[Applause] [Music] i'd like to tell you all a story actually but before i do i need you guys to do something with me can i ask everybody to stand up please like everybody one of the problems with speaking a few hours after lunch is that it can get quite tiring so just stretch get comfortable and when you're ready take a seat one of the most difficult times in my life was actually when i was applying to university i didn't get the grades that i needed so i had to reapply the next year the problem was the tuition fees were set to triple and you see in the uk it's pretty normal to take out a student loan to fund your studies except i didn't want to take a student loan and i didn't have a ton of money sitting in my bank account either so i didn't know what to do and i remember when i had a conversation with the admissions lady at the university i explained my situation i was really excited to go there everything was amazing i loved the subject i just had this finance issue what should i do and i still remember her reply she said if you can't afford to study here you should reconsider your options and that hurt because it was probably the first time in my life where i felt like something that i really care about was no longer in my control it felt like it was literally in somebody else's hand and to just to help you understand what that felt like i want you guys to work with me on an experiment can i just get a show of hands if you're okay to take part [Applause] can i ask everybody to take out their phones please in your hand and can you unlock your phone so in your hand you should have an unlocked phone can you pass your unlocked phone to the person sitting on your left please did you feel that sudden jump in your heart something that you really care about in somebody else's hand that's kind of what it was like all right you can get your phones back now it's fine give it a hug and a kiss it's okay but phones aside i was stuck and i didn't know what to do what happens now one thing that i'd realized putting aside entrepreneurship and business and all of this other stuff everybody is good at something everybody has a passion like everybody in my case there were two things that i thought i could do number one i used to work part-time as a teacher number two i loved economics so put the two together my genius idea was i will become a tutor sounds great and i was charging 20 an hour which is not bad for an 18 year old in london but it wasn't enough for what i needed so i asked my students to tell their friends and if their friends join that class instead of charging one person 20 an hour i can charge 15 each so now i'm making 30. i was like hey this could work and soon enough two students became four which became eight and then 16 and that grew to multiple different classes and i'm so grateful to have been able to make enough to cover the cost of my entire degree after the first year of my university studies and of course a few years later what you do when you graduate put it on social media [Applause] today this entire story has grown to a company and it's centered around the belief that everybody has something that they want to learn and something that they can teach and we're bringing the two together put aside me teaching a few dozen students in the uk imagine a world where expert tutors and instructors here in saudi arabia being able to create classes with students from all around the world and imagine that happening everywhere isn't that incredible wouldn't that be amazing throughout my entire story one of the things that i've realized in sharing it with individuals like yourselves is it's really nice looking at a story backwards because everything makes sense right everything gets pieced together but at the time looking forward you haven't got a clue what's going to happen you don't know where you're going to go and that risk can be scary but i'd be crazy not to thank the number of amazing people that i've met on this journey so i wanted to extend that support that i received to everybody in this room so i'm excited to be able to speak to everybody share ideas and share everything that i've learned with anybody that i can meet whilst i'm here because isn't the most beautiful thing that we can imagine a world where knowledge is shared thank you you