The government-funded retreat of homeowners from flood-prone housing is becoming increasingly common as a global climate adaptation strategy. However, there is limited understanding of the factors that influence whether or not homeowners choose to retreat, where they move, and if this movement reduces their future flood risk. This study combines novel residential history data with future flood risk estimates and indices of local context to better understand how retreat is unfolding across the US. It was found that when voluntary, retreat is a highly localized process, with homeowners in majority-white communities being more likely to stay in place despite higher risk and less likely to relocate to nearby areas that are not majority-white.


How's it going guys and welcome back to another jhr view and I want to share something that a lot of people commented on was the Opening to my claw machine video, and I want to show you guys how I achieved that. I Actually bought a camera kind of a roller slash stabilizer It does live action shots and kind of smooth them out like a steady cam And it is basically a pair of robotic wheels Right here with a little attachment that mounts to a phone bracket hold your phone in kind of a standard tripod screw mount and then in here we have the actual device which is Resilient if I do say so myself and up here it even has these kind of little degrees of measurement for when you Kind of go to use it and it starts rolling They're very sensitive. So you only really have to adjust it by a very slight degree and it will follow along that path This is the front wheel it actually turns. So all you do is go ahead and turn it on And it comes with a little click remote that I have on the side right here And all you have to do is click play And it starts rotating and it has multiple different settings to make it go faster or slower Go ahead and pause that All right, so I put it back here So you guys can kind of get an idea of what it would look like the camera would normally be put right there But when you press play It does a really nice smooth pan. It's on a very minor curve right now So it's gonna go over here and then it's gonna start to curve back to that side Yep, and there it goes and then you can pause it as well This thing is very useful for getting like more high quality objects or maybe even you know Different things that are just special to you. You can get it really nice kind of pan-on look on them And it just gives this polish to your videos and surprisingly this was only 60 dollars A lot of these other ones that I have seen that are on a rail system. Well, by the way, this is compatible with a rail system They're like a minimum of 250 There's some cheaper ones, but the reviews are kind of mixed, but this one right here It goes both directions You can even make it spin in a complete 360 circles So I think that the value for this one is insane and like I said, you can just move over here Put this on here like that And then just mount your phone bracket to it and then boom you can just go ahead and have that full rotation You could even put a DSLR on here probably. But yeah, kind of a quick video on this really nice little camera stabilizers slider and I'm really excited to continue making videos with this I have a video planned in the future of Something kind of a retro and I'm really excited to show you guys But what do you guys think? Let me know in the comments below Is this something that you'd want to get for your YouTube setup or maybe even just filming? You know things that you're interested in. Let me know a Huge shout out to my Patreons. Thank you guys so much for your support. You guys are awesome Huge shout out to my friend Zeke for becoming my first $50 patreon. You are awesome, man Thank you so much and Yeah, as always guys, I'll see you in the next video


Russia's opposition and Ukraine may unite against Putin. Ukraine and the liberal Russian opposition share a common enemy. Both want to see an end to President Vladimir Putin's reign and his war against Ukraine. The Washington Post wrote this. It is noted that the Ukrainian reaction to the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, Putin's greatest opponent, has highlighted the depth of the discontent between the two sides. It has also underscored the complexities of achieving lasting reconciliation between the two neighbors, even if Putin were no longer around. Earlier, the Politico said that Russia's opposition and Ukraine find it possible to unite against Putin. Most Russian opposition leaders have sided with Ukraine since the early days of the war, advocating for a free, independent, democratic Ukraine based on its 1991 borders. And it is now time to open a second line of attack from within Russia itself, Politico added. Although there are many differences between Ukrainian society and the Russian opposition, joining forces against a common enemy would be useful in several ways. Of course, we shouldn't expect Putin's regime to ease up on media pressure now. But while the Russian opposition knows what to say, they continually monitor the domestic mood and conducts polls to gauge public anxieties. It lacks the expertise to target mass audiences through the media. Ukraine, however, have media experts who do, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has particular expertise in this as well, specifically in relation to mass Russian audiences. Ukraine's media battle against Russian propaganda should be given the same importance as the frontlines of the conflict. Vast resources aren't required for this. Rather, Putin's information monopoly can be broken by combining media talent with serious effort, particularly as Russian discontent with his policies begin to emerge, such as the protests organized by the wives of soldiers on the frontlines. Another area in which joining forces could be of use is sanctions. Ukraine and the Russian opposition thus need to come together to adopt a personal sanctions regime, for example, by offering sanctions relief in exchange for openly condemning Putin and financially backing Ukraine. These incentives don't currently exist, Politico said. Russia prepares for war against Armenia. Kremlin declares that West turned Yerevan into Ukraine. Armenia deserves to live in peace and under no circumstances should it become an object of trade in the hands of unscrupulous Western politicians. Maria Zakharova, the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry said this while commenting on the reproachment between Yerevan and the European Union. She said that they made similar promises to Ukraine and then abandoned it. This country deserves to live in peace and under no circumstances should it become an object of trade in the hands of unscrupulous Western politicians. Russia sincerely wishes peace to Armenia. We wish this state, peace, stability and prosperity both from the point of view of love for this country and people and the point of view of pragmatism, because the prosperity of the region as a whole depends on it. Unfortunately, the West played with Ukraine then broke it, threw Kiev into the corner like a toy without arms and legs and started looking for a new victim. Let Armenia not be this new victim who is deceived and tempted, she added. Zakharova noted that some Armenian figures see the increased intention of the EU as a solution to the problem. You need to look deeper. It is also characteristic of the white man who shows the mirror and exchanges with it, the most valuable things owned by the natives. Unfortunately, several political figures of Armenia do not think that the country has become a tool and entertainment of Western geopolitics. Armen Grigoryan, Secretary of the Security Council of Armenia, said that Armenia has sent an official letter to Russia regarding the withdrawal of Russian border guards from Zvartnotz Airport. A government's position is that Armenian border troops should serve at the airport, he said. But Press Secretary of Russian President Dmitry Peskov noted that Russia is not aware of any decision by Yerevan regarding the withdrawal of Russian border guards from Zvartnotz Airport. As for the border guards in Zvartnotz, as far as we understand, there has been no decision on this issue. No one communicated these decisions to us through official channels. We were in all directions within the framework of the CIS and EU structures at the level of the bilateral relations, he said. It should be recalled that Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said that the presence of Russian border guards at Zvartnotz Airport is not regulated by any agreement. After that, the Armenians who staged an action chanted insulting slogans against Russia and demanded that the Russian border guards reject Zvartnotz.


Hello everyone, this is Amit Dhan of AmitDhan.com. Today I'll have another episode of unboxing and crate card review video And I'll be presenting the TD airplane visa platinum crate card, which I have it right here so I Have had the TD airplane visa infinite crate card for a few times and then I wanted to get the TD airplane visa platinum card because of the promotion going on and Due to the fact that I do not actually qualify for this crate card because I'm Overqualified so I applied for the TD airplane visa infinite crate card And then I called TD to switch it to the TD airplane visa platinum Which they did and then that's how I got this great card So today I'm going to talk about the parts and features of this crate card and whether you should have this great card or not If you're looking for honest non-affiliated and unbiased opinion or reviews of great cars You're not gonna find them because 99.99% of the reviews you see online They're affiliated and dishonest because they're working for the particular companies and They would like to make money off you by providing affiliated links and for that reason, you know, if you have come to the honest and Unbiased opinion and reviews then you have come to the right place So today I'll go through all of them one by one so the card came in a package just like this and I'm going to take out the whole Materials which are inside and I'm going to set this here So the crate card is in here in the first folder and I'll just you know move this away and then we have And information folders about the changes coming to this great card starting November 8 So the review I'm doing actually is going to be based on everything starting from November 8 So if you are looking at the review later on this is going to be updated review based on the November 8 changes So I'm going to just set this aside here Then we have a brochure which is a TD card holder agreement and benefit coverage So I'm going to cover the basics on my index card So I'll just you know set this aside here and then we have another Information folder which describes basically you know the annual fee and then like you know the grace period and Foreign currency fee I stopped like that So I'll just just set this aside and then they attached another brochure which is just you know giving you the outline of the changes which are coming to November 8. So I'll just you know set this aside here. So here We have the index card and I'm just going to you know go through one by one based on what's important So this card comes with $89 annual fee for the primary card holder and $35 annual fee for each additional card holder and Then the reward structure works this way You get one point or one airplane point which used to be called airplane mile But now airplane point for every $1 spent on Gas grocery and Air Canada purchases and again This is as of November 8 and then you get one point for everything else So you can see that you know the reward structure is not that great So Definitely like and you can get better credit cards by just paying a little bit more Starting at $120 annual fee. So I don't see any reason to you know have this card So let's move on to the next. What are the benefits of this card? So the insurances Are very basic so that card cover some basic insurances for example hotel motel Barglary for $2,500 each and then mobile device insurance $1,000 and then you have common carrier travel accident insurance half million delayed lost baggage Once you exceed six hours $1,000 maximum and then we have Purchase security and extended warranty if it's over one hour after them one year after the manufacturer's warranty And then you have flight and trip delay insurance. This is not a flight and trip cancellation It's just a delay which is has to exceed four hours And it's a $500 maximum and then you have the auto rental and collision loss damage insurance again for The details of the benefits consultees website because you know these things can change when you were looking at the review So these are the very basics now. Let's look at what the car doesn't cover so the first Major insurance the card doesn't cover is the no emergency medical travel insurance So I strongly recommend not to accept any card which doesn't provide you the medical emergency travel medical insurance which this card doesn't and then It doesn't have any zero foreign currency transaction fee So there's going to be a 2.5% charge whenever you're making Purchases on any currency other than Canadian. It doesn't provide any concierge services And it doesn't provide any free lounge access or lounge passes And it doesn't cover trip cancellation and trip interruption insurance, which is another insurance element which you should always take Whenever you are having a Travel credit card. So if you have a travel credit card, just look for trip cancellation interruption and no Emerging and emergency medical insurance These are a must for any travel credit cards And then except that the car doesn't provide many other parts and benefits But I'm not going to go into that in general most of the credit cards will not give you free lounge accesses or zero Foreign currency transaction fee airplane credit cards are not good at providing parts and features When it comes to even you know the visa infinite series credit cards So for this card due to the fact that the real structure is poor and then the parts are not that great My recommendation would be not to get this credit card Unless you absolutely want to because you can pay $120 and get a much better airplane Arming with more parts and benefits credit card out there So for that reason, you know, this is definitely not a credit card I can recommend or no one you shouldn't have this Given the fact that you have access to the visa infinite series or any other credit card which gives you more access and more airplane beards and Now the final part of the review. I'll show you the TD Airplan Visa Platinum credit card. So let's take this out of this Folder and here we have the TD Airplan visa breaking up credit card So that's the review of the TD Airplan visa Platinum credit card Thank you for watching this video. Forget about subscribing this channel.  So I'll see you shortly. Thank you


to be ambitious, changing people's lives, which means like you have a mission to do something impactful, and doing it as a great team. And so someone needs to be able to demonstrate that they're going to care about posting so that they're going to be effective within the team setting. Another aspect is just being able to communicate effectively. But beyond that, I think what we also very much value is being able to demonstrate that you can, for example, you have in the past been able to make yourself vulnerable and have the ability to say, I don't know, but that is actually very, very important for us. We also have a high kind of value based upon transparency. So being able to demonstrate that you're comfortable working in that environment and that you're not just going to say, oh, I know how to do it, and then go in your own direction and try to create a little black box that you operate in. But yeah, those are kind of some of the softest things. What about a large English program for students not to express to people? So the way we're going about doing that is we're thinking about it in terms of steps. And so right now, we just completed our first step, which was let's validate that we can get a small group of senior experienced people to deliver that first success. As we think about the next steps moving forward, we recognize that we have a need and really a responsibility to start developing some of those talents within kind of service type. And as in, not just expect people are going to come in and from day one be able to do what they need them to do and that we're going to be the ones that kind of provide that training and that career path. That obviously takes time. And so as we go through kind of our iterations, then the time horizon that we work with in is going to get longer and longer. So we've started doing some curriculum and some training on some of the specific areas of technology as kind of a first step. But what I would expect is, assuming that we're able to continue the momentum that we've built so far, that we will increase the scope of our kind of programs that we have. So I suspect we'll start doing internships with universities, we'll probably collaborate on perhaps running some of the classes. And there's probably a whole list of opportunities that we can discuss about how service type can interact with the universities and open up some of these programs to the wider population. But our approach has always been to take very concrete specific steps with very cruelly identified success criteria. Because I personally believe it's a mistake to try to do everything all at once in the first step. And so our goal is to eventually get to a place where we're making the biggest possible impact, but to do that within kind of gated steps in the process. So Ashok, maybe you can speak to what our current plans are for any sort of internships and if you don't have one, that's okay too. But what do we currently have planned in terms of availability? Currently we're still aiming to grow our senior and leading team to between 15 to 20 people. So only after that we would be able to absorb more, less senior people because there's also a high responsibility when you're taking on interns. So that you don't just take them and have them sit there, but you're taking on the responsibility to coach them. So we wanna first make sure we have the necessary capacity before we take on that. I think we are currently looking at about at least half a year until we can reach that point. And currently we're also actively organizing trainings to help people actually also for the mid ones to reach the senior level so that we can hire them now. So that's another approach. And so this is the very first training we have organized now. It's going to be finished in about three to four weeks and based on the results of the feedbacks. So we wanna start thinking about what we've done to be repeated, do we grow that? Do we do another even more difficult one? So I'm sure if you just follow our Facebook service at the Titan Armenia Facebook page. So we're posting all these news there. So anyone here considered applying or tried to apply? Yeah, I tried. What position? First one was Q-Engineering. Okay. And Q-Arts, I wasn't here. Do you have any experience with Q-Automation? But thank you first of all, we just have a summary problem. So we appreciate all of the professional mission that I'm teaching traction design here. I'm wondering what specialists you have in user experience design and traction design approach and whether you were thinking of kind of getting some here and having some work from here. Yeah, good question. So in terms of what we have on the design side today, we have a design team of, I think, somewhere between 15 to 20 designers. And what we found to be effective for us is we initially started thinking about it in terms of let's break out UI versus UX and kind of do it in a collaborative model. What we found is that designers don't always get along and that proved to be very difficult. And so we've kind of changed our model to think about it from a kind of end-to-end skill set. And so now we look for people that can not just do the UX piece but be able to go the full distance and understand how to go scope. So that's kind of the profile that we optimized for today. In terms of Armenia, the team that we're trying to stand up right now to have that autonomy is trying to solve a problem where there's some design aspects but it's not really a design-heavy problem. It's really around support automation and things like that. So I don't know if we're gonna actually have a design role for this kind of specific iteration. But as we get to kind of teams that have more autonomy around things that are, you know, have a user interface, then I suspect that we do look for design resources as well. So that's kind of at the high level. But, you know, so much of the success that we've had has been a function of our design and we place a very high value on having kind of that. But I think it's super critical, just independent of service type, I think, for the local ecosystem to be successful. That has to be a muscle that's developed and it's a very, very, you know. On the surface, the people think design is about making stuff pretty and it's absolutely not what design is about. And so I think it's great that you guys are focusing on that and having that give a piece of the curriculum. But yeah, I mean, in terms of building great technology, design is great. Do you employ data scientists and what are their goals in this area?  One of our hires here today who's in our data science team, who's a graduate from AUA. And so at a high level, yes, we actually have a few teams that we kind of employ data science boards. We have a team that I think today we've got something in the neighborhood of six or seven data scientists within the product organization. And we also have a team that's kind of an internal operations team where they essentially are, again, apply data science to our own customer acquisition efforts and our internal finance, forecasting and all those kinds of things. Long term, the vision is to essentially embed machine learning and artificial intelligence in every aspect of the product. And that's kind of what we're hearing up to do. And right now we're in the phase where we're still trying to set up some of the basic infrastructure you need, the data pipelines, the training infrastructure, the design elements of it. You know, like if you think about how that technology is used, a piece of it is about making predictions and incorporating that. But a piece of it is also the automation of taking over a certain functionality that today is done by a human and having the machine do it. Well, one of the biggest challenges in doing that is not only in having the thing actually work in terms of making the right decisions, but also communicating with the user about why it's making the decision that it's making and getting that trust to then hand over that decision to the other. And that's actually a design challenge as much as it is a data science challenge. And so as we think about what is it gonna take to get from where we are today to kind of an ideal future state where anything that can be automated is automated. You have this machine learning aspect of it. We think that one of the bigger challenges is just winning that trust. So today what we really focus on is what is that interaction with the user gonna be like in order to get then to actually hand over that power of making decisions. Now for example, we have this feature within service type that we call smart dispatch that automatically assigns which technician should be assigned to which job. And on the surface, you know, like our customers today spend literally hundreds of millions of dollars on cable paying someone to do that job. And we have this tool that they literally can put the switch and it automates it. That's majority of them don't use it. Why? Because they're entrusted. They have very few ways right now to know that this is the actual right decision. And so in that very specific example, in order to get the full adoption of that feature and the full value of it, it's actually a challenge of gaining that trust. And so now we're thinking about ways of, okay, what should the UI and UX be of how this thing is turned on? What is the right way of communicating to the user why this decision is better than what the human would have done and so forth? And so it's an area that we're heavily investing in internally. I can tell you that it's one of the hottest fields in tech, roughly. It's one of the hardest positions to find. And if you're in a position where you've got kind of the math background and the ambition to go into that field, it's an incredibly lucrative field. And that's probably got one of the highest potentials in terms of, you know, within engineering, roughly speaking, and certainly within the broader job market. So I'm very happy that there's a focus both here at the university and it seems like it's been broadly at the country level as well. And I think it's going to be one of the big drivers of the future in terms of tech as a whole. Can you describe a service to turn of how it's working services? Sure. So I'll talk about kind of how the company was created. So I was at the university. I was about to graduate. And my dad, he's a plumber. In fact, he's probably under a cross right now, facing something. And he had a planning business that he was running. And I saw the tool he was using to track his customers, the jobs, the invoices. And like, it was like from the 80s. Green screen, no mouse. Like, it was just bad. And so I thought that, like, of course, using the wrong stuff, I'll just go Google and I'll find something to replace this system he was using to run his business.  There's no good products out there. So I figured, okay, I'll spend a few weeks. I'll put something together and then I'll go be an engineer at Google or something. And so I started kind of tinkering and building it. And then a few weeks turned into a few months and then I kind of realized, oh, this is actually a much deeper and more complex problem than I originally recognized. And that's kind of the beginning of the company. And then I met my co-founder who was working on a very similar problem. And we just kind of started the company there. But to answer your question, what we do is we provide a tool that's used by companies that provide services in the home. So if you, let's just say, you have a plumbing company in Texas and you have 10 trucks that you then send out and they do services in people's homes. The way you service Titan is you use service Titan to do all your marketing analytics so you understand every advertisement that you put money into. What is that yielding in terms of an ROI? We do all the call center management. So when the customer calls in, the agent uses our system to answer the phone, to capture the customer's information, to give them history, to book the job. Then somebody uses service Titan to figure out which technician goes to which house. Then when the technicians get into the home, they use service Titan to do their inspections, put together the options, charge for the payment, apply for financing. And then when they, you know, that cycle repeats for all the jobs. And in the back office, all of the invoicing, the payroll, the receivable of the accounting integrations, all of that happens in service Titan. And so the value that we bring to our customers is that we take all these various things that needs to get done for any business. We put it all in the one package and that's kind of where the value creation happens because what we discovered is that just like my dad, this entire industry is full of people that are not technical. So for example, at service Titan, you know, we've got hundreds of engineers and we have all of these things and we're able to implement Salesforce and put on marketing automation and put on some forecasting software and accounting and do all the technical integrations and make sure the data is flowing and blah, blah, blah. Well, these businesses can't do that. And so while there were solutions out there that were point solutions that were marketing analytics solutions or call center management or whatever, the big piece that was missing is nobody had taken these pieces, put them together and put it on the internet so that it was accessible. All our competitors were kind of old legacy systems that were more windows based and so forth. So that's what we do. We're a tool that's used by businesses. We don't actually interface with customers.  And like, that's not what we are at all. We don't enter, we're not a marketplace where we connect consumers to the thing. We're like a back end tool that's used by these companies to run their business. Should I add your video? Yeah. That'd be embarrassing, I don't think that's a good idea. And while it's all on the cloud, it's self-worth as a service. So they pay as they use? Mm-hmm. Yeah. So just to give you a sense on the business side, if you look at the average service type of customer and look at what they were paying the previous supplier or the previous vendor, we are at a minimum 300% more expensive. And many times we're going to hire, 10 times more expensive is not uncommon. In fact, we had one customer, this is the most extreme example. You went from paying $600 a month to his previous provider to $30,000 a month to service. Why? Because we're able to demonstrate to him that using service type, he's able to make more money because we make his marketing a little bit better and we make his call center a little bit better and we make his performance in the field a little bit better. And what ends up happening is the impact compounds on each other. So the top of the funnel, the middle of the funnel, bottom of the funnel. And we're able to demonstrate that as a business, if you believe and communicate to our customers, we're going to create this much value for you and we're going to take this much in return back to us. And as long as that ROI exists, the pricing conversation is around the value creation. And so we never competed on price. That was never our strategy. That'll never be our strategy. We will always be the most expensive product out there. As long as we create the most value, then it's still making business sense for our customers. I think, when I talk to Armenian startups here and just kind of the community here, the default is always, let's try to do the same thing that the competitors are doing in Go-Cheaper. And in my opinion, obviously for Amazon and everything in Walmart, sure. That's a strategy that works very well a lot of the time. But when you're talking about technology, building a technology business, that's not always the right way to go. That's certainly not the way that we plan to do it. What we find is that a lot of the companies today that are being successful are focusing more on value creation and creating as much value as possible. And then you try to just charge as much money as you possibly can. And that's kind of an iterative process and you're gonna experiment and test. So it's not always clear kind of what the pricing is. We still don't understand what the way price should be. We just kind of try and see if it works. Sometimes it doesn't, sometimes it doesn't. But we're a tool that's used by businesses and we charge by users.  That's how it works. One of your customers, more big companies, service companies, or very individual commerce, station, or else? Yeah, good question. So if you were to look at kind of home services as a whole, there's, in the US, roughly about a million businesses that exist within home services. Within that group, we today only serve companies that do plumbing, HVAC, and electrical, companies that are focused on service, not new construction, companies that are focused on residential customers that are commercial, and companies that have five employees or more. And so when you do that, you go from about a million potential customers to 30,000 potential customers. And even though we're a billion dollar company today, and so on, we still today only focus on the 30,000.  We just said, no, we're not gonna work. Because we know that we're not a good fit for those guys today, that the product is too big, they don't get the value from it. And we haven't figured out a way yet to make that work for them. So within the industry that we serve, we're known as the ones that serve the top end of the market. But because the market is a fragment all our customers are still small businesses. Our biggest, biggest customer, maybe does a hundred million a year, which is still considered a small business in the US. It's still like family owned type of thing. So we don't sell to the fortune 500, none of our customers are public and so on and so forth. From a category perspective, we're still focused on SMB. But within our market, we service the bigger end and the ones that are generally the larger ones. But we don't go any smaller than 5 employees. That's one of the areas that we're growing. And so for your growth, you could, I assume you're focused on the US right now. Like you said, there's a huge market. And so you could grow in terms of just bonding into other segments. Or another approach for growth is to start growing internationally. How are you guys thinking about those choices? Yeah, great question. So if you think about just in terms of growth, like what is good and what is bad, generally the gold standard that kind of tech companies aspire to, today it's called a 2T3D. And what that means is first you get to get to a million a year revenue. That's just based on that. Once you get to a million a year revenue, you do triple, triple, double, double, double. So when you do the math, that gets you 70 to a million in five years. So we went more than that. Today we're roughly about 100 million a year revenue. And our goal is to continue growing at roughly 100% a year. So that's kind of the top-down goal that we have. We want to maintain this trajectory of going forward. So the next question becomes how? How do you do that? And it doesn't matter how big you are. Even Google and Microsoft and all of these guys, they all at the end of the day have this much opportunity to do stuff and this much capacity to do it. That's a universal problem. And so then that means, okay, so of all the opportunities there, where do you expect? It's a fundamental resource allocation problem. And so for us, when we think about our world, there's a few different factors involved. So just going back to that initial sizing, out of the 30,000 customers, today we're roughly about 10%. So our number one growth vector is just within our home base, just continue that growth of maybe becoming, we think it can easily be 60%, 70% market share, just giving it the dynamics of the market. So that's kind of goal number one, is to win within the home space. Beyond that, the additional vectors of growth are essentially, if you think about that, what we call our ideal time profile, plumbing, HVAC, service line new construction, residential, non-commercial, five technicians and above, well if you loosen any of these constraints, then you have additional vectors to grow. And the exercise that we're going through right now is essentially we have an entire team of like, I don't know, 15 people now that just focus on this problem, trying to understand what is that right next incremental step. So is it to go into roofing and windows and lawn care, or is it to go into commercial services or are there servicing businesses? Or is it to go into new construction where they're building entire tracts of homes? Or is it to go to Europe or to China? Or for us, what we found is that because we're like that end-to-end operating system, we're able to develop new products and sell for existing customers. So for example, a few years ago, we realized that all of our customers need to process payment. So we're like, oh, we can do that. And so we made a payments product. And we realized that because we have this operating system that these companies are using, we can do things that no other payment processor can do. So for example, we can't do the technician within our app. So the user experience is better. You don't have to switch to a different app. We can attach the payment to the invoice. So that's a step that nobody else can do because they don't have access to the invoice. We can know when the money goes into the bank what payments were there so we can automate the process of doing the deposit and the reconciliation and so forth. And so because there was all these opportunities for value creation, we were able to be completely, basically impossible to compete with. If you're running on service type, it makes no sense not to use service type for your payments. So that's why we charge more for our payments than the rest of the competition does. We have, I think today, something like 80% of our customers using our payments product. And we charge probably like 23% more than the other payment providers. And why do our customers choose to do business with us? Well, because we create more value than anybody else does. And so the other growth factor for us is investing and building in products that we can then sell for existing customer base. So we take a step back and think about, okay, the high level of goal is to continue growing at 100% for the next few years. Then it becomes an exercise in optimization, right? This is the universal possibilities for us to invest in. This is how many resources we have. And even after raising 300 billion and having 700 employees, for us it's still not enough. You're still way more opportunities than what we have to invest for. And so we're figuring it out as we go along with it. Are most of the students here in engineering? Probably computer science or engineering, maybe odds and ends, others. Got it, yeah. Maybe computer science or engineering, so. Yeah, well, I mean, in our chart, just differently. If you had a piece of advice to students now, take this class or spend your summer doing that, any time, free advice, one time only. Well, what would you advise to, you know, bachelor's or master's students in those fields? Yeah, I mean, this may sound kind of cheesy, but I'll say the first piece of advice is know yourself. Like try to understand what you really, really want and what's important to you. Because I think that is the starting point of any sort of like big life decisions. For me, I always knew that I needed to be really successful. Like that was really important to me. And I kind of knew that, you know, frankly speaking, I really, really wanted to be, I wanted to make my friends proud of me. I wanted to be rich. I wanted to make an impact. And so that by itself eliminated a whole set of possibilities because that was really, really important. And I knew that I needed to have that for me to be content with myself.  Like it's not easy to start a business. There's all sorts of hardships along the way. And I made a conscious decision early on that I was gonna sacrifice a whole bunch of things. And I knew I was gonna have to work really hard to get there. That might not make sense for everyone. In fact, for sure it doesn't make sense for everyone. So I think first step is just understanding what's important to you and being realistic about what that means. In terms of tactically what that looks like once you go from there, I would say generally speaking, technical skills are super, super important. So being able to like the specifics within that, I think statistics is incredibly useful just across the field. There was one class I took in school which I absolutely hated when I was taking it. In fact, I dropped my business major because of this class, it was a county. And I hated it so much I remember thinking, I would rather dig ditches for a living than ever do accounting. Today, there's probably no class that I've ever taken that's as useful as accounting. I use it every single day. So I think accounting is super, super important if you're gonna do anything in business. And then just on the technical side, I really value SQL skills in my interviews. I think being able to process data just even for a product manager or anyone, that's really useful. But anything beyond that is really specific to the pattern that you wanna go down. And one of the things I really recommend people do is to really paint this image in their mind of where is it they wanna end up? And then just go look at what people want. It's not a mystery, it's not some big secret that companies are trying to hide. If you wanna be a data scientist, go pull up all the job descriptions of data scientists. Look at what they're actually looking for. If you wanna be a designer, then go see what kind of experiences are valued, what are some of the skill sets that are necessary. When they describe in the job description what they're looking for, you'll be able to understand what those gaps are. And then of course I'm partial to kind of computer science and engineering.  Trust me, go learn it. So I think if that's something that is exciting to people, it's certainly kind of a very, very useful skill set in. I don't know anyone that's graduating from computer science and is a programmer that can't find a job and isn't able to make money fairly easily. So that's how I feel about it. Thank you. I have a discussion. In the university, often students want practical courses. They want practical courses. In fact, if a student looks at job descriptions, it's probably, they'll say you need to know C++ programming, you need to know business. But you know, things change in the real world. And I have the opinion that rigorous, solid training in some of the theories is essential for people to succeed long-term and also have leadership positions. You know, I often give this example. California has a marvelous education system because they have planned it so well. There's the junior college and there's Cal State system and there's the UCC system. Many companies prefer Cal State graduates because they're practical. They hire them, they immediately know the codes, they know the language, the programming. The 10 years later, you come, that guy is still doing the same. Yeah? You see graduates who are stronger in theory. They may not be immediately usable in terms of the practicalness, but you come back 10 years, 20 years later, to Derby. Derby ones that are able to adapt to new needs, to the industry, quickly learn new stuff and follow. And when you're a student, you don't see that long-term. You see the immediate, so, for example, our students who complain that there's no, you know, program. Because when you go to work, the programming is the first thing they do. So why do I need all that math? Why do I need the statistics? What's your view on this? Yeah, good question. So, we'll talk about this earlier, actually. So I have a bit of a controversial view on this. I'll push back on the premise of the question. So I would say, from an employer's perspective, when we're looking at assessing candidates, certainly skill sets is obviously one of the things that you look for. But the way I think many employers, and I doubt many of them would admit this, they also think of it in terms of a proxy for intelligence, a proxy for work ethic, and so forth. And so, for example, when I see an applicant come in who's gone to Harvard or Stanford or whatever the case may be, even if they didn't learn anything while they were at Stanford, and they took some random class that had nothing to do with what we are hiring them for, just the fact that they got into Stanford is already a huge signal. That tells me that this person already has a lot to offer. So I think in some ways the university, the badge that I have on that university, is really a signal to what filter you were able to pass through just to get in. And then the skills that you learn in the process, I think in many ways are almost secondary to that kind of filter aspect. Now, in terms of the conversation between the practical aspect and theoretical aspect, like I went to USC, which is one of the better engineering schools in the country, and we can debate whether the UCs are better than USC. Some UCs are probably better. But like when we were learning programming, it was still probably two or three languages behind what the current state was, and it was very much theoretical. And so, like when we hire an engineer out of school, we're expecting to have to train them on our specific technologies and all those kinds of things. And sure, it'd be great if they had the latest language that they learned. But part of the value that we see in someone who has a computer science degree is they know how the whole thing works. And they can go from the CPU and the registers and all the commands to the assembly language to the higher level languages and they understand compilers and operating systems. And so, that theoretical depth gives them a lot of power to then be able to incorporate new things so that when the next language comes out, they have the head start. So, I think there's tremendous value in the theory aspect of it. I think the question becomes, are we teaching the right theories and are those the most relevant? Because it could also go in the other direction where they have the relevant areas. So, I agree with you to the extent that it shouldn't be like a trade school where you're just focusing on the skillsets that you need for the job market and that's it. Because there are certain things that don't even come to play until you're years into it and so forth. The right balance between those two, I don't know, I think this is not my domain and I don't think that I have an answer for that. But I think there needs to be consideration of less science and going through the extreme value of language in the defense, either. But in terms of the, you know, from the employer perspective, it's, it would be difficult for me to not mention kind of the branding aspect as well. And so, in Armenia, obviously, AUA is one of the, if not the, premier brands to have and people should see the value for that and that should be part of the consideration as well. But I don't think the students here should necessarily be playing that the language that they're learning is not the latest or whatever because it changes so fast, right? If you think about what a university has to do, the set up of curriculum, to have everything in place, you would expect there to be some delay. Hopefully it's not too big of a delay between what the latest is and so forth. But I would agree to the sense that the theory is definitely important and there's certain core kind of, like math, like incredibly important because it expresses itself in all sorts of things in engineering. But to your point, it's not gonna be easy to necessarily recognize, oh, this linear algebra, algebra class can be useful in this programming job because it's not that direct of a connection. So I wouldn't discount the theory at all. But I think there needs to be consideration of growth and especially in an environment like Armenia where the ecosystem isn't as mature and there's a lot of different companies looking for different things. There's probably a higher burden on the universities to maybe focus on those practical skills that could accelerate the ramp up and so forth. But it shouldn't be at the expense of the peer theory and like I said, I think it's gonna be a balance as the right answer, not necessarily one versus the other. I'm gonna have to steal Vahe away so we can probably do one more question. Last, ready questions I can answer for you guys. Maybe you're starting the entrepreneurship. So there are several people here that are teaching close and related to entrepreneurship. Sometimes you may know we have our entrepreneurship for the International Center and then maybe you'll try to come up with the next generation of entrepreneurs. Yep, maybe a simple question, but what would you advise us on what what aspects should we kind of focus so that we get the best back to the most of what we actually offer to people who work here? Yeah, two questions. I think if I think about entrepreneurship perspective what's really important to me, it really is some of the very basics about why do companies exist? Why are some businesses successful and why some business is unsuccessful? And to me, it really comes down to value creation and just solving problems. So I've interacted with a lot of the startups here in the local ecosystem and I think a couple of the things that stand out to me is being curious for improvement or opportunity. One is that there's, in my opinion, not as much emphasis in understanding the problem that they're trying to solve or even understanding if the problem will work with solve. So just the idea of being able to think, I would say if there's one principle that shouldn't be hammered home in any entrepreneurship class is that you should start with a premise that you don't know, that you're starting from scratch and that you should validate every one of your assumptions. That you should be thinking about where you are today, where you want to go and all the risk factors involved and have a methodical process of understanding. So there's a book called Being Started by Eric Weiss. That's like, it's very effective in communicating this kind of idea that I'm talking about. So just having an iterative approach to the process to me has a ton of value and because what I've seen here and this is a mistake everyone, I've made the same mistake too.  That's not how the world works. And so I think breaking that and thinking about how you can set people up for success and not falling into that trap is a big aspect of it. The other one, that point comes a little bit later, is around fundraising. So we've raised, we raised two seed rounds and four venture rounds. And it was like, the first one was $200,000, $400,000 and $18 million and it's a number just got really big after that. And one of the things that I think we did really effectively was the common approach and we did this early on too is you try to figure out what do investors want and then you kind of try to make yourself appeal or you think about what are some of the tactics I can do, how do I get in front of investors, how do I do this and how do I do that? And I think fundamentally that approaches flawed because if you look at the current circumstance, there's way, way more capital that is looking for investment opportunities than there are good investment opportunities. So it's a huge advantage to the entrepreneur. The problem is, how do you get access to that? And in my opinion, the question shouldn't be solved from a, hey, what are the tactics I can do to raise money? It really should be solved from a perspective of like, how can I make the money chase me? How can I get myself to be the buyer of the transaction and not the seller? Because that's where you win. That's where you get to leverage. That's where you get the valuation. That's how you get that. And so the question is how do you become the buyer in that fundraising transaction? They just need to understand what's important to the investor and in today's world, all that risk for just a second. 30 years ago or 20 years ago or whatever, in order to start a business, it took a lot of capital. So if I wanted to start a service type in the 90s, I would have to buy a bunch of computers to host all this stuff. The technology to build it would have been 10 times harder because a lot of the tools hadn't been built yet. So the amount of capital I would need to do service type would have been much more. But I could have gone in, I could have been like, I have this idea. And then people are like, oh great, there's someone going inside. That is not the world we live in today. What's happened since then is the costs have gone way down. There's all sorts of cloud services now that I only pay when I use it. The tools necessary have advanced tremendously where what used to take 100 hours might take five hours today to do. But what that's done to the fundraising aspect is it's raised the ball. And then you can no longer come to an investor and that guy have an idea and they'll give you money. No, you need to come to an investor and you need to be much more mature along the journey. And that trend is gonna continue. 10 years from now, it's gonna be even harder in terms of what stage you need to be in to raise the money. But conversely, it's gonna be much easier to then get to that stage. You should last, require the last money. So in today's role to raise money, what you really need is traction. You need to be able to demonstrate not just that you have the idea, not just that you have the competency and the capability of making that idea into a real product, but that your product is actually gaining traction and that you have users that are willing to either pay you or use your product or whatever. And so that's the area where I think entrepreneurs need to focus on. And if you can get to the right level of traction, the money will come, like there's an entire city that's all they do is look for opportunities to invest in companies. The question is, what are you doing to put yourself in a position to be part of that magic? And so what I find a lot of, and this is not just here, I see this in the US as well, a lot of the entrepreneurs are just focused on, I need to raise money, I need to raise money, I need to have this meeting, I need to have that meeting. And the process of raising money creates no value for the business. Every minute that you spend on raising money is a minute that you steal from making the business better. So the other kind of main point that I would kind of have around to the entrepreneurship side is don't focus on raising the money. Focus on creating a reason for the money to come to you. And then once you do that, like it's much easier to get access to the capital. Those are the areas that I would like to say. Great to say that. So many of you may know, Vahet was here a year ago and gave a talk. And his talk was more about the business and how the business started. And it was very inspirational. So I just want to thank you for what you're doing. You're inspiring all of us. In our courses I teach entrepreneurship, service type is an example of a business that we talk about in our course. At the same time, we know that you didn't have to come to our media. We know probably you had to convince your board to do it. Even if you're spending a week here is an opportunity cost for your company. And so just as an Armenian and from a way really want to thank what you and I are doing. And it's very inspirational. It's very important. I think a lot of people appreciate it. You guys are a very early stage company. There's so many other things you could do. Just to win this at this stage of your company is really amazing and very auditory. So thank you. And your comments were very insightful. All right. Thank you.


Poland showcased one of the South Korean F-A-50 fighter jets it has acquired at a military base in the suburbs of Warsaw on August 21. The aircraft will contribute to the modernization of Poland's Air Force fleet, which currently includes both Soviet and post-Soviet fighter jets. Airplanes from the Western world are superior to post-Soviet aircraft, Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Blazek said during the presentation of the F-A-50. Two F-A-50s have already been delivered to Poland, with 10 more scheduled to arrive later this year, according to Blazak. South Korea aims to become a significant partner for Poland and signed a $13.7 billion arms deal with Warsaw last year, Seoul's largest ever such deal. The agreement with Poland, a key NATO member, encompasses hundreds of Chunmu rocket launchers, K-2 tanks, K-9 self-propelled Howitzers, and F-A-50 fighter aircraft. We have an idea to set up this technique and I want it to be seen all over the world, so that it is on Instagram and TikTok. I will put it on my own, because really Russians should see what we can do with them. I am writing to the EU, the glory of the country and the glory of the heroes. The technique that surrounds our peaceful gates, here it is standing, here it is standing and the glory of our heroic supporters, the technique that was brought to such a myth that it cannot do anything. And the glory of Ukraine, the glory of the heroes, we stand, we will be strong and I think that we can do it. Clean for the father. That's all for the father. I am watching and it's all a joke. It is, but it is, it's all disgusting. It's all terrible, it's all what kills a person. Children are killed, even all people are killed. What healthy thoughts, what can they do in general, not only for their own country, but even for the whole world.


Sugar you got some sugar for you These are hot, where'd they come from? I know every time you send me to go get them. Yeah, I'll give you I'll give you for Can I borrow Can I borrow five give them a little extra can I borrow five from you let me borrow six darling give them six So we got to hear about this kid going off the road come on out new birds. Okay. Oh, wow How far down do you know I mean he was right where the covert is oh my god When he went in it he gave it to try to pull it out and they drove it in further You know you that cover it's about three feet. Yeah, really This thing smells radiators just so you know.   What time probably 334 o'clock. I left here three I mean the puddles were all full this morning when I got over here Yeah, but I didn't it didn't rain at our place. Oh, wow. We got a little rain at my place Not like I was still able to down it pretty good shake. Yeah Don you're only eight months out on your sticker. Just so you know Nobody does ask him how far out he's on his nine Well guys and what he caught one day I was in Antifords And he came over you know, your stickers been out for over a year. Yeah There ain't a piece of dirt in this gravel it is the nicest stuff No, we're gonna bring a dump trailer we're bringing your dump trailer we're bringing two dump trailers Yours is 14, right? Yeah, we're taking yeah, we're taking it we're loading it with hemlock How much you off work Okay How much you want for that chainsaw? No, I mean now it's been run over how much you want for it. It's not worth as much No, I didn't say I ran over Now that's been run over. I'll give you like 150 I can go buy a chainsaw new for 400 Why would I buy one when I get yours for free? It's like the old milk why buy my bad Tom wants to buy mine Does he really his new ones are wrecked I don't know if I'll let him hunt on this land this year. You can't seem to find anything Well, he does stare him up for the other hunters We're just talking to Pat about Pat dragged up naughty of a beer. He shot was 180 pounds I don't think it weighed over a hundred. No, he put it in his pocket carrying it out. Yeah There was no me. That was that they'll wait a hundred. I don't think it weighed a hundred No, there was a smaller six point I've ever seen. Yeah. Yeah Yeah, all right. We'll see you later. All right Thank you Yeah Okay


We have it on record that we are the fastest nation to get red readiness approval and we just got that in June, I'm sorry, in October this year and if you place that on record against other nations that started before us they are yet to get their red readiness proposals approved and the unique thing about the red readiness program in Nigeria is that it has a two-track approach at the national level and then at the state level. The state level it has to do essentially with the state that has for it, the state that has an antecedent on how to manage its for it, the state that sees red not just as an end in itself but it means to an end. We are quite happy that the momentum that is sustained that the red is going and I think with red we'll be able to attain other associated programs or benefits from protection of the last tropical rainforest. What we are faced with is to reach out to the vast majority of stakeholders and to reach out and create more awareness on these issues and to persuade them that red is beneficial to all that everybody is a winner as far as red is concerned and that too it's a multi-benefits kind of arrangement you know we benefit from the gains we get from ecosystem services, we benefit from alleviating poverty at the community level, we benefit at even political organizing in these processes. So the challenge is to convey these benefits that are associated with red towards people and again one of the typical ways that how do we hold the people down? How do we scale up our activities at the community level? The challenges of resources to get the thing down because we need to as we move from the use of forest for timber concession to carbon concession and the article of trade is carbon. The people who are interacting with the forest need to come to these realities, need to benefit obviously, need to understand the mechanism of this new trade that we are going into. So the challenge is to transfer this level of knowledge to the level that they will participate to that's the challenge we have and again to translate to see means giving them alternative means of livelihood that they will have every reason to keep away from the forest.  So we need to see how to make the people see beyond them beyond survivor we need to think about tomorrow. Do I want to leave an inheritance to my what kind of inheritance do I want to leave for my children who are coming behind? Do I want to subject them? I love them so what I give to them is to give them more hardship for what I view. We need to ponder at all those things to put them together until that yes red has a hope if it has to bring us the desired benefit we must take the actions that we ought to take right now.


Ever scratched your head looking at things like f of x and math and wondered what they're all about? Wondering how this f of x function notation can be understood simply through a visual and fun approach? Join me as we explore these questions in today's episode of Mr. Mark's Math Adventures. Hey math learners, it's Mr. Mark's your friendly neighborhood math teacher. Remember, it's not just about getting the right answers, it's about learning and growing along the way. Now before we dive into today's adventure, remember to hit that subscribe button and ring that bell to stay tuned for future episodes. Now if you've been following along, you might remember our peek into calculus in episode number three of Mr. Mark's Math Adventures. For context around today's topic, you can check that episode out. But no worries, today's topic stands alone. So to all the curious minds out there, especially Mario, thank you for your honesty Mario. It's feedback like yours that helps us all grow.