 Bismillahirrahmanirrahim We like to call it Deen in dunya, the blossoming Islamic start-up scene, but a better way to remember it is Muslims getting their mojo back. Okay, Muslims getting their mojo back. What do I mean by this? So let's start, we have to kind of go back to history. Anyone know what city this is? Yes. Good guess, it's not Cairo though. Nope, there's a lot of water from Medina. Close, you're getting closer now. This is a famous city. It's ancient in American age, right? Because like cities in America aren't more than a few hundred years old. But in terms of global history, this is almost kind of a new city. And it's in a place that we know as Mesopotamia or modern day Iraq. What city is that? Baghdad. Now Baghdad, I mean Iraq has really old cities, really old artifacts. But Baghdad is actually not one of those cities. Did the Baghdad exist at the time of Prophet Muhammad SAW? No. The Haruna Rashid is the one that created Baghdad. Okay? So this was turned into the capital of the Muslim empire. They wanted their own city. And at that time the Muslims were very confident. They were a growing empire. They were very proud. And they said we can invent the world's greatest city. And this was a very unique design. They made it a circular city. And in the middle of it they put something very unique and special. Anyone know what that was? It's called Dar al-Hikmah, the house of wisdom. Dar al-Hikmah. And it was a place that people of all faiths, even all parts of the world would come and exchange knowledge and learn from one another. And we know this. This is our golden age. Everyone know about the golden age of Muslims. And it's not relegated only to Baghdad. What are the other things Muslims were responsible for as Muslims? What else were we responsible for? Okay, good. Spreading Islam. What else? Medicine. Science. Soul. Coffee. We hear about it. Who's the inventor of algebra? Al-Khabur is me. Who is it? Are you about to say that? Al-Khabur is me. What's another faith? We've even seen it with the medicine. There's so many famous Muslims we talk about in the past. But there's another part of our past we don't talk about as much. What's this city? What does it look like this city? It looks kind of like Syria. Actually that's very observant. It does look like Syria, but it's not Syria. It is Spain. Yeah, it looks kind of like Granada. But is this Granada? It's called Medina Tu Zehra. City of flowers and city of beauty and adornment. And there's an interesting story. When the Muslims came to Spain, a lot of the early caliphs were very sincere in their faith. And so for example, has anyone been to Granada or Al-Hambra Palace? A few people. Do you remember there's a calligraphy written all over the words of Al-Hambra Palace? Do you remember what it said? Good. What does that mean? No victor but God. The Muslims had seized Spain, built this incredible palace. But who did they acknowledge all that was from? Allah is Panathal. Now you fast forward a few generations and you have this caliph in Abdu-Rahman III. He similarly wanted to build a palace in a city that was beautiful and showed their civilization. But for whose sake? Was it for God's sake? Was he adorned with Allah? He actually built the city with intention to reflect the majesty of their Umayyad dynasty. And it's a lesson from Allah SWT that when we do things for Allah, it lasts. There's a permanence to it. But when our intentions become to seek glory in this world for ourselves, what happens? Down turns, taken away from us, right? There's a famous saying of Umar ibn al-Khattab and I'm probably going to misquote him. But the meaning of it, Rado Anhu, was we Arabs were nothing. And God glorified us with the Quran. And glorified us with Islam. And if we seek that glory, that riza from anything other than Islam, what Allah is going to do to us? Return us back to a lowly state. So this is kind of the sumna of Allah in history. But I believe we're at a critical juncture in our history once again. And I hope, I pray that it's a rebirth of our ummah and I think we're seeing that. This is a map, we call this a Twitter heat map. You guys know Twitter, right? That thing Donald Trump uses, right? He sends all of his presidential messages out of. So when someone uses a hashtag, like hashtag MCC, you can search on Twitter all the hashtags MCC. And you see when people are in conversations, for example, MCC. So a few years ago, there was a hashtag that was trending. And you can see it went viral across the whole world. And it started on the east coast in North Carolina. You know what happened around this time? What, three years ago? Three or four years ago? Yes, our three heroes. There was Diyah Yusam Razan. Three young, amazing Muslims were killed. It was very horrific. And there's a hashtag that's spreading called hashtag chapel hill shooting. And if you look at what's happening here, yes, this starts in America. But as it spreads across America, it starts spreading across Europe, it starts spreading across the Middle East, it starts spreading across Southeast Asia. But it's also going to South Africa, Australia, to New Zealand, to parts of South America. What I see here is the heartbeat of the global Muslim movement. You guys travel, raise your hand if you travel outside the United States. But you laugh like everyone does, right? Okay, I'm a white guy, so I'm going to talk about white people for a second. If you just go to, like I'm from Michigan, if you go to a church in Michigan and a bunch of white people, or black people, probably the same thing, and you ask them who's traveled outside the US, or who even has a passport, how many hands are going to be raised? Almost none. But Muslims, subhandle, we just traveled the whole world, right? And we've been traveling, we've been to these places, and I think you know, just as well as I, that if we hopped into a plane today, and showed up in Johannesburg, and we walked into a mustard like this, and we say, hey, I just got off the plane, but I don't have a place to stay, I don't have any food, could someone host me, what's going to happen? They'll fight, they'll fight to host you, that honor to host you, right? Because subhandle, our hearts are connected as Muslims. We can be brown, or white, or red, or... I don't know what colors, right? But subhandle, we have this heart and it's still alive. The Prophet Muhammad SAW said, the ummah is like what? One body. It's like one body. You know, some of it hurts, all of it hurts, and we feel that, like, you know, we see the Muslims struggling in Palestine, I'm not Palestinian, but I care about that. We see the Muslims struggling in Burma, the Rohingyas, and you guys might not be Rohingyas, but you care about it, don't you? Like subhandle, we see this, and we don't see this, we live this experience. And so we came up with a word for this, gummies. But I don't mean your Haribo halal delicious gummies from Turkey. This is an acronym we use that stands for what? Can someone read that to me? Go ahead, that's right. Global urban Muslims were educated and speaking. Global meaning, we're part of the world. We're urban, meaning we're not on farms. If we lived on a farm in Indonesia, we wouldn't be able to connect in the same way. So there's some sort of urbanization there. But Muslim, we're educated, and we can speak English. If you have those qualities, we can find this instant connection. It could be Johannesburg, it could be Jakarta, it could be Jacksonville. Yet we have this kind of commonality, this common thread ties. Now what's interesting, how many Muslims fit this description in America? Basically, I mean most American Muslims. And how many Muslims are in America? Seven, I honestly think it's more like three million. But it's a few million. I don't know, three million, five million, seven million. It's a handful. How many in Canada, anyone know? About one million, two million. Two million in the UK, half a million in Australia. It's not a lot, right? It's just a few million, half a million. But you start adding it up. Throw in South Africa. Throw in the five million Muslims who are educated English speaking in Kuala Lumpur. Throw in the ten million Muslims in Pakistan who fit this description. How big do you think this community adds up to gummies? If you add up all the little pieces from all 170 countries in the world. 60, 70 million, 30 million. How about the sister side? How many Muslims from all over the world fit this description you think? You're getting closer. It's about 284 million. If it was a country, it would be the fourth largest country in the world. Just behind the US. So I'm going to ask a question. Do you think this country of Muslims deserves its own TV shows? Deserves its own books and stories and schools and websites and tools, right? Like, would we expect China... Are we surprised, for example, that China has its own Netflix? No, it makes sense that China would have its own Netflix, right? Why should China have to use Netflix? Why can't they have their own Netflix? Is there their own culture in their own community? There's a common values there that may not be the values Hollywood has. So what about the Muslim community? Anyone know this one? What's this? Ertugrul. What is Ertugrul? Isn't it like you speak Turkish? Anyone speak Turkish here? Okay, no one speaks Turkish. Raise your hand if you've seen this show before. Okay, how come half the room has seen a Turkish TV show and we don't even speak Turkish? Yeah, Arabic translation or the English translation or the Bahasa Malay translation. And this thing is translated to like every language that Muslims speak. But you notice, what is it? So if you don't know what this is, this is like a Turkish drama about the father of Osman who founded the Ottoman Empire. And it's very popular as Muslims. It's on Netflix in fact, we just saw it on Netflix. And it's one of Netflix's most popular shows. Is there any nudity in it? Is there any cursing in it? Right? Like the things that, you know, repulsals. Like the things that are against our values won't find in this. But is this the first time Muslims have tried to make shows? What's another successful Muslim movie or TV show you know? Omar series, okay good. So we have Omar series which is just before this. And what about other than that? Maybe a movie. What movie do you know that's successful in the Muslim community? Good, The Message. Okay, Mustafa Akkad, Californian I believe. What year was the message made? I think someone said 70, 76, 78. So what? What was going on? All the 80s, all the 90s, all the 2000s. We were in three decades without a movie or a decent movie or TV show. You know I used to, I'll talk about my story in a second. I used to be a film producer. We made a movie called Bilal Stan. I kind of did well. I'll talk about a second. And we were trying to raise money for movies with the Muslim values. Not even an Islamic movie, just like Muslim values. And we felt a lot of resistance. And it was a fair objection from investors. They say give me an example of a Muslim based movie of any kind that's made money. And it's the only thing I can point to is the message. Why would an investor have confidence that this idea we have is going to work? But this worked. What was unique? What's different? Why is Eritorical Resurrection successful? Whereas for 30 years we haven't had anything successful. What's different now? Production quality. So I want to give you an example. I don't know if I have this slide. I got to add a slide here, but I'm going to tell you a story. I became Muslim in 2001 in East Coast. Anyone from the East Coast, Massachusetts? Where are you from? Okay, I don't know what to say. Six, right? That's what you guys say. Go six or something. Okay, so I'm from Amherst, Massachusetts. Little town in Western Massachusetts. I became Muslim. And a few months in, someone was like, hey brother, you want a halal burger? I'm like, oh yeah. I haven't had any access to halal burgers. I can't wait. This is 2001. And they hand me this kofta between two pieces of white bread. And I'm like, what is this, right? But that was like a halal burger in 2001. I don't know how it is here, but I'm in Dearborn. I'm certain that in Toronto is just like this. If someone offers you halal burger in Toronto, how is it? It's amazing. In Michigan, is it like that here in California? Like halal burgers at the top of the chart? So-so, okay, you guys got to work on it. In Michigan, it's like even the non-Muslims know the halal burger places are the best burger places, right? Even the non-Muslim restaurants will get the halal meat for their burgers. That's how strong our halal burger scene is. So what changed in the 16 years, or 18 years since I became Muslim, with halal burgers? It's the same thing as Ertugol. Equality. So what is the point I'm trying to get to? We Muslims, we have the size of 289 million gummies out there, right? We deserve our own products. But what's been missing for decades now has been the quality. But if we can build that quality, then I believe we can achieve some really great things as a community. And now we're starting to see it. So I want to share the story of Lawn to Good. We pray that we're on that path. And some more examples to share with you, even in your own backyard. My own story, I became Muslim in 2001. This is me and my friend, Mike Dan. We were 16 at the time. And like many convert, any people that entered Islam or convert, revert type people? Not only one in the room. So I'm going to say, if this was 2001, it was June. So three months after I became Muslim, and probably you guys know this, have you ever seen new Muslims like, you got the Krufi on, right? And you're like, so proud of your Islam. And you're like, you know what I mean? You're really strong in your faith. And then three months after I became Muslim, 9-11 happened. It was a very traumatic event for me personally, because I didn't know any Muslims, first of all. Where we lived, the Masjid was an hour away. So I knew Mike. I knew Malcolm X because I read his autobiography. He helped me become Muslim, and I knew like one other guy. And at that age, like, do I know Arabic yet? I haven't even faced a crime. I know very little about Islam. So if I want to learn about Islam, what do I have to do? This was pre-Google basically. What do I have to do if I want to learn about Islam? Go to Masjid. You learn from the Sheikh, right? So if the Sheikh has a beard like this, that might be good. But like this brother's beard is a little bit longer. So as a new Muslim, I might think what? He knows more knowledgeable. And then, you know, that brother's got a topia, like a kufi, right? So maybe he's like even more knowledgeable. How did Osama bin Laden look? When I first saw him on TV, talking about how did he look? The longest beard. And a turban. And a thow. And quoting the cross. Can you imagine how difficult this is for a new Muslim? You know, I was singing. I'm like, you've had a lot of like, is this Islam? Like, I know Islam is true. And I want to be a good Muslim. This can't be right. You know? So it set me off on my own journey of discovery. And I was very blessed with a lot of facilities. So much good in my life, Alhamdulillah. Mashallah. So I've got the chance to live and study in places like Turkey and Morocco and Malaysia, Jordan. This is the Hajj, Alhamdulillah. So this is all within like my first five years of being Muslim. And I came away with two strong conclusions. The first is Islam is not Osama bin Laden. And then we all know that, right? Thank God. And I learned about the history of Muslims and the beauty of the sunnah and the beauty of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ. And it's like, man, we have, we got a big PR problem there. The second thing I learned about Islam, I think Muslims is something I think we all need to reflect on. Muslims are pretty cool. Okay? It's so hard on ourselves, guys. But all of you are nice. I'm sure if I came to your house, you'd make me some chai. You'd give me some falafel. I mean, I'd have a great time living with you for a weekend. Like Muslims are so nice. Everywhere I go in the world, everyone treats me so well. Yet the image out there in movies, for example, is how our Muslims portray. Terrorists, women beaters, misogynists, like horrible images of Muslims. So at that time, I thought, you know, one way to change that is to get into film. And so we made a movie. I briefly referred to it. It's called Bilal Sen, about a young black Muslim in Detroit trying to go to school. It's a funny movie. It's a thoughtful movie. It did very well. We got a very lucky break. We got into a festival called Sundance. Raise your hand if you've heard of Sundance. Well, most of you have, but it's like the premier festival for movies, for independent filmmakers. So we are so excited, but we're also so broke. So like, oh my God, we need to do color corrections and sound corrections and make DVDs and posters and a website. Like all the stuff and all the stuff takes money. We didn't have money. Now at that time, this is 2010, I had a friend from New York that said, hey, there's this new startup here, a new website. You should try it called Kickstarter. Now if you don't know Kickstarter, it's one of the world's largest crowdfunding platforms. It's helped raise over $3 billion for projects just like this. But at that time, it was brand new. It was about a year old, and we were the first Muslims to use it. We had a very successful campaign, and I started to fall in love with crowdfunding. Because it isn't just about the money. It's about the story and inspiration it provides. So like, when we did this Kickstarter and we raised a bunch of money, then I had a friend come and he was like, you know, Chris, I was thinking about doing this project where I drive around the world, so I drive around America, and I visit 30 mosques in 30 days of all my life. And I helped that friend end up doing a Kickstarter. And then my friend over here and co-founder Manny Kalawi, there he is standing up, she had a nonprofit that was working with teenage youth in Detroit, Muslim youth, and I started working with her organization to do their own crowdfunding campaign. And I realized that every time we do these campaigns, they inspire two or three more people to do their own campaign. And I thought, what if we Muslims had our own Kickstarter? What if we had our own platform that would support Muslims to do good work in the world? And that led to the creation of LaunchGrid. So LaunchGrid is this website that you can go to and raise money for whatever cause you care about in the world. An example of this a year, two years ago, this is really a very sad story, two years ago in the Trump mania, there was a shooting in a mosque outside of a Quebec city. You guys remember that? You guys from Asia, and it's a horrible incident. Well, this brother, Aiman Darbali, he actually charged the shooter, suffered, of course, severe injuries where he's paralyzed from it, he saved many people's lives that day. But a year later, kind of the community forgot about him. Until a story came out in the Toronto Sun, I believe, one of the big newspapers there, highlighting his struggle. And we partnered with some Muslims on the ground there, these guys, we call Dawa now, the Toronto Muslims. And they ended up doing a campaign to raise money to buy him a new house that ended up raising over $400,000. And it got support from over 4,000 people, including many, many people of other faiths, Christians, Jews, or atheists, whatever. But as an opportunity shows that when Muslims come together, we can accomplish anything. It was just like an idea. It was like, oh, I was motivated. I read this story in the newspaper, and I feel helpless, but maybe I can do something about it. And that's what we care about for launch, is this sense of empowerment. Yes, we are struggling as a community. Yes, we have many enemies working against us. We have many difficult circumstances. We have to overcome whether it's Islamophobia or racism or American foreign policy. But we always have something we can do. The Prophet Muhammad SAW said, if you have a seed, even if it's a big dozen, what are you supposed to do with that seed? Planting. Will you get to see that tree grow? Will the tree even grow? Probably not. But it's about the intention and the action as a Muslim community. We should be the most empowered community of any in the world. You are supposed to be the best nation-raised force for mankind. So how we've seen launch could develop over the years, this goes back to this idea I'm talking about, I believe we're at this re-birth, this tipping point. Launch could, we launched in October 2013, so 2013 was an incomplete year, but in our first year we raised over a million and a half dollars from the loan. The total grew to 6 million, grew to 14 million, grew to 33 million, and at the end of last year, we just celebrate five years, actually I need to update these numbers, we're at almost 65 million dollars raised from the loan. And you'll notice like what, it's about three years ago we're at 6 million and now we're at 65 million almost. That's an incredible growth. And it's not because of us, I would love to say it's like because I'm so smart I'm not. Or we got such an amazing team we do, but I think more than anything, it's a reflection of our community. Our community is ready for quality. And that's the opportunity and the responsibility we all have. And if you're curious, this is our team for launch good. We're always looking to grow the team, we're about 16 or so team members spread across the world. And I have a small video I want to play for you guys. Have you ever wondered about the past? The golden age of Islam we call it, looking upon it with besotted eyes. Have you felt it? That remembering of a legacy. When we built great institutions of knowledge, achieved remarkable breakthroughs, not for the pursuit of this world alone, but for a purpose much grander than all of us. Have you ever wondered about the present? The sands that slipped through our fingers and what we build with it. Today, here, now, our hearts are connected like never before. We are the storytellers, we're worshipers, we're seekers, lovers, creatives, and travelers in this life. Sometimes the journey is life-changing. And sometimes we change the world. Have you ever stopped and wondered about the future? That's what we do, but who Muslims are? Most recently we saw this in October. There was a horrible incident in October in Pittsburgh. You guys remember where it was? The synagogue shooting. And there's a brother named Tarkah of Nassidi, the founder of Celebrate Mercy. He went on launch for the critical campaign for the victims of that synagogue. It ended up raising over $200,000. And more importantly, it changed the narrative. What do most Americans think about Muslims and Jews? They hate each other. Oh, we must hate, do we hate Jews? Muslims don't hate Jews. We have issues with what's going on in Palestine, but we don't hate Jews. And so we're changing the narrative of who Muslims are. And a lot of this is happening in your own backyard. We've been blessed to work with a lot of these organizations. What's this one? Do you guys recognize it? At least. Subhanallah, I was actually blessed when I started LaunchGood. I came here to California to do a program there called MMP Muslim Mentorship Program. Have you guys heard of that? It trains people to work with new Muslims. And it's probably sent several people from Michigan, and we've come back to Michigan, and now we have an organization helping new Muslims. These are seeds of excellence that are being planted across the world. There's another organization here called Gamma, a gathering of all Muslim artists that are helping to promote artwork that has a purpose and a deeper meaning to it. It's not just this grotesque modern art. And even a lot of activism. So there's brothers Stefan Clark, you guys know him, a convert to Islam up in Sacramento, brutally, you know, horribly killed by police officers, and a brother up there with care, Sacramento, Bassam al-Qaeda, he put together a campaign that ended up going viral. It got the support of celebrities, athletes that all came together. And again, what's the narrative that's written when people see Muslims doing these type of campaigns? That Muslims are a source of healing for a community, a source of goodness for the community. People should love and want that their neighbor, for example, is a Muslim. Because they know that they've been good to them. And so thank you for inviting us today. May Allah bless you and honor us to be leaders of the righteous. We love this dua. Allah name you. And especially that last part, we make us for the pious leaders. We have a big opportunity in America, a big opportunity, I've traveled the whole world. I spent last year, parts of last year living in Malaysia, traveling to Indonesia, Singapore, Australian, New Zealand, all over the Middle East, Europe. Now, in Spanish, American Muslims, we have this outsized influence on the world. I told you, we're like 3 million Muslims, out of 1.5 billion. That's less than 1%. Less than 1% of the Ummahs are American Muslims, yet we have this ability to influence all the way the world works because it's kind of a bad thing, but there's this American hegemony, like American culture is everywhere. Omar, what's the number one record in this brand in the world? Coca Cola. Everywhere you go in the world, they know Coca Cola, right? What's number two? That's amazing, right? Like American culture is everywhere. We're kind of, here in America, you know what we like to say is we're in the belly of the beast, right? But we pray that Allah swt allows us to move up into the heart of the beast and transform it into a beast. So that's the end of our presentation. I want my team to stand up. You can recognize them. I'm Annie Kalaoui, my co-founder, our mighty mouse and chief operating officer. Nafi Rashid is from Calgary. She's our VP of operations and Omar Hamid in the back is also our third co-founder and chief design officer. I guess we have maybe 20 minutes or so for Q&A. And then after Asia, we're going to go hang out at Mirchi Cafe and Masala Pizza. Get some chai, get some desserts. It's our treat. We're going to pay every, our company is very interesting. If you remember this picture over here, our company is what we call a remote team. And you probably here in California know this more. We only have two people working in our headquarters in Michigan. Almost everyone works wherever they live. That could be Singapore, that could be London, that could be Calgary. And as a leadership team, every six months we come together to do leadership type stuff and strategy and planning. But also we use it as a chance to get to know the community better. So recently we're in Toronto over the summer. Before that we were in Kuala Lumpur. Before that we were in London. And we're honored to be your guests here in the San Francisco Bay Area. So I want to kind of thank you very much. A very short funny story is five years ago, we started launch and we actually made a visit here to the Bay Area for money, of course. Fundraising, we're a startup. And every door was closed on our face. And politely, people were very nice. We have a lot of successful Muslims, Mashallah. Any of you guys work in tech? Yeah, there's a lot of successful Muslims in the tech industry. But have you ever heard of a successful Muslim tech company? No, it's never existed. So we were trying to raise money. It's just like the film industry, right? They're like, well, give me an example of any faith community having a successful startup. You know, and it was hard. I couldn't think of any. And so we didn't get any investors, but subhanallah, we just scrapped their way. And the law blesses a lot and you guys have supported a lot. So thank you. Five years later, we built a sustainable company. We're very grateful to be back here in San Francisco. And why don't you guys come up? We can answer some questions. I'm going to get sit down and be a little casual, inshallah. Any question or comments? Is there anything you'd like or you want to correct about my presentation? Yes, everyone heard my question. Yeah. And I'll repeat this in case you know the question is like, I guess maybe like, what's the tipping point? Like what got that was a great question. And Manny, I think you answered that recently pretty well to one of our donors, so I'm going to pass it to you. Sorry, can you hear me? So I think if I heard your question correctly, it was what was our tipping point? You know, that's I think a really good question. Oftentimes I used to think, OK, we just get this one big campaign or we just get this one influencer on board if we're able to get, you know, every time we sort of knock a door and we get some maybe high profile campaign career, I think that that would be the tipping point. But I actually think that it was this gradual building of the team and the company and the culture, right? I think what most people don't know is that, you know, as Chris mentioned, we bootstrap it. So five years ago, we came here and they're not like, hey, give us some money and they're like, OK, your idea is cute. But we're not really, I don't know, I don't really think I'm in, right? And so we just bootstrapped it and we had gotten a ten thousand dollar angel investment to launch a launch good. And what most people don't realize is that's actually what most campaigns on launch good rates, four to ten thousand. So a lot of small, a lot of great ideas just need a little bit of seed money to go somewhere. So we bootstrapped it at, you know, at some point we were able to pay the investor back and then like for three years, we didn't take any salary. And that was a really big thing for us to be able to really continue to build it. And so gradually what was sort of on our credit cards at the time, which we had no idea if we were able to reimburse and then eventually we started to, you know, kept hustling, kept pushing, kept pushing, started to be able to, you know, we work in full time on part-time salaries and we kept pushing, kept pushing and then we were able to get to a point where full time on full time salaries, right? So I'd say it's hard to kind of pinpoint one specific incident. I think the thing that I would say was the most important thing was that there was growth, right? Like it was going somewhere. And that was the piece that we knew what we were doing was working. We just had to continue doing it, continue to innovate and then building things that really allow you to kind of automate some of the support you get. So, for example, our remote launch challenge is a big deal where for 30 days you can give to any project on the site and you give automatically things like that help you have sort of reoccurring revenue so that you're not stuck on, you know, something seasonal. But for me personally, it's hard to say this is the tipping point. We got this partnership because, you know, we're a collection of 5,000 stories and 5,000 campaigns. And over time, the model works where each campaign brings new people, new supporters and show the new campaigns as well. That's a very long answer to your question to try to synthesize the last five years. OK, what was that tipping point? So by the great presentation, not as familiar with launch, just maybe some of the rest, but as someone working in technology, as I'm sure a lot of people should probably are, one of the issues that I see kind of plaguing the Muslim tech scene and the reason why I say tech specifically is because startups coming out of that industry are typically much more capital intensive than some of the non-technic say. The question I have for you is one of the one of the largest challenges that I see most of startups have is obviously raising that capital. And it's not as it's not because of a lack of resources in the community. As much of it is a lack of financial investment competency within the Muslim community. And so your platform is taking obviously the crowdsourcing approach, but has it launched good? Have you guys ever thought about maybe raising funds to help fill that knowledge gap within the Muslim community? And I'll give you an example, right? So like I'm in the middle of starting my own startup right now. So I'll go to an investor, right? Very wealthy individual. I hope I put 10 million dollars on the table. The stipulations that they will associate with this money is so infantile and it's in its kind of understanding from an Islamic investing standpoint that it's like, why would I ever take this? Right? Like I'm shooting myself in the foot right now. And they're not doing it out of balance or anything. It's just purely out of, they just don't know. So let me see if I can kind of regurgitate that question is like Muslim investors are not very sophisticated. Yeah. So we had that issue ourselves. We mentioned we had an angel investor. And then it's a mentor of mine. I mean, as someone I really look up to a lot, but within two years of launch, if you want to start wanting dividends on a ten thousand dollar angel investor, right? You understand how silly that is, right? And we are not, OK, this is not going to end well. And we just came to an agreement, a certain X ROI for him and we just paid him back and he was happy and we were happy, you know? It is an issue that there I think a great example that we faced here. And I hope we wouldn't mind it. There's a brilliant Muslim DC. His name is Matt Moon. He is an amazing guy, just a wonderful human being. And at the time, he was running a firm called S&P Capital, Social Capital, Social Plus, something capital. And we met with him and we met with him five years ago when we first started. He was nice enough to at least take a meeting with us. We came back the next year and he was impressed. He's like year had passed. We grown quite a bit. We were still around. You know, I mean, like a lot of startups does a lot real quick. He said he wanted to invest in us, but he's got a problem, which is his firm doesn't allow him to make his own investments. If he's investing as an individual, he has to invest on behalf of S&P, because otherwise it's like he's saving the best opportunities for himself. But his firm wouldn't let him invest in a religious startup. So they catch twenty two. So I think there are people. We've got Omar Hamaoui, we've got Matt Moonhamed, and there's Omar Tawakor, Osama Bedir. We have all these Muslim, Muslims, very successful in technology, built hundred plus million dollar companies, sold them, are sophisticated angel investors, but they themselves don't see an opportunity yet in this space or they're in an environment that doesn't even allow them to invest in this space. So now you're left with like doctors or engineers or lawyers or people who amass wealth in other ways trying to invest in the tech space and they don't understand it at all. I don't know what the solution is, but I do resonate with that issue. But in Chalai, we're in a good position. I think if we can convince the Omar Hamaoui's and Matt Moonhamed's to open up to community better, but to be fair to them, I still think this is not it's hard to make an argument that this is the space to invest in. You'd have to be a very great investor. As we go to conferences like there's one called Global Islamic Economy Center. And they put us on the keynote and they put us on the main stage. We are the Facebook of the Digital Islamic Economy. And if you're the Facebook of the Digital Islamic Economy, this is your whole team. That's not good. The Digital Islamic Economy is very small. So the opportunity for return on investment is not there yet. I don't know what the solution to that is other than we have to do a better job of growing this Islamic economy. And this is part of why we go around and tell you guys, we have powers as consumers. Like, how's Uber doing in China? Anyone know? Or Netflix, how's Netflix doing in China? How's WhatsApp doing in China? Part of it is the government of China itself. A part is the people. The people prefer to use WeChat over WhatsApp. It's their own platform. I forget the Uber competitor. They choose their own Diddy. They want to use Diddy. They want to use Alibaba. Do they want to use Amazon? No, they understand that it's better for us as Chinese people have our own Alibaba over Amazon. And so they invest and trust themselves. And I think that's important as a Muslim community. We have to take that. Do you think Alibaba was as good as Amazon 10 years ago? Well, WeChat was as good as WhatsApp 10 years ago, probably not. But they're willing to sacrifice a little bit of quality for the future. We're going to invest in our own stuff. And I think that's important. So I guess it's so great to finally meet you all. You got to tell people who you are. My name is Abbas. We've run two campaigns on the launch good platform for gathering almost the artists. So you guys got a launch good right in your back here. Let's give a round of applause. I have two questions for y'all. Number one is why is Omar not wearing the right socks? Are we all wearing launch good? Oh, that's so funny. And he's your head of design. I designed these socks so he doesn't like them. That's the problem. You don't need his standards. So my question, my question has to do with how you navigate campaigns within the Muslim community. So launch good as a name. It's not very forthcoming as Muslim. When going through the website, you know, I found some campaigns that were created by non-Muslims. I found some that were created by Muslims, but for the non-Muslim community. Have you had to reject any projects? Do you draw a discernment? Is it a faith or an identity label? What is your official strategy of navigating this space? Yeah, so that's that's that's a really good question. If I understand correctly, how do we sort of discern between Muslim non-Muslim and I think that one of the things that early on we kind of came to the agreement about is that if we try to be everything for everyone, we're just going to be mediocre. Right. So, you know, we could be an ethical crowdfunding platform and maybe focus on certain things. But then the line that's kind of, you know, it can get kind of blurry. Right. Like, for example, I could be maybe a Christian who's doing sort of like a bar up a bar crawl campaign, right? You might bar hop at different places and it's a fundraising drive. So, us staying focused on our niche was probably it was the defining factor. But for us, we want to make sure that we focus on the Muslim community because we truly believe that there is so much of a problem that we haven't been able to tell people who we are. We spent so much time defending ourselves and we can show what we are. Right. We're saying we're not this and we launch just and so that was a key factor for us. And we had people sort of say, like, if you could grow your pride so much more and you go to someone, you know, the Jewish community, the Christian community. But again, there's something about being able to build something that's unapologetic, unapologetic to the Muslim and cater to the Muslim community with a whole lot of challenge and try to give us that. So, that being said, it doesn't mean that we don't support millions of items. So, for example, you know, when the Muslims response for black churches that we burn down in the south or Pittsburgh, right? We're saying that, you know, wherever. It's not saying that the good in creating the world is limited just to Muslims. So, we also have people who are non-Muslim that are like, hey, we just love you a lot more than we love you a lot more than we love you. So, that's one of the things that we really like the most about it is that when we go out and come out of the project or we continue to build bodies that are focused on the Muslim community, we really like it. And I think that's the, that's the core value that we do for our people in the city as a child. Thank you. Salaamu Alaikum. Wonderful Masha'Allah presentation. Two things I really loved up there was seeing orthodox, my children come to me a day like, look, a Muslim hero and he wins without lying or strong. And so this is, you know, if it wasn't for in English, it's going to be right. And then Mo Salah, and I'll share with you why Mo Salah, maybe. I am Egyptian, that's one of the reasons. But the other big reason is just like your struggle in the getting the la-la out in the Sundance industry. I struggled in opening a sports agency or called Koros Stars. And so, you know, why am I not with the Weiser men's, you know, in the. So this is a discussion, you know, it's like a Jewish agency. It's and it's known to be that way. So either go under them, but to try to open a strong Muslim agency is very, very difficult to move the challenges of that. And to get the Muslims, who are many of them stars to even unite to do it is that's a whole other story. But on this on the note of gummy, which is what I really like, how have you guys done to promote just that word alone and to be able to maybe even get one dollar from all the Muslims, right? If we could just do a campaign of that and have then have three hundred million dollar funding for your own good launch or so forth. This is this could be a little bit interesting. And I love how what you guys are doing. I just want to yeah, I have been trying to promote this idea in terms of quite a bit, it's mostly a limited right now to a high level of events, conferences, I think it would be great if there is a focus and a marketing effort for it, probably to come up with a better term in gummies, how to get them. That's the challenge. But I'll tell you something about this market. This market is very unique. Fifty percent of it is almost every single one of them has a smart thing. If you go to Rohingya camps in Bangladesh, you can't get a clean couple of water. So they're connected to the internet. They're on WhatsApp, heavily on WhatsApp. And they're young. So I think the future is bright and also financially. I mean, they're coming into the industry, they're coming with our own. So there's a lot of bright opportunities. And I just pray that we've never been an issue before this. And we were talking about this issue that plays a role in the topic of the time, the Sahabah, time when people take it easy by forcing the people to do not sit in the table and you're on the bench, right? And the Sahabah thinking, oh, is that the good word? The concept of knowing not to be good. Rather, you like to talk to the CEO a lot, but you have no, you have no substance to it. And he said, yeah, why lose it? What's the reason that this life? And what's the issue? And the love takes it away from the love. But when you want to do that, that's it. That's it. That's it. 200 million, there's a billion. Welcome to the US. But what's that? That's the question. I just wanted to thank you. And question, if you have ever partnered with all the accelerators and incubators here and abroad, because all of their startups can really use your program, right? Anyone that's going in the startups, I'm sure you've seen yourself go to classes like how to start a startup by launch, by coming in, it's so valuable. Yeah, it's probably what we could do. Now we're out and also we as a company are going the size of beyond this type of programs, but I think you're right. We can do a lot with membership. We're not doing it here. Frankly, I think there's a lot more talented and all the entrepreneurs than us. But what's cool is some places like Malaysia, we're specifically living in this community, we spend a lot of time. I spend a lot of time personally mentoring all the entrepreneurs. And all of us are happy to do that. We all do that if anyone wants to stay in touch here and just have support. You guys have an issue at eight o'clock? But I don't want to stop. We'll be after this will be a miracle. Inshallah. Come grab. In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.