 I believe that there is no better voice than self of the youth, and that's why President Shinchea was very kind under the framework of the Child Health Protection, for which she is the global patron for IPU. Protecting children in cyberspace is one of the greatest challenges that we are facing today, and President Shinchea has been very much committed to that, and we commend her leadership, and we are delighted that she is bringing the youth today here together in San Jose, Costa Rica. Today is the day of the youth as well. It's the children's day today, so there's no better time than this. Thank you very much, Minister Garnier. Think of why are we doing this experience that has been extremely useful of how education can be empowered by using DIC. This conference gains importance because our greatest question today is how can we allow a good internet connection to every student in every educational center? And the third reason is that in order to understand how we can implement these things, I think the best way is to ask the youth themselves. The youth that the young boys and girls of technology goes beyond anything we're thinking about, so we need to listen to the words of our youth to learn how to take our next step forward. Thank you very much, Akma. You are the first U.N. Secretary General, and boy on youth. Can you explain to us what we have a larger audience perhaps? And I look forward to the discussion. I really like the setting, so I really look forward to it. Going back to your question, the first envoy, I just wanted to quote Mr. Hamduturi, who just had an exchange of ideas before we entered the room, and we're talking about the challenges that young people are facing. And he said something very interesting, that many people around the world are not truly aware of the scope of the problems that we're facing right now. It's just the fact that more than 500 million jobs need to be created in the next 15 years. And with that in mind, we need to invest more in the youth. We need to realize that the world population, most of them are under 25 years old. So part of my job and part of the mandate that I've been given to the U.N. has been to, first of all, allow people to realize the opportunity and the challenges that we are facing if we don't invest in the youth. There's a great opportunity when we invest in half the world population, but there are also normal challenges that are facing them from access to quality education to find decent world opportunities and to access to a healthcare system. My focus and my mandate is, first of all, to bring more harmonization to the work of the United Nations on youth. As you know, the U.N. has a very big system, has many different agencies that are already doing different types of youth projects. We need to harmonize the U.N. work on youth. And now for the first time ever, we have a common strategy for the U.N. and youth called Systemwide Action Plan N with this. One common strategy for the youth, bring more coordination to our work and also to bring more commerce to cooperate with us. We also focus on advocacy and to advocate for a stronger youth attitude around the world and youth policy. And we need to ensure that the governments and private sectors do more for youth. We're also focusing on promoting more access points for young people to work with the United Nations. Participation is one of the top priorities in my agenda because I believe that nothing for the youth should ever be done without the youth participation. We can't talk about youth without involving youth in the discussion. My objective here is to make sure that we are bringing help to the youth in a structured way through the United Nations. That's why the Secretary General of the U.N. announced that we'll have a youth advisory ball for the U.N. country teams and the country government. And also with the close cooperation of Mr. Soya and we're also promoting regional youth forums and finding more ways of bringing people to work with the United Nations. And last but not least, we also need to realize that we need to increase investment in youth issues and we need to work with youth leader organizations and one of the guiding principles of our work is to partner with the youth and fully partner with youth organizations and that's why I'm looking forward today to hear ideas of how the U.N. can work with you. Thank you very much. You have a very great responsibility and we are very happy to have you representing us. Ambassador Osorio, it is a privilege for us to have the President of the EcoSoc. You compliment perfectly the work of Mr. Ahmad. And while he's a special envoy of the U.N. Secretary, you are the elected president of one of the most relevant and powerful U.N. bodies. Could you tell us why youth matters for the EcoSoc? Economic and social council. And thank you very much. And first of all, let me tell you how delighted I am to be here in this gathering that is producing a tremendous energy in this room. And we are here to exchange views and to hear your voice together with maintaining peace and security and defending human rights. The Economic and Social Council is one of the pillars of the U.N. and it's the one that goes out and is in touch with the real world. And it's the one that should be received and create the necessary environment for concrete recommendations of economic and social policy. And youth, of course, is at the center of what we are building for the future. When we think that more than 1.2 billion people in the world are between the age of 15 and 25 and out of those people, there are more than 73 million who are unemployed. The responsibility of those who are in charge of policymaking and of creating an environment that will allow this youth to truly participate and to give them truly a part in what will be the building of the future is an essential responsibility of the international community. So, in a way, what we are as members of the U.N. and specifically of this council, it's to create an environment that in the case of science and technology and innovation and participation of the youth in these areas, we could look forward to promoting openness, transparency, accountability and effectiveness. Those are the areas in which by way of acting, of innovating, of participating in shaping our future, that's how the youth can contribute enormously and we are there to facilitate to create this proper atmosphere and a proper environment to develop these ideas. So, we need to be very conscious about the revolution. I was going to say we're witnessing, but we're not witnessing it. We're actors in this revolution and the youth are the main actors of this revolution because you are there to try, you're there to think and you're there to challenge those who think they are right. And so, this is important in the sense that when you promote and when you ask for access to information, we are in the middle of a major political issue worldwide which is access to information which implies political responsibility and economic facility. So, in these areas, perhaps we can go back, but when we talk about access to information and how important it is, especially you who are in this permanent communication and access to media, you need to also think, as we're thinking as policy makers, how we can guarantee this access and how to be this access to information as a responsible activity. Thank you very much, Dr. Touré. Building up on what Ambassador Sodja was just mentioning, why does the summit put so much emphasis on the role of ICTs and what do you think is the link between ICTs, youth and social change? Well, all this and all the latest changes in the revolution that we're living in today has been driven by information and communications technologies. The particular feature of information is one thing when you share it, it multiplies, anything else when you share it is divided. And that's the power of the tool that we have in our hands today. How do we make good use of it? Well, there are some downsides. We talk about cybersecurity, but that downside should not overshadow the positive things that come out of it. We're gathered here today in this conference. And this conference goes beyond these walls of this room. We are talking about 4 to 500 people gathered here in this room, but we have thousands of people gathered around the world. We have 30 countries, 50 hubs in those 30 countries, 3,000 people, from developing countries, and some of them do not have access to the internet. And therefore, we're really organizing the most inclusive conference ever and using the power of communication. So we're also giving the voice to the younger generations because this is about them. We're expecting them to find solutions and to tell us what is the future day and how they want to achieve it. And we are hoping that during this meeting we will be taking this issue to the United Nations, to the General Assembly, and to the other levels of the UNN so that together we can build the future that you will be proud of. Thank you very much. Mr. Leonardo, youth is always linked to education, although many countries are still a luxury to have quality education. As Minister of the Education of Costa Rica, what do you think are the main challenges that you are trying to address through the programs and policies indicated by your ministry? Well, I believe that the link between youth education and development is key. Costa Rica, like most other countries in Latin America, has great challenges to break the vicious circle of poverty. This has been a continent where for many decades development strategies depended on the use of cheap labor who was underskilled, undereducated with poor salaries, low productivity, and on the other hand, on an abusive use of our natural resources. In the last 30 years, Costa Rica has been going through a process of learning how to take advantage of or how to make use of a youth population that is sophisticated, that is able to work focused on innovation processes and very closely hand in hand with sustainability of the environment and the youth have been key in this effort. How the new generations perceive environmental sustainability in a way that we have never even dared to dream the way they approach the production sectors with an idea of innovation, of research, of collaborating and problem solving and this focuses on challenging and structuring education differently of how we did in the past and something that finally is perhaps the most important point of all is that the new generations need to learn how to do these things from the perspective of sharing, of living with each other that's the greatest challenge of all. We often talk about the soft skills in a very abstract sense but in our daily lives from early primary schools both boys and girls need to learn how to work together not despite their differences which is often how we word it but precisely by enjoying and making the most out of these differences when these technologies allow the youth worldwide to share with each other it's a very powerful tool for arts, sciences, economy there are very creative solutions when the youth worldwide has access to these tools and are able to work on these challenges together and of course we need to educate them differently Thank you very much Mr. Gernier was talking a lot about collaboration between different disciplines and different countries and perspectives from all over the world. Ahmad, in your view what is the role that ICTs is playing in pairing youth around the world in both developing and developing countries how do you plan to emphasize this role in your new world well first of all let me ask how many people have Twitter here well how many people have Facebook accounts of course that goes without saying I'm just teasing you well I think that there's a correlation now between the youth and the ICTs you can't mention ICTs innovation without mentioning the youth you can't mention in youth in any event we're starting to talk about how we can use ICTs this goes without saying and it's clear that some of the greatest inventions when it comes to ICTs were led by young people and when I say it's clear I don't even make the case of the need for ICTs however many people tend to forget or take them for granted do you know why we take ICTs for granted because they're so accessible for us ICTs are invisible because we take them for granted but if we don't have internet in this room we'll realize it becomes a big issue for all of us we were talking about how we can connect to the internet right now so it's an invisible too but believable or not it's not truly invisible because it's not accessible to many people around the world more than two thirds of the world population is still offline and this is a big challenge for all of us affordability, accessibility, availability and applicability as well for the youth availability in the sense that how many people around the world today have internet available to them in terms of services sometimes you know that in 31 countries where broadband connection is the least affordable the cost of subscription to broadband internet equals to half of your salary and how can we talk about accessibility in these conditions it's not accessible in this case and the second point here is whether it's affordable or not but the third is whether it's applicable or not in many different languages we still don't have enough materials enough content for people to be able to access the internet and to use that information that is available on the internet and the barrier language I think that's another issue that we need to address why the debate of being important we need to realize that first of all it's not accessible to everyone yet and it's not affordable to many people around the world and the work of the UN we are trying to use this while we are acknowledging the fact that it's still not accessible to many young people around the world just last week I launched an online platform for the youth to bring all the work of the UN agencies on youth on one single place where you can access information about the work of the UN agencies on youth so it's a venue, a platform that even with the makes the work of the UN more accessible but I think we still need to do more more in terms of making sure that the internet is more available to people that the information is more available but also guess what, electricity 1.3 billion people around the world still don't have electricity so for them to talk about ACTs is like talking about something that's still very far away together, what we're debating in this forum is extremely important we're not talking about ACTs for the sake of ACTs we're talking about ACTs as an enabler for the world we want for post-2015 development agenda how can we make sure that ACTs continue to drive our innovation and the way we think about our future while we're still thinking about those who might be left behind so we don't want to leave anyone behind and to make that we need to make sure by focusing our efforts on all the population and having a new development agenda and also to continue working on our millennium development goals so I urge you to think about ACTs as a tool and making sure that the world we want is something achievable and that our new millennium development goals will continue with our commitment to them but also we need to think about how being active and achieving this millennium development world and one last word here the world that we want is not just what you are it's a world for everyone and when you meet here you realize the power that ACTs can give every single one of us so that nobody is voiceless anymore we all have a voice but we need to give voice who are still voiceless thank you very much I totally agree with you this invisible tool is something that we need to keep in mind very often Ambassador Osorio this summit is about the ideas and use of the youth but also has an important objective about addressing the role of ACTs in the UN post-2015 and development agenda how do you describe the role of ACTs for development then which sectors are the most to drain in your opinion and also taking into consideration this invisible tool and do you think that ACTs are well understood and promoted by countries and by decision makers yes I think that what Hamanda has just said gives me the basis to develop a little bit in this regard by 2015 it's not just a casual reference 2015 is the year in which after 15 years the millennium development goals are supposed not to end but to be evaluated when the heads of states in 2000 established these goals especially geared to facilitate the development in developing countries that's why we're talking about eradicating poverty access to primary school, gender equality the reduction of child mortality all of these aspects were very much focused on the human improving the lives of human beings and providing better conditions for life so now when we evaluate and this council is going to devote all of the year 2014 to focusing on how in the 193 countries these goals have been implemented and how they've been developed for governments to have these goals has been a tremendous tool to gear the government programs and to establish specific targets after Rio Plus 20 the conference that was held last year we're focusing on a more universal and comprehensive approach we're going to talk about sustainable development goals which are the basis for general sustainable development and this is where ICT's and the innovation that is involved in youth in these tools is going to be a cross cutting issue in which the contribution to the illustrative goals that we're talking about not just simply 8 but 18 that cover food security, energy the way to deal with cities how to provide maintenance to rural area how to provide better healthcare wherever you go you will see that technology, information innovation will contribute and will be a necessary tool to make these objectives more approachable so I think that we have here a tremendous challenge and this challenge is that of using all of these tools that we have in our hands to contribute to the sustainable development and it's not just about how to improve the live in a few development countries it's how the developed countries are going to contribute to maintaining and sustaining this planet there is a figure that many of you will be familiar with because it's often repeated the planet that we have currently if we want to keep it as it is we need two and a half planets in order just to keep it as is which is already in a quite deteriorated state and in 2050 we're probably going to be 9 billion people not 7 and these people are going to eat twice as much food that we consume today and if we don't use the tools of innovation to create an environment in which all of the issues that are challenging us will be possible then we'll be in real trouble thank you very much we have more questions for our panelists but we want to open the world to the floor in case that you may have questions prepared questions that you would like to ask our panelists please raise your hand there's one there thank you very much can someone help me with the microphone over here there's a gentleman over here who also has a question good morning my name is Carlis Sanchez and my question is for the special envoy of the UN we're talking about there are a lot of things to do we heard it mentioned of the president of New York we need two planets and a half to be able to sustain the planet as is how we, the youth can participate directly in our communities to make a change what is our participation are we taken into account are we really being taken into account thank you very much how the youth can participate let me just tell you how I understand myself the world that we want or this debate about what are the issues of how individuals can contribute to tackle the global challenges we're facing the fact is if we look at most of our present challenges there are global challenges by nature and to respond to these challenges we need a global response as well we need to promote global partnerships but the question what is the role of individuals especially young people in joining forces and all of these efforts to understand post 2015 agenda is similar to the world of social contracts but it's a development country it's a valuable contract that defines responsibilities for everyone on this planet and that's why I said it's not just the job of the UN or of the governments alone it's the responsibility of everyone to ensure that as Mr Osorio said we need two planets and a half and I think that's important to remember that when you talk about plan B but we don't have a planet B we only have one planet and we need to figure out how we can make it sustainable to do that I encourage all of you and all of the youth organization to look at the MDGs and align their work with those of the MDGs to make sure all the work that we do at the local level is in line with our global agenda we're trying to define a global agenda for development what the UN will continue to do is provide venue for all actors to meet and to see ok these are our challenges these are our opportunities and this is the way forward but we need everybody to be on board what I'm hoping for is for young people to continue participating in studying our new development of Joldenba but while we're talking about this we keep true to the title of this conference Beyond 2015 so let's define our work not by 2015 but beyond 2015 something we're considering now for all of us to applaud and see how we're going to contribute to make this agenda implemented and to kind of fit the presentation so once again I don't think it's just for the job of one party or two I think youth organizations have a critical role in implementing the post 2015 development agenda and I want to challenge you back by saying how can we come out of this meeting with concrete ideas to ensure that the youth can continue to participate in the implementation of our development agenda post 2015 and this can be something that is very important to carry out the general assembly this year exactly and I think we are here to hear from you the youth this is your future that is at stake we don't want to we want this to be about you we want you to be part of it and let us know what we can do or simply tell us to step out of the way if we're getting in the way those are the types of things that we're expecting from you here and we are expecting to be challenged when we see so many young and bright people in a single room together and the opportunity is open when I was 20 I didn't have the same opportunity but today we hope that you have this opportunity to tell us what you want and President Chinchilla will be taking your message very strongly the President of IKOSOK is here we have all of the regions here together to try to have a partnership this is a partnership we're here to hear from you and there are tools that are in your hands today that are in the hands of many people out there we're in the information society today our next goal is to enter the knowledge society what is a knowledge society it's a society where everyone has access to information but as Amit said access is not enough you need to be able to use the information and using information is simply not enough you have to create information every citizen on this planet needs to have that potential has that potential to create information and that's the power that we have here regardless of where they're coming from whether it's developed or developing countries and therefore we're giving you a tool that gives you equal opportunity to everyone and last but not least I told you that the three pinnacles for access to information using information and creating information last but not least sharing information and then we enter a knowledge society what a beautiful society we want to create here that society will address all of the key issues of our planet we talk about the millennium development goals education, health, food ICTs can be a part of the solution for each of these cases climate change is one of the fundamental challenges that we're facing today through satellites monitoring and the use of ICTs we can save this planet any major issue that has been addressed lately the food crisis for example about four years ago I'm sure that all of you remember the food crisis well you would ask me what does the FCTs have to do with it ICT is not part of the problem there the food crisis in the world is not due to the lack of food it's the distribution chain that is wrong ICT can help make sure that food does not go twice around the globe to reach its destination and that it will be affordable those are the things that we are expecting from you and that's important to engage with you here in this room today we're starting a dialogue that will continue long beyond this conference thank you very much Ambassador Osorio I would like to add the importance that we need to the possibilities of contribution it's enormous the main thing has always been science, technology, education and iteration one one of the things we are looking for is how to participate on how we are organizing the Geneva in the month of July it's very interesting the innovation fair and implementation form it was a showcase of potentially all the technological and how to improve the sustainable lively food and to give you an example for example the company called Qualcomm created an educational platform which provided access to massive online courses for creating mobile applications you are familiar with that and every day we discover applications and the heart of this company is for young people who are working taking these options of mobile courses and developing different initiatives I think here it's not what what we tell you you can do you actually tell us every day what we can do for you with innovation with accent thank you very much and thank you all for lots of opinions and perspectives and challenges that you have given us now we are going to illustrate before closing the panel please stay with us we are going to illustrate now and we are talking also around Mr. Garnier said the need of collaboration we are not alone just that access here sorry I have a question here I'm sorry excuse me I can't see you but please go ahead we are going to do a brief question and then we go to the video okay my name is Biland I come from Qatar my question is connecting people everywhere on the globe with internet it's something nice this initiative how can we ensure that us as youth and you as policy makers will not turn this into a global big brother program or initiative just to have access to everyone's data information prying and spying it's the question actually it's a statement let's hope we can see this topic well under two debates so thank you now we are going to see the video it's not only people who are here but but following from the hub but I mean the many needs that have been stated during the last few months and then we are going to present a video made shot in Mumbai, India this is a message from reality give stand we recorded a message for you because it will be very late at night here when you are talking it is funny talking about what computers could do for our future it's a message for education but the reality is that at the moment we don't have enough computers in our school or our homes so the first thing we would like is very simple we would like computers for everyone everywhere we want computers with a reliable internet connection that are cheap enough for poor people to buy if people are rich they can pay more for computers and technologies if they are poorer companies they need to make computers and technologies cheaper so that they can afford them ITC shouldn't just be for rich people every person who wants a personal computer should be able to have one we want things to be equal we think that every person in all countries should have computer classes and be educated to use ICTs also we want our teachers to have better equipment like projectors so that they can teach us better we think that better ICT equipment will improve our education in science again in science medicine and many more things education gives better opportunities education gives us knowledge and can help people to have a better standard of living it will improve our lifestyles and give us a bright future it is not only our education but everyone's education but it's not only computers that we want everyone to have we want everyone to have education we want everyone to have safe water access to healthcare and hospitals we want everyone to have food maybe in the future computers can help with this these are our ideas for the United Nations new goals we hope you like our video thank you very much this is a very clear message one of the many youths around the world are speaking and they are looking forward to addressing we want to thank you all so very much in this panel now I'm going to invite you all to be challenged and to really take into consideration what we have discussed this morning from now on try and apply it in everything that you're going to be discussing learning and listening so that it can really become something part of our culture and we will sign our declaration thank you so very much so we also want to remind you we want to be involvement in social networks with these discussions that we're having here please do remember the hashtag for Twitter is BYND 2015 to share your thoughts further questions ideas etc through there now we want just to explain that from now on and change the world we hope you enjoy and the director of strategic partnerships who will be moderating with Anapras thank you Melissa I'd like to invite the speakers under the panel please join me gentlemen I'm missing one person well Howard is getting mic'd I just want to say this is going to be a little bit different so we're going to mix it up a bit so you're here to help us we're not really here we're here to give you some of our ideas this is not about us you are here to change the game the UN has done something different they're actually stepping out they're saying look this isn't about us the average age here is probably twice the age of the average age in the crowd you guys are going to be the future you're the future of the UN you're the future of the world we need you to help us so at the end of this panel please give us your ideas feedback to the UN at the end of the day today we want you to break out and say what did you actually hear what is actually going to change in the millennium development goals the MDGs post 2015 that actually can make a difference this is all about you it's not about us we're here to give you a few ideas but you've got to take the stage you've got to say look this is it use the blog we're seeing today so that we can actually use that feedback in two weeks at the UN in New York to give the General Assembly the ideas of what this crowd through ITU, through the BYND beyond 2015 these are the ideas that we feel are really important so starting with that crowd electricity actually helped us figure out what should we talk about getting ahead was the thing that came to the top get ahead was saying use unemployment is terrible over the world it's nobody's got the answer but ICT has been seen as a possible solution so we're going to take a rapid fire opportunity here to actually give you some ideas we're going to open it up to the crowd for 10 or 15 minutes at the end and then we're going to jump into hopefully a little bit of a panel debate here and really get the ideas flowing so it's going to be a bit TED-like we don't have a lot of time we've got 45 minutes, 6 people ideas for minutes so with that I'm going to start I'm going to jump into Mr. Senu tell us what if you believe in youth you deeply are passionate about development and the youth and the unemployment problems of the world how do you see ICT and ITU as making a change? after the order first question did you sleep well? when you woke up this morning what is the first question you asked yourself? do I have Wi-Fi? then coffee good, I have an answer the first question should have been what have changed when I was sleeping what has changed while you were sleeping? what have changed when I was sleeping this is what ICT is about third question so after answering this question what's the next question you asked yourself? the next question after the two third question what's the next one? what is next? the answer is what should I do to remain relevant? for the rest you're out of the game thank you very much Andy you may ask yourself why they do so so all people here to come and sit and talk to you about your problem two reasons first we are all young like you and second is more important is because all the people here believe in an ancient very wise proverb Indian proverb from this region and the proverb says we don't inherit the earth from our ancestors we borrow it from our children that's what we believe in here this is why we are here today to tell you that your future what will happen we are borrowing from you it is yours so everything said that what ICT is doing in term of putting together innovation ICT entrepreneurship we do believe that everything is about capacity building because again technology exists you can buy it you can steal it but you cannot own it unless you have the proper capacity at individual level this why particularly in the telecommunication development we are putting emphasis on four areas of capacity building the first one is about putting some resources at your disposal you are created ITU academy under the patronage of the secretary general Dr. Madhuntui where we are putting some resources at your disposal that you can use this is an academy on the side of the regional capacity building we are working with the government to make sure that they put in place the right policy the right regulation that would facilitate the contribution of the young people Mr. Sunoo ITU academy what is it about sharing how can I help entrepreneurs I am just going to have to jump quickly give me one word what do you want the entrepreneurs in this crowd to use ITU academy for of course the ITU academy I have got I will come to that later because the ITU academy is giving resources to young people this is the first part I am going to talk about as I said is about capacity this is the second one the third one is capacity building at another level because all of you could be considered as very old and say very very old compared to the young of 2 or 3 years compared to us we are young but compared to those 2 or 3 years we are very old so what we do to make sure that those who are 1 or 2 or 3 years can get connected with the ICTs this is where our program where we are working together with www.henset.org to train the women we are training a campaign for training women so far we are training 800,000 women and we plan to train 2 million big women by the end of 2015 first of course this women will be empowered for themselves but secondly those women will be ITU ICT literate which means that they are going to groom their kids together with ICT and others so which means that in the future we will no longer talk about we don't have ICT ICT skills because they will be groomed by their mothers the first part where we are putting an answer to your question is entrepreneurship in this area we believe in peer mentoring and for this purpose this meeting is one of the peer mentoring during this week here we are going to talk to each other those who never did something talking to others they will realize they can also do it ITU is doing a lot on that and every year through our telecom we are making a contest where we get the best entrepreneurs who will come to the ITU telecom to talk to others to talk to the industry and also to make sure that we get enough resources and training to go ahead with the enterprise so those are a few issues I just want to throw in the table of course I'm sure we will come back in the course of the discussion that's a great segue so entrepreneurship and experience what you've imparted on this as peer mentoring is important I'm going to turn to Worley co-founder and chief innovation officer Kayatek Moon also the founder of the business you've got to at least watch the video and someday try it Worley I think experience you and I have talked a lot about this experience doesn't necessarily breed innovation what can you impart on this what does breed innovation failure failure is the number one tool in your arsenal to become innovative and I believe all of you they're very creative and I travel around the world and I usually the speaker goes like this there's a bunch of people I don't fit in with so I get all nervous and it's awkward to be up here and then I go and I talk to youth and I tell them exactly what they can do and it starts with not asking us anything it starts with you actually getting off of your ass and going out and doing something and then what happens is at the end of the conference there's always 50-60 people lined up and they all ask me about how I can help them only you can help yourself as entrepreneurs as innovators your aversion to risk should be your greatest fear you must stop being worried about risk stop worrying about failure you must be able to go out and take risk and learn to be comfortable with failure and the faster you can fail the sooner that you realize that well, a lot of experience in the room have any of you failed before? OCTAR's failed, alright OCTAR Badasha is the senior director of community affairs at Microsoft and he drives the global philanthropy for Microsoft so it's a big job and he's helped a lot of people through his role so I turned it over to him and how have you failed OCTAR? I fail every day every day I wake up the first thing I notice is what have I not been able to do I think the message that Wurley gave is absolutely essential for all of you to understand but before I get to the point of failure the first thing I want you to also understand as young people is do not take no for an answer first and foremost innovate don't take no for an answer and you will fail there is no question about it you will fail but the important thing is how do you pick yourself up and move forward and that is really the key to what we at Microsoft do by working with young people like yourselves around the world is ensuring that we are providing you with tools I travel to resilient countries around the world I have gathered with many of you in different circumstances and different conditions and different environments that every single time I walk out of a meaning out of conversation with optimism simply because you all believe in your future you believe that the future you will make your future and I also know because you tell me that technology is going to play a role in how you shape that future so we at Microsoft are extremely pleased to be part of this dialogue supporting what ITU and all of you are doing I work with about 100 nonprofit organizations around the world my goal is to be able to reach 300 million you over the next 3 years through our youth spark program so that we can bring benefits to you through technology so that you can get into jobs start something on your own or go for further education one of the things that I tweeted about just now was that I will carry your message forward it is something that I have agreed with Mr. Alandawi the secretary general's youth envoy where we are going to be on a panel together in New York in two weeks time at the global content initiative and I want to make sure that he gets the opportunity to take your message there and talk about what it is that you are concerned about and how you are looking for solutions and what we can do so I leave you with one message if you want to look at how young people are shaping and changing their lives on September 28th if you can get a chance join on a TEDx event which is happening in Redmond Washington it is a pilot it is the only TEDx which is organized by you for you and all speakers are you and it is just an amazing thing they have been doing this for the last four years it was started by a 12 year old who got invited to speak at TED at the big TED and she has taken this and created a global message of empowering young people thank you Randy I will go ahead and clap you don't need permission from me excellent okay so the important piece that may be missing here though is access getting the access and the enablement in your hands requires internet capability requires you to actually be able to get online broadband and the UN Broadband Commission and last mile access to the world we have some great people in the room here I'm going to turn to Juan Antonio who really understands how to get mobile access and last mile access into the hands of the world population can you tell us a bit about what you are doing and how you are going to help youth in unemployment yes first of all good morning I wanted to congratulate you for this initiative and your organizers of this event and the government of Costa Rica for welcoming this important event that was designed specifically for you the youth right now the people who are truly driven who are truly wanting to find out and discover new things as the youth but in the future you will be the promoters of these new technologies of course for Clara Costa Rica and for America Mobile in January it's an honor to be here today and to be part of this event but also to support it and therefore we try and participate as actively as we possibly can in all of the activities that have to do with ITCs just to address the issue a little bit but I want to emphasize that the leveraging of ITCs have a positive impact in the social, cultural, economical growth of the different countries having a great potential to address all these different issues and to face the challenges that are alien in the world today and the American continent in all of the operations where we have started one of our objectives and our philosophy has always been to reach as much with the best coverage best possible coverage possible into the farthest places most remote areas of the countries because we truly believe that technology must be accessible to everybody at all different social strata so for us it's clearly very important to be part of this revolution of the ITC Revolution and we want you as well as all of the other people where we operate to have access to this technology just as you saw that in the video a little while ago I think that when we are that part that that ultimate step that actually gives access to that technology by itself it cannot be used in a very easy way for entertainment for education for so many other purposes through convinced of this and that's why we are committed to this philosophy short on time I can't quite believe how quickly this is going by but what I want to do is give an opportunity for our two other guests to really impart their vision here so enabling ICT education through ICT Richard is something that you've been passionate about can you tell us how you in your work with the United Nations and being the liaison for Intel has really driven that change sure thank you I'd like to offer you all an unofficial motto for this group this gathering it was set by Richard for not five years ago not sure we're hearing you can you hear me? he said don't be encumbered by history go off and do something wonderful and his name was Robert Noyce he's an engineer and he's the co-founder of a little startup in California called Intel Corporation and his vision was fulfilled and fast forward to today and Intel's motto has changed something else which I also recommend for your consideration it's to connect to create and extend computing technology to connect and enrich the lives of everyone on earth our industry and the technology ecology has as you've heard reached somewhere less than half about three billion people on the planet but there are seven billion people currently and natural market forces will as they drive the price of technology and computing and internet access down will solve some of this problem but not quickly enough to achieve the needs of the millennium developed goals or the upcoming sustainable development goals so we must form partnerships learn how to do that better on a global basis in order to achieve by 2030 looking forward to what I think the sustainable development goal will contain affordable and fair access for everyone on the planet computing technology and to the internet once that's achieved it will bind us together to one human family in a way that has never been done before thank you so speaking of binding societies together by technology hard you currently senior vice president Cisco but you've been an innovator and a leader in making the internet happen through your work at three common Cisco can you tell us your advice about how youth can leverage the internet to help create jobs and entrepreneurship creation value we are pushing now you might be try again well put it here this one now it's working try again I'm going to use this one because my friend is permitting me to participate so we're talking about the creation of value and the creation of value comes from innovative thinking thinking about change and it comes from focus and so I'm going to take a different approach here I have done this twice I started two different companies that became very successful and I'm going to tell you that the technology doesn't matter we take it for granted we take for granted the fact that you have technological confidence in the areas that you are going to undertake we just assume that you have to become good at what you do but let me tell you what you can never take for granted you can never take for granted markets markets are the definition of needs unfulfilled needs and what makes people motivated what gives them passion is to solve a problem a big problem I met a man who wanted to solve the problem of diabetes in Mexico I met another man who wanted to solve the problem of illiteracy in Africa see a lot of people in Africa are not literate so should they be disenfranchised from participating in the rest of the world he said the way we have to reach these people is via audio so the message here is that it's really not about the technology what it's really about is the passion to want to change the world and to focus on what that might mean and the technology becomes a tool it becomes a hammer and nails and tractors and whatever other tools that you need to employ to change that world and what skills do you need do you need skills of how to run a business let me tell you folks if you can't run a business this is all useless because you have to take in money changing the world costs money if you can't work with other people I have a great respect there was a young man I learned about last night I think it was Iraq he built one robot that's a big deal especially in Iraq now build 10,000 robots but to build 10,000 robots you can't do this alone you need your friends you have to convince them this is the right way to go so we take the technology for granted we do not take markets for granted and we definitely don't take leadership skills for granted when you come away from this conference learning one thing it's that markets and leadership matter a lot excellent perfect now it's up to you can we get a few questions from the floor you got a microphone good right there in the back welcome back to you here my name is Leme Kanim Tongo from Zambia my question concerns the aspect of ass going in with a lot of energy in terms of developing technology however there is a particular aspect of the legal component in the policies they have been mentioned yes but what is being done to give law and policy efficacy what is being done to ensure that the legal aspect of it is adhered to of course in every society what is being done to protect people are we paying a blind eye to that aspect or are we actually doing something about it because matches we want to develop we also have to consider the aspect of protecting the people so how strong is the legal aspect how strong is it from an international level and how strong is it going to be from a local level and it doesn't have to be toothless as well it has to be either punitive or it has to ensure that it deters people from committing crime so I wonder what the ITU is doing about that it is considering that aspect thank you so much Mr. Sunil the ITU is on the spot yes thank you very much for this question I think that there are two aspects of it first aspect is about what I will call physical security here we are talking about cyber security and I am sure that during this meeting we are going to talk a lot about cyber security this ITU have got a program to work on cyber security we have got a program where we have got as of today 145 countries we have signed to work with us to make sure that we made the cyber space safe for the young people for our children and of course as it was referred to this morning the president of this country is a patron of the child online protection and this country have done a lot in this area so this is one aspect the other aspect of the question is what do we do at the government level to put in place as you said the low part of the issue on this side as I mentioned when I started in ITU we have got a big program for capacity building for the regulators and the policy makers this way we are putting a lot of emphasis on the way and means to create an enabled playing for all the people including a young innovator to find a way to use the innovation to live out of it without being in danger on the low part so this is what I can say thank you Mr. Sinu so I appreciate the work that ITU has done to enable governments to understand security and legal policies and frameworks and I think that absolutely required especially when it comes to protecting children online but I want to turn it over to Worley again how do you see the internet and security and infrastructure of today? I have a completely different view of that I come from the hacking culture I've been in trouble with many of governments I've had my passport taken at one point, things like that I think that the question is really good the question security takes one of two things and if you have enough of them any security can be broken and that's time and resource there is no such thing as something that's completely secure but it's more important for the policy makers and for the people in this room to understand the difference between something else and that's reaction and response because one of those is voluntary and the other is not and if we react to these potential threats these hazards, these concerns that's where things tend to go very very far of course they need a very measured a very well thought through response and involves to be honest today a lot more people and a lot more youth that are actually involved in any of those policy decisions I couldn't say that more myself please I think everybody on this panel has a lot to say about this topic if you rely on government to solve your problems you will wait a long time government is a wonderful institution we can't get along without it but let me tell you the solution is through education and technology we need to teach people not to open emails where they do not know the recipient it's that simple Microsoft has been very good at this we need to have technological solutions to protect children we can look for certain patterns in data streams that characterize credit card numbers we can look for patterns which characterize content which perhaps should not go to certain individuals so when the automobile was invented many people died because we had not yet invented safety glass and safety glass or prior to the invention there too used to kill many people the glass would break in these long pieces that looked like knives and people would just die and then we came up with this invention called safety glass and people don't die anymore in collisions we need that in cyberspace as well we need technological solutions to prevent people from having access to the information they should not have and then we have to teach people where they should not go now regulation is great but you'll notice that when we pass very strict laws preventing people from certain behaviors there's always an element who breaks those laws they don't care so the solution practically with respect to security is technological and it is only really practically technological ethics it's a good question Mr. Ambassador ethics is very important but you know where ethics comes from it comes from your parents they teach you what is right and what is wrong it will not come from me telling you that's inappropriate behavior ethics is taught to children so we need ethics in our access to information and the rules that you use for that access should be taught to you by your parents I know what you're thinking you don't want this session to end and I actually don't either because I would love to get some other input on this because it's a great question we're coming back at five o'clock we're going to bring a lot of this discussion back to the stage but you're going to have some more time to think about the talks and then come back with even more ideas and we're going to be even more heated back at that point we have one more question from the audience I'd love to just turn it over to this gentleman sorry this is what you wanted on the panel I wanted there are more than enough technological solutions and security problems the problem is not a technological problem it is absolutely an ethics problem it is an education problem that right now in cyberspace if I attack you there is nothing that happens to me and in 1994 you can go google a company called symbiote that I participated in they built a system of measuring risk and what we did is we gave everybody a credit score and if the community through community-centric security decided that you were a bad actor on the internet they would remove you from that infrastructure and every government in the world did not like that idea so I just have to counterpoint and say we have a technological problem we have more than technology I know we're not Microsoft started on this just one minute actually this is why in ITU we decided together to make sure that the women are trained because they are the ones who are going to give the ethics to the young people absolutely I agree with that sir one more question from the audience just yell it out just go ahead and yell it out I'll repeat it another one is coming right here guys here we go my name is Jose Miguel I'm from Costa Rica and mostly the idea comes from how can how can we how can we foster the youth and the United Nations to actually help us to do joint projects for example a few weeks ago I had to participate in a scientific fair and a 12 year old came to me and asked me one of these little balls that I had that lights up can you create an engine to help his grandma to open a door just to get computers where there is no electricity the first thing you need though is power how do we make power cheaper for these people and how do we make it more accessible and this has been developed for a while and I'm thinking of solar panels for example how do we make solar panels cheaper so that these people will have the power even though they are in remote places in rural areas the solution I am proposing is providing all of these solar panels to public schools so kids can get used to it they can use it they can play with it and they can start being creative with the use of those panels so I think I think would you like to respond at all or I would actually just like to just echo another general thought you guys should not date you guys can invent you guys can create you guys can solve issues that you think are important and need to be solved so yes you know there are legal issues yes there are technological barriers yes there are barriers to scale but at the end of the day you know change because to a large extent don't look like me like you so believe in yourself and be the change maker that you want us to be thank you can I ask a question for somebody who works at Microsoft we get along really well I am going to do what he did earlier just remember you have to actively choose to take the risk that is it you have to actively choose to take the risk you have to learn to accept the failure and you have to remember that when you choose not to decide on one of those things you still have made a choice and in action is your enemy thank you so I am going to empower everybody with one last thought may I ask a question over here ah if we have the time quick question it is a question from Mr. Charney you were talking about ethics it is not accepted by our parents but to be honest I think it is the whole system itself which instructs ethics which we have not even decided for and when you talk the very example this is when you talk about markets as the reflection of unsatisfied needs that is your opinion it is you are imposing this on people and you are creating the insatiability of this consumerist society and the whole capitalist yeah I won't go further this is also about jobs I have a job for you not at all but please it is the whole ethics system you are talking about change and entrepreneurship and employment the skills which we require are not necessarily being a businessman and explaining the very people in our company change is volunteering for social and economic equality it is not about satisfying wants which are created by the system itself it is not desires it is not needs it is desires and this whole propaganda you are talking about it is not appearance it is the whole system ok with that I think we leave that as the food for thought and that will bring us back at 5 o'clock hopefully you and Howard can find each other in the hallway and have a TED style networking discussion it will be fun I want to listen in one last thing I want to impart with everybody my father had one job over my lifetime I am going to have 7 from what we are seeing each one of you may have 7 jobs at once and that is ok enjoy excuse me I had one more person please I am turning it over to Melissa I am not a time keeper we are had fun thanks everyone Mr. Sunoo please yes I want to say love you oh he had no tie on oh my goodness this is innovation all right yes don't be afraid sometimes innovation is just doing the whole thing is a new way so this is innovation this is new at 5 o'clock you got to be in chains thanks everyone thank you very much please give our panelists a final applause thank you so much it's been a very interesting morning lots of challenges encouraging us to take risks to question to propose and actually the next part of the day is going to be a lot around that those callings we are going to go through the activities for the following hours at room Corcorado 1 in the ground floor we will start right now beyond 2015 intergenerational debate I am asking please mentors to go down now so you can be prepared when the participants arrive this is going to be an inspirational dialogue between 10 mentors and 10 youth and how the youth are changing the world with ICTs I invite you all to join those debates the rest of the breakout rooms will continue with the get ahead workshops I am going to go through them in case you are registered go straight to the rooms that are registered for your workshop in case you are not registered then go and ask for flexibility and you can join them the workshops will be run in two sessions of two hours so you can go to two different workshops with the exception of two of them that are going to be through the whole day divided into two excuse me I please ask for some silence so I can finish explaining the workshops at room tv po we are going to have to build my digital enterprise a workshop organized by ITU and Zen Digital this will be a four hour workshop running two parts and facilitated by Rob Fitzpatrick and Valerie Kino if you are interested in setting up your own business and come join us this workshop and learn from the experts lots of what we have been talking about this morning also the second workshop negotiate for success at room Corcovalo 2 also in the ground floor organized by ITU and Zen Digital you have two opportunities to take this workshop one in the morning and one in the afternoon join me and I Dalgo to learn about how to get results you want by using the right negotiating tactics at room Corcovalo 3 also in the ground floor United Nations volunteers will organize a workshop be a volunteer be an agent of social change at this workshop Bart Ticklin also you can empower by being a volunteer and how to run your own social business this is going to be conducted in two parts as well at room Kawita 1 in the first floor Jason Conan and Cheryl Miller will be sharing their experience in realize your creative independence online you have two opportunities as well to take this workshop organized by ITU and Zen Digital and at room Kawita 2 the Omar Dengue Foundation workshop strengthening your entrepreneur skills join this event to find the areas you need to strengthen their profile and to better access the labor market you have as well two opportunities to take this workshop one in the morning and one in the afternoon and finally the ideation meeting at the room gondola with a participation participants of the beyond 2015 it's going to be we're going to have a 24 hour hackathon and we're going to have the first ideation meeting then this is a very interesting activity we're all encouraging for you to join and to learn more about it in case you want to be investing your next 24 hours on the hackathon please note that you need either technical or creative skills to join this competition and a commitment for the competition and to stay there for the next 24 hours prices will be awarded for this as well we'll be all learning from the different competitors and the awards later in the later in the in the summit for those interested please go to room gondola for more information meanwhile our summit will also be connected to a new addition of the coffee and then dialogue if you're interested you can join the discussion at the TV studio by Salon Tobosi please also I want to invite you to be very active and to participate and really take advantage of all of these workshops and all of these experts that are sharing our knowledge and all of these participants from all over the world to also learn from their perspectives and as well we want to remind you to leave your interpretation devices at the door so we can have them for the next session and final announcement we'll be back here at the TV pole plenary at 2pm have a great time and we hope you'll enjoy, thank you very much hey guys we're going to be talking about startups and building something and making it happen in here so if you're sticking around for that workshop just pile in toward the front because this is a gigantic room and we definitely don't need all of it anyone else here startups, digital enterprise if so just bring it up here I'm going to be talking without the mic so if you're in the back of the room you're not going to hear me very much alright cool so this should be fun I think my experience okay that's better so we get an idea from somewhere and we get all excited about it we want to do something with it and can I get my screen we'll deal with it so we're going to be talking about startups which I think are pretty cool and interesting and startups can have a lot of different functions you can build a little company which just makes enough money to kind of set you free to have something up and set it on automatic and it's whole job is to make you enough money so that you can do other things with the rest of your life this is what business is for a lot of people they care about something they want to get something done but you know there's that pesky thing if we need enough money to live so they go into business and they start just to take care of that and then they'll do whatever maybe they'll start another company maybe they'll devote the time or just hanging out go on permanent vacation that's one way that people use business is another way is to just go as big as possible right to create the infrastructure to create the empires to create the companies that we all take for granted now they're just everywhere they're part of the plumbing that we use for life and that's great as well and there's this new category of social enterprises which is that people have said businesses seem to work pretty well is there a way that instead of getting businesses to spit out more and more money we can get them to spit out more and more like positive social impact all of these are completely valid and we're going to dig into kind of what makes them tick because the biggest thing that's changed over the last say 10 or 15 years is that we've started to figure out how to actually make innovative businesses a ways back it was kind of a gamble you would try something and there were a few people who seemed to be able to do it and everyone else was like they were looking at the successes and thinking I want to do that but we didn't really have a path and it was quite scary on a personal level because if it didn't work out you'd risked a lot to try to make it happen you might end up and you could be in debt you could be totally wiped out and then you have to go and spend all of your time just to pay off your bills and that stops you from being able to start a new company to actually do the thing you want to do so that's no good so we want to be able to have this safety where we can be innovative and we can try new and disruptive and huge new things but also in a way that we're personally safe because if we go broke we can't do it anymore we can't create any sort of change in the world if we can't pay our rent so can my screen just not work alright so we're going to do a lot of talking as little groups so if you're sitting at a table with fewer than four people would you just kind of merge with one of the other tables and maybe spread out so that we have at least say four, five, six people at each table we'll just do a little shuffle now just move somewhere so that we have at least four people at each table it makes for more interesting conversations you know so just take a minute and kind of amongst yourselves and we'll call out a few of these answers once we have them but starting a business is not easy even if it's not a business starting a movement, getting a ton of volunteers organizing something to happen this is not easy so like why bother what motivates you why would you want to go through all of this work and all of this energy and suffering to make this thing that may or may not work so we'll take kind of like two minutes and just talk, get a sense for everyone at the table what are their reasons, what are their motivations why would they want to try this it's just why is a business worth starting it's difficult why would you bother this starts with a little idea completely agree so even like you don't need to start with huge like a huge project you can start with something that seems small and simple so that's perfect and just kind of as within your tables let's just spend a couple minutes and talk through some of the other reasons that are motivating you why are people doing this yes, you're allowed to talk just like why would you bother starting a company you know, just talk to each other talk to each other, like find out, try to understand why the people at your table are motivated okay, so the motivation here was that you get to work with people you like and kind of do something you care about was that roughly right? awesome motivation who else has one that's come up from their table being sick of hierarchies, the way people do think yeah, well when you're sick of the way people do think that it's not useful anymore and when you're sick of hierarchies like you know it's not working but they still do it in the same way that's my motivation was, for example to improve something in a special area or category where I am interested in and what is my passion just that this yeah, that this area gets improved so that's why I am starting a new company well I think the reality of the matter is that most people who start companies are doing this, it's a personal matter they're probably trying to fulfill something sorry, they're trying to fulfill something that they wanted to do maybe in their life and then maybe hopefully they'd come to the idea that they'd want to give a bit of their money which they earned for charity but it's true though that most companies you see today have been built on people's ideas which were mainly for their own interests and that's why that's what I think would be the motives for many people to start their own companies I feel that one of the reasons to start a company would be also deciding your own work environment like avoiding certain aspects of tedious normal working life and like being more dynamic or deciding where you want to work like oh, if I have my own company I can go to the beach and maybe work there with my friends or teammates and you don't have to worry much about bosses or well you make your own set of rules and the way you want the company to go forward with like everybody being happier also you get to have bragging rights bragging rights so now it's easier than in the past and so that's a good thing I think I think a lot of companies that you see are somebody else's dream and so you want to sort of start your own dream instead of helping to build somebody else's dream if that makes sense cool so we've had a pretty good range so far I think you guys kind of covered most of the most of the spots so there's you might want to change the world you might want to create something you might prefer the working environment you want to work with your friends you want to work under your own rules you want to work on something that you choose you might just want to build something big you might have you want the bragging rights you want to be the person who builds this company are there any others did anyone have a different take I want to have my own company not just for me I want to give work for others actually I have dream like how is it going to be my company how is it going to be it will have a school for the people who work for me who is working there for the kids to be there too and to bring other kids that have opportunity to learn so the people who is going to be there have to feel what is to help other people other people that can be enabled to have those opportunities they have so I think what I like my company for is not just for me, it's for others to be able to have better opportunities that they have now so that's what I think what I want to have at my own company not for me, for others to give them opportunities they don't have cool, yeah that's huge some people are kind of can you pass the mic over that direction some people are motivated for any number of different reasons and some people really focus on the employees and the company or itself this seemed to be what motivated Tony from Zappos, he was very focused he wanted to make the best place in the world for his employees to be working it was like focused on that family but yeah well I'm encouraged to get my own business started because of course with this whole theme we would want to get ahead of course the money we also would like to elaborate on this young ladies comment to charity to give to others if you're purchasing something from an online platform or something like that you can get donations for other the other young people and whatnot Hello, my name is Bouba Campeau I speak French my name is Bouba Campeau and I speak French I come from Senegal and I am creating my own company with my own team and I am the leader we have created many applications so that we don't have to depend on society or on the government we create applications that have social implications we can provide a lot of opportunities to the whole world, thank you very much participate in a company of entrepreneurs I'm from El Salvador region technology is not highly developed as far as mobile phones smartphones, tablets, etc so we are acting as evangelists because it's not highly developed we need to prove society that we need to show companies that they can be more effective in applying all of their technology into mobile phones taking their products to the people to solve their mobile needs our social involvement and help is to provide the students of the Francisco Gavidio University the opportunities for learning because in this country there aren't many schools that teach about technology so what we do is we try to help the students of Francisco Gavidio in this university they are there's a lack of educational technological education in their schools leading up to the university so they're trying to bridge that gap for their university students at this university here in El Salvador we started three years ago I started as a collaborator in this company at this university there's like a training school for entrepreneurs so we started working trying to help people we are developing on one hand applications apps for companies but we're also educating or training some of our colleagues from the university so that they may learn how to develop new technologies we have developed apps that have been used nationwide and we're trying to focus this help so that technology may increase in our country so my plan is to endorse that you may create your own companies we have received help from our government because of our technological inventions and if you notice I'm young and most of the people in my company we're all young our ages are 20, 21, 25 years of age tops and we've already done a lot of business in our country and that's our commitment I want to spread my message I want to communicate my message to other people I want you to set up your own businesses and I want you to keep on the cutting edge of technology thank you live translation yeah clap it up for everyone those are all awesome motivations thank you, thank you and I think it's important to remember why we want to start a business or why we want to start anything because it's hard how many of you guys have tried starting something up before how many of you thought it was easy if so I want to know the secret it's tough right so it needs to be something that you want to do that you want to go after and the ideas can come from a load of different places right we might see a problem in the world or we have a stroke of insight and we're suddenly like I'm a genius I had such a good idea I just have to do it we might see an opportunity to make money we might see a big chance we might see a huge social change all of these are completely valid but when we look at where we're trying to go it can be difficult to do it all at once we see the prize we see where we're trying to get to but we don't necessarily have everything we need from the very beginning we don't have all the money we don't have the support we don't have the team we get to the end we end up falling in the pit and what modern startups are beginning to show us is that the best entrepreneurs are finding these stepping stones and sometimes they're hidden they're not always obvious and they're finding ways they have this big world-changing vision but like you said the first step looks tiny the first step it's like well that's nothing you want to start a big global movement to help kids learn to read the first step is to teach a kid to read now you're in business you started and the scale comes later and now that you're moving other people find it much easier to believe in you to support you to help you out and everyone's stepping stones are different this is both the hardest and the most interesting piece because no one else can tell you exactly what to do you know your own business and you know your strengths and you know your goals better than anyone else so you can certainly learn there are amazing lessons there's amazing tools that are out there but you can't just blindly follow other people's advice you always have to make it your own and there's a ton of different types of companies and types of organizations that you can build to achieve those goals you can go out by yourself and sell your services as a freelancer that's great because it's like the quickest and most reliable way to get out of a job and into independence but it doesn't scale very far you can get a few friends together and have an agency now it's amazing you won't believe how easy it is to make physical products now it used to take a manufacturing plant and hundreds of thousands of dollars and now it's easy but it's not tomorrow you can think of it today and have it for sale tomorrow on Kickstarter it's unbelievable and different types of businesses take different shapes the kind of big difference I want to point out is the green and the purple ones they quickly make money but they flatten out if I become a freelancer I can start making money immediately I can survive it only gets so big right? the reason why technology is so exciting is that if we can lay the foundations properly then it can reach the whole world but laying the foundations is the tricky bit because when we're building our technology when we're figuring out what people need during that period we're spending money you know and it takes more time and it takes more money than we would initially guess that's why they're so hard and we can't project exactly where we're going part of the the funny bit not funny but if you look at the history of startups around 2000 there were a ton of companies that had loads of money this is my favorite this is the mascot of pets.com it was an online store for pet food and I'm simplifying the story a little bit but can anyone guess how much money they spent for pet food? just shout out a number zero they sadly did not spend zero ten no it's okay it has gosh I don't even know how many zeros that is eight zeros they spent 300 million dollars to build their to build their business and it didn't work which is a shame because if you're going to spend 300 million dollars you may as well build a working business and essentially what the attitude back then was they would stand here at the beginning of their business at the beginning of their mission and they would look at this scary dip where they were going to be spending time and losing money and they would say okay well we just need to be brave we just need to like really commit and grit our teeth and go for it and push through and so they would come up with a great plan and they would go for it and these were not dumb people these were excellent business people they were excellent technical people but you can only see so far from the starting line so what we're seeing more and more it's these stepping stones you only have to see to the next stepping stone you have to know where you're going but you only need an exact plan for right here so we can do something that seems very small at the beginning and ends up becoming huge that's the magic of technology a lot of you guys already have started businesses so I just want to chat again in your kind of little groups if you haven't started a business yet why not if you're interested in doing it but you haven't what's stopping you is it that you don't feel you know enough you don't feel you have access to the resources no one gave you permission I don't like what is it so just talk try to get a sense and write down a list for just the people at your table what has stopped them from starting a business and we've got some paper and some pens kind of floating around so if your table doesn't have any I'm sure you can grab some we'll just take two minutes try to understand why does everyone at your table like what's stopping them just what's stopping you why haven't you started a business yet if you came in late sitting at a table by yourself you might want to join someone else's table because all of these group discussions will get quite lonely if you're talking to yourself all right we're going to bring the microphone around and just kind of one person per group if you would just tell us what some of the big reasons were that came up at your table for what's holding people back and these are all great things that we can hopefully change at some point so yeah why don't you guys start us off hello guys what do you stand for please my name is Melchizedek I'm from Botswana so what we heard from our group is that you find that most of the people don't have finances you have an idea but you can't finance your idea you also don't have time you have your idea but you're trying to make time for that idea you have to go to school and you don't have enough time there are also regulations in other countries like one of our friends here he tried to implement something in a different country but then the regulations of that country did not allow them allow him actually to implement that idea he had we also you might not know how to the starting process how do you start about making a business who do you check what do you write what do you have to deal with so that is also a problem also I think that is all I have summarized all of them thank you awesome thank you how about you guys well we also struggle with the time and the money issue like everyone else there was an experience here where they felt like maybe it was because they were young within their own company that the company was looking towards the senior employees for ideas and not interested in hearing innovative ideas if there may be entry level employees so even though the government was kind of out of the way the company itself kept itself from expanding in that way and also a few of us were thinking maybe we just didn't know exactly how to implement the technology or the resources you know get the man power behind you to support you cool do you want to just pass it to ok in our table some of us think that the age is one of the bad ideas that they cannot start their own businesses and some of them is finding the right skill with the right people to create a team and then start their own business as well as lack of motivation some of them they have the idea but they are not motivated enough to go ahead and start their own business this is a difficulty in getting a lot on a small money a capital to start your own business as well cool great, thank you hold on those guys have a mic sorry ok go ahead we as a group think that what happens is that people are often scared because they haven't been properly educated with regards to social finances because they haven't been taught from an early age but there is also inequality because often women are discriminated in these regards and also we believe that the lack of resources or funds can be involved I believe one of the main constraints for creating an organization is just the lack of time as she mentioned I think that most people who are trying to start an organization tend to be like we all are and some of them even as young as in their freshman year when they are at university that's a big problem because they don't really have a lot of time on their hands to start a company especially when they want to create something as ambitious as maybe a company which sells toys for example and it takes a lot of effort and a lot of motivation especially you have to be really passionate about it and create an organization like that when you have such little time it really depends on whether you are really into fulfilling your desire to create this and whether you are prepared to sacrifice a lot of time to make this happen particularly the same as everybody else with the financial setbacks for capital start-up capital as well as regulations certain things keep us back so basically we also found that the main reason would be time being lacking especially if you are studying and you don't want to rely on dropping out on trying something new and failing and just maybe having problems with financing finding reliable people to work with cool let's do one more table and then we'll, I know not everyone's gone but we'll do, okay we'll do two more that still have the microphone and then we'll move on, take it away okay as the other group said I believe that well one common factor among all of us is that we're young right and being young it's has the consequence of having I mean it's harder to get finance opportunities for young people because most of us we don't have the financial backup in case we don't have success so being afraid of failure it's another another setback to start your own business right I think okay now yeah okay I'm college so I have like those teachers that are young too and you see that they are having their own content but how they make it, they have like this content they can make it on their own so what do you think I'm still trying to think trying to do but I'm going to have that all the skills, all the knowledge they have about changing call when you call how to get a budget they need because it's not easy and your customer gets really really difficult to get money to start you like a young people that are coming but because what you have to give them if you're studying so I think basically I think those teachers have said to me it's like you basically have to have those contacts, those people because in your career because you all together can make like that idea you have possible so I think that is really a good characteristic about you yeah perfect those are excellent those are great and there's some that are like hard to deal with if you're in a country where the immigration laws are such that you can't bring in the employees you want or the tax laws are such that it's really difficult for you to start your own business then that's hard but most of the others we can solve ourselves it's like came up in the previous session right if you need to wait for it to be fixed by someone else you're going to wait for a long time it's way better to be able to do it yourself and thankfully most of these things we can solve ourselves one is money the best solution to money is to not need it and that sounds silly but I'm serious because so I've started a few companies now and I know a bunch of investors and I hang out with them and we drink beers and we drink coffee together but they would never fund a company of mine when it was still an idea in my head like that would be crazy right because it's so easy on the tax level it's so easy to get to the first stepping stone without money you don't have to go all the way without money you just have to get started like once you've started suddenly everyone wants to help you once you make it to the first or second of those stepping stones then it becomes possible but do not wait to get started for someone else to magically hand you a bag full of money it just doesn't happen it doesn't happen for me some people well I should say some people get freakishly lucky and it does happen so don't let that distract you because chances are good it's not going to happen to you so it's better to be like what can I do with the resources I have but something else that comes out of this is important right? like how do you start if you don't know the right people how do you start if you don't have anyone on your team who knows how to program a problem right? what's the solution it's like start meeting those people you know there's a company I love and it's such a dumb idea a lot of my favorite companies are really stupid ideas and this company never should have worked you know blogs right so how much does a blog cost to put up yeah it's free right blogs are free that's just part of the internet you get a blog if you want it it's free have one this company's idea was they were going to charge you $200 a month for a blog which is just the dumbest idea ever right let's take something free and charge people $200 a month for it but the guy who started it he was really well respected and he had there were 50,000 bloggers and entrepreneurs and programmers who subscribed to his newsletter where he talked about software and how to make a good website and how to do all this stuff so when he said hey it's going to be better it's worth the money they trusted him and they all bought it and it was a multi-million dollar business in its first year it's called WP engine and people complained he was like see I just showed you how easy it is and they're like yeah but that's not fair you have 50,000 subscribers and I don't and he said yeah but that's why I've been telling you to like start being visible for years you know you don't like suddenly trip and you're like oh wow now I'm famous well that's good it's like oh now everyone wants to work with me terrific it's like that's something that gets it gets built up over time right you do something you help somebody out you get to know somebody this is such an amazing place for it they say they're the two most precious resources for for a startup founder one is the founder's time and attention you know because you can only time was brought up a lot right we only have so much of it and the other one is good people who will work with you it's hard to find them if there's anyone here someone stands up and talks and you're like oh that person's smart like track them down later right maybe they're your future co-founder you really got to like start building it today because that's how you get the stuff you need for tomorrow and university is awesome professors are so connected and they want to help you out take advantage of all these resources right start now before you start the company it makes life way way easier so I want to do Microsoft's here so we're going to do a little thought experiment and try to put Microsoft out of business so Microsoft has a pretty good word processor right word is definitely winning it would be crazy for us with no money to compete with word so I want you guys to figure out how you would do that in your teams come up with a way that you guys as a team with no money would build a successful business competing with Microsoft word okay you've got five minutes one minute left don't get stuck on one idea just get a lot out there's something written down by the end of this if it's just in your head it doesn't count you have to write down what's your plan what's your idea who's got a plan who's got a plan of attack here let's hear one do we have the mics still floating around no mics you're about to get all the mics what's your five minute plan to compete with Microsoft word okay so first we have a popular word processing program called Open Office and Leap of Peace which are free to use they're open source and they offer practically the same tools as Microsoft Word they become pretty popular because Leap of Peace comes with Ubuntu for many of you who use the operating system we thought that if we were to compete with Microsoft Word a lot of people are using it we thought that maybe we should make our word processing app more intuitive because when someone opens Microsoft Word then it's a bit hard to pick up like that so we thought that making our program more intuitive would attract more people at first sight cool that's an awesome approach to competing with a big competitor instead of adding features you get rid of features you compete with them by making it more complicated you compete with them by making it simpler and that also makes it easier for you to build so great I guess if you want maybe to compete with Microsoft Word you cannot compete with 20 years of innovation and software development but for example she said about delivery office you can for example start with little steps like the stones like you said about why do you get a team of volunteers to schools and say I want to teach you all delivery office or open office I'm going to show you that this software is free and maybe it's better because you can know it you can know how to use it you can know how to be productive with the software so it's a great challenge that this is the order and I can teach you how to use it I can teach you how to use it despite the difference and start to compete because it's different to compete against the company you need to compete or ally it with all companies cool that's another awesome way of competing with a big company right you can afford to offer incredible customer service whereas they're too big to be able to do that so you can go in and you can individually talk to your users you can make them feel loved and cared for you can start the ball rolling they tell all their friends that they have the most incredible experience with your company so yeah that's a great approach let's take one more in the back and then we'll come back to you so conceptually how we approach this was what does microsoft or do really well and we kind of agree that it's really good it's very complex format it's really good it's short to medium length so when you get a longer one if anyone's ever written a page document it's really good just one person writing it and it's at a premium price so we kind of delineated that all of those features and then said that's not what we wanted and so we kind of continued with that we thought well making one would be you create a program that's better at writing really long stuff that would be short stuff that would be more intuitive these reviews that better at collaboration that's collaborating and at a better price but then you just kind of think of what are they doing really well and let's avoid that and let's try to do some other things that would involve short that's another amazing approach that's basically saying the big competitors have to be generic by definition because they serve everybody so that means if you go really specific you can serve a certain type of person better than the big competitor and you can make their lives amazing this is the word processor I use for books and it's awful it's so bad it's so confusing but I love it and I paid for it because it's totally designed for books where it is bad at books exactly as you say right and there's a million other things that these big competitors they're always bad at something so you can say I'm going to take just that type of person and I'm going to focus on exactly what they need and they'll put up with a pretty buggy product for a long time so that means your version one doesn't even need to be perfect which makes it a lot easier for you as a startup so yeah that's another great approach how about there was one more waiting over here and okay cool we'll take those two and then we'll charge forward oh we were basically on the same side of people with a book thinking of well you're not going to try and target Microsoft on a generic side you need to go specific and set your goals on things you know they can't do and there's people who need it like say in the scientific side you can use text and legs to format formulas you could do it easier making a custom processor that's like word in the sense of ease of use but you can use faster for your need and does it better and you can always change the side like if you're basing your software on a open source version like you take you don't have to create something from scratch you take something that's open source modify it to your needs and then you can say well it was open source take it I'm just going to charge for the service of teaching and support cool and lastly yeah what do you guys have well we have here another idea with my friend Lamecab from Sambia to collaborate for this idea word is built for business so when you get start if you never has a use it you will maybe don't know how to start so what happen if you are a child and you open Microsoft board what happen what can I do I don't know so if when the child open the program will be nice that a single single message hi what are you going to do and be a step by step given a guide for example I want to do my homework okay are you going to use image yes I want to use it here are the steps to do your homework using image so you will you will complete your homework that way yeah combining his idea we understand that oh sorry by the way my name is Lamecab from Sambia combining his idea we understand that there is also an aspect of learning that is so attached to visual what you see you likely not to forget you read through the menu for Microsoft word and you forget but if we use simulation animation to teach what the app will do the new application for Microsoft word it will become more user friendly and like he said we're going to use word to target not only adults that can use word but even the people that even the most basic people that can have access to Microsoft word it being even the lowest grades and in schools so if we have all those people using Microsoft word we have a bigger market and more income thank you cool those are pretty reasonable approaches right and those wouldn't take a ton of money to do especially the ones that are very they're very simple they're very focused men if you could make a word processor that helped kids learn to read a little better or help them to write a little better parents wouldn't care how often it crashed they would love that right teachers would recommend it to everybody so you wouldn't have to spend money on expensive promotion like these are all things that would make your life easier you would still need somebody on your team who's a pretty good programmer and you would need some pretty good designers to really make it simple but that's something these skills exist in the world now you can find these people you can become that person so yeah I love it you don't compete by going bigger right you don't compete by adding more features you compete by saying like I'm small and that gives me the luxury I can choose something really specific and focus to work on and I can get there quickly and depending on who you choose like you might say like oh well I really need to pay the bills you know I don't have a job so you would focus on a specific group who can also pay you if that's not a concern then you could focus on the one that will reach the most people maybe you know all of these options are in play but once we get started it's important to realize that our plan as we imagine it at the very beginning isn't going to be totally right I gave you guys five minutes to come up with a business they were pretty good if I'd given you five hours they wouldn't have been any better if you had five weeks they would probably get worse like most of the learning that we get it comes from okay like we get the start of an idea but then what really needs to happen is like you have to test it against the market right you have to is it going to help kids learn to read well we'd better get some kids using it do moms want that we'd better talk to them you know it's got to get out there into the market there's only so much we can do sitting around a table so we really focus like when has been an awesome week it's because I've learned a lot about my business I'm like ooh that doesn't work but this has potential and then I know how to spend the next week better because as so many of us said we only have so much time right so you don't want to block off a year and say I'm going to take this year and build my business you want to be like okay this is what matters this week and this week and this week it's these smaller chunks and then you can you can adjust a bit more one of the other things I noticed that a couple of the tables how many of you guys basically spent all of your time working on the first idea that came up did anyone now okay great because the first idea is usually not the best idea but we tend to like our first idea and if you look at the way other professions work especially crafts people they come up with thousands of possibilities before they commit to one this is a picture of Frank Gary's workshop and he's just designing a chair and he's a great designer I'm sure his first design would have been pretty good but he wants to know what's possible we should do the same thing with our ideas your ideas get way better if you come up with lots of them so if I have five minutes if I have an hour I'd rather spend the hour to come up with 12 ideas then spend the hour like really polishing one right get more possibility then kill off the bad ones there's lots of different ways to do this like we're not going to go into detail but this is how you prototype a chair this is how you prototype a website you can even take this to people and you can say like how would you use this and have them play with it with their fingers as if it was a touch screen it feels silly but it works and they're like wait but how do I close it and you're like oh yeah I forgot the close button and you can actually make your product better before you've written any code this was the very first product I built at my first company it was meant to be it was the coded version of this so that was the mock-up and that was the product and it was meant to be an online way of making cartoons we wanted to compete with Adobe Adobe Flash basically it was the leading animator it's big expensive software we wanted to put it on the web we wanted to make it free but we made a big mistake and we just kept adding more features this thing was so confusing and we spent almost a year on it and we never even launched it because at some point we launched this really simple automation toy we said okay we have this ambition we're going to make a big sophisticated software it's going to be powerful it's going to be amazing but in the meantime let's just throw this up we're just going to put this on the web it took four hours to build you could grab this character and you could drag him around and however you moved him was recorded and it would play back the same way it was a total toy we had no idea, no grand ambitions no idea that people can play with and immediately Sony and Disney and MTV and all of these guys started calling me and they were saying hey we saw your animation thing can we license it and I was like wow we have a business and it was a total accident and so based on that success with clients we were able to go and raise funding from investors and that kind of got us started and we never in a million years would have come up with this idea but because we'd put something out into the world we'd said like hey here we are like who else cares about this space and we were able to get into a conversation with our customers instead of just sitting around a table talking to ourselves they did some research recently do you know what the biggest thing that kills innovative products is? the biggest thing that kills startups venture capitalists so running out of money is bad having too much money you don't know what to do with is also bad yes but that's not the number one killer belief in yourself not having enough or having too much okay not having enough belief in yourself so you just sort of give up that's usually not the problem that entrepreneurs have but yeah some people certainly do walk away from good ideas cause yeah it gets hard they want to do other things what? laziness no that's not it either and it's not co-founders fighting with each other too much time on the idea definitely hurts you yeah all of those months are kind of wasted you know there's this saying that you haven't started working on the business until you've launched it you know you gotta get it out there it really matters but no the biggest killer of small companies of innovative companies is that they try to act like big companies so when they're still little they start spending lots of money it could be two guys in a living room or like a couple people who are still in university who are spending no money but instead they start printing business cards and they get an office and they hire an intern and they get a salesperson and suddenly they're spending all this money and they're like oh my gosh we're gonna go broke in three months until you start acting like a big company you're basically immortal like your company cannot fail as long as you're a student because you're not losing money right you have all the time in the world to work on it so you can play with lots of crazy ideas as long as you stay small as soon as you start acting big then things get difficult your company is suddenly in danger and at some point obviously it needs to grow up you can't stay small forever so what we're looking for is we want to stay small until we've got the core we found something that people really love it doesn't have to be big it's crazy how small these things start but you know someone really loves it right you're serving this type of user better than anyone else and you can take that love and start to expand it out and we can also find clever ways of testing whether different pieces of the business are going to work I'm going to give you an idea and I want you guys to basically pretend you're the CEO, you're the founder and you're deciding how to figure out if this idea is going to work so I had a friend he's a graffiti artist he's a street artist and he wanted to build a community website which all the graffiti artists would go around and they would take pictures of their work around the city and it would appear on the website so it's like Instagram but it has all the locations around the city where their work is so they can show off their portfolio and they can also get hired because sometimes people want to hire these artists to do work for them and that was how the business is going to make money so you get all the graffiti artists they put up all the pictures of their work they say this is where it is and then people can hire them it basically makes sense these artists do get hired so you know that this transaction happens there is money in the market it's big, it's part of the advertising industry but we have no idea if it's going to work or not now it's just an idea so in your groups how would you start figuring out if this idea was going to work and remember you don't have money how could you figure out if the idea is going to work this weekend alright take five minutes see what you can come up with and again if you're sitting by yourself feel free to join in with a larger group so the idea one more time is you've got a bunch of graffiti artists and they're building portfolios so they're saying this is all of my art as a street artist this is where it is in the city this is how you can find it hear nice pictures of it and then people can hire them just about a minute and a half left remember how do you figure out if this is a good idea you want to find a way to test it you want to find a way to figure out if it's going to work thirty seconds alright guys what do we come up with is anyone happy about their plan of attack you feel like you've got a good way to start oh nice okay so as long as we don't have money we thought about setting up a free website one of the free hostess so we are ready to go and then we're going to pull the profile of all the artists over there and then through finding the right connection and then the website so we would like to know how is the demand is this country is compatible or is this region compatible with this model and then going to the companies we are only going to spend time in it not money so we got to go to the companies that are interested in this one like promoting the idea tourism and then with the point in the target market we can launch the website and this is going to be successful brilliant thank you yeah just hold on to it I think I like clapping cool hi my name is Beatrice I'm from Romania me and my colleague here were coming up with probably a similar idea but using this whole event that we are in at the moment and just creating the buzz like going either person to person and talking with them getting their email and then emailing them the whole portfolio and saying okay this is this is the plan this is what these young people want to do and then maybe through social media like a side event for lunch break and inviting everyone who is interested in I don't know outside and showing them all the portfolio and then trying to find partners outside the summit who are actually interested in those portfolios and trying to help them cool great thank you so both of these focus on basically getting people excited and committed before we've actually built the technology which I think is a great approach did anyone have quite a different approach great where's the mic floating we talked a little bit about protecting the artist's anonymity because as we know graffiti blurs a line between sometimes being vandalism and sometimes being art and a lot of these artists have their identities hidden for good reasons so we talked about maybe just finding out the voices in that community first if they're willing to put their information on such a website so here I am so you can find me doing this illegal activity and then also seeing about the market and seeing who would be interested in contacting the artists inside nice thank you cool so that's a great question as well right like do artists want to even post their stuff online because it might be illegal and we might be getting all of them thrown in prison and then it wouldn't be a very popular website the way I like to look at new ideas is I look at them and I go okay what am I scared about about this idea if this idea wasn't going to work why not so some of what you guys have brought up so it's sort of can we get lots of people excited can we grow this movement do street artists actually want this tool do they have other security concerns that we need to find a way to alleviate I love the idea of actually going into like getting a few portfolios together building a free website and then actually going in and trying to sell your artists get someone to hire them because then suddenly money is flowing through and you know that the whole business works you've actually created the value I talked to someone who wanted to create a social enterprise basically doing crowdfunding to get people their first home and it was a really cool idea and he was trying to raise something like 10 million dollars so that he could do this but that's crazy right like the homes don't cost very much they only cost about 10,000 dollars so the first step is to get you know a couple hundred friends to each chip in 50 dollars and then bam you bought someone a house it's like suddenly it's in business right you've connected the whole thing and then if you do need to raise funding or you do need to convince a friend to join your team or help you build your website you've got something real to show for it you've taken that first step by yourself and if there's one thing to take away it's like to me startups at the early stages they're all about figuring out what that first step is you're never going to you can't build the whole thing all at once it's just too big right you have to know you're going somewhere you want to go for all of the reasons we talked about at the beginning of the day and those are your own reasons right but to get there there's that first step in deciding what it is to me that's like that's strategy basically how given the resources I actually have not the resources I wish I had one day what I have right now how can I get started how can I make without anyone's permission without anyone's support how can I use the money, the people, the things I know right now and actually get it going because I promise you once you've started people want to help you it's crazy you wouldn't believe the difference when I had this it was basically just an idea we hadn't launched it sorry it was just an idea everyone told us it was stupid they told us it would never work yeah it's difficult as soon as we actually put something out into the world like all we got was help and support like oh you need to talk to this person you need to talk to this person you got to get the ball rolling yourself this is another one this one's pretty straightforward let's say you want to build a website but it's going to take you 7 weeks you don't want to spend 7 weeks building a website that nobody's going to use or pay you for how do you figure out whether people are going to pay you this one's sort of a classic I already know it and this was done by a great entrepreneur a guy named Joel he spent a couple hours and he set up a website and the first website said these are the three features it does these three things boom boom boom do you want to buy it? here's how much it costs then you can say oh yeah I want to see how much it costs that took you to a second page which said it costs you know zero five would you like to buy it? and if you clicked the yes you would it went to a third website or a third page which said whoops sorry it doesn't actually exist yet but like I'm thrilled that you're interested in it I would love to talk to you to figure out what you need so that I can make sure I make exactly what you want and from that he got into conversation with about a hundred people who he knew already wanted to buy what he was going to build and he had email conversations with all of them and he got to really understand exactly what they cared about just like you brought up right what are they concerned about what do they really care why are they bothering to do this and then by the time he committed to actually building it he already had people he knew were going to pay him that's great like you don't want to build you know it's like you see as well sometimes you'll see like charities who are looking for people to help and to me that's the same as like for customers it's sort of like it's missed the mark a little bit and there's a huge number of reasons this can happen but what you ideally want is you want to know in advance that people really want what you're making whether it's that they want to be helped by it or they want to buy it and sometimes we can get really sneaky I talked to a team they wanted to start a training business but it was going to cost them 5,000 euros to get the certification they needed and they were debating this they've been debating it for weeks should we spend the money that's a lot of money do we spend it we barely have that much money is this business going to work but it's actually pretty easy to figure out right you can go sell your services now and if anyone buys it go get certified or you can say hey I'm not certified yet but we're good at this can I just come in and give it to your team for free get some testimonials if someone won't take it for free they'll bother getting the expensive certification and charging them for them maybe you don't even enjoy doing this stuff you know doing it these guys had never run this training and they were thinking about spending all their money to make a job out of that man I would want to know if I enjoyed it first you definitely don't want to work really hard to build a job you don't enjoy are any of you guys interested in physical products yeah one maybe you'll be more interested when you figure out how easy it actually is it's unbelievable if you had an idea for a product you'd have to get your molds and your manufacturing equipment built it was so expensive nowadays it's really easy and people have been being clever for a while do you guys have when I was growing up in the US there were these ads for ridiculous products which would come on late at night like this one it's a blanket with arms it's called the snuggie it's basically a bathrobe but you wear it backwards it's like a pretty dumb idea you've got to admit and it's hugely popular and before they made it they didn't know if it was going to be popular or not so the guy who came up with the snuggie he's like trust me blanket with arms good idea the guy sitting across from was like that's idiotic why are you even here? and he's like no it's great trust me it's genius but they decide they can settle it for barely any money so what they do is they run the TV ad before the product exists and they say hey you can buy it we'll deliver it but it's going to take 6 to 8 weeks to be delivered do you guys see what's happening here they're only going to manufacture the products if enough people buy them if people don't want the product they don't need to build it it's like an awesome trick sell it first then build it if they want it there's so much you can do like this I know guys who bought they got an entire floor of a New York City skyscraper with no money because they got their customers to pay them in advance and then they use that money to get their skyscraper which is just it's crazy there's another company that set up an airline like this I'm amazed what you can get away with if you're just like willing to ask people for money the modern version of this is Kickstarter I actually wanted to show you I just ran a Kickstarter because I've never done one before and I wanted to see what it was like so this one ended like a week ago we were making a card game we made this card game and I'll show you what the prototypes look like in a second but it was going to be quite expensive to manufacture I needed to make like 2,000 copies and so I didn't want to make 2,000 copies of a game that nobody bought so you put it on Kickstarter and you say hey, pay me today and if enough people pay me I'll build it and it did really well we got way more money than we needed we only needed $10,000 to make it and we got more than that so now we're manufacturing the game and sending it to people and the first version of that actually looked like this you know, it's like the prototypes don't need to be complicated we just needed to find out if our game was fun that's our first job like why bother doing anything else if the game's not fun and so I had like I'd invite tons of people over and we'd have like board game nights and we would play all these games that I'd drawn onto blank cards and it was great and it doesn't look like a business but this is what the beginnings of businesses look like they look weird you know, it's a couple guys in a garage you know, a couple people after school or like a whoever like making sewing stuff and then selling it on eBay like that's the beginnings and the huge empires they grow out of this stuff there's also really something to be said for just getting started Wikipedia we look at Wikipedia now and it seems like this enormous product right? and who is crazy enough to think of Wikipedia as an idea, it's kind of crazy it's an encyclopedia but anyone can add to it but where it actually came from is they had a regular encyclopedia and one day they're like hey let's just try adding this little feature it's not crazy, just one little feature we'll see what happens bam, one of the most important sites on the internet it didn't come out of a big debate it didn't come out of a huge like ambitious plan, they weren't trying to actively change the world let's try something maybe it'll work, we'll see what happens he's one of the he was one of the co-founders of Newpedia I believe does anyone know right or wrong for a fact I believe that Newpedia was the original company and then Wikipedia spun out of it and Jimmy Wales took that over so we talked about a few different approaches we talked about stripping features out you can really simplify down if you get fast your life's just so much easier you don't want to be taking months to release a version of what you're trying to do you want it to take a week ideally, or less each version of your company should take a week whether it's the next version of your website, whether it's the next proposal that you're going to take and try to sell to people it's like you got to simplify down if you're able to make it a little bit better if it's taking months you've thrown away the biggest advantage you have and then one other thing that really surprises people in the early days is what a difference a community can make we talked about the benefit of knowing partners and co-founders but the other really important type of people you can know is your customers if you have a blog or a Facebook group or a big and popular meetup that's a group of people who care about something this is a group of people who care about something if you get all those people together and they look up to you and you can say you can direct that energy suddenly companies and social enterprises and non-profits, all this stuff is suddenly so possible it's such an incredible asset as when you're starting out your career I really think that it's worth building your own audience because it's something that you can take with you from job to job and from company to company you never have to give it away if people read your blog if they follow your thoughts if they look up to your opinions it makes you so much more valuable to employers but then you also don't need them you can always take your own tribe your own group and say hey I know what you guys like I built a new product for you you know, like here you are here's this, I know you already want it because I know you and you trust me so it's easy for you to buy it and this is kind of the idea of building a movement companies don't have to start with technology this was brought up earlier you can start with a group of people who care about what it's trying to accomplish and then later you can just add the technology to make them more efficient this is a great approach it's a totally reasonable first step if your first step is to get 100 excited people you're doing great don't let anything stop you is basically what I'm trying to say there's always a first step that uses the resources that you have available to you so before we get out of here I want to get out a couple minutes early but I want you to do do one last thing and then I think we may have a couple closing comments I want you to figure out what you could start building now that would help you for the rest of your career what you could build now that would be the most important asset you don't already have would make your next company easier is it going to be connections to business partners and co-founders is it going to be your own audience of potential customers who looks up to you is it a missing skill like knowing how to program what's the most important thing that you could get is it taking care of your finances and getting rich so that you don't need to worry about time anymore and you can spend all your time thinking about what's the most important thing you could build that's going to help you not right now but with your next company so we'll just take like two minutes what's the most important thing you're missing remember all the things stopping you from building your company what's the one that would make the most difference if you started getting it today two minutes I'll set a little timer I have seconds that's time what came up do you just shout them out equipment okay so building up the equipment and the infrastructure getting people to donate computers finding cheap suppliers who will give it to you finding ways of getting that supply that's an awesome thing to start building up now you can start collecting it you can let people know that's what's going to really help you great code literacy code literacy perfect learning how to program just opens up so many possibilities for the sort of stuff you can build it takes a little while you can learn to make a website in a weekend but to learn to build a full business online is going to take you six months to two years so if that's going to be important for your career definitely start learning it okay okay what sort of people would you like to meet attention everybody we've got a programmer looking to meet business and legal people right there make your way over don't all rush cool I think people skills is also a big problem because some people really have some people have trouble actually talking to their customers and they spend a lot of months trying to find a partner who does this for them while they deal with the rest in the back and some people lose a lot of time months maybe even years doing that where and they hope that they wish that they learned these people skills earlier time so they wouldn't waste so much time money yeah there are certain skills that are just valuable to have knowing how to sell knowing a little bit about technology knowing a little bit about design knowing how to talk to people these things just keep paying off over and over and over so yeah starting to fill in the missing gaps is huge let's take one more yeah reputation nice yeah reputation especially if you know there's there was one more in the very back corner we haven't heard much from that corner yeah if you have a good reputation especially in an industry you care about let's say you know that you want to stay in the medical industry if you get a good reputation within the medical community then it makes every one of your companies easier it makes your whole career easier that's a great thing to build up I'm Jerry from Hong Kong I feel that a trendy mind that is always up to date is very important because talking about businesses that's outdated no one would do a business with you even if you're good at making businesses cool yeah definitely staying on top of things having the right timing and just staying aware to what's going on in the world is huge the ones that I like that these are kind of your unfair advantage that you're going to build up over time and it's what's going to make you better at starting these companies these movements these social enterprises than anyone else and I think like all of these are great the ones that came to mind when I thought about it is getting to know future co-founders it's so so important have the right people on your team getting better at the big three kind of building skills so programming design and sales and having a side project that you take seriously even if it's just a blog if you actually try to make that popular if you try to drive traffic to it if you try to improve it if you try to make it better you learn so so much and lastly building any kind of audience getting people to follow you look up to you building that reputation all of these things will keep paying off and every project you want to run every company you want to start is this and it lets you take a bigger first step you know even with where you're at now you can always take that first step you just need to be clever you need to find a way to do it without the money and without the connections you need to choose an idea which you're able to do now that's fine one of the biggest powers you have is choosing an idea that you can actually start today there's always time for the other ideas later in your first idea but then also start building up what you're going to need so that you can really go after the big one when you're ready for it so that's all for the morning we've got another couple hours in the afternoon so far we've been talking mostly about the mindset and the attitude and how to take that big idea and actually start making progress on it it's hugely important and if you take nothing else away I think that will serve you well if you get started that you don't need other people's support for find a way to take that first step yourself in the afternoon we're going to look at some of the technology and tools which make it a lot easier and kind of some of the more practical steps about how you actually like what do I actually need to do how do I get paid that first dollar what are some of the different types of businesses I can start and what I really really want is I want you guys when you're done with today I want you to know that the first step is that you can take to start on a company or a project that you care about that meets your goals and is going to do what you want it to do so are there any closing words before we break for lunch no ok thanks so much guys lunch is down by the pool and it starts serving just about now so thanks a lot and see you see you in the afternoon one last thing that I'll say is two of you tonight are going to kind of make a little presentation in front of everybody it's very fun so we'll decide at the end of the afternoon who that should be and who wants to do it but just you know keep in mind if you think that you might be interested in sort of talking about lessons learned and what needs to change legally to make this easier and break down some of the entrepreneurial walls for us like have a think and we'll figure it out in the afternoon