Hello oscillators in here and welcome back to the series where we are taking a deep dive look into the operator modes on the Korg Ops 6. So far we've looked at the FM mode, the ring mod mode, and the filter mod mode and in this video we are going to finish up by taking a look at the remaining two modes which are the filter mode and wave folding. So in all of the previous modes that we've taken a look at we've had this carrier and modulator paradigm. In all of these cases you have a carrier which is the operator that you hear and then you have a modulator which feeds into that carrier and modulates some parameter so in frequency modulation it's the frequency of the carrier in the ring mod it's the amplitude and in the filter mod it's the filter cutoff of a built-in filter. These final two modes are different fundamentally because instead of the operator that sits above our carrier or call it a carrier for the moment or that's that naming probably isn't quite right, instead of that modulator altering something about the carrier what's really happening is that our operators which would normally be our carriers are now processing the the sound that's coming from the modulator that's sat above it. So let's take a really quick look at what we mean by that. So if we bring up operator one and we'll take a look at the settings here and we play nothing is happening and the reason that nothing is happening at this point is because it's operator two which is sat directly above it in our algorithm here which is going to be fed through operator one and be processed in some way. So if we bring up the level of operator two we start to hear some signal and then we can process operator two in spoiler alert the filter mode allows us to change the cutoff of a filter that's sat in operator one. In operator three we come across this one again if we bring it up we don't hear any sound because it's operator four which is feeding into it and as we bring that up we will hear some sound. So a fundamental difference in these two modes compared to the other three these modes are essentially additional processors that can be applied to operators within the algorithm that you're using. So these two operator modes in terms of the way that they process the operators that are sat above them they do very different things but they do share one parameter between them which is this osc mix setting here. So in the way that we currently have it set up with this osc mix turned all the way down if I turn up operator one and we don't have operator two turned up we don't hear any sound. What osc mix does is it additionally mixes in the oscillator for this operator pretty easy if we change the ratio to something different. So here we don't hear anything and as we turn up the osc mix we start to hear this operator's sound as well. Now it's important to note that this is not a wet dry mix you are mixing it in so it's not the case that we get to 50% and they're balanced evenly and then we go further we're only hearing one. If you want to get them balanced evenly what you need is to put your osc mix level up to full so they're both sounding at their full volume and this works exactly the same way on the way forward as well there's no difference. Okay let's actually talk about what these two modes do so we'll go back over to operator one which is currently our filter mode operator. I'll leave the oscillator mix down at the moment and what I'll do just because we're talking about a filter here is I'll maybe set operator two to a slightly more interesting. Let's go with the sort wave there we go. So in terms of the parameters that we have in the operator mode for filter it's quite similar to what we had for the filter mode in that we have a type which sets the various different types of filter and it's exactly the same set of types as with the filter mode if you've watched the previous video so that means we have low pass high pass band pass band reject which is always nice to have. We have then some other modelled high pass low pass band passes including the MS-20 high pass and low pass which can get quite nice and gritty. We then have a cutoff and resonance control the resonance does what you would expect. The cutoff is not the absolute cutoff so you can hear that obviously that's opening up the filter or closing up closing down the filter depending on what type of filter choice we have there but what's important to note is that the cutoff of a filter mode operator is intrinsically linked to the pitch that that operator would be playing. So if we set the resonance nice and high and just temporarily we'll set the waveform for operator 2 as white noise so that it doesn't have a pitch. So you can hear there that we've got one certain darkness of the filter there as we turn it down it gets darker and brighter up at the top because as they play across the keyboard as long as this operator is set in ratio mode which it currently is the frequency of this operator is going to be changing and therefore so is the filter cutoff. What that means is that if we set the resonance up nice and high so that we can do that nice sort of self oscillating filter and we can start to put pitch on to pitch sounds for example which is just a nice thing to do. In my previous video where we looked at the filter mode I went through all of the different types of filters so I won't do that in depth here but I will mention that there are as I said different models and they do have kind of different feels to them the MS21s in particular as you start to crank the resonance starts to properly self oscillate and get quite gritty and distorted which is a really really nice option to have especially when you're doing this kind of thing where we are imparting a pitch on a sound through the filter. So if you want to disable this filter tracking behavior I'll just set this back to a sawtooth. If you want to disable this filter tracking behavior that we were hearing what we need to do is go into the pitch menu here and change this from a ratio so it's following the keyboard to fixed and now I've got a nice sawtooth which has a particular darkness to it and if I want to change that flavor then all I need to do is change the frequency for this operator. So the important thing to remember with the filter mode is that for the purposes of the cutoff of the filter cutoff equals pitch basically. So that means if we want to create independent filter envelopes which are independent to the master filter which of course goes across all of the operators the way that we will do that is by playing a pitch envelope or pitch LFO if we want to create some whips. So here we are in the pitch menu and we've got our pitch set to fixed and if we want to create an independent filter movement on just this operator for example Varian LFO if we go up the depth here and that's completely filled independent to the main filter here which means we could also have different speeds on those two filters and get some interesting things happening. So we've got a slow filter movement and a faster one like that for example which is pretty cool and of course if you had multiple filter operator setup we could start to set up different modulations across all of them and you can get very very interesting evolving sounds. Similarly if we come back to the pitch menu for operator one here if I set the envelope generator so this is going to be envelope generator one and if we come into again this can be separate to the master filter as well so you have this ability to create pre-filtering on the way to the main filter. Honestly one of the reasons I think this is a nice one to have is is quite apart from having the movement here being able to shape something like a rich sawtooth wave before it hits the main filter if you want to have darker sounds mixed in with a brighter sawtooth sound. Having that kind of flexibility is really quite a nice thing so you could for example have a lower pitched lower pitched and darker sounding filter alongside a brighter higher pitched sound which wasn't getting filtered so we've got like a dark sawtooth and an unfiltered triangle going on there that's an incredibly flexible way that you can start using your your filtering. I think one of the most interesting things that you can do once you have this ability to have multiple operators all operating as filters is to start thinking about having multiple parallel filters which is always a really really nice thing to have so if we choose an algorithm and there's some towards the end 20 something I think 22 here we go so in algorithm 22 you have we'll turn down operators one and two but you have operator six as a as this upper one here and it's feeding into operators three four and five all at the same time so we can do things like setting up parallel filter banks so if we come across to our mode here we'll ignore one and two we'll set operator three to be filter and maybe set it to be a band pass filter and then we'll do the same on the next ones as well band pass filter and band pass filters now we have three band pass filters which are all being fed by a single operator okay and we will turn down the mix level for each of these so it's just that one feeding in here and then maybe if we come back if we go up to operator six here we'll set it a sawtooth again and maybe tune it down a little bit like that and now if we come into each of our filter operators that are all been fed by this single operator here and maybe give it a little bit of resonance and let's in fact let's set the pitch to be fixed and we'll do that on all of them and pitch to be fixed pitch to be fixed and then give it a bit more resonance give it a bit more resonance and then if we change the cutoffs of each of them which we just do here we can have these this sort of parallel filter bank which gets you all these cool vocal sounds for example you know what FM synth allows you to do the duke formant synthesis for example this does send to work with it with a lower pitched sawtooth wave that tends to be a good place to start for this kind of sound and then we can start modulating these stuff these different filters so we could go into the v-patch and maybe set each of the different cutoff rather the pitches it should be so operator three pitch and we can go to the next one and give it LFO 2 to operator 4 pitch that's really cool sounds that you were certainly not expect to to get from a an FM synth if you can stop your mouth from making shapes while you listen to a patch like this you are a stronger world synthesis than i this is just a lot of fun and another thing if we wanted to make this a bit more vocal we could perhaps on a couple of these just mix a bit of noise just a taste what we've got here essentially is setting up a filter bank and through the user algorithms for example you can set up a five band filter bank and then feed noise into it or whatever you want to do to to create really nice ghostly sounds great stuff so one other cool thing with the filter modes i'd like to highlight i'm just going to initialize the patch and let's come across to algorithm 5 or d the filters on the op 6 whether we're talking on the operators or within the master filter quite character and they do resonate quite nicely so if i bring up operator one and we'll put it into put it into filter mode turn the oscillator mix down and turn up operator two okay so if we take operator two and set it to fixed mode and then drop our ratio right down sorry our frequency right down obviously we're not going to really hear anything now because we're at lfo speed if then if you were looking at this on a scope you probably see some dc get moved around or whatever but we're basically not hearing anything if we set the wave to something which has hard edges however we might just about hear some clicks so let's just try um let's try square yeah there we go we can hear some clicks probably too fast so let's just drop this down a bit more okay um so the interesting thing with these filters and let's go to um let's try one of the band pass filters again because these will work nicely is if we turn up the resonance now you can ping the filters and they will resonate quite nicely and different modes will do different kind of different sort of flavors of resonance so all we're hearing now is the filter with its resonance being um cranked being pinged by an elephant essentially like like someone like hindback would would do perhaps he would enjoy this particular way of working with the synth and of course because by default with the filter if they're not um unfixed everything is going to be tracking the keyboard so we get these lovely sort of faux arpeggios all been driven by these lfos and if we um set the um lfo like if you like shape to uh one of the random so uh do i mean something hold i mean uh actually yeah that'll work noise sample and hold if we have it on sample and hold because it's a random voltage each time we get dynamics worked in there as well which i think is rather cool one thing to note with the cutoff control on the filter mode is that uh it is an offset in terms of semitones so if we want it to go up an octave we can make it go up exactly an octave because it tracks properly and you could do things like um duplicate this uh same idea on the next one along uh we use a different filter mode turn that oscillator mix down send that one down for a second uh again so in operator four we would set it to sample and hold uh in its pitch we would go fixed and turn it very low and come with the other one was set to let's try that and we could set uh set it to a different pitch here i think we've set these at the same speed haven't i two and two yeah set this at like um three instead and we could get poly rhythms and stuff happening in here oh go on let's add some reverb quickly so we can create all these interesting rhythmical organic pingy we could even take our master filter crank its resonance put another resonance set above it lovely stuff um lots of creative ways to use um the filter mode beyond just shaping some some ways by cutting out some frequencies okay let's talk about the wave folder mode then uh so operator three here is in wave folder mode we're not hearing anything at the moment because it's oscillator mix is turned to minimum if we raise the level of operator four we will hear the wave being pushed through it i'm just going to change operator four's wave shape to a triangle because um that's probably the easiest waveform to uh look at and understand what the wave folder is actually doing so what is the wave folder doing well it's going to fold the wave and uh it is thankfully very easy to um show you what that looks like on the uh opposite because we have the analyzer so let's come back down to operator three here this knob here b is going to be the gain of the wave folder and as we push more gain into the wave four folder we're going to see more folding so here is our wave here let's turn on the analyzer so we can see it nice triangle wave there now as we turn up the gain control what you'll see happens quite soon we get this little divot happening inside our wave shape here so where we used to have the peak of our wave that peak has been bent down back on itself and that is generating more harmonic content we can see here that we've got to the point where it's basically doubled the wave because we've pushed it so far up that it's inverted but what we've got there it is a effective doubling in frequency and if we push it harder we get that same thing happening at the other bits and we can hear that as we crank that gain we get that that lovely wave folding sound that lovely doubling of frequency and all of those intermediate points as those things are happening so the other control that's going to affect the wave folder is the bias control this one here that is on e what the bias control is going to do is it's going to push the waveform up or down depending on which way you turn the knob so that the folding is happening more on one end of the wave than the other so again if we come back into the analyze here and just give a little bit of gain so we can see that a little bit of divot happening inside our wave shape if we turn up the bias what you'll notice is that it gets deeper here and shallower here right and by changing this bias control it's going to have a massive change on what it sounds like when we up our gain so for example let's set our bias to zero and we do a quick sweep this kind of sounds like harmonics being added in let's put a bias maybe to about 13 percent if we do the same thing there's a sort of harsh and more metallic sound to it a different edge to the sound and between those two controls we can get different flavors of wave folding it's also worth noting that our gain control is affected by the level of the input as well so if we set our gain control up a little bit but turn our level down we get less folding because we're essentially reducing the overall gain and turning up the level here is what's going to get our folding happening so if we think about that in terms of getting time will change over time if we want to get that sort of classic wave folder sound what we want to do is think about the level envelope of the operator operator four which is feeding into our wave folder here so let's lower that sustain by changing our changing our envelope here we're going to get different time will change over time a filter in reverse because as the level goes up what we're doing is introducing more harmonics so if we think about our oscillator mix here on our wave folder as we turn that up and we're mixing in the oscillator sound from operator three that it's going to push our wave folder harder as well because there's overall more signal when you mix those two things together so by balancing the two different oscillators involved here the bias the gain we can get a range of different sounds great for harsh weird tweaky sounds now it is worth noting that because of the nature of those waves being sort of combined together you will get very interesting results if you detune some of those waves much different than just that sort of chorusing that you would expect there's a frequency interaction that's happening here because of the phase of the two waves whether they're high or low at any particular point it's going to alter how they're being folded so it's not just a case of getting that sort of chorusing that you expect you get this kind of beating that's happening here but that beating isn't just a pitch beating it's affecting the harmonic content of the sound as well there's no lfo going on here but we're getting this real interaction between the tuning of the the two waves that be mixed together here like really interesting harsh sounds it sounds almost like you would expect stuff coming from fm but it's a different kind of flavour and of course the different wave shapes are going to have different phase interactions as well which will again give you different flavours really cool vocal sounds there with the triangles in terms of the wave shapes that you will choose to to make use of with the wave folder rule of thumb basically is you want to choose a wave shape which has a slanted edge um let me uh demonstrate that if we just turn the and let's just refer to this patch for a second so we can just get back to a baseline here okay so if we go to operator four here a sine wave has nice slanted waves so when you um fold it we get those nice divots and troughs being introduced there similarly as we saw a triangle wave works really well for this as well a sawtooth wave has a slanted edge so that works pretty well and can i get to here keep going into the wrong operator there let's try that again so that's a pretty gnarly sound there because it's got something to work with on that slanted edge almost sync like sounds in that situation cool stuff um um uh on the other hand something like a square wave doesn't give you such interesting results generally speaking um because there's less slanted edge to work with this square wave as it happens has a bit of a slant at the top so this should still give us something but it's mostly just repeating the same trick over and over again right so there's some sort of interference points there but it's not really anything dreadfully interesting there because it hasn't got a nice slanted edge to work with triangles um uh sine sawtooth has that one slanted edge to work with as well um any wave shape that has those slanted edges will give you good results square waves not so much so it's worth noting on the wave folder and on the filter um but we'll talk about the wave folder here is is that it is a um operator mode that works quite happily on its own it doesn't need anything to feed it really um so if we just turn up operator three and as long as we have our oscillator mix turned up we can wave fold it without having anything feeding into it um one thing that i've come back to again and again though is pointing out how interesting it can be to apply lfo rate um modulation if you like or the the operator sat above the the carrier here being lfo rate instead so what's really interesting uh in the wave fold mode uh so if we just set uh the pitch of this one again we'll go fixed and go down to like four hertz or something like that um as we um turn up operator four and therefore let's start mixing it into the wave folder or we can hear actually and if we turn up the gain slightly we can hear this movement happening um let's slow that down even more so we can hear it a bit easier so let's look at the analyzer to see what that's doing it's massaging our wave in a really interesting way and slow it down to some more analyzer again see if we can work out what's happening here well it's not just moving the gain around but you can see it's actually changing the shape as we go as well uh so what's interesting here is if we come back into the mode for operator three and we tweak the bias uh we will hear and see actually be in the right place there that's went up a very similar thing going on right so by feeding an lfo rate um operator into the wave folder what you're going to be doing is very slowly adding a bunch of stuff as the wave goes high and then subtracting a load of stuff as the wave goes low so what you're doing essentially is um applying a bias that's all the bias is doing it's pushing the wave up and it's pulling the wave down so by using an lfo rate um operator feeding into the wave folder what you are essentially doing is independently modulating the bias control uh of the operator you're feeling into and of course we can do all sorts of interesting things with um different um different shapes and get different sort of rhythms being pulled out within our sound pretty cool stuff so another thing i think is pretty cool when you are dealing with um pretend the oscillator mix back up here a wave folder operator that's basically doing its own thing providing its own fun if you like here is uh if we go to the operator that's feeding it and maybe use a fixed ratio instead because you don't so much hear the fact that there is a fixed um uh frequency in here instead what you get is all those interactions again and by changing the frequency here we get sort of almost like ring mod type stuff happening in with it but like sort of wave folding ring mod and much like with the ring mod and the filter mod and everything else you can kind of tune this effect so that it works in the key that we're playing in and kind of get these bell tones like i say another flavor of ring mod and changing that bias is going to give us different feels as well which is pretty cool so anyway um i hope that was interesting and useful if it was then as always it would be much appreciated if you could hit that thumbs up button make sure you subscribe to the channel uh because if you are here looking at op 6 stuff there is some more op 6 stuff to come let me tell you um so we've looked at all of the um operator modes here plan for the next video is to go in and talk about the user algorithms because i think this is a really really exciting aspect of the synth um especially as it allows you to think a little bit about creating entire synth architectures inside the op 6 which we'll get to um but i think it is a massively powerful element to this synth from a sound design perspective so i'm really really excited to start exploring that on the channel now that i've discussed all of the different operator modes uh on the op 6 i also feel a little bit more inclined to um do some more patch building videos because i didn't really want to skim over what the different operator modes were doing as i was building the patches i've got some ideas but if there are some particular types or flavors of patches that you'd like to see um featured on the channel then by all means please let me know down in the comments what you would like to see i am more than happy to take suggestions other than that thank you so much for joining me as always take care until next time bye bye


Today I have the pleasure of speaking with Chris Dobbin from Nova Leap Health Corp. How are you today? Great Tracy. Thanks very much for having me. You know Chris you have one of the best performing stocks I was just explaining to my associate In 2017 you had what a million in revenue and you've jumped to over 10 million in one year. Is that correct? That's right. Yeah, exactly in you know, both close to 900 percent You know improvement in revenue, which we report in US dollars So, yeah, I think I read in your most recent fourth quarter results in 877% left Can you tell us a little bit about the highlights from this fourth quarter because obviously Investor Intel audience members are going what from 1 to 10 million. That's that's impressive Yeah, I mean it really goes back to our strategy Tracy to be perfectly honest I think we were pretty pretty open with the market in terms of what our plans were detail in 2017 We said that we'd do up to four acquisitions in 2018. We ended up doing five You know our operations are performing well in the US. We made one acquisition in Canada in Halifax last June And we've come back out and said we plan on doing up to four acquisitions again in 2019 so a lot of our You know revenue has been driven by the acquisitions, but we've been making we've made some really really good acquisitions Which will lead to some long-term growth for the company So if you did it ten times last year, what do we expect for 2019? Are you gonna do it again? Well ten times might be a bit aggressive, but we've certainly indicated the market that we plan on growing by by at least You know 50 to 100% And and that's not really from the the 10 million dollar US or revenue that we reported in in 2018 That's really has to do more with our annualized revenue run right now, which is You know, which is north of 15 million and and with the latest acquisition that we've just announced Yet to close but we're getting close You know, we'll be close to 18 million dollars US and revenue So of course for those of you out there and investor Intel may not Understand or have never heard about the Nova Leap health story before Chris Can you give us kind of an overview about what the company is the vision because I mean people like me we fall in love with your story? Thank you Sure, I mean I'm happy to talk to the story anytime obviously I mean, you know, we're we are in the home care services industry And so we we help people usually seniors within their home a lot of a lot of our client base has some form of dementia But we're really after a demographic that is, you know, you know fast-growing Obviously, it's you know, sort of the biggest change in our our lifetime from a demographic perspective And we have people that have some form of you know, long-term or chronic condition that need Assistance with in their home and we provide it and so, you know our plans since we started Nova Leap Health Corp Was always to build a very large multinational company You know, we have a fairly aggressive Acquisition strategy and growth plan we're ahead of where we thought we'd be after a couple years You know, I had a 10-year plan when I started this company at the very least for two years into that We've accomplished a lot but for someone that's new to our story. I think what they need to look at is Okay, here's a company. Here's a management team that's gone. They said what they're gonna do to the market in advance of sort of the You know a year in advance. They've exceeded what they said they would do They're generating real revenues from a real business. They're collecting those revenues They're buying businesses at a reasonable multiple which is attractive for a public trade company And they're delivering on a plan So I think from my perspective as as you know, one of the two largest shareholders in our company Obviously, I'm very bullish on our strategy. It's gone very very well to date We have a number of terrific people throughout the organization. We have a great client base We've been very focused geographically particularly in New England and and now in Nova Scotia So we're really really pleased with where we're going and I think From an investor perspective, I would think that this is a pretty good entry point Just given the fact we just produced record results for our company and and quite honestly We're just getting started So Chris what we're doing right now is we're trying to encourage people out and investor Intel land to send us questions They'd like to ask you and prior to this conversation We sent out an e-blast. We asked everyone to give us some input on Nova Leap health and what they'd like to ask you And here was one of the questions we got actually we got a lot of Accommodations for you that you're out performing what they expected But that what they really wanted to know is what you're doing next Can you tell us what you're doing immediately say in the next quarter or two? Yeah, so so, you know, I'll step back to say We did announce that we'll do up to four acquisitions in in 2019 We're we're very confident we can achieve that We've just made one announcement that we expect to close by the end of April And so that's an acquisition of an Eastern Canadian business we've been very focused on on two things one is organic growth and ensuring that You know the companies that we currently have under ownership or perform really really well And we're quite happy with a performance to date We still think we have a few improvements, but but really really happy with the people we have in place So that's the one is on organic growth Which is very important to us and two will continue to make acquisitions which will still be or still form the bulk of our Growth certainly in a short to midterm So Chris, thank you so much for the update as always. It's a pleasure Thanks very much Trace. I appreciate it. Have me


Hello, I'm Faisal Sohail, managing director of Presidio Partners, a venture capital firm based in San Francisco, California. I will be your moderator for today's global innovation through science and technology or just tech-connect conversation on knowing when to seek capital and when to bootstrap. I would like to welcome you, the viewers from around the world, who have joined us today to discuss one of the most important topics to any entrepreneur. How to finance your venture? The expert panel here today will discuss what you should consider when looking for the best option for your specific startup, and we look forward to answering your questions live. The just tech-connects are led by the US Department of State and implemented by the University of Texas at Austin's IC Squared Institute. Just empowers young innovators through networking, skill building, mentoring, and access to financing through its various programs. Today we are delighted to host a live web chat connecting you with the experts on financing startups. Since its inception, just tech-connects have reached tens of thousands of viewers from more than 79 countries around the globe and discuss topics important to science and technology entrepreneurs. You can learn more about our programs and partners at our website www.gistnetwork.org. Please use the hashtag just tech-connect when tweeting about the event today. We are also collecting your questions to ask our panelists. Please start sending us questions now and throughout the program by typing in the chat space beside the video or via Twitter. I would especially like to thank those of you hosting viewing groups and encourage you to submit your questions and live photos early for your chance to be featured during the program. Now let me introduce our panel of experts. First a warm welcome to Ingrid, Ingrid Vanderbilt, the founder and chairwoman of Empowering a Billion Women by 2020, Vanderbilt Global Investments, and Ingrid Vanderbilt LLC. Ingrid is an experienced angel investor and was the entrepreneur and resident for Dell Inc from 2011 to 2014 where she oversaw entrepreneurial initiatives worldwide and founded the Dell Innovators Credit Fund, Dell Founders Club, and Dell Center for Entrepreneurs. Welcome Ingrid. Thank you. Hello. Next I would like to welcome Dale Nervaney Pfeiffer, the founder of Good World. Dale's company is evolutionizing charity. Her hashtag, donate technology allows individuals to easily donate using social media. She bootstrapped her company from two and a half years before successfully securing capital from both venture funds and angel investor. She's from New Zealand, not living here in the United States. Thank you both of us, both of you for joining us for this great conversation on how to raise money for your fund. Thank you for having us. So while we wait for questions to come in from the audience, I'd like to kick start the discussion. Dale first asking you a question about there's many ways of raising money for your company from venture capital to seed funding to angel to bootstrapping. Could you describe to us what exactly bootstrapping your venture means in your experience? Absolutely. So to bootstrap your company means to found and build your company with either your own personal finances or money that you can create, the money that you can make of early operating revenue. So what that really means is you build and you define an idea to get as far along as you can before you seek for venture capital. And often what that means is having a part-time job or just cutting costs as much as possible. So in some ways you can consider it that you become your own investor. Great. Thank you so much for that answer. So in contrast to that Ingrid, you've been a very successful angel investor. So how would you contrast angel investing to bootstrapping? Well, thank you for the question and it's great to be here with everybody today. Great to see all of you out there. What I would say about angel investing and where it contrasts to bootstrapping is I often think about a comment that a famous angel investor and a venture investor here in the States, Guy Kawasaki, used to say and that is he talks about investors really want to see that what we say here in the United States is the dogs eat the dog food. So basically what an angel investor is looking for is the more that you can really prove out your idea, if you will, by bootstrapping it, by bringing in those early customers. Angel investors are more likely to get involved in your venture, certainly. But what it also gives you if you're able to bootstrap before going to angel investors as it allows you to control bigger ownership of your company. Because what an angel investor will do is angel investors tend to be wealthy individuals who most angel investors that I know in the tech sector have made their money in technology and they're now looking to pay it forward. So they will get involved with a new entrepreneur at any stage of the venture early on, pre-revenue certainly, but again if they can come in, if we can come in as angel investors as revenue is already starting to show, you're going to be able to negotiate a better rate on the investment for you. Great, thank you so much. So there's a big contrast between bootstrapping and angel investor. I think now we will start to get the questions from different embassies around the globe. So the first one is from Embassy from Avigia. How effective is crowdfunding in helping startups? So this is a question about another form of funding which is crowdfunding as opposed to either angel or bootstrapping. So Dale, perhaps you want to talk a bit about crowdfunding? Absolutely, and it's a fantastic question and one that's very ripe here in the United States is the job, the regulations and guidelines for the jobs act that just passed that allowed crowdfunding here in the US has just come into action. So you can actually crowdfund ventures now. And a lot of people, there's equity-based crowdfunding and ventures. There's a lot of different ways you can do it. A lot of people run Kickstarter campaigns. And I think that is a really, really great way to crowdfund a venture because quite often what you're doing is you're going out and doing a lot of the PR up front and getting a lot of expressions of interest in terms of people actually buying a product up front. So it's a really, really great way to test the concept and bring it to market quickly. And then there's other platforms which are now raising up crowdfunding as a popular one where you can actually go and you can put your offering up and equity, VCs and angels, proper equity-based people can come in and fund. And it's new and particularly this equity-based crowdfunding platform, but I think they're a really interesting place to start looking. That's great. People ask me, because in the U.S. it is becoming a very large sector of investment very quickly, several billion dollars over the last two years. And people always ask me, is that bad for venture capitalist? And my point is always, no, it's great because it proves that the products, if customers are buying the products or the crowds are buying the products, it's a great way to prove out the concept. Well, great. Thank you for that answer. Let's go next to a question from Yali Birngrup in Senegal. What are the risks involved in taking debt capital as opposed to taking equity capital? I think that's a great question. Ingrid, I'll pose it to you first, which is what are the risks and rewards of debt versus equity, especially with your experience of managing the debt capital fund at Dell? Thank you. So, yes. So I started a $100 million fund, a debt fund at Dell, which became a $250 million fund. I run another $100 million debt fund now. There are big differences between debt capital and equity capital. The biggest one that I would say is when you're raising debt for your venture, you're not necessarily giving away equity in your venture. I'm a huge fan of debt. So let's say for example, debt is essentially a loan. It's a loan into your venture. The type of debt funds that I have overseen are funds that tend to work with technology companies that are seeking to finance growth, finance equipment, that type of thing. And so instead of going out, for example, and raising a million dollars as an example, in equity financing where you have to give up a percentage of your company, if you worked with a structured debt fund, we'll actually potentially lend the money to you at rates that tend to be below what you would get at a bank, for example. So what that does for you again is it allows you to keep ownership of your company, get capital that you need for your growth. The risk of debt capital, the biggest risk that I would say between debt and equity is that debt capital, at some point, you've got to pay it back. And unlike equity investors, when somebody comes in and writes you a check and they become an owner of your company, for any entrepreneur, we're always going to face difficulties in our ventures. We're going to face challenges in our ventures. And when you're not performing to numbers, for example, your equity investors will tend to be in there with you. They're going to help you work through those challenging times. They're going to make connections with you, help you work through that. Debt investors, on the other hand, tend to focus very much on just the return on the capital. So what we're looking for is we've made a loan. We want to get paid back the loan. We don't have the same relationship with the company. So it can become more challenging when the company starts going through difficult times. So that would be what both of them are, opportunities and challenges with both. Great. Dale, can you expand upon the collateral or non-collateral parts of debt? Have you seen what the difference is between the two structures may look like? If it's secured debt or unsecured debt? Well, I think probably the two of you are a more better place to answer that question in terms of, you know, from what I've seen in terms of the eco, the entrepreneur ecosystem that I'm part of a co-working space where there's 170 different companies. And I think most people inside of that space go towards equity-based investments. And I think the reason that they do that is because quite often when you're taking capital from an outside investor, they don't just bring the money. They bring a huge wealth of expertise and financial acumen with them and also a set of expectations. So, you know, when you take that money, you need to get very clear on the expectations of growth and how that money will be spent with your investors. And so I think that's why it, and, you know, and I think, so I think that's one of the reasons why people inside of the co-working space and the incubator that my company is based in often prefer equity-based capital. Got it. Thank you, Sir. Next question. We have a viewing group in Lesotho. This is our friend Mr. Powers is there asking this question. If you have a business that has a potential to go global, how do we identify and make contact with the right investors to move forward? So I think this question is more about if you are based not in U.S., for example, where a lot of the capital is available, but your idea is one that is global. So it could benefit from being in different parts of the world. How would you go about securing capital, you know, for something like that? Ingrid, do you want to take that? Yeah, what I would actually like to do is give you an answer and then hand it over to you, Dale, on that front, because I was just overseas answering a very similar question. And it was coming from an entrepreneur who was talking about building a global business, but that basically said, I don't even have access to the investors who could potentially fund this business. So how would I actually gain access to them? And of course we can talk about all the different groups that are out there for you to become a member of, where you can network into the investment community. But there was somebody in that discussion who gave a really great answer that I've never forgotten and I will always say, and that is this, very, very simple. If you are somebody who, for example, starting out for the first time, you don't have access to these investors, it's the fastest way to gain access to the people that you'd like to do business with is find an organization. This might be out of the box thinking, but find an organization in your community that a lot of these investors or these wealthy individuals are part of. So in the United States, for example, down in Austin, Texas, to give you an example, maybe it's the opera community. And what this person said was go and volunteer for that organization so that the next time that organization has a fundraising event, show up, volunteer, and all of a sudden you're putting yourself at the same level that these investors and these wealthy individuals are at in the same organization, and that's going to be your opportunity to create those initial connections. So I love the out of the box thinking on that. I had never heard it before, but I think it's valuable. I think it's a really interesting idea. I think one of the big things to remember is that we're all people and we like to connect as people. So there is such a power and don't be scared to ask for help.  And I think, you know, where I come from in New Zealand, you know, we don't hesitate to ask for help. That's one of the great things about being New Zealander, I think. And you know, literally, as I was bootstrapping my company, I would just send emails to anybody that I wanted to, you know, that I thought could help me, and I would simply ask for their advice. If you ask somebody for their advice, it is such a different thing for asking them for money, because essentially what you want to do is you want to develop a relationship with that person. It's not often that an investor will come in and hear your idea and just invest on the first meeting. You know, sometimes that happens and you can get really lucky, but generally it's a process of getting to know somebody and getting to know an idea and getting in that deeper understanding. So the first thing that I would say is don't be scared to ask for advice. And through asking for advice, you can create the deeper connection that might be necessary for somebody to invest. The second thing I would say is that there is amazing mechanisms out there that actually all of these people are signed up to. One of them is LinkedIn.  You can go, you can message people, you can find out who are involved in these organizations. You can see the connection. So if you wanted to, you know, you can map your network and see who has connections and who might be able to make introductions. I mean, another one is Angel List. Angel List has a huge amount of people who are on there not just because they want to invest, but because they're looking for opportunities to mentor and advise early stage companies. So I would say really use these platforms that are at your disposal to make the connections and then make the connections in a way that's not going to be too alienating and work on building relationships. The both great answers. I would just add one aspect from my experience, you know, to pick up on your point of connecting with people and to pick up your point of finding things of interest to them is you can find out what those people are interested in. You could share knowledge. You could share information.  That's another way of adding value back to the investors and then they connect with you because you're talking to them about things that they're of mutual interest. So find things that are common, find things that are of mutual interest and try to help each other. That's a great way to get to know somebody. Well, great. So a follow-up question to that, which is what do investors look for in these early stage startups? So you're looking for capital from investors. You've got a brilliant idea. What are investors looking for? Ingrid, do you want to tackle that? Sure. The number one thing is always the team. It's always the quality of the team. It's always the quality of the founder of the team. Even if you're a first-time entrepreneur, I, in fact, just last summer, I funded a group of four people who were from the age of, one was 17, I think two were 19 and one was 20. So these were relatively young people. But I had gotten to know the founder and felt like I could trust him, which brings up the second point because, number one, it's the quality of the team. Number two, I'm looking for can I trust them? And I trust them from the perspective of things are not always going to go as planned. Like I go into every venture I think all investors do expecting. It's never going to go the way that we planned. And that's fine. But what's not okay is if you're not kept in the loop as an investor when things aren't working out, because especially as an angel investor, when things aren't working out, part of back to what you were saying earlier, our value is we get that that's going to happen. But we want to help you through that process. We want your success just as much as you want your success. So that would be the second thing. The third thing, of course, is the opportunity itself. Always love looking for really big markets. I love solving really big problems. So I like when people come to me with innovative ideas that can solve a global issue using technology very intriguing. Number four, I look at the quality of the financials. So as an investor, angel investors, part of why we invest is our way to give back. But this is also part of our business. And so as part of our business, we are looking for that return. And so we are going to look at those financials. We're going to look at what the return is likely to be. And I would say the fifth thing, and this is really related to the second one I mentioned about trust, but I really look for people who will listen. This was something that my first investor, so well he was a first investor too, but my first mentor really taught me, Dr. George Kosmetzky, who founded IC Squared, which is one of the sponsors of the program, who has since passed away. But I asked him, he was a self-made multi-billionaire who grew up so poor he had holes in his shoes and managed to become the self-made billionaire who had plenty of things to do other than spend time with me. And I asked him once, I said, why is it that you choose to invest time in what it is that I'm trying to do here? When I know you've got a hundred other things that you could be doing. And he said, Ingrid, the reason that I do is because when you visit with me, you listen to what I say, and between the time that you and I visit today and we get together a month from now, I enjoy watching how you implement the ideas and what the progress is. And it's very collaborative. So I would say those are really, for me, the five things that I look for. And then I'll add one more, certainly anything related to empowering a billion women by 2020. Anything. I mean, yeah. Well, great. There is a list of six things there. Six things. So keep good notes. Well, great. Let's get to the next question. It's Claudia from Romania. What is the best stage to seek finance from angel investors? Is a well-documented idea enough? Or should my startup come with a demo or a satisfied user group? So I think she's asking about the stage at which to look for money from angel investors. Dale, any thoughts on that? Well, as you all know, I bootstrapped my company for a long time. And probably about six months in, I met with a couple of angel investors. And it was really just a pitch deck, a slide, a PowerPoint presentation, and a lot of enthusiasm. And basically, they weren't even close to wanting to invest in good world. But there was a lot of good that came out of that meeting. And essentially, what those two investors that I met with did is they really challenged the business concept. How is this really going to make money? They really challenged me to really think through the business model in a way that I hadn't before and go out and get that customer validation. So I would say, as long as they're not your big meetings that are going to make or break your business, definitely go and start having those conversations. But it's like I said before, it's a relationship that you need to build with these people. And it's exactly what Ingrid said.  Then you come back in a couple of months and go, well, six months and show them your progress. And that's when you can build the relationship of trust, which really, really makes all the difference in the best investor entrepreneur relationships. So you don't necessarily need a product to be ready to show. You can go with a concept. You can go with a PowerPoint deck. My experience is that less and less ideas are getting funded. However, it is still possible, so don't necessarily stop, but less and less ideas are getting funded. So if you have a product, that may be even better. Yes, exactly. Wonderful. Great. Well, let's move on to the next question. Hassan, a follow-up question with what would I need to get VC partner interested in my business? So basically asking about, okay, what do I need to do? I mean, I can take that a little bit being a venture capitalist since that's what I do for a living. I would say I'll pair down Ingrid's list of six things to three things. I would say number one and probably the most important thing that I look for is it is the team because team really makes a difference. Number two I look for is large growing underserved markets. So the way I think about it is if these are large markets and they're growing and they're underserved, you can really, really build large businesses with great margins. And then the third thing is critical is speed of execution. So if I can see those three things in an idea that intrigues, I think most venture capitalist intrigues them to dig deeper, to see if it's a world-class team working on a big underserved growing market and has the ability to execute quickly, that would be my answer. But please feel free to add to those three things. No, I think from a venture perspective, so I'm involved in a fund called Bell Capital. We specifically look for women run, women-led ventures. And we're looking for the same thing. And I think it's interesting because before we actually started filming today, we were talking about the idea of speed to execution because we were talking about how soon, at what point, do you want to raise how much money? And there's a lot to be said around how fast are you going to be able to execute in the market because again, from a venture perspective, we absolutely are looking at time to the exit. We're looking at all the competitors out there and we want to make sure we beat them when we get our maximum value. Wonderful. The only thing I would perhaps add just very quickly is you have to make sure you get your narrative right. So this is probably not something you see as an investor, but we spend so much time figuring out exactly what our story is and practicing that pitch so we're pitch perfect when we go in. Very important, yeah. I know VCs want to see a very concise description of what you're going to do and how is that going to make a big impact very quickly. We have a very short time, a very short attention span, unfortunately. Okay, great. Let's move on to the next question. What do angels and VCs take in return for investment from the venture? It's a great question because sometimes we just automatically assume. So let's dive into that a little bit. What is the entrepreneur giving up in return for that money? Yeah, so from the angel perspective, I mean, again, it really does come down to the negotiation of what you think your value is worth and what we think the value of your company is worth. Two deals that I just did, one company we went in and so these were small investments from a U.S. investor perspective. But I put $20,000 into each one of these. So again, these were small by U.S. standards. One of them, I took 25% of the company. The other one, I had less than 1% of the company. And the biggest difference was the one where I had the higher equity in the company, they needed a lot of help from a management perspective, from a relationship perspective. It was going to take a lot of my time to help them get to the next stage. This other venture was my money went in, closed my eyes, went the other way. And basically, if they called me and needed help, I helped them, but they basically had it. So that would be the difference. God, so time, your time involvement in that case made the difference between you getting a lot more equity or a lot less equity depending upon how much effort you were going to put in. Dale, your perspective on what entrepreneurs give up when they take money? Take and return for investment. So they take equity. I mean, they also take a part of your time because you have reporting responsibility. So the other part of that is you want to make sure you have very good relationships. So your investors can help you when you call. But the biggest thing that they obviously take is the equity in your company. Sure. And in Silicon Valley, one thing that we see very common these days is when we invest in the companies as a seed round or angel round that typically goes in as debt. So basically at that time, we're just only have it as debt and it gets converted to equity when there's a larger round raised. And then we convert that money that we've invested into equity. But you're right, at the end of the day, we end up owning equity. That is our business model. We want to own equity. Then we want to help build that equity into much higher value. So that's how we then make profit from that. Great. Let's move on to the next question. Is there a difference between financing for an IT startup versus another type of startup such as a one in energy or health? It's a great question. So you have multiple different types of companies from healthcare to technology to energy to social media. As investors, do you look for different characteristics depending upon if it's an IT company or not? Well, so we invest in IT related companies. But one thing I will say is that if we get a company that comes in that might not necessarily be IT by definition, we're certainly looking at how are they using technology in innovative ways to solve a health issue, whatever that might be. What I would say is the return on the investment is certainly different based on the industry that you're in. But what I would definitely say here is really do your homework upfront. If you're really serious about going and raising a successful, certainly a venture round, do your homework and go talk to the venture investor who actually funds in your space. I can't tell you how many people will bring ideas in that really are not related to where our focus is. And that's one of the fastest ways to get really frankly a quick no because you're looking for what fits within what your expertise is. So do your homework, go find those investors and the returns tend to be different. Are things like patents or intellectual property are things like that? Are they important if it's a tech investment like I think the person asking the question about IT investments? So are those a must have if you're going to invest in a technology company or a good to have? So what I would say is I really want to see that, but I'm seeing a lot more deal flow now that actually don't have protection or a lot of protection around their technology. And what I find interesting and it's interesting because I was just with the US Patent Office last week because they're trying to encourage more people to go through that patent process. When a lot of entrepreneurs are now saying the technology is frankly changing so fast and going back to what you said earlier about the speed to execution by the time that they are where they want to be in the market where we want to see them be they're already on to their next gen or whatever. So I don't ever look at it as if you don't have it would we not look at it? It's certainly something that we look for as soon as we're involved in a company like that we want to get whatever protections around it we can. But it has changed is very different from funding of 10 years ago as you've probably experienced yourself. Yeah, absolutely. Great. Let's move to our next question. It's a question coming on Twitter in a startup offering a free version model. How many users do VCs want to see before investing? That's that's a great question. I think so question is about traction. You're you're in the social giving space and what type of numbers are interesting before a business or an idea seems to be getting traction. So, you know, a lot of companies now are raising capital just on this idea of having a lot of users and not necessarily so much on, you know, creating revenue. And I think that that is still very ripe. And I'll be actually really interested in your comments on this. However, I have a feeling that, you know, while that is still very valid, you know, offering free versions and getting a lot of people signed up and everything doesn't necessarily mean to say that they're going to use use it down the track. So at some point you really have to convert them into paying users. But I should be really interested in your comment. Yeah, I think, you know, we're seeing both business models. Conversion seems to be less and less so because a lot of people once they get used to a free service don't convert. That's the fact of fact of reality. So a lot of the companies that we're looking at nowadays, they really are, you know, monetizing through advertising revenue. So really it is about if you can get a very strong, large following, which is very consistently using your product. And then you can start to monetize it via advertising, which, you know, tends to be a very good business model as opposed to trying to get them to convert to pay, which in from what I'm seeing, it is more and more difficult in the age of Internet where most people have an expectation that products will just be free. And and it's very hard for them to put their credit card information in to actually pay for it. Matt, one more thing to that because one one company I just did over a year ago. So these entrepreneurs. Built a solution that they so they looked at the market. They identified a very specific need. They knew they were going to get acquired. They knew who the potential acquirer was. They developed the company. They had 60 paid users. That was it. So 60 paid users over a about a four month time period. They got bought out. So it was one of those things where I was like, OK, note to sell. Very valuable 60. Actually, the funny thing is because if you looked at the average average revenue per user, it's actually not that high. So the interesting thing was they were so smart about going into building this venture of saying, we know if we get this right and we show the dogs eat the dog food, but we get this right. This is the solution this company absolutely needs. And they they got pretty good valuation on the buyout in less than a year. So great. So no, no, your end markets and no, your end acquisition targets. So which is great. Great. Let's keep moving. You have a similar question coming from Iraq and Nigeria. Let's let's look at this question. How do you run a startup and secure investment in countries facing challenging conditions? Excellent question where you have security is an issue on the ground where you have potential disruptions to services and so on. So forth. How do you operate in that type of environment one? And how do you secure your capital? If you will, how do you secure your investment? I mean, it's a difficult question. If there are any ideas you want to share about maybe how to secure some of those things, Dale, any thoughts on this? Yeah, I can I can never have a God answering this question. And, you know, it's I think when you're when you're building a business is all sorts of things that you can do that don't, you know, really involve being online when I use the lean startup methodology for creating good world. And if people don't know what lean startup is, if you go and look at my lean startup.com, it has this whole approach to creating a business. But what what it basically means is as you're building your business, you're really out there with your customers doing a lot of interviews. You're not necessarily, you know, on the computer coding and doing things that really, you know, you need this type of infrastructure for. You can be out there, you know, drawing up wireframes with the pen and paper and going and showing that to people and getting input and kind of really creating the, you know, really creating the product without without necessarily having to be online encoding and doing those things which might be challenging in some countries to have that all the time. And, you know, the other thing is that that I would say is, you know, once again, I would, you know, really tell these these net online networks like angels list like LinkedIn to go and find people and create those relationships that that can help you offshore. Yeah. And I think one of the one of the answers that I would give is you, you know, in that concept of LinkedIn and finding people that have affinity to what you're working on because, you know, I can tell you sitting in San Francisco investing globally. It can be a challenge because it's hard to get to those places. It's hard to know about the political situation, the security, the, you know, the different issues on the ground. But if you have people that are familiar with those geographies, those areas, those challenges, they tend to be a lot better investor because they tend to have confidence in terms of, you know, what the issues are and how to get their arms around the issue, how to actually deal with the issues. So I've seen successfully people invest in those areas that they are comfortable with. And so I was first thing I would look for is investors that are comfortable with the region, comfortable with the territory, the geography, not just the sectors and types of companies. And that's probably your best bet. Well, great. Let's move on to a group in Embassy at Dakar. They're asking in what special sectors are you making investments in Africa? Great question. So Africa, big continent, all kinds of different opportunities. Are you looking at Africa at all in terms of you are? Okay, so what sectors excite you in Africa? Yeah, well, in fact, I was just in a meeting last night about it and there's so much happening in Africa. I actually look at Africa to give me insight on where I think all the global trending is happening, frankly. So what I'm really interested in in Africa is the telcos. I mean, that's huge. There's huge opportunity there and mobile money.  What about energy? Are you looking at off-grid energy, both production and storage in Africa? So I used to and now I don't and it's simply just a time issue on my side and focusing on EBW 2020. We're not involved in those sectors, but I know there's a lot going on down there. So I'd love your take on that too. So sounds like mobile, telecom, fintech, you know, types of things are interesting and energy perhaps in the past, but not today. Dale, any thoughts on opportunities in Africa for what you see? Well, I know that some of the, you know, the co-working space that I'm a part of, there's a lot of fintech companies that are operating in Africa, as you said, and then electrification and how do you bring electricity to cities and things like that. There's a couple of companies that are focusing on that in Africa. Yeah, I've seen some really interesting ideas, I guess lecture at Stanford GSB and recently I saw a car company coming out of Africa, a car that is really designed for the local markets. So you're seeing, I'm seeing a lot of energy, pay as you go, energy production and energy usage. We're seeing an incredible amount of fintech financial technology, which is could be mobile money, mobile payments, other types of financial transactions on mobile platforms. So we actually look at some of those countries to see how they're leapfrogging because in U.S. you really don't, you know, we're barely starting to use Apple Pay and Africa has been so far ahead of us with mobile pay. So we look at Africa to see some of those trends which are leapfrogging the technologies in U.S. and those are predominantly in pay as you go, energy and water as well as in financial technologies. Those are probably some of the big areas. Great. Do global entrepreneurs have to find angel investors from the U.S. or are there angels in every country? So I don't know about angel investors, but let's say they're angels in every country. My experience is that they are, you're going to find them everywhere. So they're certainly easier to find in some places as opposed to others, but there are wealthy, there are, and when I say there are wealthy people everywhere, you don't even have to be that wealthy of an individual to become an angel investor. So there are people who have done well in your home countries that they really consider one of their ways to pay it forward is in fact to make those angel investments. And so they are everywhere. They are everywhere. How about yourself? Do you see angels everywhere? Absolutely. I mean, I don't know about every country, but I think there's angels in many countries. The thing that I would say is that what an angel group expects in one country may be pretty different than what they expect in another country and the terms that you may get from an angel investor in your home country may be very different to what you get in the U.S. And it depends often on the sophistication of the kind of the angel ecosystem and how many people are doing it and whether they're organized and all of that sort of stuff. So I would definitely compare the terms that you're likely to get from the various countries that you're looking in. Yeah, I think I would tend to agree with both of you. We see angel investors, you know, they just come in different forms. I think in U.S., you have a very organized angel investor community, you have groups and they meet on Thursday nights and Wednesday nights and so on and so forth. You may not have that level of organized activity, but I agree with both of you. You can find people that are passionate about what you're doing and trust in you and you can find those angels anywhere. And we talk about, you know, quite often here in the U.S., you talk about angels and then you talk about friends and family money, which is, you know, they're similar but different.  So quite often that can be an easier way to access capital through your friends and family network before going out to the more formal angel groups. Okay. A similar question from Azerbaijan. A gentleman or lady mentioned that there's lack of angel investors and venture capitalists. This can certainly be a problem for other countries as well. What advice could you provide to help launch or encourage the development of investment ecosystem? Great question. I mean, I think I've had, I've been, unfortunately, I've seen the investment ecosystem develop, we were early investors in China before there really any VC funds there. We saw a similar ecosystem develop in India. We were one of the first VCs in India and so on, so forth now investing in the Middle East and looking at Africa. You know, from my perspective, and I'd love to kind of get your thoughts, is you need a critical mass. And a critical mass doesn't have to be very large. You need a few, and my experience says you need about three to five like-minded, whether they're large angels or small funds or entities. They could be pseudo government. They could be wealthy individuals. You have to create a small like-minded people who are willing to take that risk and willing to kind of co-invest in these companies. And once you start that process, it seems to gain a lot of momentum. At least that's my experience. I'd love to hear your thoughts. That is my experience as well. We were just talking a little bit earlier about Sri Lanka. It's a very interesting place right now and that's exactly what's happening there. So you've got a couple of proven entrepreneurs down there who want to build out that ecosystem. They have banded together. They have put some of their money to work. But then they went and they traveled over here to the United States to talk with a number of us to talk about the opportunities in Sri Lanka and would we take a chance over there? And back to your earlier point about if investors can see an opportunity and we can create a trusted connection with somebody who is localized in the market who knows the environment over there who we know we can trust. There's a good chance that you'll start to attract money from outside to come into that critical mass. And that's where I've seen it begin to snowball. Yeah, that's good. So I think to the person from Azerbaijan, I think one of the best things you can do is convince one of the successful people from your region to come back and to bring that credibility back into the region and investors will follow. I can talk about how it happened in New Zealand. Yeah, I would love to hear that. In New Zealand, what happened was there was very, very few angel investors in New Zealand. And essentially what happened was that there was this first kind of co-worker incubator space that was created at Auckland University in the business school there. And all of a sudden these top mentors started to come to give that to help these companies. And what ended up happening through a conversation with these top business people in New Zealand and they were pretty high-profile people, they formed a group which was actually called the Ice Angels. And so they started gathering regular, once a quarter. All of a sudden the press caught on that these famous New Zealand businessmen were getting together to help fund these companies and all of a sudden that group grew. And they really learned together, the companies learned from them and that was the... So I think universities can also be really important places where these types of thought leadership is really born. Wonderful, great idea. I mean, I think you've got some like-minded people together. And I think to the person again from Azerbaijan and other places, there are a lot of successful CEOs in Silicon Valley that I know of one, literally yesterday we had a very big exit and the CEOs from that part of the world. And so I'm sure he may be a good angel investor back in Azerbaijan. Better watch out, you've got emails now from all over the place. Who is it? Okay, great. Next question comes to us from Twitter. How can we attract U.S. VCs to invest overseas as opposed to relocating our startups to the U.S.? Good question. So, you know, would you invest in a company that's overseas or would you force them to move to Austin, for example? Say you want them to be next to you? I think it really depends. If I was going to be totally honest about it, and we talked about this a little bit earlier, but investors do like to have access to their investments. And so one of the things that I do see happening globally is if you've started your company regardless of where you are in the world and you're interested in pulling in money from the United States, I think, again, if I was going to be totally honest with you, there is some level of expectation that maybe you're not moving the whole office over to the United States, but you're moving some critical decision makers to the U.S. so that there can be that collaboration. And frankly, from an investor perspective, so that we can tap you into our network of resources and people to help you grow. I would compliment that, though, by saying there is not an expectation, though, that you have to pick up the entire company and move it to the U.S. So there are ways to work around that. I would say from a bootstrapping perspective, I think, obviously, there's a point where you need money to grow your company, but at the very beginning, your most valuable resource is actually time, not necessarily the money, because until you know that you've got the idea spot on, then it's not going to grow. Once you get traction in the idea, just starts to pick up and takes a life of its own, all of a sudden you've created something with a lot of magnetism that people want to know about. So, and quite often then, that's when people will start approaching you because the media will pick up on it. All of a sudden, there'll be a lot of buzz about your company. And that's how, what I did with Good World, I built Good World to literally the point where VCs and angels were coming to us and actively seeking us out to invest. So I would say don't give up hope. Just keep going and create an absolutely irresistible investment proposition. And then you hold many more of the cards yourself rather than having to fulfill other people's expectations. You hold the power closer to you. Yeah, and I think that's a great point. Just be the magnet and then people just come to you instead of pulling you. And also I think I would say look for investors that are happy to get on a plane and come and have a board meeting where your company is because there are a bunch of investors in Silicon Valley that just simply will never get on a plane and they don't have to because there's a lot of opportunity right in Silicon Valley. So it's important to I think approach and select investors that are open to travel and open to being in a different area to look at investments and not everybody is. All right, wonderful. Next question is Russia from Baku asks I need to get patent protection for my invention but I cannot afford it. Is there a type of investment that could help? I think that's very much in the bootstrap. I can talk about the way that we did it. Basically, if you're seeking patent protection here in the US you can file a provisional patent for a year which is you know simply kind of almost like you know you have to have enough description in there so it you know covers off the claims and things like that but it's not a really detailed kind of patent application. A lot of that you can almost do yourself and I actually wrote a provisional patent mostly with myself with the help of a legal student and then we just you know pay the lawyer to do like a one-time review before we submitted it. So it's not the ideal situation but you know I would just always advocate for doing as much as you can yourself and not waiting like don't wait because you don't have the money just get online, find out research about it and find out what you can do yourself because at the end of the day even though you need a lawyer to really kind of do the full patent and make it absolutely bulletproof there's a lot you can do yourself and there's very little that you can't do you know with the internet is such an incredible resource of how to build a business so don't wait. And there's one more thing I would add to that is right now at least here in the United States it is a great time for those entrepreneurs who are seeking some level of patent protection because the U.S. Patent Office led by Michelle Lee they are actively going out and setting up regional offices they just helped open the Texas one last week where they recognize that a lot of entrepreneurs out there don't have the money to actually go get the protection that they so critically need. So if you go to their site and just dig around a little bit they actually have pro bono programs at the Patent Office that can help you do exactly what you were just saying the process that you went through but provide you with access to some help and resources to help enable you to get through that process. So go check that out. It is a great time for those entrepreneurs who don't necessarily have the funding but really want to go see that patent protection the Patent Office wants to help you. So what's that website ingredient is at pto.us. Well US PTO and I don't know that word probably but it is the United States Patent Office led by Michelle Lee. So just Google it and you'll find it there and it is loaded with resources for you. Wonderful. Great. Both both answers were very helpful. Yeah. Next question Veronica from Columbia asked there are special financing. Are there special financing sources for female owned businesses? Well I think you're going to put a billion women in business. All right. Let's start with first one in Columbia. Here's the thing though that when we launched our hundred million dollar debt fund back in May the first two months it was open it is set up to fund women entrepreneurs. We did not have a single woman applied to that. It was all men. So and I think part of that goes back to there's there's a core issue there that a lot of women for the first time in their communities are elevating as leaders as CEOs and they're trying to figure this out and so confidence tends to be a big issue they're working to overcome. So with that in mind there are places you can go and I was writing some of them down. So springboard enterprises where I sit on the board there and they do training for for women entrepreneurs. They get you ready for funding. I mentioned Bell Capital earlier. It's one of the top VCs in the U.S. for women run women led ventures. There's Golden Seeds is another one. Yes.  So yes. OK. So I think you just heard four names right there of venture funds are particularly set up to help female businesses. So please go and check them out on the website and see what information may be able to get. And just one characteristic that I've really noticed and was actually really pointed out to me early on about female entrepreneurs. We often won't ask for money until we have like serious traction or we might go out and I have one or two conversations and somebody will say no to us so we'll stop. You know like quite often men when they get a no they'll just be like oh well and they'll just keep going and they'll have lots lots lots lots more conversations and sometimes as a woman we won't do that. So I would say just get out there if you want the money and ask and apply it to these things. Right. Excellent question. Embassy in Rabat question when it comes to social businesses what unique elements should be considered when deciding how to finance their startups? So this is I think they'll maybe right in your in your sweet spot. So social businesses what are the what are the elements to be considered there? So of course you know a lot of social businesses is a double bottom line business. So you know you have a social benefit and you have and you have the financial benefit of the business and there is an incredible amount right now of social funds that are popping up right from you know the very traditional type financiers like Bain and BlackRock through to you know there's also a lot of foundations that fund social impact opportunities. The being and being an impact being branded as an impact opportunity can actually help you with getting access into all of these funds and really making your mark there. And but also can kind of harm you because a lot of traditional finances won't look at you because they see you as an impact opportunity and they don't think that quite often people will just kind of you know make a cognitive lead that you're going to not going to provide market rate returns. So my my and there is a lot of you know and I think a lot of social entrepreneurs they're more focused on the social impact of their businesses rather than the the market you know the financial impact. So I would say just holding those two goals equal and not being soft on either of them and really pushing yourself to find a business model that works with it with a social opportunity is really where the secret source is. Okay. Got it. Great. Well the hour is flown by so we've got the last question because we're running out of time here. So final question for for both you Dale and Ingrid in one minute what is the one take home message you want our audience to know that hasn't been mentioned so far that we haven't had a chance to talk about is there any magic bullet you can you can you know share with these people from all over the world that are listening my my biggest thing is that you are most precious resource is your time. You know quite often you if you get money too early you won't have created the art you won't have done all that customer validation you won't have refined your idea in a way that you will that you can actually deliver it to market and if you're going out seeking capital that's a part-time job. You know you you should not underestimate how much time that is going to take you when maybe you could have another part-time job that is bringing that is actually bringing an income that could like support your operations to get to this point where you have the traction and you have the publicity and everything that's going to make you a much more magnetic opportunity for investors. So my number one point is time is your key asset not necessarily money in an early-stage venture. All right so time is your key asset Ingrid. Yeah I would say there are three takeaways and these are the game-changers that truly took me from being a young entrepreneur with not a lot of experience being furled now with a lot. But the three things that really made the huge difference for me in my career and now the CEOs that I work with are number one get yourself a mentor. That is the number one thing if you do not do anything else go and get yourself a mentor. Number two would be surround yourself with like-minded thinkers. So I'm a huge fan of the Mohammed Eunice model from Grameen Bank. So especially for women entrepreneurs out there there's a magic in putting together four other people in addition to yourself. So you have a group of five where you can confidentially meet on a regular basis. You can support one another in the venture that you're building and you can help one another elevate through and work through those challenges. And the third thing that I would say and this is back to what you were saying earlier which is really know if you know if you're building a great company you've got to also know the numbers. And you've got to know the finances. You've got to be financially literate. I'm not saying you've got to be a rocket science financially literate person but you really do need to understand the blocking and tackling of the numbers behind your business. So all those things this will be a plug but it's all free so it's kind of not a plug but EBW 2020 we do offer those things for free to help you solve those three things. So I'd love for for you to come and join. Well great thank you so much both of you so I think we're we're out of time now so we'll hopefully lot of the information you've given here people will go and look up on the websites and and learn more about that. So so special thanks to you in groups today in embassies and Abuja Baghdad Baguada the car Guatemala Guinea Lee Longway Lome Masseroo Mexico City Rabat and we'd like to give a shout out to the entrepreneurial organizations around the world that participated with us youth tech and girls in tech in Colombia in just Egypt Zain Iraq Iraqi Network for social media and Fikra Space Impact Hub Bucharest C.T.I.C. incubator in Senegal Guido Cha in South Africa and finally a spree incubator in Tunis please join us for our next Tech Connect live chat on February 9th 2016 before we go I would like to add that just is more than just Tech Connects just also run startup boot camps which empower young science and technology innovators and entrepreneurs in advancing their skill set through on the ground training delivered by top U.S. mentors and in country partners our next boot camp is scheduled for Tunis Tunisia on January 11th through the 13th 2016 in partnership with a spree incubator applications for Tunisia boot camp are open until November 27th and I encourage all interested Tunisian science and technology entrepreneurs age 18 to 40 to apply I'm also pleased to announce that just will be expanding its online programming with a brand new guru series web chat monthly interactive web chat will be another opportunity for viewers to have an intimate conversation with an expert on a variety of entrepreneurial topics you can learn more about these and other just programs at the just network again at www.just network .org you hope to see you there for future discussions on topics of importance to entrepreneurs like you finally I would like to highlight that the annual tech I competition will be its window it'll be open its window for the submission of applications of your startups on December 1st application forms will be available on the just network website so stay tuned we'll now end our session with a video from one of our just tech I alums I wish you all the best of luck with your startups one year after I started my company I was pitching my startup at the global entrepreneurship summit in front of investors business leaders and innovators from all around the world just tech I got me there I want the 2011 just tech I pitch competition and received seed money for my business mentorship and training I continue to be part of the just family and it has forever changed the trajectory of my business in my life thank you just


Let's go y'all Chris from dresses case breaks comm doing our 2022 chops triple threads 9 box PYT number 10 number 10 Rnb 18 teams will say the list real quick Angels mariners rays red Sox Dodgers Mets Royals Cubs Pirates Blue Jays Orioles Tigers Guardians Rangers Marlins Brewers A's and Rockies 18 teams, but 10 spots get one of these hits for a fracture the price R&B spots from 1 to 0 Zero being any redemptions even if they are number one to one on the checklist spot 1 going 91 so on and so forth down from 2 to 9 Here are our friends TJ Chris Dilo Brian Steve Dilo in the Nick Dilo Nick with the one filler that we need to get it done So thanks anyone who got spot straight up and thanks anyone who got in on the filler appreciate y'all Let's do this randomizer this dice roll for both. Good luck everyone five and six eleven times All right, let's do it one two three four five six seven eight nine ten Ten and eleven here. We got eleven times Nick down to TJ Got the names on the sheet as well and eleven times for the numbers. Good luck one two three four five six seven eight nine ten That's ten killing me ten and eleven eleven times four down to zero Those last two spots for TJ looking nice. Let's do a little recap here after some formatting And here So Nick with that filler grabs spot for Dilo with six Brian with two Steve with eight Dilo with seven and nine last spot Mojo and from the filler Crisp with three Nick with five from the filler and TJ at the bottom grabs one and zero very nice All right, that's the video when we come back nine box inner case PYT 10 top stripper threads baseball chapter's case breaks calm