Let's get started. Thank you for joining me on this talk. I hope you're enjoying Bill Bowell as much as I have been. Today we're going to be talking about cross-plane composition functions. And I find these really exciting, so this has been a great talk for me to prepare for and think about. So let's get started. So what we're going to do in this talk is first we're going to talk just briefly about cross-plane itself, the project if you're not familiar with it. We're going to talk about something in cross-plane called compositions, which is a way of making more complex infrastructure. Then we're going to really get into like architecture and design of functions. We're going to talk about running functions, and then we're going to have some go-walkthrough, right? I'll actually show you how to write a function and go. So we'll have some coding at the end of this talk. So that's going to be the outline of the talk. And one disclaimer here. This is actually kind of exciting for everybody in the audience here. This is unreleased software, right? This is coming into the next version of cross-plane, which is going to come in late October. So you folks are like the first people who are actually seeing kind of this put together how this is going to work. So so this is the state of it right now, like as a pull request made this and last week in terms of what's been merged in the cross-plane master. So things can change. It's probably about 90 to 95 percent what the final design is going to be, but just as disclaimer that that's what this talk is covering today. So first, how many people here are familiar with Kubernetes itself just to get an idea of the audience? Okay, so we have about 80 percent of the audience is familiar with Kubernetes. So we know Kubernetes is a cluster scheduler. It does work, but Kubernetes has this, if you were here at the last talk, the speaker talked about writing operators, right? And he talked about CRDs and things like that. So I'm actually going to show you what that looks like in practice. Kubernetes uses cross-plane uses Kubernetes CRDs and controllers very heavily to basically manage anything, right? Like where Kubernetes is concerned with pods and services and things like that. Cross-plane, you can manage AWS buckets, GitHub projects, pretty much anything, right? So basically exposes any external API and exposes it to your users as a Kubernetes resource. Right, so what does that look like? So you've heard about Kubernetes and YAML. So here what we have is, let's say we want to provision a bucket in AWS. What we're going to do is we're going to have a manifest that says what kind of bucket we want to do. And you can see here is that we have groups, versions and kinds, like every single thing. We've heard about CRDs from the last talk. This is a CRD, right? And we're using it to create a bucket. It supports all the Kubernetes, you know, metadata and groups, versions, kinds. It supports labels and annotations, right? So every resource. And then finally, we have this for provider, right? So a cross-plane resource is a high fidelity representation of a cloud provider's API, right? So in this for provider state, it's pretty much all the settings you could do in an S3 bucket. So I've only got a few here, but there's hundreds of settings that you could do, right?  So that's what cross-plane looks like. And if we want to see what that looks like in like it, you know, running it in real time, what we could do is we could do something like, I have a bucket here, and I'm just going to apply it to my cluster, right? And then we could see what's going on with this bucket. We could say, hey, what's the status of it? We could watch it. And we could see that cross-plane is going to go create it after a few seconds. It's going to go through what it's going to do is it's going to talk to the AWS API, and then it's going to verify that the bucket exists. And then after that, you know, it'll take about 30 to 60 seconds forever, how long it takes the bucket to get provisioned. Yeah, so now it's ready, right? So that's basically the experience of this. You're not running a shell script or something to provision infrastructure. You're applying something to the Kubernetes API, and then in the back end, the controller is going and reconciling that. One of the nice things about this is that we get all kinds of information out of the bucket, right? So we have a spec. So you could see here, if Kubernetes can be wordy here, but our spec is what we want to send to the cluster, and then we have a status which comes back, right? So you could see here in the status, we have all the things that came back from AWS about the bucket. We have it in our Kubernetes object. Something else that's cool is that we have conditions. So you're not running a shell script and interpreting an exit code, right? What you're doing is you're looking at conditions of the resource. So you could filter these. You could have these propagated up to like a Grafana dashboard or something like that. And then finally, we have events. You can emit events. So things like in terms of like audit and control, you want to see what's happening with your resources, right? So you could hook this in pretty much every Kubernetes cluster in a corporate setting has some kind of event monitoring. So that's a high-level view of what cross-plan is, right?  All right. We'll let that get deleted, and we'll move forward with our presentation. So what I did there, I applied that YAML to my cluster. The way Kubernetes works is that as an API server that sits there, and when we install these providers here with cross-plane, they say they install a bunch of CRDs, right? They say I manage buckets, I manage VPCs, I manage EKS clusters. And then the controller will start. It's basically Kubernetes pod that watches the API server for that. So there's a whole bunch of mechanisms within the Kubernetes API server for tracking Delta's changes for updates and things like that. So your controller can just do a watch, and when something changes on the remote, like if the user changes a setting, like maybe makes a, you know, a disk size larger on a node, it'll get it, and then it'll talk to the AWS API, and then it'll propagate its status back to the API server, right? So this is the core of how cross-plane works. So there's a separation between the controllers and the API servers. What's nice about this is that you have the API, the standard Kubernetes API server. So for provisioning infrastructure, everything you have in Kubernetes today, whether it's Argo CD Flux, whether it's Off-Z, Off-N, or something on your Kubernetes API server, you could just reuse that for your infrastructure. And also things like Coverno, OPA, you know, things like that, right? So this is a really powerful framework. I'd like to say that cross-plane is a CNCF project. So I work for UpBound, which is one of the main contributors to cross-plane. But the whole cross-plane project has been donated to the CNCF, right? So I know there's been a lot of talk in the infrastructure space about licensing and things like that. Cross-plane, the trademarks, governance, and security are under the CNCF. We announced, like, two days ago that our core providers have also been donated to the cross-plane org. So everything is either Apache 2 or MPL 2 that are some derived from some Terraform code. But pretty much UpBound's focus is on the enterprise and scaling. But all the core cross-plane components are in the CNCF. And I just put this here on the map because there we are in the little landscape. I know everybody loves the CNCF landscape. So I said, this is like you are here in the galaxy. And I hope I pointed out the right location for the cross-plane logo. I think I did. All right. Introduction, we're finished with. So let's talk about compositions and functions. So I showed you a basic bucket, right? But we know in an infrastructure you want to do more complex things. So in this case, we have something called an XRD, right?  If you've probably been following infrastructure, you've probably been hearing this platform engineering, right? Like, you know, the thing that's past DevOps. So I'll show you an example of it. In this case, we have a YAML file. And you can see here the API version is mycompany.com, right? So this is something that your company is defining.  And you're creating a custom CRD for that. So in this case, the only thing you allow your developers to set is the Kubernetes version, the number of nodes, and the size of the nodes. And they don't even know the node types. They're just saying it's small, medium, or large, right? So you need to find an API, a CRD, to your users. And when they're, like, installing their pods and ingress and everything, they could just say, hey, get me a cluster, too. What the composition does, very simply, is it explodes that out into a whole set of infrastructure. So, like, if you have an EKS cluster, you know you're going to need IAM roles, OIDC cluster, and node groups, right? This is similar, you know, if you use Terraform modules. This is a similar concept. So this is something called composition. And this is in cross-plane how we build more complex infrastructure today. And the way it works is when a user asks for something, so here a user is going to create something called a claim, and what we have is they're going to ask for an object store, which is an abstracted bucket, and they're going to say desired region, right? So what we do is we take that spec desired region, and we use something called a patch. If you look down here, and what it's going to do is it's going to take that spec desired region, and it's going to patch that back up to this spec for provider, right? So this is how patch and transforms. This is not about patch and transforms as talk, so I could go very deeply into the subject about all the different things you can do with this, and we also support things like selectors and references. So if you have like a security group, you could say match the label of a VPC and will automatically attach that VPC. So there's a lot of things we could do dynamically with infrastructure within cross-plane with just patches and transforms. So we have, you know, pretty much most people now running very complex infrastructures on top of this right now. So, but I am going to talk about some that we have limitations to that, right? Because we know Kubernetes is a declarative system, right? We're declaring things in YAML and patch and transforms can ameliorate some of that. Labels, references, and selectors can also ameliorate some of that, but we still have lots of problems that we kind of work around today, like using a Helm provider to do some of this. One of them is like loops, right? Like just looping around. It's not something you could really do right now in patches and transforms. Conditionals too. The next thing is flexibility. So right now the patch and transform engine is embedded into cross-plane source code itself, right? So in order to add anything, like if you wanted to add a new hashing algorithm to a transform, you have to modify cross-plane itself, and then you have to wait, you know, whatever time it is, it has quarterly releases for that to come out. And then finally, it's while there is some ordering and dependency management within, you know, cross-plane resources are times an infrastructure when we need to run things imperatively. So design solution for this is going to be functions, and we've been talking about this in the cross-plane community now for a couple of years, so it's taken a long time to get to this point. Number one, we don't want to write around DSL. That was like the number one thing. We don't want to have a new language. The next thing is obviously we want to support complex logic, and one of our goals here is we want to enable people to write these functions to write them in any language, right? We don't want to be opinionated on it, and we want them to be easy to write, to share, and run in your clusters. Okay, this was another big goal of our project. And another thing is we wanted to enable multi-step pipelines in cross-plane itself. So right now it's a declarative. You give it something, and it all provisions it out, and it solves all the dependencies for you, but we wanted to have the ability to run like multi-stage pipelines. And then finally, scalability. So a big theme that's going to I think you're going to see in cross-plane for 2024 is just immense scalability. A lot of cross-plane users are very large organizations, and we're seeing massive amounts of resources being provisioned, and there's a huge amount for lots of cross-plane environments in terms of multi-tenancy. So one of our big focuses is scalability, just like running these things at fleet scale. So the focus for this year for us in UpBound and the cross-plane community has really been talking to our customers, talking to cross-plane users, and basically looking for what are the blockers, what are your pain points, and eliminating those. So we have a quarter release. I've put key features here. You can just reference this slide, and I put all the links I put to the design documentation so you could actually see how things are documented. So every quarter we've been adding features that really improve the core engine. So you could see the first alpha release of functions came out in January. So we spent like six months working on it and refining the proposal. So the beta is coming out 114, and it's actually different than the alpha, but I'm probably not going to go into the differences here because the new design is much better. The old design was kind of inside cross-plane, and we'll talk about the new design, how it runs as a deployment outside. So let's talk about functions. So the first thing is the key thing about cross-plane functions is they run as a UNIX pipeline. So that's probably the closest thing you want to think about. So you're going to run your function, your function accepts in data. Like if you think about those manifests we talked about, right? Like you're going to get a big chunk of YAML. And the way cross-plane pipelines work is that you're going to mutate that data and then pass it out the other side. So the closest analogy is UNIX pipelines here. And in 114, the actual patch and transform engine, which is in cross-plane, we're actually going to have a functional version of it, so we're going to pull it out of cross-plane core. So in this example here, what we're going to do is we're going to have patch and transform after the first function is going to create the resources, right? And then the next function that gets called is just going to mutate them. It's going to do something we don't know what. Maybe it'll add labels and resources. Maybe it'll check for any security settings.  Once all the functions are completed running, then that final desired state gets passed on to the provider and then the provider goes to provision it in the cloud. So this is the model that we're approaching here. A simple function. So let's talk about what functions are because, again, one of the main hallmarks of cross-plane in these functions is that we want them to be simple. So I'm going to just show you a simple example of function here. Let's say that we have a desired state here, and I've made this really short, and we're just going to use the example of JQ, right? So I'm just going to cat this. And JQ has the ability that you could add labels on the fly. You can mutate things within JQ. So in this case, we're just going to cat that text. We're going to pipe it through JQ, and it's going to add a label. And when it comes out the other side, it's going to have the label, right? So you can understand this is kind of the core concept of a function. You pass in your desired state. You mutate it, and you send it out the other side. And that's basically what your function needs to know. It needs to know how to process JSON or YAML. So let's talk about function internals. So functions are basically an OCI image, a Docker image that you install in your cluster. Because we're on Kubernetes, everything is a Kubernetes type. So what you do is you just apply a function to a system, right? You just say kubectl apply my function. You point it to a Docker image, and it'll come up. And then I think I have a bunch of functions on my test machine here, right? You can just see them there. You see they point to the Docker image. You can see they're installed in healthy. I can do a function revision, right? So you can see here which functions. You can see that I've been playing with some of the functions so that there's revisions that have been incremented. So every time you install a new function, it's got a revision. This is pretty common in the Kubernetes world that basically have revisions of objects that go forward. So whenever a function gets upgraded, the new function gets installed, and then there's a termination, and then it gets the new function starts. So basically, that's how functions work. You want to install one, you want to monitor them. All you basically have to do is just install a function type that points to a valid OCI image. The other thing the cross-plane package does, because we want this to be an easy developer experience for folks, is cross-plane also installs a bunch of other Kubernetes resources that surround that function. So this is a little bit small text here, but what I want to say just to highlight some things is it creates a secret which contains a mutual TLS credential for you automatically, right? So all the communications between cross-plane and this function are going to go over a mutually TLS secured. It creates a service account. And also, if you have any CRDs that are part of your function, it will install them on the cluster. So basically, this is all handled for you by the cross-plane runtime.  All right. So how does it work? So we said it creates a Kubernetes service when you install it. It creates mutual TLS. So basically, when you create, and these are functions in different languages, it's going to create the function name in the cross-plane system namespace, right? That's going to be the Kubernetes service if you've used DNS with the Kubernetes cluster. It uses something called GRPC, which is protocol buffers. So basically, we have two things. Cross-plane will send a run function request, which contains that protocol version of that JSON YAML that I showed you before about the desired state. And your function is going to return a run function response, right? And that's basically it. It's like a pipe, right? You get text in of one format and you're going to pipe out the other format of this input mutated. They're basically almost the exact same thing, the two structures. And you could see this. We could run multiple, you know, if you have multiple functions running in the cluster and you have them in a pipeline, cross-plane is just going to invoke each one with the data from the last one. So this is what a protocol buffer definition looks like if you've never seen one before. And basically, what we're saying here is that we have some metadata attached to this run function request. And the two most important things there are the state, observed and desired, right? So that's going to be like an array of objects. If you remember that first YAML that I showed you of the bucket, just think of a large array of those objects. And the observed one, if you remember when I showed you that bucket, it had like all the VPC information and the subnets and everything. That's what's in the observed, right? So you're going to get past that information. And then finally, you can define an optional input that you could send to the function aside from all the composition. And that's a Google Protobuf struct. So that's basically a Kubernetes object, right? So that's how Google represents Kubernetes objects. We could use the same thing in protocol buffers, right? So that's what it looks like in Protobuf and kind of what it looks like in YAML is like this, right? You have the input, you have observed, and you have desired resources, right? So it's going to look something like this. Once protocol buffers unpack and then puts it into your function to be processed. So let's talk about pipelines now. So I think we've covered now like how you install functions, what they are, like how they handle data, how cross-plane talks to them. So what's going to happen here is in our composition, we define this in YAML, we're going to create something called the pipeline, right?  This is a very similar experience. What we do here is that first we enable pipeline mode. And then in the pipeline, what we do is if you remember those functions that we find, each function had a name in Kubernetes, right? Here we have a function ref, right? So in Kubernetes, whenever you see a ref, that means a reference to an object on a Kubernetes cluster, right? So that's kind of a nomenclature. So here what we're saying is a function that's installed, it references a function, and then we have that optional input, right? That was telling you about, right? So then you have another step here, right? So in this example here, there's actually using Go template to render some text, right? Like you could imagine that it's just going to, you know, you probably give it some input and it's going to use some Go templates and, you know, it will render all the YAML that you need to pass it on to the next one. And this example here is, you know, it's going to use like a validation on it, right? So this is how you call it in your... All right. So yeah, those are the basics, right? So I'm going to cover now writing Go, but just to reiterate what we said, you know, we manage objects in Kubernetes. We have the ability and a composition to manage lots of objects. And the whole idea here with these pipelines is we're going to take those and mutate those through a bunch of steps so that you can have some complex infrastructure and basically manage almost anything. One thing I want to say about writing a function in Go, the lead developer, architect of Crossplane, when he's reviewing my slides, he says, please let them know that this is in development right now. That was his specific feedback. So his SDK was... So just letting everyone know that this is... So basically what we want to do here is we want to create a VPC, but for security reasons, a lot of places that run Kubernetes require labels on every single object on the cluster, right? Otherwise, those things get killed. There's a lot of places that have very strict security policies of what could be running on their clusters. So what we're going to do in our composition, instead of having the user do it, we're just going to automatically add some labels and annotations to every resource, right? That's basically... So if you can see here, we got this and you have labels, metadata labels, metadata annotations, right? We're going to add those. So that's the goal of this function that we're going to write. And I'm going to walk you through the Go code and hopefully everybody feels confident after this if they could do it themselves. Right. So there's a Go function template repository. And what you could do is you could clone this. If I click on this, you could see it here, right? So you could just click on Use this template and you could just get a copy of your own. And I'm not going to go over every step here, but basically what you do is you update your input to whatever input you need for your function.  That's basically it to write a function. So they're very simple, especially in Go and we're working on other SDKs. A big thing has been talking to the community about what languages they prioritize. So I think Python is the next one that's coming. So these are basically the steps here. I know it looks pretty long, but actually it's just a few steps. So I'm going to walk everybody through it myself. So I created that function to add labels and annotations. I have a link here and we're going to walk through what to do. So the first thing is we have to give an input type. So the last talk was talking about well-known Kubernetes API types. This is what it looks like in Go. If you've never written Go of what a Kubernetes CRD looks like. So those two fields up there, Meta V1, those are actually part of the Kubernetes API machinery. So these are the type of it, that group version kind. So this is the object. Just common things about Kubernetes objects. And then what we do is we add these two things to it. We say a label is just going to be a map of a key and a value, basically. And they're both strings. And we do the same thing for annotations. And these JSON markers here is how it's just a Go thing about how when you have data structures, how they get represented into JSON or YAML. So that's basically our input type. You could set this as a Boolean. You could do strings, any type. So we've defined our input for this function. We're going to say you could define what labels you want to add and what annotations. And if you look at Visual Studio Code, and we look at the code. You could see here input V1, beta 1. We have our input here. And I've added them there. That's basically if that's a whole file. The other thing I did was I did set the group name here. Because this is when you do Go Generate, it generates the CRD for you. So Coup Builder does that for you in controller runtime. So the next thing is how to process the input stream. And we have the SDK that does this. So I have a link to there. So basically what we're going to do is we're just going to say get the desired composition resources. And we're just going to range through each one and just add labels and annotations. That's a whole function. Because we have built-in things to add labels. Otherwise you could just do a range and add each key to the map. But that's basically it. And then what we're going to do is we're going to set that and then return it. The response. So that's the entire body of the function. And I could show you that in the Go itself. This is in Go here. So in our input here we're just going to look at fn.go. We get the input in. We do our desired. And then we just return it with a response and an error condition. And that's the entire function in Go. The SDK actually handles bringing in the converting the protobuf message into like a JSON for you to range through. And the other thing you need to know about functions is main.go. You actually don't have to change this. But the main logic of it when it runs it starts off it starts your function up. It sets up TLS and listens on that port. So basically the SDK already has this set up for you. All you have to do is when you invoke this it's going to start up a GRPC port. And any time any traffic comes through it's going to route it to your run function. Unpack the data for your function. And then when you send it back it's going to return it. So that's basically the core of writing a function. You update your input with the types and then you just basically do your fn.go. You mutate the JSON and send it back. So I hope everybody feels that I know if you haven't used go before there are sometimes some odd things about it, but I hope everybody feels at least somewhat confident that they could do this fairly easily. All right. So I'm just going to go through this really quick. We have time to do a running an example here. So the first thing is we're going to install a pre-release of cross-plane until 1.14 is out. You can just use this slide. The main thing here is if you could see there, we're using a pre-release git branch for master. So there's a Helm chart that installs cross-plane into your cluster. You can get the latest tags. Every time we have a pull request it gets tested and pushed up to Docker so you can see the latest tags. So I'm just using a tag from yesterday. The next thing is just ensure when you look at the logs that beta composition functions are enabled. So that's the other thing you want to do for this test. All right. So the first thing with deploying our functions is we're going to deploy three functions. One for patch and transform and one for add labels and annotations in our composition pipeline. So I already have these installed, these functions. And then what we could do here is if we go look at our composition I just have one here. So this is the composition here. And here's our pipeline code where it starts. So the first thing we're going to do in the first step is we're just going to do a base patch and transform. So we're going to take a VPC and an Internet gateway and we're going to patch them for a couple fields here. And then what we're going to do is we're going to actually I have another function here that just kind of echoes things but and then next thing we're going to run our labels and annotations. So we're going to create the resources with patch and transform and then we're going to pass those resources to label those and annotations in our pipeline and hopefully everything will work. All right, so I've applied this. This is just a YAML file. I've also applied the definition. This is a CRD. So basically we're defining a demo. So a user is going to ask for a network, right? The user asks for a network. They're going to get a VPC with an Internet gateway. All right. See here where we're at. Okay. And you see the input type there. Let me just refer back to that when we have our composition here. You can just see here in our input type that I defined, the labels and the annotations, right? This is the kind when I said the group here. It's a CRD of an input type and these are the things we're going to add to it. These labels and annotations. So let's do this. So this will take a few seconds just to provision. But yeah, what I did here is I created a network claim that provisions this and then the composition is going to create the Internet gateway and the VPC. So the Internet gateway depends on the VPC ID. So when we talked about dependencies, the Internet gateway will not be created until the VPC is in a ready state, right? So this is kind of, it's not like a straight dependency, it's something like Terraform where it builds the whole graph for you in advance. The way it works here is if you have a dependency, that dependency won't be ready until you see the VPC got ready then suddenly the Internet gateway started getting provisioned. So that's how dependencies work within cross-plane. It's a little more asynchronous. We'll let that go. That takes a little while to provision in AWS. And I can just do COOP CTL get managed. We could see both of our resources and if I do OEML we should see that our resources now have had the labels and annotations set to them. Yeah, you can see here, right? There's our labels and there's our annotations. So basically our function, we created our resources based on what these are had and then with our built-in function there that we as a platform engineering installed, we could add tags to everybody's resources even if they don't know we're doing it to their resources. But yeah, that's our end result. So that is, I walk through. Cool. So yeah, I will go into a summary now and then we can do like a Q&A. So one cross-plane functions are stateless, right? They don't restore any state. They can be written in any language. You know, they're designed to mutate data, right? They don't do all the work. They just mutate data and let other systems do the work. A composition pipeline executes things in step, which is a little new for Kubernetes, right? Like Kubernetes has been declarative and it gets to a single state. This is a little bit different. And then when you deploy a function, cross-plane actually takes care of all the machinery around it. You know, handling CRPC traffic for you and then SDK will help you there, too. And finally, the V1 beta one release will be in late October with cross-plane 1.14. So you can play with it today, but this will probably be a big announcement coming in late October for cross-plane itself. All right. And just if you want to get involved, the cross-plane Slack has SIPC composition where all the core developers are, if you want to go talk to them. There's a discussion there in the cross-plane. It's a very good design docs across the project. So if you're really interested in learning about cross-plane, it's a great place to learn. Yeah. And then you could clone.  You could actually wrap any binary to make it look like GRPC, right, just for local testing. So this is something else worth thinking about. Like if you could just take any script and just like have a wrapper for it that handles all the GRPC stuff for you. So we'll probably have something more advanced for this available when we get closer to the release. So yeah, that is my talk. I'll be happy to answer any questions about anything on cross-plane since but yes, thank you for your time. And I'm very excited about this actually. Having worked on cross-plane for about three or four years now this is super interesting. Thank you.


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You're in that situation where it's like you get to like the checkout page of a thing you're trying to buy and it's like Oh promo code. It's that feeling where it's like, oh, I think I can save a bit more money But you just it just doesn't just doesn't always work out that way And so I find with tickets it's not quite as bad But sometimes it is for example, you're on Ticketmaster You're trying to buy some tickets you see the promo code boxes there But you don't really think much of it and then you go onto the map itself And you see all these other codes are all locked by these little lockboxes like oh, what's the promo code? How do I unlock these tickets? How do I access to these seats so that I can go ahead and actually get better seats save some money get better discount all The good things. How do I actually do it? Well, there's actually a website on the internet that talks about all the presale codes for different ticketed events And it goes into detail of how to actually go find those tickets get some tips How to use those presale codes what the presale codes are all that information is there and it's all for free Interested let's discuss What's up guys welcome back mine insurance here on thumbs up run where we talk about buying tickets selling tickets making sure that you have all the Fun with your taste they were talking all about ticket crusader comm ticket crusader They are someone who I have been relying on for more than a few years now And I use them as my go-to source I am looking for new presale codes for different events So today I'm actually gonna do a deep dive review into ticket crusader themselves who they are what they do what they're good at what They're not so good at and then just giving my overall impression of what I think about using them as a service We're looking for those presale codes. You'll definitely want to pay attention to this one today. All right So first off ticket crusader. Who are they? What are they? They do have a bit of a social presence online, but it's not necessarily Massive and this is probably why a lot of you may or may not even know they exist I find that those people who are looking for tickets all the time They would have eventually run across this website because they do post quite a bit However, in terms of socials, they're mostly active on Twitter and Facebook and then a bit of the YouTube though That's kind of died off over the years. So if you just take a look at their YouTube channel, you know 299 subscribers, maybe you guys can go show them some love hit that subscribe button over there Give them a little kick say hey, let's make some more videos because you know They got a few here one of them over a hundred thousand views, which is you know, it's pretty good I don't I mean, I don't have anything over fifty thousand So I mean this they're crushing it then in terms of the Twitter and Facebook's Twitter They're about twelve hundred followers and then as well on Facebook about five thousand or so people who like their page So, you know, they're there they're around there is a bit of a following behind them and that's pretty cool Right, but I find that with Twitter. They're posting there the most often I think a lot of times the posts that they get made on Twitter They go directly to Facebook and then they also pull directly from their website as well So it's all kind of integrated together to help them basically drive SEO so that they can go ahead get more Traffic to their website and you know drive some more visitors viewers page views all that good stuff That's the way they're doing it to basically, you know get themselves, you know, no in the world all very good things But on the actual main website, this is kind of where all the glory is so you can see here They got a whole bunch of different bars and sections going on You know the talk about presale codes how to become a broker tips and tricks and then also the buying and selling of tickets So let's kind of dive into each of these different areas and give ourselves a bit of an evaluation of what we like what we Don't like and get a better idea of how it all kind of ties together Right off the bat one of the very best things I like about taking Crusader is that they have a section over here on the right called standard Presale passwords I rely on this quite a bit because not necessarily for the annex and city chase presale codes But more for the live nation presale codes I always forget what they are and every month they do come out with a new one So sometimes I just I just don't have the time or the patience to go ahead and actually find it on the live Nation website, so I just jump on over here and I can see this month from May It's remix every month it will come up with something new So if I can find a place that I can always go ahead pull it from Kind of saves me a bit of time bit of effort and it just makes my life a whole lot easier other than that the other main Draw to coming to the website is actually through their presale passwords section So in this section ticket crusader is posting daily and not just you know once a day They're posting basically anyone and everyone who has an event. They're making a page about it saying hey This is where the events going on here's where it's taking place and here's all the presale codes for all the different events So I take a look this one and Jamie Johnson presale codes don't exactly know who this is But if I go down and take a look I can see here There are presale codes for today and then it kind of just goes by different events now When you're actually taking a look on their website It may not initially come off cross to you But I would assume that they are actually ticket brokers themselves one just because they are spending the time to go Head find those presale codes would imply they're trying to buy tickets for themselves as well So they can go ahead resell them and then to they do have this website called super seats So ticket crusader and super seats I believe they are one and the same ticket crusader it kind of draws everybody in with the free content And then they try and push you over into super seats to finalize that ticket purchase If you can't get them on the primary market I think this is actually quite genius of them because you are drawing people in looking for different events point being Say you get to take a massive you try and buy those tickets, and it just didn't work out Well, you're like ah so frustrating what do I do now so then you come back to the page and you're looking at it You're like oh click here to buy tickets on super seats. What is this super seats you speak up? So I jump on over here and it takes you to this website super seats calm and I can see here It's just one of those basically those white label standard ticket resell website pages where you can go ahead take a look At the inventory that's there and then kind of move along and finalize your ticket purchase It's very ingenious actually because you're driving so much traffic to the website initially There's also additional incentives to go ahead and make that purchase on super seats because there are coupon codes available to you if you Do buy directly from here again our friend here Jamie Johnson So if you go ahead and actually you know pay attention to a few of the blurbs here You can see here pre-sale codes are not available or working or tickets are sold out Buy your tickets from super seats and get a special discount off your ticket price with promo code crusader Look at that all ties together.  I can't fault them for that whatsoever what I can't fault them for though is the amount of not necessarily junk that gets posted but This is just the sheer volume of all the things that they post on all their social medias And what actually ends up on the website itself unless you're looking for something very specifically It can be a bit overwhelming trying to sort through filter through all the different events that are being announced and trying to find Pre-sale codes for that specific artist or event if you take a look at pre-sale passwords for example And I just take you know, it's sort of sort down Florida, Georgia line and then there's a whole bunch of other random streets caputo Billy Eilish a lot of people here that you may recognize but also a lot that you may not So it's it is quite a lot of volume again There is a reason they do this it helps drive traffic if someone is searching for you know lady a or Jonas brothers or whoever the case may be they might end up on tape crusader because they're trying to find a pre-sale code If you're using their website often you'll find that it's a lot easier just to search for the individual artist or team You want rather than trying to see who's who's just announced a new tour who's coming on sale generally I wouldn't come here to find tour announcement information because I don't find that as helpful and as useful I do find however pre-sale side. That's where the true value lies I will say a lot of the times they will have them if they are generic pre-sale codes But if they are unique pre-sale codes, then it doesn't really matter anyway It'll basically say hey, you know, you need a unique fan club code or you need a password search code or whatever the case may be So they can only do so much and I do recommend them 100% of the time when you do begin your initial search There are a few other quirks though on their website where I find there's a lot of missing links and errors and things like that Things just don't redirect you to the right places tried to click the super seats link couldn't actually go and buy those tickets A bit of a weird one because you'd expect them to you know drive the traffic that kind of thing So I find there's a lot of things like that I don't know if this is on my browser or if it's just on the website in general Pictures are not loading. So, you know, I've got a hover over them It's kind of a funny thing that seems to be happening happening on my other computer as well But if it's on my end so be it's on their end something that they may eventually want to take a look at just You know pretty up the site just a little little bit in addition to the pre-sale side of things though They do offer quite a few other value add services as well So let's just jump over through the rest of them very quickly. So number one how to be a ticket broker They actually offer a free document that you can go ahead and receive from them If you just send them a quick email and gives you kind of basic basic level details of what it takes to become a ticket broker And how to kind of get yourself started There are other you know ebooks and courses and groups and things like that if you want something simple and easy You can go ahead send them a quick email I'm sure they'll get back to you get you that information you're looking for next thing over is they actually have some more Ticket-buying tips and tricks. I find again. These are very generic But I again, it's they are there some people who have never bought tickets for in their life would find these tips and tricks quite helpful Same thing with the YouTube videos that they do have they are a bit generic again And they are at this point a little outdated just because Ticketmaster has updated their website so many times at this point I find that these videos four or five years old They're not quite hitting the same effectiveness as they would be in the past However, in terms of generic tips and tricks definitely can't go wrong They are helpful and you should be able to get some value out of it if you've never bought tickets in your life before Last two things here selling tickets and buying tickets the buying side you guys already know how that works Go ahead. It'll take you to superseats.com Again one of these these errors that they kind of need to clean up a little bit But in general if you're buying tickets They do offer the ability to click the links get directly to the event you want on the different presale pages tour event pages All that kind of thing so it's all it's all there for you if you do want to buy some tickets And then this other feature they have which I think is also quite interesting is being able to sell your tickets They're mostly you know Mostly sites are really just kind of helping you to buy tickets and kind of drive traffic that way make some sales on the Commissions, but they also now have the ability to go ahead and list your tickets if you're listing tickets through them They will charge the 12 and a half percent commission fee Which is the bit on the high side if you are a returning customer I think they drop it down to 10 percent in their terms and conditions down there if you are looking to sell tickets I would recommend using one of the other more dominant and prominent ticket exchanges Dubhub, Vividseed, SeatGeek, that kind of thing stick to those big ones Basically, you're gonna get better market view of your tickets that are being listed Likely that they'll actually sell a bit faster and the fees generally will be a little bit smaller Other than that though, I find the website is is for what it's doing and what you're actually using it for I think it's top-notch hundred percent excellent I think the fact that they do offer presale codes for free is great There are others websites on the internet. They will do the same thing But they'll charge you know ten twenty dollars a year ten twenty dollars a month sometimes even more than that So if you can get some of these things all for free, which is kind of what we're all looking for It's fantastic one for excellent highly highly highly recommend with that being said There are a few things about them that kind of throw me off a little bit But you kind of work with what you got if you're selling specific great search for it directly You can either search it in the search bar at the top use it on Google with ticket crusader in the name Or you can come to the page themselves and just kind of start searching through their various headers Have you guys ever actually used ticket crusader before in the past if you have let me know in the comments down below All at all definitely would recommend using them I use them all the time for presale codes you guys might want to consider using them for presale codes too And if you do definitely let me know down below That's all I got for today though If you guys are doing this video definitely let me know by hitting like button down below Also, be sure to subscribe if you haven't already great new content coming out every single week in see you guys next time


Going on everyone Sam here with late sports cards have been 2023 putting the origins football hobby 8 bucks break number 24 Pick your team style names and teams Allen s with the Texans Brett W Ravens Eagles commanders Dominic T with the Vikings drew our Rams Dolphins and Titans Jeremy s with the Bengals Joe D Niners and Colts Matt oh Raiders Matthew F. Lyons Michael J Giant Jets Steelers Bucks Nelson V with the Cowboys Nicholas Z has the Chiefs Nick L with the Chargers Pack-A-Pong V Seahawks Patrick are Saints Patriots That is gonna be Rob and with the Packers sirua L with the Cardinals Browns and Bears Stefan L bills Terry F Broncos Theodore H Jags Tim T Falcons and Wallace L with the Panthers It's good luck everybody. Let's do it again. Just two to go breaks next on origins Divis Two to go breaks next like four teams of bots in an open field shooting each other picked them all out. Yeah, there you go That is 275 OBJ for the Ravens and 225 Kyle Pitts gold for the Falcons The Marjaxon and Roshan Johnson First hit going to the Texans to 199 will Anderson On the origins rookie patches will Anderson Got on card rookie up. No, not on part 299 sticker auto of a Cedric Tillman Nice one there browns. Congrats Cleveland and RPA Jonathan Mingo going to the Panthers. Congrats Carolina Carolina Justin Herbert to 125 and Michael Thomas the 149 got Jerry Judy and Devon Ochin Ochain Ochain whatever you want to say Tyree Wilson rookie patch to 75 75 of 75 for the Raiders two colors Got rookie auto for the Lions, Sam LaPorta. Nice one there Lions. Congrats again their Detroit Very nice very nice and then a Tank Dell rookie jumbo Jersey auto going to the Texans Congrats Houston. Nice one there each town Michael Thomas to 125 and Red juju to 149 OBJ and Sam LaPorta for the Lions Quentin Johnson rookie Jersey to 99 for the Chargers Jaren Hall rookie auto to 49 Nice one there on the blue for the Vikings And Rishi Rice rookie Jersey auto going it to the Chiefs. Congrats Chiefs Nice one there. Nice one there Devontae Adams to 50 for the Raiders And Russell Wilson to 99 for the Broncos Jaren Hall auto Yes, it is on card Dom Yes, sir. Yes, it is Yeah, most of the rookies are some of them aren't there's a couple guys in the checklist that are sticker autos like Downs is Garrett Wilson Stetson Bennett, but he's been a sticker auto in everything that is a Jalen Hyatt to 25 on the rookie jumbo patch for the Giants. Yeah, no problem Dom. Got you brother Michael Meyer rookie auto for the Raiders. Congrats Raiders Nice one there there you go Vegas and Jaden Reed rookie Jersey auto going to the Packers. There you go at Green Bay Green Bay Packers. All right. We're halfway through now everybody Micah Parsons to 50 Cowboys Turquoise and say quanta 99 on the blue for the Giants Jamar Chase and Darius Davis rookie Zach Charbonnet Camarillo, California. It's a 99 for the Seahawks on the hometown Roots Jersey card Cool one there for sure. Got Michael Wilson rookie auto on card for the Cardinals Nice one there and tape Bigsby rookie Jersey auto for the Jags. Congrats Jacksonville The running back in Jacksonville one of one of the running backs in Jacksonville Again, just two to go on origins everybody two to go. That's it breaks next All right, three boxes left in this break of origins. Let's go. Thank you Matthew picking up a division. Appreciate you brother Thank you. Thank you. Thank you one to go now everybody Matthew appreciate that appreciate that. Thank you so much Justin Herbert to 99 and Darius Davis to 149 Let's go man one left Mike Evans and say flowers rookie for the Ravens Devon a chance to 75 go into the Dolphins Nice one there at Miami. We've got Jalen Hyatt nice on the gold Rookie auto 10 of 25. There you go Giants. I love the golds things in this dude A lot of times on the one of ones They'll personalize them too, which is pretty cool like a scribe. Oh, yeah That is will Anderson jr. Rookie at Jersey auto for the I'm gonna say Texas guy couldn't think of it for a second my favorite card set of all time at this point is Thank You there Alexander taking a spot in tier one Buddhist League See if there's any on eBay right now There's 2015 tops Valor football Okay, they're called the war anthems. Okay See if there's any up right now Battle anthem was it they're all one of one. Yeah, they're all one of ones and They signed it and they put their favorite song. Oh, that's cool. Right. So this was like checked by Meek Mill That was Todd Gurley's.  I love the battle anthems That was one of my favorite set probably Arguably my favorite set of all time Who's a what product? I Was in 2015 tops Valor football Valor. Yeah, which only made for a couple of years They only made it I think in 14 and 15. I loved it. It was a good product This is a PYT Mike. This is a PYT So there's really no way to post Post results. Was there one was it a different break or it wasn't just one. Yeah, PYT on this one Take one to 50 on the turquoise and patch my homes to 99 for the chiefs Etn and Anthony Richardson rookie Colts Jaden Reed rookie patch to 199 for the Packers. Oh I got you. I got you Mike. I'll tell you right now There was Michael J if you're Michael J. You had the Giants jet Steelers and bucks Giants jet Steelers bucks Michael J Roshan Johnson for the Bears. Yeah, you got it Mike. No worries, buddy No worries at all. Nice one there bears and straight Tucker rookie Jersey auto for the Raiders. Congrats Raiders Congrats on that trade talker. I like the RPA like the smoke design rather than the Galaxy Design on the yeah, I know what you mean on the regular autos. Yeah George Pickens to at 75 and Jay Jettus to 25 Calvin Ridley and Josh Downs rookie got Zay flowers rookie patch to color to 99 for the Ravens Got tank Dell rookie auto for the Texans nice one there Texans That's one there at Texans and Tana McKee rookie patch auto for the Eagles Nice one there. There is a little bit of edge wear on the bottom. I'm gonna send an empty box and wrapper with that Sorry about that Eagles still a nice card still a nice card, of course And you got force tomorrow over on fanatics live We are way under market on a lot of these teams as well everybody I might actually pick up an NT team tomorrow because it is payday tomorrow So it's true it is might end up getting a little crazy and get a team an NT basketball on fanatics live Zay flowers that is Jaden Reed Devon Achan got hometown roots of Zach Charbonnet. That is Jalen Hyatt Quentin Johnson Tyree Wilson and Will Anderson RPA of Tana McKee. That's tank Dell trade Tucker Roshan Johnson will Anderson jr. Jalen Hyatt a tank Bigsby Michael Wilson Jaden Reed Michael Meyer Jaren Hall Rishi Rice Tank Dell Sam Laporta Cedric Tillman and Jonathan Bingo. That'll do it for the break everybody. Thanks again for the fill up next is Divvies one


In 2006, the readers of the British Medical Journal voted for the greatest medical advance of the last 200 years. They didn't choose surgery or anesthesia or the pill, they chose the toilet. Not maybe a fancy toilet like this one which comes from the World Toilet Organisation, that's the other WTO expo, but a basic flush toilet has probably added 20 years to the western human lifespan. However, in 2012, 2.6 billion people have no sanitation whatsoever. Not a toilet, not a bucket, not a bag, not a box. That's two out of five people who have to do with something that looks like this.  Why does that matter?   For most of us in this room, we think diarrhea is a joke, maybe we get it from a dodgy kebab. Or a bad takeaway, it goes away in a couple of days, it's the squits, it's the runs, it's deli belli.   It's the second biggest killer of children in the world. It kills more children than HIV AIDS, TB, measles or all those three things put together. It's not just children. In Sub-Saharan Africa, 50% of hospital beds are filled with people suffering from what is known as water-related diseases. They're actually poop-related diseases. And why can't we say that they're poop-related? Because we're too embarrassed, because governments think that voters don't want to know about toilets. So do charities, you'll see a celebrity standing in front of a shiny water tap gushing out clean water.   That's twice as much as clean water alone. A toilet can do so much for you. It can put you back in school. 20% of children, girl children, drop out of school because they don't have a toilet and they don't go back. It can put you in work. Governments lose 5% of GDP to hospital costs and absenteeism due to poor sanitation. It can earn you money.  That's a bargain in health economics. And if all that doesn't persuade you, it can get you laid. A toilet in India is now being used in a social campaign which has been dubbed No Lou, No I Do. Because brides refuse to marry into a family that doesn't have a toilet and it's working. It's not just a toilet that can save your life.  This is an operating theatre in Brooklyn, New York, and that woman is about to get a dose of donated human feces. It's called a fecal transplant and most surgeons have exactly the same reaction that you just did, which is why it's hardly done anywhere. However, it's got a 91% success rate. She's been suffering from a superbug called C. diff for years and suffered horribly. She's tried all sorts of antibiotics. She gets a dose of poop and she's cured in half an hour. That sounds dramatic, but it's true. Poop can also grow your food. It's a great fertilizer. We eat food, we excrete it, and we excrete nutrients like potassium, phosphate, nitrogen. Apparently, if you pee on your orchard, you get very crunchy apples. In Rwanda, they get 75% of their cooking fuel from biogas, which is taken from digested sewage from prisoner's latrines.  And yet, in somewhere like the UK, routinely every wastewater utility just burns off methane. The minute we started putting our waste, as we call it, into clean drinking water in the mid-19th century, we started neglecting the fact that it was a resource. We saw it simply as waste, and we stopped talking about it. We put the toilet behind the locked door and we shoved it out of conversation at the same time. Does it need to be that way? No, it doesn't. In Japan, they've had a toilet revolution in the last 70 years. 70 years ago, they used pitlaterines. Now, as a routine, they have something called a washlet toilet. There are more washlet toilets in Japan than there are personal computers. They have an inbuilt B-day nozzle, which cleans you better than toilet paper, and I know because I've tried it. They have heated seats. They have an automatic lid-raising function, which is known as the marriage saver. But most importantly, what Japan has done is decide that the toilet is talkable. It's a normal household product. It gets innovated. It sees creativity applied to it. And they talk about it. 30 years ago, HIV AIDS campaign has faced a similar problem with sanitation activists. They had an unspeakable subject. What did they do? They carried on talking about it and talking. Now we can say sex, we can say condoms.  We want more talking and less killing. Thank you.


Marcus Marriota does so many things at the line of stream that helps the thousands throughout a ballgame. Now the stats always come up. People talk about the numbers, but it's not all about the numbers. One thing you cannot measure when it comes to Marcus Marriota is his toughness. Now he's going to get a blitzer come right through here and he's going to get hit dead in the mouth. Now this is a big-time play here against Tampa Bay because he's going to throw this speed out here to Drake London. Now the big thing about it is it's third down. Third down, cruiser down, you're almost inside the red zone. The difference between getting points, touchdowns or field goals. Now this play gets started. Now here comes, here comes this add-on backer here. Marriota knows we are not blocking him. He's outside, he has his man here and Drake has to work this route. He has to give it time, but watch Marriota standing here and deliver a football with this guy bearing down on him. Now the ball is halfway out, headed to Drake London and creates a nice play. Ultimate, you pick up the first down. Let's watch it from the backside one more time. Just watch how he stands here. This is the toughness you talk about from your quarterback. This is not stats, this is not done you talk about after, but here is what happens. Look at this. How many people are going to stand in here and deliver this football with Devin White, one of the top linebackers in the league, barreling down on you, standing in there and delivering a strike.  Here's another instance where Marcus Marriot is going to stand in here and deliver a strike to Ozzie here. Another third down play and what's going to happen in the front is the Browns are going to go with a stunt, so this guy is going to come all the way around and have a clean shot right on Marcus, but he has to stand in here and deliver a strike right here to Ozzie in the middle of field for a big time completion. Now watch here, watch him. Look at this guy coming around. Nobody has him. Marriot knows he's got to stand in there. He knows he's got one on one with one of his best receivers to win on the outside. And watch him standing here. Look at there, another shot with a guy coming barreling right down. Know he's got a win route right here by Ozzie and it's another completion. Watch it again from the back side. Watch him standing here. Look at this guy. He's going to come all the way around and loop and have a clean shot on him and watch him just standing there. Guy barreling down on him, but he know he has Ozzie on the win and stands in there and completes his football and this is what respect is about when his team turns on the tape and they see a guy standing in here, completing the ball for his teammates. That's toughness. That's something you cannot put in a stat sheet and this is why he is excelling inside his office. Hey, I'm DJ Shockley. This is Falcon's Film Review, powered by Microsoft Surface. Now, one thing that will also never show up on a stat sheet is intelligence.  He goes like this. He goes can-can, which means he's all of them. He's changing the play. That means he's putting his offense in a better position to be successful. And because he does that, the reason why he's doing this usually is because you want to run away from somebody. This is the safety. Now, something tells Mariota, we don't want to run to this side. So, he runs away from the safety. He audibles to his entire team says can-can and now they're going to run right. And watch what happened because he recognized that the defense was doing something else and he changed the play and ultimately it ends up in a touchdown. This is an unbelievable call that won't stop on a stat sheet again, but he's still changed the play. Audibly got him into a better play, ultimately ended up in a touchdown for the Falcons. Alright, here's what Marcus does, what makes his offense so special and why defenses are having fix with his offense right now because his ability to maybe use his leg. Now, this was third and 13 and it was right before halftime.  But because his ability to use his legs creates this huge play. But up front, they go zone-blitz. So, they got eyes going back here. They got still got eyes on the quarterback, but they're also bringing pressure and they actually are going to get home. Most quarterbacks, this may be a sack, but for Murriota, watch them climb in the pocket. Understands, hit comes pressure. Hit comes pressure. Good job of reaching out by your back, picking up his outside guard. But look how deep these routes are. They haven't even turned around yet because they're still trying to get to 13 yards to get to the first down marker. Murriota knows this, but he also knows there is nobody in the middle of the field for him if he takes off. Use the pocket, climbs up, and now look at all this run room he has now. Now, 30-13 turns into a first down, picking up 17 yards on first down. Watch him get from the back side. Watch him just use his feet to move inside his pocket. There's so much stuff going on. This guy's a free runner. This guy's a free runner. Watch him use his legs to be able to create some more separation. Steal with his eyes. Look at his eyes. His head is still downfield, looking to throw the football. But now, he has to escape the pocket. Now, your own is up going for 17 yards.  We're talking about his toughness. We're talking about using his legs. Let's talk about the improv that also never comes up on a stat sheet but always works out for the Falcons when he uses it. This is a particular plate where he's going to end up hitting Parker Hassey out of the backfield. Now, he can probably throw this if he wants. He could probably hit quarter of a pass into this one. But he's actually reading this side of the field, and now he wants to look this way. But by the time he gets back over here, it's a little bit too late. But watch the improv here. He doesn't like it. He doesn't really panic. Now, he starts to escape the pocket. Right now, he's thinking run. Look, his eyes aren't even downfield. He's thinking run. He's thinking let's get to this marker over here. Let's get out of bounds. But he continues to look downfield. That's what most quarterbacks don't do when they get outside the pocket. It's continue to be a passer. He gets outside right here at the very last moment. Finds Parker Hassey out here and completes a big-time throw here. And now you've got another big-time play because he wants it because he begins to improvise. Watch again from the way that Marcus Mario sees it. He's going to work to his right side. Nothing there. Improv, get outside. But now it looks like he's running, right? But his eyes are still downfield just in case somebody uncovers. Somebody uncovers at the last moment, throws an accurate ball. Big-time play, Parker Hassey, drive continues. Sometimes your quarterback is just better than the other team. Now, this is the prototypical zone read here. He has the chance to pull it. He has the chance to hand it off. Or he has the chance to run it. On this particular play, 49ers actually cover this. They have guys on the inside for the dive. And this guy on the outside who's the defensive back who's just as fast as the quarterback. But sometimes your player is just better than his. And Mario has the confidence knowing that if I don't hand it off, I have to beat him to the corner. And he absolutely does. This nice job of riding it all the way in there. Because he rides it just a half a second, watch this guy step in just for one step. That one step gives him a corner and allows him to get to the edge. Boom. See, that first step there, look at his fall step. He is flat-footed now while Mario is already on the pursuit to run. And now he outruns him. And it's just an ideal play you like from a quarterback that you can use down in the red zone. Watch it again from his backside. And show you exactly what I'm talking about with his guys. Now he's flat-footed. Flat-footed, he's beaten. You've got a guy who can get around the corner. This is exactly what Mario does. His toughness, athleticism, and attention to detail. Being able to improv is so big for a quarterback that will never show up on the stat sheet. But this is why Marcus Mario to continue to be the guy for this offense. I'm DJ Shockley. This has been Falcon's Film Review, powered by Microsoft Surface. I appreciate you watching.


Hi, and welcome, everyone. I'm Sabine Wiesander. I'm a partner at the VC firm, Kriandum. And I'm here with Johannes Schilt, CEO and founder of Kri, a multi-billion dollar healthcare company out of the Nordics. Welcome, Johannes. Well, thank you. Good to be here. Good to see you, Sabina. Good to see you. We are here to talk about scaling billion dollar companies in highly regulated markets. So some of the most regulated markets are also the industries that are the least touched by software. Education, energy, healthcare, it's just some of them. But there are entrepreneurs that are taking on these industries and that are trailblazing. And Johannes, you are one of them. I am, yeah. So I will ask Johannes to share insights of what it takes to scale a company not only in a highly regulated market, but a business that has as its core business model to be reimbursed by the public sector. And hopefully you will get some insights to take on your own journey. So let's get started. Let's get started. Let's get started. Johannes, Kri is a digital first healthcare provider. How many patients have you helped to date? We helped a bit more than 7 million patients across Europe by now. 7 million patients. And for those in the audience who is not one of 7 million patients, what is Kri? Well, to put it simple, it's a healthcare clinic in your phone where you could meet clinicians within minutes, psychologists, doctors, nurses, physiotherapists. And we operate this across Europe based in Stockholm, but also operating at scale now in France and the UK. Ambition have always been to be a mass market service, to be something for everyone. And obviously in order to achieve that within healthcare, you do have to, as you said, address the public healthcare systems and partnering with the public payers. So that's what we usually do. And then also we partner with private healthcare, private insurance, and sometimes also go directly to patients and through employers. So that's what we do. And the majority of what we, healthcare we deliver is pure digital. And then we also put a lot of effort during the latest years to knit together the patient journeys and link our digital offering to physical healthcare as well, where we're now starting to operate a light touch network of physical clinics in some key areas. So that's what we do. So digital healthcare wasn't tough enough. You're also doing, adding physical clinics to the problem. Yeah, I think it's for us it's been important that digital healthcare is not a silent system and then you have everything else. I think it's clear for us that most or all healthcare journeys will eventually start digitally. And then in the majority of the cases, we will be able to treat our patients end to end through pure digital. But obviously in some cases, we need to link patients further down the healthcare journey and also do physical healthcare. And we do that mainly through partnerships but also to some extent we do it by ourselves. Yeah, so that's what we do. And at core, we are a technology and product company but we also operate healthcare ourselves at scale. So we do employee and trainer of a lot of clinicians across Europe. Wow, impressive. And why did you start this company? Are you coming from the healthcare side of things? No, I'm not. Well, I am because I'm a patient as everyone else. So a lot of it is out of our needs. I've been a patient in the Swedish healthcare system as most we've seen being trusted on how bad part of it is structured. I think in Europe, we're in general, we're fairly spoiled with high quality of care but there's been a lack of access and a lack of efficiencies. And we thought there must be better ways of producing and delivering care. So we started building what we now have been doing for quite some time. But no, I had very little experience from the healthcare sector before starting Q. And in one way, I think it's been a positive. Yeah. I mean, I'm sure we're all curious to know how much did you know about regulation in healthcare before you went on this journey? Well, the very honest answer is that I didn't know anything about regulations in healthcare when we initially started. And as I said, I think it's, in one way, it could have been a positive because what we do is complex. It is very regulated. It's complex, but sometimes it's rather good to be a bit naive when it comes to addressing new things and just jump straight into it. I think for us, it's always been ultra clear that what we do is a big part of the future. But no, we didn't know that much about regulations when we initially started. Now we do. Now we know a lot about it. Now you know. And if you knew back then what you know now about public reimbursement, about regulation, what would you have done differently? I'm not sure that I would have done so much differently. Well, obviously, I think we have played sort of slightly different roles in different markets we've been addressing and all of the markets that we're in. And if you look into Europe now in the world, all of markets are in slightly different levels of maturity when it comes to regulations and how you structure reimbursement systems in healthcare, et cetera. And the role we played in Sweden for a long time was really trying to sort of push the system forward. And I think that we've done that in a fairly good way. Now I'm not sure that we would have done so much differently. Obviously, we've made a lot of mistakes and sometimes you could have been pushed harder, pushed less. We have sometimes, you know, addressed new segments or markets too early. But I don't have a clear answer to that question.  Should you try to influence policy and regulation in the market that you are in and can you as a startup take that role? I think you have to. I think you definitely need to be in the conversations as you're the most, you know, large sectors. You have regulation, right? Healthcare is, you know, it's 10, 11% of GDP in all European markets and it's, you know, it's also addressing public systems. There's a lot of regulations and complexity. And I think that you, obviously, you need to be in conversations about how to push things forward. Then you can't sit back and wait until things are changing, right? I think you need to also play the role as sort of challenging the system. Our main challenge has been addressing healthcare and doing it at a scale. If you look into the healthcare systems right now, it's very local. Regulations are built around physical healthcare delivery. That's not what we do at CORE. And then sometimes you have to and you need to challenge that. But we have always taken public policies side very seriously and put a lot of time and effort and really trying to be around the table and discuss the future of how healthcare should and could look like. And that requires time and effort. It does, but I think it's definitely worth it and I don't think it's any way around that, really. So, you know, spending time on it, being in the dialogues, but maybe not expecting to move the whole European framework all at once. No, that will unfortunately not happen. But if you look back when we initially started, there was no reimbursement infrastructure for little healthcare in any European markets. When we launched in Sweden, there was no payment model for it. Now there is a lot of things have changed during the years that we have been in this industry. And a part of that is obviously us trying hard and showing that this is doable and this is a real need and it works. That was not, now it might sound like a given that what we do, little healthcare is an obvious and critical part of any healthcare system. But that was not the case when we started. That was something that was completely new and we had a lot of skepticism around what we're doing and people said, no, you can't do it. This can't be done. It's no need for it. But we showed the world and our patients and partners that what we do is actually of real value. And from us, even though we started out of a pure patient perspective, obviously what we do, we need to serve both patients and clinicians that work with us and for us. And we obviously also need to serve the needs of our partners. And as I said, that's mainly governments and public systems. And they tend to be fairly regulated and they also tend to be fairly conservative. And so you're showing the way you're showing it can be done, you're going on the forefront. And then a pandemic came. How did that affect being in a healthcare market? And has that affected the policymaker's way of looking at software, you think? Yeah, I think for us, I would argue that the biggest change during an epidemic have been on the policy and regulatory side. I think even though, even when we started, there was a clear demand for the patient side. People don't want to call a landline early in the morning and travel long distances and sit in a waiting room for a GP practice and hopefully get a time slot. You know, there are more efficient ways of solving it and that have been clear for us and it's also been clear for patients. It's been maybe less clear from the clinician side and on the payer side up until recently. This shift started long before the pandemic. It did, but the pandemic definitely accelerated it. And now I would argue that it is well anchored everywhere in all healthcare systems but what we do is a critical part of the infrastructure of healthcare moving forward. Then the pandemic has been strange because part of the healthcare system have been under severe pressure but healthcare usage during the whole pandemic actually been an all-time low and many healthcare systems have basically put everything on pause. In the UK, you almost have 10 million people waiting to get a doctor's appointment because everything was paused for a long time. Well, 10 million people waiting for a doctor's appointment. The European healthcare systems are under severe pressure. That's a fact. And you can't solve that by just continuing to do what you have been doing before and that's now finally starting to be clear to you, our partners that you do have to structure how you deliver healthcare moving forward in a different way. And that's a big opportunity for us, obviously. And do you think there are, policymakers who understand what needs to be done that are pushing the rest of their peers towards a future where software plays a bigger role in public sector or highly regulated markets? Yeah, no, obviously there are champions, obviously. And if you look back in the early days of Korea, I think we were fairly successful at identifying those individuals or regions in our first markets. In Sweden, there were less conservative or more pro-tri-new ways of delivering care and sort of juicing them as a champion. So yeah, I would argue that things definitely are moving forward. And I think there's usually, and sometimes there's a lack of understanding how technology actually works and what will mean. And we have, but in the end, there are definitely people that do understand. So there's not only a problem of will, there's also a problem of not understanding what regulation stands in the way of innovation. Yeah, I think that we have quite a lot of examples where you have regulations clearly sort of blocking innovation and demand, or not demand, but blocking innovation. And usually that is not now by bad intent from regulators, it's just lack of understanding what the decisions will lead to. Interesting. So that's also a reason why you need to be in the conversations and try to educate people. Yeah, continue to have conversations, try to get them on board, try to understand, then get them to understand what the future looks like. Yeah. We're gonna try to get vulnerable for a few minutes. Wondered if you can share with the audience any big mistake that you look back on on the journey of building this huge company and something you brought from that. Big mistakes, but we knew in this far wise, obviously we've done a lot of mistakes and it comes to regulations and policy. I think that we sometimes had a tendency of maybe pushing too hard and sometimes had a tendency of pushing, you could have pushed harder, right? And we have had, we've launched markets that have not been ready from a regulatory perspective. We've launched new services, but timing was not right. So obviously when you look back, there's a lot of things that you could have done differently. That's obviously... But it's been kind of trying to find the balance of what's pushing enough to keep moving at the startup speed, but of course within the regulatory realm that you're acting in. And I think that healthcare is very local. So part of what we do is very scalable on the technology side and operation side. What we do is very similar in the different markets, but how the healthcare systems are structured is a very different between the different markets. And when we initially launched in Sweden, there was nothing, we pushed it forward. And when we initially launched, we launched as a private service and our main argument to the public sector was like, this will happen anyhow, right? So if we don't make sure that this is a part of the public healthcare systems, this will be like a premium channel for the few that can afford to pay for better access. We don't want to do that. And that will undermine the trust of the public healthcare systems. So it's different arguments that we have used in different points in time. And as I said, the markets have been at the very different level of maturity. I would argue that the UK have been really good at this. It's been well anchored for a long period of time that digital healthcare is a part of the future. That was not the case in Sweden when we initially launched. And for those of you, I mean, I assume most people are not from Sweden here. So that's where most of the digital health in Europe started. And now we see that most of the regions that are operating public healthcare are launching their own apps. And obviously, that would never have happened unless you guys went on to show the way of what should be the first step of interacting with the healthcare system. Yeah, I think the first way for us was to show that this is actually doable, right? And now it's anchored, it's doable. Then it's like, who should do it? How should it be implemented? How should it be reimbursed, et cetera? But we crossed that first stage where, is this a real thing or not? Now it's obvious it's a real thing. There's more question about who should do it? Should you allow private companies to operate in this space or not? Or how should it be paid for and who should pay for it, et cetera? And we're all aware we need regulations in all our industry for them to function in a well manner. As a highly innovative companies, can you turn these very strictly regulated environments? Can you turn that into an advantage? Yeah, I think you can, because that is a barrier to entry. It can be frustrating to operate in a highly regulated market, but it's also certain advantages. If you're starting to be good at it, that's a part of your mode. I think we started to reach a point where it is, right? It's a strategic advantage to us. We know that very well and we can sort of, you just have to embrace it. You just have to roll up your sleeves and dig into it. I think there's no way around it. If you want to operate in healthcare and other highly regulated industries, like you can't shy away from it. Like you just have to embrace that you operate in a regulated environment and then try your best to use that to your advantage. And I mean there is some of the largest global industries are also the most highly regulated. So the price, if you do make it, it's very big, right? And I guess what you're saying is, it's not for everyone, but that also means that it will be less crowded. Yeah, if you look into what we do, we don't have that much competition upon European scale. We have local competition, all the markets that we're in and part of that is because there's quite a lot of heavy lifting to address a new market, to understand regulations and reimbursement systems and find a payer model, et cetera. And it's two sides of the coin of complexity. It's tough and it's hard, but as I said, you can also use it to your advantage. And it is a part of, it's a barrier of entry. I know another Nordic example is the scooter company, Voi, that are, you know, they're so good at managing policies in the cities that they operate in. So their main agenda is to push for more policies because they are the only company that can actually handle those kind of frameworks and the public agenda that they're pushing. So they're actually pushing for more regulation on the scooter side because they think that's one, the way for them to be able to operate period and two, of course, to have less competition in the market. So we see it also in other industries than healthcare. Many entrepreneurs in the audience, I assume, what would be your advice to entrepreneurs building, not only in healthcare, but in other highly regulated markets? An advice to founder of if you operate in a highly regulated market. I think some of the things that I've already said, I think, you know, there's no way around it. You should try to be in the conversations. You know, go out, meet the policymakers, talk to regulators. I think, again, I think you should, you know, really dig deep into it and try to use it to your advantage. I said, there's like, there's no way around it, really. So just, you know, embrace it. Yeah, become really good at it, better than everyone else. I think sort of, in the beginning, we were sort of, it was a bit frustrating. So when you realize that this is fairly tough, you're like, oh, God, this is really tough. There's a lot of things that we need to learn. It's highly regulated, and then you first get trusted about it. But I think, you know, then early on we reached that point, we're like, we will just embrace this. We will try our best to be good at it. And I think that would be my main advice would be to just, you know, don't shy away from it. Try to embrace it. Embrace it, lean into it. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, if it was easy, everyone would have done it. We would have, you know, the same amount of software in healthcare and education as we have in other sectors. Yeah, and now, in some of our core markets, as in Sweden, like we have access to the full population, we have 25% of the households that sign up with the service, you know, it's a power brand, so everyone is aware of it and people use it. And it's like, now it's painfully obvious that what we do is needed, but that was not the case before.  Yeah. Think deep and try to embrace it. Yeah. And I don't know if there's any policymakers in the audience, but if there is, you know, what would you say to them? Or what do you say to them? Well, I would probably say the same thing. I try to engage with innovators and companies and startups. I think if you look into, like, healthcare, it's obvious to me and all of other people that, you know, private companies would pay a big role in solving some of the crisis within the healthcare sectors, like engage with companies and innovators and try to understand what policy and regulations can do to actually enable more innovation and not blocking innovation. Because that do happen, right? Like, you do have regulations that are actually hindering innovation.   We've just had a big climate conference.  You know, tons of startups got to go this year and engage. Hopefully policymakers are, you know, listening and engaging as much as they can. What do you think the future holds for digital healthcare? Oh, for digital healthcare. Now, as I said, I think it's painful, obvious, and been painful, obvious since we started that healthcare is going digital. That's ultra clear. And we did that early on. If you just look into the ICD codes, the diagnosis codes of our primary healthcare clinic, you realize that the majority of those concentrations can happen digitally. And that's now slowly but steadily or in some times, it's starting to happen, right? So we believe that more of all and the majority of healthcare concentrations will start online. The majority of the things will also be treated purely digitally. And that's, you know, the macro trend is ultra clear. And it's just a matter of like how quickly can we reach that point? And that will not solve all of the problems within healthcare, but it will solve some of the problems in healthcare. And as I said, I think, you know, you can't just pour in capital in the rather ill functional existing system and hope that that will change. Nor can you just add like a thin layer of digital on top of the rather ill functional system. Like you really have to. And that's what we do. Like we combine technology with hardcore healthcare operations. And that's what you really can create some magic. So it's not the silver bullet that's gonna solve our healthcare problems, but it's an important tool for the future of healthcare in Europe. Yeah, and it is a tool. It's, you know, it's no technology for the sake of technologies, no value. But you can use technology and product to improve efficiencies and improve access and improve and remove some of the inequalities when it comes to access. That could be done. But, you know, technology for the sake of technology that doesn't serve any purpose. No. And, you know, where are we on this journey? Are we, you know, far ahead? You know, where? No, we're very much just getting started. Like very much that we've been operating this now for, yeah, since 2015. But, you know, we're still have a long way to go. Healthcare is 10, 11% of GDP in all European markets. It's just, we're very much just getting started. I think that in the next five, 10 years, we'll see an awful lot of change in all European markets in this space. That's a future we're very much looking forward to. We are near the end. Johannes, if the entrepreneurs in the audience are to bring one thing from this session, what do you think that should be? Well, if you would bring one thing and we should try two regulations, I think what I've said plenty of times now, don't shy away from it. Like, there's no way around it. Like, in some areas, there's obviously, like a lot of companies, you don't have to care too much about regulations, but if you want to go into healthcare or other highly regulated industries, then there's just the name of the game.  And that would be my best advice. Embrace it. The price is big. Less competition. Just do it. Yeah, let's do it. Yeah. Thank you so much, Johannes. Thank you, everyone, for listening. I hope you found this insightful, and I wish you a great slush. Thank you. Great slush.


called The Bat, a piece composed by Andy Beck. Our chorus is very excited for this song for the first time in a second. It fits our spooky ball theme for the concert. The lyrics talk about the animal, rather than the baseball equipment. This piece is a lot of fun to sing and to listen to, and it's a chorus favorite. The Bat is a small piece that pairs well with Firefly and the Moon, which are similar pieces of music also by Andy Beck. It was the director of choral publications at Alford Music. He has composed over 450 popular choral works for local resources and children's musicals. The Bat is a captivating two-part piece with changing dynamics and an eerie and chilling piano part. The piece definitely lines up with our ongoing spooky season. Music that wants to imagine playing in the background of one of many Halloween movies. Though folks might not be jumping to add it to their playlist after the concert, as it sounds much better to a live performance. Without further ado, we have a picture show at the Moon International Chalm Festival and the Galax Spectrum Award. Originally written as a filler track in a popular movie, the time mark contains a message of individuality and expressing your true self without worrying about others' sake. It's astounding. Time is fleeting. Madness takes its toll. But listen closely. Not for very much longer. Control. This is written by a great composer, Brian Balmologist, who I think you will hear from in the orchestra later as well. This piece kind of reverbs around motif, really just two notes. So for a lot of us, we'll be hearing two of the same notes. I want to give a note, a big shout out to Ann Decker, who's stepping in for one of our band members who couldn't get there at the very last second today. So shout out to Ann doing the feature-burned-up part on this. This is reverberations. I just wanted to say, if you saw this band last year, it had about 16 people now. We're up to about 30. I'm really happy to see this band grow here in my second year. It's been a blast. But I'm turning it over to John Wallstra. It's going to be a little surprising. It's going to give you thrills. I advise you visit to Asheville, North Carolina. Blue Ridge Real is meant to appreciate the blue ridge mountains. Brian Balmologist has always loved bluegrass music. This piece of music was meant to show the beauty of bluegrass music and the traditional average reel. The way all the music parts of this song move together to create the feel of old and new coming together in perfect harmony. The way this song mixes areas where the whole work show is planned together and then fades out to certain instruments shows the way that the old and the new coexist but in their own ways. We have a lot of fun planning this.


Live entertainment, educational booths and a petting zoo for children were all a part of Newton's annual Earth Day Festival. The event was hosted by Green Newton, a local organization created to protect natural resources and encourage businesses to be more energy efficient. Green Newton President Marsha Cooper says the goal is to teach people how to care for the climate. Some people will stop to think and say, wait a minute, like maybe I should adjust the thermostat in my home. Maybe I should consider an electric vehicle for my next car or walk or bike more, things like that. The actions that people can take, we can each make a difference. The Newton Citizens' Commission on Energy found that 60% of total greenhouse gas carbon emissions in Newton come from houses and cars. Elizabeth Sockwell, an intern for Green Newton, says Earth Day gives Newton the opportunity to spread more awareness and reach out to bring change. Earth Day is a really great opportunity to get new people who might care about the planet but don't know the right actions they can take. Shalom Arudones, co-founder of Indigenous Peoples' Day and Newton Committee, hopes to bring awareness to honoring Indigenous lands on Earth Day. Because this is our land, legit, and visibility, absolutely, it is very important because a lot of people don't realize that this is Indigenous land. Event organizer Marsha Cooper said that over 1,000 residents were in attendance, along with 30 local vendors including climate crew and homeworks energy, educating visitors on all the ways to be more Earth-friendly in their daily lives. Reporting from Boston, I'm Lainey Broussard for BUTV10.