventures as well. And it became really quickly apparent to us that it was solving really profound issues in people's lives, like migraines and sleep and all these big issues. And for us, it was like, how could we, we knew whatever we started, it needed to be like a big purpose behind, and obviously a profitable business when we started business. And it became quickly apparent that the products were just helping like the 1% athletes of the world. But there was really a lot of, like our both of our parents and you know, helping Matt's mom play with her arthritis, she could play with her granddaughter. And it was like, whoa, this is like a, there's a really massive opportunity here to that. And then I keep going back to Therragon, because in his setting, there was no science, right? And so when I had him on the podcast, he talked about how he created science. And now they have seven research papers done by the top institutions across the world around saying why this works. Do you guys feel like in some way you're literally creating science? Are you working with institutions? Are you doing any testing or that's probably early to say, but do you feel like you're like literally creating science in some way? We're creating citizen science, we call it, meaning it's the anecdotes from people who have the, you know, Kevin just used your migraine story. It's just, you know, Kevin's, I didn't placebo, not having migraines out of my, you know, I dealt with this for years and all of a sudden I don't have any more migraines, you know, these debilitating migraines. So we have thousands of stories like that, that with our brand, but also just in the category in general, but within our brand, we have so many stories that, you know, people are just correlating using bean products to having these benefits too. And sure, you could say like some of that can be placebo. I think there could probably be placebo with anything, but at the same time, like there's just enough anecdotal evidence, our citizen science, we call it that it just points to that we have efficacious products. This is something that I'm always interested in. I love asking people like you guys these questions because it's an opportunity to get the messaging out there. And so what are the myths that you guys are either always combating or the things that you've learned people like me, who are maybe who have never purchased a product, think about CBD and are just totally off on what are like three things, three myths that we can debunk right now about this.  If you have go, go with as many as you can. All CBD is the same. Okay. All CBD or CBD gets you high and it's THC that it's illegal to take it. What else better than this? Anything else? It makes you sleepy. And that because that's because again, like how we've implemented CBD and different functional things that aren't correlated to sleep. It's like, why, well, isn't this going to make me drowsy? I can't take this during the day. And again, going back to the end of cannabinoid system and how that works, it's not so much it makes you drowsy. There is science. If you took an absurd amount of CBD, it might have a drowsy effect, but it's not making you drowsy that helps you sleep. It's doing things to help your body do what it does to get to a deep state of sleep. I would say those like for me, the two of the main things again are just like, does it get me high? And is it going to make me sleepy? I would also add another one is like that it's that it's a myth, but also hard. I guess you could say this with any startup, like that it's really easy to start a CBD company. It's easy to start a really bad CBD company. It's like, well, you guys, of course, you're going well, you started a CBD company. You can go to the podcast, I'm sure, like it's easy to start a podcast. I get this question. I literally probably have one email or one, one everything, one email, one LinkedIn message, one Instagram a week about someone saying, Hey, I want to start a podcast. So what should I buy? And I'm like, your podcast has nothing to do with a microphone and, you know, recording. It's got everything to do with what's your topic. What are you, what are you like, even an expert in, if anything, and can you get enough guests to have a and facilitate a good conversation? Because the worst thing you could do is have a bring in like a monster guest and you don't even know how to talk into a microphone or how to read body language. And so yeah, totally, right? I get this all the time. And the part of me is, I go, but I go into supporter mode. I'm like, look, we're all on our own personal journey. So let me just be a fan and help them out. And we have like an email template at this point, basically being like, Oh, you want to know what's in it? Here's my email template. Boom. And it takes me a second to send it. But the reality is like they're asking the wrong question, right? Yeah, well said. Yeah, it was well said, which is great. I mean, that's why I love startup too, because it's like, I just go back to like, Oh, if I'm LeBron, it like, I look at LeBron James playing basketball and I'm like, this is what an easy game this is, right?  And so I'm like, Oh, I must be doing this so well that people think it's easy. And that's just the ego coming out and being like, Oh, we got this kind of a thing. That reminds me of a good story. I mean, not to take this sound like a super deep rabbit hole, but I forget who it was. Like, do you know where I'm going? This not like the Van Gogh story or whoever it was that the painter was. I forget who it was. I'll probably butcher the story a little bit, but he was in a cafe somewhere. Picasso. Picasso. Yeah. A little girl walked up to him and said, Hey, can you paint me a picture? And he painted a quick picture in 30 seconds to return and gave it to her. And he said, no, this is going to be however much it's going to cost, right? It's going to cost $10,000. And he said, wait, this, this costs like, this took you 30 seconds to do this. And he said, no, no, no, that's sucking my whole life and so like we, we talk about that a lot at the company of like from the outsider's perspective, looking in, it's like, oh my gosh, you guys just raised another round of funding or, you know, this product launch was so successful. Like that looks so easy. It's like, oh my gosh, like that was, that was not easy. But I don't know what reminded me of that. Like, all the good things. I'm like, it's your point, your podcast, being whatever it is, like, totally. It's always, that's a very common misconception. Yeah. And I'm also coming from a place of like helping, like we're literally just trying to inspire. I'm sure, I'm sure your product is all about helping people, right? And so the ethos of it is not fame or money making or whatever. It's like, I hope to inspire more entrepreneurs because people will hear your story and they'll be like, wow, these, these guys met, they were athletes, they realized this, this new market and they decided to dig in.  And now here you are, right? It's evolving. And we're still in it. We're still in it. We're in the arena. We're not somebody in the nose bleed seats, right? Yeah. We're like, we're in it and they're, we love that. Yeah. We're fortunate. We get to chat with a lot of entrepreneurs now where, who, where we were, you know, obviously not long ago. And it's great when people, oh, why do you must have been a biologist? Like, one of you must have come from a manufacturing background, right? This is like, we literally had no experience in cannabis, manufacturing, science, all these different things. It just became obsessed with all the different elements of our business. And so we love getting to chat with now, you know, people where we were, you know, about a year and a half, two years ago and share obviously all those learnings and hopefully inspire their journey. I think that's one of the, there's so many things, but that's one of the things, you know, I know we both really enjoy getting to do now. We did that too. And you're like, we're talking to some of the other founders trying to pick their brains and what we still do it. Yeah, I would say that. And then also having a team of people that like believe in the mission and kind of like the idea that we just like put on paper one day that's super inspiring, really cool. And just see them each like their own personal journeys, you know, within the company and then also just in life. And to work with them and to help, we talk a lot about when we hire people that it's, we want everybody to have a great financial outcome, right? For being to be a super successful, they make a lot of money. But at the same time, it's a failure really, if we walk away from this and, you know, people haven't had a good experience or they haven't conquered some fear in their life or they haven't grown as a person, that's really important to us too, from a cultural perspective. Yeah, no, that's awesome. I think a lot of people got that wrong. I can say this, especially in Silicon Valley, it's very much like, we're on the treadmill and we're going to go. And if you can't keep up, sorry, that's kind of the, and it's, it's just the, it's like a mindset out there. It's really different. It's hard. It is hard. Yeah. And we certainly push people very hard. I don't suggest that we're sure and get the most out of everybody, but it's in a way that's loving, I would say. Yeah, I say, I always think of support is the best currency, right? It's like, that's the thing. If you, if you give everybody that, everything else kind of takes care of itself. Just switch gears here. What has COVID been like for you guys? Obviously, people are now going to a grocery store like Irwan to buy products. And so are you guys like seeing a growth in certain markets, whether it's retail and, or what has it been like for you guys? It's been good. It's been, I mean, it's, You can be honest too. Yeah, I mean, I'll say it in the context of like, it's been good for us, but we're also self-aware enough to realize like how really, really, really fortunate we are. It's been really bad for a lot of people. So we don't take that lightly, how good it's been for us and how lucky we are. I mean, we have products that help people with stress, anxiety, sleep, and we're an entirely direct-to-consumer-based business right now. So when you look at COVID, we had a lot of good things going for us at the time. And also, I think just from a very macro perspective, people are realizing that their health and wellness isn't a trend. This is really important. And if they want to COVID or whatever's after COVID, just to have longevity in their life and happiness, they need to be happy, healthy, whole. And that we've obviously seen a successful uptake from that trend. So really early on, people are leaning really heavily into our sleep products because of issues like Mara, Chapel, and I guess, again, to bring it macro, we've seen a really big uptake in business the last six months. That's great. I'm excited to do that anyways, but we have kind of exceeded our expectations. And trust me, I've heard this of everyone we heard on the podcast. And this narrative that exists in the news to me is like, what is happening? Every time I talk to a founder, all of them are like, hey, we're killing it. And it's simple. It's because uncertain times came and they pivoted in the direction that they needed to.  So we went heavy into the grocery store. Right.  And you have to, it's all about survival. And those times you don't have a choice, you know, it's exactly right. Yeah, you're grabbing the closest life raft. Exactly. Yeah. And I'd say too, it wasn't just like COVID happened. And all of a sudden overnight, like people just started going to our website and buying beam. We made a very conscious decision to lean into these things and to really lean into like, how do we get people to become more aware about beam? If our hunch is that they're going to be spending money into these types of products right now.  And we have, I think by the time this comes out, but Baker Mayfield is an investor in beam. And we're doing something on the more personal brand side with him. So we've noticed a couple of examples, also creating products like we just launched focus a few weeks ago. And the idea was like, okay, we're also working from home. So we launched this really cool capsule called focus that pairs our CBD with new tropics and adaptogens to really give you a good mental boost again, because we're all just sitting at home and probably not maybe moving around or interacting as much other people. So, you know, we've leaned into it from a whole strategy side, like how do we thrive during this and not just try to like buckle up and hold on and what happens happens?   It's like, no. It's also funny too, like we were talking about a second ago, like, you might think, Oh, this is great. Like, you know, the company has that creates influx of demand, which is outside of your projections creates supply chain and logistical issues and inventory issues. So we went from like, how are we going to survive the first few weeks of COVID to Oh my gosh, this is actually probably a good thing in our business. How are we going to get more products faster? Right.  Yeah, it's funny because basically at some point you just don't celebrate anything. You're like, this is great. But there's a fire on the other side because of this thing. That's one of our biggest things we talked about between the two of us as founders and also with the team, we just, was that of an interview we were doing last week and Aaron on our team said, you know, when we raised our, we did a $5 million round back in September of last year and when that closed, everybody wanted to go out and you know, celebrate and all right, kind of like a stop train. You need to get better with that. That's for sure. I'm the same way. So I've done this in companies where I've just been really bad at celebrating the wins like awful, like obviously we raised money because that was the whole goal. We put a lot of energy into it. Why are we celebrating right? It's like, and then you realize your whole team really needs that excitement. And even if even in my marriage, even in my marriage with my wife, I'm just like, like yesterday she bought a new car. I'm like, let's go have dinner. Let's just, let's celebrate this thing. And you have to, you have to, even though it feels so unnatural for me personally, because of my whole mind just goes to the next thing, right? It's like, you guys are doing the calyx on the run rate.  And we hope, we hope we're right along the way a few times. So we don't have, right? And so it's like, you're not in a position because you're doing the calculus. It's a gift and a curse. Yeah, totally true. Well, look, what's next for you guys? You mentioned a new product. What are some of the things you can, you can tease? So we, so I just mentioned, I guess, going back and kind of talking in the sense that episode probably comes out will be, so on Monday is when we do more of like a deeper unveil of really leaning into these four categories of balance, performance, recovery, and sleep. And then again, within each of those, we have multiple different products that one, it's really easy for consumer customer. I have this pain point like, what is the best thing for me to get? It's very easy to look at and see based on the categories and functions. And so that's an exciting thing. Again, like even just talking about that, like, you know, we kind of lead into this, you know, really unveiling this cool beam brand evolution during COVID. And we launched focus last week. It's gone really well. We have some fun stuff happening in January, probably like too early to tease it. But again, really just expanding, you know, beam being a wellness company. However, that can be interpreted by like really leaning into like, how do we impact people's health and wellness? And from the start, we've always thought of being like beyond a CBD company, you know, what are the other unique ways that we can do that? And so we'll be getting into that early next year. Well said. Yeah, I'm like excited about this. It's not like this.  It does. Oh my goodness. That's awesome. Well, look, tell everyone where they can find you guys, where they can buy your products, all your socials, all that good stuff. Social is pretty simple. Just at beam. And then the website is www.beamtlc, like tenderlovingcare.com. I am at Kevin Moran 34 and Matt is at Matt Lombardi 24. Well, look, thank you guys for coming on the podcast and sharing your story. I'm very excited and literally on the edge of my seat for January.