title: Pierre Tachot - Incubating Businesses in Libya, Yemen, and Other Post Conflict Zones (Frontier Markets Podcast #11)
author: Frontier Markets Podcast
publication: Frontier Markets Podcast
published: 2023-06-19T08:00:00
source_url: https://podcasts.captivate.fm/media/a1b91a25-bca8-4846-8c3a-bc6c7a9e8063/Pierre-Final-converted.mp3
word_count: 7146
Hello, and thank you for joining me on the Frontier Market's podcast. I'm your host, Crescian Coupchand, and my guest today is Pierre Tachot. Pierre is the co-founder of Supernovae, an NGO and accelerator that helps SMEs grow in post-conflict zones like Yemen and Libya. This is, in my opinion, the frontier of the frontier, and I'm looking forward to learning from Pierre. To kick us off, Pierre, can you give us a bit of a backstory on how you've got here and how you've got to work on this accelerator? Yeah, it's a thank you, thank you for your time, and thank you for the introduction. Yeah, it's difficult to explain why I'm here right now. Many journalists don't make much sense. It just doesn't happen on New Zealand. But basically, I will try to make it short. I had a career before within the entrepreneurship and start-up scene in Western countries, in Asia, in Europe, and in the US, and by chance, I met my current co-founder who was working for French government agency called Expertise France, and at this time, we're already covering Libya. But we're working for big organizations, funded by the EU, by the French government, and at some stage, we felt that being part of the big organizations was not giving us enough freedom or efficiency to be very efficient on difficult countries, because, of course, when you go to Libya, to Yemen, there's a couple of challenges, logistic rise, to get your visa. You have to be on the ground, when you give grants, you have to give cash to your entrepreneurs. So, as many challenges, and if you're not more like in a bootstrap or lean mode, is it difficult to be efficient? So, the story that's coming from this entrepreneurship mindset, from big companies, we decided to create something of own, to be more efficient on the ground, and to increase impact we wanted to have on those countries. And then why Libya and Yemen, let us be honest, when you launch a business, you have more chance to raise money in less competitive markets. Basically, if you're to do something in the US, there will be thousands and thousands of people doing the same thing. If you want to help SMEs and startups in Libya in Yemen, well, you have less competition to face, so the chance to raise money is easier. It's difficult to execute because of course, those countries are difficult to reach and discover what you need, but it's a less competitive market and for us in the specific industry where we are, we have more chance to get funding in Yemen, in Libya, in Palestine, in this kind of conflict of post-conflict-affected countries, so that's one business reason. And also personal reasons is difficult to explain, because it's more like a metaphysical or emotional reason, why do I love so much being in Libya and in Palestine? I don't know. I just love to see those people, and I think the worst thing in my life is to look at myself in a mirror. Every day I wake up, I brush my teeth, I see myself, it's a fucking pain, at least. When I'm in France, people look like me. What's the point? When I go to Libya and Yemen and Palestine, at least it's, of course, like us, I want to be happy, I want to enjoy life, but the context is different. So every chat you have is slightly different from what you experience in Europe, in USA. So just this opportunity to see people who express different life as myself, I love it. And that's a huge motivation for me, so that's why I love keep going there. And those people are so open, and I love to chat, and I don't get the chance to mix every day with non-local people. I find fascinating, motivating, and I learned much more than three or four years working in those countries, and I did working in other countries, so it does fulfill my metaphysical, spiritual needs, which are growing, growing, the moment getting older, I guess. I deeply empathize with that. I think I shared a book with you a while back on Richard Kapinsky, I think his name is Kapuchinsky. Exactly. I remember that. Which hits at a similar type of spiritual, adventurous aspiration, and I deeply empathize with that. It's almost going to a new jurisdiction like this, I'd imagine, is like when a kid for example is like at the age of three to seven, they're just learning for the first time what it means to kind of, you know, what will walk and kind of talk the first time and there, you're learning new languages, you're speaking to people from totally different contexts, and you're obviously having an impact as well, which is fantastic. Yes, exactly. Awesome. So in terms of supernovae's operations today, what is the extent of it, and what does it kind of day to day look like, can you walk us through that? Yeah, I can give you some insight about supernovae. So basically, supernovae is a French registered NGO with a head office in Paris. We have an operation office in Tunisia, what I mean is logistic finance and so on, is based in Tunisia. Our main office in Libya, with Libyan team over there, we have an office in Yemen, and we're just opening up an office in Gaza. So that's where we are physically right now. We get funding from the EU and from the French government. So the EU and the French, I give us money to do specific activities that we agreed before about. So I will not go into the developed body industry because it could be a bit boring, but that's the point. It's like in the private sector, you raise money for a specific reason. So we raise money from the EU from French for specific goals. In Libya, we have three main projects funded by the French and the EU. First one is to help ex-factors, ex militias, to be economically reintegrated. So as you might know or not, because it's not very famous, but in Libya, you have many militias, and some of them are providing some services to the people in Libya. You have a couple of militias. It was very useful during the war, maybe, but many of them wants to go back to the civil lives. They want to go back to economic life. So we try to train some of them so they can get the job afterwards, okay? So that's one project. It's challenging, of course. One is to work with migrants and to work with the Libyan government, to work with migrants and to register them so they can walk and earn papers. So we're also training Libyan to have jobs as well in the community where they're migrants. And the last one is about startup. So startup is a kind of overused concept. When everybody claims to be a startup, a guy who's going to be a professional shop in the street, we call him a startup. So we call it startup, but basically it's more SMEs or small businesses. So for the specific project, we create what we call incubators, accelerators, which are spaces where we work on young guys with IDs or businesses, we train them, we help them to grow the business, to increase their revenues, and the ones who are doing well are getting some money, some grants. So they can carry on and grow the business. So that's what we're doing in Libya. In Yemen, we did the same, so in Yemen, we're working in the city called Aden. So Aden is in the south of Yemen on the Red Sea. So Yemen is divided into two parts, north and south, north, the capital is called Sana, and south, you have Aden, which is a big part on the seaside. In here, we created the first incubator. So Yemen has been very much affected by the conflict, so they need to create jobs to come back to slowly to normal life. So we created an incubator, we're going to train one hundred young people to come from an ID to a business, and the same as in Libya, we'll give them money, so they can grow their business, and hopefully by going to a business, they will offer jobs to the community, and if people have jobs and money, of course life is easier than if you have jobs and no money. It's common sense what I say, but it's critical. So business for me is also a way to improve your daily life and to improve the life of your community. It's not only about making money and making profit and raising a lot of cash. But you have a job, you have money, you can feed your families, so you feel good and proud about it, and by doing that you can help your community. And one of the countries has been affected by a conflict, it's not only about giving them medicines or food or whatever, it's about giving them a chance to get the economy back on track. But if people don't get jobs, they don't get pride, they don't get money, they have no thing, and you remain in the same situation. So for us, the economy is not only about making money, it's also about doing something that makes sense for people, and that's it. Self esteem. Exactly. Can you go into English? English is a bit better than mine, thank you to you. Can you go into more detail before getting into the operations of the accelerator? Can you go into more detail on the retraining that you guys are doing in Libya? Like what are some of the jobs that you're kind of retraining for, what does that process look like? Are there any stories you can share? Yeah, so it's important to keep it simple and not to overthink. So basically, we look at the job needs in the market, within the SMEs. So if we do in Tripoli, which is a big town, the capital, you have a couple of, so Libya is mostly a public system, so the price sector is still small. But you have some SMEs in Tripoli, and some simple needs, they need salespeople, they need marketing people, they need admin people, they need a content, they need financial people, everything that is required to run a small business. It seems obvious for you because, well, you're based in London, I guess, so in London, if you want to hire a marketing guy, it's easy, you're going to post a job and you'll get 250,000 guys who are over-skilled for it in Libya, it's still challenging to find the right people for SMEs. So we train people to those kinds of jobs which are required within SMEs. You can also include logistic or all those job-by-secrets that you need in SMEs. Okay, fantastic. And in terms of the accelerator, can you share some stories of the types of folks that even work with the types of businesses that they've been launching and building in both Yemen and Libya? Yes, I will take some opposite examples because, of course, as you can imagine, we're not acting in the Silicon Valley, so it's not deep tech businesses. We still have some tech businesses, but not much. So the most common stuff has the needs that people have in the market. I work a lot with some facial designers, okay, closes, seems obvious. But those guys, I mean, those guys, girls, we managed to have them a lot because in Libya right now, to learn the scale of business, it's very interesting. If today, for a moment, I want to sell this short, t-shirt iron myself in London, it will be challenging. Why? Because to enter the market, it's difficult, it's expensive, it's very competitive. So my cost to acquire a client is going to be very expensive. In Libya, you don't have much competition. So if you decide to do a t-shirt business, it's going to cost you much, much less than in England to sell it, and you have a population with money, with willing to pay for it. So most of the success stories we had were basically each rate e-commerce. One of the girls I've met three years ago, she started with two dresses, a business name is called Karaza. She was making beef 1,000 dinars a month, which is 300 pounds maybe. After three years, she has a team of seven people, eight people I think now. She makes some good revenue, she's profitable, she goes to full sales in the Middle East as well, in the Gulf region. Just because she was very accurate, we help her with very simple stuff, with our KPIs, we have a bit of cash, some grants, so we give her like 10,000 euros the first time, and then again we give her 10,000 euros, so that's a huge money, but that's not enough to hire people that are not enough to buy the basic materials and to have a business that makes sense. And again, as a marketing cost, a very low in Libya, you can make business quickly and you can increase your business very quickly if you're smart about it. So that's good stories we experience, and we have the same in Yemen. In Yemen it's a bit, so I was in Yemen four months ago. So Yemen is, so Libya is a kind of conservative countries, if you compare to London, and Yemen even more. And it's interesting because when you go there, you still have you Western stereotypes about girls and men and so on. The last time I was in Yemen, I was in Rome, and most of the girls were fully covered, so I just can see the eyes. And as a French guy, of course, as a way, I always need a small moment to adapt myself because I'm not used to speak for the girls and just see the eyes. And one of the girls fully covered, she started to discuss, and when she named her business, everybody in the room started to be excited and enthusiastic. So this girl that was fully covered, she was owning the biggest toy shop in Yemen. And she was making lots of money, and everybody in Yemen knows her, but you cannot recognize her when she speaks with her. And she started to explain her journey, or she started, we were just like two toys. We got a bit of money from our family, and she went from like small shops making like ten pounds a week to the biggest in town. So what I mean by that, those countries seem challenging, difficult, but the private sector competition is still low. So you still find some guys that you can help very quickly with a bit of cash, a bit of technical assistance, marketing, sales, finance, it can go very quickly. And that's what is motivating, because the same amount of money and the same skills you do, same in Europe, is still going to have a huge failing rates within the entrepreneurs. Yeah, that's something I find interesting. I don't know if I do answer your question, but that's what I can share. There's many opportunities for entrepreneurs over there, and with being very curate and a bit of cash, you can actually change businesses and grow very quickly. Fantastic. What types of growth rates are you talking about here when it comes to some of these businesses? As a growth rate, are you, because you go from zero, you get enough, and anything I go to. I can take 200% of growth rates, but the main thing because you go from zero to 200 much. So it's just the main difficulty. So you know, I used to be in the startup seed in Asia and Europe, and you had what we call symmetries of seed companies. So the first seed fund raising, so the raised 500, 1 million, 2 million euros, the things are going to do well, but 95% of the companies that die two years later. So that's the statistic we have, okay? So you don't have the same rate in liberal human. In liberal human is difficult, of course, but the fairing rate is lower, because the chip to the market, the price to the market is more important. So if I give you statistic about the growth rate, it's the money, anything, because you start from zero, there's not much competition, and right now there's huge opportunities for young people who are focusing to grow business. So yeah, you can have, I gave you the example of, I have another guy like that, I met him five years ago, he's selling potries, I said, it's well potries, sorry for my factory. He was making 10 dinars a month, and now he's making 10,000 a month, so you see, the growth rate is huge, multiply by 1,000 is revenue, but it's normal, there's not much competition. He has two competitors. I mean, if you sell potries in whoever in Europe, you have 1,000 competitors. So the statistic is difficult to give them, because it's only anything based on your benchmark you have in Europe. Right, okay. There's a lot of blank space for these new entrepreneurs to build industry scratch, essentially, in this case, to meet him sized businesses. The most challenging is for the tech companies, because you don't have a huge number of coders or tech people in those countries. So one of the most successful tech companies in Brazil is Presto, it's a delivery company, so they basically deliver food, medicine, everything. The guy is very smart. It's a big company, I think there are more than 200 people right now. So he has tech people, but the main struggle was to find the tech team, actually, because you don't have many of them. So initially, you have to outsource outside of Libya, but it's not ideal when you have tech business to do everything outside of your country. So to do tech company now is not the main issue, is not the money or the market, because again, the market is totally open and there's no competition, is to find the tech people. So you do e-commerce, you can do e-commerce through Facebook, easy, you will sell if you smart, I mean, if you know marketing, tech, it will be a challenge. So there's still a huge opportunity in tech, because there's not much tech, fintech as well in Libya, it's starting now, there's not much competition, but you need to find the right tech people, and you need also to face the regulation. So when you do e-commerce, I mean, honestly, it's cash on delivery, it's just cash businesses, the regulation you don't give a shit, you do whatever you want, so that's a challenge. Tech businesses is more difficult. What does the current tech landscape, such infrastructure landscape look like? So you mentioned payments are settled in cash very often, and Presto is probably the most popular social app. Are there any other attributes with regards to how people on the ground that's here, six million people in Libya right now, how they interact with technology from either a telecom basis, or from Facebook marketplace, what are the main kind of, what's your map of things? Well, you have two big telecom companies in Libya, but they're from the same group, they're owned by the same company, which is the public company, so they do compete, but they have the same stake orders, so the huge company, the public companies. You have more and more private owned banks, but just to make it short, the banking system is very limited, you cannot withdraw money in the street. You cannot pay with your credit card, it's a cash driven market, so people pay on delivery, they pay with the access, and the most useful tool to communicate to sell is messenger. It's Facebook and all the social media apps that you can name, but you don't have lots of local tools, tech local tools. What does the smartphone landscape look like? I'm most people using Android phones, do most people use smartphones? There are different in Yemen and Palestine, and Libya, the Libyan people have much more money, because it's big, all countries have money, so in Libya, it's like everywhere, there are iPhones, everything you can think about, in Yemen, of course, it's a struggle much more, so you don't have the same landscape of mobile phones. In terms of Yemen's tech landscape, the main telecom company there is also owned by a similar group, so it's also a very much public driven country. Awesome. It was zooming out of it. Could you share a bit on kind of, I know this is not necessarily something you may find too interesting, but I'm curious, could you share a bit of the kind of big story or big picture of what's kind of happened in Yemen over the last 10 years, I sure what you've been seeing on the ground right now? I'm not an historian, I started to go in Yemen less than eight months ago, so the last couple of years have been tough, because as you know, Yemen was in a conflict, and when you have conflict in this part of the world, you have some groups who were taking advantage of the situations to implement themself. So in the country it's been divided into two parts, so the North part, which is managed by a group called Houthi, Houthi is a, I don't want to go too political, but they're seen as a group of terrorists by some countries. It's a very extremely conservative group of people, so there are cities where women cannot even get out, so it's for some people it's like Al Qaeda, or this kind of group very close, but the political situation is a bit, it's a bit difficult to understand, because the Saudi don't support them, they may not be sure, so it's very complicated, honestly, it's not that I'm not into politics, but I don't get it, so I'm in Libya, I tried initially in Libya, I tried to understand the political aspect of it, but it changed on the time, it's opened down, so I stopped listening to it, because I never understood it, so basically in Yemen it's divided into two parts, so you have the U.T. Managing the North, so U.T. recognized by some people as a terrorist group, and the South, well it's supposed to be unified, I would just two groups on it, in the best difference, the country is divided into two parts, East and West, on the East you have somebody called Afthar, who is a general Afthar, he was under Qaddafi before, and he came back to Libya and two control of the East, on Eastern part of the country, so you just have one guy managing Eastern part, the West is managed by a First Minister, but we still have this number of militias who are reactive in three-prinos cities, each of them control different parts of the city or business, and the South of the country, which is, it seems to be also a country by itself, so that's the way it is right now, so sorry not to give you the big piece of this sort of this country, I'm not skill enough to tell you that. How does one navigate? I would bring an instrument with me next time, hopefully you can get both of you guys on at the same time, that way from, how does one navigate the, as you mentioned, there's militia groups, for example, in Libya, how does that kind of impact the day today of doing business? So that's also, for me, that's just part of the landscape, that's just part of the landscape, so each of them own a different part of the city, they have their own business, but I should not say that because not all the Libyans would agree with me, but for me again, to launch a business in Libya now, it's a good moment, from outside of the country it seems difficult because there's militias, the banking system is down, it's a conservative country, so it makes it difficult sometimes for the girls, but it's a totally open market with people who have money, I don't have other examples in the world, I mean, I've been everywhere of course, but you have a country with no competition in the project, and with people with high income, and this matter of no competition, high incomes, I don't have a clue where you can find it, because most of the time when you have high incomes, you have high competitions, but this kind of situation is unique, so of course, when you're in Tripoli, you see some checkpoints, you see some militias, some militias control the airport, and so on, but for me, I don't see it as an order to do business, again, for me, the main order is to take business from the skills, but if I was Libyan, I would launch a business now in Libya, and I would prefer to launch a e-commerce business in Libya right now than in England or in New York, and when you start to know Libya, you like it, and you see a good part of it, so I know sometimes we always say it's difficult and so on, of course, it's difficult countries, but we're talking about business, it's full of... We had a slight technical difficulty, but we'll get back to what P.I. was sharing in terms of the opportunities in Libya, continue, please. Now, so my point basically is, when you reach the media's covering Yemen, Libya, of course, it's not easy for many reasons, but when it comes to business, I see it, full of opportunities. I don't want to make stupid comparisons based like at the beginning in America, you get all those guys who went there, it was a full market with nobody and it was full of opportunities, so it's not the same at all, but again, you have countries which has been mostly public sector driven, which means that most of people have a public sector mindset, so not at all entrepreneurship and business oriented, so if you are one of the few to be business mindset and this kind of entrepreneurship mindset, you are one of the few, it's a fine and amazing, I remember I used to be in a startup in Hong Kong myself and we had to raise money and we thought that already was amazing, and then we went to the US to raise money, but we went like the number 25 to have the same idea when we met an investor, the visitor does, do you think your idea is amazing? No, it's the same as thousands of people have met before, say, okay, cool, cool, we're just a nobody, we're in a big market, so how do you make a difference and it's difficult, so again, I don't want to make it sound, it's easy in those countries, life is difficult for different reasons, but business wise, it's interesting and especially Libya, but Yemen also, so that's why I see that by helping out people to launch a business, it's also a way to improve also society because the more people have this kind of entrepreneurship mindset, the more they will have this kind of freedom to speak, to discuss more topics, you know, those thing cubators who are launching is also excused to get people together, so I was in Tripoli this week, we launched an incubator, it's great because Zoom people, girls and boys are coming to discuss business, but we're not freaks, okay, we don't discuss business all day long, as only Elon Musk speaks about business all day long, but we don't, and of course it discuss and start to meet people with different, so those incubators also have a very useful social impact and social role is to get people together, when you go to add in Yemen, you don't have thousands of coffee where you can go and meet girls and boys, here you have a place, you can say whatever you want, you discuss business and excuse, and I'm not going to say it's a dating place, but it's a place to meet and to mix and to discuss other things and what you get in your family and in your community, so I might sound a bit naive, but those incubators for me are doing much more than business, they give a chance to be able to speak, and that's nice. Wonderful, it's a place for kind of culture to meet and for people to just hang out as well, not just there, it's not done, fantastic, get your more technical here, I'm curious, how does the important export work in Libya, for example? I know Libya exports a lot of oil, and I know you mentioned that they're selling products that are being hand made that are kind of sold, but how do products get into the country and like Germany's insight into that landscape? Not much to be honest, but it's Libya rely a lot on imports, so it's different in Yemen, but most of the stuff you will find in Libya are not produced in Libya, I don't have the right, but it's huge, and even for oil, they rely on foreign companies or so, so it's a huge import countries, but it's very small in terms of export because I don't produce much, so they have lots, most of business are services business, that don't produce goods, the industry sector is quite small comparing the size of the country, and again the imports, the import everything. Are there any businesses that you guys have kind of helped accelerate or incubate that sell to foreign markets, and not just Libya market? Yes, so I gave you an example of fashion designers, so girls are in closes, so basically some of them started to sell outside of Libya, but it's very specific to the style of the police, so they don't sell in to the industry girls, I'm not talking about the sell mostly in the Gulf, I mentioned the guys doing potries, he has a very cheap deal producing potries where he's based, so he started to export, but the first person we bought this stuff were Libyan sleeping outside of Libya, so that's also the limit of the entrepreneurship ecosystem in Libya, it's easy to get into the market, it's easy to cover the Libyan market, but the products that are producing just feel the need of the market, and they don't have a huge value comparing to what you could get outside of Libya, so these export nights, it's very much limited, and you mean they're the best, I mean I didn't try because I don't eat honey myself, but the Paris are the best honey and coffee ever, and comparing to what they export is very much limited, because again it's not well organized, the countries, it's when you get out of a post-conflict, and nothing is set to export, and it takes time, so Yemen has the opportunity to export some specific goods, as every usual so a fish seen in the south of the countries, so they could export fishes, but right now it's very limited. Okay, so I'm not an import export expert, so I don't want to add more bullshit to my to my bullshit. No, but I think this is good local on the ground knowledge, I appreciate it. Okay, final couple of questions here, so one is I'm curious what the educational institutions in both Libya and Yemen and how they've kind of been impacted right now and how they kind of exist, so do you have any insight into what the landscape of that looks like, what does, you know I would consider what you guys are building to be also an educational institution, that's not typical schools, but what does it look like in Libya, what's the typical kind of educational profile? So most of people have diplomas, the high level of education in Libya, also in Yemen the big cities in Sanaan and then high level of education, so you know those countries who are like kind of what we call it communist driven countries in the past, which means they were paying lots of attention to give free education to everybody, because they're positive as the US, for instance, so everybody was going to study, everybody was going to university, so in Libya, in the manufacturing of engineers, you find out of guys who get PhD, you find out of guys studying economics, so the level of education is high, but the limit of it is he has not been a deity, they would say, so it's still a kind of old-fashioned way to teach, which is very much theoretical, for instance you don't have business schools, so you can study the economy, so you learn and you will understand the big theory of economy and so on, so you will be able to explain who is the Adam Smith and goes through his journey, but you don't study marketing, sales and concrete finance, so that's the challenge, also you have guys who are highly educated, to really get educated, but it does not always match the need of the markets, because you don't have this system of having internships, you don't have this system of embedding the needs of the market who is in the university, so it's good because there's some good bays and people are highly educated, but it's still disconnected from the needs of the markets and from the private sectors, so that's the main change right now, it's too much, both of it, but people are highly educated, in some countries I get more impressive, I go to some missions in Iraq and Palestine, in Iraq it's very, very highly educated as well, it's very impressive, so now you have a high level of education, so most of those Arab-speaking countries, you find highly educated people, because the university system was quite good, so it's quite impressive. Can you share more on your time in Iraq? What do you mean? Yeah, any projects you worked on in Iraq, can you share with us something about that? On the what, sorry, your time in Iraq, so you have to speak with the French accent, otherwise I get lost. Not Iraq, it was before we created supernova, I work in Baghdad, in Erbil, which is Kurdistan and Mosul, Mosul was very interesting, because as you may know, or not, Mosul during Kabul of I was managed, invaded, I'm not sure what to say in English, by Daesh, by the Islamic State, people from Mosul, they spent a couple of years with those freaks from Daesh, managing the city, which means that as a girl you cannot do anything you want, I met some guys from Mosul, it was a very weird experience and a horrible experience, and the city has been destroyed and so on, and when we're in Mosul, we work with a company from Baghdad, so Baghdad, you have lots of very highly educated, skillful people, it's very impressive, lot of startups, raising money, it's impressive, so we work with some people from Baghdad, and we created the first incubator in Mosul, and that was just after a year and a half, after Daesh left, and that was amazing, because the city was almost destroyed, falling apart, and you had this building in your city, where about 200 young people were meeting every day, discussing businesses, discussing ideas, mixing, it was also, this place was an excuse to give life again to the city, you know, so the news of Mosul was good to give life again, so there were few entities in Mosul giving back life, and giving back people trust they can go out, because of course after Daesh left, some people were still scared, because I thought they might come back, or some people from Daesh were still in Mosul, so of course you shit yourself, because those guys were very aggressive, so solely and solely you have to create those spaces where people can go and feel confident and feel the trust, so Iraq was interesting especially for this project in Mosul, honestly, I did very little myself, but I find very interesting, because again by building this kind of entity, by building those places where business and excuse to meet, you can give back life to people who have been affected by conflict, you can give back trust to people, and you give back the point to people to be human being again and to enjoy that life, so Iraq was very interesting for that to go specifically to Mosul, Baghdad was impressive because I was surprised by the love of the start-up scene, by the amount of money they raise, as a quality, I mean, Baghdad was impressive, but Mosul was a different story, it was typically a post-afflected city, we suffer a lot, and what can you do? Wonderful. For folks who are listening who have a similar spiritual and adventurous inclination, as you mentioned at the beginning of the podcast, and they either want to participate as investors or operationally, what kind of suggestions would you have for folks from outside? As investors, I mean, one as investors, and then separately for folks who just maybe aren't investing, but just want to participate in this. So investing in India human is difficult, so you have small businesses, but you don't have a crack record of exit. I mean, there isn't an startup that solves a business and made money out of it, and you also have an issue of liquidity, so if you invest in a Libyan registered company to get back your money on the stick good luck, so the Libyan startup that raised money, they're registered all side of Libya, in Turkey, in the Netherlands, in Delaware, in the US, so an investor, of course, had the first type, but I met one of the VC fund that invested in Libya, but it was in 2011, just before Gaddafi was kicked out, so of course, he lost all his money. But as an investor, it's interesting because the equity is cheap, but it's highly risky, so if you have the balls to be the first one to go, honestly, the first one in Yemen and Libya. Now in Libya is getting better, you might get the first VC fund that will be launched with some Libyan guys, so Libya, in the next 12 months, two years, maybe there will be some opportunities for investors who are bold enough to go there, as well as the Libyan companies that have registered outside of Libya, and you can have a plan of exit if you have some corporates who want to move to Libya, because it could be a good way to the first step of the era. Yemen, it's, you would take a bit more time, it would say three for your time, I'll discuss that with our contractor in Yemen, and you think the same, you think we should start getting this fund raising, mindset in Yemen, so that's an intention. As people in Dubai, Emirati, so this is a might look at investing in Yemen, but you would take a bit more time than Libya. And the younger you want to discover those countries, don't go by yourself, don't take your car or boat and go by yourself, don't advise to do that for different users. Now just work for NGOs, there are many NGOs, it depends, you have big organizations who are working there, like the United Nations and so on, but if you're a bit more adventurous, I would say, you join the NGO because you'll be much more on the ground, and you do a bit less paper, so there are NGOs in those countries, mostly humanitarian NGOs, so that helps people to give them food and so on, but I've never done that myself before, but that's an amazing experience to be on the ground, so I would just advise to join a small medium-sized NGO, and I need to discover those countries, and you will see if you like it or not. Wonderful. Final question here, any recommended readings or resources for folks who are listening to this, I know you have a shared interest in kind of novels and stuff. I tell you, I don't have any books to advise, I mean, there are some, there are some fictions, so I read fiction myself, I don't read history or I couldn't, but there are some fictions taking place in Yemen in Aden, because Aden, actually, for the French literature was famous because you know, we have a French poet from the 19th century called Arthur Rambo, and Arthur Rambo ended up in Aden, and he was there. After being a poet, he was selling guns and he was, he changed totally his life and he was in Aden, so the story is about Rambo in Aden, which are quite nice, and you have a French adventurer, a guy which called Henri de Montfre, and used to be between this part of African and Yemen, and he wrote many stories about this part of the world during the 19th centuries. And it's quite interesting, because it was a wide, wide waist at this time, so it's quite interesting. But more than Yemen, I don't know, I didn't see it. Libya, I just read one book about tibia fictions, because a wanderer, it's a funny book, it's very nice, but he will not tell you anything about Libya, so I'm sorry, I have no advices. No, I think there's a great recommendation nonetheless, I enjoy reading fiction before I go to a country as well. All right, I think that's it, yeah. Thank you so much for making the time for the interview, it's been wonderful, learned a lot, and I'm sure that listeners will appreciate this as well. Thank you for your time, it was great, see you, bye bye.