Some nice music. Yes, it's beautiful and nice to have you here Andreas. How are you? Thank you very much? This is a bit impromptu, but it's gonna be fun. Great, I know that I'm not famous enough to make the original lineup. So that's that's that's totally fine I guess we have lots of questions and I really want to understand myself How do I impress the VC right? But before that could you dive a little bit deeper into why you are here and and pretty much? What's your background? Why are you why do you have the expertise to tell us how to impress the VC, you know? Because I am a VC And that's literally the only thing I know so my journey and and Kim already alluded to that a little bit earlier is I'm German. I studied industrial engineering. I spent six months of my life on a factory shop floor in China Which was a lot of fun, but also Not what I wanted to do for the rest of my life And then was very fortunate that I could join project a which is an early-stage fund out of Berlin At a time when they were just effectively getting started on their VC model. I was the first Analyst to join the team. I was incredibly junior And that's now almost nine years ago and I've been doing absolutely nothing else besides VC properly for the rest of my career And now with Atomico for the last three and a half almost years All right, how many pictures do you hear per year? Oh, that's a good question. I should have looked into the date I was asked this question this morning actually as well. I So as a team in total it's several thousands and We ran the numbers so I met with around 500 Organizations this year so far that includes other VCs, right? so it's probably like a third of that and the rest is probably Startups, so that's me personally, but as a team we see a lot. We're a generalist series a investor We love our as as you mentioned in the introduction. We love all all all partners We all have our individual focus areas But as a whole we're a generalist funds and so we have to cover the entirety of the landscape and therefore there's a lot of meetings that come out of that and Also a lot of knows unfortunately, which is which is the The part about this job that I disliked the most all right So now pretend I'm a founder and I really want to impress you a first impression I've never seen you before so how do I make a top impression first impression to a VC? I hope you're gonna start a business and we then we probably have to talk So I think There's one thing that I really value in founders journeys and that's authenticity right like you can be a very much an introvert You can be very much an extrovert. You can be coming from an industry background You can be a whiteboard founder who explored different industries and unsettled on a specific problem to solve all of that is very valid in itself And I think you can really like once you see in many pitches. You can really sense where people Make up stories or like try to fudge things that are not really they are true beliefs and they're true Yeah, they're true intentions of why they started the business, etc So I always really value like an authentic story That's yeah that comes up that is of course well presented I think there is certainly a storytelling element to it But that story element or a storytelling element should also fit to your own personality So I think above all this is authenticity and like really Being who you are as a founder because you don't want to raise capital from people who will think you're someone else So be authentic and I think that's that always leaves a great impression be honest about the challenges that you're facing I think that's if everything's crystal clear everything's perfect That's never the case right like so being authentic also about the challenges that you're facing That shows a good understanding for it You can make a great case out of why you're what they want to overcome these challenges So being honest being authentic being humble. I mean you're setting out to Achieve hopefully a really great great vision. So there's there's a little bit of of strong ambition And maybe sometimes even slight delusion a slight naivety, which is great needs to be in that but But I think sort of dislike humbleness around like hey Building a startup is incredibly tough and nothing is gonna fall Nothing's gonna fall into place. You need to make things fall into place So it's the yeah authenticity being humble and being honest about the challenges that you're facing Do I impress you better with my authenticity humbleness online or in person you? Collectively speaking I think I think you all as the slush team you're just like very Dry finished people who just like to do more than talking and I think that's That's what this entire conference embraces and it's a bit ironic that now we're sitting on stage and talking but but No, it's it's authentic like you're the same person online as you are in real life. So That's great. That's why I want you to start a business. It's gonna be my challenge So if we now move on right so I am pressed to you I Hopefully get to the second meeting and we have more and more chats and potentially we end up working together And I'm raising funding from Atomico. That's great. I'm hopefully here manifesting my future But if you if we now proceed right so you have invested into into my startup in this case And I really want to develop the relationship further. So I now have an existing investor What are the do's that I should do that's make you and the fund love me even more? Yes So multiple things in this question. I think so the first thing is just speaking to us really helps when I was May I may throw him under the bus here But when I was at project a there was one partner who wants an immediate interview said something on the along the lines of hey If founders don't reply to us, that's what makes us really excited and we want want to chase them even further Which for me as a VC junior as an analyst made my life really hard because people just stopped replying to me So I think the first thing I would counter what's at this former boss of mine effectively said is I Think there's an element of nurturing these relationships. That is very important So for us we are not a super early-stage fund. So we don't necessarily do pre-seed We come in around like late seed series a is where our bread and butter really starts So usually you would have an investor before and usually you would have a little bit of time along your journey That has already gotten into this so along this journey And I appreciate very much that as a founder you have so many things to do Right like you have a business to run with people to hire your customers calling you particularly in the beginning You're wearing so many different hats Taking time out of your day to actually speak to investors and like keep them updated about the journey can be a really really tough thing to do What I what I advise my founders to is just like take one call a week Let's have an hour just to catch up with people just to build like a book of people that are Interested in your business keep them engaged keep them along the journey That's just makes it much much easier you can pause that right like if you have an important strategic decision Maybe you're gonna pivot or slightly change your business model Then maybe around that time you don't really want to speak because you first want to make up your mind That's totally fine. So it's not prescriptive But generally building that relationship really really helps and we've seen that also with the fun With our founders who then go on to fundraise it really helps if you have built up a book of excited investors about you So first thing just speaking and building the relationship I think that is that is very very important and then it's basically a continuation of what I said before right? So you're telling about your challenges to tell taking about telling about the things that you're facing I think was always greatest when founders exhibit like a strong understanding of the journey is like, okay Here's where I am. Here's the challenges that I'm having in the next six months I want to prove that I can also sell to a customer outside of my initial ideal customer profile Maybe in the beginning I'm just selling to startups and I want to prove that I can sell to someone else besides startups just as a random example so Really understanding your growth journey is showing your progression along the way. There's a big element of Just expectation management of like if you deliver what you're saying you're going to deliver like if you say well You're going to be at 1 million ARR end of the year and you're actually going to be at 1 million ARR at the end of the year That's what makes me as a easily excitable person Very excited about just someone who has an understanding on this growth journey ends We and that might be different for pre-seed funds who meet you earlier along the journey We have this luxury of being able to build a relationship with founders over time and therefore we have many data points We see how founders grow they get to know us I think it's just a much better start into an actual founder investor relationship Versus you get into a process you have to close in a week or maybe even less That's just not a great start. I think both parties need to get to know each other And I think therefore nurturing building that relationship is really important to both sides Even though I very much understand as a founder you're thinking about the next problem It is going to solve at hand and customers peaking your left right and center and someone's quitting and you have to hire that person and It's busy But taking a capped very capped amount of time out of your busy schedules to do that Actually makes sense and I realized this is a very self-serving answer of course because we also want to build that relationship But yeah, that's that would be my thinking. I'd like to double-click on the on the topic So basically my concern would be that if I'm very open to you and update your weekly on all the challenges I face wouldn't you start to see me in potentially in the image of yeah, or this guy doesn't have anything under control Could that potentially to the VC looking at me negatively? How do I balance those those two things? Maybe not every single challenge, right? So if you've worked in a startup, you know that a challenge can be whatever people are arguing of which sort of tea to order for the office Whatever or which blend of coffee like that's that's maybe not something to talk about with your investors about But we've like this strategic challenges of like as I was saying right like we think a lot and proof points Like getting your first customer getting your first revenues. That's a great proof point So and if you don't have that well, it's a challenge to get there So being honest about these things and then the next proof point is like getting a bunch of customers Maybe different customer segments because you want to prove that you cannot only sell to a specific customer group But also to another customer group then maybe getting like a repeatable go-to-market motion in place of like where you have a sales team You can predictably if you throw leads into the funnel you produce revenue in the end These are like proof points. These are the challenges sort of that that I think it's always great and encouraging to hear and The thing is Investors should know that saying all investors know but investors should know that building an early-stage startup is so challenging and if everything would be great, well, everyone would be doing it and it's a really a really hard job to do and Therefore there will always be challenges and I personally think and maybe that's a personal view and other we sees would think differently But I I think it's great to sort of like own these challenges and like say okay So I need to prove that I can acquire customer out of my initial ideal customer profile I'm going to do that by talking to XYZ. I have these leads maybe already in the pipeline and I want to deliver on that until XYZ That's great. That's like owning a challenge If we now go I'm getting ahead of myself here I'm just very curious. So basically if I'm now the founder and we have those weekly seconds and I'm sharing with you my strategic challenges However, I start to misbehave Outside of your expectations where what does misbehaving mean? That's the question I want to get to so pretty much other any things that founders should never ever do when Collaborating and trying to nurture the relationship with the existing investor Yeah, very good question. I think there is So Not hitting the expectations like if you say you're gonna hit whatever a million a year on the end of the year and You're not hitting that like we know that this is going to happen, right? Like we know that you're like a growth journey is never linear or never fully exponential only if you zoom out at the very end very much But in that moment, it's never like that. So it's very much not hitting your growth plans. I think it's more Really true misbehaving and like the true sense of the word is like really is if it's just misconduct, right? Like if you're if you're misleading me in it like you one day you say, oh, I have 500 K Or are and then you're gonna race around 12 months later and I look at the numbers and actually at this point in time You actually didn't have any revenues at all Like I think this is where borderline starts to become investor fraud and this is where things really start to get worse So I think that's one that's one thing all types of Allogations of like how to how you create the company culture etc So I think that's like really true misbehaving which is a becoming a red flag and then there's Anything in between right like if you don't hit your growth targets Well, of course, it's not necessarily a positive thing, but it can be reasons for that So if you can explain that if you can put that into context, etc It's not necessarily a red flag even though it might not be a positive thing It's not a misbehaving in its true sense. I would say if we now go a step back, right? So I just raised the funding And my key focus was I want funding from a VC that that's why I had the first impression That's for how I impressed you and then we built a relationship But there's many other reasons to raise funding from a VC and many more value ads besides Besides the actual funding could you quickly just summarize of why else are we working together between as the founder and the VC? Yes, I think maybe even before that I'm gonna say something that's slightly controversial I think VC is not for everyone. I think raising VC capital is really like you should be Incredibly clear about what your growth journey is going to be and if you want to build a nice small profitable 10 people business That's perfectly fine and it's great But it's just we see is not the right a form of financing for you So really being intentional about your funding journey is very important So if you go down the VC route because you want to create a really massive generational company Then we see is the right type of funding for you but I think even before even before that what you were saying is like even It's really important to make up your mind that VC is really what you want as a former financing and it really fits to your Funding journey and then sort of like with regards to the value that I would bucket this into two items one is Like the classic core competencies of an investor right like so we are as board members We're and we can get dive into the into the details of that we give like some form of strategic advice We can connect you to people to customers at the right point in time, etc We are well gonna look over your financials. We're gonna provide a certain form of governance, of course So I think there's like this core investor value proposition elements That needs to be right and there's varying varying degrees of how well this can be executed Happy to go into the details on that And then there's the other element lots of VCs. They come with a platform team and it's become sort of this like ongoing Running joke amongst founders like VCs or they always claim to be helpful, but they never really actually are and when it comes to sort of this platform team, this is something that lots of people are saying and I really want to counter this and say like hey if you have a VC that really has a strong platform team And of course I'm tooting my own horn here But we have like a 12 people platform team of people who've built up snowflake in Europe from zero to 250 million ARR Fantastic go-to-market leader people who've seen the talent function grow from zero to one to 20 people on the talent team These are just like fantastic people that you can learn from that's like we call it growth acceleration Other people might call it platform, but this is sort of the second bucket of more operational more functional advice That you can get from an investor or also not get from an investor if you don't want to that's also completely fair by the way You mentioned the board right am I forced to have you on my board if I raised funding for you? Depends on the stage so where we usually invest You're never forced because I don't like these words, but we would generally love to take a board CDS Because we think that well at a certain point and where we invest right like there's at least some indication of product market fits There's big debates around Whether you need to have a board really before you found true product market fit over you It's rather like you need to tinker and find that for yourself. I think everyone needs to find the right Model for them, but once you've reached that once it's more about like creating a certain repeatability Establishing processes and I think just establishing processes There's like a even though it's sometimes a bit of a bad word But it's like there's a certain governance like you've seen that with the open AI board Etc. What all the things that can happen and it's not probably not the Not the very best example of how a board should be working but like there's a certain element of governance a certain element of oversight that should be happening and Usually these board meetings should be and that brings us to another point. They should be most valuable to the founders like I see this as a Service offering if you will to the founders there's an element of classic oversight And we need to see some reporting on like how revenues have grown how like cash in a bank has developed etc We need to see that of course, but then it's much more about strategic guidance on like what do we think about a certain topic? giving maybe a little bit of inspiration to the founders Never being prescriptive I think VCs have this tendency sometimes and I Tend to hold back if I see that in myself because I'm very guilty of that sometimes myself to extrapolate from a too small sample size So if one portfolio company who did one thing really well, and you're thinking okay now This is the next thing that you're gonna preach to every of your portfolio companies It's not true like everything is super context dependent. It still might be a good inspiration and maybe you can connect the two companies, but Giving the strategic advice I think is helpful. You can discuss certain things. What should we be focusing on? What should we would not be focusing on how do we prioritize? How would you do we find the right sequence? Are we first gonna internationalize? Are we first gonna sell into different customers groups that we hadn't sold to before? So all of these like more focusing sequencing type of discussions are usually a great place to do at the board Who should I have on my board in the first place? Is it isn't just the investors I raised from do I get external people? How do I know as a first-time founder? Who should I have on the board? Because we've seen ourselves recently. There's the board has immense power So yeah, how do I make those decisions? first of all and above all it should only be people that you have like a Good relationship to and people that you trust. I think that's above all things That's most important which comes comes back to the forcing rights that you mentioned earlier Like if it feels forced to you then we probably shouldn't do this But if you want this and if you think this can be valuable then well, that's a good starting point So I think first of all like this is like a just base layer of trust of like mutual Appreciation that needs to be established otherwise. It's never going to work and it's never going to be successful It's going to be horrible for everyone involved and then I think sort of like along the classic journey like in the beginning you have the founders on the board and you might have a Pre-seed or seed investor like whoever is the largest of them And then you might have a series a investor and like every round you add like one or two Maybe one observer because sometimes people like to have that And then the board grows and grows over time. I Personally and that's now maybe a slightly controversial opinion as well. I think there's a merit to having a Certain board size and not having it too big because sometimes if you're if you're then in a room with 10 plus people is really hard to find conclusions So keeping it small keeping it to a circle of people that you really trust I think renders merit for founders Because you can still reach out like if there's a specific topic from your other investors that you want input on you can still reach out to them I think at some point somewhere around series a series B usually you start to see independent board directors like founders or operators Who have been through the journey? Can take on a chairman role can be like a non-executive board director can become really helpful can become really meaningful Very context-dependent very dependent on that person Shouldn't get someone just for the sake of getting someone. I think that's generally never to kick never never good But I think this is like how a bird board journey evolves like his guests established With the seed round or with the series a rounds and then sort of like it grows from there and there's also Periods of where you probably need to cut your boards Make it a bit smaller and have to hopefully a collaborative discussion with your investors around that Just to keep the discussion quality high Small board are we talking three people four people five people depends on whatever works, right? I've seen five as a good size usually have you two founders two three investors maybe depending on stage of course right like That that's roughly where where I see is a good equilibrium Maybe one or two observers if you if investors want that and if you think that these observers can add value But yeah, I generally think that smaller boards yield better discussions and I'm happy to be bumped off the board at some point as well Right like it's it's a journey if founders want me. I'm very happy to stay on boards if there's no reason for me being there I'm also happy to step out. So I think it needs to be sort of just like mutual Taking on this journey together and find whatever works for all parties involved We have a couple of minutes left I'd like to kind of finish it off with going even more into the practicalities of work now deepening my Investor relations through the work that that you do on my board So how often do we have board meetings? How do I structure them? Yeah, and how do I prepare for them as a founder to maximize my investor relations that we have through the board's work Yeah Once again, this is very personal and you need to find whatever rhythm works for you But what I've seen work and I hope that by sharing that I'm not prescriptive, but that's what I've seen works really well is Sharing a pre read of materials like exactly the reporting that I mentioned right like you want to report on your revenues You want to report on the number of customers you want to report on your turn whatever metrics you have you want to Report on changes on the team you want to report on strategic changes, etc Key achievements key things that didn't go so well Sending out a pre read can be a dog can be a deck whatever format works for you Sending that out a couple of days before the board meeting make all investors really read that I think if you're on a board you have a responsibility to what a company reading that and I've been in too many boards where Investors started reading that like within the board meeting and that shouldn't really not be the case I've funny side story. I have one portfolio company. They included a link in their deck of like Hey, please inputs. They're raising some working capital facility Please input all the contacts providing working capital that you have and then they Link to a Google sheets and they did not give the investors access to the Google sheet So they would basically see that only the ones who request access to the Google sheet have actually read the documents So it was a funny little little check that they did but really make investors read that deck before because otherwise Like you're gonna not gonna have a great discussion Then start off with like any sort of like Q&A any questions that come out of that 20-30 minutes maybe an hour or whatever works well and then pick one two three Core areas where you as a founder we really would like input on can be a strategic prioritization like are we gonna go international now or are we gonna Solve these are these challenges first can be like a discussion around product can be a discussion around hiring like when should we Introduce like a VP layer as the sea layer sea level additions and how should we approach that? So there's probably like some challenges that are front of mind where you as a founder would love to get some input on That would really pick these areas of like okay. These are the things on my mind dear boards Happy to discuss and then you have a discussion around these specific topics. I think that works really well and Then after the boards there is usually like a well not usually sorry But one of one of the portfolio founders and big shout out to Thomas from they Who has introduced that and it's like I've been now been preaching this maybe a little bit too much Is to do like an all shareholders call after the board as well because we have probably have angel investors smaller funds Etc at some point throughout the journey and you want to keep them engaged and you can send them the reporting But just get them for 30 minutes in a room Like do a little Q&A give like a 10 minute 10 minutes presentation get all of their input You have them on your cap table for a reason, right? Yeah, you're not letting them in just because they wired the money because but because they have contacts of value And put them to the test and I think that's that's really it and sorry you mentioned cadence Roughly quarterly is what we've seen works best but like in the end doesn't really matter But quarterly works best can be every two months fine And then catch ups in the meantime right like Investor to founder relationships board relationships if they only happen within the board meeting then they're probably a bit dysfunctional So they should happen throughout this entire journey Outside of that you can do that with regular catch ups. You can do that async. I do both with my portfolio companies all of that works But it would meet like investor if you only interact in the board. You're probably doing something wrong And the other thing I really wanted to say like as we're nearing towards the end of it Like really put your investors to the test like as founders I think that's one of the things where I always like sometimes getting almost a little bit confused of like you get the investors in For providing the value and then afterwards you're saying ah, they didn't really provide that value But really put them to the test ask questions ask hey Oh, I'm gonna look for benchmarks on whatever what percentage of my Staff at my stage should be engineering versus sales like that's something that we can provide good input on you should Put us to the test like hey, I'm looking to hire this and this function Can you recommend three people who are doing it? Well, so I can calibrate what good good looks like I really put your investors to the test and we're really happy to help like genuinely and I Would love for founders to do that more in the diligence phase actually as well and also after that like we're super happy to Roll up our sleeves literally and work together with founders very closely. So put us to the test, please Thank you so much for jumping in here today Thank you for having I know where to go when I start my company. Please start a company. That's great. Thank you very much


Is it a good idea to go back to a place where you've grown up, had a wonderful time, to go back after a couple of years, because you know, something changes. That's just what happened to me when I went back to XLRI after many years. I had finished my post-graduation. I'm not going to tell you when, but it was a long, long time back. And then after a couple of years, when I went back to XLRI, Jamshedpur, when I went to the town, I felt that something had changed, but then I thought that, oh well, maybe I didn't remember it all that clearly because I was a student at XL and I didn't really step out that much into the town. So, I decided to hold my judgment until I went back to the old campus and I was so looking forward to it. I wanted to meet the old professors, go back and visit that classroom, maybe sit down there without any stress for a change. And as I went closer to the campus, I discovered that, ah, maybe, oh well, I thought I'm going to hold judgment because the first thing that struck me was the campus looked different. There were barriers there where none existed. The old tea shop had moved somewhere else. Yes, the hostel was there. That was a reassuring sign because that's really the first thing that you see as you step into XLRI. And then the taxi driver asked me a difficult question. He said, do you want to go to the old guest house or the new guest house? And you know, when it's a choice between something old and something new, it's a bad idea to go back to something new when you go back to your old alma mater. So, I said, I'm going to play it safe and I'm going to go back to the old guest house. When I went there, I found it was run by a different set of people who didn't recognize me. Well, when I was there, I knew everyone and I was a little disappointed. So, I introduced myself and wanted to check in. They said, no, your booking is probably in the other guest house. So, I went to the other guest house and before I would go there, I stopped to turn back and say, but where is the other guest house? They said, oh, it's in the new campus. And I said, oh my God, where is the new campus? And all this was new news to me. The campus was different, you know, the place where there used to be football matches that field really had now become part of the old campus. Where the staff quarters used to end the professors' houses, that now was just the beginning of, you know, what was going to be the new campus. I walked across, stepped into this new place. It was really, you know, much nicer than the, you know, the guest house that I had stayed in once, the older guest house. But something was missing. You know, it was a different place. It almost seemed as if I didn't quite study there. This was a different college that I had come back to. So, I thought I'm going to wait until I meet some of the older professors. As I inquired around, all the professors seemed to have retired. They had left and there were one or two people and I was so excited about seeing all of them. But I also realized that this was not going to be the old XLR that I was used to. And in some sense, I don't know whether I should say it was disappointment, but certainly I felt that, you know, a part of my childhood which was there, you know, I should have just let it be. But then this was the real world. So, I decided to reconcile those feelings and I went back to talk to some of the people who were studying there. And I really discovered when you talk to some of the youngsters who are there, so I asked them, you know, which of the two streams, business management or IR or HR, are you a part of? And they said, well, I mean, I'm part of a certificate program. So, I said, what is that? Because when I was a student there, they had the daytime course which had two streams and then there was the evening batch. So, we used to finish it in two years, the daytime course students and the others who are the working people who used to do it part-time took three years to complete the degree. There was about the only difference if you ask me and then now when I inquired about the whole process, they said, well, there is the certificate program, there is the short-term course, there is the stay-up with this particular place and there are a whole lot of people. And I said, how many students are there? And the number that they told me really was mind-boggling. And then I also discovered that they were to open another campus in another city. It was in some senses a destruction of that whole campus, you know, the little dream that I had, that little imaginary place that I had written about, I have spoken about so many times. I just thought the soul had changed. So, why am I telling you about this today? Because you're going to feel exactly the same thing as you step into the workplace and as this new workplace opens up wrapper by wrapper, fold by fold, you will discover that it's a different place altogether. So, stop looking for the old place because you're going to feel like me going back to the old campus and thinking, everything has changed and you're going to keep looking at today from the lens of yesterday and nobody wants that. Because when I was talking to the students who were there, they didn't want to talk about, you know, what was happening at the time when I was a student and there's only so much of nostalgia that you can take. You can say, oh, you know, it used to be so lovely, we used to sit here for hours together and have tea and their whole point is, okay, get it. So what about the world now? That's what they want to talk about. They want to talk about what's happening in the world of HR today. And so I was talking to them about how HR is going to have to get reinvented. That's the term we've used a lot in the past but we didn't really know what reinvention means because reinvention actually can mean something dramatically different. It's going to be a different workplace, that's for sure. So everything about that workplace will look different. You know, take, for example, when people come there wearing masks all around you or that you have to stand in line. So your concept of time and space is the first casualty that's going to be noticed. You will discover you take a lot more time to get into the office. Somebody checks for temperature. Somebody makes sure that it's sanitized. Somebody comes and cleans up the workplace. You sort of go and sit down there after so long. If you left a desktop there, you know, it may not start up right away and you are grateful that you have the IT support there because at home when you're working, that IT support was not there. Of course, when people first discover that they're going to go back to the workplace, they're also filled with excitement. They're going to meet their old colleagues again. But what they have not factored in is, your colleague is now looking at you and wondering, I hope it's safe to sit this close to you because I'm going to maintain social distance and suddenly all the rooms suddenly appear very small. The air conditioning, as soon as it is switched on, some people feel paranoid. Is it safe to put on the air conditioning? Can we do without the air conditioning?  So that's going to be our choice. Departments are going to change. So what it means is maybe the admin department or facilities department, whatever you decide to call it in your organization, they are also going to have to start working and thinking about sanitation a lot more, hygiene a lot more. The cafeteria is not going to be the same. Where people really stood there next to each other, they sat there and had a conversation as they ate. A lot of people are going to wonder, why I'm not quite sure whether the cafeteria is a safe place to go. So that's going to change. And along with that, also the way people learn, the way people get onboarded, the way people get hired, if anybody is hiring at all. And then you're going to have virtual interviews because there's no point getting a person in. You don't know whether the person is, the candidate is going to be disease free or virus free. That's going to be something that we've never ever had to worry about.  A lot of how we make sense in informal conversations is actually going to disappear because you can't make out whether somebody is smiling or scowling at you. So just think about it, this much is covered and you'll kind of discover that when I said something to the boss, was he smiling and so therefore it's on or was he just really being grumpy. Signals that we have used for survival in all kinds of settings are going to go away. Well, if one thing people are going to be grateful for that no more virtual conferences to attend all day. No more classrooms to attend all day because people are really almost grateful to get back to a different mode of learning which they always used to say, oh that's not good enough I can learn on my own because one of the things we discover is learning is not just about content transfer which is very efficient actually by the way when you think about online courses, they are very very efficient. So when you think about learning, how would you learn? Is it going to be a mix? Is it going to be a combination? Is it going to be 90% virtual, 10% in-person or the other way round? When you go back to the workplace, you might discover that not if your top talent is unable to join you for various reasons and some people may have left. Your workplace may have trimmed down the number of employees that they have. So you may need to create a different workforce strategy. Are you going to work with freelancers and are you going to worry about their health when they come in to work with you? Are you going to leverage them as part of your learning and development process? Invite some of the experts in to come in, upskill your task force and then let them distribute this particular new skill across the organization. Or perhaps something that someone said is maybe we are going to use our L&D budget to distribute infrastructure so that as and when people need to work from home, in case of a shutdown, sudden shutdown, they should be able to do that without letting work suffer. So these are all going to be extremely hard new decisions that people will have to take and think about it. This is all going to be about people in that new workplace. As you bring them in, it is not going to be the old workplace. It's going to be a new workplace with new norms and I think the new norms will have to be co-created. It will have to be done with the employees. What do they think about privacy versus safety? What are those choices? Are people comfortable making those choices? So as we get into this new workplace, we will have to ask ourselves, let us stop using the lens of the old times and keep tweaking that this new world of work. Let us stop tweaking that to make it look like the old times just because it makes us comfortable. You know, when I went back to XLR, I so wanted to turn the clock back and relive that time. But I'm a different person today and I would be just as out of place if the old workplace came back. So yes, there will be new things, new behaviors, new methods of thinking, new roles that will come up. In every function, you'll have to sit back and think what are the roles that did not exist before and you are going to have to build those in. Your supply chain will probably have to be reconfigured. So will your hiring strategy or career management strategy, talent management if you will. And then instead of working with people being brought in from outside, some of that will still continue. But a lot of it really gives you an opportunity to help people discover their own strengths, make people move within the organization and it's the equivalent of really discovering each other. As we did when we were spending time with the family, you discover aspects about them that we didn't know existed. We lived with them for so many years, but there were strangers and this lockdown gave us a chance to really get to know them a lot more closely. So the same thing is going to happen in the workplace. You will discover colleagues have skills which you weren't aware of or that they have taken an online course which equips them far better than the person who's been formally charged to do that particular piece of work. So in many ways, as they say, the workplace is dead, long live the workplace.


We already know how to embed words into a vector space. We use embeddings to assign similar vectors to words with similar meanings. Then given a reference word, we can use these vectors to find semantically similar words from our word list. Now we would also like to use these embeddings to find clusters of similar words. And the important thing here is that we're interested in words' meanings, not their structure. We're looking at words as a whole, not as just a sequence of characters. OK, so first let's load the list of 150 words using the corpus widget. There they are. Apple, Arrow, Banana, Bed, and on and on the list goes. Now this time, we will embed our words using fast text. So let's check it out in a data table. OK, every word is represented by a vector of 300 features. Now next, we can measure the distances between each pair of words using the distances widget. OK, I'll make sure that the distances widget uses the cosine distance. Then we can take a quick peek at the output of this widget with the distance matrix widget. And let's show the words in the headers of the columns and rows. OK, I get a square matrix of distances between words. The matrix tells me that the distance between Apple and Banana is smaller than between Apple and Book. Makes sense. Now I want to feed this distance matrix into the widget for hierarchical clustering. Then check out those results in the gendergram. OK, great. It seems musical instruments make a nice cluster. Then there's a cluster of words about writing and taking notes. And a cluster of sharp objects that include knife and rake. And then another large cluster related to food at the very bottom. These results make a lot of sense. The words cluster together are definitely semantically related. So I can use any dimensionality reduction approach to try to visualize the word space in two dimensions. Say, t-sneed. I'll connect the t-sneed widget directly to the embedding output. Here in our t-sneed plot, every point represents a word. So let's select a group of points in the right part of the plot. And feed the output of t-sneed to a corpus viewer to neatly display my selection. Nice. This is the cluster of musical instruments. And then this group are animals. And the group on the top represents food items. Now I can also check how well the clusters in the gendergram correspond to the groups from the t-sneed plot. So I'll connect the hierarchical clustering and t-sneed so that every selection from the gendergram is sent to the t-sneed widget as a data subset. Now I'll arrange the two widgets side by side and select the cluster with musical instruments in the gendergram. Great. There they are in the t-sneed plot. All grouped up. Except for one outlying word. Let's click on it to make sure what it is. Hmm. Whistle. Well whistle is an odd word. It isn't really a musical instrument. So it's nice that I can find these inconsistencies by looking at a t-sneed plot. Now I could do more here and use other clustering algorithms or data visualization methods like MDS or PCA. And you're welcome to check out our videos on some of those algorithms in our Introduction to Data Science video series. The link will be in the description below. But now we need to move on to our next video on word classification.


Okay, so say I have a sample of carbon disulfide that weighs 32.37 grams. Is there a conversion factor that we can find, or that might already be present on the board, that would convert grams to moles? Yes. Yes. What is that conversion factor called? Molar. The molar mass, okay? So we've got the molar mass of that, right? But we've got grams on top. So how do I do conversions, right? I'm going to have to multiply it by a ratio, right? So when I do that, what's going to be on the top? Yeah, one mole. And I like to say one mole of carbon disulfide just to kind of help myself out, keep my place. And on the bottom here, what's that going to be? 76.13 grams of carbon disulfide. And cancels my grams. Hopefully, everybody sees that. My calculator. 32.37 divided by 76.13. So I got 0.42 by 2 moles of carbon disulfide. Everybody's cool with that? Yes. So that is the first conversion factor that you guys already know from Chapter 3. Okay, so that's the first one you're going to learn. Everybody, any questions? I guess there should be. Questions, questions? Okay.


Job. We're in Job chapter 19. And we'll begin reading together. Job 19 will begin reading at verse one. We'll read verses one through six and we'll get into our study. Job chapter 19 verses one through six. Verse one, Job answered and said, How long will you torment my soul and break me in pieces with words? These ten times you have reproached me. You are not ashamed that you've wronged me. And if indeed I have aired, my error remains with me. If indeed you exalt yourselves against me and plead my disgrace against me, know then that God has wronged me and has surrounded me with his net. So we were looking at the fact that one of Job's friends, one of his quote-unquote miserable comforters, one of his friends, Bill Dad, had been speaking to him and had irritated him because Job had said something or said several things really that had caused him to be irritated. And so because Job has said things that have caused Bill Dad to be irritated, he has been correcting him. He was bothered because as we've seen, Job, he believes, has been rejecting their advice. So in response to Job's rejection of their advice, Bill Dad began to actually insult Job. That's the best way to encourage somebody who's hurting, by the way, just insult them. You know, that's very kind. But that's what they were doing. And what he did is he had said to him that he said, Job, basically he said, you're long-winded. You ought to stop arguing. He had said to Job, gain understanding before you open your mouth. Because if you were to do that, it would do you good. You see, he was angry.  He said, you're treating us like we're simply animals. So as far as Bill Dad could see, Job was blaming God instead of taking the responsibility upon himself. Bill Dad felt that the actual fact was that that Job had actually brought this all on himself. And he had even closed in his words in chapter 18, he even closed by inferring that Job was responsible for the death of his own children. In verse 19 of chapter 18, he said this, speaking of this sinner, he said, he has neither son nor posterity among his people, nor any remaining in his dwellings. In essence, he is saying, you are responsible for the death of your own children. And so chapter 19 opens with Job responding to what Bill Dad has been saying. Obviously, Job is unmoved by the things that Bill Dad has been saying to him and is unmoved by his condemnation. And so Job in verse one answered and said, how long will you torment my soul and break me in pieces with words?  He's been saying this since they began giving their counsel. All the way back in chapter six, verse 14, Job had said to him who was afflicted, kindness should be shown by his friend, even though he forsakes the fear of the Almighty. Somebody who's hurting ought to be shown kindness, but you haven't done that. You see, the fact is, even if Job were in the wrong, the better approach to correct him and bring him to that which is right would have been kindness, love, caring, compassion. Now he's speaking long before the New Testament was written, but in the New Testament book of Galatians, the Apostle Paul in chapter six verses one and two gave us insight into how to bring a correction. He said in Galatians six, one and two, dear brothers and sisters, if another Christian is overcome by some sin, you who are godly should gently and humbly help that person back onto the right path. And be careful not to fall into the same temptation yourself. Share each other's troubles and problems, and in this way obey the law of Christ. If you're going to bring correction, if you're going to help somebody to find the right path, do so with gentleness. Don't bring words of condemnation. Don't be telling them all the wrong that they've done. Chances are they already know how much wrong they've done. And in today's society, it's a wise thing if you should actually bring a word of correction that you do so with compassion and love. You do so with gentleness and understanding, considering yourself, because you yourself could also be tempted. But here instead of bringing comfort, he's saying your words have brought me pain. These words broke him. It was like a hammer breaking rocks is what he's saying. They broke him in pieces with their words, and they caused him anguish. He says in verse three, these 10 times you have reproached me. You are not ashamed that you've wronged me. 10 times is not the exact number. It simply means you've been saying numerous things. And you're not ashamed. You're not ashamed that you wronged me. When he says you are not ashamed that you have wronged me, literally he's saying you have hardened yourselves against me, and you have stunned me with repeated blows. And you've made yourselves like strangers to me as if you didn't know me and how I've lived in the things of my past as if you hadn't known the way that God had blessed me and all of those things.  You're acting as if you never saw those things, he said, and that's caused me great pain. In verse four, and if indeed I have erred, my error remains with me. If I've sinned, instead of being my accusers, you should have brought comfort to me. I would deserve your compassion. I desire even your pity. He says in verse five, if indeed you exalt yourselves against me and plead my disgrace against me, know then that God has wronged me. He's the one who has surrounded me with his net. It seems that you have set yourselves up as superior to me. I guess it's because you're not suffering like I am. So you think that because you're not hurting like me, that you're better than me. You think that because you're not suffering like I am, that you can judge me. And you're using as your evidence my suffering and my pain. Remember back in chapter four, verses seven and eight, Alaphis had said this. Remember now, whoever perished be an innocent. Or where were the upright ever cut off? Even as I've seen those who plow iniquity and so trouble reap the same. So they're saying, basically you're only reaping what you've sown.  The reason that you're suffering is because you've walked away from the things of the Lord and God is punishing you for doing so. And so you've been trapped basically in your own snare. He says in verse six again, know then that God has wronged me and has surrounded me with his net. So he's saying, I want to do something. You need to know this. You need to know that the Lord is working against me. He surrounded me. So let me appeal to your compassion by clearly stating that God has unjustly plagued me. Bill, that I haven't been trapped by my own snare. I've been ensnared by God. You see in Job chapter 18, verse eight, Bill dead said that he had been ensnared in and Job insists that God has personally been against him. He says in verse seven, if I cry out concerning wrong, I'm not heard. If I cry aloud, there's no justice. Now when he says, if I cry out concerning wrong, the word wrong is a word that is also translated violence. What he's basically saying is God has dealt with me severely. God has dealt with me in a violent way. I've cried out for help, but God hasn't brought relief. And there's no justice because God has not removed my affliction. So there's an appearance of me sinning. But my friends, you know the way that I used to live. You know how my life has been and you haven't vouched for me. He says in verse eight, he has fenced up my way so that I cannot pass. And he has said darkness in my paths. He's fenced up my way. I was moving along the path of life. I was actually happy, but he blocked my path. Now I'm trapped. I'm trapped and I'm trapped in darkness. And because I'm trapped and trapped in darkness, I don't know which way I can go. In Psalm 119 verse 105, the psalmist said, your lamp, your word is a lamp to my feet, a light to my path. I need direction. I need light because the world that I live in is dark. That's why Psalm 1828 says you will light my lamp. The Lord my God will enlighten my darkness. I was moving happily, living in a blessed way. But God has basically blocked me in. And now it feels like I'm walking in darkness, but I need his word and I need his spirit to bring me into the light. So God's word and spirit will give us light because we live in a sin, darkened world. But the reality is, though we have advantages of the word and his spirit, we still experience dark times. Dark times are possible as we know for believers. And we go through them quite often, I'd say. I think the average Christian who's wanting to live for Jesus, I think that the more you want to live for Jesus, the more it seems that that you sometimes feel hemmed in. And even sometimes even wonder how come these things are taking place of the one who wants to do right before the Lord. Dark times are still possible. We have to endure those things. You know, I was just thinking, as we were about to begin our study, as I walked up here and stood here behind this platform, on this platform behind this pulpit, I was thinking that we're going on a year, a year of this COVID and all of these things. And there are quite a number of people who feel hemmed in. There are quite a number of people who feel like their way has been blocked. There are quite a number of people who are having very difficult times in this, all of this.  It's just hard, isn't it? I mean, there was a time when you were walking happily.   You know, that kind of thing. Let's go eat something you didn't cook.  You want to have a good time. And maybe that was your routine. Maybe you did that. Maybe that was part of what you did all the time. That was what you could do. And it was pleasurable. It was fun.  But now you can't.  And fear people are feeling. And some of it, I understand, I do understand. And other things I don't understand. I still, I've said this several times, I'll say it again. I still don't understand people who are by themselves in the car, driving around with the mask on. I just don't get that. But when they put it on their dogs, then they've gone a little bit too far. My wife and I have our routines.  That's kind of what you do. What is it that we're going to do today? Okay, we're going to take 15 minutes to try and get out of bed. After we do that, let's go get coffee. And so you have your routines, right? I have my routine. I have routines. And I've set them up, right? And it helps me to keep my life in order, because I've got a very busy life. There are a lot of things that I personally do, a lot of opportunities. I have a lot of meetings that I have a lot of things. So I've had to orchestrate my life into small bits of what I do. I do this. Now I do this. And now all of that's kind of shattered. You know, when the COVID things came upon us, and Marie and I were in, we were in Israel and we had returned from Israel. And when we returned from Israel, I think within two weeks, everything was shut down. And what a lot of people went through, we went through. And what some people don't realize is for Marie and me, for us as a family, every Sunday for 39 years, every Sunday for 39 years, I had some place to go. I came to church every Sunday. And when I wasn't here because I'm infrequently gone, but you know, even so, I was teaching somewhere else most of the time, because Marie has been saying to me for years, we really need to take a vacation sometime. Because when I do, I go someplace and I know a pastor in a church and you'll say, well, you're here. You want to do my Sunday? And sure, why not? That's my routine. That's what I do. And now I'm being told. And now we're being told, you can't do that. You can't do that.  They weren't able to be here. But from the beginning, I told my wife, and I didn't, I said it for myself and said, maybe I'm going to go to church. I'm going to be there. I've been doing this for all these years. I'm going to do this on Sunday. There may be somebody who needs to talk, somebody who needs prayer. So we came. We came every week. I didn't advertise it. I didn't put it. Oh, guess what we're doing. I didn't put on Facebook pictures of me praying, you know, I didn't do that.  And you know that I do too. But we didn't. We just came. And after a while, after two, three, four weeks or so, people began to find out that we were here. And so what they did is they came in the first time we had this caravan, these people coming in honking. It was really beautiful.  The David Vacation Fund, you know, so Hawaii or bust, you know, that kind of thing. But so they came and then they parked. And there was a good amount, I forget how many, about 150 people who were in the parking lot. And it's hot. And so I look at my wife and I look at our chapel and I look at John and some of the guys and I say, let's open the doors. So I don't want them out here standing in the heat. So they went in. Now they're all sitting in there and it's kind of cool. And I'm thinking it's Sunday. So I told Jared, you know, Jared sing a couple songs. Jared leads some worship.  I'm a shepherd. I want to take care of my sheep. That's what God called me to do. And I don't want my sheep to not be taught God's word. That's why I did what I did. Forgive me. I don't even know why the emotion. Okay, offering time. No. So that's what we did. But our routines have been thrown off. And a lot of people have been affected by that. A lot of people have gotten depressed and children have gone through so much, so much pain. Children especially need fellowship. They need their friends. They need to play. They need to be outside. They need to be living and everything was shutting down. Everything was shutting down. And the small things that Marie and I were used to do, used to doing, which is to get a cup of coffee together, spend time visiting. Now all of the shops are closing down. And you all know what I mean.  We've all gone through it. It was hard. So you can feel enclosed sometimes. You can feel closed in. Job was feeling closed in. But he said it's the Lord who has closed me in. I used to go out. I used to walk freely. I used to live with joy. But the Lord is the one who's put me in an encampment of some sort. And I'm having tough time because I'm going through tough times. And it's been very difficult for me. It's been very hard. Again, in verse 8, he said that he had said darkness in my paths. God has closed me in. He's fenced me up. I can't pass. And so even though we have God's Word and God's Spirit, we can still go through times when we feel like we're closed in. And yet we find ways. We find ways to actually to live with hope because that's what has been with Marie, my wife and me, is we have decided that rather than living with despair, we're going to live with hope because my God is my hope. And believers walk by faith and not by sight. And we hold tightly to His promises. And we trust Him.  And we have His light. But even though we have His light, yes, we do encounter times of darkness, times when we don't see clearly, times when we do feel anxious. One of the passages that encourages me about this is found in Mark. It's found in Mark chapter 4, verses 36 through 41. There it reads on the same day when evening had come, he, Jesus said to them, let us cross over to the other side. Now, when they had left the multitude, they took him along in the boat as he was. And other little boats were also with him. And a great windstorm arose. And the waves beat into the boat so that it was already filling. But he was in the stern asleep on a pillow. And they awoke him and said to him, teacher, do you not care that we're perishing? He arose and rebuked the wind. He said to the sea, peace, be still. The wind ceased. And there was a great calm. But he said to them, why are you so fearful? How is it that you have no faith? And they feared exceedingly and said to one another, who can this be that even the wind in the sea obey him? And then in chapter 5, verse 1, it says they came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the gatherings. And that's one of my favorite portions of Scripture. I'm not going to give you a whole study on that because it's one of my favorite places in the Word of God. But there are some things that I really, really, I don't know what I'm really taken by, because one, he said to them, let us cross over to the other side. Let us cross over to the other side. And so God is doing that in our lives. He has said, we're going to cross over to the other side. You're going to make it. No weapon formed against you shall prosper. In Christ, you are more than conquerors because of what he's done. If he overcame the grave, he can overcome anything. And he'll work that in your life. We know that. We know that. And yet, and yet when we enter into a storm, and he seems to be not even caring, he was asleep, his body was tired, he needed to rest. He's got these men who are saying, oh my goodness, we're going to go down. We're in a storm. And so what do they do? They wake up Jesus and they ask him a question. And this is one of those things that has really ministered to my heart. And they asked him, don't you care that we're perishing? Have you ever said that to the Lord? And have you thought that maybe even recently? Lord, look what's going on. Has this left your vision? Do you not see these things? Don't you care? But it's not simply, don't you care? Don't you care that we are perishing? Don't you care about us? Believers do that to the Lord all the time. And what does Jesus do? He stands up and he literally in the original language, muzzles the wind in the storm.  That's enough.   The dog shuts up. Peace be still. And what happens to his men? Who is this? That even the winds and the waves obey? Who is this? He's more than what we thought. And the thing that I love about that, he speaks to them says, where's your faith? What happened to you? Well, what do you mean? Where's my faith? I've been in the middle of a storm. But he began when it said, let us cross over. He had made it very clear they were going to make it. And that's why I include verse one of chapter five, because it says they came to the other side. Because if the Lord says you're going to make it, you're going to make it. Nothing will stop you. If God's in control, you will make it. You will make it. But here's the fun part of that. He went to the gatherings and they had a welcoming party there. Two demon possessed men who came running out of the tombs. So just because you don't get shipwrecked in the middle of an ocean doesn't mean some demon ain't going to chase you when you land safely. I always know that. See, when you read your Bible, always realize that he takes you from one thing into another. Why? So that he can show you he is the God of every situation. And if he said, you are going to make it, you will make it. And that's what gives me hope. And that's what gives me peace, because my God is able. My God is capable. And my God has promised. And I know my God will deliver on his promises. So yes, yes, amen. We walk through darkness. We do. We will encounter these things. We can feel fenced in. We can feel trapped. We can feel like we're in the darkness. But what we do in the midst of all of that is the wisest thing. He said, let's go to the other side. We will make it to the other side. And so what do we do? Well, what we do is we seek him. We seek him, I think, with more desire because some things have been peeled away from us. Because we know that he's the one who turns darkness into light. Later on, when we get to chapter 35, let's see, we're in chapter 19. In two years, when we get to chapter 35, verse 10, Elihu says something that has spoken to my heart for a long time.  Listen, who gives songs in the night. What a beautiful. And I look forward to sharing some things with you there, but he makes us to sing in the middle of the night. He gives songs in the middle of the night. The apostle Paul in Acts chapter 16 has been put in jail. He's been beaten in Philippi and they've placed him. They've beaten him. But the Bible says that at midnight he was singing and the prisoners heard him and he was able to minister. Even in the midst of the deepest pain and sorrow, God gives you songs in the night. He gives you the ability to sing in the midst of all of that. Why? Because we're just passing through. Our God is on the throne. He's going to supply our need. We're going to make it and we're going to give him glory after we get through. And we'll say, oh God, I was wondering where you were, but you were with me every moment. Oh God, thank you for bringing me through the storm. Thank you for doing what you do. And that's part of being a Christian, guys. That's part of what it means to be a believer. So we seek him. And when things are stripped away, we seek him even with greater desire. But in this particular passage, as Job is speaking, he feels abandoned. He feels that God hasn't answered him and yet he still trusts him. He says in verse nine, he has stripped me of my glory, taken the crown from my head, stripped me of glory and my crown. Everything that brought me honor and respectability has been taken away. When he speaks of the crown, the crown represents honor. It represents dignity. He's saying, God has taken everything. He's removed all of this. He says in verse 10, he breaks me down on every side and I'm gone. My hope, he has uprooted like a tree. He breaks me down. Everything that meant something to me has been destroyed. My respect, my family, my possessions, everything has been taken and I'm gone. I'm near death. I cannot recover. My hope has been uprooted like a tree. My hope has gone. A tree that has been uprooted does not grow again. My hope that I had in this life is gone because God has taken even that from me. He has, verse 11, also kindled his wrath against me. He counts me as one of his enemies. His anger burns hot towards me. He looks at me like I'm in opposition to him. Instead of being that close friend, God treats me like I'm his enemy. Now he'd already said that in chapter 13, verse 24, when he said, why do you hide your face and regard me as your enemy? In chapter 16, verse nine, he had said, he tears me in his wrath. He hates me. He gnashes at me with his teeth. My adversary sharpens his gaze on me. Verse 12, his troops come together and build up their road against me. They encamp all around my tent. My afflictions are his troops and his troops are clearing out debris. The debris out of the road is what they're saying in order that they can get to me. They have surrounded me these afflictions so that they can attack me from all sides. In verse 13, he has removed my brothers far from me. My acquaintances are completely estranged from me. My relatives have failed. My close friends have forgotten me. I look for help. I look for pity. I look to my relatives. I look to my friends. The ones who should have been there, the ones that should have helped me, the ones that should have come to my aid. But they abandoned me. In Psalm 88, verse 8, you have taken from me my closest friends and have made me repulsive to them. I'm confined. I cannot escape. He's removed my brothers and my friends. I'm alone. I have nothing. My relatives have failed. My close friends have forgotten me. 15, those who dwell in my house and my maid servants count me as a stranger. I'm an alien in their sight. I call my servant, but he gives no answer. I beg him with my mouth. Those who dwell in my house can be spoken of as those who are guests in the home, if you will. They may be people who are sojourning, they're staying with him. And he speaks of his maid servants, and he says, my maid servants count me as a stranger. Maid servants are the ones who should have been there to care for him. That's what they're there for, but they avoid him. They act as if they don't know him. In verse 16, when he says, I call my servant, he gives no answer. I beg him with my mouth. It was a time in his life when he would only have to look. The servants were trained, especially in the more dignified households. The servants were trained to watch the face of their master, and all the master really had to do is look in a direction. And when he looked in that direction, the servant was reading him and would know that the master wanted this. So without words, he would actually command.  What does that mean? Well, if you're looking into the face of the Lord and you see where he's looking, that's the way he can guide you. You say, how's that work? How's that really practical? And how did that work with Job?  My mom would say this, watch me when I'm talking to this person. And watch my eyes. My mom taught me to do that. Watch my eyes.  So if she was talking to somebody and she needed something, I was looking at my mom. And my mom would look at me and then she just looked somewhere for a second and looked back. And I had to look where she looked and I'd say, oh, she needs this. And I'd get up and I'd go get it for her. That's just the way I was raised. And some people think that's kind of a crazy way to be raised. And maybe it is. I don't know. Maybe your mom used the Junkla. Mine used my eyes, her eyes. But you know what they helped me to do? As a minister, it taught me to look at people when I talk to them, to read their faces when I talk to them. Because sometimes something will pass in their face that they don't even know is going on. And I'm watching them. And I'm beginning to pick up on where they're going, what's going on in their life. My mom taught me to do that. My mom taught me to do that. And so there's this thing where he would look to his servant. And all he had to do was just look. And the servant would go get what he needed because the servant knew him. But now the servant won't listen and doesn't look at him. And that's why he says, I call my servant. When he says I call my servant, he doesn't answer. He never really had to call him before. Now he's raising this sick voice and the servant is pretending he's not even there. And it bothers him terribly. And so I call him, he doesn't answer. I even beg. I have to raise my voice and ask. And he still ignores me. He doesn't want to come near me. He used to look at him, give him a nod, and he would respond. But now I have to beg. And he pretends that he doesn't hear me.  And I am repulsive to the children of my own body.  Well, one thing could mean, and remember, this man is filled with sores. And he smells terribly. And he has many commentators believe he has what is called elephantiasis, which can affect his breath, can become very rancid. It's like, it's just horrible and all of that. So on one hand, it just simply speaks concerning the fact that, that he has a foul odor. It also could mean that my wife just doesn't want to come near me. She doesn't want to be near me. So because in order for her to smell his breath, she'd have to be fairly close. It could be another way for him simply saying, she wants nothing to do with me. My wife, who was, was, was so, is so important to me, doesn't want anything to do with me. And not only that, but I'm repulsive to the children of my own body. Now, when he says I'm repulsive to the children of my own body, you have to think for a moment. Now, wait a minute. He had children who died. Did he have other children? And there are those as I went through several commentators about this. There are those who say that he may have had younger children who were not present in the home when it was knocked down and all the people died. So there's some commentators who say he may have had younger children. Others are saying, no, he's, he's really speaking of grandchildren. And others think he's speaking of simply speaking to his wife saying, show me pity on behalf of the memory of my children. But to be honest with you, there's no, no commentators agree that what exactly that means. So I'll just leave that alone and give you those, those suggestions in verse 19. All my close friends are poor me. And those whom I love have turned against me. All of my close friends. I forgot 18 young children despise me. I rise. They speak against me young children. I'll touch that young children in the past would have shown me great respect. Even the young children would show great respect to me. But they don't anymore. Now, when I try to get to my feet and he's so weak and feeble, and and he's taking weak steps, the children see him in such, such weakness. And they, he says, they mock me. And then my close friends of army and the those whom I love have turned against me. I've been completely abandoned. Everybody that should have been there has abandoned me. And so why is it? Well, verse 20, my bone clings to my skin and to my flesh. I've escaped by the skin of my teeth. So that's where that phrase comes from. He escaped by the skin of his teeth. It comes there out of the book of Job chapter 19 verse 20. I'm little more than skin and bones. I've wasted away this disease. I'm homeless. I'm almost there's nothing. And the only thing that hasn't withered away are my teeth. He says in verse 21, so have pity on me. Have pity on me. Oh, you, my friends, for the hand of God has struck me. Why do you persecute me, as God does, and are not satisfied with my flesh? You are once my dearest friends. Won't you have even a little pity? Can't you have even a small amount of sympathy for me? Why have you turned your back on me, even as my God has done? In this time of pain, he's saying, I need a friend's sympathy. I would say that every one of us have gone through very difficult times. Some have gone through more difficult times than others. And there have been times in your life, I'm sure, that you have been in such pain that you didn't even know how to speak it. I'm not saying every person has already, perhaps you may never. But there are quite a number of people who've gone through pain, who've gone through things that other people wouldn't understand, loss, physical pain. And you know what really helps, and what has helped me, and I'm sure it's helped all of us, has been when I've had somebody who doesn't want to give me a lot of advice, because sometimes I'm not ready to receive it, not that I shouldn't. But sometimes they're just not ready. Sometimes your heart's not open. So you just kind of like feel alone. And one of the scriptures that the Lord gave to me a long time ago about this is in Romans 12.15, where it simply says, rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. Weep with those who weep. I've said this, but it's true. The best thing that these men had done for Job was when they just sat next to him for 10 days without saying a word. Sometimes, sometimes the answer is a friend who is just there. It doesn't have to give you advice. Thank God for scripture that brings healing, but has the wisdom to know when to administer scripture. And sometimes the ways that I've been brought out of painful circumstances has been when a friend has simply put their hand on my shoulder and just said, you know what? I'm with you. If you need something, let me know. I'm here. That means everything to me. Because I'll say, listen, I don't know how to even explain what I'm going through. Forgive me. Right now, I'm just kind of dealing with it. But God knows I appreciate you doing that. And thank you for being there. We need each other. We need each other. We really do. We need each other. And Job is saying, I don't have anybody who helped me, who can help me. I don't have anyone who's bearing my burden with me and fulfilling it as the New Testament would say in fulfilling the law of Christ. They're not there carrying this with me. I'm by myself. So take this into consideration, he tells his friend. Have compassion on me. Try to understand me.  Can't you see? Can't you see who has lost what I have lost? Everything. I mean, I used to be the one that walked into a room and the people would whisper, there's Joe. He's a godly man. He's got a great family. He's been so blessed by God. I was that guy. I would walk into the room. He'd say, and the men would stand up. The minute I walked into the room, show me respect. I was used to that. The children, even the children would rise and show respect. Because the parents said, when you see that man, Job, you give him respect because he's worthy. Now they mock me when I tried to stand up and my friends have all abandoned me.  Why can't you pity me? Verse 21, have pity on me. Have pity on me, O you, my friends. Where's your compassion? Where's your heart? Please, please.  Oh, that they were inscribed in a book. That they were engraved on a rock with an iron pen and lead forever. Oh, that they were written by, but they have been. These words were written. These words were inscribed. These words were basically engraved. These words in other words are permanent. So the things that he's saying, we do have a record of. And then he goes on and says, the most powerful thing, verse 25. After all of this, for I know that my Redeemer lives, and he shall stand at last on the earth. And after my skin is destroyed, this I know that in my flesh, I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. How my heart yearns within me. I am not guilty of the sin that you think I have committed. And I have one thing that I am certain about. My Redeemer lives. My Redeemer lives. And I shall see him. I know that. You see, Bill had in chapter 18, verse 17, had said the memory of the wicked one perishes from the earth. But Job is countering and he's saying, no, I know that my Redeemer lives. I don't expect to be restored to my former prosperity. I don't know that I'll ever have my health back. But one thing I know, as a dying man, I trust in a living Redeemer. And by faith I have trusted him. And I know him. And I know that in the end, when all of this is done, I will be with him. I know that. And no matter what it is that I go through, I am not alone. My Redeemer lives. And I shall stand with him. Even after my skin is destroyed, my flesh in my flesh, I shall see God. Now that is something for every believer in this room to grab hold of. Oh death, where is your sting? The sting of death is sin. But Jesus Christ has given us victory in His resurrection. We don't have to have a fear of death. We don't. Death is an enemy. It's the last enemy. But Jesus Christ in His resurrection has given us victory over death. Now as we know, he's been crying out. He had cried out in chapter 9 verse 32. He had cried out for a mediator. Remember, he said in Job 932, he's not a man like me that I might answer him, that we might confront each other in court. If only there were someone to arbitrate between us, delay his hand upon us both, someone to remove God's rod from me so that his terror would frighten me no more. Then I would speak up without fear of him. But as it now stands with me, I cannot. I wish I had a mediator. Then he said, I wish I had a witness and an advocate in Job 1619. He said, even now my witness is in heaven. My advocate is on high. He said in verse 21 of chapter 16, on behalf of man, he pleads with God as a man pleads for his friend. I need a witness. I need this advocate. And I know that God can be that for me. But now he cries out, I know my Redeemer lives. The psalmist said that the redemption of a soul is costly. No one can give God a ransom. Psalm 49.15 says, but God will redeem my soul from the power of the grave, for he shall receive me. Job knew that his Redeemer lives. He knew that his advocate was on high. This is something that he had a certain knowledge of. He knew that the Lord was on his side. Now at that time, he didn't know the name of his advocate, but we know his Redeemer is Jesus Christ. And his faith is that he'll see his Redeemer. His faith is that he will be resurrected. His faith is that he will see God. So the Redeemer that he speaks of is Jesus Christ. In Titus chapter 2 verses 13 and 14 in the New Testament, Paul said it like this. He says, we wait for the blessed hope, the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good. In Galatians 4 verses 4 and 5, he said, when the time had fully come, God sent his son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law that we might receive the full rights of sons. The redemption is a purchase. He purchases us, purchased us. We were in the marketplace of sin, but he paid for us and brought us out and set us free. And that price that he paid was the life of Christ. It was his blood. In Ephesians chapter 1 verse 7, it says it like this, in him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins in accordance with the riches of God's grace. And so God has done that for us. God has given to us that hope through Jesus Christ. I hope you live that way every day, by the way. I hope you do. I hope you do. I hope you're prepared. I hope that you're aware of the fact that your Redeemer lives and Jesus Christ has bought you out of the marketplace of sin. You were a slave to sin. Paul makes it very clear when you study through the book of Ephesians, we were in the marketplace of sin. But God, through Jesus Christ, paid the ransom, paid the price, redeemed us, the blood of Christ, which is more precious than gold, silver or precious stones. He purchased us and we belong to him. I just remembered an old story. I'm going to say it. Pastor Chuck said this about the man who had the gingerbread.  Some of you might have heard it. This old man baked a gingerbread man and the gingerbread boy decided to get up and ran out of the house. And as he ran down the house, out of the house, a wolf got him. You know? Well, Chuck changed it. I give him permission. And Chuck's version of it in his illustration was that the little gingerbread boy, gingerbread man, ran out and a baker saw him. So unusual, he brought him into his shop and put him in the window to sell him. And here's this old man who had baked this little gingerbread boy and he's looking through the town and he finally comes to the window of the baker and he looks in and there's the gingerbread boy. And so Chuck says, so he goes in and he speaks to the man and he says, I want that's mine. That gingerbread boy is mine. And the baker said, well, no, he ran away from you apparently, but he's now mine. And in order for you to have him, you're going to have to pay for him. And so how much is it going to be? He said, this is an unusual little gingerbread thing. It runs around. It's got a life of its own. So it's going to cost you a lot.  So as Chuck tells it, it always ends in a wonderful way where the man looks at him, looks at his little gingerbread boy and he says, you know, I made you. I lost you. I bought you back. Now you're mine. And Chuck is, but I like to say I made you. I bought you. Now I'm going to eat you, but that's not really, that's not how Chuck said it. But I've always liked the way he endeared that story to my heart. I made you. You left me. I found you. I paid for you. And now you're mine. Oh, that's redemption, right? That's redemption. He made us. We ran from him. He sought us. He paid for us. He owns us. That simple. My redeemer lives. And I will see him. Verse 27, I will see for myself my eyes shall behold, not another. And listen how my heart yearns within me. I long for that. And then finally, if you should say, how shall we persecut him since the root of the matter is found in me? Be afraid of the sword for yourself. For wrath brings the punishment of the sword that you may know there is a judgment. Ultimately, there is a judgment and it'll take place. But as for myself, I trust the Lord and he has redeemed me.