 What's up everyone, welcome to Simulation. I'm your host, Alan Sokian. We are now gonna be talking about the purpose of startups. We have Dr. Tina Ruseva joining us on the show. Hi, Tina. Hi. Thank you so much for coming on. Thank you for having me. We're super pumped for this episode. For those that don't know Tina's background, she's the founder of Mantessa, which is a matchmaking application that allows people to find the right expert at the right time at work. She's also the author of Big Heart Ventures, which is about the purpose of startups, especially in the next age of technology. You can find the links in the bio below to mantessa.com, Tina Ruseva.com, also bigheartbook.com, and her LinkedIn and Instagram profiles. Tina, let's start things off with one of our favorite questions to ask our guests. What are your thoughts on the direction of our world? The direction of our world. Well, as a tech startup founder, when I'm thinking about our world, I always think about technology and about entrepreneurship. And what we can see is that technology is converging with all the other systems that we have installed with our societal system, with our economical system, with even with our biosystems. And what this does is that the efficiency of technology is becoming omnipresent to all other systems. We are also about, for this, to redefine the way we work, the way we live with each other and also individually. And this is a time that I perceive as a time of transition. And this is the reason why I have written the book and why I'm really thinking about the purpose of everything I do more, because I believe that the efficiency of technology is changing its effect and it's important to gain consciousness back for this reason. So we have this technology that is being democratized across the planet. It's enabling creativity. It's also somewhat, in a sense, we're still spiritually or ethically or emotionally in kindergarten in some ways. We don't know how to be really good stewards of the planet yet. We still commit acts of violence over resources or religious discrepancies or land or all this type of stuff, discrepancies. So how do we go forth with technology being democratized and enabling all these things, while we're not really still spiritually that advanced yet? Well, I don't know if an end state like this is possible at all. What is specifically interesting about what's going on right now is that technology has always been the domain of experts and specialists of people that had a lot of boundaries to overcome, to use it. Think about the installation of a railway system. You have authorities to grant permissions. You have physical circumstances to overcome to build a railway system in the country. With information technology and the way how it democratized itself, technology became accessible for everyone, for us, for everyone. So also for ordinary people and the boundaries to use it became really low. So even now, for example, artificial intelligence is available as a service. Everyone can AI everything. So this is the reason why we need more consciousness about this. But I'm not sure if an end state where we are fully conscious spiritually or however is possible at all. Why don't you think it's possible at all? Because technological progress has always been moving society forward and improving our lives. And if you look back and compare just 10 years backwards, 20 years backwards, 100 year backwards, we're really well off. So we live better, healthier, longer than ever before. Tendency rising exponentially. So I think that technology is an important component in powering humanity and part of us. Yeah, likewise. I see it that way as well. At the same time, I see the desperate need for us to spiritually actualize and re-communic back with creation or the divine or source or God. And it just seems as though human has forgotten source and that we're off playing with God-like technologies while we're spiritually in kindergarten and previous civilizations have collapsed because they've been doing exactly that. And so our wisdom race that we're in to raise consciousness fast enough to be able to deal with the democratized technologies I think is one of the most important things that we're currently experiencing Yeah, go ahead. And maybe it's not something that's lost because we have, in our bodies, we have the ability to sense the right things, the wrong things. So we have actually the, biologically, we are all set to do this and I personally believe I'm a huge fan of technology. I personally believe that it is revealing us to have more time, to find more ways to connect to ourselves. For example, just a beautiful photography of nature is found to reinforce the same chemical reactions in the body as if we would be out there seeing it and experiencing this feeling of, oh, it's found to make us better for a certain period of time. So having the technology to make a lot of beautiful pictures automatically makes us better and more connected and, yeah. Yeah, there's lots of aspects of technology that as they become democratized, they can help us become more spiritually connected and aware. So that's definitely something that will help. Tino, who were you growing up? You grew up in Bulgaria. Yes. What was that like growing up there? And who were you? How did you get interested in what you care about today? Well, I grew up in the 80s in Bulgaria and I love saying that I was born at the same time as the internet, but in Eastern Europe. And it was a time of transition from communism to democracy and a time of constant change. It was actually similar to what we experience now in Western Europe with digital transformation and transformation of society and gaining back consciousness because every transition is connected with a lot of insecurity in people and also with a lot of opportunity. So sometimes I feel that I'm back in the past today. And Bulgaria in this time was a really interesting place to live because it was a place of constant change. So on the one day everyone was forbidden to go to church. On the next day everyone was allowed and had to go to church even. On the one day we had to wear a uniform to school. Just literally on the next day no uniforms were needed. So it was like constant change and I think that this is one of the reasons why I grew up with this sense of purpose because when everything around you is constantly changing you either give up because there is nothing you can do about it. Or you develop something on the inside that you can hold yourself to so that there is at least one sustainable thing in your life. So you found yourself early finding some sort of a deeper meaning or purpose and then going forth with that. I don't know purpose but for me it is more like this integrity. So okay everyone is constantly changing. I have to take care of who I am myself. It was the lack of orientation according to the external environment. And then when did you end up deciding that you wanted to do innovation management, figuring all of this out? Yeah, well I studied computer science. I came after high school, I went to Germany and I studied computer science and journalism. Then I joined a large tech company and I realized that the way I had studied did not prepare me to understand what the technology that we were producing in the company was used for and I wanted to know this. And went back to do an MBA and from the MBA I started the company and the company led me to the innovation management. So it was really a messy process finding this. Yeah, what was the deal when you were growing up? What was the deal with the indecision with the school or the governance with the different rules? Why was it one day like this, the next day like that? Well because of the transition communism to democracy in one day of the year, end of my life suddenly going to church became allowed when the communist regime failed. It was a single day transition. Yes, but also the people, yes, so every, it's difficult for me to talk about this in a foreign language because I have never done so, but when you have, there is in ethics there is this term of natural law. So when you have a natural law for example forbidding people to believe, this is a natural law that cannot be sustained. So there you have different types of coping mechanisms with it. Some people become cynical, some people cope on the outside at least and some people just play games and as a child you are, children are very sensitive against all this so you are percepting all that. So it's period of constant change means that in one day you talk with a person that tells you that everything that's going on has a reason and the other day you speak with somebody that is cynical about it. So you don't have external orientation. It's a difficult subject I believe. Yeah, well especially if it's one day everything has a reason and it's meaningful and it's like nihilism. Yeah, but you know we don't need to get very political but it's also the same in some media today too. And this is frightening, young people are not frightening them but just pushing them back from consuming media. This okay, the one day and the other day are not connected. There is no common purpose combining the effort of politics or initiatives or whatever. There is just this okay, whatever makes me successful. Yeah, this subject is one that is there's times of transitions that have happened around the world for different cultures transitioning maybe towards a more, one could say a more spiritually conducive or a more conducive social fabric to unleashing people's gifts. And so that's ideally where I want to see things move in the direction that it enables people to bring their gifts completely forth and not in a way that squelches people's gifts and doesn't give them the ability to shine. And whatever that fabric looks like I don't think it looks like what we see with echo chambers and capitalism and cognitive ease and the destructive tendencies of war and fighting over resources. We're so spiritually in kindergarten it's so hard to, I'm grateful that at least some places have transitioned to what seems to be more conducive. I have an interesting thought about this just spontaneously. Have you thought about how birds fly in a common direction so they don't talk to each other they just know where to fly? Kind of like swarm mentality. Yes, and then there is this evolution of all animals that learn from all previous species before them a certain behavior. And I have happened wondering why is this not so with people because we are born and then every single baby grows up to learn in their own speed without inducing the behavioral evolution of all the other humans before that. And I just think that it might be that the human life is just too short for this to happen because you say we're spiritually very early on and in the kindergarten maybe we just don't have enough time for us for this inflection point. And this is the interesting thought I wanted to share is maybe this is something that technology is going to help us with because we are increasing longevity and life expectation with technology so maybe it will become possible through that to live long enough to go to the next step so that we also evolve. Fair. Yeah. Everything's possible. So I'm extremely open to that. And it also is a big most pressing issue of our time to figure out how to globally collaborate on the future trajectory of the entire species. So hopefully we can do it everyone. Hopefully we can do it. I have faith in us. Now how did you go from doing your PhD into Big Heart Ventures into doing your authorship? Well it was very easy. So right after my MBA I started my company because I had turned a mother and for the first time in my life I had a problem. I couldn't go to the gym and it was 2009 and rapid internet had arrived to Europe and I just had this idea that if I can't go maybe it can come to me like a little bit like the Mohammed in the mountain and I came up with the idea of the first online gym. I had the company for four years it was successful and I became mother for the second time and it started to get really difficult to be in both roles. And here about consciousness there are a lot of people that think that they have to do this and then they have to do that and I have always asked myself the question why do you do the things that you do and being in front of this dilemma I did something quite I believe I took quite a unique decision I decided to step back from a successful company to take care of my kids because I knew I am the only one that can do this job and I knew that everything else can wait. So stepping back from an interesting very fulfilling life as a startup founder I found myself having a lot of energy so I didn't want to travel a lot but I still wanted to work and do and this is how I came to decide I decided to do the PhD in innovation management. From then on I started teaching and working in big companies on startup programs creating acceleration programs creating ways for young startup companies to cooperate with big departments of corporations and yet it has never been as fulfilling as the startup was so I was asking myself the question okay what am I doing am I the right person to do this aren't there hundreds of thousands of others innovation managers that can do this job what is my unique you know qualification to do this and I couldn't answer this question for myself because my unique qualification was somewhere else and it was definitely as a founder in the creative problem solving space and one day it was somewhere in between the one startup and the other somewhere in between of those 5 years working in innovation management I had this idea of big heart ventures I didn't know what it is but I just stopped and contemplated this expression for several years and with time it started to occur to me what it is and I started playing around I registered the trademark big heart I did a lot of tests so you can find all sorts of flyers I gave workshops on big heart entrepreneurship I really just as a child find a toy in place with it I just played with what occurred to me and at one point it was very clear that it is a book and that it is the big heart ventures book and from the book at the reading events people were coming to me and saying ok I want to do it I also want to have purpose in my life and in my startup and how do I do it how do I find other co-founders that think like this and this is when I decided to start also as a side project the big heart collective as a community together and to expand their own each other's potential so this is a very organic process I'm sorry if I disappoint you but there was no strategy like saying first I'm going to do this then I'm going to do that then I'm going to do this for me life is more of a playground and as soon as you're conscious about what is happening you can learn really a lot and surprise yourself about the opportunities why big heart well big for me is the big reason you're doing something the purpose and for me purpose is never just an ambition just a goal what you want to have everybody wants to have something for me big is how the things that you want to achieve contribute to a better world so it's a very mindful very conscious approach to go setting and you know a journey heart I realized do you know where the word courage comes from it comes from the Latin for core for heart so courage comes from the heart and I realized because I have often very often in my life I have been claimed to be fearless even Randy commissar from Klein Perkins once said that I'm fearless I was so humbled especially because it came in a period where I was really afraid a lot of fear on the inside but then connecting it where does this fearlessness come from and I think it comes from a sense of integrity that I know what is important for me and I know how to listen to my intuition and so this is what big heart stands for because the purpose and heart is the values and I believe that if you're conscious about both of them so where you're going and what are you willing to spend for this what are you not and what are your boundaries of good and bad then you can go really far in a venture being courageous and fearless so that's the event to the event to the explanation of what occurred to me just 5 years ago without any meaning so coming forth from our heart is maybe our destiny or our divine purpose on this planet our gifts and so they're in our soul our spirit or essence and then to be able to kind of like dust off that and bring it forth into the world it's a tough process there's a lot of clearing of this channel of integrating of trauma of healing that has to happen in order for us to come forth with it so then what was big heart ventures when you're doing these readings when you're synthesizing putting together the book what are these key points that you're sharing with people well all key points are connected with technology entrepreneurship and purpose and the one key point is that technology has become so efficient that it is changing its effect you can see this for example in a social network there have always been people with that had the broader interest of the of the mass like the royals the politicians the movie stars but suddenly there was a social network in democratizing connection the ability to reach everybody on this planet and this efficiency transformed the technology that was built to literally connect friends on campus to a technology to build audience for a business so the efficiency of technology changed its effect and there are also many other examples around the financial crisis there was this a lot of conversations about automated trading systems before software emerged and this is why technology is so really important for the conversation before software emerged the job of an investment broker at the stock exchange was to evaluate companies, businesses based on their KPIs but of course also based on their purpose on their long-term vision on what they would contribute to society and so on when algorithms emerged the investment broker was replaced by software that was looking for split second opportunities sometimes that were entirely optimized for short-term gains so this entire purpose thing just fell behind and this whole thing had the name of the shareholder value paradigm has gained a lot of criticism during and after the financial crisis but it's still the predominant way how companies and businesses have run so first key point is the efficiency of technology changed its effect second key point is technology has become so efficient that efficiencies are given so it's not something we should care about your LinkedIn profile right now is an example of efficiency so without you being involved it is out there communicating your mission vision selling the stuff that we sell and so on the second point is so the third point is that given that efficiencies are given and in the face of so many challenges like global warming 70 year in a row the economist is reporting highest forced migration rates in a row we have rising knowledge gaps, skill gaps social gaps in the face of all that and running out of time when efficiencies are given and when technology has empowered us to achieve so much and sometimes really so easily why would you start a company that does no good so there is this next point that this all leaves to a necessity to leave the dichotomy thinking between for-profit and non-profit businesses behind because if you can have all efficiency and if you have so much to solve every business should be profitable and social so those are maybe the main points around technology and entrepreneurship and then it's not a how-to book so you cannot read it and know how to do everything how to build a company, how to do on purpose but I speak a lot about courage and I have like a chapter that's called The Seven Benefits of Purpose so maybe the next last key takeaway from the book is that being conscious about all that and about yourself will really help you go further down the line of achieving your goals and being also fearless what is often times the single one difference between people that do and don't yeah that's profound I agree with you completely so what do we do then when there's this beautiful gift that's cooking within all of us that is like our unique purpose that we want to bring forth and we have to be courageous and fearless with bringing it forth how do we maximize more humans being able to unleash that well good question I tried maximizing this with one on one I did a coaching training with the CTI it's a Californian coaching institute the biggest in the world and I started like helping people on a one on one basis and I realized that this is too slow to you know ineffectful then I thought I should write a book because it's like one to end and then you can reach other people that need this and don't have a coach and the next step in this thinking process was end to end so everyone can help somebody everybody has strengths everyone can can be of use especially in society that is evolving towards not working for money super interesting evolution and my and so with this yes and absolutely and my very first stone laying the underground for this is Mantesa because it's a peer-to-peer matchmaking application that helps people help each other and this is like how how I try to help how I see this and the second thing is just a very direct advice when I my book readings typically start with okay who here wants to have an impact and we are all suckers for impact and all the hands go up and then if you look at the stories of people that really had the impact it was not an overnight success it was not an easy game it was not lack it was typically giving away a lot of power freedom benefits luxury resources for the cause of something for quite some time people want to have kids but then they say oh but it's probably difficult to have kids well if you want to have an impact you have to invest something for this and my piece of advice is if you want to have an impact you have to find something to fight for that makes you forget about the invest that feels like the suffering that we go through yes that feels like a gift to fight for yes yes so for those that maybe have yet to identify with something that is of a higher calling for themselves how do we go about helping people identify their callings does mentessa pairing people does that sort of help people find their callings more effectively or what can really catalyze that well for this I have developed a hard framework tell us about it it's described in the book so it's a step by step process because so many people love processes I'm not the process person but it works and it's just an acronym for a very well known method from coaching and from personal development so age stands for half have all of your values just write down what you think is important to you spirituality for some people it's luxury for some people it's power building stuff whatever whatever it is have as much as you can think of written down this is the age and then there is of your values and values it can be everything because among us words are just labels for things that are different in all of the different heads so write everything that comes up to your mind it might be a sentence it might be a verb it might be just a classic value there are also value lists on the internet where you can download 0200 classified values and write as many down as you think that refer to you and then typically around this process people have several and then comes the E so elect and this is where it gets really interesting because yes we I have a high value on sustainability I have a high value on productivity I have a high value on recognition so how do I combine those three you have to elect what comes before something else the order so you rank the values yes because they trump each other and you might have a great value on sustainability but if you're not prepared to repair your cell phone five times before you throw it away you won't be living up to this value or maybe it's not so important to you as being cutting edge in technology which is also fine and then there is making conscious what is unconsciously in us because we all have values we just don't know what they are and knowing them helps us make decisions more quickly so this is where the A comes into play so this analyze just take every word on this piece of paper that you elected like your shortlist and think about what does this mean to me what does sustainability mean to me is this like saving the planet by building a startup or is it properly dividing the garbage is it being a good mom is it whatever so just analyze what those words stand for because this is one of the things I believe are the major cause about losing track of our consciousness or just of each other in a society we rely too much on words that are labels and that are not the same for everybody and then it gets really easy so the R is for repeat for yeah for repeat so you do this process until you have really little values we know that the human brain can only memorize 3 to maximum 7 values and if you want to be quickly taking the decisions that are really truly rightful for you you have to limit the list so that you can memorize it so that you're conscious and then the last step is I personally find the most effective is testing values so you can maybe you're not sure what is your most important value so try it on for a day go be one day I don't know sustainable every decision that you take this day what you eat, what you buy how you speak to people how you advertise your product how you create new opportunities do everything prioritizing sustainability and then you will see how you feel because as I said in the beginning we have the muscles to know if something feels good or wrong well yeah right or wrong I like this heart process a lot I like it a lot are you one of the process guys I love process and especially when we're talking about how to help people identify what is their most core values with better way than to initially just go and start writing down our core values ranking them and then going through the process of repeating these tests analyzing and repeating these tests with them all this type of stuff and then all of a sudden you have these maybe three or seven core things that you carry around with you whereas other times if we're just walking around we don't actually carry around with us those core things and then it's like other people can program our life rather than we ourselves choosing where we want to go and what we want to do and what value we want to bring to the world and it's all about just making it bringing it on the surface because we all have this it's all in an order within us so we all have like one, two, three, four five, six, seven we just don't know which this is and there is so much noise around us and so much shutevs, massevs you know the smock shute, mast, alt, gatu oh that's it I like that shute, mast, alt, gatu yeah and it's all about it's just just a mechanical bringing it to the surface and I also believe that you know your values can change so it's important to take from time to time the opportunity to re-evaluate what is really important to you some people do it on Christmas others do it every Sunday I guess it's also a personal thing yeah okay so there's these these are they're within us these core values and then we have to then go through a process of identifying what are those we have to like write them down and identify them so are they with us from birth or do they constantly get discovered and changed throughout life maybe they're different when you're 50 than when you're 20 absolutely values have a lot to do with a lot of stuff a lot with the prevailing culture in the country that you live in with the family that you raised for with the relationship that you're having with the experiences that you're doing I don't think values are inborn and this is why it's particularly important to be conscious about them because it's something that we have somehow developed it wouldn't you want to know what you have in your luggage bringing around you because every person develops something else it's something of it's a choice the values and all that so I don't think they're built in there's just so much that plays a role and exactly for this purpose it's important to to take a closer look on that what are your core values it's great that you ask when I gave the TEDx talk in San Francisco last year in November or in October I delivered the questions that I thought were most thought provoking for people to ask themselves and others and one of those questions was what are your core values so it's great that that you're bringing it back up right now but it's also maybe intimidating because then you're asking a person to to show what they're made of it's very intimidating in that sense but it's also becoming comfortable with sharing that is really important I asked it out of curiosity know thyself one of the most important principles know thyself so know thy values yeah that's true yeah in a major understanding of my values feels as though there's a deep drive towards a future of more connection to our divine purpose and nature here on the planet communing more holistically with source and also unleashing all of our gifts so that's one of the core values and just to figure out how to do that is a big challenge in itself for me like just figuring out how to maximize doing that like right now it's like oh is it is it having more interviews with leaders is it taking a slower down on that to focus on a larger synthesis and distributing multimedia content putting it together into really um like first principled values and like a book format like what are the ways to most effectively achieve this and are the trajectories already determined already are we already going in what are your thoughts on that on free will and determinism I'm all for for the unlimited opportunities that we can create for ourselves so I don't have proof of this other than my own experience but the other perspective I just don't find appealing enough which one a perspective of pre-determination I just a boring game so why play this and it also we might be in the kindergarten as you said of spirituality but we can look back to thousands of years of humanity and centuries and what we see is a development towards a better life isn't this like a justification for for the power of self for the power to create for the power of humanity to create yeah that definitely seems to be a big part of it yeah it's like trying to figure out if everything's happening for the purpose of maximizing meaning and consciousness and experience and creativity is helping us with that process and it's on its exact perfect path that it's on or if we diverted away from a holistic steward ship oriented divine alignment with source and we're just thinking that technology is great and that it's enabling more stuff to happen but the tree is growing like this, crooked instead of the tree growing straight I agree with you I just believe this is part of the process to find out how to do it because there is nobody knows so how to and going into this direction going from a social system to a social system from an economic system to a next from a way of patience on one planet this way or that way this is just a learning process that needs to take place for us to learn or to approach this divine how do you call it the ultimate state of consciousness yeah there is no answer on how to do this now the only way to change something is to to act so we cannot change the world by discussions but we have to try different things on so I agree with you and maybe we are on the path, maybe we're not I believe it doesn't matter because both will teach us what to do next what does those three things that we were talking about earlier what is kind of there let's list them quick it was purpose entrepreneurship and was it innovation technology purpose entrepreneurship and technology yeah where do those three things come so I write my values down I go through this process of getting to know myself better and what I want to do in the world and then how do I like leverage entrepreneurship and technology to bring forth my my values great question so the thing about technology becoming exponential so we have the industrial revolution going on it's the revolution that creates exponential productivity in the first industrial revolution we had created mechanical productivity so we stopped producing hands and left the work to machines in the second industrial revolution we gained automatic productivity so we we or maybe no let's say how to put it with the invention of the electricity we stopped the machines and gained the mass productivity of having a machine being powered by electricity then software came and we gained automatic productivity and now we are about to gain with artificial intelligence and exponential technologies exponential productivity and there is a very simple Chinese story that in my opinion illustrates exponential productivity very good it's the story about a Chinese man that invented the game of chess for his king do you know the story no so the king really loved it and he said oh great I want to grant you one wish in return as a sign of thanks what would you want and the old man was supposedly very wise he said I only want some grain with grain but I want it in a specific order I want one piece of grain to be put on the first square of the chess board two on the second four on the third eight on the fourth and this makes the exponential function and on 64 squares on a square board just on 64 squares it makes 70.5 quintillion with grains which is more than all the sand corns on all the beaches on our planet right now which is more than the largest wheat manufacturer China can produce in 6000 years so this is like really fast really much and this is what we are gaining now and I love that your show is called the simulation because there is a running deck among techies that in the future it will be the probability that you are part of a simulation will be higher than that you're part of a reality because there will be still one reality but exponential number of simulations creating themselves all the time so to come back to the question having this productivity of technology this really unleashed efficiency and power technology startups technology entrepreneurship has become a massive the most impactful the most powerful way to change tech companies have a higher impact on society on the economy on the well-being even on a personal level than any public program has ever had and then being aligned with your purpose and with your values I as an entrepreneur happen to believe that the best way to pursue a goal is there for a technology to a tech startup and then what would I do with my values and wanting to bring them forth with technology and entrepreneurship like what would be some of my first principled movements towards unleashing my values here it gets really interesting because most entrepreneurs want to have an impact and want to create change and they start the majority of us start by truly purely by good intentions we all want to save the world and everybody wants to have their share and contribute but if you're not clear about the values you will soon face resistance because what is impact impact is you push and then the third law of mechanics is you get pushed back so if you're really about to have an impact you're going to face resistance and the story of resistance almost always goes like this first you are a good person then you want to have an impact then you start having impact and then you face resistance and to lose something that you like and if you're not conscious about why you're doing the things that you do and what is like how is that contributing to a larger world you will not do a lot of wrong if you say oh no I just changed my direction and this little inflection point when you are taking the right or the wrong decision consciously is not something really big it's not a strategy that you create with a big team and you paint on the wall it's something that you do all day long every day with every conversation that we have with every little list decision that you have and to unleash your potential through a tech startup I believe it's very important to date when with technology you can have a massive and rapid impact on the other end of the planet within days about what you really want to achieve and really focus on that as on a lighthouse because otherwise what we what we've seen a lot in the past 15 years since I have been in this field and also since tech startups have been around because they have always been around they have only been around since the internet in the past 30 years and then a few emerged so it's not it has this tech entrepreneurship thing has only been around for 20-30 years and dogma and frameworks have only emerged in the past 15 so it's a very very fresh thing too so if you want to really be impactful you should be able to resist resistance and you do it with courage and courage comes from your values and from knowing what you're doing it for from the purpose and it's something about day-to-day decisions little little little steps what we've seen is to finish my thought a lot of startups start with a purpose to solve some problem and then they run out of money and then they say okay we need to fundraise and suddenly solving the customer's problem is something on the side next to the first purpose returning the investors' money and it totally shifts your focus so one thing is really to be mindful about those choices because nobody has said you need an investment or you need a lot of customers or you need a big company or you need whatever you have the freedom to decide to do just the right things but it requires the courage to look at the look at an open-ended road rather than I want to be famous within 5 years to come to Forbes 30 and 30 or whatever yeah yeah that's really critical advice so we're initially going to face a lot of resistance when we take our values and we want to push them forth with entrepreneurship and technology even when we do successfully maybe get through the first couple steps there's going to be even more resistance on the next couple steps and you're just going to keep facing resistance as you keep going and so to persevere through that with great amounts of courage is important also to be patient so that it's not about some sort of like I want to get super high super fast but that it's more about just I want to provide value to other people at whatever pace I am aligned with the divine purpose to bring yeah and then there is no failure because if you are on purpose if you're driven by the desire to create a better world you created with every single one of those efforts with every single one of those little inflection points overcoming resistance created by the world by every conversation that we have by every check that you pay or get it is failure by definition disappears and a lot of the talk about failure is because we define a very narrow very egocentric goal like I want to have those things by this moment and of course this is something that can fail purpose can never fail and I actually start my book with the mission of the Chinese aerospace team that reached the dark side of the moon at the beginning of this year and it's a really really important definition underlining thing so they had the purpose to reach the dark side of the moon which was not yet reached by humanity it's difficult to reach and not accessible for our satellites and the purpose of the mission was to reach this side no, the purpose of the mission was to reach this side so that we can learn about the dark side of the moon and by this about the entire moon and by this about the entire universe and by this about our own place in it better so this is the purpose their mission was successful to reach the dark side of the moon but even if they hadn't landed the purpose wouldn't have failed because the purpose is to learn about all the stuff so I think what really purpose gives you is the freedom of failure and the freedom for courage and this is why it is so profound I like that to be from failure and you're more free to be more courageous and to persevere and to be driven by purpose rather than be driven by any materialism or fame or yeah I heard a talk by Simon Sinek from a new book he's working on it's called the Infinite Game and he says a lot of what we do in society and business in particular we play as a finite game is defined by it's pretty fine it has a beginning and an ending and you know all the rules and all the players from the beginning but the world is not like this you almost never know the rules you almost never know the players and there is actually no ending so if you play the infinite game focus on purpose and on what I really want to contribute you're just laying the stones and maybe you will not be the one that reaches to the end of the road but you're laying the stones for others to come and eventually reach this point and this is why no large social revolution has been driven by one person most of them have been a series of small events destinies of individuals that were needed in order for this one moment for this one flagship event notorious journalistically represented thing to happen so that the entire system changes that's a great way to put it is that if you follow your purpose that it's you're laying down the stepping stones and that the goal isn't to finish paving the path the goal is to just keep laying down stepping stones for more people to be able to bring their gifts forth and build a more better world just think about the book because I know you're working on something too and I have recently published The Big Heart Ventures and I did a little bit of research on author being a writer in Germany is the second most desired profession in Germany is a country with 88 million citizens do you know how many full time registered authors writers live in Germany around 8000 wow so being at the second most desired profession and having that little writers such a big country that is also wealthy so it's not just a matter of can I earn with this or not there is a lot of fear so people who write books typically very often do not publish them out of the fear will it be successful, will it be recognized so now if you think about the purpose of the book and this is how I wrote my book if you do this if the book is purpose driven and my purpose was to start this conversation about the influence that technology can have and our responsible role as entrepreneurs in it better then you are achieving this I am already living the purpose of having this topic be in the conversation without having the need to sell the book or the book to be successful or to become a successful writer because this book is not about me it is about this topic and no matter if it's well written or poorly or whatever it is already creating or co-creating this movement towards purpose sustainability away from shareholders value so it's just one of the pieces that are also necessary to to some when reach the critical mass and change the way we do business yeah so when we move from a place of selflessness when we move from a place of purpose of a divine co-creation of knowing that we may just be putting down some of the foundational stuff for others to walk down it just makes it so that our contribution to society feels more whole every step of the way and it doesn't feel like we're ever lacking some sort of I'm lacking resources or I'm lacking some sort of like a shareholder return or all these other types of things but we still need our basic needs met so that kind of makes it also a little bit complicated because we do need like investing so much time into something we want to have our basic needs be met so that we can continue being creative yes but I have never said selflessness selflessness? selflessness no see this is the problem right now we think either you're there for the profit or you have to be selfless so it's like money or love I don't believe this technology has empowered us to be both and I don't think in extremes I believe that if we want to become better we need to be looking for ways to do both so it's really it's definitely not the selfless game because this is something that is eating you up and is actually making the impact less interesting there is a lot of evidence for this for example how our health system works so social jobs that are known to be done by people that are purpose driven that do them not for the money but because they want to help typically are worse paid typically people in those professions need to retire earlier because they are burnt out and we know that this has not contributed to a quality of service in this area so it has to be there has to be an equilibrium what I'm saying is that when you're trying to do a business try not to do it to become famous which startups are known for or founders try not to do it to become rich which very few successful companies are known for try not to do it to be cool because entrepreneurship is not a whole game it's actually very often a very mundane set of activities that need to be done and if you're not doing it for any of those reasons but you're doing to really solve a problem or to really help somebody or to really help the whole humanity make one step in one direction then you're going to be successful by definition yeah I love the amount of time that you've passed on figuring out this being able to communicate to other people and inspire them thanks Tina, yeah thanks for doing this thank you I like this a lot is mantesses available for people to also download and use and big heart ventures available buy and read and share yes, so mantesse cannot be downloaded, it's a web app but you can try it on a website the book is available on Amazon or in every large book shop in Germany there is nothing else I sell maybe the big heart collective so if you people want to join and meet other purpose driven entrepreneurs the community is available under bigheartcollective.com and there is not much more I have a couple other questions that we ask her guests that I want to ask you what is your relationship with God or Source or the Divine or Creation, what's your relationship with that I told you my opinion about words being labels so I am always very cautious when people misuse a label not with its purpose to make a shortcut to something on the inside but dogmatically so for me all of that is like the same there is the conscious connection to yourself or it's lack and there is the power to believe in something better or there is not so this is how I see all those labels words do you know what I mean so your relationship with those words is the words take away from your connection to it this is a good point I haven't talked about this yet yes I feel the words are superfluous is this the right word so it's I think one of the reasons for religion to be where it is is that it started relying way too much on words and maybe way too little on the purpose of those things so be it the one religion or the other or just believe in yourself those are all words that are different for every person and our own unique ways of communing with that the higher power is so important and I just feel like it's there's a great amount of lacking in our world of I just do feel like humans have forgotten that higher power in many ways and that maybe technology can help us remember that higher power it does definitely feel sometimes like really fast computers or like really fast internet feel like on the one hand side we have automated ourselves a lot but on the other we have gained a lot of free time and people are starting to meditate again and we have evidence from really spiritual societies from thousands of years before so I don't necessarily believe it's a downward trend maybe it's like a cyclic development and I do believe that all of what is happening is needs to be so that the next the future comes what would you say about the spirit or the soul meeting the body for this adventure of consciousness or do you feel like consciousness emerges from the biological yeah absolutely and there is so again consciousness emerges biologically all words, labels but I do believe that each and every one of us has felt it sometimes somebody says a word and suddenly we feel it somehow and for a long time this has been an esoteric subject but with technology again with computer tomographs and so on a lot of advances in neuroscience have been made showing the connection between the mind and the body and depending on in what regard you consider spirituality being part of the mind or a mind characteristic it has been proven so to say that what people assumed thousands of years so far is true do you feel like we come from somewhere beyond this body into the body for experiencing consciousness? I haven't thought about it maybe I'm not on my journey there yet to think about those subjects but I am very much a fan of being here and now so I love thinking about stuff and every person who wants to write a book needs to be a little bit of you know philosopher to write spinning thoughts, to like spinning thoughts but I am more concerned about really this consciousness of now what is now available what is now possible what is the next step and the only thing that really next to this matters for me is the great purpose that I want to spare my time for do you feel like our disconnection from nature from source do you feel like that's the reason why we have so many of the problems in our world? I don't know actually sitting here and looking out of your window I feel you're very connected to nature California is a beautiful place where it feels like at least from the outside it feels very much it seems very much like people are living very close to nature also in Bulgaria so I don't know when you're not in the downtown L.A. or downtown San Francisco or Oakland, San Jose etc when you're more like near the woods or near the ocean or what not you're definitely more holistically connected here and I'm sure in Bulgaria and other places in the world as well that if you're in the metropolis the downtown city center feels like the matrix but when you're outside near the woods and what not it feels less so like that would you say that we're in a simulation? good one why would you want to know what difference would it make? understanding our source code is very important so if we understand our source code then maybe we understand the ultimate nature of this reality and that makes it easier for us to potentially solve some of the big problems and big challenges that type of stuff yeah and on the other hand side if you if you describe if you explain a three year old how how a car is built or a solar panel he would still or she would still not be able to build it because they would lack for example the physical strength to bring up the tools and you know so it's always the right time with the right resources with the right purpose that need to come together for something to emerge what do you think is the most beautiful thing in the world? children's eyes yeah just the ingenuity and the curiosity and and how to say uncoloredness of emotion the ability to to witness something without the judgment absorbed by the desire just to witness it not even consciously to learn because we grown ups are like okay let me witness it so I improve so I get better just to witness yes I just think there is nothing more beautiful than this I love it this has been such a fun conversation Gina for me too thank you for inviting me I'm so happy you came on thank you thank you for joining us on the show thanks a lot and good luck with your book and with your project thank you and likewise same thing with you thanks everyone for tuning in we greatly appreciate it we'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below on the episode let us know what you're thinking also do have more conversations with your friends workers people online about purpose about your values about how to unleash those values into the world leveraging technology leveraging entrepreneurship to bring those forth also check out the links in the bio below to mantessa.com also tino rooseva.com bigheartbook.com check out our social profiles as well check those out everyone support the artists the entrepreneurs the spiritual leaders the organizations around the world that you believe in paypal links find all those below you can design cool merch and get paid also go and build the future everyone manifest your dreams into the world we love you very much thank you for tuning in and we will see you soon peace