 Hello, and thank you for joining us today. I am Jeff Engel, founder and CEO of Blue Oceans Group, which provides international business management, strategic planning, and private equity development for emerging economies. I will be your moderator for today's Global Innovation through Science and Technology, or GIST, Tech Connect, conversation on building and supporting your startup community. You will be exploring with our panelists their experience working to build startup communities and the benefits of a network of entrepreneurs, investors, educators, incubators, and others. Tech Connects are just one of the programs GIST offers. The GIST initiative helps empower you, the young science and technology innovators worldwide, to advance your ideas and startups through networking, skills building, mentoring, and access to financing. You can learn more about GIST programs and partners at www.gistnetwork.org. Please go ahead and submit your questions on startup communities in the chat box beside the video player or via Twitter at hashtag GIST Tech Connect. In a few minutes, your questions will be answered by our entrepreneurial experts. For those of you hosting viewing groups, we encourage you to send photos early of your group for a chance to be featured at the end of the program. Now, let me introduce our panel of experts. First, we are delighted to have Michelle Messina, CEO of Explorer International and co-author of the best-selling book, Decoding Silicon Valley, The Insider's Guide. She is a serial entrepreneur and pioneered Silicon Valley's best practices training in 2004 and today has training and consulting engagements with startups, investors, and regional ecosystem partners. Next is Grant Warner, the Director of Innovation for the Graduate School at Howard University. Dr. Warner is a certified lean launch pad educator and a nationally trained I-Corps instructor and is the co-founder of ConnectYard, a social analytics platform integrated into leading e-learning platforms. He is also a co-founder of Zedia Labs, a DC-based incubation firm that provides training and technical consulting to local startups. Finally, joining us virtually, we have Chantal Dumonceau, co-founder of an Advisor to Wilmina, an angel investment platform focused on women in the Middle East with an investment portfolio of seven exceptionally well-performing UAE companies. She frequently judges at startup competitions and speaks on successful investment strategies for venture capital in emerging markets. She was awarded the 2016 Arabian Business Business Woman of the Year and has been featured in numerous publications. As we wait for your questions to come in, I'd like to kick off the discussion by asking our panelists, how do you define a startup community? Chantal, since you're joining us remotely, let's hear your thoughts. Well, first of all, I just want to say thank you so much for inviting us. I'm honored to be amongst such a distinguished panel. So a startup community really is just a network of people and institutions that add value to each other and help each other succeed, just like any network. Entrepreneurs are not the only players in that ecosystem. They are everyone from corporates to government to entrepreneurs to service providers. Grant, what do you think? So I would agree with that 100%. What I think of startup communities, I think of ecosystem. So like you mentioned, they are multiple players, but each one has to be nurtured and you have to develop a plan to nurture them. Michelle, how about you? How do you define a startup community? I define a startup community in the basis of a group of different types of service providers, universities, investors, large corporations that function as customers, but they're all aligned and unified around the goal of serving and supporting the needs of the entrepreneurs. So it's a supportive ecosystem, but the entrepreneurs and the startups are in the center of that and the most important part of it. Great. Thank you, everyone, for these excellent insights. They have prompted quite a few questions from our viewers. From your experience, what are some ways that an effective startup community can benefit an entrepreneur? Grant, do you want to start with that? Yes, sure. So one of the things that we focus on with our startups is building out your team. So we talk about the diversity of an ecosystem that applies to startups also. So you find someone come with a particular idea. What we try to encourage people do is share that idea. We have a model of hipster hacker hustler. That's what makes a good startup team. So the hipster is someone who understands people. The hacker is someone who knows how to build things, not just I know how to code. If you know how to sew, you might be a hacker. And then the hustler is someone who might bring a business experience to the team. So being able to facilitate that through your ecosystem is some value that you can provide to a founder. So it's not often that you can go it alone. You really need to build a team. Chantel, do you have anything to add to that? So in terms of what really creates value in the ecosystem, it has to go beyond events. A lot of people in the ecosystem start by putting together events and networking. And that's great. But the players in the ecosystem add tangible value. Either they are investors, if they have the capacity. They are founders, they are employees, they are customers. And so there's no one right answer to that. But I would say look to how you can measurably impact the startups. That's great. The next question comes from Yonah Liberia, the viewing group, hosted with the embassy in Monrovia. The question, what are some of the components needed to build a strong startup community? Would you like to start with that, Michelle? Sure. I think one of the most important things is a commitment to serving and supporting the needs of the entrepreneur. And so having all the partners within an ecosystem that are committed to the success of the entrepreneur is first and foremost probably the most important. Let's face it, the job of being an entrepreneur and building a startup is really, really hard. And it doesn't matter where you are. It doesn't matter what ecosystem you're in. It's still really hard to build a product, create a market, build a sustainable pipeline of revenue, build a customer, traction. All those things are really hard and you need all the players in the ecosystem to serve and support entrepreneurs to help them be successful. It's tough. I agree. I think going back to that concept of sharing, that's a critical element for entrepreneurs to be able to feel not only that they can share, but that there's a level of safety in what they do share. I think that's critical in having any startup community. Openness and transparency in the startup community. Absolutely. Right. We've got another question here from our American center in Kampala, Uganda. Why is it so hard for developing countries to support young startups, despite the fact that this would grow their tax base? Chantal, do you have some thoughts on that? Well, that's quite a tricky and interesting question. In terms of growing, so I guess if you're able to make returns as an investor in a certain market and you're familiar with it, you're likely to stay in that market. And so I would say to entrepreneurs in emerging markets, not to depend on people to come and realize the value from the US or Europe, but to build it themselves, find their unique local competitive advantage that they have and exploit it. How about you, Grant? Do you have any thoughts on that? Yeah, so I would echo that. So in some ways, we talked about the elements of a strong startup community and government is part of it, but I think there's so many other elements. So if I was an entrepreneur in a developing economy, I would look to see what other assets are available in the community, excluding government for a second. And how could those assets be assembled to help grow the impact of the startup community? Because I'm sure there's a number of opportunities that are present when you start looking at the assets that are available. Great. I actually wrote a piece recently about specific to Dubai, which one might argue is not really an emerging market, but is an emerging startup ecosystem. And what I was arguing for in there is that when you are building your startup ecosystem, you should not, one should not seek to mimic Silicon Valley or compete with Silicon Valley. They are trying, it's David and Goliath. So find your unique competitive advantage, your unique market and how it is that the developed markets are not able to service your market. And that is what you need to focus in on as a startup entrepreneur, as an investor and as a community leader. Michelle, related to that, do you want to bring some perspective from the Valley since we've brought it up? So I am based in Silicon Valley. And I think it's one of the most highly functioning, efficient ecosystems in the world. But it's got a 55-year history of technology development changes in the capital gains tax that created the venture capital industry and all the supporting resources to help entrepreneurs be successful. So we've tried and failed in a lot of different ways throughout the process of growing Silicon Valley and figured out what works well for us. I think the other advantage in Silicon Valley is that we have an extremely diverse population there. We're half the people in the greater Bay Area are born in another country. So that diversity brings to the table lots more ideas and perspectives that I think build better companies, better products and better teams. But to Echo Chantal's point, when I've traveled to 50 different countries around the world, I don't believe in trying to copy pay Silicon Valley. I believe in trying to assess what's there and leverage that in a way that the ecosystem locally, whether it be the industries, the partners and the historical and cultural aspects of that local community leverage what's there already so that those communities can be successful based on what their existing strengths are. So I'm not a proponent of Silicon Valley copy paste. We wrote the book really to help people understand what happens in Silicon Valley and to figure out if there's any best practices there, they can leverage in their own geography. I think Chantal actually made an interesting point as well by talking about how that although Dubai may not be an emerging economy, the ecosystem there for entrepreneurship is emerging. And I think that's an important point to kind of highlight that even we see that inside the United States where while we're a developed economy, there are places, for example, Kansas City, Oklahoma City, where now they're starting to have these really robust emerging ecosystems that are coming out of their of their own population and out of universities and bringing in different partners. So just because an economy is developed doesn't mean that the that the ecosystem is is one in the same. Let's take another question. Who are some of the key participants in a startup community? Grant, maybe you want to start with us? Sure. So I mean, to your point, you know, recently we've been looking at how we grow the startup ecosystem and how it over the last three or three or four years. So in some ways, we were eating our own dog food, you know. So we look at this and you say, well, what are the key elements you want to build up? So at the center, and I think, Michelle, you made this point earlier, you have the talent, right? The entrepreneurs themselves. So the hipster hacker hustler model. But around that, a bunch of supporting institutions that are that are important. So one of the things we focused on is culture and community. So this idea of making sure that you can fail fast, fail often and advance your your ideas. Another part are the institutions and structures. So how do you create physical spaces that allow for incubation and acceleration where people can meet mentors, et cetera? You have access to markets and partners. So you can develop things quickly, test them in front of actual people. And again, I think when we talk about developing your own ecosystem, part of it is understanding what unique market do you have that provides for a competitive advantage. And then the last component we looked at was financing. So if and when people need financing, can we provide a conduit to that? And so those five elements, the talent, the community, the infrastructure, the markets and financing, is what we looked at developing and launching our ecosystem. Sure. Michelle, do you want to add something to that? In addition to those elements, I think that universities, research labs, and the service providers that provide finance, legal support, et cetera, to entrepreneurs, all those are additional components of the ecosystem. In addition to mentors, mentors, coaches, and advisors are really important. Part of the whole process of helping entrepreneurs understand what they might want to consider in building their business and pitfalls to avoid in the process. There's nothing more valuable than having a mentor who's been there, done that, provide guidance to an entrepreneur to help them scale their business much more quickly. So I think that training mentors is a really important part of the process. And mentorship in Silicon Valley has grown up kind of organically over many years. So it's not a natural skill a lot of times that I see in developing economies around the world. So mentor training is important. I think angel and seed investor training in other parts of the world is important too because the role of the investor, depending on the stage at which they invest in the company, they're gonna provide either more hands-on feedback, more mentoring and coaching, or less mentoring and coaching. So being able to be a value-added investor is important and so I think those are elements of the ecosystem that are really essential for entrepreneurs. I'd like to echo something you said there about mentors. From my experience in the Middle East and North African region, this is one of the most critical elements for building out these startup communities and these ecosystems is that a lot of the entrepreneurs while they want to pursue entrepreneurship and creating their own startups and creating their own businesses, they're not really sure what the end goal of that really looks like. They're going through the process. They're not really sure what the outcomes are, what the exits look like. What we've seen is that bringing in some successful mentors that have maybe exited companies or built companies and then they were later acquired really provides the roadmap for a lot of these young entrepreneurs and gives them something to aspire towards as not only a role model, but as an example and kind of a case study that creates some precedent of, oh, that's why we're doing this. That's the potential in creating these companies. I don't think mentors can be stressed enough. They're important. I think another story is having those examples in a startup community is really important. To see it is to be it and to be it is to see it. And I think those examples are really essential for entrepreneurs to aspire to, but to your point around talking around exits, what is an exit and defining what an exit is and an exit in Silicon Valley is very different than an exit perhaps in Latin America. So helping entrepreneurs understand what their growth path might be and what their potential exit strategies are, that's an important part of the discussion early on in building the company as well. I agree. Chantal, I think you had something to add to that. I just, you mentioned the Middle East and North Africa region and I just wanted to add fun fact about the momentum that's being gained in the ecosystem here. I was informed and have been doing some research and saw that there have been 10 notable and public tech exits, I'm sorry, in the past 10 years there have been 36 notable and public tech exits and 23 of those have been in the past 12 months. And so it's really gaining some momentum out here. I also just wanted to address something you said earlier about who is, I forget the exact wording of your question, but who are the key people in the startup ecosystem? And I was gonna say that an ancillary to that question is what characterizes someone or an entity that chooses to participate in the startup ecosystem? And more important than anything is value creation. And I keep sticking on this point because point blank, you are not going to get corporates or governments or customers involved unless they stand to gain from it. And so if I'm speaking to entrepreneurs right now, when you are assessing your startup, you have to assess, do I have a value proposition for my local market? Great, yeah, I think that cannot be stated enough, actually, thanks, Chantal. The viewing group at the American Space in Kampala, Uganda, states that Uganda has been widely mentioned as one of the most entrepreneurial nations. But is this a good thing when statistics also say that 90% of startups fail? Interesting, Michelle? I think that the, yes, the statistics do say that 90% of startups fail. But the fact of the matter is that you need economic diversity, you need job creation. And I think that startups are a great way for a lot of this to happen. Even though so many startups do fail, I think that it's really important to continue that momentum, to continue building companies that serve and support the local market, whether it be local that grows to a regional business and potentially maybe a global business. But entrepreneurship is a great way for economic diversity and job creation in any economy. Sir, Grant, do you wanna add something? So I think that applies here also, right? So most startups fail, not most, the vast majority, right, up to 90%. Yet and still, when we look at the economic recovery that happened here, most of the job growth was attributed to small companies and startups. So regardless of the fact that startups fail, to Michelle's point, I think there's a tremendous opportunity to drive job growth, right? And the ones that succeed can succeed largely, right? Absolutely, and I think we've really seen that in Colorado, where I'm from, is that this element of startups and really building out our ecosystem has led to tremendous job growth over the last half decade to a decade. Sorry, Chantal, did you want to add something? So I mean, as long as the net economic gain to society and GDP growth from that last 10% makes up for the losses and the net job growth as well, then we're in good shape. Our viewing group in La Longue, Malawi, asks, how can you recruit others to participate and support the community? What benefits does it offer them? Someone want to start with that, Chantal, maybe? It's very easy to get people excited about the concept of startups and the startup community. It's, as far as making it a recruitment effort, I think all you have to do is tell people how cool it is to really be building something. And people end up coming themselves. And again, I stick on my point of make it valuable for them. Michelle, do you want to add something about building? I think, as human beings, we want to be part of something. And I think if we're aligned with others around a common goal or a common end objective, it's not that difficult to get people to participate. So recruiting or evangelizing entrepreneurship in a community, I don't think it's that hard to do and then bringing on board supporting partners, it's not that difficult, in my opinion. In what I've seen all around the world, it's easy to get people energized and participating. Sure, I'd like to echo something that you said there. I was actually asked this same question by one of my clients in the Middle East, not too long ago, of why would these mentors, why would these angels want to come? These are early stage ideas, early stage innovations, early stage companies, is that the best use of their time? And I didn't really have a good answer for it because I never really thought about that. It's something that happens rather organically, I think, in some of our ecosystems here in the United States. And so I actually went back and asked some of the mentors and angels that participate in our networks here and back in Colorado. And that was the thing that they echoed over and over, was that for a lot of these guys, both men and women, they had been successful in either their own businesses or in corporate life and they were looking for kind of something to do. They wanted to be part of the community. They wanted to come back in. And one of the gentlemen who I'm rather close to told me that he said, you know, this is an opportunity for me at a point in my life when I thought I was going to be retired, that I can actually get involved in something that's fresh and exciting. And he told me he thinks he's gonna live an extra decade because he was able to get involved in something that kind of makes him feel young again. So there you go, maybe longevity is the answer to that. Feeling young. Feeling young. So how about recruitment from within your ecosystem? You talked a little bit about this, but are there some active initiatives that work on that kind of thing, trying to bring people in? We have programs with some of the largest, some of the largest you can educate people on how entrepreneurship works in order to, I guess, get them young, change their mentality and show them the entrepreneurship or investment as the case may be or finance is an option. And so we at the same time actually invest. And so it's important that you pair inspiring a new culture with actual activities. There are many other players in the ecosystem who are going a really long way from accelerators to mentorship programs to pitch competitions. It's really just a matter of getting people excited, letting them know it's an option and letting them know that they could be successful at it. Great. You mentioned a key word there, culture. Let's take it. Let's talk about culture a little bit. What are some of the characteristics of a startup community culture that leads to more success? Grant, do you wanna start with this? So when we started doing things on campus, we would hold events and bring entrepreneurs in and every once in a while, somebody would pop up and say, okay, well, I know this is kind of a pitch event. I don't wanna share my idea in the forum. Can I just go talk to you on the side? And I'll tell you what I'm doing and then you can figure out if you could help me. So all of those people I refuse to talk to. Cause I think one of the big ideas is this sharing. The idea that information can be spread very quickly helps entrepreneurs doesn't hurt them. I think Michelle, you may have said or Chantel may have said how hard it is to be an entrepreneur. So even if you have the greatest idea, entrepreneurship is a slog, right? You're gonna go through kind of the deep depression of wondering if anybody really wants this thing until you come out the other side a couple years later, maybe a couple months later. So the challenge of that in my mind means that people will not steal your idea, right? Other people in the entrepreneurship community are not gonna steal your idea cause it's hard. It's hard work. You have to love it. But on the flip side, by sharing, you can find people that help build your team, move your idea forward. So taking us as a personal example for the university, when we were starting out, we offered some training courses. We heard that they were being offered at University of Maryland. I went over there. They opened the door to me. I was able to sit in on their training courses. We developed a strong partnership. You know, that emerged from that. Now we do training, oscillating back between campuses. That wouldn't have been possible had we not kind of been open to each other and shared kind of what we were doing. And I think the same thing applies to entrepreneurs. So this idea of sharing to me is a big deal. I agree. I'd actually like to echo something with that and that having done this or been in this world of startups and ecosystem development for as long as I have, I cannot think of one concrete example where someone shared an idea in which someone else in the room or someone wrote it down, copied it and took it with him. It's just not something that happens. And what I talk to entrepreneurs about a lot when they bring up this idea of safety and is it really okay for me to share my idea is this idea of execution. That's 99% of building the business. I mean, at any one time across the globe, there's multiple people working on the same great idea with probably the same business model. How you go about executing that really determines what the success or failure of that's going to be. So not engaging in those conversations that wanna be on the side but then bring those out to make them more public is probably the best way to address that. Michelle, do you have anything to add? So I think I heard ideas are cheap and execution is priceless. I think the other thing I'm gonna add to it is the tolerance for experimentation and iteration that entrepreneurs have to go through to find their ideal customer base, build a sustainable business and continue to build value in their business. And that process of experimentation and iteration takes a long time. The whole process of experimenting is where the word pivot came from with respect to, okay, that didn't work. We're gonna pivot and try a new market or adapt our technology in a different way. So that tolerance for mistakes in the iteration process in a business is really important. The other element I think that's really important is just how darn long it takes to be successful. It takes a long time to build success and so the perseverance that entrepreneurs need to have to build that success and the support and patience that an ecosystem has to allow them to get to that level of success, however it's defined, that's really important as well. So it takes a long time to be successful. So on that idea of success, let's take a question from Abidjan Kodawar. What are the distinctive features of a successful startup? Shantel, do you wanna start with that? It comes down to the people, their ability to execute on the idea. As echoing their statements, I couldn't agree enough, ideas are cheap, there are a million of them. What you perhaps need to protect and what people mean when they say I need to protect my ideas, you need to protect your unique advantage in building your business, but you don't have to protect an idea. Secondly, I would say the next important thing is the market. Ask yourself, are you in a large or growing market for which there is demand for your product or service? That is the quality of the product or service, the technology behind it. Do you have any intellectual property or ownership of your materials? Then I would say depending on the type of business it is, the financials or the exit strategy. So is it something that can make money in a relatively fast period of time in order to attract investors? Or if you're in a place where perhaps capital isn't really available, where you can access the amount of capital you need to do what you want to do. And then in the case of say the Facebooks of the world where there are many investors available, they can pump money in for eight years before making a dime, the exit strategy. So in that case, it would be an IPO. Beyond that, I've mentioned it over and over competition. What is your competitive advantage? And I think that's those are the main points that come to mind. Michelle, do you wanna add anything to that? Characteristics? I think being able to find leverage in the market. So how do you get to your customer more quickly and get to more customers who look exactly the same? So who's a complimentary provider of products or services to that same customer base that is gonna help you get to that market more quickly? And can you set up distribution or alliance agreements with them to help you build traction more quickly? So I always look for leverage. Where are the points of leverage? Great, so you've both mentioned market and you just mentioned traction. A viewer from Nigeria states that gaining traction and winning market share is a major problem faced by every startup and startup community. What approach do you recommend that would help startups gain traction? Grant? So I spent the last few years doing a lot of lean startup work. So to me, this piggyback's a little bit into the last question. So the more successful startups to me can admit that they don't have the answer, right? So I think the one trap that you can fall into is that you've created something in your mind or with your group of friends in a room and you think you have the solution. And part of the challenge of product market fit is if you take that approach, then you're pushing into the market. What we try to teach with lean startup customer discovery is that, okay, you don't have the answer. You have a set of hypotheses. Your job now is to go out and test those hypotheses by talking to your actual customer, right? Identifying the end user, identifying who would be the buyer, influencer, et cetera. And following that path, you'll be able to pivot and iterate if you're open to the idea that you might not have been right, right out the gate. Absolutely, Shanta, you also talked about market. Do you wanna talk about traction? I can't answer that question for each individual startup, but generally speaking, it's a matter of creating visibility and momentum and in assessing what creates visibility and momentum for your startup, I would recommend being as data-driven as possible. You can get analytics on just about everything at this point and whatever has the highest conversion rate, focus on that and constantly be tweaking that. Even, I know CEOs of now large companies that were once startups and when they are now running a team of 300 people and they're delegating what they need to do, they go legal paper here, accounting here, operations here. Conversions and user experience, they never let that go. Michelle, I think you had something you wanted to add. I think that the supporting partners in an ecosystem like the large corporations, the 300 employee corporation that Shanta was referencing or the governments that put money into initiatives and programs to support the entrepreneurs, they have to be willing to purchase products, services and technologies from the startups. So they have to have, if you're a government agency, for example, they have to have an RFP process that is conducive to startups applying and bidding on that job, meaning the RFP cannot be written where it says we need five-year financial history for your company before you can qualify to bid. So the environment there, whether it be large corporate customers in the ecosystem or the government, they need to be willing, able and interested in buying for startups. And that's a key component about providing market opportunities for new companies. Absolutely, both market opportunities and developing traction as well. A viewer from Abadjan asks, how does the technology fit into the business model in the development of a startup? So really talking about technology and business model fits here. So I think the core idea is that you have something. So there's a term in America called vaporware. So kind of people go around and say, well, I do X, Y, Z, when in fact they don't do anything, it's an idea. So I think the technology in some ways, if you have a technology startup, should be the centerpiece of what you're doing. So there's some real list of capabilities that you have. With that said, the technology in and of itself is not enough. So there are a number of different companies that were technology plays where people look at it and say, wow, that's really cool. Attracted a ton of money only to have it implode because there's no market there. So I think the technology is a portion of it, but it's not the larger portion. We talked a little bit about execution risk. I think the technology, if you have a technology startup, should be it to say I have capabilities. Then you have to go out and explore all of the other risk and figure out how do you de-risk acquiring customers? How do you de-risk what your partnership models look like, what channels you sell through, et cetera? You have to be really strategic in moving through that. But again, if you're a technology startup, the foundation has to be some kind of working technology. You brought up a good point related to de-risking of technology. And this is something that I run into a lot having worked with professors and academicians that are at science-based universities where perhaps they've created something in a lab and now they're looking to commercialize it and bring it out. And not understanding the risk component from a market perspective compared to an academic or a research perspective is sometimes a huge knowledge gap. And just as an example of that, there was a sensor, a biosensor company I was engaged with at one point. They had been working on the development of a sensor in their laboratory and had brought it to about 96% accuracy, took them about a year to develop this in a laboratory. In order for it to have market application, it needed to be 98% to 99% to 99.5% accurate due to the consequences of what would happen if there was some failure in it. The development that happened inside the university and inside the research facility happened very quickly. The next piece to achieve those next milestones took multiples longer. They were two to three years out before they could get to that level of accuracy. Now, the perception was that, oh, we created this really quickly in the lab and not understanding that the investors and the actual market was not impressed with that level of accuracy and they were far too immature to even be developing capital or even looking at the market. There was an example of where the technology was absolutely not a fit for the business model or the market and the different perspectives were a clash with each other. Just to piggyback on that. So I've worked with the university technology community on commercialization for the last few years and sometimes we see the converse of that. So you'll have technology in the lab that you're trying to work to perfection, go out into the market and you find the 80% solution actually would have worked. So there's a balance that needs to happen. Technology risk is one part of the risk of the whole startup operation. That's a great point. So do you wanna add something to that? Well, I think the important takeaway I have from both of your comments is that if you're not engaged in talking to your prospective customers throughout the process of developing and iterating your technology, then by the time you develop it and release it out into the market, you could potentially be left with no market out there. So unless you have a prospective customer advisory board or key people that are involved in the development of your product requirement documents and your market definition and things like that, you run the risk of developing a product that just there's no product market fit. So you've gotta be talking to your market and your prospective customers from day one. Absolutely. We have a question from viewer Christian Torres. How would the panelists suggest connecting different entrepreneurship ecosystems? It's difficult coming from a developing country to connect with the right people that you need for your startup. Chantal, do you wanna take that? There's a great nonprofit that we work with in San Francisco Bay Area called TechWadi, which Wadi is Valley in Arabic. And so the play on words. And they aim to unite the Arab world in focusing on technology and educate on startups. And they have successfully engaged the diaspora. And so everyone knows TechWadi across the region. And that's oftentimes one of the first stops into Silicon Valley. Now, I think engaging the diaspora or like I've heard of say the Albanian-American associates in the US that decides to invest in Albanian startups because they have heart there. And also engaging like-minded people where there's enough commonality with the virtual community that you are able to connect despite the distance. So for instance, with developer communities or for instance, what we are participating in right now, GIST. Absolutely. Michelle, do you wanna add something to that? The whole world's trying to connect to the valley. What have you seen work and not work? Well, we have a government representation in Silicon Valley from dozens and dozens of countries. So there's a soft landing programs, there's bilateral trade associations. I'm a big fan of trying to do as much reading about a geography or an economy before I go to figure out who's in the tech startup space, for example, who's being quoted in the press. I've been known to contact journalists or online editors to ask them so who's active in the community? What are the meetups I should go to? I look at large technology conferences. There's startup grind, there's tech crunch, there's IoT world. There's many different types of conferences in Silicon Valley and the same in other geographies around the world. Trying to figure out what events, what meetups, talk to journalists about who key players are in the industry. Certainly, I'm a resource in Silicon Valley if anyone needs it. When I go into another country, I just try to do as much homework as I can and then try to be clear about what my own objectives are for going into that ecosystem. What is it that I hope to accomplish and who do I wanna connect with? And it's the same when you come to Silicon Valley. Who do you wanna connect with and what are you trying to accomplish? Great, I think we've got quite the backlog of questions so let's try to get through a few of these as we can. The viewing group at the embassy in Quito acknowledges that being an entrepreneur is hard. Can you share some thoughts on the benefits of building a startup community as it relates to the emotional aspects of the entrepreneurial lifestyle? Grant, would you like to take this? So there's a saying in America, misery likes company. So kind of having a startup community where other people can commiserate and share stories, is helpful, right? So one is that you realize that this is not the end of the road, right? Is that there's a path that many entrepreneurs follow, you're not in this alone. So you'll start off really excited, you'll encounter some difficulties, maybe get really depressed, keep charting through, start to see some light at the end of the tunnel and emerge at the end. So in DC we have a number of meetups. One of the things that also is hosted is a black tech startup dinner. So where people in the black tech startup community meet and one of the reasons is just that. It's just kind of let's share experiences. Some of them are success stories. Like two years ago I was here depressed today, look I got this large company, but other times it's just like here's where I am in the cycle and other people can chime in to say, well, here are things that you might consider. I've been there too, it gets better, et cetera. That's great, so along those same lines let's talk a little bit about measurement and assessment. A question from our viewing group in Longway, Malawi. How do you measure whether a startup community is performing well? Michelle, do you wanna take that? Well, I think every startup community is unique because of where they are, the culture, the industries that have been established there over time and what the daily rhythms of business are, for example. So every community is gonna be nuanced and different in its own way. I think being able to put a stake in the ground at some point in time and say, okay, from this point forward we're gonna start benchmarking what happens in our community, so we're gonna start looking at the number of new companies that are started. We're gonna talk about, we're gonna look at how many events that we're creating and get a lot of activity going and then after a period of time you start refining those events and activities for example to be talking about the themes and the interests of the entrepreneur. For example, back to the empathetic journey of being an entrepreneur, having other entrepreneurs talk about their experiences, their mistakes, their failures, I think is a way to legitimize the entrepreneurial process and just talk about the journey. But I think being able to benchmark activity is an important place to start and then being able to measure the activity over a course of years. It helps people to understand we started from here and now we're here. Absolutely. Ramarek from the Founder Institute states that one of the issues in running a startup ecosystem in French speaking countries is the language barrier. Do you have suggestions on how to improve the linguistic hurdle in the collaboration between the French speaking startups ecosystem and the USA? Chantal, do you want to start with this question? I know there's a great hunger to get to Silicon Valley and connect with Silicon Valley, but as much as there is that hunger, there are opportunities within secondary and tertiary markets. So that's the first thing. But if we are going to address the question of how to connect, again, I will echo back to us. I think Michelle said earlier talking about the diversity in Silicon Valley and in the US and London and the other major hubs for innovation in that there are French entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. There are British entrepreneurs in France. And so you can again try to engage the diaspora. Beyond that, just being as honest as possible, I think it's important for the long-term growth of the startup to have English in your repertoire or at least have someone on your team that can engage with English speakers. The viewing group at the Impact Hub in Bucharest asks, do you consider that it's easier to grow a community around a physical product rather than around an abstract concept such as community of hackers? And what recommendation do you have for building communities around abstract concepts? Michelle, you were kind of shaking your head on this. I'm not quite clear. I understand the question. Certainly technology clusters in an ecosystem are important and certainly even looking at, if we just took the auto industry in the United States, for example, there's major manufacturers of cars, but there's all kinds of secondary and tertiary companies that build products and technologies and supply services into that industry. So I think I'd have to go back to leveraging on the strengths of the local ecosystem and then figuring out what that means with respect to products and services if we're gonna cluster technologies. So that might be one piece of advice or guidance I would share. We've seen some of this in Morocco in the case of what's happening in that country around solar and alternative energy. So there was a big movement to install and create solar and to deploy it. And now that's really spinning out into a bunch of other clean tech types of technologies. That could be an example of a modern example of something that may mimic the car industry of the United States when it was started. The American Space in Tunis asks, do you think that social media can be helpful when building and growing your startup community? Grant? I mean, certainly. Part of what you wanna do is have as much reach as possible. Obviously social media provides a mechanism for you to reach many people with a relatively low barrier. Depending on the age groups that you're targeting, they'll create their own hashtags, et cetera, in support of it. And that's what we see on the university campus. So there's some programming that happens because it comes from administration but there's much more programming that happens because students have taken this concept and they own it, right? Create their own social media marketing campaigns around startup activities. So let's keep going on that idea of university. The viewing group at La Petitex in Seuss, Tunisia, asks, what role can universities play in a startup community? That's great. So we think we can play multiple roles, at least here. So the campus is a bed of talent. So we have people kind of studying in multiple different fields, a lot of energy. So again, it's hipster, hacker, hustler, right? They're all there. On top of it though, the university has resources to create spaces that can benefit the community. So Howard has partnered with the government of the District of Columbia to create an incubator on campus. So it's outward facing, so people from the community can leverage it. But part of it was developed with university resources. That's one part. The other thing that we say for our startups is there's this idea that you have to reach markets in order to test your product. So universities have very strong partnerships with large corporations. So if you think about some markets that have high barriers, fintech, et cetera, the university is a pathway to develop key partnerships that can help you grow your startup. So we think there's a number of different lovers that the university can pull off. Great. The viewing group at Utec Ventures in Lima, Peru asks, how do you influence the culture of the university to be more supportive of the startup community? Chantal, do you have something to add to that? I think Grant would be better equipped to answer this question considering his role. What we've tried to do, again, is offer training for both students and faculty staff. So you start to impact the entire culture. Startups is not something exclusive to students. There are people at the university who are doing research that would love to see it commercialized. That's a potential startup. The extent that they understand the founder's journey creates other pools of advocacy to change policies, et cetera, at the university that benefit everyone. In part, what we bump up against is a university culture that, one, is afraid of risk. Two, promotes this idea that you can't fail. So both of those things you have to push against suddenly, redefining what failure is. Now, certainly we can't promote it. You can go around and fail indiscriminately and it's okay. But the idea of experimentation being linked to failure is something that's intrinsic at the university, but is often not linked properly. I agree with that. Some of my experiences in Turkey specifically, in which there is a lot of science and technology that comes out of the research side of the universities. Now, helping universities to understand that there's actually a commercial and market potential in that helps at the highest levels to kind of help disseminate that information down to the researchers to say, hey, look, you're doing research, perhaps it's academic in nature, but there may be a commercial benefit to this. And in trying to shift that mindset of research can be done for commercialized purposes as well. I actually think that's been a very successful shift in thinking in that specific ecosystem. Daniel at the American Corner in Cape Town, South Africa asks, as an entrepreneur focusing on training and development, what should I develop more? My personal brand or the brand of my business? Michelle, that sounds like a great question for you. I would definitely develop the brand of the business and I would use the training clients that the company has had to speak on behalf of the company with respect to the experience they've had with the training, the value that they've received from the training courses and how the training's been applied to their business and the results that they've gotten from using the training company. So I would let the market wherever possible speak for the brand of the company. Great, Chantal, do you have something to add to that? Yeah, so I guess it depends when he says that he's starting a training and development company, does he mean he's starting a Coursera competitor, like an online development where you're not facing a person or a platform that connects to tutors or a personal one-on-one training and development brand. If it's personal one-on-one, then absolutely his personal brand is going to carry him in its entirety and so it's the most important thing. But if it is an online brand, then it's more about creating visibility, creating momentum and attracting those who are interested in your product. What is the most important takeaway you have for our viewers about startup communities? The most important thing you'd like them to hear? I'll just add a couple notes that I think are important in approaching building your startup community or being part of your startup community. It all comes down to the people. Whatever you're working on is a sum of its parts and so engage with the best who have your best of your best interest as well. The next part is that I've harped on this point, but in creating a startup community and building a startup community, measure real value, which actually goes back to a question you asked earlier about how do you measure a startup community's success? I take a hard line. I would say it's in terms of if we're talking tech startups, in terms of exits and investment capital and momentum. And I guess just believe in your own locality and build it. That's great. Michelle, do you have some thoughts on that? Yeah, I would say two things. I would say it takes a long time and you have to have patience. And the second part of that is don't be afraid to iterate and continually try new things to see what works best. One part is just like you're saying, well, it takes time, but you need to promote a culture of probably found elsewhere. Again, this touches back on this sharing piece, but you have to be willing to take good ideas from wherever they come from, not just from your own head. And that applies to the entrepreneurs and the ecosystem and the people helping to form the ecosystem. The other thing I would say is, as we were talking about growing your ecosystem for my startup, we needed partners to be successful. So oftentimes we think of partners and we think about what we can get from them. So we have to think about both assets and needs. So as you identify people you want to partner with, you have to figure out what asset do you have that would be beneficial to them in addition to thinking about what asset of theirs that you want. When you find that pairing, the partnerships go a lot easier. Unfortunately, we are at the end of the question and answer session for today's Tech Connect. Thank you so much to our wonderful panelists and everyone viewing today. I also want to give a special thanks to the hosts of the viewing groups around the globe. We have with us Embassy Quito, Ecuador, hosted with Kruger Labs, American Center, Caracas, Venezuela, Embassy, Qichanao, Moldova, Embassy Bucharest, Romania, hosted by Impact Hub Bucharest, Embassy Djibouti, Embassy Abidjan Kodavar, Embassy Kampala, Uganda, Embassy La Longue, Malawi, Embassy Tunis, Tunisia, Embassy Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, American Space Tunis, American Space Sus, American Space Svax, American Center Jalisco, Mexico, American Spaces in Burundi, including the IRC, Bujumbura, Rosa Parks, American Corner, Kamenji, Martin Luther King, American Corner, Getaiga, American Corner, Kinendo. We also want to thank local organizations for hosting viewing parties, including Protik Innovation Center in Tirana, Albania, Afroplan in Abidjan Kodavar, University of Technology, hosted with It's Pixel Perfect in Kingston, Jamaica, the GIST Innovation Hub in Nairobi, Kenya, Berry Tech in Beirut, Lebanon, Youth Network for Reform in Monrovia, Liberia, Utec Ventures in Lima, Peru, Mahasaracham University in Talat, Thailand, La Peradox in Sus, Tunisia, the Innovation Village in Kampala, Uganda, and lastly, Barama in Baku, Azerbaijan. Thank you again, and please join us for the next GIST Online Program, and become a registered member of the GIST community at gistnetwork.org. I hope you found our insights today useful. Until next time, I wish you all the best of luck.