Hafiz Bhuyan: Startups, History, Leadership, and Tech | #35

Hafiz Bhuyan is the Co-Founder of Drivense a company that creates virtual business cards. Tom knows Hafiz through the society of entrepreneurs at JMU. 

We discuss his startup, they started off wanting to create a platform for online textbooks before they pivoted to create virtual business cards. Now they do create physical business cards. They are scannable and once scanned will pull up the virtual business card. They have also developed an app for storing virtual business cards.

We also talked a lot about history, specifically, Hafiz is interested in Julius Caesar and Napoleon. Then we focused on leadership and made comparisons between historical figures and then certain startups and tech founders. Finally, we discuss the future of technology and how that might impact our lives.

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Transcript

0:00

Hello everyone. My name is Tom driver. And welcome back to another episode. Of the drive program. Today, my guest is and I know her fees through the society of entrepreneurs. It was a club that I was in at JMU. I also touched base with him because we were both interested in history, similar to the episode with Marwan. I posted out on Instagram. Asking if there was any history of nerds out there that would want to do a podcast. And Hafiz reached out. But he's also an entrepreneur. So we talked a lot about his company as well. So his company's name is actually very similar to my company's name. It's called Driven's. a combination of driven and excellence. They actually started off wanting to create a platform for online textbooks. And then they pivoted to create virtual business cards. So one reason I bring that up is because me and Hafiz actually talk about that pivot and like the old idea. Verse why he went in this new direction. But the new direction is essentially. They actually do create physical cards and then they're scannable. So then once you scan one of the physical cards, it. We'll send someone a virtual business card. The physical cards also pair with an app. And the app that they have is called the Driven's connect app. So they actually just this week. Relaunched their app. So I'm going to be providing a link to their website. To have visas Instagram. And the description, but essentially they're just kind of starting off. So if you want to test out the app or just be involved with this startup, definitely reach out to Javi's. And his, co-founders. Personally, because they want to be very involved with early adopters. So that's very exciting. Like I said, I will provide details about his company, uh, links and everything you need to know in the description. So please go check the description out if you are. Interested in Virtual business cards, or even just using the connect app that they're working on. So that's not all that we talked about. As I mentioned, we talked a lot about history. specifically. Uh, Viess was interested in Julius Caesar. And Napoleon. And then we kind of focused on leadership a lot because we would draw comparisons between, you know, historical figures and their leadership, and then certain startups and tech founders specifically. He was a big fan of the Airbnb team. So we talked about them a lot. And then near the end, we just start talking a little bit about, you know, the metaverse, and What kind of technologies me and him are excited about for the future. So it was a great conversation. I love connecting with Ravi's and I mentioned this to him, but if there's any other members of the society of entrepreneurs listening, Let me know. I love to interview entrepreneurs, especially ones that went to JMU. I find that very exciting to hear what you guys are all working on. So if you want to. Do an interview and want some help promoting your project or company. Please reach out to me. Uh, reach out to heavies. He'll put you in touch with me. And here's a quick word from our sponsors. This is episode 35 of the drive program. With guests have fees beyond. So hobbies I've been actually paying attention to your company for quite a while because our companies have very similar names. So it always draws. It always captures my attention whenever I see it driven and drive fitness. Right. I'm always, I'm always very curious about what you guys are doing because I don't know, just for that reason. So I feel like it's also very fitting to have you on the show, you know, the, the drive program. you started this company called drivens, right. And it started off as a textbook company. Right. And then you said it moved to a company about business cards, right. So can you explain to me just initially why you guys decided to start a textbook company and what the initial kind of business plan was, and then we'll get into kind of why you pivoted, because I think that's extremely interesting. I think a lot of companies pivot and it's hard to make that decision. So it's always interesting to hear about where your guys' heads were at first and where you pivoted to. Right. So tell me a little bit about the textbook idea. I know that you guys aren't doing that anymore, but tell me about kind of the initial idea and business plan first. Yeah. So from 20 18, 20 19 it was just me. I didn't bring him my co-founders that points for about, for about a year. It's just me. And so I came up with the idea, it was kinda like other, you know, large companies come with their ideas where someone just stumbled across one of those everyday problems. You know, I was looking for textbooks and, you know, I think the calculus textbook I was looking at, I think I bought it pretty early, so I got lucky, but afterwards, I dunno, for some reason I just went back, just kind of see what the price was. It was like 200, two$50. I was like, whoa, that's for one semester. And so, I don't know. I think my gears were turning and I guess being around for a whole semester did a lot of cool activities, like idea creation or just, you know, just problem solving. You know, I don't know, maybe there's a way to solve the problem. So you know, the same week and I was, you know, listen to Spotify, I was like, you know what? This is like a subscription, the subscription business model. Hasn't really been applied, you know, to textbooks. So, you know, maybe try it and see what happens. And so, you know, I talked around a couple of students from my high school and from Dora JMU that I knew and also, you know, talk with Patrick A. Little bit. I mean, he said, you know, this was a problem, but it was one of those tough ones to solve just because it's, you know, just the nature of that industry. So through that, I mean, we didn't really go anywhere. We kind of just spinning our wheels just because the way the insurance industry set up, there's just too many big players and you know what to do anything you just have to, there's usually a lot of money or a lot of licensing stuff involved. So after two years, Even though we barely get anywhere. We still did learn a lot. And then, what happened was during the pandemic, we got lucky because everything was virtual. We got to reach out to a couple of professors at JMU and one of them he connected us to his, one of his publishers at one of the larger, like textbook publishing companies and great guy. We got to have two separate meetings. When our meetings with him, he told us a lot about the industry that we couldn't, we could not research. It just wasn't out there. And through that, we learned that one of the biggest things that publishers either now or. In the near future, they're going to start partnering directly with the universities. And I think Pearson recently launched literally what we were doing, like literally a month ago where they're offering like literally the entire like stack of books, like, like 1500, 2000 textbooks for like again, subscriptions. And so, you know, he told us like, you know, this was something that was going to happen. And like, there's just no reason why they would give it to a startup. And because there's no way a startup can compete with that. So like, all right. That's. Not even try. And then I guess the biggest reason was we just, weren't passionate about it. Textbooks. They're great, but it's not really something that will make me jump out of bed and, you know, work on it for five, 10 years, however long it takes. So yeah, we talked as a team, you know, by then we had it was myself. Chris was whose, who graduated 20, 20, December, 20, 20 as an econ major. Henry. Who graduated 20, 21 from CIS and then Jack who actually kind of jumped around a little bit, but they're all from JMU. And by then we had all four of us together. We talked like, all right. Yeah. We greed that, you know, those are the reasons we don't want to work on it. And so we decided to spend the last couple of weeks of 2020 just figuring out kind of, you know, just changing our, you know, what we were working on to whatever the next thing was. Okay. So the conclusion was, it was, it was still a good idea, but it was going to take maybe someone who was more established in the textbook industry to kind of convert all of those textbooks over to a subscription online format. And there wasn't enough momentum or reason for anyone to invest in like a startup to do this since maybe these textbook companies already had the capability of putting something together like that, or they were already working on stuff similar. Exactly. Exactly. Yup. Okay. Interesting. And so how did. Experience feel like in the moment to realize, Hey, like this is not going to work out. You know, where was your head at? Kind of like emotionally you know, like I said, like we, you know, we took a step back when we realized that. Our excitement about this, wasn't really about solving the problem was most of it's about just, you're excited that, Hey, we're working on a startup, you know, that's something cool. You can bring up these conversations or, you know, talking to a recruiter or stuff like that. And so, you know, not being excited about what you're working on, that's, that's a big drawback. Like I know you hear from like all the founders that have made it, like Steve jobs and you know, Brian Chesky, they always talked about, you gotta be passionate about what you're solving now, carry your further. And so for us, it wasn't that big of a hit as it might've been. I mean, yeah, we did feel bummed out, you know, for two years we were spinning our wheels really didn't really go anywhere. But you know, we didn't, we didn't, we didn't dwell on it too long. We just were like, all right, let's take a step back and take a break and then go on to the next thing. Like, I mean, I, I love coding. So for me it really wasn't much of a let down or anything. So it didn't really impact us as much as it could of. I just picked her pieces back up and kept going. Are you a computer science major? No, I was. But then I couldn't make any of the major sweat squash swapped over to, I said, oh, I'm an ice. I was an ice at major as well, man. Yeah. And then I heard I actually listened to the. Episode you did with professor ribbon and I have I have, and this semester I had them last semester. Tell him, I say hi. Yeah, he was my favorite. Well, he was, he was my captain advisor and my favorite professor. So yeah, I was really honored to have him on the show. I mean, usually I interview people who are my own age, so he was definitely, probably one of the most, or the most credible guests that I've had on, on the show. It's pretty cool. So yeah. Keep, keep in touch with him. He's a, he's an awesome professor and he really, a lot of professors, I feel like lose touch with the younger generation and I don't think he's lost his touch. I think he still kind of understands what it feels like to be the age of someone in college, you know? Yeah. A hundred percent agree. It's amazing. Okay. So. You guys, I guess kind of realize you were mostly just excited about starting a company, the textbook, you got the passion wasn't really in there along with some other reasons. How fast did you pick this new route of, of a business card company? uh, We stopped textbook thing, I guess officially around like November 20, 20, and then we picked this new one up like literally a month after. So the right at the, as 2021 was starting because like I still just in the background, we're like, you know, like a lot of people would have said we had just had like a folder of like all these ideas. So I was like, all right, which is the one that's not going to take as much money. It's something I can just build just on my own. digital business cards was something. I had no idea how to start building it. Which kind of learned as we, as we went, kinda like the whole thing. But starting out instead of just straight out, just going in is trying to build, which I know most engineers do. We spent a couple of months, I guess until spring break would be a good time marker from like January to March, like mid-March kinda just reached out to on LinkedIn to a lot of the founders we met whether they were JMU connected or like, ah, we did Y Combinator startup school for a couple, a couple times. That's kinda like a, kinda like a, like a whole course, but they connect with a lot of founders because they do these like programs and they're just founders from all over the place. You know, some are from the U S some are from Europe and we just, you know, reaching out to. We didn't even pitch the digital business card. Just ask them three questions about business cards. Like, you know, how much are you spending now? do you buy business cards as like a generic, like company business card, you buy it, you know, one free Shipley and like how to use it. And from that we gathered that, you know, maybe there is a spot for a digital business card because people were spending too much. You know, there's just like all these problems that they were, give it to us. And so after that, after spring break, we kind of consolidate with like, all right, this is something, you know, as, you know, little by little try to build it, see what we can come out. So yeah, for us, it didn't take too long to kind of pivot over. I mean, it took us a while to start building, cause we didn't really know how to build it. We just kind of learn as we went. Yeah. Okay. So how does it work? Like the functionality of the app? Is it something that you can scan like a barcode scanner and then the business card is on the other person's phone or. What, how, how does it kind of function? Yeah, so we have two components to it. So one is the app itself. So that's mainly for like, you know, virtual connection. So that has a QR code, which you can send, you know, via email, a text or really any method kind of like you, wouldn't like if you want to send like a Instagram post to gives you all those options same feature. And then we are also building a physical business card, which is like, basically the way we market it is it has the look and feel of a credit card, but it has a utility of a business card. So it's got that same plastic field, but instead of, you know, exchanging financial information, it's just your contact info, you know, your social media accounts. And the reason we did that as one so one, our timing, we realized it was pretty spot on because virtual events have started to really kick up. Like, I think. We found on a Statista that like 40% of events this year 2022 will be either fully virtual or half virtual and big events that are going to DC startup week. I got to go to it for the first time solely because it was virtual and we had people from, you know, Seattle signing in. And so we realized that sure, we were kind of beating herself up for the last idea that we spent two years, but we realized that this one, we kind of started it at a pretty good time because now we can for, we can build out this app early on, which is, which costs us almost nothing like we're using Google Firebase, like the free tier. So it's almost costing us nothing to build it, get those early traction and then even the cards itself. So we're using Acrylic sheets, which is basically just like really thin pieces of plastic. We're using X labs. They have these massive like I guess, cutters, vinyl, cutters. They also got painted, got everything over there. X labs is really cool. And those costs a dollar to a dollar 50, including everything to make and maybe to ship out. So like starting out yeah, it's, you know, something simple we can build. We'd started with both components, virtual and physical because we realized, you know, eventually you want to go to a physical, sometimes you want to stay in a virtual setting. All depends on your mood. It all depends on the event itself. So yeah, we, so that's how it works. I mean, the virtual is all just to get, keep our code. That's how going to start out, but eventually we might want to try to maybe spice it up a little bit. Maybe, you know, we'll keep that QR technology, but. Maybe add other aspects. I'm not sure where we're going to go. And then for the digital, for the cards itself, that's something you just kind of swipe either on someone's phone or eventually against someone else's card. And that automatically transfers the information. Okay. So when you hand someone, do you, you don't hand these cards out to people, right? You just keep that one card and get it through a QR code or something. It goes onto their phone. Okay. And then, is there a way to create the actual business card through your app? Is it kind of like a canvas type app where you can design the look and feel of the business card? Or is it more just you import from somewhere else? And then it's like a wallet where you hold other people's business cards or how does that work? Actually, so the carton, so the way we're planning it now is we just kind of build it initially, just us. You just send the info you want to put in. And then you're like, you know, shipping information so we can ship it out. So like, you know, you put your name, the company work email, and then we just kind of build kind of a generic card for everyone uh, that we can ask, you know, if like a color that they want. But eventually we do want to add that kind of custom build, like where we can just pick your color if you want to add your logo or you can add like, you know, special design however you want, you know, kinda integrate Canva or any other kind of design tools. Um, But yeah, for just starting out with sending you a step, we'll just, you know, just five, two pieces information you want on there. We'll definitely, upload picture of your logo. So you can put that on there as well. Etched in their laser laser, cut it in there and then just ship it out. We're gonna keep it simple, starting out. And then, you know, depending on the demand that we can like dial it up. Cause I know it does as you, as you start adding more to, it does add up the cost, so, okay. So then, but the virtual card will look the same thing, the same exact way. Yeah. And then, is it kind of like a wallet of view of you can store and hundreds of people's cards in your wallet as well? Or, yeah, I mean, we haven't, we didn't call it a wall, I guess we didn't really come up with the name, but yeah, it's just kinda like, you know, your LinkedIn connections that has like all the people you've connected with, it has, you know, the basic info for them and, you know, reach out, send an email. We're I think we're trying to integrate a way to send messages through the app, but I think we're going to hold off on that for a little bit. And we're just gonna allow people to just, you know, just email first and then eventually kind of Firebase that costs do start adding up and we want to kind of keep it low, starting out. So you do use Firebase for the backend, right? How did you develop the front end of the app? Is it native iOS or. Yeah, the front end is all react native. And then we use Firebase for all the backend and react native does have there's a package built by a great team. that allows you to import all of fire bases, services, everything from fire store, storage, dynamic planes, what everyone did the whole suite of stuff and just import it. And you just use the Java scripts. You don't have to use any other language. The whole app is literally just Java script and thanks to all those teams that, you know, integrated Firebase and allowed us to build the app pretty quickly and easily so that we wouldn't have to, you know, learn separate languages you just use one language and it made it a lot easier for, you know, a two person team doing it. Nice, man. Yeah. I used ionic with my app. I think it's similar to react. It does use a lot of Java JavaScript and I actually did start with Firebase as my backend at first. Then I switched over to AWS. And the SQL style database. So have you run into any technical challenges or what have you kind of learned about making apps from the purely technical standpoint? No, I mean, we've, you know, you've hit the usual bugs here and there and that's usually just, you know, you call the wrong function or you asked for, for a user to write to the fire base, but fire store or any other service, even though they don't have permission because he wrote those rules down. So it kind of, it gives you that those errors. But other than that, the Google Firebase team did a pretty good job of building it out and also writing up the documentation. And then also the react native packages that you use their documentations almost is also really well-written like, you can just read through it. Yeah, so we haven't had any problems on it. Usually if we do, we just kind of Google it and these packages are so widely used that chances are someone's already fixed it, or at least there's some kind of discussion going on. And if it's pretty recent, then you know, a case of bug, they're probably gonna fix it soon. So yeah, we haven't had any big issues. It's just normal everyday bugs. You get when developing these technical projects, but uh, yeah, nothing big Firebase is great. We've loved it. I mean, our website, is it a main thing? So that's still AWS because we already had it all set up through that. So we don't even feel like changing it, but our app that's, that's using Firebase just because, you know, they have packages already that can be easily used to connect the app ends back in. Is it on the app store? Is it, or is it still in a testing stage? It was on the app store. We did try to launch it a couple of times, but about a week would go by and it was like, all right. We don't like the design. We don't like, we know what it is. And so yeah, it is technically Abstra well, I did take it off take it off from sale. I think that's how they call it. We can like temporarily delisted. So, you know, people can't search it or did that just so we don't have anyone downloading it while we're trying to launch again. Hopefully the next few weeks. Okay. Yeah, I've done. I've taken my app off the app store several times to tweak it and stuff. I understand. So are you going to be able to, are you a senior, first of all? Yep. Last year or where you were you, does that make you a freshmen? When I was a senior? Yeah, I'm a fifth year senior right now. Okay. Yes, I was a fresh. Okay. I graduated at 17. Yeah. I graduated in 2018. Oh yeah. Okay. So were you in, were you in the society of entrepreneurs? When I was there? Did we overlap at all or maybe first semester? I don't know. I mean, there were a lot of members back then, so we might've brushed past, but I think it must have been very brief. I mean, I heard things about, you know was it Josh, like either the metrics celebrated a lot of the people that she did it with, I got to meet, you know, the human team Sienna, and then Josh all those guys, I kind of heard about you through them, but yeah. Okay, cool. Did you end up making this, your capstone project through Isaac? No, I did not know that that's something else. We're doing, what do you, what does that, bro? What are you doing for your capstone? I mean, this could be a separate team, but we're trying to build like this, a web platform to help high-school upperclassmen, like juniors and seniors, like better pick give them an, an additional tool so they can pick a major or career path, much easier. So, you know, they put it in like, you know, stuff, they like doing their strengths or weaknesses, hobbies, and then we'd just give them a list of like here here's, you know, majors that you might want to explore. And then we, you know, give them like resources that they can use. Cause I know like when I kind of chose, I kind of, I won't say blindly, but it was, I didn't have as many resources. So we just thought, you know, that this might be another additional tool that, you know, these, these juniors and seniors can use to better pick something. Hopefully, hopefully something that they'll like, and they don't have to constantly second guess themselves. What platform and software stack are you using for that capstone? That one's really simple. We're just using AWS. I set all that up. You know, as a backend this is the basic stuff to get a website up. And then for coding for the front end, it's just the basic web text, HTML, CSS, JavaScript. We have no reason to, you know, add any frameworks, like react because it's gonna try to make it as simple as possible. Have the backend. I think I want to use PHP cause that's what I'm more used to, but you know, if they want to use, if rest of my team wants use Java, then that's fine too. It doesn't matter. Cool, man. Yeah. Okay. So what, what, how has your experience just in the society of entrepreneurs been? Because that's kind of how we know each other. I've I found it very. Inspirational and, and helped a lot. Just kind of believing in yourself and keep moving forward since starting your own company is, it seems like you've got a big team, but it's usually such a solo tasks that you kind of, you don't get a lot of reinforcing positive feedback, always, you know, to keep going forward. So I found it very helpful just to have other people I could relate to and get a different perspective on things from, but how has your experience been and how has that helped you with the company at all? Yeah, I mean, I know. After, I believe after either you left or maybe you're after that we had like a massive amount of seniors graduating. So I think it came down to literally just me, Josh Clements and Ty Dan we, I think we did, Dan was president and then Josh was V VP. And then I think I was like secretary of some of the third role and we just kind of pick the pieces back up cause everyone just graduated. So it was just us three of us. But between then and now we, we definitely grew not as big as it used to be when I was a freshmen, but definitely there's that quality is still there. So there's probably about 10 to 15 now. mean we're still kind of recruiting in a way, so it might be 10 to 20 before I leave. But the good part is I'm the only one graduating and the rest of the guys that are staying back, they are, you know, super passionate. We got people from all over, you know, we have, we have one freshman from engineering. We have people from marketing. We got I think we have a few from like the fine arts, but yeah, I mean just being around them We've been Nestle as a whole. It's definitely helped me break out of my shell. I know when I came in, I was pretty, very, very introverted. Like I would not like I hated public speaking. It was not my strong suit, but now, I mean, I love, I mean, yes, that, that little bit of nervousness is still there, but now, I mean, I'll go up and talk about, you know, whatever, you know, my company, or like, you know, my experience at JMU. I sat, whatever I know as a senior I think we've gone to a couple of the freshmen ISAT classes. It's kind of talked about our capstone. So it was kind of public speaking stuff that I definitely helped me out. I mean, so he just helped me out, you know, just all these like interpersonal skills that I wouldn't, I honestly would not have learned if it wasn't for just being around all these other students that are also building stuff. But yeah. So he was, I guess like an integral part of like, you know, not just driven, but also just, you know, me becoming like better, I guess, student better programmer better, like almost everything. I mean, I interviewed Josh on the podcast too, and I reached out to Ty, Dan. I almost interviewed him once. I need to just jump on a zoom call with him at some point, but I was for awhile, I was pretty bent on trying to interview people in person. And I, I also just liked that guy. So I was trying to see, I was trying to see him and do an in person interview, but at some point probably the summer I'll reach out to him and see how he's doing, because I just love his brand. I would always wear my diabetes shirt even to this day, you know? So why did you name it driven? What does the name mean? I'm always curious by why people name things the way they do. Yeah. So I just kind of give myself a week. I just started, you know, writing things down and like, okay, what, what do I want to represent all these things? Like I Googled, you know, how does branding work? I Google like all the stories behind, like, you know, the name of Starbucks, Lego, Ikea. Like some of them really out there, some of them really intriguing. Like I know Ikea is a, the ink or the initials of the founder and the eat and a is like his village and like the county. So like pretty abstract stuff. So I was like, all right, I guess it doesn't really matter what you name it. me, I just want it to sound, I guess the techie I wanted it to, you know, try to, so based on my three criteria for it was I had of sound tech. You had to be one word, it had to be a.com available for the domain. And so I just started to brainstorm. I don't even know what I was brainstorming. I just started listing off names sounded cool. And then eventually I was like, okay, these one name. Really don't work. And so drivens is like combination of the words driven, driven to excellence, which I take that to mean, like, just getting up every day and just like being better than you were the day before. It's constantly improving yourself. They're going to just, you know, one step that's still better than you were the day before. And what's cool is like, the reason I like the name is like, it's pretty abstract so we can really be about anything. So like we can be building whatever and can still make sense. Like we don't have to go out and get a new domain name. We don't have to change our emails. Everything can stay the same. And yeah, we just liked the name and we liked kind of what it represents. And then, yeah, that's just how we came up with it really wasn't, you know, They're just like making sure that, you know, it just sounds cool. It's got the name, it's got the.com domain, which we got our actually I know excellent. Spelled a C E N C E, but drivens with a seat.com was taken. So I was like, all right, let's put an S and N germans.com with an S there's a car. Right. Perfect. So NAB that. And that's how we spell it one of my friends that was in the venture started with it, he's like, Hey, you spelled it wrong. I was like, no. Yeah, man. That's awesome. I obviously love the name because it's got a very similar theme to my podcast, right. I, I actually, at first the podcast started off as just me interviewing people that could help me with, or relate to my app in some way. So it was just called, like drive fitness, but you know, the whole dry part has always been there. And the new theme of the podcast, I guess, is just me talking to people who are those type of driven people who are going above and beyond either in fitness or in business or tech or really anything. Right. I want to, to open up to just be anything. But I do, if there's one stipulation, it's just, they gotta be driven. You know, they gotta be passionate about something and they got to really just be the kind of person that, that is always taking that next step forward, you know? So, so I love it. I love that. Let's see, so we originally connected because I posted on my story for any history nerds to hit me up and you reached out, so let's try and talk about history for a couple minutes. Yeah, yeah. That goes I actually, I talked to someone else about a recently and I think the, the one thing that you mentioned that I never got the chance to talk with him about is kind of like the history of technology in general. So why are you interested in history? You know, why did you reach out about that topic? And then specifically, why are you interested in kind of how technology evolved through history? Yeah. So for me, history, it was always like. Like an easy subject for me, like school. Like I was always fascinated by it and it made it easier cause like all the teachers I've had even the, one of the gen ed classes I took at JMU, the professor I had was amazing. Like you can tell, like they had, they were very passionate about the topic. They just wanted to share it with their students and like that combined with just, you know, just fascinating. I just love learning about all these different things. And you know, because of that, I just loved history and you know, I won't say I'm a scholar or anything, but you know, I try to learn as much as I can. And I, and I, you know, you asked me kinda like what time periods? I got fascinated. I mean, I love the Roman period. I love just like learning kind of how, you know, people that same goes like Rome wasn't built in a day. And just like actually going through the trudging through that history of like men, it took them like hundreds of years to get to where they were. And then even it took him a couple more hundred techs, feet, I guess, collapse. And then I know in a history class, he told us all the time Where, you know, we learn history, like, you know, we learned Greeks first and learned the Romans and learned the British and just go through there, but then they're like, but then if you line up everything on the timeline you realized, like when Alexander was over in India doing his thing, Rome was just getting started. So, so if Alex I think, I don't know if it was a YouTube video or it was a class like a discussion, but it was like, if Alex was still alive, we have, if he decided to swing west, could he have taken out the Romans before they became Rome? And so, I don't know. It's just, it's just a fascinating topic. Like there's so many things you can go around. And then I don't know, Poliana kind of got into him and then I know, you know, just kind of, I guess like a little side, but like there's this video game I love it's called total war and it's basically, they take these time periods. Like their most popular ones are around and it's Tila. He also, you know, God until the 18th century where it's just. You know, like I'm a gamer, but like those kind of help you like delve right into those histories. Like you get to play as like Julius Caesar and like conquer, gall, like take his lesions, like do all these things. And I don't know, just like history is just one of those things. That's always stuck by me. It's easy for me to grasp. And it's just really cool to kind of see like, you know, how all these people kind of lived and how, it's kind of fascinating how we went from horse-drawn carriages to rocket ships. And like, not even 50 years, like in like 19 hundreds, we were like horse and buggy and like 1950, we were almost putting a guy on the moon and that's just like an insane so I guess using that, like going on like technology I mean tech like the history of technology, so I'm not too. Like, you know, I don't know everything about it, but, you know, I know about the.com crash. I know, you know, how different languages are involved. I think I learned about like, you know, how like, you know, DARPA and invented the internet first and then recently, and then after that to kind of give it, I guess, to the public. And I think it's Tim Berners Lee. He was like the founder. He's like one of the, he was like, I think he led the team or if he was powered at the, he was part of the founding team that took the internet and open it up to the world. It's just pretty crazy how just like technology has exploded in just the past couple of years. And like how it's pretty open Nally, anyone from anywhere can really develop cool tech. Since I'm in the community, you know, just try to see kind of where it was and where it's, where it is now and where it's hopefully going to be. Yeah, man you mentioned Rome. I had a big conversation with someone recently about Rome that I'm excited for that podcast to come out, because that is just a crazy, interesting civilization that really impacted modern culture. Right. And then if you're interested in the history of tech, there's a book called innovation and how it works. I think, I think by Matt Ridley and it's a book that kind of details all of these little innovations across history, right? Like one of the big one is, is the Wright brothers and the plane. But there's some interesting stuff in there. Like they had a whole chapter on the screw and how the screw evolved over time and how important to screw us. You know, we think about stuff like the airplane airplane in the rocket ship, but I never really thought about. How goddamn important it was to, to invent screws, you know, and, and how much change that affected everywhere. And that was, that was a super interesting read, you know, to hear about all that kind of stuff. I don't remember everything about that book, but that was one of the things that really stood out to me is, is just like how, how much we were able to build once we mastered, you know, the screw itself. So what, what are, what are some of your favorite innovations, you know, and which, which kind of technological innovations do you think had some of the biggest impacts across time then? I'd say like in general at first, I guess like all these open source technologies like react native. I know you said ionic. I know, I appreciate that. It's open source as. People creating these projects and then allowing other people to kind of build on top of it. And so things like GitHub repo, and just being able to collaborate using different tools like GitHub or Google drive. Yeah, I guess not really any specific technology, but I think because someone one starts one thing and then you just like kind of piles up on top of another let's eventually build something. Cause usually those, those technologies are built for a specific purpose, but then people realize, oh, you know, we can definitely build more. Yeah, I mean, I guess nothing really specific that I can pull it out, but okay. So what about someone like Napoleon or who's one of your favorite storable figures then. Why are you interested in that person? Yeah. One of the guys always stands up to me is the Julius Caesar. He was like, just as a leader, like he could inspire people. Even though he was basically grew up with a silver spoon in his mouth, he grew up wealthy from a wealthy family. You probably never had to worry about, you know, food, like other Roman citizens had to, but at the same time, he was able to like inspire, you know, like a hundred thousands of soldiers to literally turn on their own country, literally across the Rubicon, just cause he said, Hey, you know, follow me, but that's just kind of the leader he was. And I know he also, he took inspiration from Alexander, the great, who was probably the best well-known The guy, but I guess Julius Caesar stands out the most because he wasn't just a conqueror, but he also like just builds an empire. He conquered all of modern day France with just like, you know, a handful of soldiers. And, you know, I watch, you know, like documentaries on YouTube of like all his different battles, like polizia or how you invaded England without even knowing what England was. He just kind of went there and his troops followed him. And like just those simple things of, you know, just getting all these soldiers to follow you, even though they know they might not make it, like those kinds of small things, especially for like generals. It's like always fascinated me, like how they're able to just, just inspire these guys. And then, you know, you know, cause because I know, you know, one of the things that Caesar used to do is like when its troops started getting tired, he'd get off his horse and just start walking with them. Or like he wouldn't, he didn't have like a fancy tent. He'd just sleep on a regular, you know, on the ground, on the regular, basically do what his soldiers were doing and like. That's what, that's one of the things I was always emphasized because I did actually take Latin all throughout high school. And, you know, we did touch a lot about, you know, Caesar and like all his books. And that's one of the things that always stood out was just the love his troops had for forum. And, you know, not just as troops, but every time he'd go, he'd come back to Rome. He'd always take care of the people. Like when he became a quote unquote dictator you know, people got scared that he used to take this power and it's gonna go to his head, but honestly, like he's probably just going to make the empire better. And then also watch the show Rome that was on HBO for like two seasons, which was two seasons way too short. Like they could have gone further, but that was such an incredible show. Great cast. And that really. Put Julius Caesar, wasn't kind of visualized him. Like you got to see him, like when he, obviously it wasn't, you know, perfectly, he can't, we know what happened there, but a lot of stories, he said like, you know, praise it. I was probably the closest thing that could get. And unfortunately they didn't have the most funding so they can be shown all of it. The parts that sticks out to me is like, right before you cross the Rubicon with his troops, he kind of just stands out in front of us. Okay. You know, they declared me a trader, they called me a criminal, which means you're all criminals. They were like, Hey, no, that's not what we are. And he's like, all right, let's literally become actual traders. Let's cross the Rubicon. It's like, they followed him. And I don't know, just him as a person, he almost seems like just like he was larger than life, but he kind of knew who he was. He knew he didn't, he, he knew how to kind of command his presence. And people knew me showed up. And like, when he died, like the whole world kind of just like almost froze, like his soldiers loved it. And even after that, they helped his Was Augustus and Mark Anthony days stayed with them and like help them like get revenge. So like being someone like that in life. And then after even now like 2000 years after he's dead, like I'm still talking about him. So definitely he was definitely one of those guys that just like the way he inspired people, but see how you as a leader, how he kind of just went about his life, even though he was rich and he still took care of the people that were, you know, I guess in a way like societal leaders below him. So you have, for me Julius, Caesar's the guy that always stands out as like this guy in his history that, you know, I was loved reading about always knowing more about them. Yeah. At one point you mentioned how he would see what the soldiers and stuff. It, it reminded me of one of my favorite kind of quotes or pictures. It's the picture of a guy cracking the whip and he's, you know, commanding people from behind them to run faster or whatever. And then it's like true leadership and it shows the guy, the leader is in front of the pack, right. Like leading the way. And, and I really think that is something I always try to keep in mind with my company or with any, with any leadership opportunity, but I'm always willing to kind of get down, get my hands dirty and make sure, you know, everyone knows that I'm not above doing the smallest tasks, you know and, and, and doing what everyone else is doing in order to lead by example and not just lead by commanding people, you know, Yeah. What other than that, what do you think makes a leader? Great. What do you think makes someone like a person inspirational and maybe is there any other examples of, of people from it could be from history or from like startup companies that, you know, are, are really you think really great other great examples of, of leaders and inspiration, inspirational people. Yeah. So for me, I think one of the things that I guess, like a philosophy or like a principle that I came up with for leadership is one, like a good leader knows when to show his heart. But he also knows when it shows strength. Like you, don't a leader, shouldn't be someone that can just walk over. But at the same time, they shouldn't be completely like jerk to the people that they're leading. And so, you know, just having empathy for all the people that you know, are either following you, whether, you know, you know, it's a job or it's, you know, some other setting just having empathy, knowing what they're going through, being able to talk to them as a person and not as a bus follower mentality. And just like, I guess just not nothing good of yourself as too high might even be more, you know, following you. And yeah, it's, it's, I guess it's not many things. Just like just being a person, just knowing like, yeah. People are following me because they see something in me, even if you don't see it in yourself. And a lot of leaders that, you know, you know, you like, you know, as companies, many of them were just, you know, just regular people. And then they eventually, you know, are leading companies that are employing thousands of people, many of them to start out the artists are just coders. They built something and eventually became a massive company. I don't know, I don't know, outside of history. One of the founders that I've always looked up to as well, not one finally the whole founding team of Airbnb Brian, Joe, and Nathan I mean, cause I've, I've heard both of their, all their stories. I listened to their podcasts for how I built this, which is amazing podcast by guy Razi and interviews, kinda like what you're doing. Interviews all these founders from almost like literally every industry everyone from the Airbnb team to the strike team, to the founders of dipping dots, to, you know, the Dyson guy and founder of Dyson. And I, I just love how they lead their team. And actually one of the things that stood out to me, it was like a running with the pandemic started. This is great. And it, a story that he told actually in, in the podcast was that, you know, right on the pen, Starbuck, Airbnb is like travel company. So, you know, shutdowns were happening, people weren't traveling. And so in about, I think it's a three or four weeks 80% of the business that spent that took them eight years to build it was just gone. And so they had to fire almost like 1400 people. And, you know, he sent out a letter. To all the employees. And it's just like, I, I keep meaning to read the letter, but what he say, he was just very vulnerable. Like, you know, this isn't something that, you know, he wants to do, but he kind of has to do it just to save everyone else. And that's just like the nature of what their business was. But what stood out to me was what they did after they did that was all those 1400 people that would continue getting paid for 14 weeks after they would continue receiving health insurance for another year, because his justification was like, you know, we're in a pandemic, people need to, you know, take care of their health. And then at the end, what has the adding the 12 that the founding team. So Brian, Joe and Nate, they kind of met. They're like, Hey, you know, let's, you know, let's have our own hiring team help these guys, these 1400 new jobs. And so, you know, I, I shared this story with like my own team. I was like, you know, that's how you're supposed to lead. I mean, it, it happens like it was a pandemic, it's a travel company, but like how you take care of them after that. Oh, that's just very inspiring to me. Like no one wants to, I know, I know the Airbnb team, I don't know the like, you know, closely, but from what I've heard, they seem like amazing guys. They're not guys who just want to fire 1400 people. But you know, just taking care of your team, even after this fortunate, like that happens, like that's leadership, like that's like take care of you. Don't fire us. That's in complete contrast to what the better.com CEO did, who just sent us to call fire 900 people. The benefits to God were almost nothing. And I think last week, Peloton fired a bunch of people. And again, same thing. The benefits were almost nothing. Like you just kicking these people to the curb in the middle of the pandemic. And that's just not how leaders are supposed to be like the way the Airbnb team did. I don't know many other companies probably do the same thing. Like either they did something like Peloton day, they just fired him. Just kind of kicked me to the curb or they did some like the Airbnb team and that kind of, I think the pandemic. In a way kind of showed kind of how people lead. Like either you're going to ticket, you're going to dial it down and just take care of your team, or you're just going to be, I guess, a jerk then kick people to the curb. So yeah, I mean, I like, you know, that's definitely inspiring to me just seeing like how during these difficult times, like they're able to kind of dig deep and really show how they are as leaders. And so for me, those Airbnb team has always been, you know, like the north star for us. Like they've been, even though there are industries are completely different, but it just us founders, like they have been incredible. But yeah yeah, I mean, it seems, it sounds like he showed some true empathy and really, you know, felt bad, not bad, but he really understood what everyone was going through and did the best he could to help out and, and explain to everyone and really. Sympathize with the people being laid off instead of just treating it like a statistic, you know, which is, yeah, I don't hate my past company. Micro-strategy at all. I think they're great, but it did feel a little bit calculated and less empathetic, you know when they let go a lot of people as well, you know, so yeah, man, that, that can be a really rough situation. So I'm glad Airbnb handled it properly. Yeah. What else do you like about Airbnb and their idea? I feel like your, your first idea of the textbook ideas, not crazy different from them, right. I mean you're, you're kind of creating a platform for other textbooks. Like they created a platform for other hotels. I'm sure that was your mindset going into it. I mean maybe related to Uber or something, but what do you think about these companies that have built platforms without ever owning a car or owning a piece of real estate? What do you think is their trick. Like we, like you said, you were trying to build this textbook platform without ever, you know, writing a textbook first. And it turned out that maybe some of the textbook companies were more suitable for that. So, but it never felt like one of the taxi companies were more suitable to be Uber. Right. So what do you, what, what do you think makes the Uber ideas, the Airbnb idea ideas, so perfect for the industry. And then I guess what other type of types of industries or situations or things do, do you feel that. W would work with, with that kind of business plan? What do you think makes that type of business plan so successful? I guess my hypothesis for it was the 2008 recession that happened. I think that's when all those companies, Airbnb door, dash Uber, like the whole peer-to-peer industry, I feel like the eight recession was really what kind of helped them out. Because one, you have people on one side, especially in the travel industry, you have people on one side that want to just a cheaper way to kinda get somewhere. Cuba would stay. And on the other side, you had people who, you know, want to just make extra money and you got that perfect mix. I feel like if it wasn't for that, you know, that downturn and everyone's, you know, a downturn in the economy where people were looking on both sides. Cause, and these markets you need, it's the chicken and egg problem. Like, you know, you gotta get properties first, but you also, but people aren't really gonna put the properties if you have, if you have users actively looking for them But, you know, during that downturn, since people are looking to make extra money, some people are trying to find better ways to get around the city or better, cheaper way to stay in the city whether business or, you know just personal well, yeah, that was just like, my thing is like, if that didn't happen, I don't think any of these companies would have, well, they probably would have succeeded at some point, but just not, they probably wouldn't have gotten the success that you have now because eventually that success kind of started rolling and they just kinda went with it. And you know, we just got bigger and bigger, but I guess that's just my way of thinking. I mean, I know there's. One company, probably a bunch of them where I don't know, we used it when my family, when I went to Miami for spring break, 2018 and 2019 where my dad basically paid for. So hotels you know, people, you don't park there too much. And so especially up in the DC area. And so this is these startups come up to him and basically, Hey, just tell them, Hey, you want to like, you know, I guess like sell parking spaces, these unsold parking spots. And he just given to travelers who don't want to pay those, you know, expensive airport parking fees. And so we paid, I think like very cheap. I, it was like 20,$30. I don't even know if like a whole, you know, weekend. He just kept at the hotels like Marriott. They just had all these empty spaces. They're like a bunch of companies that do that. And there was another one where people who do park at the airport, they can actually like, I guess kind of like Touro where you can kind of go rent your car out in a way, except it's like specifically park it at the airport or something. But yeah, like all these, like. I guess platforms and stops are coming out where people use things that they already own. And these comp you're just giving a platform with a K you can make some extra money renting these out. I don't Turo. I saw him like for the first time, like two years ago, like a downloaded, there'll be like, I can, DCW people renting out like their, you know, their beefed up Mustangs or like Aston Martins or Porsche's for like a couple of hundred oh an hour, like a couple of hundred a day, which is much cheaper than most like rental companies. It's definitely with those industries, that's definitely booming. You know, people want to make money and people want to have a cheaper way of doing different things. Definitely has a lot of room to grow. I dunno if I don't know what other industries haven't been touched yet. I mean, yeah. Delivery of accommodations parking it seems like you need to identify some value, right. That someone is sitting on and then give them a way to share that or, or sell that value. Right. And I guess the textbook idea was going to be more within like a B2B paradigm, but maybe if there was like a used textbook idea right. Where people are sitting on textbooks and maybe they could, I mean, I'm sure there's already platforms like that. It exists, but something like that because the text textbook companies don't want to work with something like you, someone like you. Right. But someone's sitting on 12 use textbooks from college, so they don't use anymore. That's a similar comparison to what like the Airbnb companies are doing. Right. Just finding value sitting around that, that no one is really capitalizing on, you know, it just seems to be like, there's so many situations like that. Right. But I've thought about it before with gym equipment. Like, is there a way I can create a platform that people can share fitness equipment or something? And I was like, nah, you don't want someone just walking into your like in-home gym and then using it. It's not maybe, maybe, but I thought of an idea like that too. Right. Where something like that could be done. I think a couple of our SOE get a preacher. You've seen it. A rectory was a Griffin and a Griffin Nick Sipes. And then I forgot the third co-founder, but like, yeah, it's basically just like a, like this box where they have like all these rental equipment. I mean, I don't think it's meant for gyms. I think it's mainly, it's not really peer to peer, but it kind of gives they buy the stuff to put in there, but. You know, they just put it, they have one in Charleston towns, like four of them in Harrisonburg. It's these boxes with like, you know, maybe like athletic stuff, like basketballs or volleyballs, all these things that, you know, you don't have to necessarily buy yourself cause it's already there. So I think that that's kind of like peer-to-peer, but it's kinda like kind of knocking off the, getting rid of the chicken and egg problem. Cause you already have the stuff. So people just go up and get it. You don't have to wait for, you know, you know, not like Uber where you need to have a bunch of users and then you also need a lot of drivers at the same time. But yeah, I feel like that's kind of close in a way, no. Yeah, that's definitely interesting and probably more doable than the gym equipment idea because gym equipment is heavy, heavy and hard to move. So this is a question I've I've found is kind of fun to ask people who are into history. If you had to be a foot soldier in one army, and from any point in history, which one would you choose and then a general in any army, which one would you choose and then like a dictator or a leader, or like a president? Like the highest ranking person in a society throughout history for those three categories. What, what three kind of civilizations or armies or categories are you picking? Ooh, I mean, in one way, I'd see a room for all three, but you can't pick this up, so which one for Rome, would you be a foot soldier, a general or a, like a dictator so for Rome, I think I'd definitely be a general just because. Just at that time, generals were just frankly, more powerful than, you know, the console where the emperor was in a way, because those soldiers were, I guess, from what I've read, they were more loyal to their to the general than they were to, you know, whoever the, you know, console or that Burt was as a foot soldier I'd have to say it would be someone that the 18 hundreds, so like they're Napoleonic or like American civil war. I'm not sure why it's highly, at least if it wasn't a poli, I know that his leadership style was similar to Caesar's, but his upbringing, it was much different where Napoleon came up from, basically the slum was like, he wasn't playing, he didn't have a silver spoon in his mouth. Um, And so just being a soldier in that army would be pretty cool cause the DBC decimated their way through Europe and just being part of that history, if I can survive it, I guess. And then I guess for a president I probably have to deal with like world war II, that era, like, I don't, because by that time general would probably be close, but I feel like as a president, you can do a lot more you have a lot more influence, like being like, you know, Roosevelt or Churchill. Cause like, I think couple of months ago back when Netflix had it and we saw my family and I, we watched the movie with Churchill, I think it's it was a darkest hour, I think. It was with Gary Oldman of a great movie, really show like sure. Show being like, you know, like the politician he was, but like, yeah, just, those would be three separate times. Just cause just cause those roles were so much different. Like being a general in world war two. the effects, the dynamics of being a general at that time, it was much more different than you were in Rome. And being a general Rome, you didn't have like, you know, radios, you didn't have plain stouts. You literally had dues on horses and, you know, at the most would be drums. Just that different atmosphere would probably make more things, things a lot more challenging. But yeah, those were, I guess, three separate times that fascinated me. That would be those different parts. Yeah. Every leader from world war II is iconic in history, right? Like Hitler, Stalin, Roosevelt, Churchill. Right. All of those people are so iconic. So that would be a good time period to be the absolute like leader, you know, and every decision they made made was so crucial and important. And just like you were saying, it was touched such a different battle, it wasn't numbers on the board. It was true strategy, you know? And then you said Napoleon, you seem interested in, in Napoleon and his era. Why, why him? Why are you interested in him? Yeah, pretty similar to the reason for Caesar. It is just like how you led, but also how you know, when he conquered all of Europe, he was, I think I read it again, like either from like a documentary or from like book, but like at that point, when you had all of Europe, you know, he reached all the way to Russia. He was the only emperor slash king in Europe that wasn't from like a Royal lineage. So he was the only guy leading didn't get his position passed down to him, like every other. So like England, Prussia, Russia, all of them, they were Royal lineages. So they all got threatened. And how it took literally all of Europe to come together. Probably I think the only time in history when. You know, those countries actually came together to take down to the pulling. Like it took the whole strength and, and, you know, there were other stuff I know he went to Spain, but that didn't work at Spain was basically like his cold war. And that was at Vietnam. That was in Afghanistan. He just couldn't, you know, tech succeed in Spain. Like he couldn't other places, but yeah, I mean, it's just like him just coming up from almost nothing and just using, I guess, in a way using the French revolution to his advantage. But then his troops loved them, just like, you know, Caesar's lead just loved him. Like, you know, when those troops, the first time he was exiled before, what is the battle of Waterloo? Like he came out of exile. He literally uses, grabbed a ship came to some town in France, the. The temporary king sent its troops down to arrest him. But they're just like, yeah, we're not arresting him. We love this guy. He literally went up and hugged him. Like he literally came back to Paris, the troops that were sent to like arrest him like that. That's like Caesar level crazy. Like, and then just him just winning all his battles, like, you know, being able to move troops from one place to another that would take days and did an hours. And then his, like, I guess his equivalent of generals. So he called him his marshals. Like they were super talented, like, like I'd watch like all the battles that they did and it's just him just kind of goading his enemies. Like forced them to kind of, you know, move to the low ground and give up the Hills. Like he knew, like he, he knew how to play as opponents and like this almost chess, like maneuver and like, yeah. I don't know if you've seen those like YouTube videos where it kind of like shows like the battles of shows, like how, you know, trips for mood, but like you just see it, you just kind of see how, you know, like this was before radio, just before all these technologies, like he used all these primitive stuff and he still won battles where a lot of times it looked like he was gonna lose. you know, similar to kind of Caesar in a way, but just the style, the way you led the impact he had on history. I mean, he only lived not like his rain wasn't even that long, like I think not even a decade and a half, but even during that small period of time. Oh. And then, I mean, he did sell, you know, Louise and purchase to America's best. That was pretty big too. But yeah, like just the impact he had in history, even for the short amount of time that he was there. It's honestly pretty incredible. Just like considering just like where he came from and then what he ended up becoming. Yeah, man. So I talked about Julius Caesar and Hitler some with a guy named Marwan, who is someone else who reached out, who was interested in history. And we kind of decided that that Julius Caesar was more of a morally just person, right. That he, he did want what was best for Rome. And he did kind of try to put the country before himself. Like he wasn't, he was a dictator, but he wasn't like an evil self-absorbed person. Right. But, but then obviously Hitler does fall under the category of, I mean, we pin them as evil. And, and he is someone who had a lot of moral flaws with him and, and, and was not a morally just person Napoleon to me, feels like. He's in a gray area. Right. So I've seen people throw him in the category with Hitler. Like he's not a Hitler, but but he gets tied in there with him sometimes. And then you're kind of looping him in with Caesar. Some, you know some similarities. Do you think that Napoleon was a good person or do you, do you think that he was more of an evil dictator? the stuff I know about the point is mostly just from like the books or movies or, you know, you know, those cool documentaries they have on YouTube. And I've never really heard of any of like the, I guess, evil stuff, at least to the scale that Hitler did ever happening. Like I never heard of any, like, you know, civilian casualties that happen in battles. I mean, there are obviously some, but he always. Yeah. You know, at least it's like, you know, cities will be evacuated or something. There weren't any like mass like these atrocities that would have happened even during that era. Especially cause I think maybe just because Napoleon was, you know, from a, from a smaller upbringing, probably like empathize with these people more than, you know, if it was like someone else, like a king was leading his troops at that time. So yeah, I don't, I know like at that time England was doing like their only campaign against them. They were painting him as like this evil man who was, you know, trying to take away their ticket with their lives, you know, come over invading England. So like maybe that's probably just the residue of all that, all those campaigns of like England just painting the Polian is a bad guy, even though, I mean, you know, we weren't there, so we can't really pin anything, but from what I've read and seen, like he. He didn't do atrocities at least to the scale of what, you know, Hitler other people that we could serve bad. Did he seem just like know better leader in a way? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I mean, he did try to conquer all of Europe. Right. I mean, that was kind of his goal. Do you know why he wanted to do that? Did he have any, any reason that made a lot of sense or do you know what, what was the re reasoning? Right. I mean, it wasn't in a self-defense situation. He was on the attack. Right. You know? Yeah. I mean, I don't know if there ever was earliest kind of finding justification. I think it was, might've been kinda like the whole, like, you know you know, Aftermath of the French revolution where, you know, they're all poor, but like all these European countries are being ruled by these, you know, selfish king selects, I guess, in a way, try to liberate them. Cause I know there were a couple places you went to where he did, he was treated more as like liberated or than a conqueror or maybe it was someone else. But I know you did want to reach down to like all these, like you basically want to be, you want to do what Alexander did. Like, you know, just, I guess, quote unquote, conquer the world. But I mean, he only got just a Europe, but even that was a lot, but yeah, I don't know if there's any, I guess, direct justification that you'd have. Doing what you did. Maybe it's like, you know, you just had this massive army, those loyal teams. He's like, all right, let's just show our muscle. You know, I think, I think it was, I think it was more of a, one of those a good defense is a good offense. So you just tacked first and then, you know, that way they just attack first and then be forced them on the defensive. So they might've been that. But yeah, I haven't seen any direct things for why he actually did it. Yeah. It's crazy that someone like Alexander the great goes down as a hero. Right. And Napoleon wasn't too different, but he just kinda goes down a little bit more of as a villain. Right. Because he didn't succeed in what he set out to do the same way. Right. So, yeah, it's weird that he probably would have been viewed as more of a collaborator. Right. If he had. If he had held his ground cause he law here, he lost. Right. I don't want to say, yeah, I think he, towards the end, he just, I think he was, what is the battle of Waterloo's where he just, he just couldn't muster up the troops, like all the troops that he had were just so inexperienced, like his early battles, the reason he wants so many of them was because the troops that he had were like super expensive there. They were like, you know, the best experience troops you can get, like they held their ground, they fought uphill. They did all these crazy things. But after years and years of fighting, eventually like many of them just died or got wounded to the point where they can shoot. So eventually his second exile when, after that he didn't return you know, he had to rely on just fresh recruits and they didn't have the same impact in the battle. so those like veterans, when it shoved the battle, like the other enemies that know like, oh my God, they fought multiple battles. Like they know what they're doing, but we don't. And so like that, that shock and all that they would have just being on the field. But eventually when he had to rely on all these new guys, they didn't have the same effect he kind of had to have their handheld. When, you know, 10 years prior, we had all these experienced tubes, they could kind of just fight on their own. They didn't need to pull in standing and watching them. So, yeah, that was one, but yeah, eventually you just lost because there's just too many enemies. Like everyone when all these other kingdoms that he eventually conquered realized that the plane was getting weekly. The kind of just turn tail. He just flipped on like half of all of Italy. All the countries took out first. Like they just all started swapping sides and like and then Spain was like, is, you know, like I said, I was like his role, Russia was one, he lost crapped on a tombstone troops up there. And then Spain, like he had a lot of troops that were held down there and a lot of it is like experienced veterans were killed there too. And so, yeah, just like a combination of a lot of things he eventually just could not continue. I'm going to ask a little bit, some basic questions, but I don't know much about Napoleon. I do, I obviously know of him, but I don't know a lot. So these might be stupid questions, but maybe there's, maybe there's a listener that doesn't know like me, does this war have a name? Was it just the Napoleon Napoleon Moore or where does it get? Does it have a different name? Yeah, I think we just call it the era. They just call it after him just cause, I mean they're okay. Yeah. Yeah. Is the whole blanket statement for the whole thing. That's what I thought. That's what I thought. And then who did England defeat him or who put him in his place? Yeah. So it was it. Yeah, the battle of Waterloo. It was England and I believe it was Prussia. I don't know. It was one of those like central European countries that like kind of the last two that kind of had enough troops to kind of challenge and cause like bowel just went off for so long. A lot of country. I don't rush out. I just didn't have the troops ready. A lot of us didn't have capacity to wait another war. So it's those two. What's funny is like think I watched one of the documentaries where at the end like depression guy, he wanted to name the battle something, and it was actually a really cool name. It was like the English translation was like unity or like hope or something like really nice way to tie the bow. But like the British guy was like, now we're just named a Waterloo. We doesn't mean anything. But yeah, it was England. I mean, I think Waterloo is the first time was the only time where England actually put troops on the ground. Cause I don't, I don't know why, but they just use their Navy to kind of cut off France. But like they never actually deployed troops. They just gave money or support or supplies to like countries. They were fighting him. But yeah, it was like England. And then like, it was probably pressure Sweden or somebody that will like help them out. Yeah, I figured England seemed like the only person that I could kind of put him in his place around that time. I'm not surprised, but I didn't know that for sure. So does, after his fall, the, this ward is, does this kind of lead to England? Like the British empire kind of taking over is, is that, does that though do the timelines on those two events kind of line up where not soon, AF not too long after Napoleon's reign the next big power is the British empire, or am I not. Yeah, I'm not sure exactly, but yeah, I think that sort of lines up. Cause I mean, up until that point, it was always, you know, England versus France, like they were going to know just vying for whoever, you know, could take the mantle of like, you know, world power. But I think after the two kind of pulling in, I think they just installed a new government. They redrew were not redrew. They put the lines of the countries back to where it was before Napoleon. So it kind of just erased all the work he'd done. But yeah, I think after that, I don't think anyone could match up to England and have, cause like I said, England didn't deploy new troops until that last battle. So they had most of their military still intact while rest of Europe is kind of just in shambles kind of just picking their pieces. it was a pretty good turning point for them, but I think it was, might've been in like international relations class, but I think after the Napoleonic wars, your pad, you know, relative piece for very long time, I think it was like. Maybe until world war one, maybe before that for pretty long time, like there wasn't any like massive conflict, like pulling words. It was pretty relatively, they did a good job of like keeping everything settled. So it wasn't all bad. Yeah. The, the British empire seems almost like a trick, like sneaky. Right? Cause they, they had all these colonies and stuff and they didn't just declare war on everyone and start trying to take over things the way like groan did the way Napoleon did, even the way later on Hitler would try to do right. They just sort of like took over these colonies and tax them and had certain ways of controlling them without making them feel like they were just, you know They made them feel like a part of England system instead of just bulldozing them over and, and, and, you know, calling them England. Right. they let a lot of the cultures stay in tact. they had a terrible outcome for places like India and stuff. Right. I mean, they didn't. Yeah. I don't think that they're better at all, but I think that their strategy with their empire was different than anyone had tried. Right. They weren't, trying to take over the same way. All these other people have tried to take over England, you know, I mean, I mean, Europe, you know, Maybe it was in high school teacher, but someone said that, yeah, I think it was nice when we were talking about like comparing the differences between how America, like the 13 colonies, how they like post England, how they were able to kind of pick themselves back up much better than what, like, you know, south America or places like France or Spain conquered. And it was because of like how they govern these places like France or Spain, they like have this direct government. I think, I think it's the terms like where they literally send their own people. And I was like, all right, now your French government, your French, your Spanish, like, and then once, you know, those colonies eventually got their independence. They really didn't know how to governance. They kind of have to like learn everything on their own. But England, on the other hand, they had like an indirect rule, I think, where, you know, like, I think we might've learned about it, but like during like the 13 colonies. Like all these towns and states, they were ruled by their own people, like, Virginia was like governed by Virginia, not an English person, like not like a person from England. And they were governed by their own people. So like when they eventually got free, they had that experience of, Hey, we can govern something. So it was a lot easier. So I think that, you know, that's a big difference between like all the English colonies and all the rest of the colonies of like how they will to, you know, govern themselves posts, you know, being independent. And I think that's a big divide between like, I guess the developed world and the developing world. Cause the developing world, it took them a lot longer to like really figure out who they were as a country and places that England conquered. They already knew they weren't because England never, I guess they weren't, they were never good, but they never took those identities away. He kinda just went over and just kind of took what they could, but they'll let you know America be America. They let all these places be themselves. But yeah, I know that was like the big. Like comparison. We did, I think in high school, but it kind of, it, it was a pretty big eye opener, like, okay. That makes a lot more sense. Why, you know, these countries are where they are now because they kind of had like, almost like a headstart. They knew how to govern themselves yeah, it's so interesting to me, how England never really never really fell like that empire that was there never really fell. So they were able the way that, like you said, they didn't take away people's identity. They understood that if you just bulldoze a culture then what right. You, you, you can't just force them to be your culture all of a sudden, so they kind of let people exist. And then once the revolutionary war happened once like in India, you know, Gandhi helped like peacefully resolve the, the rain over there, they were able to just retreat back into England cause they never, they never really. Push back too hard on, on the control they had over people, right? I mean, they fought us for the revolutionary war, but they never really fell. And they, I feel like they've still, to this day, maintain power, right? Like everyone talks about the English museum. Like England apparently has this museum from, from when they were the British empire of all of these crazy artifacts. And it's like, how do we just let them have that it's cause they just, they conquered places or they didn't conquer. Right. But they controlled areas for so long. They just absorbed all of the resources and the interesting pieces of culture and stuff like that. And then once that place was strong enough to fight back. They just left, but it's like, they never really were defeated by anybody. So they still are just sitting on, they still have more, more wealth than most places in the world. And they were able to basically steal like all of these crazy. Cultural artifacts from all of these places that they oversaw during the British Empire's rain. Right. I mean, if they had really fallen or defeat were defeated, then they wouldn't be sitting on that museum. You know, it wouldn't be, there is to have the same way. Yeah. So since you're into technology, looking towards the future, what what technology and innovations are you excited for? What are your predictions for the way technology is going to impact us in the next, you know, 10, 20, even maybe 50 years? Yes. I know. I feel like we talked about that. I said, I don't know if you've taken like the, it was like ethical courses. I don't know Dr. York. I took most of her courses, but like, yeah. I feel like we talk about that as well, but I feel like in there we kind of talk more about like the negative sides, but I think there's a lot more, there's just many, if not more like positives that would come out. I think one example like more direct example is one that mark Andreessen gave. So, you know, mark Andreessen, he was the founder of Netscape, you know, eventually sold that to AOL. Then now he, along with Ben Horowitz, they founded Andreessen. Horowitz which is like a big, massive venture capital company down in the valley invested in like almost every tech company that's out there. But in an interview that he did with re Hoffman, but it's just two of them, but he cleared out basically the idea of self-driving cars and how that's going to impact the future. And, you know, Actually went back in history and talked about, you know, when the first cars were being invented people were getting crazy. Like, you know, this is going to destroy the economy. Like, back then the horse was like the central mode of transportation. So people that were tied to the horse economy and the, of the stable, the blacksmiths, like all these people were like, oh my God, we're gonna lose our jobs. It's gonna destroy the economy. AI and machine learning, all these things that people are scared of that's happening again. But he said that, you know, when the car was invented and allowed people to go further outside of town and it created all these, you know, first, second and third tier industries related to the car, you know, like, you know, making the car, maintaining it you know, gas stations for when people, you know, convenience stores for people went out hotels went further. And so he's saying the same thing with these, you know, self-driving cars with AI where what's gonna happen is people are gonna be able to live much further. And then just, you know, cause like, you know, you can wake up at five because it's sleep in your car cause it's been take to work. So you can live like two hours away. So all these small towns like Harrisonburg or like in Nova, like in Winchester, they might grow faster just because people like their, you know, their cost of living is lower too. So people they won't have to live in all these congested cities, they can spread out more and all these towns will start springing up and there might be more, you know, second or third tier industries. From machine learning from AI, from the self-tracking cars, that'll pop up that we probably haven't even thought of yet. And so, yeah, like I think, you know, we get scared so early on from like, you know, what might happen directly, but like the whole car industry is probably more valuable than anything the horse, you know, industry has ever came up with just because there's so much stuff beyond it. So yeah, that's like a direct example, but I think there's gonna be some so much cool stuff. Like I know I don't, if people are scared of the metaverse, but I mean, it is, it is pretty unique. I think it's, I think it's a pretty cool place, like, especially like virtual events and virtual stuff have lot of people from all the worlds connect. Like I know I went to, you know, I've been to, like, most of these events are free, so you just pop in, and, you know, you have people from was it like, you know, the west coast, you have people from Europe you've I think I've had people from like, like Indonesia, Japan, job jumping on these calls, like 2:00 AM over there. They're still popping in and just, you know, everyone's sharing their thoughts and like, you know, the metaverse, I think it's, if it's done right, I think can really can really help people. And it'll just make things a lot more, I guess. Cool. Just to get whole another medium that you can just go out. I don't know, what's in store for it, but maybe it's just like a whole, another virtual, like video game kind of thing. It's just like super exciting if like what's being built and you know, all the people that are building, I don't know, there's stuff happening all over the world. I know with the like Penn to demic venture capital firms in the U S started investing in places like Nigeria in India, in Indonesia, places that before didn't really get much attention. And so like, you have all these different areas that weren't a part of this like globalized economy finally coming in, you have more people developing technology from a clean energy to like solar powered planes, like all these cool stuff that's just made. Like obviously there's always these negative effects, but I feel like there's more positives out there and like, people are just building cool stuff. And I know it's definitely gonna be more positive than the negatives that people, I guess, in a way, I guess either intimidated or scared by, but yeah, I think there's a lot of good things that's coming from. Yeah, man. I think there's a lot more positives. This is going to come out of the metaverse and ideas like that. Then the negatives, to be honest, I think that we already spend a lot of time isolated and stuff. And the people who liked to go out in the real world and be active, are going to continue doing that. And the people who are already isolated and enjoy playing video games all day are just going to have a better experience, you know, doing what they're doing and it's going to feel it's going to feel more like the real world, you know? I really liked what you said about smart cars personally. I am excited to work in my car. I am excited to sleep in my car, but the safety, the safety of the factor of it all. I'm so excited for it because I'm not the best driver. I've had a couple incidents here and there and you know, it. Absolutely blows my mind that we're still all driving around in these big giant deathtraps right. I mean, there's certain innovations that are inevitable, but the car and giving everyone their own ability to drive a machine like that at any point is really, I don't know why it happened the way it did. Like we could have had trains only like train systems everywhere or whatever that would never crash into each other. You know, like we did not have to innovate this way where it's, it's so easy for the average American accidentally crashed their car into something that they shouldn't, you know? And I think it's going to be absolutely insane to look back. Our childhoods and be like, wow, I was driving my own death trap at six 16. You know, I really am excited for a day when I don't have to worry about that anymore because I mean, I live in Florida, man. These people drive crazy down here, dude. It's badness, especially with everyone moving down here, there's a lot of different driving styles, just colliding. I feel like in Florida. And it's, it's, it's crazy. I I'm, I'm very excited to own a smart car someday, but yeah the metaverse is really interesting. I, I, I saw Tik TOK recently where someone was saying the metaverse isn't even an idea. It's more of a vibe because it's not like VR already existed, you know? So VR headsets already existed ideas like crypto and up tees, they exist and they are kind of part of the metaverse, but. It's hard to put your finger on what the metaverse is. Everyone is just kind of accepting it these days as a thing. But I mean, this, this person on Tik TOK was saying, it's more of a vibe. Like it's not really, it's not really an innovation, you know? So I don't know. What do you think about that? What do you, what is the metaverse to you? Because I don't think that there's a direct answer for it, you know? Yeah. I think it's a mix of, honestly, there's a movie called ready player one. I don't know if you've watched that. Yeah. I think it's that combined with maybe a little bit of what swirled, where it's just like, it's like virtual world. You can just go in the promo stuff that that Zuckerberg has been doing. I mean, it seems pretty cool. I can play tennis with like someone from California while you're in Virginia or, you know, you can go to a virtual club. I know there's like virtual. Islands that are being sold or whatever, but like, is there any difference between that idea and just virtual reality, the virtual reality idea? You know, I think it's taking it, but I think it's like putting it all into like one place instead of like, you know, one virtual video game, one visual thing here. One thing here, here, here. I think it's just like a way to kind of connect it all. Cause I mean, at least that's my guess. I mean, I'm not entirely sure. I mean, You know what you see Facebook, they're putting a lot of money. I think they're, I think they're hiring like 10,000 engineers just to build out this metaverse. So from, from my guests, I think it's just taking these NFC is taking these crypto, taking all these VR stuff. That's already there, you know, adding their own. And that eventually, maybe just connecting it into this one, massive like just world or universe that there makes, I think that's gonna be my guests. I love to see where it goes. I mean, if it's any different, I don't, I don't know. It's pretty cool to see. Yeah. I guess with the idea of NFTs and owning digital assets, then lead leads to people owning digital real estate, which makes it feel more of a, metaverse more of a place that you can go and own a chunk of it instead of just of virtual reality, which is like someone else's game, you're stepping into A place that's owned by the game company itself versus the idea of owning a piece of digital property makes it, feel more than just, you know, Facebook's place. Right. But it's weird. I don't like the idea of Facebook just completely owning the thing. And, and even if we can buy, buy real estate bear, whatever, having them control all the ins and outs of this, this place should be more decentralized and share ownership of the actual, idea to, you know, yeah. I think what is it? I know a lot of brands are. I don't know how they're acting. They're just like allowing their intellectual property. I don't, Nike was the first. And I know the other, a lot of other, like, I guess modern luxury brands are like doing something with Cedar NFTs or like joining the metaverse. Are they successful? Like the articles, like title it, like, you know, this company's joining the metaverse. Yeah, I mean, I know, I know at some point I know all the other big tech companies are at least at some point, probably gonna either try to build something similar. I mean, actually that'd be, that'd be cool to see is just seeing if like Google or apple, if they either try to join what Metta is creating like their metaverse or if they're gonna make their own. Google metaverse and apple metaphysics. Cause I don't know. We'll see, like, that'd be pretty cool because they all have, they all have the money and the capacity to build and I'm pretty sure they will. I mean, if they see that Facebook or Meadows doing well in this, I'm pretty sure those guys will follow suit and then yeah. But just be like another product. Yeah. I think that there will be definitely, at least some competitors are, but probably a lot of different platforms that you can go to. And I guess what makes it the metaverse is that with the web three technologies, if it's all using the same type of blockchain under the hood, If you have your digital NFT, let's just say you could put it up in your, in your hotel, in your Facebook, in your Facebook's platform. And then also bring that over to Google. So usually like, like if your, your likes on Instagram don't transfer over well to the likes on Twitter, for instance, something like that, where I think with, with all the web three technologies, what makes it feel like its own universe is that the Google, if Google builds a platform and Facebook builds a platform and it's all using these NFT tokens, then there will be more connected than, than just two separate platforms. I'm hoping, basically, I don't know if that that lady was right when she said it's just a vibe because I do think, I do think it's, it's, it's the combination of VR technology and. And web three and like token technology and blockchain technology that does make it something more than just those two things separately, But yeah, man, let's wrap it up. So I, I really liked hearing about your company. That sounds awesome. Let me know when you put it back out on the store and honestly we'll probably can hold off on releasing this episode until it is. Okay. Depending, but, so there's a chance people listening right now, they can go download it, but either way, let me know, and I'll check that out myself. I'm excited. And thanks for talking about history and stuff and, and the future and just leadership. That was a cool conversation. Also let something. People in S SOE, the society of entrepreneurs know that I'm trying to do an episode every week right now. So I'm definitely open to talking to a lot of different people. I really like startups, but if there's anyone else at JMU, I'm from Jay, you know, I went to JMU. I was in necessarily of entrepreneurs. So those guys I know I would definitely like to talk to. but if there's anyone else that you, you know, from JMU that would like to be a guest man, let me know. Because I love talking to the JMU people. Yeah. Appreciate it. Thank you for having me. It was awesome. Yeah. Thanks for coming on man. And good luck with everything. I hope it goes well, take it easy. Take it easy.