 Hello, I'm Eli Velasquez, Director of Venture Development at Texas Tech University and Executive Director of the Lubbock Angel Network. I previously served as Director of the Greater West Texas Regional Center of Innovation and Commercialization where I implemented innovation initiatives that significantly advanced the entrepreneurial ecosystem in West Texas. I will be your moderator for today's global innovation through science and technology or just Tech Connect conversation on disruptive innovations making competition irrelevant. We will be exploring with our panelists how startups can differentiate themselves from established companies by creating new markets and maximize their startups' chances of success. Tech Connects are just one of the programs just offers. The Just Initiative helps empower you, the young science and technology innovators worldwide to advance your ideas and startups through networking, skills building, mentoring, and access to financing. You can learn more about Just programs and partners at www.justnetwork.org. Today in our Tech Connect, you have the opportunity to ask questions of our entrepreneurial experts. We will be collecting your questions and comments through the chat space beside the video or on Twitter at hashtag Just Tech Connect. I also want to thank those of you hosting viewing groups and encourage you to submit your questions and live photos early for your chance to be featured during the program. Now let me introduce our panel of experts. First we're delighted to have Hemi Parthasotofi joining us remotely from Silicon Valley. Hemi is a scientific director of Breakout Labs, a program of the Thiel Foundation which supports early stage radical science-based companies. She holds a PhD in Brain and Cognitive Sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a BA in Biophysics from the Johns Hopkins University. Our next expert panelist is Shantaro Kaido. Shantaro is a Kauffman Fellow and Director of Drexel Renters at Drexel University. Shantaro works with Drexel startups on product validation, customer acquisition, and revenue model development and also manages the $10 million early stage fund to invest in Drexel startups. Prior to Drexel, Shantaro made seed and Series A investments for I2E, one of the two venture development organizations recognized by name in a 2015 White House report on successful investment models. Shantaro is also an entrepreneur and is a co-founder of CineCon Technologies and CodeZ. Finally, in our studio we have Duigo Octem. Duigo is a venture advisor for the European Investment Fund and the founder of Du Consulting, a company based in Silicon Valley where she is helping corporations to innovate and startups to scale. Duigo is also the founder of Turkey's first corporate run startup accelerator. She is a corporate computer engineer with a master's degree. Duigo also has been named one of the most influential people in Turkey's entrepreneurial ecosystem by StartupsWatch. Thank you all for joining us today for this exciting conversation. As we wait for your questions to come in, I'd like to kick off the discussion by asking the first question of our panelists. Could each of you share with us what disruptive innovations mean to you? Tammy, since you're joining us remotely, let's hear your thoughts. Thanks, Eli. I'm honored to kick off the discussion on this important topic. Disruptive innovations, of course, were originally defined around startups sneaking up and overtaking large incumbents and capturing market share unexpectedly. I'd say at least in Silicon Valley now, that term is bandied around basically by anybody that's trying to hustle up some venture capital. But for me and for the companies that we support through breakout labs, I'd say that disruptive innovation is building something fundamentally new based on a strong differentiated technology with a core IP and or a creative business model. But the point of the business model is really to maximize the potential of that technology in solving an important problem. Thank you very much, Hemi. Shintaro, what are your thoughts? So just to do a dub tail on what Hemi said, this is about the new service. So it's really about products and services that are designed for new set of customers, new attributes, performance criteria. It really changes the business model from the business model that the incumbent is using. Do you agree? What about you? Well, I agree with what Hemi and Shintaro said. I just can add, when I think about like disruptive innovation, I always like ask the question, what is the game changing thing here? So for me, disruptive innovation is a game changer, and it doesn't need to be come out real like breakthrough scientific inventions, but it also can be true like business model innovation. Excellent. Thank you very much. Thank you for these excellent insights. They have prompted quite a few questions from our viewers. Our viewing group at Procirca International in Abuzha, Nigeria wants to know if an entrepreneur creates an innovative product, and a competitor then uses that product to create a slightly better product. Is that still considered a disruptive innovation? Shintaro, let's start with you on this question. And I think my take on this is that it is still a disruptive innovation, and I'm assuming that the competitor that the person who's asking the question is referring to is the incumbent, but when you are introducing a new product with those new attributes, that's the qualification of disruptive innovation, so my take is that it still is. Thank you. Hemi, what are your thoughts on this? I suppose it depends on what slightly means and what dimension it's in. A slight improvement can actually be a game changer, so I would agree with Shintaro. It sort of depends on the outcome for the customer, for the product. Do you go? Well, I think the same thing, so it definitely depends on the domain and what slightly means, but as we told, even like a business model innovation can be a disruptive innovation, so both yes and no, it depends on the domain. Excellent. Now that we've defined disruptive innovations, it might be helpful to our viewers to know, what are some of the different types of markets that exist, and do we go to start with you? Well there are like four different types of markets, so the first one, the new markets, so mostly like disruptive innovations are tapping into this, and you are creating a new market out there, and the other one is like an existing market. You can just go into an existing market that you know all the competitors, and you know the domain, you know you have data, and you are trying to bite the cake, so that's another type and we have also the re-segmented market, which means that you have the product and service, but you are re-segmented for different types of customers. And the last one, the clone market, so it means that there's a proven model somewhere up there, and you say, okay this model is working, so maybe I can use the same model in my country or in my domain, so you are copying that model, of course you have to do some changes, but since you know the model is already proven, you are taking that model. Excellent. Excellent. U.S. Embassy in Monrovia's viewing group asks, what are some traits of successful and disruptive entrepreneurs? What are some successful traits of disruptive entrepreneurs, Jantaro? I'd say perseverance, when you're introducing disruptive innovation, a lot of people will not initially see the value in the innovation, and especially the incumbents and the customers of those incumbents, they will have difficulties getting a grasp of your true value proposition. So you'll have to be very patient with them, work with them to understand how they are incentivized, how they measure themselves, and tell the story about your disruptive innovation partly from their perspective, and I think that is a very time-taking and energy-taking process. Hemi, in your experience working with so many entrepreneurs, what are some of those traits that you've seen that make what would potentially be a disruptive entrepreneur? Well, I think there is a fine balance between having that vision and that passion and that belief, because you're going to get a lot of people who are naysayers, it's very easy to say no, and it's very easy to put off trying to do something fundamentally new. That combination of Shantara's perseverance and that belief in oneself and one's vision of the future, but also combined with what we call coachability. No one can do this alone and they need to take feedback from the people that they're interacting with, from their partners, from their mentors, and that ability to know what you don't know and to balance that feedback and be responsive, but at the same time staying true to yourself and your vision, that's a fine balance. Duigo, you've had an opportunity to work in multiple countries and seeing entrepreneurs from all walks of life, what have you seen that makes up a disruptive entrepreneur? As Hemi and Shintara said, definitely a vision, so they have vision and also they know how to use the gut feeling, because since you are tapping into a new market, you have no data and you kind of like get information through your intuition and through your gut feeling and you should trust your instinct and you should use that to find out what's really out there. Excellent. Can you provide an example of entrepreneurs who have successfully created new markets with their products? What about entrepreneurs who failed? What can we learn from them? Let's start with you, Hemi, on this one. Well, I think the classic example out here in biotech is really Genentech, which is now a huge company, but it really started out with a couple of entrepreneurs who believed that they could create proteins in a new way. We used to make insulin by basically purifying it out of animals and now we're able to synthesize and produce it, so that vision for once with better word and a fundamental new technology has really changed the way biotech exists today. Excellent. Now, I want to encourage all the audience members, please keep submitting your questions in the chat space next to the video player or on the Twitter hashtag using hashtag just tech connect. So, Shintara, what are your thoughts on this question? Oh, well, so I have an example on where entrepreneurs failed and this particular example that I'm thinking of, it's a sensor technology that would detect certain molecules and samples and you can diagnose very quickly and cheaply and the target application was for hospitals to detect infection or any kind of bacteria in the samples, but the way that the startup formed in making a product, the value proposition wasn't vetted with the hospital administration. So, how the hospital measures itself in terms of performance and readmission, internal infection control, those things were not vetted into the product or the revenue model of the product. So, even though it was resting on top of what we consider to be an excellent technology, you had a disconnect with the customer. Interesting. And I think that segues nicely into this next question. What is the lean startup approach and how can entrepreneurs use it to better understand their market? Dugu, let's start with you. Yeah, well, I can get an example from my very own experience. So, I was working for Turkish Telecom, which is the biggest telecooperator in Turkey with 35 million customers and I was responsible for the commercialization of R&D projects. And I saw that it takes a long time for us to come up with a new product and service because it's a giant company, we have lots of bureaucracy, lots of processes and then I said, we should solve this problem and then I worked with my team and we come up with this solution. We have to work with startups. And then, but I talked to my peers inside Turkish Telecom and they said, well, they have innovative ideas, but they have to be trained on business model, they have to be trained about partnerships with Turkish Telecom and we don't really have time for that. And then, I said, okay, we can fix this. So, we learned about startup, we learned Lin startup and we applied Lin startup principles to come up with the idea of startup accelerator, which means that our customers were like my peers inside Turkish Telecom and also the startups out there. So, we interviewed them individually and we asked, okay, what are your needs and how can we help you? And we used all the Lin startup principles and then we actually understand the pain out there and then we come up with the startup accelerator solution. So, that makes everybody happy. So, it helped us to identify the pain points and then what customers need and our model. So, it's worked well and it's still going on. So, it's worked for us. Excellent. Shintaro. For me, Lin startup is really about efficiency in terms of timing capital and I challenge my startups that I work with in identifying what I call the most fragile assumption in every part of the business model canvas and having challenging your peers to challenge that you've in fact identified those most fragile ones and then going out to your customers and stakeholders and testing that out. Usually, it results in those assumptions being proven wrong very quickly. Interesting. Yeah. Hemi, what are your thoughts on Lin startup and its use for disruptive innovations? Well, I'd say that the core of Lin startup for me is really what Dita was referring to is this customer interaction. But one of the things we've found is that startups don't always go to who their customer actually is. So, in the Lin startup mode, you'll interview a bunch of folks that maybe you're trying to develop a therapeutic and you're talking to the folks that would benefit from that therapeutic. That's certainly one conversation. But along the way, you're really going to need the corporate partners to be able to develop that therapeutic and having those conversations and iterative conversations. So one interview may not be enough, but developing relationships to really understand who is going to be the business partner that takes you forward and what kind of proof points they really need to see can be a very distinct conversation than looking at the end user and talking to them. So I'd say for the companies that we work with, we spend a lot of time trying to connect them with the intermediaries along the way that will be instrumental to their success and helping our startups understand what those intermediaries will require in terms of evidence that the technology is promising and that the solution is important. Excellent. Thank you. Nitz and I in Masaru noted that disruptive innovations are new and perhaps difficult to fully understand. How do we convince investors to finance these new innovations, especially in developing economies? And I'll start with you, Shintaro. You definitely have experience in this space. Well, it is a challenge. It's a formidable challenge. The investors, I think you have different types of investors from angels to VCs who are experienced in different degrees in investing in disruptive innovations. So I think you have people who are, say, angel investors that are not necessarily looking for a disruptive innovation to invest in, but just a matter of a asset optimization type of a thing to a venture capitals who are looking for visionary, truly transformative investments where it's too high of a hurdle for the angel investments or regional early stage players to take to play in that market. I think one of the things that I might suggest is that as an entrepreneur, know who are the people who would make that visionary investment and know the ecosystem, not just for the entrepreneurs, but for the capital formation side. And if you network within the investors, I think you'll get a picture of who might have the appetite to be looking for disruptive innovations that might have difficulties attracting investors. Hammy, what are your thoughts on convincing investors that this is a disruptive innovation? Convincing investors that it is a disruptive innovation. I think I was more referring to or I thought the question was more around how to convince investors that they that they should go after a disruptive innovation. And I think there's I should start with saying a lot of investors that are sort of me to and after a quick buck. But there are I think there is a growing landscape of people that really do want to use their money to make an impact more of an impact than than they might through through lesser technologies. I think that the family offices and foundations are starting to get involved and crossing a line between philanthropy and investment where there can be if you can if you can again sell your technology from the point of view of solving a problem that they care about. That's your best entry point. Excellent. And your thoughts? Yeah, well, I think like convincing investors for disruptive innovations is hard in all over the world. But for developing countries it's a little bit harder because the investors in developing countries are tend to be like more risk averse. So but you know it's hard all around the world like we you know reading stories like how really big investors missed the opportunity of like your board or Airbnb deals. But I think like if you believe like you as an entrepreneur you believe that you have a disruptive innovation and to convince like investors maybe you should like talk about how big is the opportunity. So because like you know and it doesn't matter if it's a disruptive innovation or like you know a regular one there is always a chance of success and failure. So if you can say like okay either way we have two options like success or fail and if I you know if this became a success think about the how big is the opportunity is here. So you know convince them through like how much money you will make because of the big market opportunity because it's obvious is a new market. And I think you should play through like the form of investors you know the fear of missing out. So you should say if you miss this you will miss the big opportunity here. That's good. It's good tips. Hemi we'll start with you on this one. Is creating a new market difficult. And if so why. Yes it's it's a huge challenge because it hasn't been done before. I was thinking as I was talking about sizing markets and how much of a challenge it is to put numbers before an investor that are meaningful when you're really creating a new market. For example we have a company C Trek which has created some very interesting technology around being able to take the temperature difference in the ocean to recharge batteries that can be used to power underwater vehicles to power sensors in the ocean to measure things that are for example associated with climate change. Very important. It's very important for us to understand our oceans. Well because the energy technologies aren't in place to really have widespread deployment of sensors for the ocean for underwater vehicles there is this chicken and egg problem that our company faces which is that they have this vast vision and vast potential market of powering underwater research to a large extent. But because that doesn't already exist it's very hard to put numbers around that market. So they are they're starting out very focused on a small existing market and they're using sort of bootstrapping tactics to go larger. But it is a challenge for them to convince a to present a case that is really around the market size at this point. Thank you. Shintaro is creating a new market difficult. No I think it is quite difficult. I'm going to talk about like just particularly on the B2B side. But when you have disruptive innovation trying to create a new market often involves stakeholders from your customers across business units that were traditionally not part of the selling process. So you might have to in the same room have the CEO CFO marketing sales procurement. All of them would have to agree on this value proposition. So anything that relates to integrating or changing the existing business process of a customer. You have to have all the stakeholders within that company to recognize that. And sometimes as a startup getting to that meeting where everyone's present. That's that's the formidable challenge. One of the biggest challenges. Do we go to your thoughts. Well I was thinking about the process that I went through when I started the first corporate startup accelerator in Turkey because there wasn't like even a single player out there. So it was like very hard to convince my boss the CEO of Trukta.com because like hey we should like you know run a startup accelerator and what is it like. And you know you have to convince like every department inside the company and you should convince like startups. Hey we are running this program come here and you know let's be partners. And since like it's not done before inside the company no one knows how to like you know prepare it every month with startups. So you have to work with legal department. You have to work with finance. You have to work with like even marketing departments. So it's very hard because nobody you know knows that. So you have to like tell people and convince them and to get there buying is so important. So it's very hard. But it's also it's challenging but if if you're if you're successful it definitely is worth it. Excellent. Marcos from Peru asks does disruptive innovation apply only to science and technology or can it apply to other areas such as marketing administration or finance. If so can you give an example and I'll start with you Shintaro on this one. Can it be applied outside of science and tech or the question does it come from outside of science and tech because I think marketing and finance those are the areas where technology and science profoundly impacts what happens in those areas. Right. But if the question is about advances in concepts and marketing and finance I think it could be. So for instance in finance disruptive innovation was like like say a valuation of derivatives. So that was definitely a profound finance advancement that changed how capital markets work. Hemi what are your thoughts. I'm afraid I'm going to have to punt on that one. We are so focused on disruption in the context of science and technology that you're going outside my area of expertise. No problem. Well as I just gave an example like you know like even like it's starting a corporate startup accelerator can be an example of disruptive innovation because there is nothing there before. And also think about like Starbucks. Like it's not a you know scientific innovation but it changed the way you know how we pursue coffee shops and like how we experience our you know you know coffee. So even that even that and I can give an example from my home country like Turkey. So a guy come up with the idea of having an airline for like not rich people let's say. So the airplane tickets were so expensive and then he said OK there are lots of people out there who can't afford this. So he come up with this idea and he said OK we are not serving meals during flights and we are not having like fancy lunches but instead of that we will you know have tickets with reasonable prices and then it worked. So it doesn't need to be a breakthrough scientific innovation. But as long as you come up with an idea you know it can be like simpler cheaper. You can make it like more accessible more affordable. These all count. Excellent. Our viewing group from Embassy Tel Aviv wants to know how to conduct customer discovery for a new market. Can you provide a framework. So him you punted on the previous one. You can't punt on this one. Providing a framework for customer discovery. I think it is an iterative process. I think you start out with your key assumptions and your your key targets. And then you make a list. Right. You go down the list. You tap your connections first and your connections build connections. And you you find out you do a first pass on your your questions. You find out where you were right and where you were wrong. And then you hone in and do that all over again. So it's not a it's not a one time process. It's very much an iteration around refining your ideas to the point where you are ready to go to market. Centaro on the on a list follow up on on some of the comments you made earlier. If you're approaching a B2B sort of market or channel. How do you devise the customer discovery process for that for disruptive technology. Well so I'll go back to the attributes right within the market and the product and service and how the customer measures its own performance. So in a new market customer discovery the fundamental process stays the same. But the assumptions that you need to test out very first in its first iteration of customer development is that the key assumptions about what you think are the new attributes that you're introducing by your product and service. So in the example that you kind of put the context around I would have my companies come up with a sheet of well. So if you were to use this innovation then your new measurements will be a BNC. But then do you agree on that. And if not why. Because that usually leads to a very detailed process about what they thought the metrics were and why and were the misalignment between or the gap between the current business processes in the metrics and where the where you eventually want to take your customer to. So you told us about your approach to corporate partners corporate leadership and understanding those customers to sell them on the startup accelerator. What was the value proposition as part of your customer discovery process that that you used and what ultimately convinced them that this was the way to go. So I told my peers in Truc Telecom say hey like I will we will run this program and I promise you we will select from startups together and then we will select startups in the domains that you need. And then we will work with them and with your help at the end of the three months program they will be ready to be a partner of Truc Telecom. It means that you will provide the cost our customers like the customers of Truc Telecom in a way the products and services. And you will spend like less effort because the products and services will come from startups. And I convinced them with that and then I convinced startups that hey like you can access 35 million customers of Truc Telecom and you can use sales and distribution channels of Truc Telecom and we will help you. We will work with you as like your co-founders and then you will use the resources of Truc Telecom and then they it worked and they became like you know they applied. Bought it. Excellent. The viewing group from Embassy Dakar would like to know what are the advantages and risks of partnering with competitors that have similar ideas when developing a disruptive innovation. Working with competitors do we go. Working with competitors well in some cases like I saw a couple of examples that it really worked well because like even sometimes you have to collaborate with competitors especially like you know if you have no data with the new markets you can use like you know their channels you can use even like even like think about like big corporations they are partnering before competing. So it may help but since like you are tapping into a complete new market I'm not sure like if there are already competitors there because you know it's a new market basically you are not supposed to have that much competitors. So I'm not sure if that is totally applicable for disruptive innovation. Excellent. Shintaro what do you think. I think this is a difficult one because you really have to be careful how you partner. I think one of the useful ways to partner is to partner to build a critical mass of awareness to the target customer community. Actually I came across an interesting article. It was a beer industry in Japan but the beer consumption has been going down significantly over the last I think like five years leading up to 2005 and all the major players in Japan decided that it was worth a collaboration and all the major makers decided to do an awareness campaign. And if you think about the margins and dynamics of that business it's cutthroat competition right. But then the industry really consolidated amongst unified mission. Let's create and improve the awareness of beer in Japan. And it really has kicked up since then. So I think drawing a parallel in disruptive innovations and startups. I think if you partner to communicate to your potential customer in the market we're really here. We all there are a bunch of us who are vested in solving this problem for you. I think that would be an effective potentially an effective way of collaborating with your competitors. Hemmy what about you especially in the life science health care market. What about working with competitors that may have similar ideas. Yeah I think it depends again on how you define competitors. There are certainly people that are working in in similar areas where it makes sense to collaborate. We have for example a company G tech that is developing wireless sensors to be able to measure activity in the G.I. tract. So we don't actually have a good way to measure in real time what's going on in the stomach and intestines. And that's usually important for a range of diseases irritable bowel syndrome that are poorly defined. And because they're poorly defined there aren't great therapeutic options. It is again a kind of a chicken and an egg problem. And so working with folks in the G.I. space that maybe are not they nobody has a technology by virtue of the fact that it's a new market to measure functional activity in real time. People do have technologies to measure the microbiome of the gut to develop and develop therapeutic platforms. And so there may be strengths there in collaborating to really help to solve the chicken and egg problem. But I was actually going to refer to something different which is my my boss Peter Thiel who's the head of the Thiel Foundation which breakout lab sits in tells the story of the development of PayPal and how PayPal actually ended up merging with its competitor down the road at a point where both of them were very very much more concerned about the investment environment than the potential value of their product and really felt that rather than trying to compete head to head if they brought joint forces they'd be much more attractive to investors. And of course that subsequently turned out to be true. Absolutely. Thank you. Another question from U.S. Embassy Monrovia is if there is no immediate competition with a startup with a new innovation what motivates entrepreneurs to expand their business. Shantaro. So I think and then I see this often coming from a university setting disruptive technology niche beachhead market could be for a very comfortable lifestyle business. But then there is of course the avenue more of the high growth and getting to an outside investment. So what motivates entrepreneurs to expand their business. I think it goes back to some of the qualities that we're talking about what you look for an entrepreneur. And I think I said my answer was perseverance. But then it's like it's the commitment to the mission. Right. Because there's the obviously the financial side of doing startups and being an entrepreneur the financial success. But then there's the desire to make a societal impact. And then I think if you are driven purely by the financial returns I think when you reach the point of being a successful lifestyle business I think it's difficult to find the motivation to go up that extra notch. I think you really have to believe in the power of your startup changing the world. Do you know what are your thoughts. Well I think like solving a real problem can be a big motivation for an entrepreneur. Like I solve this problem with a good way. So maybe I can help the other people who live across the country or who live across the world. So I can help them about this with using my disruptive innovation. I think it can be a big motivation. Big motivation. Hemi what about you. I think the motivation to expand markets is partly around economies of scale and building networks. And as you build businesses one of the things if you're really a disruptive innovator is that it becomes more profitable and the larger you scale in a lot of businesses. And so tapping into new markets is the way you grow and the way you court investment. Mateus from Brazil asks are there ways for entrepreneurs to interest investors in a disruptive innovation that will not have an immediate return to them. For example with a nonprofit organization. Hemi let's start with you. Well I think investors are in it for returns and so you don't find the same set of investors investing in for profit entities as you do in nonprofits typically. The exception there is mission related foundations where you'll have one arm that's doing grants to nonprofits and you'll have another arm that's doing investments in for profits. There are models which I'm not overly familiar with where you have a for profit and a nonprofit sitting alongside of each other and coexisting and helping each other to succeed. And those can certainly be investable opportunities. Santaro your thoughts. I think I'll just quickly add that the entrepreneurs should do customer development on the investors themselves. So it's just uptailing on what Hemi said. So the nonprofits mission based metrics. So you don't go to a purely financial investor and talk about a mission impact. So I think once you exercise the framework that you know and love in developing startups it goes a little way to apply that same to the investors. Excellent. I think this next question is perfectly teed up from you. Do we go. How do innovators in developing countries bolster young entrepreneurial ecosystems to attract investors from developed countries. Well yeah it's it's challenging. So like in can I I can give an example from Turkey. So you know Turkey is a developing country and with a young population the help of the population is under 829 and you know internet is getting you know the penetration is growing so quickly. But investors from outside Turkey they are they are a bit shy because you know there are lots of opportunity like in Silicon Valley like in you know New York like in London like you know in startups how startups startup hops. I think we need like success stories to attract investors and it's it's actually it's happening now in Turkey like a food delivery startup Turkey startup was acquired by delivery here in London. Sorry a Berlin based startup for six hundred million dollars and it was a big exit. So investors are now like looking to that startup and they are saying like I wish we you know we were one of the earliest startups ever one of the early investors of that startup. So they would like you know have a great return. So since a couple of we need a couple of great like success stories and then investors will say OK there is something interesting going on here. So let's find out what would attract you to look at an entrepreneur in a developing country. Wow that's since I've only done investments in the U.S. so I think I come from a limited experience but I tend to think that investors do invest on relationship basis. So it's over the course of the long haul right. You get to know how the entrepreneurs developed over time in pursuing this passion. So it comes down to the question of can I invest in this person and the opportunity that he or she speaks of rather than just the opportunity looking at it. But I think it would be a challenge in in a developing country just because a lot of these assumptions that you might make about the stakeholders about regulations even might be a little bit more dynamic than what you're used to. So lots and lots of challenges. Hammy I'd like to hear your thoughts on this too. Yeah it is a real challenge. We actually only invest in the U.S. we used to when we opened our doors for breakout ads which itself is a kind of startup experiment we thought we would fund entrepreneurs all over the world and it's not so much about the intimate relationship we'll have established before we fund an entrepreneur because we take some risks on people that we come to know over the course of our program. But it's really about our ability to add value in places outside the U.S. where we just don't know the landscape there. I remember a company in India that applied to us that was very seemed like a very attractive technological opportunity to capture carbon at industrial plants and create new chemicals. But it was really about developing those relationships with those plants and we just weren't able to help. So investors want to see that they can typically want to see that they can add value that they have an inside track to helping your business to succeed. So to the extent that you can avail yourselves of opportunities that they bring to the table maybe you want to expand into a market that they're more familiar with and convince them that you have traction in your local market. That's one way. I'd say that even across the U.S. there's a challenge. We we regularly see that investors won't are more reluctant to go to places or to fund companies that we've supported across the country that aren't in the hotspots. And part of that is because one they don't they don't have that easy access and day to day contact but also because they they're wary of investing in entrepreneurs that lack a sophisticated ecosystem lack the the the the folks that they can hire to build their team that lack the other kinds of consultants and environment that they need. So to the extent that local ecosystems can develop strong interactions and strong ties that will boost the individual startups. I think that's really important across the globe. Thank you. Youth Tech in Columbia and U.S. Embassy Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have a similar question. Risk in investing is crucial but can be daunting for entrepreneurs in developing countries. Can a startup in a developing country mitigate risk when putting a disruptive technology on the market. Shintaro we'll start with you on this one. I think this question is really related to the previous set of questions but and I think one of the things that Hemi talked about one of the things that investors look for is the sophisticated ecosystem I think as she referred to it in a developing country. I think one of the one of the things that the entrepreneurs could do if they were they haven't done so or in the motion of doing it used to try to build that supportive ecosystem. So prior to my position current position in Philly I was working in Oklahoma City in Tulsa and that's one of the spots that Hemi referred to as the the not so hot spots and what the ecosystem over there did was that the entrepreneurs came together under the one mission of let's put together an ecosystem the best way that we can. We're not going to duplicate the Bay Area. We're not going to duplicate New York. We're not going to duplicate anywhere but then let's create Oklahoma City and Tulsa ecosystem as best as it can be. And then I think over the course of last three years some of the investors outside the region started to see the value proposition in that. So I think that's I think they are headed in right trajectory. That's a great story. Marcos from Peru has another question. What is the importance of partners in developing and completing a project such as suppliers, distributors, venture capitalists and others? Do you go? We'll start with you. I think none of the most important thing is like the team. Like you you should have like a dream team like because entrepreneurship is really hard and it's a real long journey and you you should pick the right partners with you in this long journey. I think this is one of one of the most crucial things. And you should like pick your investors really well because it's you know there's a saying like it's like marriage. You should you can be like really upset at the end of the process or you can be very happy. So you should pick as investors are picking entrepreneurs and as entrepreneurs you should pick your investors as well, especially in developing countries. It's not that you know easy because there are not much there are not many investors out there. But still like at least you should like judge the investors through their like you know all the investments and how they help the entrepreneurs. You should like you know do do diligence on them. And also like partner you should pick your like partners like corporates can help a lot on that. As I said because they need to innovate quickly and they need entrepreneurs for sure. And entrepreneurs can use their resources. So it's another important thing I guess. Hemi what are your thoughts on partnerships. In the world that I work in and the technologies we deal with they're absolutely critical. I think a student says the team is where you start this Peter my boss likes to say that the startup is the largest group of people you can convince of a plan to build a different future. And so propagating that plan out to the different constituencies you have to work with is critical. We have we deal with a lot of companies that are not are eventually going to be acquired. But even if they're not acquired are going to require everything from clinical samples to manufacturing partners. And one of our companies for example is developing a diagnostic a point of care diagnostic for diseases for example for sepsis and there one of their critical steps was actually finding the right manufacturing partner to develop their microfluidics platform and be able to scale that up. And they went to extraordinary lengths to vet and find the right partner which has now been critical to them to be able to run their their large clinical trials they've started. Excellent. The viewing party at the U.S. Embassy Rabat wants to know if there is a link between disruptive innovation and crowdfunding Shantaro. Let's start with you on this one. A link between disruptive innovation and crowdfunding. I think crowdfunding since its inception has powered a lot of potential disruptive innovation. So I mean obviously there's a link there. And then I think one of the things that crowdfunding should be credit for is that you can do really instantaneous dynamic ongoing real-time customer development. And you get to iterate on your product a lot quicker. I mean you feel that you're alone in the world if you put up your campaign and 15 days later you're zero percent of the target with 30 days to go. You know that you have iteration to do. So in getting to disruptive innovation I see crowdfunding as a very viable way of seeing if you have something that's valuable. Riga what are your thoughts on crowdfunding? Yeah as he said like crowdfunding helps you to helps you to prove that you fund the product market fit. And one of the startups I was really working on it's the Turkish startup called Monument. And they are doing they are doing a hardware for you to storage your photos and manage them easily. And since there is you know no similar solution in the market they run a Kickstarter campaign to see like you know if it is the you know right solution. And then they ended up with with over funding funded with five thousand backers from all around the world. And now they are telling the investors say hey like we already proved proved that you know we found the product market fit. So I think yeah there's a there's a relation between crowdfunding and disruptive innovation. Hemi what are your thoughts. I think in a lot of a lot of particularly tech their venture capitalists are now requiring evidence of crowdfunding in certain sectors more as a marketing exercise than as a tool for funding a company. I would say that there needs to be some caution particularly around what you promise to the folks that you're crowdfunding from. We've certainly heard of stories and and known folks that have promised to deliver a certain item a glowing plant as an example to the the crowdfunding community. And then that burden has effectively been too great and has compromised the ability of the business to succeed. Excellent. A Twitter question from Maria in Kampala Uganda. How do mindsets play a role when working with competitors. How should you approach this situation. Mindsets. How do mindsets play a role when working with competitors. I'll start with you Hemi. Hmm. Um. Well. I would say that you have to have a clear understanding of your value and your competitors value and go in with a clear understanding of what you want to get out of the relationship. Very good. Shintaro. I think Hemi articulated pretty well. I think that's I don't think I can add more to that. Excellent. So. But Shuku from Haiti has a final question about competition. How can you set the right price for your product in order to beat the competition. Yeah that's a tough one. What do you think. Well pricing is very important and it is it's vital to you know to survive and especially for disruptive innovations. It's it's really hard because you know there is no data that you can use as a benchmark. So I think one of the best ways to do that like you know talking to your customers and like to see how much they are willing to pay for it. And then I think this this this can help. Shintaro any final. Well I think one should exercise caution for being a cost leader. Unless you're disruptive innovation is about changing the order of magnitude of your margins. So it's important to know you have some sense in how your competitors power their product in providing their service and where you might fit in on the performance of your operation. So. And I'm a proponent of value added pricing as opposed to just pricing for the sake of beating the customer. So I would engage with the current and the potential customers about the the inherent intrinsic value of what you're providing. And then try to differentiate by other things like relationship customer service and other aspects of getting your customers to make that purchase decision. Excellent. We have a tradition with our online programs that we ask each of our panelists what is the most important takeaway you have for our viewers about disruptive innovations. So Hemi your closing thoughts on this topic. Well I think understanding how you fit into the disruptive innovation ecosystem understanding about competition and all of that is very important to the success of your business. But I would say that it's wrong to focus on disruption. If you're defining yourself by your competitors that's actually a really hard way to create something new. So at the same time that when it's understanding what it means to be a disruptive one should really focus I think in what motivates a person to succeed is this concept of creating something new. Shintaro closing thoughts. No I think that was a really really good point. And I think it's related to what I said on the previous question. It really goes back to the notion of how you build a startup in the first place and why right. So and then I think that should be stemming from the passion to solve a problem as opposed to being focused on your competitor and carving out a space that you think you can protect because most of the time the space that you think you got protected it's not protected. So I'll just end it there. Do we go. For disruptive innovation. I advise entrepreneurs to look for the like undemanding customers. So when you identify when you determine your domain like look for the undemanding customers because there are the customers there. They are not spending much. They are not demanding much. And there is a reason because of that. Maybe they are finding the other solutions are more like expensive complicated like there is a pain out there. So if you can like focus on the undemanding customers and if you can determine why they are not like demanding why they are not spending in this domain. If you can you know pinpoint that that thing and then you're very close to to find the solution with disruptive innovation. Excellent great points by everyone. Unfortunately we are at the end of the question and answer session for today's Tech Connect. Thank you so much to our wonderful panelists and everyone viewing today. I also want to give a special thanks to the hosts of the viewing groups around the globe. We have with us U.S. embassies in Abuja, Nigeria. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Dakar, Senegal. Monrovia in conjunction with the Youth Network for Reform Incorporated in Liberia. Wagadugu in Burkina, Faso. Pretoria, South Africa. IRC Tunis, Tunisia. Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Bogota, Colombia. Managua, Nicaragua. Pristina, Kosovo. Kiev at the America House in Ukraine. American Center in Moscow. Ramallah at the America House and Tel Aviv, Israel. We also want to thank local organizations for hosting viewing parties including Protek ICT Resource Center in Tehran, Albania. Femme Coaters in Kotoniu, Benin. Youth Tech, Colombia at Universidad de Bosque and Bogota, Colombia. Universidad de Antioquia and Medellín, Colombia. Kitchen, Budapest in Hungary. Ketabu in Nairobi, Kenya. Berry Tech in Beirut, Lebanon. Pico Circa International in Abuja, Nigeria. Centro Cultural Paraguayo Americano en Asunción Paraguay. And the Just Innovation Hub which is a program within the idea foundation in Kampala, Uganda. I hope you found our insights today useful and we wish you all the best of luck.