00:00:01 [Music] moving the needle on founder failure one conversation at a time i'm your host lucas poles and welcome to startup 2.0 by spark xyz join us each week as we give you access to some of the top investors and entrepreneurs around the country to help you think through and overcome some of the top challenges that start-ups i think there's no better place in the country to be investing than los angeles what is the problem that you're solving and for who like what is that specific pain point sometimes when a company is not

00:00:31 listening to its customers and just thinks it knows better than it customers has a really really hard time finding product market fit i want to see somebody that that isn't gonna stop you know this person you just feel like they're gonna they're gonna they're gonna make it work [Music] a big heartfelt thank you to brex who without their support this show would not be possible we've seen firsthand the difficulties accessing basic corporate credit without providing a security deposit or personal guarantee early on

00:01:04 as companies grow managing expenses has become more difficult and time consuming which is why we've partnered with brex to offer a corporate credit card that is not personally guaranteed offers higher credit limits provides auto reconciliation and integrates with erps using receipt capture brex is the credit card of the start ecosystem and we highly encourage you to check them out owned and operated by 130 swiss operating banks so for them to do it alone it didn't make much sense they said hey let's set

00:01:34 up an accelerator where we have a bunch of different corporate members from the swiss ecosystem to come on board and to collaborate with startups and look at the whole innovation life cycle it was pretty very broad very simple to begin with we did everything from early stage you know to late stage we did hackathons we did a six month invasion program we've done you know kind of scale up programs our acceleration programs um and that was what we were set up in 2016. we've had actually a lot of good success

00:02:02 early on with that primarily focusing and bringing startups that want to come and collaborate in switzerland with the swiss banks and financial services players and suretech players we started with our first program with three corporate members we're now up to uh to 15 our 14 corporate members and it's all about fostering collaboration between corporates and startups and that's really kind of our foundation of what we're doing since then we've kind of done we're now on our sixth batch here in switzerland

00:02:32 in zurich but there was kind of a pool that we had also from singapore um a year and a half ago going hey we love your model we find it very interesting that's kind of a non-profit model where there's it's really focusing on the collaboration and not so much on other aspects of it so we've set up a shop in singapore and recently had the same kind of pool in spain so we're now setting up spain program as well and that will be launching in early 2021 so yeah it started off as just hey let's do something for the swiss ecosystem

00:03:01 and then the model has been quite attractive to other ecosystems and asked us to bring it there and so that's where we're at at the moment nice super exciting so a lot of the startups i'm assuming then have a nice easy access to new customers and new uh potentially new sources of revenue or if not nothing else feedback yeah yeah so i mean as you can imagine with we're talking about putting startups and corporates together we kind of focus a bit on the b2b or b2bc startups um i mean switzerland has you know not

00:03:32 you know seven eight million people um so we're not really seeing a lot of b2c startups it's very b2b focus especially in switzerland now that we're expanding spain we kind of maybe open that up a bit maybe have a little bit more b2c but again yeah we are focusing on startups that want to enter into a new market or set up their company into a new market especially early stage you know do some testing with swiss banks or testing in spanish or singapore banks but then we will have some global startups or global companies that want

00:04:02 to enter into these markets and we can facilitate that with some of our programs as well awesome super exciting so so walk me through a little bit because you're working seems like three very different ecosystems right so what are some of the differences even between maybe the ecosystems in europe between spain and zurich and then uh europe versus asia yeah so what's interesting is when we went to singapore to begin with it's very similar um similar kind of small country the focus area the people the cost of living

00:04:32 there's a lot of synergies between singapore and switzerland so for us that was a very natural progression into it very big innovation cultures in both countries so very similar very similar ideas there which was which made it a little bit easier now as we venture into spain it's a little bit different different different cultural fit different cost of living different startups that we're looking to attract to come there so there it has been a learning experience we've kind of stumbled along the way as you

00:05:05 can imagine but one thing that we have noticed along the way is that the curriculum and what we're teaching and again it's not you know it's it's nothing revolutionary but you still have the same startup problems you still have the startup issues the one thing is that maybe funding in switzerland and in singapore you probably need funding a little bit earlier because to develop you need more money because it's just expensive to establish yourself in these in these markets especially early stage um so that's

00:05:37 where we do also focus very much on the investing side of things in our program especially in the singapore and uh swiss markets awesome right so would you compare it maybe too because i know that you're from san diego so yeah would you would you compare it maybe to the to the west coast versus uh maybe more middle of the country more rural uh america yeah it's i mean it's really tough i mean it's i mean there's a difference between silicon valley's is different yeah there's a different funding method there's a different

00:06:08 approach um i mean we have startups i've gone through certain programs like oh you don't just throw money at startups from day one it's like no a switzerland's a bit more reserved takes time there's a bit of more of a waiting out period a little bit i wouldn't say more due diligence i don't want to be disrespectful of it it's just a different approach [Music] when i compare it to different hubs in europe even though switzerland has always ranked at some of the highest innovation some of the innovation is

00:06:36 great but from a financial point of view you're still looking at you know berlin you're looking at london you know you're looking at you know even tel aviv you're looking at different places that are a little bit more advanced from the the fintech scene where you have a little bit more investors there is more of a hey if you're coming out of this jurisdiction there's more of a how do i put it a backing that hey you if you can make it here it's okay it's the same thing with silicon valley if you develop something

00:07:04 within silicon valley maybe gone through a certain accelerator or had a certain investor that has vouched for you it's easier to raise funding funding and develop and develop but i mean just looking at switzerland in particular it is historically a bit reserved waiting for other you know just to validate there's a little bit more almost too much due diligence if you were to ask me um it's almost overkill and that's some things that we work with our startups on is how to spot certain investors that will not add

00:07:33 value or waste your time or trying to steal too much information from you or look at so there's some interesting things there but it's a little bit different approach to be honest okay interesting i i am curious uh because we're talking about europe and brexit has been such uh dominating news uh the newslines for so long um have you seen a shift in the way that the ecosystems are working because of brexit like have you seen like an outpouring of from london into the eu or specifically into zurich

00:08:04 or has not much shifted yet because nothing's been finalized it's that we are coming up to the deadline yeah well it's interesting because switzerland is technically not in the eu oh yeah it's true that's true so they're technically anything called schengen which is kind of the free trade and movement switzerland takes all advantages of without having the commitment so it's it's a very interesting place of it um but it works out well but we don't see a lot of companies a shifting from the uk into

00:08:32 switzerland primarily because of the cost it is still operationally very costly but we do see a lot of movement of these teams that are setting up shops in germany or in other aspects even in ireland their movements are still moving around a bit we don't feel it as much in switzerland to be fair when we're scouting startups and we're working with startups and trying to attract them into the swiss ecosystem you're going to have good talent nowhere anywhere and there's an amazing amount of talent that's coming out of the uk

00:09:01 that has worked in the high streets has worked in the banks understand certain processes and actually can develop solutions that have tremendous value and within switzerland when we're focusing on our banks and insurance companies that knowledge is still amazing and we love working with the companies that are especially coming out of it awesome cool um so let's switch gears a little bit so let's walk through so we talked a little bit about due diligence and uh maybe a bit excessive on some areas

00:09:33 but walk me through kind of your due diligence process so what specifically are you looking for what gets you excited what type of fun stuff so just a little caveat so we are for the first time setting up an investment fund and we have an investment fund that we're setting up and we're gonna we're gonna invest in the graduating startups of our program so we have a little bit of different model where we're not putting money in from day one but we'll put it on the after the six month program to invest in the teams

00:10:00 that are still there now before that and what we never done we haven't really invested so we look at it slightly different so how we approach our scouting process and our due diligence is that we sit with our corporate members which are banks insurance companies core banking systems etc and we sit with indicating what's the trends what's your focus areas what uh are you looking for and that gives us a good idea of what's out there now part of the trend things on a lot of these banks and financial services

00:10:30 companies they actually don't know what they don't know they don't know what's going to disrupt they don't know the big changes so they kind of look at us a lot of times so we'll work with them on hey what are the trends out there what's coming up we then take that information then we go out and scout and then we come across all the car the startups they apply and then what we do to filter it other than the actual technologies in our six-month program which is our early stage program we have a very

00:10:57 simple criteria to join the program it's just two team members working full time and a prototype which gives us a bit of flexibility to see who we want in because our idea and our whole point is by the end of the six months they have a proof of concept or they have a project up and running with one of our corporate members which is really attractive especially the early stage startup but if you come to a program of corporates who they vote you in or want you to be a part of it that by the end of it there might be a

00:11:27 project that you can do and then you can have a case study and then take it from there yeah but as we go through the due diligence process i mean we really like no no different than you would from a vc you're really looking at the team but what we really focus on is the problem are you really serving a problem because we you know a lot of early stage founders they come with solutions and they look for problems and you know you probably heard that quite often it's that's great we know we have some of the

00:11:56 best universities in the world within a few you know miles kilometers of us so you have great they come hey we've built this tech the solution okay what's the problem and they're all trying to figure it out which is a which is an approach and that's a way but having them quickly to figure out what their real problem is is really important for us to to understand and then it comes down to the people in the team yeah i mean just a quick side note we had one startup in our program that was three co-founders they've built a

00:12:25 startup before amazing and their prototype was a one-page piece of paper that says this is what we want to develop you're kind of backing the people you know at the end of the day because we understood what the problem they were trying to do it was a massive problem in the regulatory space and they you know we came on board and they're probably one of the most successful startups has ever come out of our program so it's a little bit of everything and at the end of the day there's a bit of a gut

00:12:47 feeling i mean we you know you probably talked about a number of pcs and you know you see thousands of applications a year and you have interviews with hundreds of people there's some intuitive nature that you actually can pick up from people um but yeah we're looking a lot of the times of the problem the problem in the people i like that a lot because i i can't tell you how many times i see like decks and i'm like okay is this is it a painkiller or is it a vitamin like is it is it actually something that

00:13:15 like they people are going to get over the line and actually pay cap like pay money for or is it something that's just kind of annoying that yeah if there's a freemium out there maybe i would try using it i don't think that enough i don't think enough founders really understand that aspect of it uh especially when you're looking at uh uh developing a company because you're right the amount of time that i see but two that i see more in engineering teams where are engineering homogeneous teams where

00:13:47 they will have built something and they are looking for a a problem to fix with it but basing a venture around a very large problem and being able to solve for that i think is one of the best ways to be able to have a successful startup because there are actual pain points out there you're not going and searching for them continuously so uh yeah very uh very astute observation on your part completely i mean it's within the fintech space as well we also deal with the average age of the teams that are here are much bigger

00:14:22 than other accelerators because you're dealing with financial services regulation there's a there's a different level of understanding in a way um of certain problems and i think the most successful startups and this isn't everybody it's not all the cases but you you're dealing with people that have been working in banks or insurance companies have seen the process seen the problems firsthand or they might have said hey would they raise it to their superior hey we should try xyz or we don't have the budget what not

00:14:50 they're like well you know what i'm gonna build this and then i can install it back to you and we've actually seen that a number of times within it which is quite interesting because they understand the real problems and they're actually building it specifically for their their their core knowledge and their core understanding of what that that technology is now that's not has to be all of them but we do see an average age in our programs of you know mid you know late middle mid 30s in a way which is not

00:15:20 sometimes the average age of some of the other accelerators out there yeah definitely well so let's uh so we've seen what we look for what are uh maybe what are some of the red flags that you see during a due diligence process where you're like oh like i'm i'm out right yeah the one advice i like to give to the startups is we as investors or accelerators we have google and we really quickly easily can google your name we can quickly look at your linkedin profile and if you are there and you are working with 10

00:15:52 different companies or i mean it's there's a lot of little red flags like that it's kind of the commitment issue you know because you can get a lot of smooth talkers that are amazing presenters and within europe the interesting thing is that you know if you're a native english speaker you almost have a step up because everything is especially in financial services in english so you can get a smooth talking salesman that could come in it's like wow that's amazing it sounds great but there's no substance sometimes

00:16:17 behind it so it's really easy for us to okay that sounds great but we will google you real quick and it's literally that's it's not rocket science yeah you know so we will take a quick look at it so if you're gonna lie and say hey i'm full time on this that the other just be aware that we're going to catch you out and if you're lying then there's a trust issue from the get-go and then it's really hard to recover from that um honestly i mean again i'm just my personal opinion a lot of the people on

00:16:48 our team we'd rather just have you be 100 honest hey listen i'm already working this job i might be leaving that's cool we can work around that we can figure out a plan of attack but the moment we see kind of some distrust then it's really hard to get back on pick back on that yeah i i think there's a lot of time there's a fine line in between like founders selling especially when they're raising capital and uh uh and just like being kind of dishonest and it's very very difficult to come back because especially

00:17:17 i love it when uh it kills a lot it kills me when founders are like oh i have a commitment from abc uh vt i'm like okay like this is a very small ecosystem like i will call them like because i know them if we're saving that and a lot of time they i don't think they understand how small the actual ecosystem is and how many of us know each other i've literally had a founder do that like oh we have a commitment for series a from this we're just raising a uh a bridge round to get there uh i'm like okay

00:17:51 like i'm gonna call john [Laughter] and that's very true and i know this is also gonna sound really a bit from a salesman point of view we as investors we as you know accelerators we want to feel important and we want to add value to you so if you come armed with hey you've done research on us what do we do how can we help you and you bring that forward hey this is why i want you to be an investor in us this is why i want to be part of your accelerator we think you can add value in x y and z we have our

00:18:26 our egos as well we want to feel like we're adding value there's some accelerators or some investors that just spray and pray don't care they're just going to follow the investment model of someone else and just do it and that's fine but early stage vc's angels they we work with you know understand who you're pitching to especially from investors we're not just money you know we're more than that we can actually add value and where do you think we can add value and that's where we want to be along for

00:18:54 the journey as well it's not you know the money is yes of course we want the returns um but we also want to add value to you as a company how can we connect with you uh who who can we connect you with how can we you know be an integral part of your growth and there is a huge value in that that sometimes the startups say i need to raise x i'm going to call everybody to do everything it's like okay take a step back how are you what value do you want who are the actual people you want on your cap table

00:19:23 value yourself you know that's also really important because you can also say no not every money is good money in a way say no to certain people that you think are going to be a headache because guess what you have to have the mindset that you're going to be extremely successful in four or five years have a good exit of a million a bigger multiple if you get a headache on early on they're going to hinder you from your growth aspirations i promise you not 100 true so i mean that's a that's a good question so what should

00:19:54 so you you touched on it briefly but what should an entrepreneur not look for like what should they look for in a vc like what what is that specific yeah so we just a small just because we work with a little bit earlier stage it's kind of uh you know seed stage even almost pre-seed sometimes which you get a lot of angel investors which are tremendous because you know they've angel investors have especially in switzerland they've done it before they have the extra money they want to get into the scene they

00:20:24 want to help out so there's amazing value but what you find you know looming in the weeds especially the angels space are consultants that will try to steal your ideas get you on board say hey i'll invest you know a small amount but you have to give me a five percent consultant fee or do all this kind of stuff and then you're spending hours and hours and hours with them and you're basically wasting a lot of time that's a real struggle for early stage because they don't know how to fundraise they never maybe done it before um

00:20:55 they're very they these consultant people can be very interested in them and there might be a lure at the end and they just drag them out forever and ever where there's actually real serious angel investors that move a little bit quicker hey i know what you're doing i get it here's the value i can add so my one big thing to startups when they're looking for investors is make sure that you're also interviewing them because it's okay to ask the questions and the serious investors are going to be more than happy to

00:21:25 answer your questions because for them they're like wow the startup knows their thing they're prepared they know the value that they have they understand the value of their product and they understand the value of this negotiation the commercials so they've now taken that time with me they've done that interview with me that's a person that i can back that actually has the ability to grow so really take your time during those interviews with them because you have people that are just leeches that will suck the life out of

00:21:53 you and that's really unfortunate and that's i i don't wish that on any startup because they have this passion and vision and you have people that are just trying to take and that's that's and sometimes you don't realize it until you're you know seventh or eighth meeting in sometimes you're like oh crap here i am but it's you know it's hard but that's what you always try to teach and we try to work with our startups to be very aware of nice no that's uh it's very good i don't think enough entrepreneurs actually do

00:22:19 that especially like when i have uh coffee appointments and i'll have conversations with people i don't think that uh sometimes i feel like they're scared to ask those yeah they really are right yeah it starts telling me all the time well what can i ask like anything yeah right don't don't hold back i mean it's don't hold back ask the questions because that the moment you can be honest and open and have that frank conversation the moment your company has a problem you can quickly go to investor ask for

00:22:48 help you know or you can you know maybe you're doing something good you want to ask for an extra value or you can want to do something with them to have that openness early on is such a great value add for you long term as well yeah 100 um okay so uh we talked about some of the challenges that they have with vcs but what about some of the challenges that founders run into just in general like what are some of the biggest problems that you see early on um other than the problem the problem solution product market fit you know

00:23:24 that's the you know figuring all that out which is obviously very important we find a lot of co-founder issues when we set up the program back in 2016 we didn't focus a whole lot on it we didn't focus a lot on kind of the equity split i mean again we're again we're talking about very early stage startup we didn't focus on the equity spit split the team the roles a lot of is just product and integration investing and get them into corporates we realize that a lot of co-founders don't know how to

00:23:55 have those honest conversations with each other you know if it's two friends coming together 50 50 split well that sounds great in theory but guess what when that becomes a 10 million 20 million company and i mean so there's a lot of questions like that um so we have very much focused in recent batches the the team dynamic um what are the role profiles that you have now what are your skill sets really better understanding you as people and then what is your roadmap of your hr roadmap like in an ideal world

00:24:29 what does it look like who are you hiring it's getting people to kind of think and understand their own personal weaknesses as well if you built it if you know if you have a great solution you already have interest and people want you you think that you're going to be perfect in everything well you know not not necessarily doesn't mean you're going to be a great hr person you're not going to be a great fundraiser maybe you're not a good tech person so there's all these elements of what who are you where do you want to get to

00:24:57 and what's that hr dynamic along the way um we've had workshops where we do we do is kind of like a team workshop where it's over almost 18 hours over a number of days we've had teams that have split up halfway through and is it horrible yeah but guess what it was if it wasn't going to happen then it was going to happen one year six months down the line and they'd come back to us a couple weeks later a month later to say thank you is the greatest thing because they didn't waste their time hey we weren't aligned

00:25:27 we weren't we weren't focused on and i think having that conversation is good and one thing i also see with a lot of startups is that you can almost do too much the other way where hey you know i'm a great network i can bring a lot of people together the next thing you know you're an early stage startup with no clients and you're managing 10 advisors that don't add real value maybe they connected you to a person here connected person there give you a feedback on your your prototype or your product but

00:25:55 you're not growing and developing your company so there is a bit of a fine line there and then at the end of the day it's just be committed to it go for it and i have the utmost respect and admiration for any startup founder i've gone through it it was the most difficult time in my life but also the most successful and the most rewarding so i get it it's not easy but you just force the people to have those conversations because they're not fun but the moment you have it there's a level of relief

00:26:28 and a trust in the person sitting next to you that they're delivering on what they are supposed to deliver on which is it's a it's a load off your mind especially if you're a co-founder i i think the the anticipation up to the conversation is probably worse than the action oh it's horrible that's conversation it is so hard because what we do we have i mean we do worksheets with the teams where they fill it out individually they assess each other individually and they accept their other co-founders and

00:26:56 they talk about it and guess what it's sometimes really uncomfortable but guess what it's actually nine times out of ten it's rewarding they love it because they're all right cool we are on the same page because the most of the time nine times they're on the same page they didn't realize it no and that's that's the that's the fun thing about it oh wow we did have the same vision we never had these conversations now a lot of some startups also come in and they're actually on the same page have had this conversation can have those

00:27:22 tough conversations but when you're an innovator and a startup you want to by nature you almost want to do good you want to add value you don't want to have the conflict a huge generalization i know so having those conflicting things can you put them in a safe environment to have it to have those con those difficult conversations is really really really important and what we do isn't unique or special there's stuff you can you can google this online and figure out how to do it we just put it in an

00:27:48 environment where it feels safe i think that's also important awesome very cool um so uh what are some of the uh what is some of the areas in the startup landscape that you're kind of excited about even within fintech like what's getting you kind of excited what are some of the problems that you're seeing right now so other than what our corporates tell us to scout for [Laughter] no joking it's like joking aside they do look at us a lot saying hey what's out there what's the trends out there um

00:28:19 i mean being in switzerland and being in crypto valley there's a lot of block we get a lot of blockchain startups here in switzerland it's very very nice to see that over the last you know uh year or so the tech the use cases are becoming a lot better it's not just hey we do blockchain give us money here in switzerland the icos were mind-blowing so it's amazing that that's kind of been watered out and there's actually some amazing use cases so we're very very happy to see some of those again boring is all hell but a lot of

00:28:56 process automation especially in the financial services and insurance industry there's still a lot to be done um there's a tremendous amount to be done but what gets us excited here at the f10 is you know deep tech there's some deep tech there's some really fringe technologies that haven't really come into the financial services space i'm still looking for the best ar vr solution in finance i know it exists i haven't seen it but what's a real genuine fun use case where it's not just really probably cutesy great stuff

00:29:26 that's going to come in um but it's i mean we even though we are a fintech and suretech regtech accelerator we work with every kind of tech technology because if you can conceive of a way to collaborate with a financial services player be it a chat bot or whatever big data if you can conceive of it we want to work with you so let's figure out a way that we can you know build a product together that that services the industry so you know we don't have a certain focus we almost more focus on what our

00:30:04 corporates want um and then our corporates also look at us going hey what are other industries doing how can we make sure we don't miss the boat kind of thing cool awesome uh so a little bit tangential uh because i i read the financial times uh surprisingly enough just because american news is tough to uh tough to spread through but because i read the financial times uh wirecard has dominated uh the headlines for i don't know better part of six months um walk me through has any new regulation challenges come

00:30:43 from it has uh has it been backlash towards fintech startups like what well what's kind of happening in the ecosystem from that standpoint um so based the fact that we're based in switzerland so a lot of the focus we have a lot in our program especially it being set up in switzerland we actually have a very good regulators [Music] the regulators just like other every other jurisdiction is trying to set up some sort of fintech license a fintech sandbox they're being trying to be as proactive as they can but at the end of the day

00:31:21 they're still going to be regulators and they still need to do their job i look at those type of fraud situations those kind of issues is almost a good thing um because it gives opportunity um to do it right you're every there's always some kind of bubble there's always someone to take advantage and actually has the regulators on their toes a bit more but it also means that if you have a good business model and good foundation behind it of course there's always going to be a level of corruption you still have to

00:31:54 prove what you do is right and you have the right checks and balances but there hasn't been a massive shunning of fintech we've actually seen a lot more investments within fintech esp in switzerland now i can't speak for the details of other european jurisdictions i know there's some large tickets coming out of berlin and the uk so investing is happening um but i'm not seeing a trend where okay this is a topic we're trying to get away from in the financial services place there's still a lot of push now a lot of

00:32:29 the investment is now going away from the b to c space you know you know there's enough challenger banks out there especially in europe and there's a number that are actually coming into the us or that are moving into the u.s but there's more money in to kind of the the operational elements of things which are being good i mean i think even today i don't even know when this this clip is going to go up but what the largest fintech swiss uh core banking system just got bought by um a japanese uh company and you see so

00:33:04 it's there is a lot of push at the moment in financial services and in investment awesome very cool i like that aspect of it that uh it it can be a positive situation uh because it can lead to x y and z uh so no it's super exciting sorry for the uh for the curveball and just been uh no maybe it's my over positive thinking but whenever these opportunities come up it actually is or these things happen they're actually good opportunities for people to really if you're going to try to sneak through

00:33:39 a system and get a company live anyway you're going to have to figure out your better foundation anyway so you might as well do it from the beginning and maybe that's a bit too simplistic but it's you know true investors in true innovation and the it's still needed yeah so people are gonna people are still gonna invest and people still wanna invest time and effort uh and money into it so it's gonna happen one way or the other awesome cool so uh uh final thoughts final pieces of advice for entrepreneurs um you guys have an upload

00:34:10 application up now as well uh we can touch on that uh yeah we have we have applications over you know for our incubation acceleration program both in switzerland singapore and then we still have uh we're just opening up in spain so we have our program open for that so if there are people especially when we scout worldwide we've had teams from brazil from california all the way down to you know south africa to asia so we have really australia everywhere around the world to join our program so but the one thing i would say to these

00:34:43 entrepreneurs is keep it up really i'm i'm amazed by it my job i love because i'm inspired by them every single day it gets me going you know it's they are sacrificing their time and effort to deliver something and really commit to it and it's okay to fail the failure culture in america we don't realize it being americans that it's okay to fail you know it's okay to make mistakes try again in some other cultures i know swiss culture is slowly changing but if you failed once you're blackballed forever

00:35:20 really with the youth now it's changing massively um you know they're really taking chances and taking risks and especially innovation you're going to fail um you're going to start with a certain solution you realize that maybe hey you have to pivot slightly it's okay listen to your customers you know what are your customers saying get feedback from me if they're paying customers get that feedback how can you develop something else for a future client really think about your long-term vision and then don't get stuck on it you might

00:35:50 put a goal marker you know three years down the line but things in the world evolves you might pivot it's okay to pivot it's okay to reassess you know you don't want to force something that it's not there anymore um and it's okay to fail and that's the one thing that's really maybe because we are in switzerland and there is that we need to really reiterate that teams it's okay to fail it's okay to have a product doesn't work um it's okay to say hey this doesn't work and if you're still stuck into it you know give

00:36:18 yourself let's say i want to figure out within eight months or give you whatever time horizon if it doesn't work by eight months you know i'm gonna go back to the drawing board and either get a different job get a paying job or whatever it may be but give yourself certain timelines and goals to achieve especially early stage because if you don't you just aimlessly go around you kind of just don't have that that focus really give yourself goals and timelines and it's okay to fail and if you don't fail

00:36:45 it doesn't mean you failed it's just hey there's a wrong time or wrong product but jump back in and do it again because the world needs entrepreneurs and that sounds as corny as hell but that's how we have evolved and continue to evolve and i just love working with them i just love it i mean we all do here at the f10 so keep it up and we you inspire us and you inspire the investors more than anything so just just continue to do what you do awesome james well thank you again for uh coming on the show

00:37:13 and uh yeah look forward to chatting again soon lucas thank you so much and wish you all the best thanks you