So the team tonight is based around Two teams that I use of the weekend. It's kind of a combination of both. So and I've kind of picked out the legit series 6 Pokemon because that's what we'll go back to tonight and We're going to be playing this one. So the hat is kind of replacing a P2 and the among us is replacing a really boom not the best substitutes, but Substitutes nonetheless, so it should be fun. Right what we got chat. Give me a sec I'll just try and lock in so don't time out and I'll come straight back to you guys Right, we've got Persian Disclops Frostmoth Okay, Dalmai's Grim snarl and Taurus we're there. I need to change this track I got some weird mix on tonight, and I don't know half of it So some of it's like if you don't like tracks, tell me we'll skip okay We've not got much time Think we need a mungus. I think we need do we want to go hot because if we got hot then the Dalmai's is gonna have a Great time. Mmm, but we need to stop. I think maybe We could go Let's go Ursh Grim and bravery. I think I'm just locking in whatever we can here But we'll get through this first one. Then we'll have a little bit more time Yes, hello friends, hope you're all doing well. Hope you had an amazing weekend Let's see what we got and div dax. How are you doing? Sadly? I had no time to breed a team Dude, you should have hit me up man If there's anything any you guys are here right now if there's problems with Pokemon in future and you need a hand Reach out to me. I'm super happy to help anytime I can't guarantee that I will always be able to get the stuff But I'm pretty quick at breeding. I got efforts and set up so we'll be able to do stuff Doesn't help you now div dax. I'm sorry, dude, but in future. Do let me know. Um, okay, so Urshifu and not the greatest, but well, I mean we've got good damage We need to be careful for the Grim Snow course, but I think you've got to fake out something Mmm, you're gonna go for screens Kind of don't mind if you do I think we go for a spoil Do we go for a spoil or do we go for a rage poodle? I don't know if they're gonna Mr. Underhill, thank you so much for the follow and for joining us tonight. Um, okay Let's go for some whirlpool stuff into Grim Snow. I'll try and get that trapped first It is a bit of a weird build I've kind of had to ethos I've had to I've kind of had to merge things together from my players cut my two teams and make them semi-legal for series 6 So that's what we've done tonight. Well pool seems a little bit of a weird move on On Urshifu granted, but give me a chance. Give me a chance, okay? Mr. Underhill, I love you YouTube videos first time catching the screen. Great to have you here, man I hope you're doing well computer kids. How are you doing ten of each? Well, how are you all doing? Hope you're all well, right? We've been taunted so we can't do very much We can't switch out though. We can bring in our own Grim Snow. It's pretty safe. They got a light screen up. Um, I Mean we can Should we trap now they can just go I mean we could surge and strikes I'm just scared that the Urshifu gets spurred break to you, which wouldn't be great Um, we could do this though. We could do this Yeah, we'll do that. We'll do that. We'll do that because if they spur break us We'll get it an attack boost, which is pretty nice and then imagine that's what they want to go for We'll see we'll see Can it be surprised at the difference in rank between PC and last PC had virtually the same Elon rank was over 800 spots better I know right that the ranking was like nuts compared to like last time. There's way less players Taking part that works as well. So that's good And that'll give us the defined boots. That's better than them That's the best case scenario ever because I kind of worried about if we get the the attack boosts from the Grim Snow Spurred break then the Persian could potentially have foul play Which would be a little bit tricky to play around but oh good. Well, oh good.  I know dude. Um, I had theater all Saturday So then by the time I got round to being able to do anything it was super late And then I had to kind of squeeze in my other games just here there and everywhere because we kind of went out and then We had other stuff on as well. So it was a little bit Of a time squeeze, but managed to do it. So that was that was good. Um What are we gonna do? I think we just throw up a reflect now. I don't really want a max airstream to be honest But at the same time, we don't really have too many other options to get rid of the the clops So we could just start throwing this out Yeah I'm not crafty. How are you doing? I'm having trouble finding a tailwind set for my team any recommendations Talon flame is probably the best one in the format right now if we go in series six for sure But it does depend on the resty build if you throw out the five that you've got already We can throw some suggestions around for you doc ultra dark. I not not normal dark right ultra dark Right. Thank you so much for the follow. Thanks for joining us tonight and No event as well. No event is a really nice shout No event is a super nice shout there's a T wave coming out So don't mind that too much because I'll just bounce our lumbary I think we're gonna just change the tracks and go with a bit more reliability Let's change them back. Okay. So that's some nice damage. We'll probably see a trick room here from the the clops And communicate spin using dribbling dribbling is another nice shout as well There are plenty of tail tailwinders in the format like bravery's tailwinder, but I don't know I think like Maybe um, I don't know. I don't know. I think we go after the dust cups. It's gonna. It's gonna pay and split us now That's the problem You could literally double it Kind of want to start chipping this grim snarl down as well I don't think the grim snarl can touch It's gonna print split a grim snarl. I'm pretty sure that's what we're gonna see. Yeah, they're gonna T wave us That's fine. Oh Yeah, deep does making the good comment We We can get the economy now as well that can them that can paint split and tailwind as well So it's a good tailwinder for sure. Okay, the tailwind the trick room set up We are paralyzed. We've kind of negated that with our air streams right now Be able to get rid of this dust clops. Oh, no, we went after the grim snarl. Okay bad move bad play bad play bad play We should have double the disclops there because it's just gonna paint split again, which is a bit annoying Okay, we'll be able to get rid of it. It's fine And I'm not crafty.  So you've got a firewall grass call. Well, it's not technically the most Natural fire type that you kind of fall back on but I mean like talent flame gives you a lot of options in this format as well You know and you can get a heat wave To help with things like Durant Obviously the tailwinds imperative for that sort of team works really well with something I blast toys as well Not really sure what the frost last is doing in the team But yeah, if you want to let me know Because if you rock to Muram bravery, would you get a defiant? Yep, you would you would but you would still get the speed drop So it's a little bit problematic in that respect, but you would still get the speed boost. Okay Persian coming in All right, so I think what we're gonna do is protect bravery. I think I'm gonna get a moongus onto the field and because If they don't taunt a moongus here and into the graham snails lot, which I don't think they're gonna They may do and then we can spoil the Persian The big thing though is that we can we can just redirect whatever the Persian's gonna throw at us We've got to reflect up as well. So we should be all right But free how are you doing mate? How are you doing? I hope you've had a good weekend, dude Thanks for hoping and join us tonight Well, what am I wrong about? Anger point and Crooked Al nice Anger point and Crooked Al the frost last care that makes sense. Okay Did we just get paralyzed? On our protect there's a steel spike coming out. I'm gonna lose bird. Oh Okay, what we do just about survive the problem is we can't Okay, well, we need the bird we need the bird for later Ocean food not doing anything to it We can't do anything to tell mice without the birds. So we have to sacrifice something and put the Persian to sleep I Think we're gonna have to this is really difficult now That protect has not helped a lot fully paralyze has not helped us a nice weekend didn't play there See Is that why you had a good weekend? You can't give yourself to find a competitive Oh, no, you can't give yourself to find a competitive will you are right? But you can give your Pokemon the boost if it is defined or competitive, right? Right well put that Persian to sleep, which is helpful the phantasm coming out okay into a moongus I don't know how we're gonna. I don't know how I'm gonna deal with the Dalmites I think you're gonna have to rely on like a grim snarl to be honest Yeah, grim snarl can kind of do a job against it How many turns of the the reflect if you've got left three, okay? It's not too bad The trick room's gone. So that's helpful, but Okay, I think what we'll do is we'll switch into ocean food now and I'm gonna sack the bird. I'm gonna sack the bird I'm gonna put all my eggs in one basket with grim snarl and go for that go for that I think that's a better idea me maybe Look Jad Potter, how are you doing? Congrats on your players cups? Thanks, dude How are we how did you get on? Did you did you play this weekend? And do I still have the code for you to city or a team computer kids? I do yes planned played on Wednesday Mate, so we'll we'll do that on Wednesday, which would be a lot of fun And the city wise very cool Pokemon. Okay, it's a steal spike Could have kind of done with the Persian stain asleep a little bit longer and because we cannot Protect with a shifu now, but we do have the sash. So it's not the worst thing in the world And our reflect does where I know their reflect where it's off, which is the good thing. Okay, so we'll get a grim snarl onto the field Yeah Yeah, and I think we go after the damn eyes Yeah, I think that's what we do Series six is weird series six is weird a hundred percent. I've barely played outside my woke up set Yeah, dude. It is super weird. So do I get rid of I? Think we do I think we get rid of the Persian now Hopefully that's enough to get rid of it. Um, and I'm gonna just start Chippin down down mice. We might lose a shifu here. What's a Persian gonna do? I have no idea And will series five should have been players cup format, but lucky bars is a god team Oh, I saw you use bars as team worked out pretty well for you then and the end will so that's good And At least you've got the points to qualify for the next one. So hopefully the next round. I'm imagining players cup Might be even series seven. We might have a new rule set by then you never know never know do we Every series six team just looks like a random collection of more. I know right dude.  Okay, they're going after the grim snarl. It makes sense We do take it We can no longer escape Okay, well, we'll go for the surgeon strikes into Persian that hopefully we'll get it I think maybe well, no, we need the damage on to down mice Just if they double into us here, that's the only issue the surgeon strike doesn't get us Then let's just go for it surgeon strike spare a break and double into the Persian here try And Girl pro gonna please trade with you a battle. So we're gonna do we're gonna do viewer battles and Probably Friday this week actually so guys get your teams ready because it's series six at the minute So I think yeah, we'll do it Friday. I think that makes sense. Okay parting shot is fine. That's fine. That's that's fine That's fine Sweet I run hail series six since it'll be the only time I can have a good matchup. Yeah, dude It's the only time it's gonna do do well Which is sad which is sad hills and cool archetype. I hope we get some buffs and It's use nine. I think that's what we need. Okay grim snarl going down and it's literally gonna come down to Okay, I reflect wears off If we only had sludge bomb on a moongus right, okay, so Let's go for the whirlpool And let's start chipping it with this giga drain I'm not free. I've been using vanilla. So I used it like in a team last week On the chat. I don't know if I played it on stream. Actually, that's what we need. Okay. We need more of those misses and Yeah, and vanilla performed super well, dude. It was like it was actually really good I think we could win this now I think that miss is like actually gonna be able to get us the win because that chip damages is Pretty nice. Okay, so we'll just protect on that Ah Okay, let's see For this for this exact reason will okay.  I think we're gonna be all right. So there we go Okay, I'm gonna get a couple more of those off We'll get a couple of surgeons strikes off because I'll ignore all the defense boosts Which is good even though they do resist I think we're gonna be all right Whirlpool saving our asses here Okay, please it's worked out good in game one. That's pretty nice Nobody's seen that move since gen two. Right. There we go the giga drain Another the power up. Okay, so they hit now So if they hit that initial one later being able to chaos here, which is fine But we would have still been able to win this with their Other moongas. It's really nice. Um, I kind of used it with urshufu. I had rillaboom in my team so it was nice to be able to kind of like Trap in opposing water types and then switch to rillaboom and they were trapped taking the residual damage And then get rillaboom onto the field and just remove them And pretty easy like threats like primarina and things like that. It was um, it was it was nice It worked out pretty good in players cup and we've got meekin Next this looks very familiar this team Very familiar indeed, but uh, I don't think it's my build, but it is very similar along the same line So we got the yeah, the the sneezo um with its surf Colossal uh cobalion we need a moongas hat that is our only way around this Um, get the trick room up and go from there. I think we need um out of whack We kind of need to preserve a moonga star if it is colossal because like otherwise Well, gastrodon isn't a massive issue. It is a bit of a problem Hmm maybe Maybe grim snarl as our last one Nah urshufu. I'll go for urshufu and just hope that it's not a gastrodon And better me you've already bet ten dollars on an october release dude. I hope you're right I hope you're right And what's the odds and what odds do you get on a september release? Yeah Release tomorrow afternoon after the direct could you imagine? Available now on e-shop You could see it happening. You could you could see it happening potentially right well I mean We could be cheeky here, you know, we could be really cheeky here And go for a trick room and go for a spore Because they're gonna surf And if they go up to the hat, yeah, we don't get a trick room fine But we do put the colossal to sleep. We'd be able to get urshufu in and just get rid of it So we we would have that option for sure. So we'll see what happens And having a moonga On the field still is not a bad thing. So let's see where they they target with their um surf Oh, they're going fake out. Huh, they're not maxing Okay, gmax volklith Okay Hmm Well, we can get some decent damage onto the weevile And go for a spore into the colossal So we'll do that we'll do that So beb and what you're saying is when um The isle of armor detail trailer came out. It was two weeks after that that the game dropped, right? That's what you're saying. So that's what we've got potentially in store for us Triple axel. We're not gonna we're not gonna take this. Are we now we're not but it's Okay We a moonga probably sticks around Gonna be very close. Ah very close very close. So we'll get the colossal put to sleep, which is good Get my racking Then robson leave. Unfortunately. I couldn't play the tournament.  That would have been so much fun I would have loved to have seen that Okay, I mean, what's the con make up of the rest of this team? Astrid on Okay, I don't think they got the dust globs Do we just sack off a moonga's here? Maybe Let's go for this I'll probably be able to take the max quick. It's just gonna be good for us to potentially get The spoil just in case we don't Get it And yep, bebham's confirming that. Does anyone know how many participants played in the players cup two? I have no idea, dude So there's a sleep onto the colossal. So it's not gonna be able to do very much going forward It is slower than our maruak, which is interesting And so there's min speed And we will proc a weakness policy here Very close to taking it down Probably another triple axel coming out from this Neasel I'd imagine And there's a weakness policy proc um There's a beat up coming out but not doing too much So a moonga's gonna survive to see another day, which is which is really what we need Because we need to um ensure that we are able to get The rage pat. Oh, no, it's not and we needed the rage pad the next 10. I forget about the volkliff that damage chipping up Well, I've got given my team like a couple of hours before the tournament started. I had zero experience with it Still shows how good the team was mr. Anderson building the wimmy The wimmy cinderace team, right. This is what aqua jet would have been incredibly good How many turns of trick room have we got left um to okay one turn of the vocally We need to hope the colossal stairs asleep. We've had like two One-turn wake-ups already. So like can we just get one Where we get more than one turn of of sleep Can it can we get one tonight or is the rng? Okay, we do. Okay, so that's good Mr. Curtastic at least three participants. I think I would I would imagine that is the best guess As well. I reckon I reckon around that number probably probably compete I mean, there's probably three of us in chat that have competed. So we definitely know that is that is the case, right? But bevum if anything, I hope your prediction of two weeks from tomorrow's date is when Uh crown tundra drops it would make a lot of sense if they're kind of keeping in with that same Um Time frame as the alivarma that would make a lot of sense So two weeks get the hype going and then drop the game. So hype doesn't hype doesn't go away after that Jazz matem tem. Thank you so much For the follow. Thanks for joining us tonight on stream. Hope you enjoyed the the stream with us all Okay, well gastrodon coming into the field making it a little bit difficult Trick room is about to end but we can max phantasm into the dust globs And we can't whirlpool or do anything with urshifu as long as that gastrodon is kicking around in the field So we're going to be relying on close combats and stuff like that But let's see where the gastrodon goes. We've got like plus two special defense So we're not in the worst position as we see a bulldoze come out. There's gonna a lot of the speed on maruak um See who slaw and imagine well, maybe the gastrodon slaw than the mwak. Oh, it's a yawn. Okay That's not great to be honest. Hopefully the phantasm can take down this dust globs. It'd be amazing if it can Oh, it's so close so close and literally we can't do anything with urshifu here We can't take down the dust globs because we've got no way to do so Um, all right, that's a little bit annoying gastrodon gny 36. Thank you so much for the follow. Thanks for joining us tonight Let's bone the right. Well, we have to close combat the gastrodon. I mean we could potentially Then we'll enter gastrodon the only issue is if it protects I don't think it will though. I do protect in front of an urshifu. I don't know. I like to it Here to see it Well, we do get the dust globs so no more ally switching and against maruak is going to be put to sleep and urshifu could potentially be yawned here We'll see what they do Earth power Okay into urshifu. That's not so bad actually honestly Maruak asleep. So Um Let's try and burn a sleep turn here Punch the ghost nerd. I know dude We need to stop we need to stop thinking about these ally switches Okay, so if maruak can get a wake up that's gonna be that's gonna be massive first I think we'll be able to kind of clean up If we do it's just whether or not we want to go for We have to go close combat. I don't well, and it's power probably will take us down after the drop But that does a fat chunk of damage so maruak if we can get a wake up We will be able to close this one up Or maybe not. No, I think now poltergeist is gonna fail, which is not great The berry Okay, can we take this oh we can okay, that's fine. I didn't actually think we'd be able to take that so you used to Um Ocean food just getting dropped by any sort of special attack But the plus two definitely helps us and that is good game to my opponent. So very good. Very good. Very good Yeah div tax since when does ocean food take special attacks so well, right? Yeah Dude never like never ever ever Okay, we got bravery among us dust globs per marina dracals alt and a lot of maruak Huh Okay, so quite a similar team to what we've got except they don't have Don't have a grim snow which could be the difference for us here because we I think hat does a really nice job here um We can get a trick room up hats pretty amazing And we can definitely get a trick room up It's just whether they lead dust globs or not and kind of counteract our trick room or the trick room, you know Um, I think a moog is hats a nice lead for us um What do we want?  Let's go urshi Yeah, and this is a good name. Maybe I shouldn't make a gmail colossal team since he just destroyed one Gmail colossal dude the auto correct Gmax colossal is now we're gonna that's the new that's a new name for it dude. You've come up with it. It's genius Um, now I think colossal still a really good pokemon. I think it's just it's such a good pokemon obviously It's been used so much as well, you know, like it's just you have to have answers for it Otherwise it just runs through you which makes it harder to use Cool trainer valerie. Thank you so much for the follow. Thanks for joining us tonight I hope you're doing well and I uh, I do hope you enjoy the stream with us this evening Always worry about drake is all But we can get a trick like I don't really worry about the amungus with magic god I think it's one of the beauties that you've got with um with hat, you know You can just you can it can spores all you want, but it ain't doing very much Wonderful see max lightning here Potentially if they don't we can put that thing just we can put drake is all to sleep the next turn we just max mindstorm the the amungus See what they go for here. We have to rage party here to protect Yeah, there's the airstream onto a cobra, which is Super super fine Cameron, how are you doing mate? I hope you're well. How was your weekend, dude? And how did your players cup run go? I know you can't play in the qualifiers um, but I hope you had a good tournament. I hear that you ran rotten fun. I hope it was a lot of fun, dude I imagine it would be a lot of fun And there's a spoil and there's the magic bounce, but we cannot spawn amungus Um, yeah, they needed to get the electric train up so we couldn't put them to sleep now because it's Pretty awkward for them going forward now um, we'll spoil and we will max and I mean do they have we're there we're there we're there we're there They don't have a dog type do they no it's always worth checking these things just in case That used to like incinerals like popping on the field rudely when you mind storm and then just ruins your day But thankfully we've not got any of that here um And 1634 Cameron nice dude. That's good. That's good, dude That would probably be enough to you probably clinch qualifier with that in the us, right? I'd imagine the bars low enough for you to get in with that. I think I'd be closer to making it. I think you will be, dude As a note Cameron if you do get in is I like literally no chance that you would be able to play the qualifiers because you don't have any dates yet. So um If there is obviously the smallest chance it'd be really cool Yeah, and well, you're right like europe was definitely the highest bar out of all rating zones um for players one qualifiers um And then it was the us latem and then oceania With the the tiniest rating zone Possible. Okay. Marowak coming in Uh, we can just put the the whack to sleep And we can go for a max smite into draco's alt and get some confusion on the go as well And Cameron the thing is time I get offered to a m so anything before 10 a.m. I need to uh, yeah that that makes it super awkward, dude But maybe it might fall at the perfect time.  So that's uh, that's all hope that that happens And robson lee what is the strategy behind the move world pool on urchin foo So I don't know if it really fits in this team in general. I do like it as a utility move in general I think it's quite good. Um, I had it in my series five team So I had things like really booming the team Um, I could really bring in so I could trap water types like primarina Um, and like that's really I think it works better in series five because you've got those really like well built like Very core centric teams with like primarina ferrathorn arcanine or incinero Or prim rillaboom incinero teams there's a lot of switching going around a lot of the time So it's hard to kind of pin things down But like urchin foo can pin a lot of things down with the world pool and then you can switch into So like you can pin down primarina and then get your um rillaboom on the field and just and just get rid of it so For situations like that. I found it more useful than uh aqua jet ever really was for myself. So for that reason that's um, that's really why um I went for over aqua jet and it there was a few games where it really came in clutch And and won me games just with trapping or just the residual damage Because it's like an eighth every turn uh that you get for four to five turns. So it's it's actually a really good move So there's there's the uh, there's the code friends. So if you do try it out, I hope you enjoy it I hope you have a lot of fun with it live stream tomorrow. It'll be the same time. No live stream tomorrow will be like two pm uk time um when the the crown tundra stuff comes out So we'll do a little bit there and uh, we'll we'll see that and then chat about all the changes and all the excitement and stuff Like that. Um, so as always my friends, thank you so much for coming to the stream tonight I hope you have a great rest of your day Take care of yourselves guys. Have a good one and I'll see you all see you all for the next one So then tell them bye. Bye


The Operation Wendy is an enforcement operation which is taking place in 10 countries of Francophone Africa. The aim is to dismantle the ivory markets. In discussion with Interpol we thought that it would be great to build capacity in those countries where the illicit ivory trade is important, where elephant poaching is important. Working at the source of that ivory trade chain is working in remote areas where the elephants are. We have to be underground, present with the enforcement authorities. We have to be there to see what they need and to meet their expectations with the real needs, not some needs we guess it will help. Hueso is something between a disaster and a catastrophe in terms of being a hub for wildlife trade. Hueso is a center for ivory trafficking and beyond ivory there's a lot of illegal bushmeat trade as well. And there are stories that go back decades for how bad the situation is. The first day in Hueso we have been invited to meet with the two poachers who have been arrested recently. But it was interesting because we also saw the tools they were using. Usually they have a military weapon or a hunting weapon, but they also have a saw to remove the tusk. And they also sometimes have a balance to weigh the tusk. So they already know that the more the tusk is heavy, the more they will make profit of it. And now they are asked to answer some questions why they bought that weapon, what they were expecting to do with. So they are explaining that they had planned to kill elephants but they didn't know anything. The day after the interrogation as part of the operation Wendy we went to the prison where all the poachers and traffickers were staying. So around 30 poachers have been arrested in Hueso and around. And some of them were carrying ivory tusks when they had been arrested. And we can see that those tusks weighed between three and a half kilos and here this one is seven kilos. So we saw seven elephant tusks in the interrogation room representing at least four forest elephants killed. We followed those interrogations, we heard what they had to say, how they explained why they went to hunt for elephants. It was very interesting to hear that some of them had received the ammunition and the weapon from authorities. And mainly enforcement authorities such as the army, such as the young family. So that's why there is a very important work to do to fight corruption. In Congo fighting wildlife trade corruption is our biggest obstacle. We cannot close our eyes on that problem which needs to be tackled. When I say corruption is integral to ivory traffic I really mean it all the way up to very high levels. So those very high levels we haven't gotten prosecutions and this is our failure. So we really need to be working harder ourselves and I think that all NGOs need to be recognizing this as the main central problem with ivory traffic for instance. Being on the ground high fall have seen and have heard how soldiers, how high ranked people either provide the weapons to poach or give the funds or give the ammunition to get elephant tusks. And at this point Congo and its other neighbor Gabon are big forests with a lot of biodiversity still sitting in those forests. And those are kind of like the last stand. Those forests are kind of the last stand for some of the bigger iconic species like forest elephants. The pressure has kind of come all around and now this block of forest you know millions and millions of hectares of good forest, good habitat. But the wildlife trafficking situation is just totally out of hand. In recent years we've just seen just such a spike in the ivory trade with the economic changes happening in Asia. Development also it's helping a lot of areas become less enclaved and now the development is happening at a speed that's sometimes faster than the speed of the development of justice. As I joined Interpol for repressive action I also decided to launch an awareness campaign to inform the population in Hueso as well as in other cities that it is forbidden to hunt elephants. And as you can see we can read on that campaign that the elephants of Congo are not for sale. And the objective is to inform people that first the ivory trade is illicit and that the ivory trade kills elephants. We launched that campaign in three different languages because in Congo the French language is widely spoken. But we wanted also to use the dialect, the lingala, which is the national Congolese language. But also there is more and more Asian communities living in the country or working in the country and mainly Chinese nationals. So we thought that it would be a good idea to target them by spreading the message in their own language, so in Chinese. The approach of AIFO is a global one because we work in the source countries so we support the fight against poaching. We also work to support the fight against traffickers. But we also need to change the trend in Asian countries and inform consumers of the impact of their choice. So we work at every level of that ivory trade chain and that makes AIFO different. What gives me hope is that it's possible to change everything that we see that's hurting biodiversity. It's totally possible. It's just a question of political will. We just need to see the right players come together and make it happen. Change is possible. So basically when you have something that's that beautiful it's definitely worth fighting for. When we are on the ground and we see all the challenges we could feel very discouraged to continue because the road is still very long and we know we don't have the time. However, you will always find people really motivated, really determined to work for their own country, for their own wildlife. And our role is to support them, to encourage them because they are on the right way. And as an NGO, even international, we will never be successful without those people on the ground at the source who share our view, our ideas about protecting wildlife.


A car bombed explosion at the military base in the Colombian border city of Cúcuta. Injured further six people on Tuesday were the Defense Minister Diego Molano, cast in blame for the attacks on leftists' rebels. The explosion took place at the base used by the 30th Army Brigade in the north-eastern city near the border with Venezuela. Molano said one of the injured has had surgery and 29 are hospitalized. Two men drove a white Toyota truck into the base after passing themselves off as officials and there were two explosions. Despite the 2016 peace deal with revolutionary armed forces of Colombia, FARC rebels. Colombia's military continues to battle national liberation army guerrillas, crime gangs and former FARC members who reject the accord. The ELN, the FARC dissidents and crime gangs are all present in sometimes restive, not-desert-under province where the 30th Brigade operates. The injury toll could have been higher but most personnel were in preventative isolation because of coronavirus. President Ivan Duque said on Twitter he would travel to Cúcuta to meet what military leaders and local authorities. The government blamed FARC dissidents for a car bomb attack in March in Cúcuta province which injured more than 40 people.


Hey guys, how you doing? This is rich from rich to be live. I have another full alert for you This is crazy news and your boy rich predicted this too We are 26 days 15 hours 21 minutes and 17 seconds away from history first Go to www.richtvlive.com scroll over stocks all the tools are right there go to YouTube make sure you subscribe I know a lot of you think you're subscribed for some reason there's like a glitch with YouTube and Thousands of members got unsubscribed so you don't even realize but you're not subscribed to your boy Subscribe again. We're good to go hit that bell for notifications.  This is Trading view you can see it on trading view. It's here. It is trading at nine dollars and forty two cents we are live put it on full alert canopy rivers up a hundred and twenty eight percent brand new IPO and It's got canopies name written all over it And it's a big winner as predicted by your boy rich if you're not winning. You're not watching and We are 26 days 15 hours 19 minutes and 37 seconds away from history Remember risk TV live is strictly for education entertainment purposes. Always do your due diligence Always do your research before you invest in anything that we talk about here on rich TV live Thank you for watching. It's growing higher up a hundred and twenty nine percent and nine forty five Canopy rivers on full alert. This is your boy Smash that like button shared everywhere comment down below. What do you think canopy rivers? Are you winning? Well, if you're not you're clearly not watching. This is your boy, and I'm out. Peace


This is a real treat for us to operate with the USS in Mexico. We have an elite force in the SEALs, but I would tell you that our submarine force is equally elite. And when you bring those two elite capabilities together, you really get a supercharged capability that really demonstrates the power of the US military to project really worldwide, whether on the ground or below the sea. So it's a wonderful opportunity for us and we're really grateful to the crew of the USS in Mexico for accommodating us. It's great to be at Suda Bay here with our wonderful Greek allies. They're really important to us, not only as allies, but I would tell you as friends who have shared interests and shared values as the United States. As such, they provide us a great location here in Suda Bay to conduct operations and training today between our SEALs and the crew of the USS in Mexico right behind me. Greece is a great partner for us with exercises and it goes back many, many years. Just recently the Greeks hosted Orion 21 where they brought in partner nations from Israel, from Cyprus, as well as Serbia in the United States to participate together in a soft exercise. So that's a wonderful thing about bringing in partners as well as allies to participate in these exercises to learn from one another and again to show the breadth of our friendship even outside the alliance.


What we've seen is that from the homeowners that we interact with, overall, especially in the last five years, there's so much more educated than we're accustomed to. Welcome to the Smarter Building Materials Marketing Podcast, helping you find better ways to grow leads, sales, and outperform your competition. All right, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Smarter Building Materials Marketing. I am really excited to introduce our guest for you today. His name is Alex Cook. He's the Director of Operations of Lifetime Windows Insighting, and we've got an awesome conversation coming your way. So first and foremost, Alex, thank you so much for joining us, and welcome to the show. Yeah, thanks, Beth. I appreciate the invite and excited to chat with you for a little bit. Yeah. So before we dive in, Alex, why don't you just take a few minutes and give us the 30,000-foot view of who you are and who Windows Insighting is and what your role is there. Gotcha. Yeah. So, gosh, overall, I was kind of trying to calculate it this morning, but probably about nine years in total in the building material and residential remodeling space. I originally got started working for a small regional distributor in Colorado Springs as an outside sales rep. We sold replacement Windows, different sighting products, some decking, railing, things like that, and our primary target market was contractors. And so we sold to, gosh, we had maybe about 150 different clients that we served in that market there, nothing direct to homeowner. After a little bit of time there, I kind of morphed into a selling manager position. So kind of got a little kind of more of a peek behind the curtains to the purchasing and warehousing and stocking and all that kind of stuff. Ended up leaving there to go work for a vinyl window manufacturer called Kensington High Performance Products. Worked for them for a couple of years and transitioned over to Infinity from Marvin, which is a fiberglass window manufacturer. Spent about a year with those guys and then got an opportunity to go back to Kensington as their national director of sales and marketing at what was a really cool time because we went through an entire rebranding. And we kind of tried to take what we had started at that company five, six years earlier and develop and kind of move forward and be a little bit more homeowner-centric. And so that was kind of a big lift where we kind of rebranded the name of the company and name of the products, the website, all the marketing materials. And then I was there for about four years. And during my process in working and manufacturing, I became aware of a company called Lifetime Windows Insighting that's based in Denver, Colorado. And Peter Speed and the owner there reached out to me and said, hey, I'd love to open up a place in Texas. And so we just started talking and figuring out what would be a great place for him to look and different people to meet with. And it just ended up working out to where he wanted me to join the team and get us off the ground here. So that's been what we do. So at Lifetime, our big deal is we are in the replacement and remodel market where we focus on replacement windows and siding. We do have a roof and solar division. And we also have a bath and shower division that we're just launching actually this month and getting off the grounds that we're pretty excited about. So when they say that we have a small industry or our industry is a small world, you're a great example of that. Once you're in, you're in. You might bounce here and there, but you're not going anywhere. Yeah. Yeah. My dad's in the business too. And it's, you know, it's kind of like one of those things. Once you once you get into the window world, there's, that's it. You can't leave. Yeah. But what has been enjoyable about my process thus far is I've kind of been able to see it come full circle now, you know, from the distribution side to working in manufacturing. And now I'm on the retail end, you know, from the time that the product is made to getting it over to a contractor to getting it into the home and having that, you know, a satisfied homeowner at the end. It's definitely interesting seeing the different angles that we all have of trying to, you know, make somebody's house. So one of the reasons that we were so excited to talk to Alex is partly because of your very background, but all within the industry. And I know one of the things you wanted to go after today is the big question of who should manufacturers be targeting as kind of their top audience. If they, if you know that contractors and homeowners are both part of your buyer journey, who's, who's the best? And are we doing pull through or going after the pro? So I've got loads of questions for you in that arena, but let me just ask you that blanket question first. What's the right audience? Is it the contractor or is it the homeowner? Yeah, that's a, that's a great question. I think if it was, if you had to pick one side or the other, it's ultimately the person who's, who's spending the money, which is the homeowner, you know, because if the homeowner doesn't make the purchase, then nothing happens, right? There's, there's no contractor that's hired. There's no installation going on. There's no product being made if the homeowner is not excited about it. And so what's been interesting is that varying different manufacturers kind of have a different approach to whether they're going to make a website and marketing material that attracts the contractor and gives them kind of the information that they need to feel like they can purchase it and install it successfully. Or there's another group that primarily focuses on that homeowner and giving them the glamour shots in the photos and lets their mind run wild with the, with the imagination of, okay, hey, this isn't a worthwhile investment because I can see an idea of what my house is going to look like. So I can, I can play devil's advocate on either side of the conversation because there's clear, there's pro and con, right? And it's kind of a trick question that I kind of set you up. But, so let me just devil's advocate a second, knowing if I'd given that answer, what I would hear from a manufacturer is, well, the homeowner is only going to buy once and the pro is going to buy consistently. Talk me through where you're talking through how you still see the homeowner as the ultimate to go after. Well, what we do know is from our industries that our products have specific niches. So whether it's a window product or a siding product or a roofing product is that it's going to appeal to a certain demographic in a certain clientele. As much as we think that our product that we manufacture might fit into a house that's 150,000 to 1.5 million and all actuality that rarely ever happens. Aside from maybe drywall where we all use the same drywall or the same studs to build the house. But when you get into the fits and finishes and the final product, you've got a specific niche. So that homeowner that looked at your brochure and liked the photos because that house and that brochure looked a lot like the house that they live in or a lot like the house that they would like to live in. It's going to appeal to that same type of demographic that we're trying to get repeated over and over and over again. So I think that might be a little false scenario because what we want is we want repeat business, we want repeat clientele from that kind of same target market. And if your publication or your website appeals to the right demographic and group, then you're going to have plenty of customers that look a lot alike in regards to what they're trying to achieve. I think that's such an important piece that you're saying, Alex, which is it can feel like if you go after the homeowner, I think the misconception that you totally nailed is like it's like reinventing the wheel every time where the truth is they really have about like probably the same four to five either questions or objections for any given product that they're putting into their home. So I think you're you're nailing it, which is if you know who you're going after and you know the value that your product brings, you're able to still create that very repeatable but really impactful collateral, messaging, branding, marketing, all of those things to get that either repeat from the same customer or at least repeat results from multiple customers. That's really interesting. Yeah, I would say the same would be true for even the the sales cycle. So a lot of contractors and now we're on the end of it or I'm on the end of it in retail, right? We sell in the home. So we're going in somebody's house. Most big successful contractors and in home remodeling companies have a sales system and a sales process and they'll tell you that, hey, one, don't prejudge the lead and two, don't deviate from the process. So regardless of if you are kind of walking into that $150,000 house or that $1.5 million house, you're supposed to follow that same type of sales process and treat everybody the same and you never, you never know what their credit score is going to be or how much money they've got hidden away under the mattress to pay for it. You have no idea until you get to that point. So the same I think is can be true for the marketing aspect of it is that we want to approach every customer with that same same type of respect and say, hey, this is this is what's possible and either fits in work for your house or we're not the right one. I'd love to know, Alex, you mentioned at the beginning of the show you helped open the store for Lifetime Windows and Doors in Texas. Is there anything that you did when you were you're new to the market? Windows and Doors is highly competitive. Is there any specific strategy or tactic that you saw to really gain traction as a local store in a new market? Yeah, that's that's a phenomenal question because it's a battle. Oh, it's a total battle. Windows and Doors is brutal. It's totally brutal. Yeah, there's a lot. So we're in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and I mean just a quick Google search and it's just, you know, it scares a lot of people from even thinking about opening up or moving into a location. I was talking with our sales manager earlier today on a different topic, but I think it kind of fits to this scenario that you mentioned here, Beth, is that oddly enough today is Election Day and not to get too political of it, but I think what what we've been able to do and and be successful is that rather than trying to spread this this broad net over over an entire city that's, you know, massive between Dallas and Fort Worth put together and try to appeal to everybody as if we're running like a statewide campaign, is that we've kind of shifted our marketing and tried to think about it more of like we're trying to win like a school board election, you know, because if you're running for school board, it's a it's a small area, right? You've got a couple of neighborhoods that are grouped together and for us what what we know is in order to become like a household name is that they have to be able to recognize you. They have to see your trucks. They have to see your print media. They have to see if you are doing a radio spot or a TV spot. We want to be in the right, you know, the right areas. So it's kind of that combination of, you know, once we do sell a job is we try to take over a neighborhood as best as we can, you know, be visible with yard signs, knock the neighborhood when we sell it, knock the neighborhood when we're installing it like, you know, hey, you know, the Jones right down the street, yeah, a truck down there. Hopefully we're not in the way. Hopefully we're not, you know, making too much noise, anything like that. And then on the on the digital marketing space, they're way, way smarter than I'll ever be, but they're able to, you know, geo fence around certain zip codes and locations. So they do see, hey, the Joneses are getting new windows down the street. I didn't quite catch the name of it, you know, new windows near me, we, you know, can pop up towards the front. And so I think that's big is, especially when you're in a big, giant massive market, we don't have name recognition like we do in Colorado or, you know, that we built over in Phoenix. So it's just in very grassroots, you know, just kind of neighborhood by neighborhood. And once you start seeing that repeat business and it starts to build a little bit of traction. So you're building momentum really like municipalities or neighborhoods at a time versus just trying to blanket a whole area, which I mean, especially for an area that's booming, like Dallas, Fort Worth makes a absolute ton of sense because there's such, I mean, there's huge construction boom, there's huge, like push for specific manufacturers or retailers. I mean, I think that that just going methodically. And like you said, trusting the process, I think that makes absolutely a ton of sense. Okay, so you're in a new market, you're going after the homeowner, you're doing like, you know, you're hitting the streets from a marketing standpoint. Honestly, I think that strategy makes a ton of sense. One big pain point for manufacturers or retailers that go after homeowners is connecting them with installers. So talk to, can you talk to me a little bit about what your process was to earn installer trust so that the windows that you convinced a homeowner to buy could like, you know, end up in their house. Nowadays after, you know, being a manufacturer rep and traveling around is that a lot of people are moving away from the showroom. And they're moving into, you know, smaller smaller offices, less overhead and just kind of a either like a third party warehouse site or something like that or relying upon distribution channels to store their product for us. We went a different direction. And here we kind of built a little bit of a Taj Mahal of sorts of the showroom. And it's a big challenging layout to build something like this and find the space and kind of make that capital investment in doing so. However, what we've been able to do is kind of utilize that really on a whole lot of different avenues to whether it's recruitment of sales reps to where they can come in, they can see like, Hey, these people seem to know what they've got going on. You've got installers that come and then you show them a clean and tidy warehouse with racking and windows available for them to go and install. And they're like, Okay, I feel like if I work for these guys, I'm probably going to get paid every week. That's a good thing.  We come out and we talk about who we are, we talk about the company that we are and the services that we provide. And you don't get that from a lot of other companies that, you know, if you Google them online, their address is a a UPS box, you know, it's it's a different feel. It's a completely different vibe and it's different scale to having this and having a showroom where we've got, you know, full size product installed in the mock demo walls. It enables us to relay kind of how we want this product to look how we want it to be installed how we want it to feel to the installers. And it also gives that homeowner the opportunity if they so choose to come in and touch it and feel it and see if it's what they're what they're looking for. It's an interesting advantage to think about showrooms being for the pro because showrooms for homeowners make sense of sense, right? But for the pro to be like, Oh, yeah, that's real. Like they're they're real people in a real place. And I guess if I don't get paid, I know where to show up. Exactly, right? For sure. For sure. The last couple of years being able to go in and put your eyes on inventory, I'm sure was a really strong argument for developing partnerships of not only can I tell you that I have a product, but like, look, there it is. I mean, that's pretty, that's pretty significant. Yeah, because it's like, I mean, as you mentioned, it's with it being as aggressive and challenging of a market as it is just to get the sale in the first place, because we have so many competitors out here. Now you fight that same battle on the production operation side of getting installers and then getting them to want to leave a place where they've they install five, six days a week and then they want to come over to a new place. So yeah, being able to demonstrate that to them is pretty, pretty important and being able to to recruit and bring people over. So before I let you go, Alex, I just I want to go down the path of talking about messaging for a second because you I mean, we've talked through so many great strategies and tactics that you've put into place. And if we go back to thinking about the homeowner versus the contractor, and especially what you mentioned from a show, so from a showroom standpoint, we know for homeowners, they have such a difficult time conceptualizing, we talked about this on the show all the time, like that window that I see online. And you know, when a digital marketer says that they need to see something in real life, that that's that's a real need, right? What either online or you send them like a sample of the corner or something. So talk to me about what conversations what nuggets are you hearing or seeing or having tested that really resonate with a homeowner? Because especially in windows and doors, it can start to feel, you know, really similar from one competitor to the other. So how what messaging have you seen resonate with homeowners? Yeah, that's a that's a really good point. What we've seen is that from the homeowners that we interact with, overall, especially in like the last five years, there's so much more educated than than we're accustomed to. Like they, you know, you come into the house and you talk to them and it's like, all right, I already got the deal on low eglass, I already got the deal on argon, I already understand the insulated frame first, not insulated frame. What is this thing going to look like on my house? That's that's the primary thing that they want to know. And so the utilization of like different visualizers, whether it's through the manufacturer or or independently through a third party service, that's what we've seen has been really the shift of the conversation when we're in the house, because I tell you what, when you pull out the iPad, and you take a picture of the outside of their house, and then you come in, and then as the sales rep, you start kind of showing them, hey, okay, we can put this window here, and you just ever so gently encourage them to start playing with it. Well, at that point, they've designed it, right? So they've gone through, they've built it, they selected their options, and really they've built their own price, really, without without knowing it. And then so it just kind of follows an evolution of a system to where they got to build it, they got to design it, they got to feel like they're not trying to take a corner cut of a white window and visualize what's this thing going to look like with SDL grids. And I want to change this window from, you know, a triple single hung into a three light glider, what's that look like on my house, they can do it, and they can build it, and they can see it. And that just makes it so much easier for them. And then you guys, it's kind of really easy to justify the price at that point, because it's like, hey, this is, this is what you want, right? Yeah, exactly what you want. These are the options that you built. So I mean, we're so accustomed to online shopping now anyway, it kind of gives them a chance to have that experience of, you know, they built their shopping cart, they filled the basket, here it is, here's the price. If you don't like it, we can take some things out, we can, you know, drill it down and get to where we get to it's the conversation seems to be coming a lot more about, can you make my vision happen more so than can you make my monthly payment happen? And the psychology behind I built exactly what I want. And now how do I walk away from that? By the way, this is literally the third conversation we've had in a row on the podcast that where product visualization came up and people are going to start to think that we're like, I don't know, sponsored by product visualizers. We're not like, we believe in it, but it's like genuine coincidence, because it's just becoming so prevalent. And it's this exact conversation where you see the impact that it has and the light bulbs that go off, especially for homeowners who are holding the burden of the cost and the impact of the product being in their home. And the security that you're building in them, especially in today's consumer, I mean, you mentioned how much more educated consumers are now and consumers is, you know, a very broad term, but specifically homeowners, they care a lot. The fact that you don't have to explain the different types of glass, like out of the gate, I mean, five years ago, that was like, okay, let's start at page one. So here's what the different types of rays are from the sun and why you want to keep some of those from coming into your house.  And coupling onto that today as consumer, everything feels customizable. So when I get to my house, and I've got to just choose like window A or window B homeowners are like, hold on, hold on, hold on. I don't fit in window A or window B. Like I have a very specific vision. It's so, so impactful. I just, I love it. I mean, that's like, that's the game changer when you've got it in your hand. And then you just, you see the price tag and you're like, yeah, sure. I mean, how do I now, how do I turn down my expectations or walk back what I my dream? That's really, that's like next level stuff. Yeah. And then it's our responsibility to, you know, find a way to make it affordable for them. So either, you know, can they do the whole project? Do they need to finance it? Do we need to break it out into phases? Because yeah, because at that point, the selling part of it, it's over. That's, that's done. You know, they've, they've got what they want. And yeah, seeing that light bulb click or seeing them build something that they thought they liked in Southern Living Magazine. And then they put it in there.  I don't want that. And it's like, well, I'm glad you said that now, rather than on day of installation, because that would have been terrible. So yeah, that that has really, really been a big driver. And you can definitely tell the manufacturers that are out there that are paying attention to this and are putting that easily accessible on their website to where, you know, you don't have to give your email address or do anything super crazy right.  That's, that's just been fantastic. That's incredible. Alex, I want to say thank you so much for your time. This has been an awesome conversation. We really appreciate it. If, if anyone who's listening wants to get in touch or pick your brain, what would be a good way for them to reach out to you? Yeah, email is probably best. Just Alex, see me as uncook at lifetimewindows.com or LinkedIn is about the only social network that I use anymore. So should be able to find me on there as well. Awesome. That's great. Well, for all of our listeners, if you like this or want more content like it, head to vinvio.com for more. Until next time, see you guys.


Hello everybody, Andrew Majeski here with dental tutoring. So let me teach you guys how to study for the board exam, even if you decide not to take my board exam prep course. So this is not to sell you my course. This is to tell you guys how to really study, okay? The best thing to do is to mix up your studying. So don't just open up the textbook, read it chapter by chapter, do not do that. That's the biggest mistake that students make. And that is they try to study so much. They get tired and then the next day they don't remember anything and they get frustrated. Am I right? Does that sound like you? There's nothing worse than studying for eight hours on pharmacology and then you go back to reread pharmacology three days later and then realize nothing had sunk in a couple of days ago. That's the worst. And that happens when you don't mix up your mind. So you need to be doing different things, meaning study from the textbook, study from your notes. Have people over to go through mock exam questions. Just ask each other random questions on a certain topic. Another thing that I do tell students to do is don't study too much but be consistent. So you might be going, what are you talking about? I don't want you guys to study eight hours every day. That will not help you. Study two hours at a time, two or three hours at a time but take breaks. I don't want people to study more than six hours every day but this depends on you. If you work full time, you having to study six hours when you have to work that day is not gonna happen. But at the very least, study two hours. So let me explain that a little bit. If you work full time, on the days that you have to work, study two hours at least, whether that be first thing in the morning or in the evening time after work, on your lunch break, something like that. If you do not work though, please be consistent and study six hours every day. It could be two hours in the morning, two hours in the afternoon and then two hours in the evening or let's say you're in the groove of things. You can study three hours that afternoon but then study three hours in the evening. Six hours is great but two hours minimum. And you might be wondering, well, what topics do I study? Definitely mix it up but this also depends on you. I know when I used to study for the board exam or pretty much study for anything. I could be studying pharmacology for two hours but I kind of knew that, okay, this isn't working. I'm not feeling it. Nobody ever feels pharmacology but some days are better than others. So that afternoon, I'm not gonna study two hours more of pharmacology. I'm gonna mix it up and study a topic that I know a little bit more about or that at least interests me. Say nutrition or I'll study two hours of oral pathology or something like that. So then you kind of feel better and say, okay, I actually learned a lot. This is great. And another thing, try to have a positive mindset. I know it's hard but especially a topic like oral pathology which you hear me talk about often. Oral pathology you do have to know for the real world. So you studying for the board exam is helping you for the real world too. I'll be honest, there's a lot of things you will not have to know for the real world but it doesn't matter. You need to know them for the board exam but mix up those topics. Do not study a full day of pharmacology. You will be exhausted and you're not going to wanna study tomorrow. You'll be like, forget this. Study those topics you don't like like maybe two hours a day. But do it more consistently.  I'm not even gonna worry about it. I'll just study it next week. You will forget if you're not consistent. So studies say two hours on Monday and then two hours on Thursday. But don't do eight hours or even six hours of pharmacology. Mix up those topics. Another tip is mock exams. I have lots of mock exams and case studies in my course but if you're not a part of my course then you can ask people in your class. Ask people you know to make up questions on certain chapters. That can be everybody's homework. If you have a study group of 20 people or even like five people that can be everybody's homework. To make 20 questions per topic you can pick nutrition, oral pathology, pharmacology, you know, whatever, microbiology. So you can have like 20 questions per topic and then the other person can have 20 questions per the topics that they chose. And then mix it up. That's a great way to study because you might think you know everything about oral pathology but then when somebody throws in mock exam questions you might be like, oh my God, I actually don't know that. But don't worry, if you don't know a question that tells you like put a star beside it. That tells you to go back at that unit, that topic and study it some more. Then you will know it. That's the best thing to do that will really help you pass the board exam. In my course we meet once a week sometimes three times a month depending on if there's a holiday. And that's all we do. For our study sessions online we go through a full hour of mock exam questions and case studies. So you study that topic first and then I hit you with the hard questions. My mock exam questions are not easy. They're designed to trick you because two answers are always right. You need to pick the most correct, right? So I teach you guys every step of the way how to pick the most correct. So you're more confident. So even if you're not a part of my course though it doesn't matter. You need to build up that confidence. So really study hard. The more confident you are the greater chances you will pass because you just feel better about everything. But it's normal to be nervous. If somebody tells you they're not nervous to take the board exam they're lying to you and don't listen to them. They're very nervous. So a recap you guys. Study six hours a day at the most at least two hours if you work full time. Mock exam questions are your friend. Take lots of mock exam questions. Form study groups. Always study. Mix it up though. Chapters in your textbook, chapters in your notes from school even online learning whatever you want to do definitely mix it up. So I hope this helps you guys. Good luck on the exam. Let me know if you need any help and I'll see you guys in the next one.


There was a lady called Janet who went to a library on Thanet. She saw it was blatant, the inquiry desk vacant. So she thought to herself, should I manage? My name is Hadley Sutton and I'm now the reference team leader in Asian-African studies within the British Library. I do have one and it's a very strange item. It's the necronomicon, an old ancient manuscript which can be used as a spell to summon spirits from other worlds to Earth. Friendly, diligent, curious.


Perfect. Hello Piotr. Hi. Great to be here. Thank you so much for sitting down with me for this conversation about One of the most exciting trends in European tech right now. Thank you for having me. Thank you I just wanted to start off and maybe talk a little bit about your founder journey and what was the idea behind on capped How did you found the company? Yeah, great question. So, um prior to starting on capped I was a VC and And I met literally thousands of companies which were good businesses But didn't really fit venture model that this is are looking for the unicorns deca-corns but if you're building a good company which Doesn't really have a potential to become this billion dollar business. You really struggle to get funding to get any capital to grow your business and They realize there must be a better way for these companies to scale on top of this a lot of founders were Giving up all these shares all this equity Just to get money which they went spend on Google and Facebook So, you know, this is what had, you know, gave me the idea for a cup to create a new model for the companies to scale and You know as long as they have positive in economics, they should get that funding which allows them to scale without any delusion Amazing. So talk me through a little bit what exactly you guys do Yeah, tell me if I were five years old, how would you explain to me what you guys do? So essentially We are looking for the companies Which have a proven business model and proven economics and they know that For every pound dollar euro they spend they can generate a bit more of of returns For these companies we offer essential essentially unlimited capital, which they can spend on advertising inventory team To scale our business they come to us we connect to their data and within a couple hours. We give them the funding offer Which they can then leverage and use to deploy the money and grow their business amazing and You know, what what is the appeal of this kind of funding compared to going to a normal VC and raising equity? absolutely, I Think the key differentiation differentiators between us and VC is First of all speed as a founder if you're fundraising, you know, I've been through this on many side on both sides both as a VC and as a founder Several times it takes months. It's very just it's a huge destruction You're you know preparing for materials talking to funds doing all the legal stuff all the due diligence You can't run the business for several months It's actually a huge cost a huge like operational cost for a founder Which we completely minimize we don't Expect any input from a founder. I've been just couple clicks and a quick call with us How does that like form look like how many questions is on the form? There's no form There's no form you come to us you give us access to your data So we connect to your stripe PayPal Shopify we accounting software to your Google Facebook bank account So just couple clicks We have a quick call to a founder to understand what are we looking for and then same day next day We're getting a funding offer. That's all they have to do And you know, we don't take any equity. We don't take any warrants any covenants It's completely unsecured and you know, they have complete freedom to to scale the business So one thing is speed right another thing what I said is no dilution I think today, you know, average founder at exit owns about 5% of a company like it's nothing right like as a founder It's your baby and giving up this baby is so painful And I think we want to enable founders to scale the business without giving up this equity We have a crazy story of a company called Marshmallow It was one of our first customers they came to us where they were doing a two million around and that like 10 million valuation you know, we allowed them to Get only one million of equity and we found it everything through the debt Today this company two years later is a unicorn and this one million will help them to save Probably, you know, the founders managed to save tens of millions of equity for themselves So this is a proposition we have to the founders, you know, like keep control Keep higher ownership of a business, right? Can you talk me through a little bit more? You know, what are the conditions of the debt that you're giving to founders and how does that potentially compare to other lenders that a founder might be able to access? Our debt agreement is very very simple. We literally six pages long and we have no covenants Nothing really crazy. There's no security Don't take any any equity any equity The only condition we have is we wants to make sure that You pay us back like, you know, we ask you to not do anything bad Don't take any other debt which who could you know put us in a bad position But as long as you play fair by the rules, this is a super super simple simple agreement for you Okay, interesting. And what kind of companies? What's the right company? What kind of company do you want to work with? So 80% of our business is e-commerce companies But we found it many other businesses, too We do work out of SAS businesses, but at the end of the day, we can work with any tech enabled tech business With a proven business model. What we are looking for is companies which really found their product market fit and They know they can scale our capital is To enhance them to get to the next level. No, we don't only provide them with a capital We have a whole team of VC partnerships, you know and other kind of partners accelerators Technology companies who we can plug them into we can help them fundraise We can we help them with such decisions. It's much more than just capital As you know our vision is to become the next generation new bank for startups. Yeah and today If you if you look back 50 years ago The banks Were very local and every founder just know what no founders were entrepreneurs who are going to their local bank And they were getting funding there They were talking to the bank manager and they were getting advice. They were getting noticed very personal relations connections Yeah, exactly. Yeah, we are now working to bring it is back to the tech world So we want to be the partner for every company from the moment They start their business to the IPO where we'll give them the funding We also give them the tools to scale their business will give them their relationships will give them the contacts to give them the knowledge Amazing and so I guess that ties into my next question My next question was going to be you know when a founder goes out and they think okay I want to kind of tap into this new kind of financing and they compare you to your competitors And as we were talking about backstage there are many which is a great thing for the ecosystem You know, what what do you think? How should they compare compare you to your competitors? And what do you think you have to offer? I think a lot of First of all, I truly believe we are the most founder-friendly company of the market When we started to set up the terms of our agreement, we made sure they're truly founder-friendly This is the this is the document by which we want to always stand by and make sure there is nothing Founders to be scared of I remember we were drafting this agreement And you know it took us so much time because the lawyers were coming up with agreement Which is very tough to read difficult to read not understandable and we're like no we want the founder to Understand every single word of his agreement and really know what we're signing signing up for so you know We don't have any clauses which many of our competitors have with any like Covenants or early repayment fees or like forcing companies to repay early We are truly the most funder-friendly company out of all and maybe just to dig into that because I feel like some of those words Maybe kind of intimidating or people might not be familiar with those terms What are some of those you know Maybe clauses or things that people should look out for or words that people should be looking for when they're reading some sort of an agreement sure so, you know some of our competitors are for example Forcing some forcing companies to have minimum marketing spent like you know You have to spend X amount of money on marketing. Otherwise you the loan is defaulting or you know, they're claiming it's Revenue-based finance were at the end of the day. There is a like long-stop date Which means that like after six months you have to repay full loan, which we don't have There are some you know other covenants which force you. Well, you have to have X amount of capital otherwise the loan is defaulting we believe that when we understand the business we don't need this and We have no clauses of this kind in in any other agreement, but this is only one part. I think the second part is How we work with the founders? I think you know when I speak to the founders why they chose us over over competitors is We truly understand the companies when we give them our capital We really analyze the business deeply and make sure we tailor the offering to the Business this means we really have to understand you know the payback period of a customer, you know How are we cash loss operating? What are they looking money for? What's the risk of a of a profile and we tailor this offering to the individual company? It's not one product fit all right? It's custom-made for for every business Interesting and how have you tweaked that product as you've scaled the business like were there things that you kind of were surprised By or didn't expect to happen that have fed into how you've how you've built the business It's a good question. Um, I think we're tweaking the product every day, and I think that biggest realization can't comes from talking to the customers and Offering new we started by you know offering a very standard product And then over the time we realized that the clients want like have different needs and for example, we have to allow the customers to not repay us for Several months early on because they have a very long sales cycle and we have to tweak it or They need something more like not a simple loan But the revolver line where they can draw on on which they can draw on every day or we have to make the loans much Much longer because if our customers as business and they their sales cycle is 12 months We have to give them the loan which will be like 12 14 15 months So, you know every day we're working with a new client and tweaking products to them But also we're launching a new product. So next month next quarter We're launching complete new product where we allow the customers to tap into the funds They have on the payment processor much faster.  And a lot of our customers use Clara and turns out that Clara Takes several weeks to pay them these funds and it's a big working capital problem to his businesses So next quarter will allow them to get these funds immediately And so that's sort of something that you you hear from your customers You hear them struggling with this and you're like, okay, how can we create something exactly help them interesting and again, you know revenue You know, this sorts of financing is really new I feel like it's you know Still a very small part of the market and a lot of founders are not familiar with it yet What are some of the misconceptions that you hear from founders when they talk to you? Very good questions Wow, are you really surprised me with one? I Think the biggest misconception is about That the price of a product I think the truth is it's very tailored to each of the customer And really we want to make it work with a really in the economics. I think some founders are sometimes worried about Repaying our loan too early But you know, we tailored our product now to make sure this will never happen with a customer Other founders are worried about how our product works with other debt providers Right, but you know at the end of the day a lot of our customers are also Taking venture debt are taking any other debt funding and this products are very mutually compatible Yeah, a lot of founders are worried. Well, if we use you can we work with can we take VC money, right? We actually work with every single VC fund in Europe and like VC VCs are actually the biggest source of clients to us because they really love the custom Startups to use our product because it allows their portfolio companies to scale faster without dilution without diluting both founders and funds Interesting. And so what is that introduction like flow look like, you know The VCs just come to you and say hey, maybe you should talk to this company. What does that look like? Yeah, absolutely. So VCs come to us and you know, they reach out. Hey, Piotr or you know someone to my team Hey, we have this amazing company. We really think they should accelerate They should spend more money the marketing we should, you know, hire more sales people and we really think, you know They should do the round maybe in six twelve months, but for now we want them to accelerate it They should they should be using you We practically reach out to the VC funds and build a relationship with them But also we introduce the companies to the VC funds because very often we see amazing companies and we're like like Hey guys, you're doing really really well. We really think that you know, we want to help you But you really Could and should raise some get some VC funding So then we'll help them with introductions and introduce them to the best VCs Which we know would be very very interesting working with them And in that case when you're you know, the company has raised first debt and then they're looking to raise equity Like what kind of a profile of a company would you recommend for that? What do you mean?  They're doing amazing and you're like Actually, I think you should probably talk to some VCs. What kind of the company would would be right for that? Do you think? Are they like growing super fast exactly? I think you know, we know We know what works right? I think the beauty of our company of our businesses We are looking now at like tens of thousands of businesses every year and like we can Categorize them benchmark members each other and we know was the best in what's best in class What's average and for the best in-class companies we want to make sure they are even bigger like you know, we want to We really are fully found our friendly even if we're to lose the business We do want to make sure that we are the ones who made the introduction and we want the client to succeed because we know That it will pay back in the long term. So when we see this type of client We will tell them hey, we're gonna keep funding you But if you wanted VCs, we know five ten funds who will be very very interesting talking to you Do you want the intro and very often they say yes Interesting. Do you ever get any questions from founders when they're considering you versus maybe going and raising more traditional VC funding around like Brands, you know, of course if you partner with a VC There's like a lot of brands that that can bring to you and you have you have the the big headline in sifted Raising for such from such and such VC. How do you like talk to founders about that that aspects of fundraising? You know, it's very funny. We had some customers who actually announced that they took money from us You know as a part of the press release they said hey, we are raised this round and on top of this We got X and X of money off of funding from from one cup. I think you know, we are very We are not for everyone. We really work with the best companies and you know to work with us You need to have a solid business told you in the economics because we take much more risk than VC funding Like we know we make much less money and we can't afford to lose So if you take funding from us, it's actually a very very strong signal to the market So our our you know portfolio companies raised from the from the best funds Across I also think that the market is changing, you know like founders You know tiger shows that five founders don't care about VC so much You know money is money. They just want to make sure they get funding and they keep on the growing the business VCs, you know are great. And I think everyone loves to announce the round at the end of the day In reality, it's not a positive news. You just sold half of your like part of a company It's you know, maybe it's not something to be really really happy about Interesting interesting take on that And and why more generally like you mentioned tiger and there's like diversification and VC and strategies and fundraising that we're seeing Why do you think that more founders are interested in these kinds of alternative financing methods? um, I think Founders are realizing that managing the cap table is more and more important and I think this crazy rounds are actually Doing something changing the market in a very interesting way the best companies are able to raise at the amazing valuations But if you look at the number of Investments, it's actually slightly decreasing and this means that this average companies or or other founders are actually struggling even more because VCs are looking for you know next hoppin or next remote.com or you know next Next Deca corn and everyone else is struggling so founders are realizing realizing that and they know that they have to be much more prudent With their shares They really have to avoid the dilution and they're looking for the smarter ways to build their business And you know two years ago, they didn't have any options and now finally they can talk to us Well, what changed like we're seeing so many companies like you guys like emerging right now Is there something like behind other than you know, I don't know people looking for the market itself maturing and Expanding is there anything else behind? Yeah, I think it's a great white wine our question and it comes to I think two factors or three First of all market size. I think you know five years ago. Frankly, there are just not enough companies To lend to to make it viable business model. I think if we started then I don't think we would be able to scale to one fifth Of what we are right now. Okay. Secondly, it's about the technology Open banking, you know open APIs There's proliferation of data now and it finally allows to make underwriting fast and smooth and efficient and allows us to scale the business and I think third thing is a very slight Change in a VC mindset to to lending businesses I think you know couple years ago if you had a lending business like ours. It was very very difficult to Get funding from VCs ourselves Yeah, then, you know Clara and our by now pay later companies never success Successful companies showed that actually you can make money on lending and finally VCs are again interested in giving capital to companies like us Interesting definitely and so what do you think about there's also like kind of the other side Which is that you see do see some V's actually VCs moving into this space themselves So I'm thinking about like general catalyst that announced, you know earlier this year that they're gonna have a fund where they're gonna buy Future revenue of startups, right? So what do you think of the potential for VC is moving into this space as well and becoming competitors to you? Huh, you know, I genuinely think they underestimate how hard it is to build this company like, you know We are almost hundred people right now I think if you have a small team of of investment professionals you will Never be able to match the product of ours like in terms of the quality speed execution the capital and You know doing all these needs. I think people think people underestimate how hard it is To build this business and how hard it is to really deliver outstanding value proposition to the customers So I think we're all up for a huge appointment when they realized what are we up to and I think we'll be much better off just giving capital to us Very Bush, I like it. So my next question would be around like what keeps you up at me What's the thing that concerns you or worries you whether that's about external competition or changes in the market or just scaling your own business Good question. I think you know like everyone I think I'm most worried about the general macro environment I think you know with interest rates changing and you know, everyone knows that the stock market is Crazy and everyone is looking for this big crush, but no one knows when it will happen You know, some people are for last 10 years are little I'm saying go talk tech stocks are too high We're gonna have a crash and they keep doubling and doubling But I think the day of recording will come one day and this is the day when us and everyone else might wake up in a Very difficult position. Yeah So, you know, we have to make sure that our company is ready for this and our clients are ready for this And we can support them through for this, you know, we are also very impacted by big trends like covid and vaccination and changes like in summer There was a definite like Decrease in the lockdowns and it will start to go on holidays and in our data We saw the huge decrease in the revenue across all e-commerce sector Interesting and e-commerce is you know 80% of our business. So like for two months It was really really scary So this big macro trends with lockdowns or lack of lockdowns actually has a huge impact on companies like ours Interesting. And so what's next for you guys? You talked a little bit about your vision and being like the neo bank for for startups and for scale ups What else is there? What's your expansion plans? Yeah, I think Building a new bank. I think we started as a lending business, but I think the startups need the better operating system To run their company. I think today. There's no real banking product for tech companies I think there's second value bank with frankly very average product offering, you know, we are a customer and it's it's so painful to even open the bank account And I think this is what we want to change We want the startups to have the best experience in opening the bank account getting funding Managing that managing their business paying invoices having a credit card for startups Basically having one stop shop to fulfill all their financial needs. So this is what we're building and this is what we're launching in next quarter Amazing. And so geographically where do you want to focus on next? Well, the big areas of focus for us right now is both Germany and the US. I think this is, you know We are very strong in the UK. I think, you know, we were the biggest Lender for startups in the UK and I think next ambition for us is to conquer these two next big markets Amazing amazing and I also like, you know in terms of funding as well I think it's kind of interesting maybe to hear about your experience as a company that lends out to startups But you've also raised funding yourself like how does that feel? Yeah, it's a very interesting discussions for investors, right?  You know, how are you changing the game? You know, I Think, you know at the end of the day the best investors know that To make money you have to disrupt yourself Right, and I think we are the you know the next generation of disruption in the in the ecosystem So I think if you want to diversify your business, I think this is the safe bet to To hedge yourself. Yeah, definitely It feels a little bit about like when sifted raised money and we write about startups raising money about like super meta Exactly Definitely. Well, thank you so much for all of this I want to kind of leave everyone with some things simple takeaways Especially the founders or operators in the audience with some simple takeaways like what they can remember So if you were talking to a founder and you are gonna give them three things that they should remember about revenue Back to finance. What should they remember? What are those three things? I think first of all It's no dilution. So you don't give up any equity Secondly It's very fast. You can get funding in, you know, 24 hours And thirdly, uncapped is the best Amazing. Well, thank you so much for your time. I feel like I've learned a lot and there's one more surprise we had What there's one more surprise we had there is one more surprise. Yeah. Yeah, so for everyone here We have a stand somewhere over there and we have a special promotion for slash attendees If you would like to try out our product We are offering up to 50,000 of capital for marketing without any fees. So you can boost up your marketing spend For next couple months without any fees amazing Someone's excited. Okay Well, thank you so much. It was amazing chatting with you. Thanks