Start-ups the smart way, not the hard way; How to Build Scale ups

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In this exciting panel discussion, "Start-ups the Smart Way, Not the Hard Way: How to Build Scale Ups," we delve into the strategies for successfully scaling startups to unicorn status. Our expert panel will explore essential insights on optimizing growth, financing strategies, and the human element of idea creation. Join us as we tackle pivotal questions and foster an engaging dialogue that inspires actionable insights for entrepreneurs and business leaders alike.

Moderated by Nicole Enslein, the CEO & Founder of Sublime Communications, Nicole brings a wealth of experience in growth acceleration and marketing communications. With an esteemed background working with Fortune 500 brands and her expertise in cybersecurity and technology, she ensures a spirited and insightful discussion.

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Transcript

(00:01) [Music] I know this is uh the last the last panel of the day but we are still full of energy and ready to go party tonight uh and so let's talk about scaling versus failing and doing it the smart way not the hard way I think as entrepreneurs we have all seen many many different stories as investors we've all seen many many companies either make it or fail uh but we want to talk about the how and the why some of them perform better than others so I want to introduce we have three amazing panelists who not only are they
(00:56) professionally amazing they're all people I I really like quite a lot so I like you quite a lot too yeah so we're gonna have a lot of fun um all right so Jackson Klein CEO of Kio and Kio is a biometric Tech which I can't wait for everyone to hear more about and then we have pel farasat who is the chief growth advisor of Fina which helps investing in small businesses in Africa which we know is the future of where our population is going so uh we also have John Stanton who is the founder of universal export Ventures he is also an investor so and
(01:51) I'll quickly tell you who I am aside from being the moderator I am Nicole enin and I'm the CEO and founder of BL Communications so what I do on a daily basis is help build Brands scale Brands companies and even personal Brands so I have seen this from so many different lenses so it's exciting to be able to share this with everybody so I would love to talk about just from each of your experience what are what are some of the biggest challenges that you face and I know that is a broad question but I'd love for you we start at the
(02:37) beginning go for it because we all know how easy it is to find money start a company run it exit right it's just a walk in the park so let's talk about you know what some of those key challenges are Milestone moments actually I I want to pass this over to Jackson because uh he's at at this very incredible stage in this company uh and I know a little bit about it so I'm going to say you know vulnerably share some of the massive struggles that you guys have overcome let's take a look at that okay um so where my mind immediately went was a
(03:20) challenge that we don't have so but I I still think it it's a valuable answer a thing that a lot of startups deal with is just getting really high quality people who are willing to grind and I know there was talk about work life balance before and and that's very important but the reality is a lot of times you need a core group of people who are wildly dedicated to a vision and willing to work exceptionally hard and those people are hard to find and they're hard to kind of get into that almost founder mentality tie themselves
(03:56) to the Mast and be willing to weather the storm and so I have a lot of peer CEOs who struggle with that immensely and I think that we haven't struggled with it as much or maybe at all um because of a core thing and I think a thing John and hopefully we all speak about here which is using leading with vision and kind of leading with like audacious Vision working on the biggest problems that we face as a civilization as a planet it turns out if you do that and you're proud out of it and you speak loudly about it that all
(04:33) of the right people come to you and are willing to tie themselves to the Mas alongside you that is so beautifully answered and it sounds to me like you know this vision and this power also stems from having strong leadership and a leader that you're willing to to really ride or die with and hats off to you because ride or die ride or die yeah you have to build a culture that is that is clear and we'd love to hear about some of the secrets to building that culture because that is really how how you have to have keep people there I can give a
(05:18) quick shout out uh a huge shortcut to building great culture is to have a founding team that's majority women uh in the US majority uh immigrant and ideally maybe everyone looks a little bit different and so that was one of our approaches and it turns out the diversity and honestly I think just kind of female energy is massively helpful to setting culture in a company wow I like that round of applause to the women like come on everybody the ladies and jumping jumping in I think one of the things that's really important um and this is
(06:01) uh to your two questions kind of at the same time some of the nightmares that I fa both as an entrepreneur uh well three phases right entrepreneur CEO and investor is when a company tries to scale just for financial returns and it's something about hey we're going to get this return on our money this return on our time uh it begs to sunk cost or it speaks to sunk cost and sometimes you don't actually want to scale and the only thing that I think that actually drive scale speaking to both of these really remarkable human beings is that uh yeah
(06:37) no one needs that what's that uh purpose Drive scale and so and then team will actually uh buy into that and the team will buy in in a positive direction and the team will also call your in the negative Direction when you say we're changing the world it's amazing but everyone's just trying to have a fin return so yeah if I can add something from a purely personal perspective here so I'm a beekeeper and I studi these bees and how they create this colony and I've learned everything about scaling from The Beehive and I'll tell
(07:21) you why like anyone here is a beekeeper or knows anything about bees or honey business okay there's one right there okay Molly back me up here so every Hive needs a queen and they will protect her at their their own cost you know like at their cost of their own life but without her The Hive is dead it's gone forget the honey you don't even have a colony and so in business I feel like the queen is either going to be your purpose right or it's going to be a vision that your people can follow like they have to believe it so if you don't
(07:59) believe in it and you don't have purpose and you're just doing it to make more money or get more scale or whatever the more is it's not about the more it's about what is it that you want more and does that does the whole organism need that and that's what I learned from the bees is that there's an organism that is a collective and what does that entire organism need and if we can look at business that way or like for example right now I'm an adviser on a fund that's based in Africa for startups it's an all female team so
(08:32) coming back to your team uh coming back to your point all female team from the MD to the lawyer to the investment director to name it the advisers and we had to diversify in the IC we added some guys I mean it's a fun thing to do but it's hard to do it's not easy to do so what was our purpose our purpose was so that I can go up to people like you and say we have an all female team and we're very proud of it and it is very unique for an investment fund to have an all all women team even today and so what is your purpose and what does the organism
(09:09) need and that to me is conscious leadership when you can be conscious of that and I spent 20 years being an unconscious follower so I'm speaking from doing both I've done both if my boss has said go left I went left unconsciously but now I'm like you know if if if to become a conscious leader in a conscious business and just coming back to your point like purpose and profitability have to go hand inand because at the end of the day any businesses or anything that I work on you know it has to be paired together
(09:44) because impact is going to be your differentiator there's so many businesses of the same type but how are you going to be different and so I don't know I think both of you are super cool because you both stole my points and I'm repeating you're welcome but I back you guys 100% And The Bees back you and that's how they work in that in nature you can't Brute Force scale it has to work well together you have to find a way in infrastructure some scaffolding to inspire scale you can brute force it and that's usual you
(10:19) mean you can't financially engineer scale yeah I mean yeah you know and that's the thing you can financially engineer anything but if No One Believes you you will fail as fast as you succeed because it it's just the foundation's weaker so yeah I love that answer and I love this is we've got some chemistry going on here this is so great um I think it's it's so true because even when it comes to building a brand you have to build a brand with authenticity you can't sell someone something if it doesn't have a deeper meaning for them and so often
(11:03) when I talk to Founders the most difficult thing most Founders have a very big problem with being able to tell their story and coming up with an elevator pitch it's just a very difficult thing because there are so many things your company may do you may be a technology you may be a biometric Tech it doesn't it doesn't matter it your head you have so many things and it's distilling it to this one simple point but that simple point just it can't just be about you it has to be about the person you're talking to so pel I have a question for
(11:48) you how as an impact company how how do you see the interaction and the intersection between scaling growing and being impact focused storytelling I love you for that answer you you got to tell stories about your data and and a storytelling I mean data driven storytelling you can't just make up stories you know you got to back them with facts and you got to make the facts tell the story and that's the hardest thing I think so many leaders have vision and they have great products but they see the data and they
(12:34) just repeat it as if just because it's factual it's going to come through and it's going to be believable and the truth is I mean you got to have people on your team that can tell stories so you need to have a chief Storyteller in every freaking organization because if you do no matter what the data says they're able to tell a story that then can just permeate and just I don't know so stories would be the answer and uh if done well they're really powerful and if they are done wrong it can sync a brand right so it
(13:08) goes both ways thank you uh Jackson I have a specific question for you I think I'm sure people have heard this week we've talked to death about Ai and Tech and I I think it's a really interesting thing to to think about how how you can use tech for Humanity and ethically and Do no harm yeah wasn't I mean there was a moment when that was Google's it was what don't be evil look how that turned out no we we love Google but it's it's so hard to control we we no I guess what I mean there is that it away naturally that that phrase had to
(14:03) kind of melt away because it was too kind of Monolithic in its tone and I think that naturally as an organization scales you have to adapt and and it's a really hard reality and I think that the you know I would so not Google but other companies as you know there are probably entrepreneurs in the room or people who invest in entrepreneurs and I think that one of the things I think about so much and and I advise young entrepreneurs and people getting started is like really critically think about what like in the
(14:38) best case scenario or with the most scale what have you achieved and what is what is the impact you've had on the world because a lot of people start companies and they're kind of looking at you know the next month or the next year but they don't actually realize that if you just keep putting one foot in front of the other and you do a good job you might actually accidentally build this giant thing that might accidentally be net negative for Humanity or the planet so I would implore people to build good things like start with there and if you
(15:11) do that then you kind of end up in the right spot and hopefully you do scale but a lot of companies frankly shouldn't scale I do think that you know in AI there's so much net positive stuff but a lot of people who are building an AI also probably are not really thinking about the second order and third order effects of what they're building and they might just accidentally get into a position that hurts us all so assume you aim big assume you will win and make sure that winning is good I think that that's a a proper approach I like that
(15:43) mindset mindset so John you you come from an interesting uh point of view because you're also an investor do you feel that having the perspective of an investor is a helpful tool as an entrepreneur actually yeah I uh uh this question to me is near and dear to my heart because my very first company that I started straight out of University I grew up poor so I thought it I'm going to start an investment firm so I can learn money um and that you know went well it was great started September 10th 2001 so you know you only go up um and so uh but a
(16:35) lot of it I actually had to retrain myself even though I was running my own office right my own company it's a small company you know uh lots of AUM and all the things and then launched a nice little angel investment firm off the side all the things and but as an entrepreneur uh it goes back to things like what Jackson's talking about you're actually really focused on things like unit economics right right as you scale you're saying okay we are scaling this company we're making it big for a real good reason for Humanity and then I need
(17:09) my Revenue per employee to go up right that's a different perspective than a say more passive investor and so uh I think this touches on I think what both of you guys have already talked about and what Jackson spoke about is the passion that the crew has and the leadership that's required for everyone to literally tie themselves to the Mast is what I had to train myself moving away from an and you know an Investor's mindset into an entrepreneurs mindset for all the businesses that I started as a founder and CEO and so the combination is
(17:48) powerful so anybody who is an investor and only investor I will challenge you and I will say start a side gig start a company feel the burn and the  ego death that you have to go through to make things happen and then invest again with that mindset yeah yes I think rejection is something that uh startups know too well going through the fundraising process I think you have to have a very thick skin um but I would love to hear about about some of your aha moments and tipping points along the way along the journey and valuable
(18:37) advice that you can share with everyone here so I think one of the biggest aha moments for me was realizing that scale is not success and you said this I think or you said this that you some comp oh you said this some companies do should not scale and um and even if you scale it doesn't mean you're successful and I that was I think the biggest thing because I think we're all so like scale scale scale grow grow grow you know I my mentor was Dr Harry marwitz he's passed away but he's a noble or at economics I'm economics
(19:21) background so he had told me something before he passed it was really cool because he was on my investment committee for um I managed 16 billion AUM investment firm right and he was on the investment committee and he would say this all the time he's like when you leave the room when you exit the room what systems have you built that are sustainable no matter what you do think about i' I'm leaving the room and if you can't answer that question very quickly in 2 seconds it doesn't matter how much scale you have
(19:59) it's not sustainable either and I felt like that was like an aha moment and I think I use it in life now you know it's like when I leave this room is there a system here that's sustainable that's going to do something good in alignment with my values so for that you need to know your values first and then keep building this like system behind you every door every room and so when we had our latest exit it was literally that for that it's like you can exit you can have a great successful investor exit but when you've exited when you've left
(20:35) that room what sustainable structure have you left behind and so that's was like I mean he taught me that and he's wise and he passed away in his 90s and I'm grateful you know but it's it's been um a life Cher not just business changer very nice it is beautiful and I think a theme that keeps coming up is is really about culture and I've seen I've worked with so many companies that we've taken from as few as five employees and and taken them to thousands of employees and there have been a a handful of them that I've seen that have
(21:27) been a able to really maintain the culture and I'm always saddened when I see what was a thriving company and even though it's financially growing but it loses its Soul it the it it just is lost and what what are those ways how how do you see as leaders and as you scale your companies how do you maintain that Compass how do you stay the course you want to answer do we just all jump in go for it you can go down the line down the line the line yeah well I I I simply you know conceptually we change right so uh a
(22:16) compan is an organism and it also grows and changes um but if it doesn't have a North star that we are talking about purpose Drive scale right if it's not behind what you're doing then inherently your culture is going to turn to um it's just going to have a whole bunch of Assassins come in and there'll be a different reason rais on Detra right and so if you're really hardcore rais on Detra even though the corporation the company however structure you want to talk about uh it will evolve and will change right because a a 50 person or even a 50
(22:55) million uh Revenue company versus a 500 million Revenue company the people that made that 50 million Revenue company successful will likely not all be there in the 500 million version right which means inherently it's going to shift that North Star is is is the key right and then honestly you see even Founders who started a company oftentimes I tell Founders who started a company and they're there and they're wanting to scale it that they need to leave they're not the right person to run that company anymore and
(23:27) it's okay right it's okay for that to be the case because things change but that North Star at the very beginning is the key um I think when scale turns into chaos I think things get toxic in any organization and you got to watch for that and I don't think I think that's like many leaders don't look for that because they think that's the price you pay to be successful is you take on care chaos and you deal with toxic people toxic employees toxic Partners toxic investors right like I mean when we're investing in a company if we're toxic
(24:11) and we want to bring that they'll do it and that's where it's painful because you don't want toxicity in your life I mean I was just in the deepok Chopra thing and he you were there too I mean what he blew our minds he's like look this place is toxic cuz all you guys are focused on is networking and there's truth to that because we're literally spinning up we spin we spin we Spin and at the end of the day when we leave our existence here you know it's not about that spin it has to be more than that and so look for put
(24:50) your radar on for toxicity and do you are you surrounding yourself with toxic people or chaotic people or chaotic energy or chaotic investors or chaotic leaders who are constantly manifesting that and is that really the point of building something and having it be successful and can it really be successful if it's really toxic I don't know I'm I'm just guessing no but I don't know I'm okay cool all right yeah okay I can keep mine brief but I think the I like the systems comment before and I think you know systems and people are are deeply
(25:27) intertwined here right so you want to leave behind great systems but of course they the people are ultimately without people the systems do nothing and so you need these incredible people which is a massive emphasis on hiring well and there's been plenty written about that we don't need to go into it but like we have a a a core tenant in our company which is you know simply don't hire  it's it's a nice easy one um but you know even within that but and that's you know written down like explicitly in our hiring guidelines
(25:57) internal to the company and I think that you you don't need to like we never feel like we have to betray that it turns out you can just always have that rule and even above that you can say instead of don't hire bad people hire amazing people hire people you truly want to work with be patient in the process and know you don't need you know that 10x engineer and this and that if they're toxic don't do it just don't do it get the 9x engineer who's amazing you're fine you'll be okay so I think that that that because you don't want it to all
(26:32) blow up in your face and it and it will if you lose the culture it it just doesn't matter and we've seen this happen so many times now or if you're the founder you'll you know you'll ultimately lose the company so like focus on that core team I think that that's critically important but I think the additional Point that's counterintuitive is that most teams should be way smaller than they are and I think that you can build and there a lot of breath has been given to this at Davos already but small teams can build
(27:03) global scale products that work in Enterprise situations they work in you know National Security they work in whatever do not just add people for the sake of adding people because then where you started this of like you the that death of culture I would argue that you get there no matter what if you get too big once you're over you know a few thousand employees or whatever it just doesn't really matter anymore now it's no one you you can you no longer know out most of the people even you no longer have direct lines to leadership
(27:35) so if you want to work in an organization that's close a close-nit group of people what what's the a small group of forgot the quote but anyway you the it's a you know unreason unreasonable people in small groups getting great things done and you're like but you need those you need that group to stay small enough that you have efficient communication and all of that so and we saw it with Twitter what was like 80% of the staff and never you it was going to explode and die and it didn't like these companies get big for
(28:02) big sake and that actually ruins culture so to keep culture probably tried to stay small and be very very efficient purposeful I I think it's amazing and to me it's it's really great hearing especially in a panel that's about businesses failing scaling that we're spending a lot of time talking about Humanity and I think that there is a big link between humanity and creating something that's scalable and it it is putting that North Star in place that people want to follow and people want to follow something because you've created
(28:48) an energy and a light that they see and they want to be a part of so uh I certainly see a lot of lights up here which I I'm really thankful for uh what I want to know is each of you I would like you each to answer because you have this opportunity you have the stage or the floor what is it you need most and that doesn't have to be you know it's not always an economic thing but but what is it you need most because to me it's the power of connectivity and I know DPAC may have I I agree too much networking but I think if if your intention is
(29:42) known and if everyone in this room knows your intention there's likely someone who can forge a connection to the one thing you may need and that it could be anything man it do you have easy um I would say if you can if you can figure out how to manifest things whatever it is you want I stumbled upon it a couple years ago where I could I can say I want X to happen and a month later it happens but it's a thing that you you earn with whatever like yourself right like this really sense you believe in yourself so much and it's not you it's
(30:34) like you believe in whatever purpose that whatever you're working on has that purpose you believe in that purpose so much that like the universe conspires to make sure it happens and like it happened today in that other session the lady sitting next to me was for Microsoft and the lady sitting in front of me ah there she is and I swear and she just popped it I swear like I'm just saying see what I just did I thought of her and she's in a room and she probably yeah anyways so I would say what I need most is that to keep that
(31:19) because you can also lose it because if you get cocky and you get arrogant and you don't and you don't appreciate the gift you know and you just take it for granted it's going to go away I will not make be able to make her appear in a room where I was just talking about her because she was such a gift she was sitting right next to me and um I needed someone at that moment to be supportive of me you know we're very busy we're here there's so much going on my energy is getting depleted and I literally said I need
(31:50) just someone to like bring my and like charge my phone my internal phone and she sat next to me and she was like this charger for me and we've never met before and here She is again and so I would say what I need in my life to keep manifesting is to keep my energy up to surround myself with people that are amazing and purpose-filled and value aligned and uh hopefully I don't lose the gift and I can keep appreciating getting the gift and if there if there something I would share with others is like get to that point where you can
(32:25) manifest whatever the heck it is that you want for yourself for others you know cuz that's kind of cool and it's different while Jackson uh collects his thoughts um I think uh something for me just in general um from the perspective of say scaleup entrepreneurs startup entrepreneurs uh the belief in oneself without the ego is vital and so that's something that I uh call it from a perspective of even my own personal journey I actively need people who are in my life who engage the exact same way actively and that means you have to be badass
(33:15) who come up excuse me can we edit that um my bad we're all adult it's here it's okay but the I think the the strength in that is huge right being able to enter a room and then both give support and ask for support in a very open way and so for me that is vital um from a perspective of uh my business or businesses uh I want to actively engage commercially with people who think that way and think huge so even with Jackson and Kio we're engaging with uh with humans at a large commercial scale at a sovereign scale uh that implemented
(33:57) technology that is literally the foundation for human identity for the rest of humanity in the next hundred years and that is a crazy thing to do right and so there's the commercial side of that and then there's the investment side of that we want aligned investors I want align investors in my Investment Company who think the same way who are not toxic and then we go after opportunities and support amazing entrepreneurs like Jackson the team to do amazing things and be a part of it so there you go yeah okay so I like that all of our like
(34:38) what do you need are like we need the world or we need all of you to think this way and none like I need yeah I need this um and and I I was trying to think of something that wouldn't be that again but ultimately that's where I landed as well so the we're living in a world right now that is dealing with the overhang of a lot of Institutions that were built out of the world wars that were built out of a lot of resource extraction a lot of really harmful policies and a lot of the people who kind of built those systems that
(35:14) helped us you know ultimately get where we are and we're very I guess thankful for a lot of that but fundamentally a lot of those people just by nature of human lifespan won't be here all that much longer and for my generation and the Generations under me were kind of left like standing around looking at the you know the ruins of you know what was basically a big National Park and trying to figure out what's next and I think that we have there's a huge amount of pessimism in you know Millennials and gen Z all
(35:48) the way down and a huge amount of apathy um because it feels like the power structures are in place they have been in place for a long time and there really is no way to affect change and I I interview these people for our company I hire them and it is just truly and deeply sad how pervasive that lack of of optimism and positivity and the real feeling that we can affect change is and I if if this doesn't sound right to any of you I implore you to go and and speak with you know 18 year olds 17 year olds 24 year olds it is
(36:20) and how you feeling good this guy but so I think that that um what I would ask or kind of what I what I would wish for is just to you know if you have that positivity to talk about it if you're still optimistic about the future share that because there's so much of the opposite and also like the easy one is just like get off your phones get off of streaming stop doing it it's all crazy like we our our media diets are so bad and someone mentioned was it this talk or last talk um like silence in last in the last talk
(36:57) there talking about like take time you know in nature to think good God it's just like what Tik tok's like four and a half hours per day per 17y old that is bad are you joking I think it's a lot higher yeah but like there aren't really four hours outside of school for a 17year old so that's all You' be shocked I don't know there must be 36 hours in their day yeah but we're all guilty of it if you take you know news media streaming social media and gaming and porn five media food groups that's all of everyone's
(37:30) time no and it's no wonder that we have a lack of optimism it's no wonder people aren't building the institutions of the future so like get off of the devices think carefully about what the future needs build it talk about it loudly be optimistic be positive what okay so soot B we need hell yes about your daughter's book for sure oh now okay for a minute yeah we'd like to hear yeah so yeah we're all curious now just like not just about the book thanks Mark I I love you thanks for the plug but what he just said about
(38:16) like being on screens in Tech you know all the time and how that shapes our decision making and we're decision makers each and every one of us right and so um we kept our daughter off of Tech so she has no technology and we can go on a 6-hour car ride and just talk and or look out the window and there's no iPad there's no phone there's no nothing she just chills and she figures it out and she'll read a book or Draw or you know so um I think it's because of that I see the Next Generation really drowned in Tech and so stressed they're always
(38:57) comparing their Liv lives to other people's lives and those lives are fake you know how many times have you met somebody in real life and you see them on screen and they look totally different and you're like who are you cuz I thought you look totally different and so imagine growing up like that with 4 and a half hours or 14 hours of that all day it's it's hard and so we kept her off of tech and then because of that um we encourage other outlets of expression and so that's where the books come in and they're all about self-love
(39:26) and positive things but anyways thank you wow um and can you take a moment to tell us about Kio and your vision for Kio sure yeah yeah so Kio quickly we um we like to say we replace your keys credit cards tickets passports government ID all with a contactless scan of your palm and so you can imagine walking up to your front door and waving at it to unlock it or walk walking into a cafe and paying for your coffee just by waving at the cash register so when you're waving you're actually waving at a device we make it
(40:05) looks at five million points into unique vein patterns inside of your hand in under a second totally contactlessly it turns out your vein patterns are unique even between identical twins and at a global scale of 8.5 billion people uh so we then tied that to verified credentials to your college degree to anything you want to tie to that you need to be able to prove out in the world and we're oriented around the the idea that if you take roads Plumbing electricity the internet these kind of Core Physical infrastructure layers of
(40:35) the world that we fundamentally don't have identity infrastructure for the physical world which is the reason that when you know probably at least a few people in this room went to check into their hotel and then they got to the room and then the key card didn't work and they went back down to the lobby and they did it two or three times like that's crazy we're used to Identity working really well in the digital world you unlock your you know phone and it's just there but then we carry around pockets and purses full of you know
(41:01) little bits of plastic and metal that act as proxies of identity but ultimately can be lost stolen and forgotten and so on one hand we're oriented on let's say a more convenient world having a a better travel experience but more importantly we're focused on let's call it safety and equity and dealing with the billion people in the world who simply don't have access to government idea and through that don't have access to traditional Finance can't cross borders and so on so it we've as we've been building this company we've put a huge
(41:34) amount of time and thought and effort and money into it we realized that what we were building really was this infrastructure layer and that we then to fulfill that Vision could only do it by working with local operators at a country bycount scale and that's who ultimately was coming to us so now we're rolling out what we're shifting from kind of a startup to what we think of as a have a new generation of hybrid organizations oriented around this kind of positive outlook for the future and building institutions that matter and in
(42:07) this case it is making sure that every human can prove who they are what they own where their citizenship is all of these things always period irrespective of a changing government regime irrespective of a l large commercial entity making being a gatekeeper but that that is always yours based on effectively your unique DNA so that that's what we do um if anyone in the room does anything peripherally related to Identity so all of you and you have any interest in you know talking about it more I'd love to chat afterwards yeah so one of the
(42:43) things that's really interesting that he referenced amongst that uh those comments is that Kio has created an economic empowerment engine in the same way that the App Store is in the same way that collaborative economies are and that's something that you and I talked about earlier and so questions yes I just want to take your how much of social media such a level that is just beyond like any any like capacity for individual hum like grasp and how do you think that like kids or anyone for that matter kind avoid that like is it just good
(43:45) parenting or like how do you like how do you stop like that from infiltrating so deep into people's I I have strong feelings about this one I I believe this is the single largest challenge that we're all facing on the planet today and I think that it's actually because the inmates are running the Asylum and so the regulators and the government officials and the people who should you know be putting in place Common Sense regulation where you don't have Monet like monetizing attention at Scale based on Amazing
(44:24) Neuroscience is just we have basically put hundreds of billions of dollars into architecting perfect drugs we've given them to the regulators and to the children and everyone in between and the parents so the parents The Regulators and the children are all addicted to the same drugs is very very hard to change a system like that so I don't know that answer I think and again if we're trying to figure out solutions to anything here no one's going to you know we're going to keep going off the toward the Cliff of climate we're going to keep going
(44:55) toward all these different Cliffs we're going to keep being in Wars if everyone's just kind of consuming media all the time so we actually have to solve this so the first step like it starts with you like stop yeah it stops with everyone in the room like get yeah you take yeah yeah Focus like build things build big things with good people spend your time on that get off a media you know stop doing it and then also if you like work together let's all work together to figure out like how what is that critical incision we can make to
(45:25) stop all this nonsense yeah I love that because it's the the thing that quote unquote connects us that separates us so you had a question yeah maybe it's too technical but may speak later how do you manage to safegard the DAT yeah yeah so we're fundamentally a security and privacy company and so the there I mean we don't need to go super tech technical but we don't store the raw data first of all so we store what's effectively an AI generated kind of output of a scan Vector yeah so we do kind of vectorization that those vectors
(46:10) aren't reversible back into the original data so even if you have it you can't pretend to be someone you're not so even in like a catastrophic situation of data loss you still you know nothing's happened to your underlying Identity or people's ability to pretend to be you so that's probably the most uh succinct answer answer the thing we spend a lot more time on is actually privacy and we Orient and that is this dramatic orientation um around the proliferation of facial recognition so we spend a lot of time working with regulators and
(46:42) focusing on this idea that proliferating facial recognition is massively net negative for civil society and that you know if you one of our investors is um here I was just on a panel with him and he introduced this or our company as the digital or your filing cabinet you kind of that you know your mom has with all of her documents in it and kind of that you digitize that and then your hand becomes the key and a thing I mentioned later on was the problem with facial recognition is your face becomes the key and you wear your face on the front of
(47:16) your head as you walk around you know on sidewalks and in train stations and that's deeply problematic because you end up basically on this clear road to kind of police States and totalitarian you know overreach where you have perfect identity of every citizen wherever they are at all times and we all have to make this decision between convenience and privacy we definitely shouldn't say well you know we want convenience like you know out the window with privacy right so we like that's the thing that we're kind of trying to
(47:47) navigate but yeah fundamentally like we a degree of anonymity is critical to functioning civil society and so you should have that expectation that you can turn off your phone go outside and you you know are kind of independent at that point you speak about privacy curious have you about r or the I have not I'd love to hiding oh hiring hiring where did you hide them like yeah where did you put them been there or done that no boy I think yeah I think that's one of it's just one of those things where you
(48:52) it depends on are they  right to Jackson's Point earlier you know to your point as well toxicity right then I you yeah so like we all talked about this yeah it's like are they or are the toxic people off discernment is going to be really big you you got to learn to discern like from just because they're family or friends they don't get a seat at the table I and I know we're programmed differently I know from when we're were kids and culturally and we're programmed that you're some supposed to do this because you're supposed to be a good
(49:32) person and that's what a good person is and honestly I feel like a good person is someone who can actually discern the difference between a toxic person and a chaotic person and whether you want that in your life or not family or not friend or not and don't be that for other people don't create toxicity for other family members or your children or your business your people that work for you or your employees and so it it's a two-way street but you it starts with discernment and that you don't owe anybody anything just because they're a
(50:01) family but that's what we are programmed to believe and um good luck with that because they are already in your business yeah I I think it's one of these times where you have to put your own oxygen mask on First and it's not easy but you have to rip the Band-Aid and do it because ultimately it will be a detriment to the business I I had a very similar situation and it's amazing the power of even One Bad Apple it it sucks the life out of everything one let the system do it sorry I didn't mean interrupt you Nicole
(50:46) but like let the system do it create the system where they have to go through the system and that's it you literally let the system do it unemotional boom go through the system then tell them Tove move I hope it's not your wife or okay we have to have your question because you magically appeared here for so basically by the time you go home
(52:20) your brother's going to be like you know what I've decided to move and I don't want to do this anymore you're going to be like I'm manifested this and you can do it with love and kindness but you just have yeah you've you've got to lay it lay it down that it's it's over it's over it's healing you can do this you got this we're gonna like good we should all get your contact and and we can create a group and be like did you do it yet accountability we're we're going to wait do you work for him ORS for you or he's
(53:09) gone send in mark even if it's forget about yourself you're doing this for your employees and the health of your company you have to these people have families they're supporting and he will take the ship down it's the greater good I can I can take it you
(54:24) want well I think that um I guess the esoteric answer is I think a lot of it won't matter at all I think that the kind of hard takeoff of of AI will be so extreme that we'll have to rethink kind of every aspect of of business investing and it will happen slow and then it will happen overnight and it the value of Labor will change entirely economies will change entirely and it will happen within our lifetime I think that you know like are you asking for a friend you are you so I as a we actually touched on this a few a
(55:13) few different times um within kind of the softer touch conversations that we were having one is uh you know relates to say Revenue per employee right as you and and particularly as it relates to scaling you there's a a lot of companies who just completely ignore the fact that if you if you are if your Revenue per employee is going down that's a bad sign right and I am scaling I'm scaling this company no you're not you're going to drive this thing into the ground right um so that you know speaks to this other concept of
(55:46) focusing on efficiency versus growth right and so if we you know you get technical into it uh AI actually drives efficiency if it is used appropriately right you have to train these things so even at Kio they had to train a model for a very specific reason and Engineers can't exactly do what that model does but it's trained by the engineers because it's Purpose Driven right so those two things are vitally important so I think as an investor as a Founder AI is going to actually drive incredible growth from the perspective of
(56:23) efficiency right if it's used for that so I think we need to wrap up but I encourage everyone to find the panelists who are amazing professionally personally and thank you thank you [Music]