hello everybody Welcome to Trio VC insights this is our first live session for trio VC insights my name is z malop I'm one of three General partners for trio VC together with my colleagues chetam toemon and ARA tied it is so exciting to be here because it's been quite a journey for us too we started roughly August 2023 so almost a year ago um and we did our First Capital calls in October and we've already made six Investments and we're moving right along supporting Turkish tech companies in the US market and today's topic is actually going to be why the US market is such a strategic Global stage for Turkish technology companies and why we believe that Turkish Tech can actually compete uh in today's entrepreneurship environment and of course while we're doing all of this we have one of the most experienced Founders entrepreneurs successful Founders and active investors Mr bant CH from he's the founder of air ties who's also a very active uh angel investor and now he's an a venture capital investor together with Trio VC and what's really exciting about buan story is his career in technology has spent three continents right so he started in the United States working in the chip industry among other things he made it all the way to Asia where he spent some time there so he was literally you know in the beating heart and pulse of of um the chip industry industry and then he ended up in Turkey to mobilize uh Wi-Fi connectivity issues um better than any other organization could do um given their mesh Technology Innovation so not only is he actually a tech Guru but he's also an innovator so he's actually developed technology as well so there's hard tech involved in that activity and what's interesting about working with brance through my years with uh together with him at Endeavor turkey and now at tric is that but he's one of the entrepreneurs who even though he knew the United States Market really well and he was very comfortable with it he hesitated to go there he experimented with the Middle East with Europe first and he took his time to go to the United States and in retrospect he wishes he had gone in earlier and I've always enjoyed this conversation with him so when we launched Trio VC actually even before we launched it and we were doing our own feasibility study BR was one of the first people that we went to for feedback advice on our initiative and our investment mandate and he thought it was a wonderful idea so he was one of the first people to support and back Us in these activities of helping Turkish Tech really Bridge um the US market so banim can you tell us a little bit about your career um before we get into why the US market is so interesting and important for Turkish tech companies well uh first off DM thank you for inviting me to this uh wonderful event um uh very happy to be here um I mean you covered a lot of the high points of my my career I mean I moved from Turkey to to the US when I was basically a teenager with my with my family went to UC Berkeley and D um and then worked in the chip industry there for for quite some time um uh and and then decided to uh you know found uh air ties so um I don't think no need to go any further into that I mean but the the bigger thing I think is you know why why the US market um before I even go into that you know many there are many Turkish startups with great ideas with great technology and then they essentially run into the wall of of the the size of the Turkish market um you know if you're not in fintech or some you know a few of these segments where where the local Turkish market is really big enough for you to become you know multi hundred million dollar valuations maybe even a unicorn um is very difficult to to be satisfied with with the Turkish market so inevitably uh even the Turkish species are now basically saying if you don't have a globalization um strategy uh you're not on the list for to become uh to become invested in and so many of the Turkish companies what they initially start out with is of course they just look around the region and say okay you know let's go to the Middle East and let's go here and let's go there and they immediately focus in that area and then you quickly find out that there are a whole bunch of issues uh uh with that and then if they take one step further they go to uh Europe where you know there's another uh it's obviously a big much bigger market and much more attractive and the US usually ends up being last on the uh on on the list unfortunately and and I think many of these companies would do much better to really focus in on the US market right at the beginning and and you might say why um the you know outside of everybody knows the US market is huge but that's that's just one parameter the real more important thing is is the attitude of the customers um you know they the customers are much more attractive uh in in in the sense that they are not they're not reluctant to use new technology or new ideas in fact they they uh they want to use it they they they they pull you in now uh now you have to have very good technology you have to have very good very very strong value prop proposition uh but you know but those are all you know tangible metrics it's not that you have to know XYZ to to get an uh to get an audience or or or to be able to do any any business it's not it's not the more relationship type things it is more the things that a a startup founder can actually control it's like how good is my product am I really solving a real problem uh and if you're doing those things then you'll get an audience with the uh uh with with with the US customers um they act very quickly you the the the the possibility of winning businesses uh is is much stronger it's based on nice tangible things versus like even with Europe they just take so long and they come up with 50 reasons as to why well you know we have to change our process we have to get this approval we have to do that we have to do that and uh and and you can't move uh quickly enough um so I mean the US guys they're they're open to startups they're open to technology now being a Turkish tech company you start out at negative one uh because you know Turkey is not known for for technology in in in the US so the the obvious question becomes you know why uh you know why am I going to go to Turkey for for technology but but you can get over those types of things BR let's deconstruct these things because I think that there's a whole treasury of information in the summary that you just gave and I do want to deconstruct it from two points of view one is um being able to position to attract clients or customers and let's talk specifically in the B2B domain because I think b2c is something completely different um very different not completely different but quite different um and also how to become investor ready in the United States and what different parameters that they're looking at and one of the things that we've discussed plenty of times with you in the past has been um from a point of view of attracting customers or positioning yourself to attract customers in the United States the difference between networking and meritocracy like so we were saying you know in turkey or in Europe the networking element is weighs very very heavily and of course that's true for everybody around the world right networking is always an important um element in your toolkit but meritocracy plays a different role so what happens when you're a foreigner in the United States and you're speaking English with an accent and like how do you really convince the customer gain their trust uh very good question and it's it's usually I mean first off you obviously need to be able to communicate uh with them uh you know so your English has to be good but it's okay to have an accent because they're just totally used to that I mean you know there are whole bunch of Indians and Chinese and and Turks and and Arabs and so all there Latin Americans um so they're used to having dealing with uh in particular in technology they're used to dealing with people that have an accent but you know you obviously need to be you need to know English relatively well uh and to be able to uh communicate so uh that doesn't bother them at I wouldn't say at all U because they're very very used to having you know high-tech companies be led by uh nonwhite American uh people uh so so that that is not an issue by far the biggest issue is do you have a technical tangible product differentiation what you know your value proposition how good is your value proposition um and and and it has to be good enough where for them to be able to make a change uh because they're not they're not going to just go make a change because you know they like they're definitely not going to do it because of the color of your eyes or something along those lines uh there you have to have something very tangible uh to offer them now ultimately you know they're GNA want the customer service and they're going to want the technical support and they're going to want somebody who they can call on immediately if they you know if there's a problem but that's true of any business um yeah and so you have to provide you know you you ultimately have to be able to provide all those things um and and if you're providing those things then then they're open and and they go for it again from the client perspective one of the things that we've noticed as tric in the United States is the tendency for American companies to be open to doing paid Pilots which is very different from turkey and maybe even Europe right so open to this idea of innovation and I also think it's a timing issue too right so they're open to paid Pilots but it's also kind of an even playing field right now with the Advent of generative Ai and kind of everybody can compete right now there's no like clear gold standard so the Turkish tech companies can also compete um what would you say about um these paid pilots and the opportunity to co-develop products um and services and solutions with clients in the United States I I mean it's it's one of the big things I think that again makes the the US customers more attractive again in particular for for uh for B2B uh uh situations where you know you may be locking a few features or a few things that the customer wants um and they know that you're a startup and you don't have a whole bunch of resources and things like that and so they don't really you know squeeeze your your squeeze you down to the lowest price and lowest cost and uh and these types of in fact they go the exact opposite they what what they try to do is to say you know I really I like the idea you have but it's really missing this and this and this can you do that for me and and oh by the way I'll help cover your costs so uh we definitely had plenty of what we call non-recurring engineering fees where where you know we we charg the customer uh upfront cost engineering costs and they paid for it and then ultimately bought the product uh in full production and in full volume uh later but they helped subsidize the thing and again this is a big contrast you know I don't know how much this is this is true of of uh of the Western European countries but it's definitely true of the Turkish companies the Turkish companies go the exact opposite and say oh you're a Turkish company so your price should be much lower you know why do you should do this for free you should do it for the for the name we're going to give it Prestige sure for the prestige um and the mindset is just totally different and and it is it's so wonderful you know you go there you meet with the appropriate people you I mean of course you have to do some negotiation you know they're they're not going to just you know throw things at you but you go through that you know once and then they decide they they commit to you and then after that it's relatively smooth uh uh smooth sailing I mean you have to deliver yeah I love case studies and storytelling and I remember you talking about how one of your clients in the United States like the fact that you guys were co- creating actually led to one of your biggest pivots as air ties like the feedback that they gave you guys can you tell us a little bit about that and how important was it that you were there in the United States in front of the client and not a mid-level manager Maybe uh very very very good point so um when we first started um we we basically were coming up with this thing called mesh Network which actually solved the coverage problem inside inside the home you know the Wi-Fi coverage problem inside the home and we're at one of the one of our major customers um uh and we got all the technical people you know they they looked at the stuff they they liked it um and and they were going to submit it to to their top management uh to get it approved uh and to to to get it go ahead to to move forward and and then this situation became you know it's really difficult to explain what a mesh network is and and and how do we uh how how are we going to present to the C uh to to the management this is what's going on and they they challenged us to come up with a way of showing it uh to their to their management visualizing it right yeah sure visualizing it yes um and so we had one of our uh you know I was there the we had one of our uh Chief R&D uh people there um and and then we came and then we got a hold of one of our senior engineers in in turkey and literally within 24 hours we came up with a an iPad app that showed the whole network and how it was operating U and how the different devices were connecting up to each other and things like that just as a visualization so that we can actually you know the guy can actually demonstrate uh the technology to to his management and lo and behold during the presentation what ended up happening is the top management got more excited about the app than they did of the mesh you knowy core technology and the reason was you know they had a big problem in that they they had no idea of what's actually going on in consumer's home network and and it was especially at a time when video streaming and On Demand was up on on the ride just just starting right I mean you know the iPhone is just or you know just started Netflix is just going and the their their technical support people are constantly getting under all this pressure but they have no idea what the home network is looking like or how it how it's operating and this app that we did for demo they basically said we want that fascinating and and literally we ended up you know going back and and developing that that product and that essentially was the the initial sense of of how we develop the cloud stuff and all the um uh all the monitoring and the the data collection and all this other stuff that was the that was the foundation now if if I was not there I could not you know you canot see exactly how important uh of a of a thing that was to that customer or to the top management of the customer and and what a role could actually play and and and the whole ability to be able to you know quickly make a decision you know if if if it was a sales guy that came back uh to you know to the air TI top management and said oh you know the customer wants one of these he would get shot down they say oh no we don't have the time we don't have this we don't have that and so it's really important that especially during the initial entry of um uh of the markets and and that that a Founder co-founder whatever you know somebody one of the core team actually is the one that is actually there to actually interpret what's really going on and to be able to put the support uh in place uh to uh when you come back to actually do it well kudos to you too for being an amazing listener right like at that moment you could have been all ego driven and gung-ho about your existing product and you know not being able to listen would have been kind of the kiss of death actually um but at that moment it actually ended up catapulting you guys into a whole new Arena um and you were able to conquer the market you guys were able to perform really really well and of course you showed your nimbleness with Turkish Tech Team behind you so you were able to do that as well which is fascinating but for trio vc2 so you know as we've spoken before one of our core prerequisites is that if the founders in the early stage and we're doing um preed and Seed Investments That We're investing quite early that one of the founders or at least one of the influential decision makers needs to be in the United States so that they have a customer facing an open dialogue with this with the customers for feedback which actually which actually brings me back to the parallel of this right so on the one hand the customers obviously the most important source of income and actually the most important source of input for developing a product and services that's that's not just nice to have but important to have and on the other hand you need that traction to be able to attract the interest of investors yes one of the reasons why TR OBC was established was also to help deal with the bottleneck of the next round of funding so fortunately in the Turkish ecosystem we have developed an early stage funding mechanism but we are experiencing bottlenecks with round series a series B Etc and a lot of that probably has to do with what you mentioned very very early in the beginning when you said turkeyy is a great Market to start but you have to be able to expand uh or you know it becomes a pilot Market proof of concept Market but then it gets saturated very quickly because the client base uh doesn't have anywhere to gr to grow so in tric we're saying get some Traction in the United States and let's be able to position you for followon funding where you're pursuing series a series B investments from US capital and that doesn't mean you have to stop your R&D activities in Turkey it just means you need to build your business development team in the United States so when we were talking about that the other day you mentioned something about the difference between Europe and how they're looking at business plans and projections versus America and how they're looking at metrics yes can we do a deep dive into that a little bit like what's the difference between Venture Capital um between the Us and other Global markets like how to expectations differ I mean they they differ substantially um and you know I'm making generalizations you know there there are there are always exceptions um the it is very traditional for for the financial investors for the uh for the even the Venture Capital companies to really look at you know what is your financial projection how much revenue are you going to generate what is your gross margin what you know how much money when are you going to turn cash flow positive and and and and really drill down into a lot of detail of of what that you know how that's put together so those are hygienics right that's your those are your projection hygienics exactly I mean obviously you need a plan of some sort but when you're especially when you're an early stage startup those projections are just made up of a ton of assumptions you know you know you have the spreadsheet and there's a line item there and you put a number in there and and it's really not based on any actual factual thing that actually happened it is it is a projection in your mind about what you think is going to happen and and ultimately you know the assumption is not going to happen there's going to be something wrong on one of the assumptions Ops and then the your whole projection goes out of the water I mean it's just not worth anything anymore and everything changes so you know then you can actually get into a you know oh you budgeted this and you didn't deliver that you can get into this whole negative uh negative cycle versus what the what the US type VCS are really looking at are the actual you know uh metrics associated with what have you done how many customers new customers did you win um what is the churn rate of those customers how long do they stay with you do they stick with you for two months or or 12 months um and then from there you can calculate what the lifetime value of that customer is and then and then from there you can actually actually track the cost of customer acquisition how much money did you spend to win this one customer uh and and those are all factual they're they're you know they're based on what actually happened and from there you can make some educated guesses they're still educated there're still guesses but at least they're there's they're based on some Foundation that you know what you know this guy's cost to customer acquisition is high but if he does A and B we can get that down by 50% okay well creates an opport you can see then the opportunity for improvement very clearly yeah exactly so so then then you start coming together and saying okay well this is what this company needs to do they need to get their customer acquisition cost from A to B they need to um gain a whole bunch more new customers because once they gain them they keep them and um and and it's really impacting the bottom line uh the the manufactur or or or or the gross margins are a bit low but you know with a little bit of scale you can you can draw the scale from you know from here to there they become very logical stuff um and and that's what I really appreciate about the about the US type VC they're looking at the potential of your Market they're looking at whether or not you have a a proper team that is actually going to be execute you know be able to execute these ideas and actually deliver on these things and and they're looking at those types of probabilities instead of looking at a financial spreadsheet and a u and a business plan and and to me that's what really sets them apart and they're investing to help you you know to drive the growth they they want the growth yeah because their their whole mindset is growth growth well it's the growth mindset and that's exactly how I was just going to summarize everything that you said like if you add a and b together let's look at Europe and I love Europe mind you but I'm just just going to you know one of the challenges we've had is you know with the Venture Capital ecosystem in general is how do you beef up venture capital in Europe um and it really ties down boils down to some of these like fixed mindset a little bit more price sensitivity so and the fixed mindset is huh where's the product today and you know can I get a lower price and you know what's my cost of trans transitioning versus in the United States it's you know what's the opportunity uh how can I improve this product working together co-creating um and then the growth mindset and then it also sounds like if I'm just gonna summarize it one sounds like in the in Europe we're looking at a top- down approach so it's looking at a budget saying oh I'm G to get you know 10% of the customers which is gives me the heebie jeebies versus really in the United States it's a bottomup approach what's my first customer my second customer when I get to my 10th customer what economies of scale am I going to achieve Etc so it's really building from the bottom up exactly which is really interesting and how am I going to create Word of Mouth how am I going to get that customer to be a reference for some other customers and Etc so yes yeah and so beyond the pilot pilot projects we also do see a lot of um strategic alliances in the United States as well so somebody who's a happy customer is actually happy to refer you to another potential customer which is really fascinating they're willing to endorse you that way exactly so that's on the customer side and on the investor side you see a lot of that happening and this goes back to how you're managing um performance issues and relationships but which brings me to if you're doing research and development in product a majority of your product development in Turkey but your Market is in the United States how do you again address your customers concerns in terms of being able to deliver so what's the expectation management there and I think that you guys were not just in Turkey but you also have um product development activities in Europe as well yes yes um I mean after the initial customer wins in U in the US uh we built up a significant initially as a technical support operation and then and then expanded into a um an R&D operation in uh in Austin Austin Texas um and there's also a significant operation in uh in Belgium um so you know there are multiple uh multiple locations now the the whole issue of you know having a bunch of R&D people in in in turkey that doesn't bother anybody um it's it's it's expected uh because many of the big Tech firms have you know multiple R&D centers throughout the world um I mean it's not only a cost issue it's also a talent issue right um so you know different types of talent are are more pronounced in India versus China versus versus Turkey versus uh Eastern Eastern Europe yeah sure so so you know wherever you can get the right set of talent um and and and and make a difference and be able to attract uh other people uh you know that's that's what that's what that's what you have to do and and pretty much all of the US companies the customers are accustomed to having remote design centers uh throughout the world you know wherever it is and uh and if you've picked turkey that's perfectly fine there's there's nothing wrong with that so they're more than willing to accept it it's not a barrier that you have to overcome you just have to create your case fors support and move on right it's this is the talent this is the talent pool this is how they're qualified let's go on to the next topic it's solving their problem which is brings me to product Market fit and the go to market strategy so United States is huge a lot of Technology can serve a lot of different customers how do you digest the United States Market or eat it like you know how do you eat an elephant right um what is the product Market fit strategy or the go-to market strategy what are the nuances or critical success factors of that in the United States um first off let me say that product Market fit is one of the most complicated problems um and there is no formula for it uh I've recently read couple of Frameworks and things like that which which are I I find very uh very exciting uh but there's no formula for it and it's very very difficult to attain and by far the the single biggest reason startups fail is is is the market side is the market validation side and then uh associated with the market validation side is whether or not you have a product that is actually solving the uh the Val the the verified uh Market um so the thing that I can say is um is start very very small start very very narrow yeah um with a very small well-defined set of customers that that you are going to uh uh you're going to Target because you can all you know if you if you if you solve their problems and and they get to the point where they would be very uh not sad but but I mean it would be problematic for them to not have your product or not have your uh solution then you're starting to get to a point where you know that you are actually solving some critical problem for those people because they can always go to you know your competitor or some some you know uh uh some other solution um but they they really really want that then um uh then you're making some some progress and and you know it has to be perfectly clear uh they need to fully understand it um and once you've developed that then you can expand into side areas you know with some tweaks into either the customer profile or some tweaks to the product itself and you can expand more and more and nine times out of 10 they you know even if you really narrowly Define a market it's usually much bigger than what you think it is and and and to get a you know good valuation you know if you've got $10 million worth of annual revenue a recurring Revenue as as a software SAS you've got a damn good valuation and and if you can bring that up to 20 30 50 you know all of a sudden you're starting to get into unicorn uh territory so you know you don't need a lot uh but whatever you do have um it needs to be very very strong and and the customers need to be pulling you wi can you imagine if you just deciphered it right so if you had to get to 10 million and you had an average customer value of 500k you need 20 customers all of a sudden your bottomup approach makes a lot of sense right exactly and if you're delivering really well to them and that goes to the well part of the goto Market strategy is doing that research and being able to reach those customers which again Trio VC and organizations like ours are there to help um but also um that goes to building right that's you know the brand building the reputation building all that kind of stuff is is a byproduct of those um solid uh customer client accounts and I mean one of the now as an angel investor I get to see more and more of the U uh of the startups and I would say by far the biggest problem I see is lack of focus and you know they're they're trying to do this for this segment and that for that segment and this for something else they're just spread out too thin by far the biggest most valuable asset in a company in a in a startup is the co-founder teams uh time you know where are they spending their time what problems are they really uh trying to solve and if you spread that out too thin you just don't you don't succeed very well you just nailed it right there so um we are moving into to the Q&A portion of our of our webinar today and we have a question from John yeles who says as a hardware enabled start software startups seeking preed funding we often hear we don't invest in Hardware startups how can Hardware startups address these concerns with investors which is a great question by the way John um yes I appreciate the I appreciate the pain yes uh and and I've Sur I've lived it many many times um so uh let me put it this way so with with Hardware or really raw uh technology it is over the last 20 years it has shifted more and more to either going inside of a chip or it is shifted out to um uh to the software that that that that is built around it and and usually when I mean is very very rare that a piece of Hardware or or Hardware design uh by itself has enough intellectual property to be uh to be able to to be protected uh where where some you know some Chinese operation can't come and duplicate it and and and really uh put you out of business or or ruin your ruin your business so the real thing that you need to do is it's okay to be Hardware enabled but you're your main proposition needs to be a cloud-based service a a piece of software it needs to be something else you know the customer needs to be buying something else um and by the way I'm I'm I am an investor in in several of those companies you know uh one of the uh recent ones is a company called ERG that's uh that does handwashing stuff and there's a piece of Hardware there is but the the value is not in the piece of Hardware the value is in the the software and and the services that go around it um that um you know that that makes the product useful and and and attractive so it's okay to have Hardware but don't have the hardware be the main value proposition it it has to be the main proposition has to be built around a set of could be data could be AI it could be it could be some you know cloud-based services that are built around it even in the example that we did with the case study of air ties so for example you were selling wireless modems essentially with this mesh technology so that was the hardware piece of it and it was the design beautiful and all that kind of stuff but at the end of the day what hooked the people was the diagnostic tool that you created for the performance of the Wi-Fi network and then the Hardware was sold alongside of it right so chicken and egg question maybe yeah I mean you know the the hardware was required okay you had to have some Hardware to do it and oh by the way I mean you know uh we had invented the the mesh Network and got a whole bunch of us patents around it and all this sort the stuff and over time that piece of the technology commoditized there were a bunch of standards that came out there became some open source typee stuff and so you know you can't really charge a lot of money for that but the but how you manage that mesh Network and and all the information and and the and and the customer stuff is a totally different uh the user experience the user interface all that kind of stuff exactly so we have another question from Murat bullot who's saying getting into US PE funds or LPS has been difficult for Turkish entrepreneurs do you think LPS consider that Turkish companies are not as attractive as relative to the US or other country Rivals interesting question yeah um yes you're you're correct um so now now the answer the question is why do they feel that way and and that's the that's the main issue now historically um there has been a lack of confidence in both the Turkish legal system and the um uh and the Turkish uh economy um as to as to whether or not you know these companies were going to be able to uh uh if they invest what type of risks are they taking Etc and now this is going to sound a little bit anti- uh Turkish or whatever but what many of the companies uh have done is they have either relocated their legal entity to uh to someplace outside of Turkey um but still maintaining a very large presence uh in turkey and and if you do that then then the US PPS they come for it I mean there's there's no doubt about that but um interesting yeah but I mean it impacts both your valuation and um uh and the number of people that are willing to deal with it true true one of the things that we're trying to do as tric you know all of us myself chm and arzo take it um chm totem on Lars take all of us come from ecosystem building backgrounds and one of the things that we're trying to do is to expand the Turkish entrepreneurship ecosystem into the United States so we're actually in addition to being a proper Venture Capital fund we're also trying to kind of elevate and do advocacy um to promote the Turkish Tech talent pool and the capabilities of that talent pool and of course also the Turkish market has really interesting incentives that are quite competitive so from the techn parks Etc that that translates into uh a Competitive Edge or a sustainable Competitive Edge over time but you're absolutely right um again one of our prerequisites too is the company one of the founders needs to be in the United States market for us to invest and they need to have um a proper entity established in the United States um to overcome you know some of those biases and really just take the air out of the sales right you know so it's not an issue anymore it becomes a non-issue when you're in the United States and the company's American exactly andam you're I'm wondering about the next elections which will be held in November how many elections affect startup and investment uh ecosystem of the USA and the whole world indirectly if you talk I'll be happy great great question question uh for I uh I'm I I I absolutely have nothing positive to say about Trump and uh so so now you're getting me into a political discussion and yeah let's let's skip that part of it yeah I mean of course it's going to impact uh I mean the the US has a very real possibility of losing some of its shine and some of its attractiveness um if things go a particular way but I mean it's it's such a big powerful thing um I don't think it's you I don't think it'll materially impact the U the startup ecosystem um you know um uh people will work around it and uh always do yeah water always finds a way is the expression yeah I mean the the ingrained culture I mean in a place like Silicon Valley uh it is so difficult to duplicate anywhere else in the world even though you know you know with Endeavor with this that we keep on saying you know oh you know uh the US doesn't have a u control over inovation and they don't but the the basic culture is so flexible and so supportive I mean you can be from any country in the world you can believe in multiple gods you can believe in you know uh uh you can be totally different culturally and be happy living in in the Bay Area uh you can be gay you can be this you can be that and you can you can still happily there and the only thing that people are gonna look at is did how well did you do your job meritocracy that's I'm gonna put democracy aside because that's a different topic but meritocracy is I think the golden gem of the United States culture exactly exactly so aarin Wimberly um does the recent shift away from our prior Notions of globalization of business also perhaps represent some near Shoring or localization of Supply chains closer to the End customer consumer probably my personal opinion is there's going to be a lot more near Shoring yes I agree um and for many many reasons and it's not just uh you know it's not just politics and and um and uh Grand standing and all this other stuff I mean you know just think of the carbon footprint I was just gonna say the same thing just that alone sure just that alone you know um so I think Supply chains need to get closer closer to where the ultimate demand is um and that's the only way we're going to solve some of these um you know Carbon you know global warming uh carbon Footprints I mean all all these different things I think it's inevitable uh and it's going to get more and more localized by the way I I just did an investment in a startup in um uh in Italy which is applying AI to optimize manufacturing chains um you know factories themselves and uh it's doing really really well so I I'm a big believer in that there's going to be a lot more of near Shoring near Shoring you know I a lot of these things are like a pendulum right globalization they were trying to maximize it it went to the nth degree and then it shot back and it went to the N the minus Nth Degree and of course it's going to become an optimization exercise so um and rational is going to win in the end so zum says thank you B and thank you for watching us Z Jim question for blent any tips on how to get some us-based leads for Alpha tests LinkedIn ads Google ads being active in LinkedIn groups and Idan chivy made a surprise appearance plus one to Z's question but maybe pivoted to focus on how do you go about customer Discovery how does one search identify and close that first codesign partner I mean there are so many Ian happens to be B's [Laughter] son nice to see you there too yeah I mean there are so many great ways to do that I mean it's the the the US is very easy to get U uh initial customers and things like that ranging from um you know crowdfunding to LinkedIn to you know uh do you know anybody at some University that you went to I mean uh and the good news is people like doing that type of thing it's not you know they they enjoy it so so it's you can definitely you know get some initial customers and initial you know Alpha users uh that want to try something out that power Dynamic is fascinating actually with the American culture like I find um maybe in turkey and and in Europe and even in the Middle East that keeping information makes you powerful but in the United States sharing information makes you powerful and it really builds your reputation so maybe that's why they're so willing to make those introductions like they do enjoy it but it's also a way to gain respect it's so fascinating that they do that I do believe we're running into um the hour uh of our time but I'm going to take this one last question from gang gun I would like to know your view what are the top three BC Hot Topics today for you other than AI H good one I mean I don't even know that AI is a Hot Topic anymore I feel like AI is kind of a utility it's in everything so I don't know that you can really do anything without having an AI component at this point yeah I mean I agree with you AI you know uh big data I mean you know it's um data is is still one of the big Moes if you will that can actually differentiate you from from your competitors you know you have access to to the right data um or or or how how can you put that and organize that um and and I'm still a big believer in in any any form of deep Tech um uh you I like investing companies that actually have some idea of you know some sort of technical differentiation if it's just pure marketing I you know I tend I I tend to stay away from it but that's my personal thing I mean there are always the industries that matter right so environment so clean tech climate Tech those things uh Finance obviously and inclusivity on the other end of Finance is always going to be important healthtech always going to be important education always going to be important so all those things like the industries that matter are always going to be key but what I seem to find again through my with together with my colleagues is that we're seeing a lot more of the tech world coming together with the Science World and they're joining forces and it's I'm seeing this more than ever before and I've been doing this for 20 years right more than ever before you have these U people who weren't necessarily networking or talking to each other now they're coming together yeah and yeah agreed really incredible value creation is happening with that synergy so when you add the business element to it too so you have the tech person the subject matter expert and then the business component to it really powerful stuff and I think that the top three things for VC are going to be looking for those co-founders that are coming together totally agree my take on it wonderful so I think that's it for our time Brant I'm so excited that we had this chance to talk because I've had the opportunity to pick your brain for many many years and I really wanted to share it with our audience as well um thank you to my teammates in the background Cham toon and ours of take and thank you for everybody who came out to watch us and shared your questions with us as well we look forward to doing more of these CHC insights roughly every two weeks or so we'll keep you posted but um this was a great start thank you BL for being our first as always thank you it was wonderful great experience my pleasure thank you