From Secrets to Security: How Bitcoin Blockchain is Reshaping IP Protection

This podcast features an in-depth discussion with William Fauchoux, the founder of Blockchain your IP, a company that leverages blockchain technology for intellectual property protection. Apart from explaining how his company is helping various sectors (from luxury consumer goods to the defense industry) to guard against industrial espionage, William also provides insightful examples of client experiences. Blockchain Your IP, a company, has innovatively created a solution by offering a time stamping service using the Bitcoin blockchain to ensure the protection of trade secrets from thefts.  He explains why they chose the Bitcoin blockchain over creating their own blockchain and also notes the increased need for effortless and consistent international IP protection solutions. This podcast initially recorded in French also includes William sharing his encounter with Bitcoin and its subsequent influence on his career.

01:52 The Problem of Intellectual Property Theft

04:34 The Solution Offered by Blockchain Your IP

15:37 Exploring Customer Use Cases and Financial Consequences

20:48 The Journey of Blockchain Your IP and Customer Acquisition

23:55 Personal Insights and Rapid Fire Questions

Transcript

William: 0:06

I think that blockchain technology has an advantage over the traditional rating solutions I mentioned earlier. In that it's international by design that is it's based on mathematical rules that are the same in Tokyo, Paris, and London, whereas as I said before dating methods differ in each country, making it more complicated to use internationally. But I really think that the real advantage of Bitcoin and blockchain dating, in fact, it's shifting to open source, meaning that everyone can have a reliable time stamping technology that's Bitcoin based. You don't need to build a proprietary solution or have a number of certifications. As a result, new players like Blockchain, your IP, and others have to innovate in terms of the user experience in order to stand out from the crowd,

Didier: 0:54

How large corporations are using the Bitcoin blockchain to protect themselves from a death. Bill from industrial espionage. This podcast was originally recorded in French, this is my own voice, but I will be using an app to clone the voice of my guests. We Leah. So, if you prefer to listen to it in French, both versions will be made available. Today I am pleased to Welcome William full shoe. Whose company blockchain, your IP provides the central services for companies and the defense luxury consumer and consumer goods sectors among others to protect themselves against industrial espionage. To do this, they use the Bitcoin blockchain. He'll explain how it works. And we'll look at possible applications. William has already appeared on a previous podcast with rich small and it's intellectual property lawyer. We saw how this group protects its intellectual property with the method provided by blockchain, your IP, the company that William founded. So, hello, William, it's a pleasure to have you back again.

William: 1:51

Hello, DDA.

Didier: 1:52

So to jump right into it, can you explain to us what problem your clients face and how your company helps solve it?

William: 1:59

In fact, our customers are confronted with the problem of theft and misappropriation of their intangible assets of their intellectual property. This is not a new problem, and I like to start with a little anecdote. It was Venice that managed to preserve the secret of mirror fabrication, which was highly prized by the Venetian courts for almost 3 centuries from the end of the thirteenth century, thanks to a skillful blend of stick and carrots. So the stick was that they took all the glassmakers and their families to an island near Venice, the island of Murano. Of course, they couldn't leave the island, so their know how was confined to it. There were extremely severe penalties for leaking secrets or know how, or even if you were a glassmaker, if you tried to leave the island without authorization, you could be imprisoned and your property confiscated. And then, as a third security measure, I'd like to say that the apprentices to whom the know how was to be passed on underwent an extremely rigorous selection process to ensure that we weren't training foreign powers. At the same time, they knew how to be generous with their best talents, you see. And for example, they had a lot of advantages. The artists were the first who could wear a sword on their belt to go around. So you have to imagine that back then it was a class act. It's a bit like a few years ago walking around with a ledger key around your neck on a pendant. You see? And he paid no taxes. Then he was allowed to marry into aristocratic families. So they put in place all these measures to maintain a competitive edge and a monopoly on mirror sales. But that wasn't enough because there were smarter people and because of the industrial espionage of Colbert who wanted to set up an ice cream factory. And so today, we call it talent poaching. That's when you go out and pay your competitors' employees indecent wages to take their know how with them. So today you're going to say, unfortunately, we can no longer unfortunately, for companies that have secrets, we can no longer whip counterfeiters or thieves in the public square. It's forbidden there may be something in there too. But on the other hand, the law states that if you take reasonable measures, we call them reasonable measures like the Venetians do, You'll be able to protect and defend your secrets to be made, your untouched property in court, you can take legal action. So these reasonable measures include, for example, compartmentalizing information according to its sensitivity, not everyone is focused on production, of course, and common sense computer security data, but also, and this is essential for us, I think the first step is to identify what's of value to you. And that's where we come full circle because the blockchain's a time stamp, but the client must delimit the perimeter of an immediate asset in the same way as you would lock up the glassmakers on the island of Murano.

Didier: 4:32

Okay. Great. Thanks for explaining the problem. And what's the solution that your company offers.

William: 4:38

We offer a desktop application that looks like Dropbox, and you can deposit in it up to 500 documents at a time, and what we're going to do is calculate a digital fingerprint of these documents. I think your listeners know what a sure 2 56 hash is, and we're going to insert a sure 2 56 hash, a fingerprint of the documents via a Bitcoin transaction into the blockchain so that it's replicated on all 50000 nodes. And in fact, this way, the day you wanna prove that you were the first to create a ring or that you had the formula for Coca Cola in your possession, you can just recalculate the fingerprint of your document and and compare it with what's been entered in the blockchain. And if the fingerprint is present in block x and is dated, for example, January first 20 24, then the document must have existed on January first 20 24, because as you know, you can't forge a fingerprint of the document nor the time stamp of the blockchain.

Didier: 5:29

That's absolutely true. I'm just going to elaborate a little bit on that because I'm going to repeat what we said in the previous podcast with leash more in blockchain, your IP. Uh, you had given a slightly more elaborate explanation. So for those who hadn't listened, who haven't listened to the previous podcast, let me just describe your, your, how your application works. And if you have any corrections, you can make them. So, for example, in the case of leash Mo you might have. Um, a jewelry designer, a fashion designer or something. And he'll design his objects and then you'll have a file, a PDF file, for example. and we'll have them validated or we'll determine that they come from this employee and this company, and that's going to be done in a fairly classic way with a scan perhaps. I have the file. And then maybe a lawyer will come along and say that this document was made in this company by this employee and put a time stamp on it or some sort of official stamp on it. So in fact, there's a kind of, of a verification of the, of the object in a completely classical and analogical way. And we'll scan this document, uh, with the proofs. Of maybe of the notary and we'll make a scan of the document with those proofs and we'll reduce it to a kind of abbreviation, which of the short 256 hash. The kind of a technical term for fingerprint at the fingerprint ended abbreviation. Of this document. So the thought short 256 hash can correspondent only to a specific document. And we'll register that trout 2 56 session, a block. So in fact, the youth are on your application. We'll be, we'll be sending a small quantity of Bitcoin. To himself. Uh, two addresses. He controls. Uh, but this transaction will, will also include the the shot, 2 56 hash of the document. So in fact, the proof of the document is done in a fairly classical and, and a logical way. The only blockchain part is the timestamping. Uh, so in fact we can prove that in a given moment in time, the documentary indeed in the hands of the company, so, in fact, it's just established the, uh, the interiority of the document. So later somebody steal the documents the company can prove that they had them at a certain point in time and as the Bitcoin blockchain is in fact, the most secure and least manipulatable database in the world. If we can prove that at a given time that our document was in the Bitcoin blockchain. And that time is earlier than the time that the, the thief. Uh, showing it, then that's a form of proof. So that's how I understand your product. Do you have any other comments that you want to make?

William: 8:00

Exactly. So just a little correction. It's not stamped by a notary before putting it in the blockchain because then it would lose a little bit your interest because that has a cost. It's an alternative to the traditional method, in fact. What you need to know is that today we already time stamped documents before Bitcoin, of course, but the solutions are different all over the world. In France, for example, we have something called the solo envelope where we have bailiffs. I know that in Switzerland we have notary deposits, but if you look at Korea or China, for example, they'll have copyright institutes to date documents, and so Blockchain is really an alternative because it allows you to obtain a date completely independently. Afterwards, what the houses you were talking about usually do is take the gouache drawing for example, or the painting of a piece of jewelry, and put the company stamp on it so that it can be signed giving an additional paternity and saying that it belongs to such and such a brand. And then the digital fingerprint will be recorded on the blockchain, which is enough to prove the interiority of the transaction.

Didier: 8:56

Yeah, exactly. So when the person steals the information and walks away, the company in question has approved that this document within the hands of the company at an earlier date. Also most people will be listening to this. So they won't be able to see the demo that you showed me before that we, we made this podcast, but you showed me how you are. Your app works. Uh, and I have to say it's very, uh, easy to use. So let me give maybe a quick description. So the person working in the company and the creative person may be a fashion designer or an engineer or a jewelry designer or whatever. He's going to be working on his computer every day. And every day at the end of the. Day, he'll have various document that he's created. There'll be on his computer. And basically he's just going to drag and drop them into your app. And, the app will, uh, Create the shot 2 56 hash, maybe reduce each all the documents together into another hash called the Merkle root. And we'll simply take that Merkle root and a. Put in the Bitcoin blockchain by creating a transaction between two addresses that he controls. So the apple basically just reduced the documents to a hash and, and, and insert the. And then third that Hashan to the Bitcoin blockchain. So, but basically all the, the designer. All they have to do with basically drag and drop there. The documents, they produce that day into the app and it may be tape, I don't know, five or 10 seconds. So I thought it was very simple to use and very user-friendly.

William: 10:27

Exactly. And that's another subject. I think that blockchain technology has an advantage over the traditional rating solutions I mentioned earlier. In that it's international by design that is it's based on mathematical rules that are the same in Tokyo, Paris, and London, whereas as I said before dating methods differ in each country, making it more complicated to use internationally. But I really think that the real advantage of Bitcoin and blockchain dating, in fact, it's shifting to open source, meaning that everyone can have a reliable time stamping technology that's Bitcoin based. You don't need to build a proprietary solution or have a number of certifications. As a result, new players like Blockchain, your IP, and others have to innovate in terms of the user experience in order to stand out from the crowd, so it's going to be faster. We're going to let you deposit 500 documents in 1 go, and in my opinion it's essential that people actually protect their IP. I was looking at the figures and you see in France, for example, the system that works best is the solo envelope. It's a system that works well. There are 45000 of these made every year by 140 0 0 brands. Because it takes 20 minutes, people completely forget about protecting creations and innovations and concentrate solely on trademarks and patents. And if you want people to actually protect it, you need to do something that's so simple that can be done on a daily basis, even automatically. And that's the next step where we try to integrate with our customers tools. Today, for example, we do this with developer tools. We integrate with GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, and you can configure it so that every time there's a merge in master, for example, a master branch or a production release, It makes a zip of your repo's integrity. This is something that's digitally imprinted in the blockchain. That way, you can prove each version.

Didier: 12:13

Okay, thank you. So now another question. Why did you use the Bitcoin blockchain? Why didn't you develop your own blockchain or use another blockchain

William: 12:22

It's a good question, and when I'm often asked that question even in the world of intellectual property, because for a while it was very fashionable to have private blockchains in the way that everyone wanted their own blockchain for their use case. The blockchain for a notary, the blockchain for bailiffs, the blockchain for lawyers. The truth is that intellectual property is a niche, and the volumes are very small. We work with some very big fashion houses who make 20000 proofs a year, and that's a lot of intellectual property. But 20000 time stamps, if you compare it with billing needs, because you know, if you're going to certify invoices, is ridiculous. And my point of view is that it's in our interest to be on the blockchain where there's the most use, because it's more secure. That's the first point. And then the second point is that we wanted a blockchain that would outlive us. I can't guarantee my customers that we'll still be alive in 3 or 4 years' time. I can't control everything. And so we needed a proof that was obviously based on an open source standard and verifiable independently of Blockchain your IP without friction. That's why we date them on Bitcoin. And once we've finished dating, we'll give you a technical receipt that allows you to trace the handprint of the document back to the Merkle root, as you explained so well, which is registered in the blockchain. With these 2 documents alone, you can verify the Blockchain proof without the Blockchain your IP. The second thing that's really important about using a public Blockchain and Bitcoin is that your tool becomes intercompatible with all the other people using the same proof standard and the same Blockchain. And in the case of Blockchain, your IP, we use a standard called chainpoint which is used by many other players such as Microsoft to certify press releases or provide traceability from wool to sweaters. And by basing ourselves on the same standard, we guarantee that tomorrow people who deposit with us will be able to check the blockchain proof against third party verifiers and vice versa. And so I think that collectively we all benefit from working on the same blockchain.

Didier: 14:20

Do you think other blockchains are as secure? Do you think other blockchains offered the same security guarantees?'cause I, I think with Bitcoin, we're pretty sure that if a hash is in a block, it will be virtually impossible to change it at a later date.

William: 14:34

Think what makes Bitcoin so secure is the number of nodes and full copies. In the case of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, he had his Visa account was closed in 24 hours and his PayPal account in 48 hours because you can call the CEO of PayPal and ask him if he still wants to do business in the United States or not. What's great about Bitcoin is that you've got 50000 full copies all over the world, and you can't call Didier or Williams to ask him to censor their node because that would be too time consuming. And Bitcoin is quite conservative. There's no feature that introduces an attack surface, and the size of the blockchain means that anyone can host it on their PC. Other public blockchains, which are also very good, have the disadvantage that you have to store them in the cloud, and there's a kind of re centralization taking place at Microsoft and Google. So they don't guarantee the same level of security from my point of view. After that, is it really central for an intellectual property use case? Probably, you can also do that on Ethereum. But for other use cases like a digital hash use case, I think it's better to do it on Bitcoin, obviously.

Didier: 15:36

Okay. And some of the examples of customers you were here before with the blockchain, your IP with leash mall, but you told me you offered some customers in the defense industry. Where we can imagine if if a firm has their, designed stolen, it can have major consequences. You also have companies who told me in mainstream computer products and then mainstream, um, Consumer products. Can you describe the financial consequences that some of your your clients might face.

William: 16:02

Of course, I can give you a few examples of customers. For example, we have a customer I'm very happy with because he really uses proofs by the blockchain, and it's been used in several cases. Obviously, you do proofs preventively, but not everyone uses them. He makes luxury wallpaper, and in fact, he realized that because he was very proud of this wallpaper, he put the photos in 4 ks on the web, and he realized that the photos had been used by Chinese factories and that they were selling exactly the same ones on Alibaba. Well, with these proofs, he can contact Alibaba's legal department to request that counterfeits be removed from the marketplace. So that's the first use case. Uh, second use case will be advertising agencies responding to calls for tender at the request of advertisers. This would be a new advertising campaign. In fact, you're going to work for free. You're going to propose a concept, and then you may or may not be retained to go any further. And very often, in fact, you won't be selected. But the advertiser, that is the customer who didn't pay, will still pick up your concept a few years later, and then it's very hard to get paid because even if people are honest, it's not necessarily the same people who are still at the same position. So you don't really have any proof. The fact that you have blockchain proof means that you can put things back on a factual footing and negotiate from a position of strength so that you can get paid. Some companies form consortiums that is work with other players. And in this kind of collaboration, the big issue is that you're going to arrive with your intellectual property, which is enormously valuable, but you're not sure you're going to leave with it because, in fact, you have what we call the background IP and the post ground IP. You like the side ground IP or the IP you arrive with, The IP that's created by the collaboration. It's very important to delimit the documents you're bringing in beforehand to avoid any conflicts that may arise later on, such as who owned which form etc. So they're going to date what they do defensively, and then the last use case as you said will be fashion and jewelry. This is where we work the most because I imagine that when you think of counterfeiting, you immediately imagine a handbag being sold outside the metro, and for example, we work a lot in the jewelry industry because the time to market is extremely long. That is between the first sketch and the final version it can take several years and so you'll have 1 or more sketches what we call gouache drawings these are magnificent drawings done in paint and gouache and then perhaps you'll have a 3 d version of the jewel and then the back shot the final version. And all these stages we're going to go into a bit more detail because the creative process isn't linear at all it goes in all directions it forks it comes back and so maybe you'd imagine making such and such a ring with a flower motif, but in the end it was abandoned at the sketch stage. But you're still going to data it with blockchain, and that avoids your designer who goes off to a competitor, who wants to take up this idea that you've never used, and who wants to reuse it later.

Didier: 18:57

Okay. Great. Thank you for all those examples. And earlier when we prepare the podcast, you gave me a few examples. So how much of the cost, how much can people potentially save with this method of protecting their IP? Do you have any, um, toothy examples you can share with us?

William: 19:13

Uh, sure. I've got a great example. Unfortunately, they're not customers yet, but if they're listening, they can write to me on LinkedIn. In fact, a few years ago, L'Oreal was sentenced to almost 100000000 euros in compensation for having misappropriated the technology when in fact they had developed the technology in house 5 years earlier. In fact, it's a crazy story. L'Oreal wanted to buy a start up called Allaplex. They had a type of hair protection solution during coloring, and in the end, in fact, the buyout didn't go through, probably because all Applix wanted too much money. I'm not sure. And so the takeover was aborted. Obviously, L'Oreal didn't want to abandon this market segment. What did L'Oreal do? They developed their own range, they had already started doing that, They came out with a competing product, and in fact, Olaplex was furious because they were convinced that L'Oreal had taken advantage of the takeover talks to steal confidential information, that they were faking an intention to buy them only to steal info. And in fact, the matter could have been settled in 30 minutes if, at the time, the Oriel had brought in a bailiff to stamp their own work to prove its anteriority. As this was not the case, they were condemned in court, and in the end, they won the case. They retrieved a series of elements that could be considered to have little probative value, emails, etcetera, which were then sent to the police. And it goes to the judge, and it's passed. But it puts you in a complete legal limbo not to have the proof of the work you're doing, but also to avoid being sued as a counterfeiter yourself. And that can be very painful, especially in the United States, where the penalties are far more severe than in France.

Didier: 20:48

So how long have you, the blockchain, your IP been around and how do you get new customers? How do you find new customers? How do people learn about your product and how do you get your product into their hands?

William: 20:57

Yes. I started Blockchain Your IP, and then, in fact, in 20 16, at the time it was a bit of a student side project because I was a third year law student. So I was doing it on the side because I was studying intellectual property, and at the same time, I was coding a bit. So I wanted to combine business with pleasure. It was a time when nobody knew anything about Bitcoin, and we wondered what we could do with it. At that time when not everyone wanted to meet us, the time when people thought we were crooks, and now things are a bit better because I'd say people have seen so much stuff. They've seen NFT and so on. And it's become a little more established, and companies and lawyers are much more accepting of the fact that it's being used. So we've come up with a solution based on blockchain. How are we going to find customers? For us, it's quite complicated because the market for intellectual property products has a lot of intermediaries. Nobody thinks I'm going to have to date my creations. Generally, it's the lawyers who will advise you. You see, your lawyers or your jurists who will advise you to time stamp your creation in the same way that a doctor will prescribe medication, he'll prescribe blockchain proofs for your innovative project. So I'd say that in fact we try to be very visible to lawyers because they're the prescribers because in fact they're always the ones behind a recommendation, and every time a startup comes to see us we know that it's their lawyer who's going to talk to us because they wouldn't have found us on his own nor thought there was a need for our solution. And then there's the second point on the target of key accounts and legal experts. I've tried to find lots of secret hacks to make ebooks to do lots of things, but it's never really worked. What works? It's pretty standard, but it's going to be intellectual property trade shows, professional after work events, physical events. So there you have it. We try to take part in lots of events to be visible in the ecosystem, and then you don't really control when people are going to come to see you, obviously, because these are big machines. So the subject may come up 6 months, not later.

Didier: 22:45

Okay. So the person who's going to have the power to make the decision. Just describe to a license or not. Is he, or she also going to be the person with the budget and the power to spend it.

William: 22:55

Yes. So just a little clarification, because elsewhere, then in France, all lawyers are lawyers. In France, there's a distinction, but, overall, I mean, external lawyers or in house lawyers, external lawyers, external lawyers, maybe small startups, they'll try to see an outside legal counsel, and then in house lawyers for large structures that have in house lawyers. Yes. It'll be the lawyers who decide to take the tools. So generally, it's more likely to be decided by the legal director. So I'd say that can be a bit complicated is that we're dealing with very big companies, and the budgets aren't necessarily well. It's not the legal department that has the biggest company budgets. It's obviously gonna be the person in the marketing and sales departments, especially as we're dealing with something fairly new. Um, that is to say, people are used to protecting their brands and patents, but this whole area in copyright know how, and trade secrets has been neglected for lack of simple user friendly solutions. Well, they're not in the habit of doing things for that, so it's a new line. So I don't know if that answers your question.

Didier: 23:50

Yes, that answers my question. Thank you. Um, the, the, one of the thing you have to explain to me. So how did you discover Bitcoin?'cause I always thought at the beginning, ah, William, he must be a programmer because he understands Bitcoin. Because he doesn't talk to me about price and he uses it for just about the one other thing that it's really useful, useful for which is a tamper-proof database. So he understands Bitcoin. He must be, he must be a programmer. That's what I always imagined. And in fact, I discovered when I got to know you, that you went to law school. And came into this product from the angle of a intellectual property. So, how did you discover Bitcoin and how did you figure out that there was this use for it?

William: 24:30

In fact, I think we've all kind of discovered Bitcoin before we even realized it because, you know, you've had a number of scandals that made a lot of noise like Silk Road, that kind of thing. So I couldn't say exactly when I first heard about it, and I don't think it's really interesting because it's not a contest. But what I do know is that the moment I started getting into it and reading books like Jacques Favier's book or Mastering Bitcoin was in 20 16. And when I started working on Blockchain, your IP, and I absolutely wanted to understand how it works because I think it's essential. You see the mistake that I see many lawyers and law professors make, and I saw it a lot at the beginning when we started talking about Bitcoin for legal uses cases. In fact, they think they can reason about Bitcoin without having read the technical documentation on Bitcoin or without having understood how it works. So for me, it was essential to take Bitcoin in hand in order to create a solution linked to Bitcoin, of course, and then I became as passionate about it as you are, I guess. Otherwise, you wouldn't have a podcast.

Didier: 25:27

Yeah, I like it too. For me, it was the technological innovation that, uh, that interested me. It's it's a new invention that allows you to do things that you couldn't do before. So that's what a. That's what interested me. So let's move on to some rapid fire questions. Uh, how often do you use cash?

William: 25:44

Well, not at all, and it's really unfortunate. I use Lydia, which is a payment application, and I don't know if you have an equivalent, but I'd really like to use Lightning instead. You know? And I think it's a big problem because there's less and less people using cash. And so it raises the question of transaction monitoring. We don't want it to come to that. And so having a cash system like lightning, I think is essential. It's a guarantee for privacy, so we have to push very hard for these innovations to arrive on the market.

Didier: 26:10

Yes. I like cash above all because it's anonymous. It's as anonymous as it gets much more anonymous than Bitcoin. There's even an initiative in Switzerland, um, that we're probably going to have to vote on the fear that wants to put cash in the constitution. So it would be impossible to completely get rid of old cash or eliminate it. And when I talk to people they're interested. And this for two reasons. Um, some people are interested in it from the angle of anonymity and other people are interested in it from the angle of, um, Electricity and technical failure. So of course every app. Every electronic means of payment basically. Depends on. Depends on. Okay. Tricity working and technological infrastructure working. And so people are afraid that if those were to break down. Uh, you'd have a problem. Um, next question. I know you use chat GPT. So what do you use it for?

William: 27:04

I'm not very advanced with it, but I do a lot of things with chat g b t. It's replaced a lot of the tools I used to use. I used to use antidote, you know, because I make a lot of spelling mistakes. Chat GBT does this really well, and I also use DeepL to translate my emails into English and improve the style. I think deep l is faster, but chat GPT, in my opinion, goes further because it'll actually rewrite the email and change the wording. And then there are the little tasks that I used to do on a regular basis and that I'd like to automate. Now let me give you an example. For example, before each customer appointment, I try to make a card. I can see all the brands they have registered, all the designs, and iconic models. I think it's interesting to show the company you're working with that you're interested in them and because it's going to help me suggest how the solution might help them. It's an extremely tedious job, and it has to be done with a template. And I think there's a part of it that can be automated with ChatGPT. You see, there's a part where you have to look up the history of the company on Wikipedia. So that's what I'm automating with ChatGPT so that they can make my forms for my customer appointments. After that, I don't know. It's a good thing because I probably learned by doing the cards and reading them afterwards. So So it just so happens that I've automated something and deprive myself of research. The most important part

Didier: 28:17

Something about your, about you, that your colleagues don't know.

William: 28:20

Before I got into tech, I had a passion for magic, particularly close-up magic. Close-up magic, as opposed to parlor magic or stage magic, where you cut women in half, so close-up magic is all about coins cards and cigarettes and so I did it every weekend and even sometimes during the week I performed in bars, I even performed on stage once in Istanbul, and then I stopped completely to concentrate on sports. I've got my new passion in fact for technology, learning to code, and do all that sort of thing.

Didier: 28:48

Great. And how did you earn your first paycheck?

William: 28:51

I was in a construction company, and we were working on the side of a clinic. And so, in fact, he asked me to paint the you had 3 sasses. It was a very secure clinic. So you had a triple sassy, and he asked me to paint the doors. And I'd messed it all up because I was a bad painter, so they had to redo the whole thing. And at the end of the day, he gave me the job of doing the joints and the plinths of the whole building. So all day long, I was with my gun and gun following the building's plinths. There you go. That was my first paycheck.

Didier: 29:17

And finally, what do you do to relax?

William: 29:21

Well, I like listening to podcasts. I like listening to podcasts, and I've recently been getting back into virtual reality, because I bought myself an Oculus Quest 2 just so I wouldn't die a fool, and I could test out the metal verse. And recently I've been getting back into VR sports in particular a really great game called Street of the Fights a VR boxing game and I can assure you that it's extremely tiring, and you're surprised to find that you can actually play sports in VR.

Didier: 29:50

Well, thank you. Yeah. I mean, it was a pleasure to have you back and we'll see how they Singlish. Doubling of your voice goes. And, uh, we'll see what the, uh, responses from listeners. Pleasure to speak to bye-bye.