EP 359 – Vibrant Startup Ecosystems: Does Location Matter More Than You Think? – Eli David Rokah – CEO at StartupBlink

Read the best-effort transcript below (This technology is still not as good as they say it is…):

Michael Waitze 0:22
Eli, thank you for coming and joining us today. I really appreciate it. The CEO of StartupBlink, thanks for coming and taking the time to do this. Let’s just jump right into this thing. Let’s talk about what is the mission and the vision of startup. Blink, why did you start it? What’s going on? What’s the big idea?

Eli David Rokah 0:39
Nice. So thank you, Michael for inviting me. And yeah, I guess I would split into the what would be my mission as I’m working on this thing, I guess it would be having fun. It’s a good mission. So, so before all the big titles and narrative, basically, the idea was for me to create a business that is just fun, exciting to work on, gives a little bit of excitement to my life, does a little bit of impact, and allows me to, more than anything, build for the lack of better Words, cool things, cool inside, cool things and so on. And that’s the and I think that, I think that I would not have it any other way, like not not trying to never have a business that is not following those goals, because at the end of the day, we are the founders, and at the end of day, we’re creating something that is supposed to enhance our happiness. If it doesn’t, does make sense now, officially, the what is the what is really the mission of startup? Basically, we’re here to uncover insights about what’s going on in the world of startups. In the economy of startups, build tools that allow to visualize all those things I’m really hoping and I already know that a lot of people are using it to make decisions, mainly, currently, the main decision that people are using it for is, where should they go to, where should they relocate? So I’ve met quite, quite a few people that told me, you know, the decision of being where I am now, if it’s Stalin in Estonia or Nairobi in Kenya, arrived from what you guys have done. So in a way, I guess that that would be, that would be the idea. And, yeah, the idea is that it’s a combination of technology. There is a massive database of 200,000 startups, and then we just take all this raw data and we project insights into it, also tools to visualize this massive database, but also algorithms that allow us to say, here is something that you didn’t know about the world. And we’ve done our own small, fun exercise, and now we tell you that that’s what we discover.

Michael Waitze 3:05
So this is a really big mission and a really difficult to implement. I want to ask you this, right? You said you have these visualization tools. One of these things is a startup ecosystem map, right? That you do for God’s sakes like, how do you make sure that this thing is updated? Because it’s like the world is constantly changing. Ecosystems are changing and evolving. How do you make sure that it’s updated all the time? Do this by yourself, or

Eli David Rokah 3:29
we have a team of 15 people go ahead. One thing so, so, yeah, that’s, that’s sort of like I, you know, one of the things I was just thinking about this yesterday in terms of how to build a business. And I had, I had a little bit of a tough moment, just like I have about every two days and so on internally. And I was just thinking to myself, you know, why didn’t I do it on my own? You know, like I would love to be, in a way, alone. Of course, I have a lot of great moments. I’m saying I’m so happy that I’m surrounded but then again, the problem in life is that if you do want to build something that is a little bit bigger or that actually makes an impact, you can do it on your own, and that means that you’re going to insert the life of those 15 people that are with you, or 10 or 20 or 30 into your life as well. So that’s the Now, as for as for the the map itself, I think one of the critical elements is not to be a perfectionist. Say, Look, I’m okay that some part of the entities that I have on this database or on this platform and so on. And some of the of the functionalities I have are not necessarily perfect, because I still think you you can reach a lot of conclusions and insights also by imperfect information. At the end of the day, it doesn’t even have to be complete. You know when, when you. Diversity PhDs. They’re doing some kind of research about something, even if there is a little bit of toxicity in the amount of bad entities that they have, let’s say five, 10% and even if they don’t take the entire global, let’s say everything that exists, but they take a sample of 1% even from that, you can derive really, really interesting insights. Yeah, there is, as a founder in general, is just move forward at some capacity, and don’t get obsessed about about perfection, about having it 100% correct. And that means that sometimes you would have a call with someone in, I don’t know where, Oklahoma, and they would tell you, hey, you know what? The seven startup that you have on the list no longer exists. And you would say, Fine, but I’ve got the Yeah. So that’s, that’s the idea, and I think connected little bit to this, you know, because we’re, we’re also on the topic, a little bit of Asia. One of the things that I’ve realized about Asia, and one of the things that Lovitt, I think, is stopping Asia, is a little bit dis mentality that I told you, the lack of the lack of this mentality that I told you about, that I had a feeling that everything has to be perfect. Really, there cannot be mistakes. And in the startup world, it’s insanity, regardless of if you’re a bootstrapped startup or company like startup link or or even an invested company that got $100 million the minute you strive for for perfection, yeah, you will not do much, and you will honestly be scared to even start at the end of the day. The mentality of fake it until you make it in a way, it’s critical. I really do believe that it’s critical. And one of the things that, you know, we’ve been working with with tech ecosystems in Asia and so on, and one of the things that I see that, that that I really feel like is stopping the progress of the region, is this mentality of, I guard my reputation like, I like, like, it’s the more. Now I also guard my reputation in the aspect of telling lies. You know, you say the truth, you’re truthful, you’re honest, and so on. But I don’t guard my reputation with perfect execution. I guard my reputation with good execution of delivering expectations and so on. But I always felt like this is something that is this reputational risk, it has to be perfect. Is a little bit Stopping, stopping the entrepreneurs that I met in Asia compared to the entrepreneurs that I meet in Israel or at the USA.

Michael Waitze 7:52
So Ellie, can I ask you this, what kind of data are you gathering to get these insights, and then how do you analyze it? What are you using to analyze, alright, so you can understand this. Like, if you’re talking to, I don’t know if you have 200,000 startups in the database, and maybe I don’t know, 10,000 of them come from Asia. Like, what kind of data are you gathering? So then you can go back and then understand that level of granularity about why an ecosystem is a specific way.

Eli David Rokah 8:19
So we actually started doing research that is a lot wider than than the ecosystms. We also do research about industries and so on, but the ecosystem is actually a very good example. So if we if we look at the ecosystms, the idea is you gather as much raw data as possible on startups, co working spaces, accelerators, even influencers are in these centers, the total amount of investment in each startup, and that derives also the total amount of investment in each city in this country. And then you basically create an algorithm that combines all the elements of of those parameters. By the way, in startuplink, we have 1000s of ecosystm pages for each city that will tell you how the city is doing in each one of those currently 39 parameters. So the idea is that you take the raw data, you build an algorithm on top of it, and then you basically arrange all the cities and all the countries in the world according to this data. And this data is both qualitative, which means the numbers, how many startups, how many coworking, how many accelerators, and so on. It’s also qualitative in the sense of how many of them are unicorns, how much investment did they raise, how many R and D centers they are, and so on and so on, like a lot of things that you say, Okay, what what can give me really an indication on the quality. And then we also look at the business environment of each location for sure. That means, you know, how is it is to do business, how innovative is the place, how easy it is to fire people, you know, the. That’s one of the problems. For example, Europe as it’s really, really hard to fire someone. And as a startup, you keep on changing your business model, and everything changes. And if you’re sort of like, in a way, bound to having the employees, and it’s all a big drama, if you need to say, I need to cut back a little bit, that really stops you. So the idea is to gather all those parameters try to build the most accurate picture that you can on the world, and then rank all those cities and countries. And in America, we have 1300 cities rank on the website. Everyone can access it for free, the ranking itself and and 119 countries. And as I mentioned before, for people that are making decisions about where should they go? You know, that’s, that’s, that’s actually a great way to to make decisions, because we’ve done all the hard lifting in terms of running massive algorithms, gathering all the data that we can and then we serve it to people. They can take it, or can we talk

Michael Waitze 11:01
a little bit more about Asia, since this is a podcast focused on Asia, if you don’t mind, like, Are there any other insights that you have that might surprise people about what you’ve learned for any Asian city in particular, or maybe the entire Southeast Asian region, or anything that you think could be just interesting for people

Eli David Rokah 11:18
to know? Yeah, at the end of the day, building a startup, building a successful startup economy, yeah, is mostly, mostly connected to, and that’s, you know, we’re doing a lot of projects for governments. We have a few dozens of government clients, and also we work with a lot of international organizations like the UNDP and the World Bank and ADB, the Asian Development Mac, and IDB, IDB. So at the end of the day, when you really look deep into an ecosystm, and if you know there is sort of like the Maslow Pyramid of what makes something great, right? And of course, in the beginning, you do need the very, very basic elemental, let’s make sure that the government doesn’t take 80% tax or make startups illegal. So once covered, hopefully, I think we have at least one country in Asia that actually probably has them illegal. But once, once this is done once. There is no sort of like very extreme policies to prevent entrepreneurship at the end of the day. At the top of this pyramid would be the psychology of the location of the people in the location the psychology of the entrepreneurs, in a way, and when you see successful places, let’s say the USA, even Estonia, Israel and so on, right, you would see that the psychology of the entrepreneur, something that we call in Israel, by the way, hutzpah, ability to, yeah, like but in a good in a good way, it leads into two. There is the bad chutzpah, which is basically you do something that hurts your reputation, and you’re really you shouldn’t have done it. It was dishonest. But there is the other element, which is basically there, there to there, to change the FD, the courage to basically say, I’m going to build the best company in the world. And yeah, now only one or two guys in stuck in the basement somewhere, working in our parents a small room or whatever, but, but this is a little bit so, so, so at the end of the day, the minute you have this a country has a gift, which is basically People that are going on sort of missions economic development as I as I like to look at it, missions of building a startup, in a way, look why countries love startups so much, because if you’re successful, you’re creating a unicorn that now employs hundreds, if not 1000s of people, bringing a lot of investment if you’re unsuccessful, you took the risk on yourself. Yeah, and the government doesn’t have to be involved in so it’s so beautiful. Instead of you going to a nine to five job, basically, you’re now going on a mission that 90% or 95% you’re going to fail, but then the only damage is to your finances. 5% you’re going to create a powerhouse in your country or city. So I think that in the end of the day, I would go back to the main insight. And the main insight is that something in Asia is lacking in the terms of mindset, in the terms of taking risks and building those startups. And I have to say, because people are rational, and when someone is building a startup in in in the USA resource, they’re a little bit irrational. They’re saying, Yeah, 90% chance that I’m gonna fail, that people fail, but I’m gonna be successful. 100% you know, it just is. And I have a feeling. Maybe in Asia, because there is more conformity, or people have more, let’s say, connection to their culture. They’re saying, Wait, 90% of the people are gonna failing. It means that there is a 90% chance of time failing, right? And so the separation between the individual and the group that we have in places like Israel or even now Estonia or the USA, it doesn’t really exist in Asia, and that creates a situation where people are making very logical decisions. Yeah, so this logical decisions are creating a lot of problems. This is one

Michael Waitze 15:32
of the things that I try to explain to people as well. And I’m curious, like, if you think there’s a way to fix this right in the US, let’s take this example of Silicon Valley right which is a well known startup ecosystem, very well developed. All the things you would want in an ecosystm Are there, including the universities, the venture capitalists, and the mindset right to take that risk. Israel has the same thing, right? And that idea chutzpah is in America, we would just call it. You just have the balls to go out and try to do something, just try something. But laws also contribute to the ability to do that right? So in the US, if I go bankrupt, it’s not fatal, and I mean that in both the literal and figurative version of the word, right, whereas in Japan, if you go bankrupt, it is fatal, you may never recover, and your family may never recover. And I do think that those two things are playing with each other? You’re right. So there’s a cultural aspect to the reason why the laws are like that, right? And a mindset reason, too. And I think it’s similar in Thailand, going bankrupt in Thailand is really, really hard. And I think that one of the reasons why what you’re saying is true is that, well, then it’s much harder to take that risk too, right? Because if you know you’re going to fail 90% of the time, let’s say you’re going to fail. The result of that failure could be fatal, and that makes doing a startup really dangerous. Yeah, what do you think?

Eli David Rokah 16:53
I totally agree. I think first of all, countries have to adjust their legal framework to support the culture, yeah, and the cultural changes they want to, I think so. The problem is that even in the end of the day, even if the government is doing that, and I actually see a few governments in even places like Japan that are doing that, and also in places like Taiwan or Singapore, for example, Singapore for sure. Problem is that even, even if you do it a if your family is still going to judge you, and if your friends are going to pinpoint that you as or look at Michael, you just busted the company and couldn’t pay his creditors, right, then it would still not work. Yeah. And so, so the idea is to look there is a lot that the government can do, and it should do, just like we said, the basic pyramid, or layer of the pyramid, it should take care of it. But the end of the day, the fermentation, let’s say, of the actions that you do on the legal element and the infrastructure, legislative element, they take time to boil up to cultural change. Yeah, in many cases they won’t even help. Basically, you say, Hey, it’s okay, but then everyone’s saying, No, it’s not okay. You know, who is this person failed. I’m never gonna do business with him again, because that’s what my parents, a little bit there tells to me. So, so this is only part of the of the way to do it. The other part is, first of all, realize that this is a very long term process. If you do it like it’s going to take dozens of years, honestly, at least 30 years, not for like you’re going to see the first results and so on and so on. By the way, what we do in startup link, the idea of ranking those ecosystms, 1300 of them, is that even if we see a movement of plus 20, people can still celebrate. You know, Taipei went up past 20, so it’s very small in like, it’s maybe 1% change compared to everyone else. But at least there is a way to at least measure that we’re moving forward and start to celebrate. But I think it’s doing the right direction, right Yeah, exactly, because many of them are going, because it’s relative ranking, 50% are going to be in the right direction. There is actually not a right direction that’s really interesting. You might be in a situation, or you’re probably in a situation that most, the vast majority, are improving, but because they’re ranked against each other, their benchmark, 50% by the power of mathematics are going to go down. And I think that that, you know, in the in the beginning, I had a little bit of a problem with that, because it felt like, right, it’s a competition, people are improving, but they might go down. And then I understood, I understood that it makes a lot of sense, because at the end of the day, and unfortunately, in the world of startup ecosystem, it’s not a win win scenario. No, the resources are limited and the resources are the entrepreneurs and capital, yep. And if Taipei is not going to get it, New York is going to get it’s always like, you can’t, you can’t replicate those elements. Someone’s going to decide if they want to go to Taipei or to Singapore? Yeah, so at the end of the day over here, it makes a lot of sense to make a comparative analysis, because we’re not in a win win economy in the sense of the resources themselves, but going back to the point of before the psychological change, the way that we recommend to do it, and we also tell the government clients and so on, let’s celebrate our heroes, because if we want to create a change, then we need to create new culture trends in a way. So instead of celebrating the k pop star and so on, let’s celebrate the the entrepreneur that has managed to do an exit celebrate the entrepreneur that is now employing 500 people. One more thing that connects to the previous question that you asked me about, what did I notice about Asia is it also people are very much innovating locally. So let’s say, if I’m in South Korea, I would innovate locally, mostly in South Korea, interesting, and in the in the locations, they are very successful, let’s say, like, for example, again, Estonia, Israel and so on. From day one, people would be even embarrassed, ashamed to say, I’m building a solution for Israel. Yeah, they would say, No, no, I’m from day one, I’m going globally, head to head with the best companies in the world. And that’s another thing that we really honestly, I have to tell you, with the governments that we work with in Asia, we’re struggling to change the mindset about convincing people. And I almost, I almost beg the governments honestly, to tell them, guys, all your programs of supporting startups and so on. If you see someone is innovating locally in the country, cut the budget, not give them budget. So that’s a little bit of a mindset problem. So yeah, I don’t know if it’s my problem, my problem over there, or theirs, but it’s pretty interesting. So

Michael Waitze 21:53
you’re, you’re working with all these governments globally, right? And I’m sure they all have different viewpoints and different perspectives on on how their startup ecosystems are growing or being built or whatever. But I’m curious about this. Do you have any examples where you’ve been working with governments, you’ve done some research, you have all these insights. You give them, or you’re you’re collaborating with the government, and they say, oh, we need to change this thing. And then they actually go out and change it. Do you know what I mean?

Eli David Rokah 22:17
Yeah, yeah. So we had a nice example. We did a project in Ethiopia, and basically it drifted into we discovered a few problems in the ecosystm, and then we they used whatever we found to actually change the legislation of their country. That’s really, really nice to see how we just said, Look, this is too hard for the entrepreneurs. This is super harsh for the investors and so on. So that’s that’s one of the happened in other locations as well. Some of them, I can’t disclose. The idea is that you see that those things are happening on one sense and the other one is basically the promotional element of it, of winning something, of having an achievement, then celebrating the achievement. Because at the end of the day, this is all a battle for the minds. An entrepreneur that is now in a village, let’s say, in Thailand, has to decide where she goes to she’s going to basically make a decision that is relatively intuitive on several sources of information that she has received during her life. And just the idea of ranking the ecosystem and being able to celebrate an achievement again, I really like the I like the the there is always something to celebrate, by the way, even in if an ecosystem of a client goes down on a specific industry, because we’re ranking also 11 industries, we would find a or maybe it will go down nationally, globally, but it will go up nationally, or it will go up in a specific industry, there is always something to celebrate. So the idea is, take the stack of all the information. Take all the bad, the bad news, and implement strategy that fix them. Take all the good news, promote them like crazy. And one of the things that we see is that our clients, and also, by the way, our data partners, we have more than 100 governments that are just giving us data for free. They’re not they’re not clients, but the minute that they that they have an achievement, then they just shoot it out there. And basically it becomes part of their promotion of their ability. And it’s really important if you’re a small city, for example, in Brazil, nobody notices you, and everyone says, Sao Paulo Rio, a small city, let’s say in Taiwan. And everyone goes to Taipei, just by using this and basically saying, hey, none now is really increasing in the rankings, and we’re the fastest growing in Taiwan. It’s also really, really important. So part of, part of what I’m trying to tell or ask our government connections to do is to think like a startup is instead, what’s your startup doing? They’re basically. Taking it until you make it. They’re trying to pitch. They’re constantly pitching. And I’m asking the governments to a little bit get away from this having a suit mentality and be so and like, celebrate, celebrate achievements all the time. In a way, I’m asking the startup organizations that are basically working with startups to think and operate like a startup. It’s really hard, but some of them are doing it incredibly well. There is a small city, for example, in Japan that I really like their mentality, fukuka. I was just small cities, yeah, I was just there. So they, they are incredibly it’s amazing. Like, they’re, they’re even promoting more than I do. I like they’re the only ones that I’m looking at by default. And it’s so non Japanese. You know, it is. Look at us. Look at that. And I just love it so much. And who would have heard about Fukuoka in the world? Of course, everyone knows it in the region, but the world now like saying Fukuoka, Fukuoka. So that’s, that’s the beautiful thing about a government official, and usually it’s not even an organization. It’s a person that basically says, I know I have this Japanese mentality and sort of like whatever, but I’m out there totally doing my thing because I know it makes a lot of impact. And when you see something like that, you’re kind of saying, that’s absolutely great. The government is really doing this for me, you know, for my location and so on. And it’s so beautiful to see. So that’s, that’s sort of like the idea,

Michael Waitze 26:27
yes, so the, I can’t remember the guy’s name, but I think it’s like, the mayor of Fukuoka city made a decision, like, five or six years ago, and he was like, we’re just gonna make this the startup city of Japan. And because I lived and worked in Japan for 22 years, I had to go there. So I went and I talked to the people in the it’s called the cool office, right? So, and also this, this the prefecture office as well, to find out if there was any way that I could help them, right, to be able to do this, because I can talk to them. And it was just super cool to see like, their attitude. And you’re right, it’s just like it starts in Japan with like one guy in the corner going, we’re just going to do this, regardless of who supports it or not. It’s kind of cool. Can I ask you this, you have all this data, right? And you keep talking. First of all, I love this celebration thing that you’re talking about. I’m going to have to talk about this more. But you also say you have all this data and insights of like, where people should go. So let’s just leave like Tel Aviv, which is amazing and beautiful, by the way, and Silicon Valley, which is Silicon Valley? No discussion necessary besides those places like, what are the top three places people should go? Like, if somebody was asking you, what would you say?

Eli David Rokah 27:30
So I would say just like, every answer it depends. It depends, first of all, on, more than anything, your goals? Are you here to build a mega Do you want something in the style of to build the next Facebook or Google? Yep, if you do, honestly, there are probably only, I’m talking about a global Facebook, not not a local version. So if it’s a global version, it’s basically the San Francisco Bay, New York, maybe, maybe long London, Los Angeles and Boston, and that’s it. That’s basically the five that that you should really consider for a massive monster, that everyone in the world should know, right? And you’re going to do yourself a very big fever favor if you’re going to go to San Francisco. So that’s, that’s the first thing. Now, if you have a goal of bootstrapping a startup and basically creating a situation that it’s really going well, but it’s not a unicorn, going to a super expensive place like San Francisco, yeah, would not make a lot of sense, right? Also, the investors are going to not going to be so receptive, because they’re, they’re over there. They’re betting on the big bets, if you’re if you’re telling them, if you’re actually taking a smaller bet, then they wouldn’t be so interested. So first of all, it really depends on your goals. By the way, that’s why we rank those 1300 cities. Because basically we say, Look, we know that you have a lot of limitations, family limitations, your geography that you really like. You don’t want to get out of Europe or Asia and so on. Here is what we’ve got. So the other one would be also your industry. Surprisingly, the verticals are very interesting. For example, Seoul would be an interesting location to go, or Taipei if you’re doing a hardware startup, interesting, but they might not be really, really relevant if you’re doing, let’s say FinTech, in a way. So you also have to to look at the vertical that you’re doing. So that’s, that’s the idea. But you know, I think that the first stage is the understanding that the location matters more than you think there is. There is a person that I really like to follow on Twitter, and I also listen to his books. His name is naval Roby Kant, a super awesome person that I just And he basically says, look, there are three big decisions in life or in business, what are you working on? Who are you working with, and where do you do the work? And I think that a lot of us are very much. Focused on, what are we working on? What are we working with? But don’t really think about, where do we where do we do the work, and where do we do the work? You know, Michael, when I asked startups about, where was this moment of success that you had? Where did it happen? Usually it’s a random encounter with the person that connects it to another person that becomes either your client or investor. And those things, those sir, lipids, elements, are usually happening. They will not happen in a small village in Austria. Can’t you know? So, yeah, so, and the problem is that when we are in the wrong location in an underperforming ecosystem. The problem is that you would never know there is no pain, because those are gifts that are being given to you randomly, just by being in a place like San Francisco or Singapore or Seoul or Taipei. They would not happen in a second tier city and so on, but you would never notice. It would not be painful. You would say to yourself, I’m saving money. I’m living in my parents apart and so on. You will just not understand the pain of not being in a place that keeps on gifting you with random gift.

Michael Waitze 31:15
Yeah, you know, it’s really interesting. A lot of the very serious entrepreneurs and I have somebody very specific in mind, I won’t mention his name, actually, that are in Singapore, right, which is essentially the financial center of Southeast Asia, at least in my mind, right? When they start getting really serious, you know what they do? They pack their bags and they go to Silicon Valley, yeah, and they try to stay there for as long as they possibly can, because, because of, just, just because of the things you’re talking about, there’s no one to bump into that’s going to change their life. This is the way they feel. I live in, I live in Bangkok. I love living here, but there’s no serendipitous meetings that I have almost never they’re all really, really purposeful, because there’s no, there’s no place to bump into people, right? I can sit in a cafe and in, like you said, in Silicon Valley, they can run it at 15 other founders, 12 venture capitalists, three guys that have just failed, two guys that have just exited, like all this kind of stuff. Could just happen when I’m getting coffee, and here I feel like I’m in a little bit of a vacuum. Can I ask you one more thing before I let you go? Well, two things really. One is you should definitely have your own show. You should literally every week. I’m not kidding. You should literally every week have a conversation about a specific city, maybe a specific country or a specific region. If you have 1000 how many cities you say you have 1100 31,300.

Eli David Rokah 32:34
Currently, we actually have a show. But to be honest, there is never we release an episode. It’s called the ecosystem development podcast, but we released an episode every two or three months. No, no, no, it’s gonna be building technologies. It’s just, you don’t have time but, but I get you, I get what you’re saying,

Michael Waitze 32:51
because there’s so much great InsurTech, and it’s a great way to promote what you’re doing. I think because, again, you’ll create this virtuous circle, this, I promise you, you’ll create this virtuous circle people be like, Oh, this startup link. Guy knows everything. I really need to know him, but I also need to give him more information. I want to be on that show because I want to be able to ask him questions about, what is it like to be in Tel Aviv What is it like to be in Estonia? What is it like to be in Lithuania? What is this thing Fukuoka, he was talking about? Is that an English word, is that a Japanese word, like all this stuff could be super cool. Anyway, I think you should do it. Here’s one last thing I’ll ask you, and then I’ll let you go. When you look and this, your answer is probably going to be, it depends, but I don’t think so. So much like when you look at founders, right? I know you’re looking at ecosystms, but at some level, you must be talking to founders. What makes a great founder, just at a high level,

Eli David Rokah 33:42
yeah, I think I would, in this case, would go back to what I said before, the ambition, the mission of building something without thinking too much about the financial logic of taking this decision again. The problem with Asia is that we’re overthinking in many, many cases, we’re overthinking someone that says, Look, I’m gonna do it and I’m gonna just go for it and make it happen. And combine this with someone that is also honest and and guards their reputation, but has a clear mission, and just goes all the way and again, thinking globally and not locally, and so on. Just just says, Hey, you know, it’s we have one life. And if I’m working on something, I’m gonna work on, on the biggest thing I can work on, yeah, and, and when this happens, that that’s where magic happens, in a way. So yeah, I

Michael Waitze 34:42
agree. I’m gonna say one last thing, and then I’m gonna let you go. I always tell people that I think that hard working people can be good at anything. They try really good at it, but to be great at something, you have to really care about it. And it sounds to me like you really care about startup link, and that’s awesome. I really want to thank you for doing. This. Ellie, this was really interesting, and I’m telling you, should do this way more often. Thank you very much.

Eli David Rokah 35:04
Thank you, Michael, so much. I added something to my to do this time, so it’s great.