All right. The next talk is by Amit and he will talk about OpenScap and Ansible. Please, are you unmuted? Yes. Go ahead. Once again, am I audible? Am I audible? Yeah, thank you. My name is Amit and I'm going to talk about compliance management with OpenScap and Ansible. A few things about me. I'm a senior software engineer at Red Hat Pune. I'm a member of Foreman community and mostly work on Foreman related components. So after this talk, I'm also available at Foreman booth. So if you want to talk about OpenScap and Ansible or Foreman, then we can have good talk about that on the booth. Apart from that, I also like power lifting and I'm beginner level power lifter. This is my first visit to Belgium, Europe, and this is my first post-demo. So if it works well, then maybe I will come next year. So this is today's agenda. It's more about what you can do with OpenScap, OpenScap security guide and Ansible. The Scap has very vast applications and what I'm going to discuss today is basic and common use case of Scap for remote system and the local system. So what is the Scap? So anyone here actually using the Scap or OpenScap? Okay, so some basics regarding OpenScap. It's security content automation protocol. It helps you to automate the vulnerability management and measurement. So when we think of big organization or suppose even if you have the 20 or 50 systems, you need to continuously monitor the systems for security threats and compliance management. So what I mean by compliance management here? So there may be cases that you should be having some rules or some possibilities like this, like disable SSH root login for all of your systems. Maybe enable the bootloader password in Grub or put all of your systems in Pipsmore. So in that case, Scap can help you because Scap has multiple policies and provides already written from where you can choose what suits you better or what suits your organization better. And as per that, you can run the compliance scan. So this is the sort of basic basics about Scap. Now you know about the Scap. The next thing is OpenScap security guide. So there are already many rules are written and those are in the OpenScap security guide format. This guide is available in the form of Archim package or even you can directly forward the repository. The Scap documents are written in XML format and when you open the Scap, any Scap file. So this is how you can see that. So you can see that the Scap guide is distributed in terms of profiles. So like I highlighted one. And the next is each profile contains multiple rules. Those are by default enabled. If you want to disable those, we can do the customizations also. Now how you can get this Scap security guide on your system? Maybe you prefer the gateway like clone the gate repository and have it on your system or multiple systems. Or if you're not sort of very technical person and you want to just go with the package installation like DNF install or APT install, that is also possible. Scap is very good example of compliance as a management. This means that the content is written in human readable format. So even if you're not that much into the Scap development, you should be able to understand what has been written and what it will do. Now you got the Scap security guide on your system. The next thing is get some information about the Scap policies. I embedded the commands directly. So if in case you are already connected to internet, you can try to install the Scap security guide and get the information using this command, Scap info command. So what basic information you should be aware about? The date of generation. So can you see that generated attribute there? So it mentions when that Scap security file was generated. I was unable to find the frequency at which they release the Scap security guides like new version. But if you're having the gate in automated way, like you keep on fetching the gate content, then you should be getting the policies in regular way and you should not be using the old policy. The next important thing is profiles. So as you can see here, there are multiple profiles. So maybe you should have question which profile I should be using. It is up to you or it is up to your organization, which standards you are going to follow or which profile you are going to follow. Like I said, it is possible to get the rules list of each profile and you can decide which one is suitable for you. Now you've got the Scap security guide. You got the basic information about the profiles. The next is doing the compliance scan. I again embedded the commands here because if you're using the laptop, you can directly run these commands and you can try all of these things side-by-side. The command says that we are going to do XCCDF evaluation and please give me the results in ARF format and HTML format. The ARF format is mostly used by applications like Foreman where you can upload that report and get better results or get the display of that report on Foreman. The later on that report.html, it is plain HTML file. It is human readable. We'll also see that in demo, what all things it has. And it gives you good information about which all rules are passed, which all rules are failed. It is also possible you want to have the Scap content on local system and execute the Scap run on another remote system. In that case, you don't actually need to copy all of this content to a remote system. You can directly use the IP address or the hosting of that system and use the OpenScap SSH command. So there are still guys. I'm not the one like that.  You can load the Scap content and do the evaluation. What are the features are available on command line? Those features are available in Scap workbench. You can do the evaluation of remote system also. Now when we think of getting something from the gate, most of the time we think that we need to customize something or we need to enable or disable something. So in that case, very first thought we get is open the original file, modify it. That's it what we get. So if you are using the gate, it is very easy to track the changes, but if you don't want to use the gate, then in that case, OpenScap provides you a way to customize the file. In this case, what you are actually going to do is don't modify the original content. Create one customization file, which is totally different and when you will run the Scap, use both of the files. So you are not touching the original content and you still have the customization. And with customization, you can select multiple rules from profiles or if you want to drop some rules from profile, that is also possible. You can play with all of the content of Scap Security Guide and there is no problem with that. Now this is sort of last stage. You got the Scap Security Guide, you installed it. Now the thing is you got some failures and you want to fix those failures. So in that case, Scap Security Guide already includes the Ansible playbooks, which can directly use to fix whatever the problems you can see on the report. And this is again possible that you upload the Ansible playbooks on Ansible Tower or even Foreman and trigger that from that side instead of locally running it. The limitation here is Ansible playbooks do not cover all of the rules and all of the policies which are there in your Scap Security Guide. So there is still a chance that you need to manually do something and maybe if you are interested, then you can commit those changes in the p3 repository. So I am having the demo now. Okay, so what I am having is already Scap package is downloaded. So it's already installed. I copied the command already. So I am just going to execute it. So this is how you can see the Scap scanning or when it scans your system. This is how it shows the output. And at the end, report will be saved in report.html file. So that verify file has with RBM. It is going to take long time. So meantime, what I will do? I will switch to Scap Workbench. I'm not sure if it can detect my operating system, but I can see it is selecting Fedora by default. So I hope it is that much intelligent. And yes, you can load the content from here. And very similar way, you can do the scan from here. So I'm not going to do it. So what I will do? I will do the customization. So here can you see 187 rules are selected now? So I go to customize. Name it something like this. Here is another dialog. Or just demo purpose. I'm going to select all the rules. Clicking OK button. So can you see that now it says 5, 1, 8 rules selected? So what I did? I selected all the rules. And after that, you can do the scan. So meantime, we have this completed. I will start the Ansible run. Let's see. OK. And OK, I will show you the report. So this is the report you get when you run the Scap scan. It shows, on the top, you can see how many rules are passed and how many failures are there. So you can see 27 rules are passed now. And if you click on any specific rule, it will give you more details about the overall definition. So it has, when you have the XECDF file, it actually refers to O1 file, which has actual implementation of that rule. And if you want to go and see what it is doing on system level, then you can check that role in Oval file. OK, so Ansible run has completed. So I have already copied the report after doing the Ansible run. And you should be able to see the difference here. So if you go here, you can see 169 rules are passed now after running the Ansible playbook. But we still have 22 failed rules. So there could be some rules where we can't automate those using Ansible. So you need to manually fix those. So this is sort of from my side. Do you have any questions? Do you have a central place where you have all these rules open source? Yeah, so there is a gate repository for that one. I will just go back to the slide where we have the link. Yeah, is there a central repository for all the open source rules out there? So here you can see all of the rules are there. And you can directly forward that repository. And for customization, you can either use the gate or use the SCAP way of customization. Thank you. You can just shout out your question and we can repeat it. Yeah, so actually those, sorry. So Ansible rules. So your question is Ansible rules are from the host on which I'm running the definition, or those are available already in this repository. Am I correct? Actually the thing is like if you're talking about remote host and you think of running or executing the scan from local host to remote host, in that case you don't need to have anything on that remote host. You can directly have the Ansible inventory run the playbook from local system on that system. So likewise, so you don't need to have anything on that host. It is sort of, I may call it like managed host. No more questions then thank you very much Amit.


You need a financial advisor with the freedom to focus on your specific needs. Whatever your goals, Reid Potter can create a game plan tailored to you. Call Reid at 432-0777 at Pikeville, Kentucky to learn more. The City of Pikeville will be having what they're calling an old-fashioned 4th of July celebration on Tuesday, July 4th. Exactly.  Come right here. We have, and I might be biased here, the best fireworks show on this side of the state, if not in the entire state. There will be live music and free activities for children at the Pikeville City Park, food trucks lining Main Street, and a magic show at the mountaintop media stage at the Appalachian Wireless Arena.  It'll be a great time. Family fun for everybody. Come down and see us. Pikeville's 4th of July celebration will start at 2.30 p.m. and will end with a fireworks show at dark. For more information, you can visit the Pikeville City Tourism Facebook page. For Mountaintop News, I'm Kelsey Dean.


Myself, Deshmukh Sachin, working as assistant professor in WALCHAN STRIP TECHNOLOGY, civil engineering department. Today we are going to learn how to measure the pressure by using inverted U2 differential manometer. You know manometers are used to measure the pressure and pressure difference. At the end of this session, you will be able and you can calculate the pressure difference from inverted U2 differential manometer for the same pipe or for different pipes. The inverted U2 differential manometer is going to join for a one pipe or two different pipes. Previously, we have seen that U2 differential manometer, we have joined to a single pipe of whose pressure difference we have calculated and the same we can join to two different pipes of whose pressure difference we are going to find out or we have calculated it. Similar way, inverted it is you can say upward. The manometer is kept upward, a pipe is there and manometer is attached. Can you imagine for which particular liquid which can use, we can use for water also, we can use for gas, we can use for vapor pressure. So particularly this inverted U2 differential manometer, we can see in the industries. And manometric liquid, there will be some question in your mind which manometric liquid will be there because in U2 differential manometer we have seen the liquid was mercury which is a heavy liquid, which is a heavy liquid. Specific gravity is 13.6 for manometer that we are using for U2 differential manometer. Now for inverted U2 manometer, here totally opposite to that that the specific gravity of that liquid must be less than the liquid of flowing liquid, isn't it? So that can be float or that can be above that liquid and which is also the same characteristics which is not going to mix with water or whatever the liquid is flowing. So many characteristics it must have that can be used as a light liquid or we can see the manometric liquid. See the figure, see this figure, concentrate on this figure, previously the U2 differential manometer is like this, now it is totally opposite to it. Now here X line is over here that is a datum line over here, the liquid from this pipe A is pushing this manometric liquid, this manometric liquid comes down, this is the liquid of that second pipe that is pipe B, this is you can say this is the height of this liquid, this is the height of this pipe A liquid, this is the light liquid, this is the difference, this is the difference H, that is a difference of manometric liquid from datum line, from the datum line. In inverted U2 differential simple U2 differential manometer what we have seen this liquid goes up, now this liquid goes down now in inverted U2 differential manometer and similar way that we are going to equate the pressure of this left limb and pressure in the right limb. So from the figure P is the pressure at point A, Pb is the pressure at point B, H is a difference of light liquid level just now we have seen, H1, H2 these are the heights of the water, the liquid above you can say from the pipe below the datum line, rho 1, rho 2 and rho at the density of the liquid of the pipe A, pipe B and the light liquid. We need to calculate the pressure difference between point A and B that is P A minus Pb, P A minus Pb that we now can find out by equating the pressures, pressure in the left limb below the datum line is P A minus rho, now why minus because it is inverted and it is you can say below the datum level it is rho 1 gh1 and pressure in the right limb it is Pb minus rho 2 gh2 minus rho 1 gh1 just see here there are two liquids on the right limb there are two liquids this one as well as this one, this one as well as this one, this one as well as this one. So here on the right limb there are two as pressure is same for the horizontal surface and therefore we will have to following equation to be mentioned here that is on the left arm as well as on the right arm equate this so that we will get the P A minus Pb. So this particular equation we get P A minus Pb is equal to rho 1 gh1 this rho 1 gh1 it goes on the right hand side and remaining both the terms as it is rho 2 gh2 rho 1 gh. Now some important things regarding this inverted duty differential momentum manometer that we have to see this is used to measure the low difference of pressure and which is very accurate also. Second the flowing liquid must have more specific gravity than the manometric liquid isn't it which is totally opposite to the duty differential manometer and for low pressure difference it gives large deflection which is most important to us to calculate the difference. Now as we know this particular concept of this now we will find out the difference of pressure by considering two problems. First one just see the figure and inverted u2 is shown which is used to measure the pressure difference between two points A and B which has water flowing from this the water is flowing from this the water is flowing and this is the you can say manometric liquid is there the difference in level is 0.3 meter and A this A is 0.25 B is 0.15 calculate the pressure difference P a minus P b if the top of the manometer is filled with the oil of relative density 0.8 this is filled with relative density 0.8. So oil is used which is going to float and which is having the specific gravity less than water it is going to float. So equate we know P a minus P b is equal to the pressure in the left limb minus pressure in the right limb. So h is given to us that is 0.3 meter A is 0.25 B is 0.15 rho density of water you can take 1000 kg per meter cube P2 it is that is given to us relative density that is 0.8 or you can say specific gravity then as it is inverted u2 differential manometer we know this is the equation. So P a minus P b if you can put this values you can put this values P a minus P b you will get 0.04 Newton per meter square 0.04 Newton per meter square these are some questions review questions and you can calculate it very fast no problem for that. These are its answers for the first one the answer is 1471 Newton per meter square and we can use for gas as well as for liquid only the thing that the manometric liquid must have the specific gravity less than the flowing liquid and which is not going to mix also. Second problem you can see similar way an inverted u2 differential manometer is there specific gravity is 0.9 it is connected to two different pipes carrying water similar way only on the right hand side we have taken in the that particular deflection here the values are given directly put these values put these values directly in the equation. So P a is also given to you P a is also given to you it is the pressure in the pipe a is 2 meter is given to you put this value over here 2 meters put all this as per the equation P a minus P b. So you will get P b is equal to 1.88 meter in terms of head head of water and in terms of you can say a unit that is kilo Newton per meter square it is 18.44 kilo Newton per meter square 18.44 kilo Newton per meter square particularly you can solve more problems for this u2 inverted u2 differential manometer it is very interesting phenomenon use these books as a references for solving more and more problems if you find any difficulty regarding solving any problem you can contact me. Thank you.


Hello and welcome to the presentation. My name is Josh Plannan. I'm a principal researcher at the American Institutes for Research, and I'm coming to you today from downtown Washington DC. Thanks for joining me. And so today we're going to discuss an evidence gap map shiny application for effect size and summary level data. So like I said, this is a collaboration with numerous individuals here at our Chi Zhang, Joe Taylor, Ryan Williams, mega Joshi and Lauren Burr mega in particular, I'd like to give a big shout out to mega was our lead developer on the shiny application, and she really helped us rethink how to process this information in the our environment so a big thank you to mega I know she's watching. So, a huge congratulations to her as well. I'm super miss if I didn't think our sponsors. So the project was originally sponsored by an Institute, a US Department of Education Institute of Education Sciences, and ended a little while ago and so the methods of synthesis and integration center or mosaic, as we call it, and our has picked up some of the slack and helped us get this shiny application to the finish line. So let's take both of those sponsors before we go further. So let's then turn to creating one of these gap maps with meta analytic data in particular with our shiny applications. Okay, so first things first, where can you find this shiny application so has a has a shiny application server that where we host various shiny applications and mosaic actually has a couple of different shiny applications that you can take a look at while you're there but if you're just interested in taking a look at the EGM shiny app you go to our shiny apps dot shiny apps dot IO backslash mosaic underscore EGM actually the mouthful but relatively simple URL to get to and you know you're in the right spots. So if you find a landing page that looks something similar to this. Now of course we're going to keep updating this page but, but this, this landing page will probably look pretty familiar to you. Once you click on it, regardless of when you come to it. So before we dive into it. This one I mentioned a bit about the philosophy and the features of the shiny app. The first thing is we wanted it to be compatible with a typical meta analytic data set. We wanted to, we wanted you to be able to say okay I've already done my meta analysis, make probably an R, and I have a row level data effect size level data on the rose. So we wanted to have columns that indicate the effect size and the variants and, and different characteristics of the programs, and we wanted you to be able to take that data set and uploaded into the shiny app and have it work. So that's what it does. We also just wanted it to be easy. But as it features uploading effect or summary level data sets so that means so again, you can have a row level where each row is an effect size or each row can be a cell within your EGM I'll show you what that means in a minute. You can actually have to so a traditional to level EGM is just x axis and y axis with multiple categories within those two axes. You can, and you can produce that very easily with this shiny app, or you can actually produce a three level EGM which I'll show you what that means in a minute. I'm just going to give you some really nice summary outputs. And then, like I said, an easy to copy and paste our code in case you want to do some more fiddling with the the gg plots or anything else within the plot itself. Okay, so the live demonstration. Finally, so two examples one using effect size level data that comes to us from a review that I completed a little about a year ago on the effects of programs on cyber bullying outcomes. So we're going to look at at that so that's the effect size level data sets, and then summary level data set comes to us from that motivational intervention review that I mentioned and that had 14 different motivational interventions across three different sites. And I do want to mention, right off the bat when it comes to loading the shiny app in Chrome that there are that there are several dependencies and so if it takes a minute the first time that you go to the the site. So give it a minute let it load and it'll I'm sure you it'll it'll eventually initialize. Okay first things first put a load data upload my own data there is an example already built in here I'm not going to show you that right now you can you're free to play with that if you'd like but it has all the same features but we're going to use our own data to start off with going to effect size level data and then you can actually upload a CSV or an Excel file we're going to start with a CSV file. Browse. We're going to use this example yes level CSV open. Just takes a second upload complete. Now we've got several dropdowns here. The first one says specify the first factor for the EGM. This first factor is your x axis.  It really is your preference you can go. You can you can put the outcome down there on the access you can put the outcome on the y axis. We're going to go with design on the x axis design is the the RCT QED individual level not school level that sort of thing so the research design. Then on the y axis we're going to go with the outcome. The outcome type so we've got two different outcome types here we got cyber bullying or aggression or traditional in person bullying. Now if we want to specify a third factor we could hear I'm not going to for this round but I'll come back to it and show you what we do with that. This effect size so which variable in your data sets is the effect size variable so just it's easy one it's yes. Then we've made this easy for you if you happen to have a column that's got standard errors you can click on that here and will transform standard errors for you, or if you've got variances for your effects go and click on variance. And then tell it where the column of variances is. And then finally, which column is your study level study identifier now this is important if you have nested effect size data. And so this would be like if you have correlated effects or hierarchical effects, so multiple effects per study. But even if you don't, you probably have a study identifier just go ahead and click on that. And that is it. That's 12345 clicks. And you click on over to create summary data. And the last click you're going to, you're going to push is has to do with the assumed correlation among the effects. And when there are multiple effects per study point eight is is generally the correlation that we say is about right so we're going to use that for now. Click summary data. I'm going to expand this to show 25 rows and now what we see here are our basic summary data. So one of the cells that's estimated. Let's walk through this for a minute. The first column here is the factor one the x axis. So this is our design column. So we've got non randomized class, class level assignment non randomized individual level assignment non randomized school level assignment, randomized class randomized individual randomized school, so on and so forth. The y axis is our outcome. So we've got two outcomes here we've got aggression or traditional bullying or the cyber bullying. The estimation method here I'm going to sort by it just so we can see this easily. There are actually three different types of estimation methods that EGM will select for you. The most basic one we actually don't have here occurs when you have one study and one effect. When that happens. And that analysis is happening within that cell. It just gives you the basic effect size. If you have two or less studies and for less effect sizes you're going to get the univariate random effects model this is just a conservative model that doesn't assume any correlated effects even though there are effects within study. And then the simple averages within the studies to create the average effect per study, and then the correlated effects estimation model is the robust variance estimation method and and that is why we need this little scroll over here. And it accounts for the correlated errors within study. That's the estimation method. Then the average effect size is exactly what you might imagine it is the average effect for that cell. And so in this particular example, negative effects are a good thing because it means that there's a decrease in bullying or cyber bullying for the intervention group compared to the comparison group. And we've got the number of studies and the number of effects. Studies within a cell is for the randomized individual looking at cyber bullying we've got 12 studies and 27 effects, and the most effects is 61 actually. And so this is randomized at the school level. And there's 61 effects there. Okay, enough of that. How do we get to an EGM click on EGM. There's a lot of dropdowns here. This says the first one says do you want to map average effect size onto a continuous color. You want to overlay anything on the dots this gives you allows you to say the number of studies or the average effect I'm going to click average effects so we can see what that looks like. And then the access access is the design. And the y axis is the outcome that allows you to put any labels that you want in there. And when you click click create plots. And then we get an EGM. Okay. So we look here one more time. We can see our typical EGM that we think of we've got the x axis is the design. We've got the six different cells, six different categories for design, two different categories for outcome on the why and then crossed in there is our average effects for each one of these cells. The average effect corresponds to this color code down here with a negative for being the largest in a dark purple. This I believe is set up for people who have color blindness or issues with processing colors this should be good for those folks. And we've overlaid the average effect within each of the cells. If you want to download the plot quick on this download plot, you can give it a different name. We'll just say patient. You can do some stuff with the width of it, but if we download the plot. And then we click on it. You can see it. Last but not least is the R syntax. You can copy and paste this right there like that. And this will tell you this will give you. Everything you need to reproduce that plots using your own data. Really, that's it. I'd like to thank you all for joining us today. I appreciate any input that you have. I'd like to thank again my collaborators and co authors, Chi, Joe, Ryan mega and Lauren. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me. There's my email I'm also on Twitter. You can find all my contact information at Joshua are planning.com. And we look forward to having you all use the program. Have a great rest of the conference. Thanks for having me have a great rest of your day wherever you're calling from.


Hi everyone, this is Sonali. Thank you all for coming out some time for attending today's webinar on the episode 27 of the Business X Learning Series, Invest, Scale, Value and Exit. To all the attendees out there, please type in any questions you might have in the Q&A section and we'll try to answer as many as possible at the end of the session. I would now like to welcome our speaker, Mr. Gaurav Mariah, Chairman and Founder of the Franchise India Group. A very warm welcome to you, sir. Thank you, Sonali, and welcome friends and welcome to another edition. If you're joining this month, the first time, very, very happy to hear to you. This is our regular edition on Saturday afternoon, just about 30 odd minutes, where we spend about 20, 25 minutes on giving you one topic on a particular aspect. It can be on value, exit, scale and how do you really do any of these things in the cycles of your business. So you talk about that and then maybe 10 minutes, a little more interactive your questions. So if you have a question, you would have to go to a Q&A box and start asking your questions and I'll probably spend more time in answering your questions today. So today's topic is about mentorship. So a lot of these days, I mean, startups come to us and especially on a Business X platform where they would see that should I take a mentor, should I not take a mentor, which kind of mentor is required to be done. People share their experiences of different kind of mentoring programs they've gone through. They've gone very institutional mentoring programs, they've just gone with one mentor which has taken them help them in terms of doing it. I can tell you there are a lot of good case studies on that and there's enough and more data available. You should really spend the lead. If you are a startup or starting your own business or planning to start your own startup, I think you need a mentor. Even if you are doing a business which has some kind of history like when franchise, even if you are doing a franchise business where you are trying out with the already established brand, it's still not a bad idea to have a good mentor. Because still it's a startup, it would still have its own challenges and if you are somebody who's not done business in the past, you would need to take a mentor. And so what we're going to cover today's topic is why you require mentors. As I said, I mean, I'll go into detail in terms of what is the real impact of being mentors around and why we need it. Then we'll also talk about types of mentors available, what kind of mentor you should choose. I always believe it's much easier for a mentor to choose a mentee than a mentee to choose a mentor. It's actually other way around. People think that getting a good mentor is difficult. Actually that's easier but for a founder or a company, the business owner to really go out and say this is a mentor who's going to help me out and I'm going to be staying with him for many, many, many years and probably have a long, deeper association and share whatever my challenges are and open up my everything to this mentor is a very important. It's like you're choosing your Dronacharya. It's something which is very, very difficult for somebody to do that. It's like choosing your own Christian. So anybody in our mythology also, there is a very big importance of a mentor. Mentors really have to also see through and there has to be a collective bonding unless and until that is there, this will not last and you will not be able to get results and it actually can become better. I've seen people who are talking and giving that this is my mentor at the particular stage and later they are not doing it and because there was a mismatch of expectations. So we'll talk about types of mentors. We'll also talk about the stages where you need a mentor and what are the stages and this is also self-evolving. Different stages, different mentors would be able to guide you through. I'll also talk about the nine reasons which why mentors would work. What are the key impact areas they would really work on that? Three areas which I will talk about what is the objective of a mentorship program. What kind of objectivity you need to bring in? You need to be very firm on that. These are three or big objectives and I think these are three big objectives which a mentor should really look at. And finally, how to select a right mentor. Who should really go out and select the right mentor and how you are creating a long-term valuation because a mentor at the certain stage was a fancy word. You know, everybody wanted to be a mentor. People liked that in that situation. They start the programs and then they all that. It's asking a lot of time from them and a lot of commitment from them and that's where they start pulling them back. So I realize that unless and until you have very defined a role, it's just not done because somebody has become very successful and now wants to do a mentor, other young people or you just for a sake of it getting a great name who is looked like your mentor would not make sense. I think either side of that would not create any kind of a value. So how to really be able to define that is very important. So we will start with first understanding why you need a mentor, why you need that and mentorship is not for everyone. I've seen a lot of successful people started their program and started doing mentorship with young people, young founders and they had no impact on the business because it needs a lot of commitment. It needs a lot of commitment and continuous working. It's not also sometimes your own personal experiences while it helps you as a mentor to have a lot of personal experiences but unless and until you are somebody who goes other way around and sees a lot of data, a lot of time you spend and then give you your advice. It's a bit of a coaching which is different from you know just bringing your own domain expert. You need to be somebody who's has to have ability to read better. Somebody who has the ability to go out and read better in businesses. Somebody who has ability to understand the data better would be able to have more analytic capabilities better than only you can be a mentor. So even for mentors I would say they have to really ask themselves would they have enough time and commitment available? Are they also not somebody who just put their own personal opinions on things because that doesn't work because every single business and a business owner is very very unique. So you cannot just go out and make your own personal opinions on this. I've been involving a lot of mentorship programs and I used to do that. I will be very honest and I will go and make same opinions because of my own understanding of businesses but I've stopped it completely. If anybody ask for advice from me I will say feed me a lot of data. The only thing I can tell is that I have ability to read that data and tell you where it stands and that becomes that I'm not judgmental on my own opinions and I'm actually going by a very methodical approach a more scientific approach towards guiding somebody. So it's a very important decision when you do that and why that's why most of the times your close relationships fail as being mentors. Your friends, family they are not the greatest mentors why because they would not be able to give you impartial feedback. Their advice would be always some form of bias to the nature and they would not be backed by strong data and a factful experience. So all this would not be available. So sometimes your close relationships and close people in the family are not the best sometimes to take as a mentor because they would not be able to give you they were always impartial about some kind of feedback to you and that's something is not good because the whole purpose you're taking a mentor is very very important. So you need to really see what is the kind of impact you're looking for this program that's very important how is there a deeper reasons why you are taking this mentor that's also very important why you want to really take a mentor because you need to really have some kind of a deeper reason. It's just not that you have a startup and you really want to engage somebody as a mentor you need to really see what is the deeper reasons and you also have to know your strength areas weak areas the areas where you need really help and so on and both sides have to have a very strong objectivity before they commit to this relationship that's very very important. So now let's get into the types of mentors there are two types and I've realized that there are two types very clearly and one has to really see say I was I was developing a new product or I needed a some kind of ideation or innovation in that product it happens in technology it happens in I think then I need a mentor who comes very clearly a domain specialist somebody who can guide me through in this it's very very similar to what happens in when you have a mentor in your education because if you are a particular subject you're reading you need somebody who has been a specialist on that subject who can guide you through that it's very similar when you have a mentor in a in when you're doing a phd or doing any other thing very clearly you need a domain because you will stuck at different stages and you need somebody to pave it through for you is it improves your critical thinking it improves your your capability to solve problems but you need to have somebody who clearly comes from the domain so you need to really ask where you are if you are somebody who is developing a new product or innovating something you need to have somebody who's an absolutely domain specialist say I was doing a you know personal care product and I want to really take this into that I need to go to somebody who understands personal care market deep down and especially if it is a product which needs a little more engineering then I need the product specialist somebody who has the absolutely product specialist and then take him as a mentor so very clearly understand where your startup is but if your startup was something which has some form of a product which has been already commercialized and now it's it's running as a business and you need somebody who comes with a larger business experience and business reputation or somebody who can help you open doors open the network and so forth then you need another second type of I think somebody who comes generally from a business experience on being an entrepreneur very successful and do that so very clearly ask yourself where your startup is and where you need to do that thing so there are two types of very clearly mentors to be in the market one are very very clearly domain champions they are they would help you to address your or your business where its stages now let's get into the why what are the stages of this mentorship program you know to me any business would have to pass through four stages and four stages there are very few times I've realized that a mentor can actually help you all for you might have to have different mentors at different stages at the first stage when you are pretty much at the what I call the validation of your business you want to really have somebody who can help you to validate your business idea take it to the next level get even the business model validated in terms of that it would have have a sustainability or a performance in going forward which is more productization of your idea so come form of you need to really come down to first stage second stage is what I call the incubation stage where you need to really reach out to your audience it's very clearly go to market and get your first success normally these two stages I think should be idly done by one single mentor and then third is a little different stage it needs a scale it needs somebody who has seen that you know people who are very clearly domain based experience they might help you in the first two stages but not be able to scale this because scale might need somebody who's seen it long term right so somebody who has has an ability to really go take this to from a certain size to a certain level who has a very strong capability of driving what I call organizational design and also performances monitoring and so on especially young founders even if they get capitalized I've seen that they get fail when they scale because they have no ability to understand how large organizations would be done so it becomes very overwhelming for somebody who's just maybe a few years in experience in business and certainly has to manage a thousand member team so how do you really get to a level where you have somebody along with you who can guide you through in this process and and fourth is where you need to really what I call monetize your startup which means that you need to look at an exit or look at a you know some kind of a capitalization for the business so that stages are there so I would say I would split this into two part which is a little more mature side of things and then the first is very clearly a validation and incubating of your business model so that's how your structure would work now let's get into what I call the nine reasons why a mentorship would work you know why would a mentor would be able to help your business so first it is it is essential when you're starting a startup how it would be good to have a mentor because you will save a lot of time to really go to the market and that time I think can take a lot of serious you know pain areas because it's a most difficult time especially if you're not from that business and you're starting off that business say I was starting a business in health care and I have somebody who's already have that experience and a lot of people start and they a lot of the people young people from technology backgrounds they come into these domains and they don't have industry domains available they don't understand health care but they understand technology so they understand that they're creating a product but they need to have a good mentor who can align with them understand validate their product and tell them a real practical issues on health care they understand the industry get some contacts and then get into the market so that's where I would strongly say you need to really if you want to save your time and money and get to market fast you need to have somebody who's a strong mentor around with you another thing which is would be the second point the mentor helps you learn faster and also become more smarter on your database because every single touch point or data point can be backed by a lot of other industry you know facts and so they keep validating those facts so you get a bouncing structure with your mentor which can help you do that third which is very very important I think the most important aspect of this is that we give access to their networks so if you have a good industry mentor and you're getting into that industry you would be able to quickly get into a lot of networks it also would continue to refine and continue to improvise your strategy so once you draw a strategy in a business plan it needs improving much much you know many many times in your cycle it needs maybe every 60 days go back to the sea that arc is the strategy working as per what we really thought improve on all other touch points for your communication any kind of communication marketing you know a business strategy that also would be able to do that and the other point which is very important is the financial agreement this is where I think a good entrepreneur who has been successful in past would be a great advice and I've seen the businesses especially early startups in the first 24 months do a lot of financial disasters you know they do a lot of financial mistakes they don't understand how to plan their budgeting they don't understand how they really want to forecast how they really want to really kind of build the sustainability in the network and that's why we have many many many failures in startups a lot of startups we've seen failing and especially in this COVID period we saw even more failing because they had no financial agreement so this is the area which I would say a mentor gets a very very important aspect also another thing which is access to a lot of knowledge and external knowledge base you know so every time you have a new new area to really learn that a good mentor with his experience and his own network and his understanding to ability to bring other parts of experience also can be a lot of other alignments in your business which you require can also be brought in another area which is very important is to continue to boost your emotional intelligence your creative thinking this is one of the areas which is actually more emotional in nature because sometimes when you're starting a business you almost every week you have an emotional rundown you are not successful you're not able to get that so keep your emotional balance and your creative thinking going up you need a mentor somebody who is along with you appreciates what you've done and also guides you through if you've not worked for you or it needs a change of strategy that also is important and finally somebody would be able to help you to raise capital or carve out your exit strategy and even at a certain stage help you to get some more resources that would be also done by the mentor now what is the objectivity why we we really need a good mentor with us I would say the three parts to this piece one is accountability you know when you are a founder of a business nobody really comes to you you are the boss of the company while you are on a small you know big business but it still is your company you have no accountability and especially early stage founders are not having the structured boards you know when you're running a large company then you have a board you become accountable to board every CEO every business owner has to go back to the board to take a lot of decisions but when you're running your own startup you have nobody to really go to apart from if you have got some early investment maybe you're investors but you don't have a day-to-day accountability so first very important aspect is put yourself in the shoes where you think that there is somebody you are accountable for and morally you are responsible on taking those decisions and once you've taken the decisions going back and telling what happened on those decisions is very very important and that works very well I mean I think self-accountability is really very important in this business and mentors with you from that second is to everything becomes process-oriented it is very important then when you are early stage startup you don't really took too much of time in putting setting some processes but mentors help you to set those processes because that would be I think more foundational so that you tomorrow when you start scaling up the business business and third thing which I would say most important aspect of a good mentor is that he's a rainmaker he knows when you need help when you need help he's always around with you and helps you out to really get some kind of not necessarily just a funding but it can be other resources which are required so he's a rainmaker he is somebody who's always around you and would be able to do that now let's get into what do you really need in a mentor what are the reasons why you want to really do that as I said it's very important industry knowledge second somebody who has an entrepreneurial edge on your business he has some kind of you are starting your entrepreneurial journey now but he is a little ahead of it so he's able to see through a little more than what you're able to see through he obviously brings in effective networks but please make sure that I've seen a lot of mentors who have visibility a lot of network they don't open up they don't open up they feel shy to really share and do this and that it takes a lot to really make some introductions and at that stage a lot of people I know don't do it they would sound that they are available with you but they will not make a conscious effort to really make one of their networks and that's something is a very big differentiator and that's why I keep saying this sometimes the big names which we see in the industry and people go to them and make them part of their organizations and treat them as mentors they are not very effective well they're they're sitting there as I think opens up some few doors for you but they don't really pick up phones and open up their networks I like people who might be you know really seriously take their mentorship structures and the mentees and they would not mind opening up their networks and tools for a fourth which is very very important is chemistry you know the mentor and a mentee has to have a very strong chemistry they need to really understand where each other is coming from and they are how they enjoy each other's success and that's very very important and finally he has to be a strong a problem solver you know because the whole idea of having a mentor is that somebody who has the ability to solve your problem whenever it is arises to do that so how do you really make sure that you select a mentor really ask frank questions understand what kind of availability he would have what kind of time he can contribute set some kind of schedules it's very important you need to really set some kind of a schedule that they would be so many hours in a month where you will be able to get that kind of a that thing you are also able to get a regular feedbacks that's very important sometimes the physical meeting would not happen but you can send data you can get some kind of a strong but well read well understood feedbacks and that's also very very important and also understand what is the length what are you committing to this mentorship program because it can become a little bit of a difficulty later to really when you start that program then you become very difficult if you're not satisfied especially for founders it becomes very difficult to start exiting from that relationship so you need to really define what do you really want to achieve at what stage you want to really do that more you are respectful for defining it in the initially more it will be easier for you to take through this whole program and finally what mentors normally would do and I've seen a lot of people do it because they just want to help youngsters and they want to help new startups and they they want to really do that I think in now it's a mature part of it it should be very well defined there is normally a advisory equity which you should rather start up offer to your mentor if you really select one and you think that there would be somebody who would be with you for the next three four five years and you need that contribution and you can clearly see the kind of time that thing once you have done that I would say absolutely offer some kind of a small equity it can be anything from a one percent to three four percent depending on the role and the time and effort for the mentorship and because you do that they're more involved and sometimes that's not very defined and that's where it goes wrong so you need to really you know make sure that that you go and offer as a startup to your mentor and say this is what I would like to offer and take your mentorship and this is what your expectation is so remember it is very very important decision to have somebody who stays with you helps you out is a great problem solver he's a rainmaker for you and also somebody who is ahead of you to see through what is happening so that's where the opportunity of making somebody to guide you through and making him a mentor for you would work so this was a today's session hope you are able to get something out of it now I like to invite Sonali back if she has some questions I can answer that sure thank you so much for another wonderful session Gaurab sir we do have quite a few questions lined up with us already so I would just take them up the first question I would like to take up is what is the difference between a mentor a coach and a consultant a good question so I think so while there are fine lines between all of them but let me start with the consultant and consultant is somebody who's who's normally a very clearly a process domain or domain under somebody who have fixed your processes so they come with say if you have a supply chain problem or you have a marketing problem or you have a HR problem if you have a technology problem so you will hire a specialist who would come and fix that part of it they normally don't look at the business at large normally they would fix the problem entirely so those are consulting most of the times you know what you pay them as a fee and against that fee they will do that coaching is a little more personal it's more more connecting the dots normally it would work on various aspects to get larger results which you are looking to expect from that I think and mentor is even more ahead of it where somebody who's who has a much deeper interest in in your performance and so on coaching is a little more getting still in the in the business kind of a role a mentor is a little more on the business kind of a role where somebody who's who's who's looking at a larger picture for you and helping you to get there absolutely sir the next question I would like to take up is as you said just getting a big name as a mentor or a board member is not really helpful but as you can see in today's startups most of them just get a big name to showcase that he or she is associated to their startup in your opinion does it add any real value to that startup it helps it helps I told in the last I think a couple of I think we've one of the companies we advise what or Ratan data as a as a investor or a mentor in that and just Ratan data sitting there in that company help this company to really get all investors investing on that and they're not the big investors but micro investors who wanted to buy their franchise they would because they would all see Ratan data being there they all go out and queued up to take a share of that company so it helps you know not everybody's Ratan data not everybody's Bansal's and not everybody's very successful we have very very handful people who were very successful and build unicorns or larger corporations and so on and Ratan data is a very exceptional example he generally have a desire to help people and help their businesses to go which also carries risk with him because I'm looking at his personality and his size and his aura and his industrial capability it can be very risky because he can but if by the time he's doing in a good spirit everybody understands where he's coming from but if you just take it only for the reason of that if somebody like that it helps but I would say if you really want a mentor you need to have somebody who is who who's available for you he's available and he's giving you genuine advice because I know the mistakes startups do in the first two to three years and those mistakes can be saved and businesses can be saved if you have a good mentor who's who have also a time availability you know it's unreasonable for anybody to even expect Ratan data giving time on businesses to really look at your balance sheet to understand what is happening on the business he can he can be a godfiddler figure who can come in and and bless you with with he being available but he is not going to be available for really putting that time and energy and maybe it will not match because the the businesses he's seen from the way he's seen and the corporations he's run he might not be the best right person to really advisor early stage start but there are I would say good successful good mentors out there who've done you know few past businesses sold them on success or a profit these are great mentors and these people are really very very good one another thing you need to really see that some mentors I think they do overdo themselves so they're advising many many companies and they're advising or mentoring many businesses so it means that they're they're overloaded they have too much of work going on and so find somebody who has availability for you and he likes you and he likes your business and that's very important absolutely sir the next question is what are the various reasons mentors work for money or share in a business or just to share their experience what kind of a mentor or a coach should we choose as an early stage business the coaches would work for money they're monthly paid so this coaching is a profession it's a professional advisory or coaching business where you pay them monthly fee I feel that if you are not very sure that somebody can act as a mentor and you feel that it can be a better coach it's better best for the business because you pay it you're not locked in you have no long term commitment because sharing an equity with somebody is a very very long term commitment and it also can be questioned by when the future investors start coming in and if he's there this person is holding 3% they would like to have questioned why you know this was given and what value he or she brought in so I would say if you if you don't see that long term viewpoint then don't take momentum if somebody is a better coach and pay a fee or a monthly retainer to work and get that sometimes young startups really don't appreciate their equity so much so they feel that reserving cash is more important so they give away equity more slightly and that's not good but if you want to mentor I would say mentors largely there are two types I would have to say one genuinely want to help founders and help companies they do mentoring depending on their time it gives them refreshing they just feel that this is their way of contributing back a lot of them do it. Jack Ma has mentored many many many entrepreneurs in China I know one of his mentees who started a billion dollar shoe company they make shoes and eyewear company the two brand two products they have and he built this he mentored him and and he's a 31 year old young Chinese guy and will build a billion dollar company in eyewear and shoes again directly mentored by he has a big class which Jack Ma used to do every year you bring in a lot of people but he never takes interest equity interest on positions in these companies he used to do it purely by his his way of doing giving back to society and giving back to entrepreneurship but this is only done at a level of Jack Ma's and likes of them they do it for that but rest every mentor would expect a certain small equity in the business which is good you should really give that equity rather if somebody is shying away from not asking go and ask openly and say this is what my expect my expectation would be that I would like you to have a small equity in my company and mentor me through this whole thing but don't just rush it just because it's a it's a big name or a fancy name you want to give somebody in equity has no meaning to me unless and until you very clearly define what is an expectation in alignment and on really very similar lines we have quite a few questions with us asking us about what are the most prevalent engagement models and commercial terms in India or how do we fix fees with a mentor anything you would like to add on anything which is 1 to 4-5 percent is that's the high 4-5 percent again I would say it's very high conserve your equity it's very very important it's very prestigious and should not be given just for the sake of it and and also define who you really need you know why you need a mentor what mentor is going to do you know I've seen you know why one of the companies I was advising and I asked that and he said that I have a chef who's my mentor I said why you have a chef as a mentor he said no because I wanted a phenomenal product and he was guiding me I says he would have hired him because product development was only one time why would you have somebody sitting as an equity who's not a complete understanding of ruining a full chain because product development was just part of it it was phased I understand it was important and he said no he would have not worked with me on that stage but I wanted him to guide me and mentor me and I asked the same question I said what what do you expect now he says very little only three months he comes and improves my product and sees what is going on so don't really confuse between fixing your your different processes for that you need consultants or coaches are available but mentor is somebody who who is for a little long period and and a much holistic approach to this rather than just being a mentality and emotionally the most important thing which I think which is always underwritten is your emotional balance and that emotional balance it comes best with a mentor and somebody who questions you a lot and I had in initial days a dear friend of mine which I treat him as my mentor and he was an Australian he's Australian he lives in now in Australia and that time he was in India the one thing which I liked about him he was he was every time he come to me and he just has hundreds of questions for me and I will get on to like a school kid giving him answers on why this did and why didn't I think and why would you do this and why would not do that and I he took me always through a self-discovery and I used to feel that every time he left I used to feel what he gave me nothing but I started realizing that he was best because he really put my critical thinking he questioned me what I was trying to do and why I was trying to do and that made me much more smarter to take my own decisions so that's something which you need to really find who's this person in your life and who's this you know and everything and that's where I would say these these are smaller pieces which are more important to me rather than somebody opening up a strategy box and saying oh here is a strategy go out and do it that's not something which I think is an ideal mentorship right sir I'll just take up the last few questions now another question that we have is should I get different mentors for different fields like technology marketing sales etc where can I find a mentor who can guide me in all these aspects should I get different mentors for different fields like technology marketing sales where can I find a mentor who can guide me in all of these aspects so again you have to find out what is the most critical part of it again I as I said types of mentors if you are at the product development stage the most critical is to get your product right it really did the product so that piece would be I think would be more important to fix and as the business goes to a little bit of what I call scale and developing smaller pieces of your organization then you might need somebody who comes with a larger canvas of understanding business but don't overdo yourself with so many mentors at one point time because you know you just need a one good mentor and that's part of it but you need to define where you are in business and who would be the more more right fit for you and and that's something which is yeah sure sir so lastly we just have questions from people who are asking us about where they can actually find a mentor so so many questions regarding that so anything you would like to add on to that it's around you you know if whatever business you are started there are people who are successful in that you need to really go out and reach out to them actively meet them set them in that perspective offer them that look I'm looking for them I think don't sound them that they are the ones who are looking at it initiate a dialogue and see if their business and you fit them and their willingness is there for that entirely for you and if you want to really reach out even businessx is a big platform where we link you with couple of industry people in different structures we reach out to Sonali and she will be happily able to send you some contacts of some mentors in but you tell us which industry you want and who you want and thinking of that nature we will be able to be happy to do that definitely sir so with this we'll just strap up the Q&A session thank you so much once again Gaurav sir for another insightful session and for very patiently answering all of our questions as always anything you would like to say in the end so one question is what is the organization as a mentor or a franchise selection guide yeah so we mentor we don't do I used to I do it sometimes on a personal capacity and some of my team and senior team members also do it but we as an organization are multifaceted but largely a SME solution company a franchising is one part of it but we run licensing we run businessx is a business resale and a business investment banking outfit and then we have media then we but everything we do is around SME so we understand SME as a large then the startup to SME the whole space we understand pretty well and anything which we can service this community is done by a franchise India group so if I've answered your question right so if you have anything which you want to really present in terms of your startup which you want to raise capital or you want to exit your business or you want to mentor or you need help doing some collaboration joint venture or MNA opportunity please reach out to Sonali and she's working hard to organize these webinars to for them need to come and say that look if you want any services from Sonali you should go to her and take all the services okay thank you very much hope this was helpful for you any subject you would like me to share and I'm enjoying this because I feel that this gives me opportunity to touch on topics which are not regular for us you know in in our business advisory and things of that nature we we're always busy in doing whatever we're doing so it gives me also an opportunity to really interact and sometimes some of you write back to me and and I get an opportunity to know your businesses it's also very good and I realize that the next set of entrepreneurs would be very very young and they would come extremely young and I do not be surprising for me that the next billion dollar companies will be made by people who are 19 and 18 and likes of them because they're pure they're pure in thinking and more pure you are more your chances are that you will think of a genuine problem and try to solve a genuine problem rather than just being somebody who's just a follower so we are coming a long way because it's our it's I would say how we were trained and and raised and and educated created a situation that we became a good followers rather than innovators so as we are coming off that what I call hangover which was 300 years of our hangover of told that this is the only way things are done I think India would see a lot of critical thinking innovation will start coming thank you very much thank you so much Gaurav sir once again and thank you to all our attendees we really hope you were able to add some value to your lives through the session and as Gaurav sir said if you need any help if you have any questions please feel free to reach out to me and we'll see you next time next Saturday at 3 p.m with another session in our series of investments scaling up valuation and exiting a business my email id is gm at gaurav maria.com so please reach me I can be of any help thank you so much sir thank you everyone


The depiction or you can say the vision of the positive governance is found in the Shanti Parva of Mahabharata. So, the Shloka goes like this. There was no sovereignty, no king, no chastisement, no chastisizer. All men used to protect one another righteously by dharma. So, this is the vision of positive governance. There was no need of punishment. There was no need of instrument for punishment. That is what Nandika is. People were protecting themselves, prajah, the jana, the population was protecting themselves in the context of, with the help of, with the reference of what? With the reference of dharma. Dharma is writer's behavior arising from the experience and knowledge of harmony within oneself and harmony with oneself and social and natural surrounding or environment. So, this is the answer of the question of Yudhisthira, which he asked to Bhishma, how this system of king and kingship came into being. So, this is the positive vision of the positive governance prevalent in the Indian tradition. Yoga is suddenly the foundation of this vision. Similar thoughts are elaborated in much greater detail in the Arthashastra, Arthashastra of Gautilya or Chanakya. Arthashastra is perhaps the most ancient text about governance, about the economic system. And this was written by Acharya Vishnugut or Chanakya or Gautilya. He was the mentor of Chandragutamori, which is considered to be the golden period of human history. So, Arthashastra says that Sukhasya mulam dharma, dharma se mulam artha, artha se mulam rajyam, rajya se mulam indriya jaya, indriya jaya se mul vinaya, vinaya se mulam vraddho pa sevaya, vraddho pa sevaya vijnanam, vijnanam atmanam sampadayet, sampaditam jitatmam bhavati jitatma sarvarthe sanyu jate. The basis of Sukha or all true pleasantness is dharma or righteous conduct. That is the meaning of Sukhasya mulam dharma. Dharma se mulam artha, the basis of dharma is artha or wealth. We discussed about the meaning of artha, the power of transaction, the physical possessions, all that comes into artha. Artha se mulam rajyam, the basis of the wealth creation. The basis of artha is rajya, state. If state is weak, wealth creation will also suffer. The basis of the stability of state lies in control over indriyas or senses, sense faculties providing pleasure. And that is what it says, rajya se mulam indriya jaya. State where the rulers and subjects do not have control on their senses. If they let their sense pleasure and urge to enjoy sense pleasure, if they let loose this without conscious understanding of the harmony within and harmony around, then the state will not remain stable. Indriya jaya se mulam vinaya and how that self-control can come. The self-control can come through humility. Humility meaning understanding the limitation of my knowledge and understanding limitation of my capability. Until I understand that I have limited knowledge, I will not strive to know more. I will not get into self-reflection. I will not get into the self-introspection. So, the basis of control of senses, the sense faculties is humility. And from where humility comes? The humility comes vinaya se mulam vraddho paseva. The basis of humility is devotion. Devotion to whom? Devotion to the grown old through wisdom. Vraddha in the yogic tradition, vraddha are considered of three types. Vayovraddha means those who are vraddha or old by age. Gyanavraddha, those who are old by knowledge. And tapovraddha, those who are old because of their penance, their sacrifice, their rigor in pursuance of the dharmic objective, the pursuance of the true knowledge. So, we attain humility by taking care and respecting vraddho paseva. Those who are old because if we take care of the old, those vraddha, those grown ups can pass on their experience, their wisdom, their knowledge to the younger generation. So, that is the basis of humility. And when we receive knowledge, we realize the limitation of our own knowledge. And that makes us humble. That makes us aware that how much is there which we do not know. And that brings a sense of openness to know, examine not only external world but also examine internal world, our intrinsic tendencies. Vraddho pasevaya vijnanam. That is the important thing. When we respect experience and knowledge, vijnan, the true knowledge emerges. If we do not respect experience, if we do not respect knowledge, vijnan, the scientific knowledge cannot be discovered. Through the devotion to the wise, one attains knowledge. And what happens when we attain knowledge? More the knowledge is existing in a society, better the state will function. So, knowledge based society and knowledge based governance is the foundation of the basic tenet of the governance in the yogic tradition. Yog also talks about controlling of the senses. Yog also talks about gyan. And this most popular sutra, the most popular hymn of the Arshasth also talks about dharma, the harmony, self-control, knowledge. And it connects beautifully how knowledge is important in terms of creation and dissemination to run a state effectively. And to perform state duties with maximum efficiencies, the functionaries of the state must learn to control their sensuous need, maximize their internal potential, respect knowledge. And those who have vanquished their baser selves, the limited self, which considers my existence limited to my physical body. And when with this whole process jatatmam bhava, when this process people get the control over their sensuous pleasure, they become prosperous naturally. And then only they can retain their prosperity. And if they can retain the prosperity, then only state can be successful and individual can be successful. So, you can see in this shloka self-control, governance and generation of wealth all three aspects are interlinked.


Good morning. Jamie Marisotis, I'm president of the Lumina Foundation. And on behalf of our partners here at New America Foundation, we want to welcome you to this forum, this convening on zero education debt. This event is really a joint venture between New America and Lumina Foundation. And I want to begin by thanking our partners at New America Foundation, particularly Alex Holt, for working with us on organizing this. We sort of independently came to the idea that we really, really needed to have this kind of a conversation. And we recognized that doing this together was going to have a lot of power and value. And we're very proud of our partnership with New American Foundation on many different levels. And we're happy to do it in this case. From Lumina's perspective, I want to say that the reason why this conversation is so important is that we believe one of the biggest challenges facing our country right now is the growing demand for talent and our inability to meet that growing demand for talent. Lumina's tried to articulate that in a specific way by working to help the country achieve a goal of having 60% of Americans achieve a high quality post-secondary degree certificate or other credential by the year 2025. Now there are lots of things that are in the way of that goal, but we believe that goal is achievable with the right combination of factors and strategies that can be applied towards helping the country get there. One of those key impediments, however, is what we like to perhaps unfavorably call the dysfunction of the current system of student finance in higher education. That system in its plainest language is broken. There are many indicators of that broken system from the fact that we have very significant concerns among students and their families about the price of college. And the price or the perceived lack of affordability of higher education has several impacts. In some cases, it's literally inhibiting students from going to college at all. In some cases, it's influencing their choice of institution. And in many cases, it's impacting their post-collegiate experiences and choices, whether they be with a degree or without. And in both of those cases, the connection between the affordability or perceived lack of affordability and the growing concerns about debt have come together, I think, in a particular way that has turned the national conversation about affordability of higher education into one of the most important that we are facing today. So we've got to find new and different ways to help students pay for college. We've got to do so soon. And from Lumina Foundation's perspective, if we're serious about achieving our nation's attainment goals, we can't simply tinker at the margins. We've got to find ways to significantly change the paradigm and focus on new ways to literally deliver more higher education to more people better. That's the challenge that's in front of us, and that's what we've got to face. Today, what we're going to be talking about is some really innovative, out-of-the-box ideas that I think in some ways have been mischaracterized as new ways of thinking about loans. These really aren't loans. These are actually new paradigms, sometimes called human capital contracts, sometimes using other language to describe them, in which students can pay for their education in a different way rather than the fractured upfront payment system. Many of these systems focus, essentially, on the future income of the individual as a payment mechanism. At Lumina Foundation, and I know for our colleagues at New America Foundation, we're very interested in looking under the hood of these ideas, figuring out how they work, and trying to better understand whether or not these are viable alternatives that we take to scale to help us achieve a system level change in higher education. We know that there are many different things that have to be explored in thinking about these new models of student financing in higher education, but we want to make sure that, in each case, these models fundamentally come back to the most important participant in the system of higher education. It's not the institutions, it's the students. Students have to be the unit of analysis in the system of higher education going forward, because that's what society needs. That's what the demand for talent is all about, and better serving those students so that those students become graduates who can participate effectively in our economy, in our democracy, in our cultural well-being. That's ultimately what this is all about. So we want to try to figure out some key, the answers to some key questions about these new plans. And Alex is going to come up and tell you a little bit about what these plans are, and then introduce our first panel. We want to know if these new plans will actually encourage more students to enroll, and if, in fact, they will be adequately served all the way through to the achievement of their credential to graduation. We want to know whether or not the, if students on these deferred plans might actually end up paying more than they would pay under normal circumstances. Is this a case where we're essentially deferring the payment and creating a longer model for payment than we currently have? Whatever the result, we think that the future system of higher education needs to be highly transparent from the perspective of students. We want to make sure that this system serves, as I said, more students than the current system currently does, serves them better, and helps them to graduate, if not debt-free, at least with a different model of how they're financing their higher education, so that the choices that they make about whether to go to college, where to go to college, and what they do after graduation are not influenced unduly by the student financing model itself. So, we're excited to take part in this conversation. I'm very much looking forward to the dialogue and the ideas that are generated, and now it's my pleasure to introduce really the driving force behind the conversation here today, Alex Holt from New America Foundation. Alex? Thanks so much, Jamie. I just want to, again, thank the Lumina Foundation for their generous support and help, and especially Zacchia Smith, who I've worked with a lot to make this happen, and I want to thank everybody for coming here today. So, we've all heard the number, a trillion dollars, an outstanding student loan debt. It's a big number, but of course, an average borrower doesn't have a trillion dollars in student loan debt. That's not the number they're thinking about. They're thinking about that burdensome monthly payment that they have to pay, they often face it. It can be really burdensome in the sense that it can defer important purchases and savings. So, when we speak about, all right, when we speak about investing in education, that increasingly means borrowing against one's future earnings with a loan. Over the long term, for a lot of people, that's good investment. However, in the immediate term, right out of college, getting a job is hard, getting a high paying one is even harder, and those high monthly payments are inflexible. Furthermore, this is non-collateralized debt. With other forms of debt, if you get in trouble, you can sell the asset, the bank can take it from you. That is not the case in this situation. This makes loans a particularly bad financial vehicle for higher education financing for a lot of people because of the high variability of risk involved in future earnings. So, what is a more analogous example of investing in future income that already occurs in the market? How about a startup? In the case of a startup, the guy in a basement knows that he has a chance of becoming the next Facebook. He also might fail. So, he doesn't take out a loan. He gets an investor to give him cash in return for a share of future earnings. This balances the risk and rewards more equally between the borrower and the investor. And this investment, in terms of higher education, is what we're calling an income share agreement for today's presentation. An investor pays the upfront cost, the student agrees to pay back a set percentage of his income for a set number of years. If the student makes a lot of money, he pays back a lot. If he makes little to no money, he pays back nothing. It's helpful to put income share agreements in the context of other financial options. In a traditional federal student loan, a borrower has a balance and makes the standard monthly payments for 10 years until the principal plus interest is paid off. With an income contingent loan, we also call it income-based repayment, the borrower still has a balance with an interest rate, but his monthly payments are linked to his earnings. Payments terminate either when the principal plus interest has been paid off or a certain amount of time has passed at which time the remaining balance is forgiven. For an income share agreement, there is no balance. The investor pays for school upfront, and then the borrower simply agrees to a payment obligation for a set amount of years. So the spectrum I'm going to show you demonstrates the difference between a normal loan, an income contingent loan, and an income share agreement as measured by risk. As you can see under a normal loan, most of the risk is on the borrower due to the inflexible nature of the payments. In an income contingent loan, that flips. The reason is because if the borrower makes no money, he pays nothing, but if he makes a lot of money, he's only going to pay back the interest that he would have accrued on his loan. So you can compensate for this by making a really high interest rate, but that's kind of impractical due to certain market forces. The most balanced approach is an income share agreement. The investor and the borrower share the risk equally, and importantly, they also share the reward. The most important aspect of an income share agreement from the borrower's perspective is the payment rate. Though there are variations on the theme, the basic structure is that for a certain amount of money, a borrower will agree to pay back a share of income for a certain period of time. That means that there is no balance and no interest rate. So the question becomes, how is that rate set? This is a spectrum of the types of income share agreements as determined by the size of the pool. This is a general theoretical outline that I think might be helpful in terms of talking about this today. The purest form of an income share agreement values each individual based on certain characteristics and can even set different payment rates based on which school he plans on attending. Theoretically, under this model, a regional state college could cost more than a prestigious private college for a given student because the student's expected future income is so much higher at that private college. So the student would be focused on the value price as determined by the rate as opposed to the sticker price. So it has this great built-in price signaling mechanism. There are of course some potential downsides. There's potential for discrimination and since different people get different rates, there's an issue of access. Specifically low income students may be passed over because the risk is too high or if the rates are so high that they de facto get priced out of the system. There are also those who believe that ideal markets look a lot different than real markets and that the proposed system is potentially far too complex to actually work at scale. Next on the spectrum is pooled valuation. In this arrangement, the market creates a risk pool based either on credential, school, or a grouping of schools like a tier of schools. Here every student in a given risk pool would be subject to the same terms. The system is simpler than the individual market described before. It discriminates by school as opposed to by the individual and it still maintains that price signaling mechanism. The downside here is that anytime you create a pool, you run the risk of the best investments opting out for more favorable terms through a different financial product. If this were to occur, investors would adjust rates higher and then more people would opt out. This feedback loop would potentially eventually lead to the market collapsing. The bigger you make the pool, the more risk you run of this happening. At least at the undergraduate level, this particular fear seems a little overblown to me since students don't really know what their future income is going to be, they're not great at predicting it, and thus are probably willing to tolerate a risk premium in the form of a slightly higher rate. Last up is pooling by the entire population. This is probably, probably only something a government could undertake. Under this model, the state pays for a student's tuition up front and charges every single student the same rate for a set number of years. Instead of spreading the cost out to the entire tax base, instead of spreading the cost out to the entire tax base, students collectively pay a tax for the privilege of attending college. This is a universal access model. There is no discrimination. The downsides are that there is no price signaling, as the government would be unlikely to charge different rates based on quality. You run significant risk of the best opting out of this system. And lastly, these ISAs or income share agreements would need to be accompanied by price controls in order to function properly. I wanna emphasize that these are the broad theoretical underpinnings of income share agreements. Furthermore, this isn't necessarily an either or situation. It's entirely possible that loans and income share agreements can both exist to finance higher education side by side, tools in a toolbox. With that, I wanna invite up the first panel, moderated by Jason Delisle, and this is a group of people who are trying to implement different models of income share agreements. Thank you very much.


So remain after the disappointment I guess in frustration of last weekend's loss at Bristol Rovers Is this Tuesday a good opportunity to potentially bounce back in against Roverham United? Yeah, it's always good to have chosen the game after a Saturday defeat So it's it's nice to be on the pitch straight away and yeah, we're not happy we Yeah, we're very frustrated at the minute, but you you know it's It's something that you know not accept but you have to you know deal with it and just bounce back and that's what we want to do on on Tuesday night And two teams fairly close positioned in the league at the moment two teams obviously fairly close Geographically in the country obviously both in the auction region home paper has a lot going for it Could obviously be quite an action-packed and an entertaining encounter. Yeah, this is It's easy to be we have a lot of you know a lot in a lot to play for for both teams, so it's Yeah, it's one of them games are they're gonna be pressure. They're gonna be a good atmosphere I'm sure so it's the kind of game we really want to play as a as players