 Let's start with having you guys introduce yourselves and we want to welcome everybody to looking at kind of social entrepreneurship entrepreneurship with our alums who have started businesses. And We're glad to have everybody here today. So this is pretty it's pretty informal in terms of the interaction. So we're going to ask everyone to start with giving kind of their bios and how they got to where they are. So, Matt, do you want to start Sure. Hi everybody. My name is Matt Edmondson. I am a IGL alum from Oh, I did Epic in 04 and I graduated in 05 and self making me feel very old Since after Epic, I actually through Epic and through the IGL I was connected to a social entrepreneur named Sasha Chanoff and joined his refugee organization Out of school at the time was called Mependo International now it's called Refuge Point. It's based in Cambridge. And I worked there for four years and that organization does some really interesting work identifying and providing solutions for at risk and vulnerable refugees beginning starting in started in Nairobi, Kenya and then expanded across East Central and the Horn of Africa and I think now they're all over Africa and and large parts of the Middle East. After that I spent two years at NYU's business school and out of that I started a company with a friend that came out of classwork we did at and at school focused on iron deficiency andemia. And so I'm now and that company started eight years ago. It's called Violet Health, and we are interested in finding innovative ways and solutions to increase decrease iron deficiency andemia amongst pregnant women. And so we're starting in India and so I can talk about our products but that's the high level. Great. Anastasia. Oh, you're on mute. You're on mute. Sorry. Hello everyone. My name is Anastasia. I am also an epic alumna. I did epic in 2006. I believe I am a double jumbo. I have the BA in political science, and also a master's from the Fledger School. So my interest while tabs were very political oriented and however going into the real world things changed because I tried various jobs and in Greece, because I am from Greece, and I went back. But none of them really worked out. But again, for me it was very important that in the job that I would end up and to would be related to my interests and this eventually led me to finding a philosophy which is a social enterprise. It's an e shop which sells Greek handicrafts and supports Greek craftsmen and their communities. So this is where I am now. Oh, and Karen, sorry. I could have just started speaking. Hi, I'm, I'm Karen Singh. I was also an epic alum. I was 0910, the South Asia year, and then I graduated 2011. I studied computer science and economics. So I was a little bit off the political science mold. But I also I was just kind of thinking about it when I was when I was listening to both you, like what it was I was where I was thinking and I came out of school and I feel like I was very confused when I came out of school. Like, because I felt like I wanted to do something to like help the world, but then I was like I listen to a job, and I was also dating someone. So I was like trying to figure out like where I was going to muddle through all of this. So I ended up like just doing the easiest path which was moving home and then I ended up like working for a startup in Seattle for a couple of years so that that was the path I ended up did going down it was very very serendipitous as Sherman would always say right that thing led to another. But I went down a computer science or I went down a technology path so I worked as a product manager for a number of years, really kind of helping people take their ideas and make it into something that can be built as technology. And then I worked as a consultant doing that same kind of work but for services for in a couple of different places I worked in New York and then I worked in London. And then I had some work that took me to India, and I moved to India in 2015 and started working specifically in ed tech. And at that point, through kind of a crazy series of events, I ended up running this company that I was working at. And through a kind of interesting series of choices, ended up selling one part of it and spinning out another part of it but shutting a good portion of it down so about 80% of the employees ended up being laid off and going to other roles. And then I in that kind of process I just met a lot of people in the startup community in India and so I decided to just go and see what I could do to start and steer money and capital towards those people so now I've been pursuing, in addition to kind of pursuing a new startup idea, I'm also been pursuing trying to steer capital towards just the non traditional entrepreneurs in India. So, like just like in the US there's a mold where it's like your white you, you know, you're, went to an Ivy League school, and India is kind of your, your, your mail your North Indian, you went to IIT like those are kind of the people who get money. And so we're just kind of excited about seeing if we can push money towards people who don't fit that mold. Sorry, that was a longer introduction. No, no, no, that's great. That's great. And now we're going to ask everyone to kind of describe the business businesses are currently working on. And so Matt, if you want to start and kind of talk about you know. So you're implementing it in India like what that's what that whole process has been like from kind of finding funding to getting it going. Yeah, yeah, yeah, sir. Yeah, so the company's called Violet Health. The idea that we first started with was, and I didn't know anything about nutrition before I stumbled into this, the idea of this work, I guess nine years ago now. Right. And that was an deficiency anemia is a major problem. It most affects pregnant women and the children that they have about 45% of pregnant, 45% of pregnant women across the world don't have enough iron. It leads to more death during during childbirth, the process of childbirth itself itself and all sorts of challenges for the mom and for the baby the baby gets less iron from the mother if the mother doesn't have a lot of iron and the baby then as as he or she is growing has challenges with can have challenges because of that with brain development delays and physical skill motor skill development delays. And what we thought was really challenging was that, even though this is a kind of a, there's a standard solution which is to recommend that pregnant women take iron tablets when they're pregnant and lactating even when pregnant women have tablets have access to tablets so we take away access as a challenge you run very quickly into the challenge of adherence or compliance which is unfortunately not true and not not just true of, in this case, but all over the world when doctors or medical professionals recommend that people take their medicine, especially to take it over a long amount of time, vast huge percentages of people don't take their medicine because they forget because of maybe for cultural reasons, they're dissuaded from by other important things in their lives not to take something not to take a tablet. And so we got really interested in in India use we see a problem where pregnant women were being blamed by everyone else in the system for not taking their iron tablets and no one was ever thinking or had thought about how can we one make this easier and two, you know, they're blaming the pregnant women not the product itself or any of the other pieces in the system, which has led to this situation which is lots of pregnant women who have access to tablets don't take them they don't any better, and the problem persists. And so we got really interested in saying can we move iron out of a tablet form to other more palatable food forms that could all out sequel increase compliance or adherence and so we ended up working with a research institute here that became absolutely critical to our development to test and then clinically do clinical studies that proved that the solutions that we were making were actually working. And so now we have a product on the market and we're looking at more products. It's an iron fortified biscuit for pregnant women and we've clinically shown that if you take this every day it's a small biscuit. If you take three of them every day it's the same as taking a tablet so we've done that now we've worked with government to try to increase the likelihood of getting into government procurement supply chain. We've now have the product on sale in the market when we have a sales force that goes and visit doctors and nutritionists and nurses and maternity hospitals and other places to talk about the product talk about our work and to try to get the word out that there is alternative to a tablet now. And so my initial kind of thing that I talked about here is is crucial that that partnership with that research institute has been for everything that we've done by by having a base of science and a base of a credible local partner that has existed for a long time in in where I am right now Bangalore that is also going across the country. So that's the quick, very quick summary of that. Great. Yeah. So, how I started close the, as I said, in my introduction earlier, I wanted to have a job to do something that had an impact on the society on the people where I was residing where I was living. So, one of the issues like we have in Greece is that our demographics and our urban structures is such that almost all over 50% of the population resides in the Athens metropolitan area, leaving the rural areas and the smaller towns with like very small economies and mainly relying on tourism. When I realized that there were craftsmen artists and people that were working in mini studios in various places all over Greece, I thought that it would be a good idea to provide them with a platform that they could have sales and therefore increase their income as opposed to just working locally and selling in their city or relying only on the tourists that would visit their city during the summer months. So close team has has as a mission to showcase the best of Greek handicrafts, which oftentimes also have very strong Greek cultural background that relates to our heritage and things like that. But most importantly to be able to provide additional income to those craftsmen and therefore support their communities and the local economy. Eventually, in the longer run once close these more has deeper roots and it's more, you know, the economy and permits and our COVID permits and we have less barriers and I intend also to do more to do events, like live events basically where I'll be visiting the communities and in partnership with an artist or a craftsman we would do a seminar to women to show them that there are ways of like starting their own business legal stuff that they don't know and things that, you know, that are beyond their, their scope of knowledge basically. So this is obviously what it is. It's an eShop basically that it's a for profit social enterprise that tries to bring out the best of Greek handicrafts. Great. Thank you. Karen. Yeah. I guess I'll answer in a slightly different vein just kind of a little bit at a different place in my my startup journey than they both are. I think I'll first just kind of like talk about like that process and how it looked like from the India perspective and then come and kind of talk about how it looked like from from where I am now and kind of trying to start a company that's going to be more remote because it's COVID times forever. So I'd say from the India perspective and definitely something that I didn't just value enough when I was coming out of school is how much regulation really just is a challenge and how much like kind of just understanding, especially in India like what what you're dealing with can just help set you up for success later. I can't think of a great example in India, but I can't think of example I set up an LLC last year, and like we followed all these forums we followed online and it was great. And we needed to like, like someone else was going to put some more money in a little later so we need to have an amendment to change the ownership of the LLC and so we went to this lawyer to be like this and we need to drop this amendment she was like well you just fucked in the beginning. So if you would just come to me in the beginning would have been like a flat rate of like $200. And then you know doing an amendment like this I would have given you a template and you know do that yourself. Right and so I feel like there's certain things that I've now realized is basically you can find someone who has done what you're trying to do before and talk to them about what they did and what sort of like services they used who did they go who did they do themselves and what things did they go to the service providers for it is so helpful. It is like in a related or corollary industry or even a little further away, but it's someone you trust and you feel like they're sensible and they operate in a similar way to you do with similar values. Another key point that just come more and more in my life, right understanding what sort of values people are operating with. That really is just it makes it so much helpful because you understand what path you might want to follow. So I'm kind of thinking about now and I know Heather you kind of did ask about the funding part of that question. I've never been one to go down like a grant sort of path just with my work. I've always been more of like an angel investor and like like you know then trying to get money from BC sort of path. I will say that that path sends your, your thinking in a certain way. I don't know. Yeah, just before you continue can just you just explain an angel investor. Oh, sir. Sorry. So, so angel investors just when you're when you're starting a company. You will usually if you can self fund maybe your first few months right. And so you're just putting your own money in, but after that you might go out and try and raise money from other people and usually those will be friends and family. So if you don't have friends and family that you can go and get money from in order to start a company, then you'll be looking for other people who are willing to invest at that really early stage. And then the term they have is angel investors right because it's like an angel has come and given you money when you don't have any, or at least this is how I always remember it. Right so they're really early stage they're usually not coming in with huge checks, even in these kind of crazier times, you're talking like, you know, $5,000 to maybe like, I don't know maximum like 50, I would be shocked if you're going to get more than like $50,000 from an angel investor. But those are going to be people who are really going to help you early on they usually trust you, you've built a relationship outside of the company. They have some reason to believe you're going to be successful outside of just like the data that is generated by your company or your idea so far because that's probably not very much because it's an idea, you know. Now I totally lost my train of thought either. What was I saying before I shoot. classes. Angel investor and then the next step. Yeah. No I totally lost my trade. It's okay we can. I'll figure that out. about starting what you were starting the differences between India and here. Okay. Yeah, so I would say, I think maybe I was talking about like the difference in raising money in India versus here. Oh yeah yeah grants versus funding yeah yeah there we are thank you. So India interestingly has a lot more, I would say like funny money I've discovered which is just people have money that they're willing to invest for like random reason it's just like people have India money that's locked up. Oftentimes maybe not fully legal right again there's just lots of lots of morality issues that you start to jump into. But in the US I would say yeah there's like a couple of different paths you can apply to some incubators, you can try and raise money from angels like I was talking about. You can kind of go down a grant sort of path to try and get yourself off the ground, but I will I will happily turn that over to Matt to talk more about the grant side of the path because I've never done it. Yeah, how did you want me to start talking with that or I don't want to throw up your question. No, no, no I think I think talking about funding and I'd also be that I think everybody be interested in hearing about like where do you hit different kind of bumps in the road. You know and what are the. Well what are the surprises you know karn was finding someone who can kind of we drew down the path and I know you know and I'm thinking working in a different country. You know, what do you, you know, what did you wish you had known before a little earlier than you found out. Yeah, yeah, I mean, so if everyone has 22 hours here, we'll begin. Yeah, okay so the, the, the short answer is current absolute like I couldn't agree more. There are so many things that you you wish you knew but you also like people that you trust that you wish you knew and like building that that cohort around you is is very time consuming and potentially resource consuming if they screw you, or if you, you know, you know, you don't realize that they're really important till after you've made the documents and then it's like very complicated to go back and redo that stuff and you know there's like 100 examples where yeah I've done the exact same thing where we think where you think that you can kind of do it on the cheap or say oh no this this should be fine we'll do it this way and you don't kind of, you know, exhaustively go through all the legal options first and you end up regretting it later so I guess to back up for a second from a funding perspective, I think especially as so I was in for those students who are graduating now or about to graduate. I was in the same position after leaving grad school with having an idea for a company, but having no money to do anything with and then trying to figure out what like I didn't have any savings to pay my, you know, to do anything so we were lucky and tops has a lot of resources and I think one of the cool things about the IGL and tops, but especially the IGL is how much you know there are always they will help you find little pockets of money all over the place to try to scrunch together to fund you know your your positions and so and I one is even though people say those have dried up they haven't they're just harder to find now probably like I'm sure there are still pockets of this money around you just have to be really polite and insistent and you will eventually there are cool things like I know tops has a great business business plan competition that has different categories. I was one of the social enterprise it used to be so I don't imagine they would have removed that. And so that has funding, we were very fortunate just when I graduated that my the co founder and I received a pot of funds from NYU to do the same thing, but then we went to grant route. Depending on your business model and kind of what it's going to take to get to get profits and what what what infrastructure you are as a company and where what country you're based in and how the if you have multiple companies and multiple countries how that how those things are connected. That would be a great way to basically give you some support why you try to figure out all these other things. And so we were very fortunate to get a couple of funds one was USA ID is a development innovation ventures div for short. It was shut down at the early in the early days of Rex Tillerson, if anyone remembers that gentlemen. Now it's back actually surprisingly it's back so USA ID the ID is back, you can get grants. I think the initial funding stages $100,000. So you can get any for profit companies can get that if they can prove that their innovation that's been funded by this will have a broader societal benefit. So I would check out that if you have interesting ideas. I would also check out grand challenges. I think is the umbrella name for a bunch of different funds of which the Gates Foundation is one, a fund called grand challenges Canada is another, a number of funders if you Google grand challenges have have different pots of money for either different very specific ideas they have in terms of saying, Oh, you know, how do you make the cold chain more efficient in parts of parts of rural eastern Africa, or whatever. And so there's very specific challenges but if you happen to fill one of those you can get 100 grand or 250 grand that can help, you know, push push you along so we survived on that early on, and then from USA ID USA ID div from grand challenges and then recently we've had investors and and also grant from the Gates Foundation. So it depends on, you know, I think one of the major thing is, if you're interested in doing this, I would talk to friends to talk to a competent lawyer and whatever you think you want to do this and run this by them and make sure that you are from the beginning, kind of do all this in a kosher way so you can don't have any massive challenges that are potentially existential later when you decide oh we want to now do this extra. And probably there's one in the ideal community, as I discovered later. Right. I feel friends. Because someone will know someone. And what's the name of it. There's a name of a, if you get in. I'll look in my you know, and I'll have by the end of this talk here about it's a, it's a community that helps nonprofits and for profit social enterprises with their, their, their legal use for free what's called. I'll come up with it. Just as another small aside, kind of what Matt was saying, I do have a good friend who started something called three wheels United, and they did a really interesting model so they ended up splitting into a foundation and a for profit company, what they do is electric auto rickshaws. So what they discovered they were operating in India, what they discovered was that the problem was not even driving adoption of the electric auto rickshaws. It was financing because auto drivers. You know, these are like the three wheelers right so they don't actually pay for their vehicles outright they cost about $2,000. They get financed by these like people who you know, obviously because it's India charge absorbent interest rates and get them into a cycle of debt. The three wheels United ended up becoming the for profit company became a financing company. The technology of the auto rickshaw was owned by the foundation, and then the foundation would go and get all the grants to take this to like other countries. So it was just interesting because like you can build these structures where you can be eligible as a nonprofit and then also have like an associate for profit they are licensing your tech to basically depends on what your idea is like Matt was saying. Yeah, that's cool. It's a great name too. Right. Yeah, really good, really good. Wow. Cool. Where they based. They are in some two or two cities that I cannot remember it now is either like Pune, or like it's somewhere like that that they've actually done and roll out they're trying to do one in Delhi and in Chennai. And the place that they realized is to go and partner with the city governments on last mile. So right like we'll have our three wheelers like waiting outside of the metro station or the bus drop off and we'll help those people get home. And you know, reduce congestion and smog and all that in the process. So, but as always with India it's a long journey of regulation that like ask kissing, can I say that ask. Great. And, honestly, we were talking about how you kind of like the, the challenges you found in starting the business you know how you financed it what were some of the bumps in the road do you want to talk about that for. Sure. Yeah, I think I have like one sentence summary is that there are a lot of bumps. I don't know because I was disconnected for a few minutes if I would like, if I might work around have mentioned that before but I think that if there is one thing I can there are a lot of bumps and that you need a lot of patience and resilience and you know, every ounce of like, you know, like hope you have you have, because there are days that are so bad that you feel like not only that you're not making money or you're wasting there's no hope and this thing cannot change for the better. But if you have a good vision and a better even mission. I think these two will propel you to the right direction. Also, I mean you have to do work. It's not that you know just the vision and the vision but I think they serve as the right compass for you to make those decisions that will eventually propel the enterprise for the business, whatever. And for me that has been very, very, you know, the fact that I knew exactly what what what I was doing why I was doing it. And the fact that also it made it made sense within my personal life because I want to mention that that one of the reasons why I started this business is the fact that I am a mother of very small children. And the fact that I wanted something flexible. So it resonated with me that I would have to do tons of work, but at least I could do them in my own time, more or less or I could not I would not have to sleep in the night maybe but it made sense to me that I was because I was more present in the early years of my children than I could have ever been if I was working outside of my home. Having said that, I want to stress that starting out a business like alone if you have small children is a very difficult thing. It's not the easy route. It's not the stress less around. It's even more like, you know, it's like you have a plate from a buffet and suddenly you have like a second and a third plate this is how it is it's very complicated. But again, if you have like this clear vision and mission and you make good decisions, you talk to the right people. I think you can move forward. In terms of funding specifically for me, I haven't, I haven't had such huge impact and positive impact for from outsider investors yet. I will be looking that when I want to scale up eventually when my kids enter in a more of a schooling environment. So, more or less, I've been up, I've been operating with my my capital which I have invested back in the business. I think one general piece of advice that I would give that I think applies to your to most social businesses, regardless of the actual like subject that they are doing is that you have to have like excellent organization skills because if you are on your own or even if you are with another person and you're doing this together there's so many things that you have to be look and organize and be current, which could be legal things, which could be financial things. It's not like any employment that you take up and you have what you need to do, and perhaps a bit more here, it's the world and you against, you're against the world basically trying to make it so I think that's also very important from my experience, and also a third thing perhaps would be the fact that you really go into untested waters and by that I mean that you do make mistakes, but again you have the possibility to refine and retune what you're doing. So, next time you can anticipate or you can course correct so you try things and you may succeed or fail for example in my case I, I started with a certain amount of products then I realized which ones were more popular I focus more on those I, I tried to sort of like this continue others, or in terms of like marketing, the way I approach different markets, you know where I see, for example, the fact that I sell Greek handicrafts, I thought that it would appeal to Greek expatriates living in Germany in German there are almost a quarter of a quarter of a million of Greek expatriates. However, for one reason or another, they seem not to be that much interested and I haven't been able to capture that. On the other side I have been able to find like non Greek people that really love and support and want to help Greece for whatever reason so the, in a way, in my case at least the way you have to go also becomes revealed to you as you move on and you make mistakes and you course correct and this is how I've been able to move forward. Great. And I was wondering if you guys want to go a little more specifically like maybe Matt you want to talk about because you've hired a local, local staff to work in some of the pros and cons of that and what that's been like especially since we know you've been in India because of COVID but before when you were traveling back and forth. Yeah. Very good question. What I put this. Yeah, so I guess we're so we're in a very particular industry which is medicine. We are, we are selling to pregnant women and their doctors principally the vast vast majority of OBGYNs in India are women. And what's what is confusing at first is if you look at the sales force that sells the sales reps that medical reps that visit these principally women doctors with women patients is it's all met. And for a variety of reasons, the industry is 99.999% and so we were very interested in the beginning of this process in having as much as we could an exclusive email sales force, which has proven difficult for a variety of reasons but but we have some wonderful employees and it's, it's, it's always I mean I think managing people is always very difficult. And it's the hardest thing that at least I do. And I mean I hear this from other friends as well that just figuring out how to manage people. Regardless of where they from or where you from or whatever is really hard and every aspect of it is hard from figuring out how do you do salaries to how do you do. You know, how do you, how do you maintain a culture of excellence. And how do you build it and what does it look like and there's a lot of things where it's just really. What you just said about about like, you have to start you have to like you get things wrong and you like think yourself up and you try to do it again and you just keep going. And that's what we've, we've tried to do and but it's it's very difficult in this industry in particular, at least here in Bangalore and from what I hear from friends in other parts of India. The churn rate is very high. And so people will, you know, people will leave for, you know, they, they can get a bonus of several percent more for themselves and their families and that's what they want to do they will and so as a result, the industry has grown up to where you have kind of the expectation is that people will leave quickly, that people will not be loyal to the product or the company because the company is not loyal to them. And so it's hard to, so kind of when you're starting off you can kind of make this decision are we going to hire people within this industry and kind of in effect you'll have to take on at least some of these cultural these kind of industry moors as you bring them in or do you want to kind of reject that and say we're going to hire our own people and build this ourselves in in an atmosphere where, you know, you know, with a new product I mean so it's I would say all of this stuff is really hard I would say the thing to do is to get a lot of people to ask these questions about and to try to be, you know, to be very open about what are your challenges and talk to people about what they are and try to figure out how you can kind of work on this together because there's not going to be one kind of one one size fits all answer. But, but if you get it wrong, you know, it's, it can be very, very, very destructive, it can be very difficult, you know, that can be the thing that can end your idea or your whole vision and all the things that, you know, you wanted to do good. And then, you know, you kind of you fall flat on the management front so it's really hard, and I wish I had an easy answer or I wish it was easy. This is the thing that I wish you could I wish colleges and business schools that everyone taught this, like, and I know it's a very difficult thing to teach as well, but it's really difficult. And I wish that we talked about it more often as a as a society, what we could do and how we can make it better. Because it seems like what we're doing right now, at least from my point of view is it's not, it's not it's hard. Yeah. And Karen, do you want to talk about that too, in terms of hiring or working with people? Sure. I also want to tell a different story. I'll answer your question first. The story I want to tell and I'll tell in a minute is just thinking it's really interesting how like I arrived because we were effectively running a social enterprise where we were running this ed tech company that was trying to build a marketplace for tutors. And what we were trying to do is help people who taught out of their home, like improve themselves enough that they'll be able to teach more kids, either like, at a time like kids would travel to their homes or they'd be more efficient. And they would be better and, you know, they would want to use this technology and, you know, they think it will spread and we peaked at like 8000 tutors on our platform. But the thing we eventually realized was that the idea didn't work and it wasn't sustainable. So, but I'll come back to that to answer your question specifically. I think the thing that was really interesting for me to learn. And I don't mean to oversimplify my mind, but I feel like it really fell into the kind of two schools for me that there's like a carrot style of management and there's a stick style of management. And I grew up in a world of carrot, very much the carrot right like I got I remember like school, people like it was more like psychological right like you knew the best kids got treated in a certain way. And like if you did think everything right you got special privileges but no one's going to beat you. So I thought those goals are grew up. Whereas in India, you know, like, like literally people got grow up and like you would be humiliated, you know, and that was regularly a style of teaching. And so I think for me to as a manager particularly to kind of learn about how to just be, you know, some people you're literally going to be managing because they're afraid of you. And like, you just have to figure out how do you manage that balance of like, you know, yes, like, you don't want to disappoint me is going to work for some people but some people they're like, well, you know, I'm afraid you're going to fire me or I'm afraid I'm going to get like yelled at, you know, or scolded or something. I didn't really I'm not very good at yelling at people and to smiley so they just don't take me seriously. They're like, what the fuck you like smiling at me every day and I'm like, dude, I just smile. But that was kind of an interesting process. I actually found what was most effective for me. And you could call this a cop out if you want. I've learned a lot of the like, like sales, like like customer support like our field customer support. Just like like a lot of these like much lower skilled lower paid roles where you know we would be paying people, maybe two to three lacks per annum so like like six to what like $10,000 a year. I just like put someone else in between me and like, because I like I just was not as good at kind of inspiring that like fear as like people I could hire to do. And you know at one point my literally my aunt who's like retired like hotel executive. She I was like my acting like like finance officer so everyone had to like go to her to get sign off any of their purchases. They're so effective because they're all terrified of her right because she's just like presents. But if I can really quickly just finish the story I wanted to tell. Okay, thanks. I was just going to say the thing that was really interesting really hard to learn was how do you how do you know when your idea doesn't work. You know, and especially in my case where I wasn't having investors telling me that they were on, they weren't going to give me more money. But what I realized was that me and my leadership team as we kind of were sitting around, we realized we could keep putting money in but people didn't like the product the tutors didn't care really enough that we're giving them technology to help them teach better. As I kind of talk about it now, it didn't make their lives 10x better it made it maybe one X or two times better they weren't so much more efficient and that wasn't enough to do a behavior change. In some ways, I don't know if Matt kind of you feels like these same probably it's not enough to make people do a behavior change if they don't feel like their life is being transformed in some way. And so it's just so hard to get people changing here. So these tutors would just drop off we lose kids we had so poor retention that was it was clear we could keep pumping money into the business getting more students and we keep losing them by the end of the year and some students are having an amazing a lot of them, you know, maybe we're helping me we weren't it was really hard to tell. And I think the thing that, and maybe I guess it kind of comes back to that moral thing I was saying earlier that the thing that was for me is I had to stand up and say hey, I want your money and I want your money because I believe that I'm going to achieve these things with it. And what I found was it was really hard for me to justify that, even though I had all these people depending on me for their jobs and I had like, you know, kids who are like we have to finish the school year like there's all these outcomes we have to make sure we achieved. It was that I had to stand up and say I want your money because I'm going to achieve this, you know, and when I stopped being able to feel like we could achieve it when we didn't see a path where we were saying that yes someday we are going to be able to expand outside of Bangalore and expand throughout India and like, it didn't seem possible. It didn't seem like this. We kept putting money into this marketplace and it kept hemorrhaging out the other side. So I don't know. So I think it's just an interesting point to kind of you have to stand like figure out where those checkpoints are to say have I put in enough. Like, and is there because there is a point where you have to say maybe your idea just doesn't work, even if like, and you have to do something else their life and make everyone else do something else with their lives, as hard as that is. Great. And one of the questions is for for closely. How do you manage the relationships with the artists or the artisans or the craftspeople and how challenging is that and especially when you were talking about how to potentially discontinue something that you were doing, you know, like a line that wasn't really popular. Yeah, but this is a very good question I have to admit. It's very complicated and very difficult, primarily now because I have over 20 different workshops I collaborate with, which means 20 different people. So, and it's also very stressful because something that is handmade has it needs time, it's not like, you know, that you can like go into production and get something very quickly. So timing with regard to orders is also a big challenge, but when it comes to the people factor. I don't have very good news to share. I mean, my, the way I go about is that in my mind, I have like a profile for every person so I know who is quick, fast, reliable, and I know who is on the other side of the spectrum basically. So I try to sort of like talk the language, you know, that is like appropriate to each person. For example, those that, first of all, I must admit that I don't collaborate with someone, unless I know that they are really good in what they do and they give me quality work. This for me is like, you know, the red line. I can tolerate, you know, like time delays and things like that. These are the things that I mentioned before that I'm trying to, you know, to manage each person differently, but the standard is that they all have to have good quality. So, again, I have an approach the way I talk to them is differently. So basically, I do all this like work in order to get what I want. And it's very hard. I try to promote the people that are that bring sales, but also the people at the journey and effort and are willing to cooperate with me to produce unique creations like custom creations, and I try to bring them more work because sometimes I can do that I can, you know, decide what I want, what the direction I want to go. Usually, the lines that fade out and are disconnected, it's sort of like a story that, you know, that you can see it happening before it happens. It could be, for example, that the product is very specific, it could be that they do not support it well with like new creations because, for example, you may have like a pen, and the first time you put the pen no matter how cool it is unless people, you know, see it for a few times, they are really, they usually don't buy from the first time. However, if on like year number two, you bring, or season number two, you bring like another pen, so the one pen basically helps the other. So what I'm trying to say is that if they are not supporting with like new lines and where they show their evolution, or when they, if they're not, for example, being cooperative enough to, you know, give me, for example, photographs that I can use in marketing or like a text and their story and their craft because I don't know like everybody's story or craft. So these are basically the corporations that tend to fade in time. But it's very hard and it's a, it's a cooperation that it's a mutual interest is so it's not like one within a hierarchy. I think it's seriously and they want to nurture it some other people not so much. But, you know, I find ways to, you know, to work with people. Great, great. And one of the questions is. Matt, you went to business school and you went to Fletcher. Karen, you chose not to go to grad school. What role do the grad schools play or not play kind of in how you moved in the direction you're moving or decided to develop, you know, go in an entrepreneurial direction. Whoever wants to start. I can start. I would say that like, you know, I mean, I don't mean to be pedantic but like, you know, if you do a cost benefit analysis that's like what you have to do right. So like how what are you doing right now what do you expect to be doing at the end of it. And is it going to be worth it to kind of make that change the things that I have always felt is like if I was trying to make a career switch or if I felt like I was being held back in some way. Until now, neither of those things have been true of late or I mean earlier this is like in the last, you know, 12 months since I shut down the company, which was a little bit of a traumatic event. Because it's just like a lot, you know, I did really strongly consider going to grad school because I mostly just wanted to change the speed. But then I realized like I think I was just having like, you know, like I want to do something else. But I think that's also fair, right, like if you're in a place where you can do that then sure. The thing you just have to remember is like not only are you paying a lot of money it's also lost earning potential. Right. So like just keeping that in mind that like you could have made money for those two years, which is a lot. So I don't know I mean I would just like say that because I've already because I got to work in a couple of different countries when I was consulting and because like now I spent enough time working in India and in the US that I have a good base of connections in both places. I don't feel that lack because I feel like I know enough people that I could get to the people I need to know in my in my second degree connections. So, I don't feel the lack right now of having not gone to grad school. Matt, do you want to. I mean, no, I think, I think as time has gone on I think you're totally right. I mean, I think the barriers to to a lot of businesses if you have your experience and you know the width and breadth of your experience, you can kind of ignore, or you know now that there's nothing that's holding you back. Business school degrees, I would say I would say it's a very personal decision. Yeah, I think it's it's it's very expensive. It's very from both time and money. But it can be the thing that can really pivot you if you can and there's also some very, very specific jobs that is very difficult to get without certain stamps. So if you want to go into finance in very specific roles, actual these days now, I mean, maybe a math PhD is better than MBA. But for, you know, you have to go to certain schools for consulting companies, it's, you know, there's ways to get in after, after undergrad but then there's a very well worn path from certain schools to consulting companies if you're interested in having that experience. So, yeah, I was, I was looking for a change and I was interested in knowing the language of business and, and previous to business school I had worked for a startup, the refuge point that I discussed, but it was a nonprofit and so I didn't have any of the technical business language. And I felt that I wanted I was interested in learning that so that's kind of, I thought I would go back to Kenya after business school but fate intervened, but that's, that's my story anyway. I guess maybe I should mention my dad's an entrepreneur and my sister's an entrepreneur. So I, maybe I'm not having the exact same circumstances as everyone else around like, yeah, because I do think I was actually wondering that like Matt like what you kind of feel like you learn and took away, but it Well, I don't know what do you feel like you learned it, like you apply things you learned in business school. Yeah, I mean I, and I also very specifically targeted very quickly I realized that I wanted like, I wanted to do my own thing and so you could take classes that were very particular for this actually as well so I had a very, very kind of tailored experience from that point of view. Yeah, every day I feel like, and also like I had no accounting background I had no I had a kind of I did econ degree at Tufts. So I had the standard econ background it from from Tufts but nothing like from a business perspective so you probably had that just been growing up. I don't feel any wiser. I don't feel like I can. It's very, I think you have to factor in like which pathway you want to follow because like Matt said very correctly. There are some places where you have to have a degree and very specific degree there are other things that with a general degree you can go with your own. So it, it really depends. You know, if you and it also depends on how you feel about things if you feel you, you have enough maybe you can just omit it. I don't have like like very good advice very specific advice what I can say though is that the more training you get in terms of academic training and the more you develop your skills. I guess you'll find it later on in your life. I think that what I did a pleasure was very, very, like, important for me to get where I am. Because it really advanced my thoughts, my the way I think my analytical schemes, things like that. And, you know, these are very important and I cannot go on answer the question, you know, could you have done that without pleasure could you have that, you know, or the point or the dot I'm not there yet to answer that that specifically. However, having said that I think that once you decide on a trajectory you want to move and a pathway you want to decide with your business you really have to keep being informed and read and think and talk with people about that because really it's an ongoing process and really you have to learn and question and you know if you ever sit down and accept and you think that you're doing things well. Unless you're very fortunate and the numbers back that up you really are not doing I think the most you can and there's so much more out there and you know you're just maybe like you have a thread like close to the Greek word for thread and you can you move your thread and I think you're doing something but you really could do so much more so it really helps to, you know, to do more things and and in that regard, I, you know, I believe that education is probably the most important thing, whether it's an advanced degree and associate degree whatever an online degree. Education is very important to keep moving forward. Great. And the last question we have is, Karen, you had brought this up and curious about whether everybody has dealt with this. The idea kind of what you talked about values and morals. You know which some are interpreting as you know kind of contending with potentially corruption or bribery, like how do you, how do you have you face that and how do you address that or manage that, especially if it's kind of a given in some places. I look for us last time. Okay. Sure. Yeah, so I would even broaden it more than that it's like, at every moment, you can decide. Like, you know, I don't want to make this too critical though. When you're the decision maker or a co decision maker, you know, at every stage you can decide like do I want to try to do a short bit here and that can be like, okay, this legal form is probably good enough, or this probably good enough you don't have to yeah. So, every single thing you do. There's a million things to do. You don't have time to do all of them thoroughly, and that's the challenge. And so what you have to do is on a bunch of stuff you have to strategically be like this is good enough, if it fails. I can, I can change it like without much cost right. You're going to get a lot of those things wrong. And I have, for sure, a lot of them. So you think like, Oh, I'll take the shortcut here. And it won't come back to bite me and it'll probably be fine. But if it if it if something comes happens, I'll then fix it when it happens because I don't have time. You know, I could do this in 15 minutes or in three hours, but I have 50 other things to do that each could that same 15 minutes or three hours. So I guess, especially when you begin, there are so many of those and they might not even be a three hour problem it might be a five hour and $2,000 problem where you have to get real good advice from someone to adequately look into make a decision in a way. So I guess every single one of those it's really hard and you just don't know and any one of those could in the end kill you and that's I guess the other challenge is like, you know, so I guess one of the challenges that when you read about it how an entrepreneur failed. It's like, I can tell you right now that the 150 reasons why we're going to fail. And one of them is going to be right. It's just really hard and you just don't have enough time to do every single piece, the way a company with 2000 people can do it. And so if you extend that to kind of corruption bribery questions, it's the same sort of thing it's like, do I want to do this right, and I'm not going to move. I'm not going to pay a bribe to get into this whatever to get access to X. You have to then, and the challenge of that is it's hard to go back and later say, Oh, no, we as a company, we as a, you know, I as a person, morally a poor those who pay bribes like you can't say that after you can only say that once and then you can't. So, I think these are all things that like, I only know my experience on, you know, I mean this is something that everyone who works in any country in the world has to face because it's corruptions everywhere and there's and it's, you you know, right or more overt and more covert in different scenarios. And I won't, I won't say what's right for whoever is working. How we say is I say the foreign corrupt practices act will make me go to jail if I pay you a bribe and I don't want to go to jail. So we're not going to do it. And so far that's been okay for us and we haven't, you know, one, we haven't done anything that I am, you know, at night, awake and worry that someone's going to knock on the door and arrest me. But two, I think also like, you know, those decisions also leech into everything you do as a company. So if, if someone saw or knew that I or someone else, you know, my co-founder took bribes like the whole kind of the moral of the foundations of the company you have to think about as well. And so that might work for you in whatever scenario and you may, you may decide that it's worth the lives you save as a result if you're in a certain area and I'm not judging at all for those that have to make that decision or that decision to make. But for us, that's kind of how we've made it so far as work. Anyone else? So first of all, I think that this question came as like it brought a shockwave into me. Not because I'm involved or anything, but because it really reminded me of like Epic 2006 when it would be like Hannah Arendt's like the dirty hands, which of course is in within a political situation. But yet again, it's, you know, the whole dilemma, the means and the end and everything. It's a very like a powerful thing. I have to say two things. I have two comments. First of all, what I do is not nearly as important or relevant as what Matt and Kahran are doing. For me, like very small, like a, you know, like a butterfly here trying to fly with a noble mission, but I don't like do things that, you know, that require me to do, you know, to have like a very, you know, like I fly under the radar basically. However, this does not mean that I'm immune of things like that because like Matt says, whatever you do, you know, you are confronted with dilemmas. For example, No, before I give you the example, I just want to say that us social entrepreneurs have it like a little bit are a little lucky because usually we're driven by a moral compass and that moral compass in a way helps and sort of like shows you which way. However, there are cases where you could be, you know, facing like a dilemma or, you know, you know, you know, things like which, you know, the way out is not exactly very clear. For example, in my case, I know that many other small businesses in Greece. For example, they try to get things without like proof of purchase, or they sell without proof of purchase, which essentially is black money. I do not engage in that and like sometimes I'm even confronted with that because the person that I buy from they say that they don't want to show the sales, etc, etc, etc, to which almost always I managed to convince them to that this is the way I operate and sometimes they're like the people that do not have like a formal entity a legal entity, but I did find a way to resolve that dilemma because that situation because there is like a certain legal window which allows like individuals to basically sell to businesses without with with some additional paperwork, which I did, however, like I did all the extra miles to, you know, to get them to be legal and to provide them with this opportunity. One could argue well that I in this way by doing things legally I first of all I'm losing money because clearly I'm paying 25% is the 24% is the taxes tax sales tax in Greece so I'm losing money there. And I'm putting myself in a decent vantage obviously because my competitors sell sell sell some similar same things without all these procedures you understand that they have a significant leverage of benefit that I do not share. And yes, people may say that this is even stupid but I think that once that you know you have to play by the rules of the game once you decided to do something because otherwise you know it wouldn't even make sense you know like who would I be trying to keep you know if I try to you know to cut corners. This is one like one like exam one case. One other, but there are, however, and this I have no experience thankfully, but there are some cases which I'm sure like Matt and current will do the more noble things I have faced or have heard of where you know, you have to cut some quarters to get like the greater good to like to have something you know to obtain something that you otherwise could not. And these are really like hard dilemmas and how you go about you know really has to be like a case by case and see how you can like offset if you've done something which is not exactly you know moral or like correct. But my general rule is like try to exhaust the possibilities that you have within the law and try to be creative sometimes you know creativity helps like alternative alternatives help I think or I want to think at least so try to do that because I think this is your springboard if you mess it with yourself then you cannot really move forward that much. Interesting answer. Yeah, I think I'd agree a lot with both of you. I actually as you were talking like I had that I had many thoughts I may have to give like a three part answer but I'll do a try and do it really briefly. I guess the first part I would just kind of talk about is my my father actually so he is this kind of he was an entrepreneur, he is an entrepreneur, excuse me, as I mentioned. He has just like I would meet people who had worked for him and they talk about him in a certain way that like he was like, like just like magical right like it was like he was like literally like like God. It was very mysterious to me like why people walked away with this impression, because I felt like he was relatively normal and like was kind of annoying. What I realized was is something my dad does is he, especially in India, which is a very hierarchical society, he would always treat people like as a person, which I mean it doesn't sound that great I mean maybe sounds more crazy in India that it was here, but he created this sort of like like moral structure within the company that he founded that even as a group to be almost like you know 1500 people people they never had tight controls in the company but but he trusted people and somehow he kind of created that environment. And I would say that that's kind of the thing that I also learned when I was running a company that that people are always watching you. You know you may think they're not but like in some way someone always is and so as you kind of take actions they always you are really setting a tone all the time. Like you know when you, I mean I hate to like to overuse a motif but like you know it is kind of like a slippery slope in some ways right because when you make a judgment. That can lead to other people making other judgments right. I would say the way that I handled what Matt was saying which is like you do have limited time at the end of the day. Is like, you know I always push like, like we tried to hurt the most the least the most vulnerable people least right so the people who are being paid the least which are our tutors which are our students or of course the most vulnerable. Our sales people were, you know, often they're being paid very small compared to the rest of us right so you're trying to like to just cascade your your harm and you and you have to. And that might mean like to give you an example. Oh here here's a real real goddamn annoying example so we happen to have our office on the same street as like this local organizer for the nationalist karnataka like movement. So like there's a karnataka party that is really pro nationalist like pro karnataka like really just that state and they're really pro and so he and like a bunch of nationals leaders had called for a bond, which is like they called for a strike for like was for like a Thursday and it was supposed to continue to a Friday. So he came and sent some people to our office or just like four doors down and was like, you can pay me. Or if I see people come to your office, we will come and break your windows in, and we will like flash everyone's tires and like, you know, we'll talk with you for the rest of time. And you're like, okay. And, you know, I don't know. I mean so we ended up doing is we just closed for two days. And we decided like we're just not going to back up there's like so we closed on Wednesday we open on Monday and we like, like, gave people like the ability to work from home which we hadn't like done for, and we couldn't do for everyone right because we just didn't have enough laptops but there are some amounts of like you can. Anyway, I don't want to get into like the full like we had a bunch of restrictions on what we trust people to do and we had to unpack some of those and say why were they really there. Anyway, long story short, yeah. harm people as little as possible and like try and be as morally upright as you can and do your best. Well, thank you guys for spending the last hour with us and really kind of unpacking this and this will be available for students to watch to that couldn't make it to the time so. So thank you, again, for sharing your experiences and I wanted to ask if any of you have sample business plans would you be willing to share them or let us share them. If you have a sample or anything like that, you know I think for students thinking about it that might be helpful. Yeah, so yeah yeah. Great. And same I'm happy to talk to people on a one if they think I could be useful and I trust law is the name of the pro bono outfit that I was thinking about earlier. I just sent it in there. Thank you guys. Thanks. Good luck.