From Gaming to a $1M Agency: Rayka Moradi's Journey to Launching a Venture Studio Without Sales/Marketing | Hosted by Tom Marcus

In this episode of Building Public Radio, we explore the inspiring journey of Rika, co-founder and CEO of Gapley. Starting at the young age of 12, Rika's passion for gaming evolved into successful game development agency. Rika emphasizes the power of patients, community and providing value as key ingredients to his entrepreneurial success. He shares his experience as blockchain, cryptocurrencies and strategic importance of communities and we delve into how he grew his agency by offering value first, often for free and the role of networking and community involvement in scaling his business. We had just enough time to discuss the startup ecosystem in Dubai and his venture studio model, which focuses on joint ventures and leveraging resources to solve market problems. This episode is rich with insights on endurance, strategic partnerships and how to navigate the challenges of entrepreneurship. What can I say? Enjoy. Hi there, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Building Public Radio. My name is Tom. I'm furlough C.O.O. and today co-hosting with me, Valeria, our community manager. Welcome Valeria. Hi everyone. Today we're hosting here, the one and only Rika, co-founder and CEO of Gapley. Did I say it right? Correct. Yep. Pleasure to be here and I'm excited. Well, so we're excited as well. We're happy to have you here. And it's not the first time that we're talking. We talked for 15 minutes prior to recording what we're recording now, but we know each other for a couple of months now, I think. Also yourself and your co-founder Faz and a couple of more people from our team. Hopefully we're going to enforce it and really have an even better relationship and work together, but we might touch it a bit later. Anyway, I think we'll just jump directly into that. We have you to there to talk a little bit about your journey, a lifetime story ever since you kind of like he said 12, right? And through your journey, development, agency, venture studio and kind of like how everything wrapped together, right? So I think we'll start with the normally flow. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Who are you? Were you based? What do you solo to get to the architecture, based in right now and all the story? Well, yeah. So originally, I'm based in Dubai now. My name is Raikka. And right now, I'm 22 years old. A lot of people get surprised when they hear it. Because I usually open up with I have 10 years of experience in the game development space and they're like, okay, yeah, this guy must be 28 plus, but I actually started development from 12. I remember the good old, pie for casual game days. There was Ketchup. We do all those companies. We worked on games together. And I worked with a lot of game studios back there as a game developer and designer. And that really initiated, I was always an entrepreneurial person. So that initiated the thought of creating a company. I remember back in a day, I was selling like hard currencies of different games to my friends because they didn't have a credit card that I did. And I just leverage that benefit that I had over there. But throughout time, I realized that what I was doing as a developer could be offered a skill. So I started my game development agency. We provided raw development resources mostly to game studios and game companies at first. And I took a big interest into the whole blockchain space. All the stocking for a sec, sorry, but when you're saying like games or gaming and how many say 10 years ago, that would be 2014 something like that. Now I'm not very much of a gamer myself. I was never, I never been. But what type of games just for us, we have a better picture of you. Yeah, 100%. So it was for the most part, hyper casual game. So if you ever played Flappy Birds, if you ever played 24/8 or games like that, where it's like a very simple mechanic, it's mostly either just with tapping, swide being, timing, those types of games that you usually see people playing in the meta just the past time. That was the type of games that we were making, yeah. Nice. Okay, cool. And many more by you. Yeah, yeah. Mostly I'm mobile, iOS and Android. It used to have a very, when I look back at my history, I see a lot of following trends. So back then, hyper casual had a big trend. There was a big revenue opportunity when it came to mobile games. After a couple of updates on iOS that actually died down quite a lot and the whole market started to deteriorate. But the point where everybody was talking, like playing hyper casual games and also companies were making millions of dollars. That was the point that I got into the game. It was a very interesting space for me because I was able to one play games. I played tens of games every day. I was already addicted to gaming. So I could just channel that towards my love to create games and then start making games that actually gained users and I could come and show off and say my games had 20 million downloads overall. So it was a very interesting time. I think there are some similar opportunities right now to it and throughout time, there's always opportunities like this. But back then, yeah, that was the main thing I did. Playing games and making them. Awesome. Okay. Now it's clear. Yeah. But long story short, I personally got a lot more involved into double blockchain space. I actually started my first Bitcoin in 2016. And how it's a great time to look at the value, right? Sure. But that's in case if I held it. I'm not that broad. Yeah. Strong hand Bitcoin holder. I wish I was. Yeah. So around when it was 20 something case. So I still made a good money, but yes, compared to what it is right now, especially as we're recording this process Bitcoin is every day hitting a new all time. Amazing. But it's so trendy. I just look at it. It was 18 nine grand. Now it's 86. Anyway, but it's just like I think ever since Trump was elected right. I see the whole market rise up, especially this. I have some Bitcoin since 2018, but a lot of them are unfortunatly. Yeah. I think there's definitely a lot of speculation when it comes to cryptocurrencies. But overall, the thing that excites me about them is the different abilities that they give me, originally speaking because I was in a very limited environment, both financially and also access wise, action wise, etc. I had to use cryptocurrency to work with different companies. I actually remember when I worked with the first company overseas that had to pay me and I had to go through the process of selling them again, send me my money in crypto. That was a whole process. They didn't know what Bitcoin was. I had to first teach them what Bitcoin was. It's not a scam. Now you have to use there. Now you have to pay me. But for you, it was an essence. Instead of having a bank account, starting with the wire and also tax, tax and everything around that, that was their main essence. Yeah, exactly. For the most part, the thing that's crypto makes very easy. Even right now, we're working with a lot of companies as an agency that we push them towards working with us in crypto. Even though we're now in jurisdictions that we declare crypto as our income as well and we pay tax on that income. But it's still a good way of transacting because of the borderless fashion that crypto has. It doesn't take the normal multiple days of wire transfer. It doesn't take the hassle. It's just in a couple of minutes, everything's in your control. You actually hold the money. There's no such concept as a bank run, etc. So, yeah, there's years. We drove into that direction, which I didn't think that we'd win, but if you're already talking about it, just a question. When you're charging a customer, a Bitcoin, normally, I assume, yeah, and it'll work for Rokes, but you frame it, let's say, the work is $5,000 and then you do the conversion to and then they send it to Bitcoin. How do you play with Bitcoin then? You immediately transfer it into your funds. How do you call it? State the coin. Yeah, so a stablecoin, or you tip it in crypto. Now, we just talked about the trendiness and it goes high and that's awesome, but it also drops. What's the play there? So the way we usually work, I used to be very involved in the actual speculation game of crypto, so I kept a lot in Ethereum, a lot in Bitcoin, etc. I think I'm a little bit of a dopamine junkie, so it gave me a dopamine rush every time it went up and down. It creates a whole other game for me that I think was distracting me a lot. So I actually flipped it around two years ago, two, three years ago, and we strictly work with US dollar amounts. Even if we're getting paid through crypto, if it's, for example, Ethereum, we instantly converted to a stablecoin and keep the stablecoin or take it into the bank account or do all sorts of things. But I try to not really play with the valuation of that cryptocurrency because I don't want to have my focus deviate in that direction. I don't have to add another worry from myself. I agree. But simultaneously, one of our friends actually raised the fund. This is one of the fun things about cryptocurrency. So today, dodgecoin literally doubled in price compared to a couple days ago. I don't know if you guys have heard of dodgecoin and Elon Musk is pushing it a lot. Everybody at least heard about it once, but these guys actually built an ecosystem around dodgecoin. And what happened was they kept, they raised $3 million for their startup, but they kept all of it in dodgecoin. So overnight, they had six million dollars. Well, there's no way. Which is funny. Which is funny. When it works, they are super smart. But when it got the prize, I have there some idiots, yeah? To me, like, again, I know that. But we got into like an investment strategy as a somehow. And I actually, I like it. I like this subject because I also did it, at least internally, for my family and my personal stuff. But like I would always keep a small portion, I would say. And again, it's an okay. It's my case, obviously. And but also as a strategy, as a part of a company, especially if you're already getting paid with Bitcoin or whatever crypto, I would take a decision like a 5% of every transaction, like I will keep in the cryptocurrency, the rest I will immediately do that. Like that, that's for investment. We always think or, you know, okay, hope that the trend will go high and eventually we'll do some and we'll make some profits out of it. Maybe that's a right strategy. But if they're overall financials of your personal living or a company makes sense to live 5% every time, but this is how I would play it. Yeah, I think it's always good to hedge against not fiat currency, but I mean, have a hedge for yourself, like have a basket of something that could grow if push game to shove. And if it went down, you're not losing your business. I think that makes a lot of sense. Specifically in crypto, especially two years ago, back to the agency, one thing that grew us a lot was actually getting some NFTs, which everybody, like when they hear NFTs, they hear scams, but actually what those NFTs were able to give us were communities. So these are people that I'm coming to Bangkok right now and I'm meeting because I met them like two years ago in an online community and that gave us the benefit. Maybe the NFT itself isn't worth anything now. I mean, a lot of those cases, it's not. But right now I made a lot of connections through those communities. There are communities that shaped around specifically like founders, startups, people who are looking for services, people who are providing services. And we met people of all sorts like we've we had the chance to work with some amazing Fortune 500 companies that we got to connect with them through people we met in the space in these communities. So it's it the community part is a very important thing. I mean, in the expansion of our business, even like going back to the old blockchain days and us getting more involved in that space, even then it was very much community based. People he know, all you connect with people who believe in the same thing as you do, which is at the end of the day as an agency. That's one of the strongest assets that you can have. If you have accessibility in a specific community, it's going to be a very massive asset for you. I think that's something that we benefited a lot with working with people who were very bit of crucial in a specific community, even becoming active in a community. I think that's something that helps a lot with the agency route because you never know who you can meet through a community, especially if it's like mine that people say in quality of people that gather around. There is a high chance that you'll actually be able to make some connections. I even met Fuzz, which you mentioned, which is my business partner now. I met Fuzz in a community. So we were just chilling there talking with each other and we realized we had a lot in common and the vision was similar and we started building products together. So yeah, I think at the end of the day, you could potentially even hedge a part of your, I always say you should put a good percentage of your income, especially as an agency into communities and being active in communities because the how else would you really try to do active business development? When communities, I'm not just talking about online communities, it could be events, it could be like masterminds, et cetera, but it's important to know that these close groups of people have the ability to give you the access and power that you don't have right now. So yeah, I completely agree. You know, it's partly funny, partially interesting what you're mentioning. Like a lot of companies, businesses, startups, agencies, they start their business, they run it, they get it, whatever, they get into some sort of a port where they start, they get the understanding of what you just said of investing in a community. Wherever or however type of a form that community is, I'm just thinking about furlough, furlough started, it is and started as a community and out of the community, that's like 180 degrees, the opposite like process. Out of the community, we grew some other parts into a real business, one of them would be working with brands, providing some services. So it's interesting that you're putting it like that. We talked earlier about a potential for the next, a second episode with you and you talk about communities and NFTs and everything like that. I think that would be an awesome idea to get you with Joe or CEO to talk about crypto in general, but more in focus are plans to launch a DAO to decentralize the community and empower that to really empower the members in it. So that might be an interesting direction. Yeah, 100% I'd be happy to have a conversation in that side. That's my passion and the headline of this story is how I grew my agency to seven figures with no marketing and sales, but the reality is the marketing and sales were the communities. I just didn't know. The way just you paint a little bit of a picture. After the blockchain started getting rolling and we did some blockchain developments on that side, we started getting more involved with communities and influencers specifically. And we worked a lot, we worked very closely on providing with influencers on providing them and their community's value for free or in a mutually beneficial direction. And that ended up positioning us in a very influential position in these communities and with these influencers. And right now in the current world, I mean, the biggest resources attention and influencers and communities are one, like two of the places that have the most amount of centric attention in them, which I think we could easily leverage by providing value. A lot of people don't go the extra mile of providing value first and then expecting something. And I remember my bank account was literally going to zero and at some point it went to zero. And I was around 50 or 60 K invested in games, building games that I gave to communities for free. I literally lit that was the turning point for my company. I started building games, I wanted to scale everything and I wanted to work with higher quality people. So I started building these games and hopes of me being able to go out and sell them to all these communities. But then I saw really it's not that easy to directly build something and go go out and sell it to these companies, but it's ready to go at game. So I actually positioned all my resources into building these games for them for free. So they have something to provide their communities with. In exchange, we're just at a position where everybody talks about us because we are the people who built those games. And that actually got the switch flipped and we started these interesting partnerships with specific communities that started to grow and then send us clients and got bigger and bigger and bigger. So that really was the turning point. I think one of the biggest issues with agencies, especially the ones that are just getting rolling is they're not willing to put the extra effort and go the extra mile to really execute on the jab, jab, jab, right hook method, which is give first a lot and then maybe ask for something. Which at the end of the day, if you start giving people will feeling client to give back something to you. I've heard people tell me, please tell me what I can do for you. And these were people who have like hundreds of thousands, millions of followers or massive communities. So it was a very good asset to have. And I think that was one of the reasons our agency was able to very quickly shift the switch and grow. Because we, I mean, now that I look back at it, it was a very risky thing, but simultaneously I was at a position where I was able to take that risk to go down to provide this value. Not everybody has to go literally to zero to provide these values, but it's just a mentality. You have to have that mentality to provide value first and then ask for something. Which in that fashion, they start making more sense and actually working out a little bit better compared to just going in and saying, Hey, I provide this service. Did you work with me? Which I see, which I see a lot on LinkedIn right now. So yeah, it's a, it's an interesting dynamic. Yeah, overall, listen, it makes, it makes complete sense. Like I think, I think if you take people five, eight years backwards, like everything that you just said is like, what? Like, how can it even be possible that like, why would I invest time into, I wouldn't call it the invest time into others, but why would I give free stuff from my end, advisory product, money, whatever, different, my time, whatever. Yeah. People were very much under the traditional journey of highly, high marketing, high budgets, high stuff like that. The beginning of the career social media or stuff and sales oriented and stuff like that. And today, I think it's a very common understanding. And especially for people like us who live, kind of live and breathe, their startup and what divides and space and community and like doing these type of calls and and and chats all days. And to that, when I understand it like it's, it's all a matter of reputation, basically, I would say if you come genuinely in providing value and being that person that people can rely on and then they value you, they say, okay, he knows what he's talking about. He gave me from all these free time, that's a person to do business with. And then you get double the potential or the amount that you eventually or originally was expected to get. And I think that's a very important important tip or a focus one. So essentially what you were saying, focusing on like building your reputation and credibility, I would say a spot of building a network, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. And to build off of what you just said, everybody focuses on being, for example, the marketing agency for startups or whatever, where you could be the marketing agency for startups in this community. And that would actually make a lot more sense and be more achievable for you as a, as a first step rather than just going for the, for the big bite first and becoming strategic with the way you position yourself in a community. So your D guy that does games in this community, everybody who wants to talk games comes to you. Then that's a good position for you to be asked. Depending on the way you want to position yourself, you definitely have to move in that direction. You move to position yourself in that direction and the strongest tool you could use is giving straight up value to others. And yeah, I think that's one of the, if not be most important ways to start building a network and connecting with people because you can't easily go around and just say, hey, I want to talk with you. I want to connect with you. That's where you actually have to be able to provide some value first and people being actually intrigued in what you do. And then from that point, it gets a lot easier for you to be able to build up your credibility, build up your network. And right now, most of the agency work that we have really comes from where the mouth. We don't do any external allow to reach. There's of course, networking that we do through these events, through our communities, etc. But right now, it gets to a point where it becomes sustainable. And of course, double down again and add more to your network and double down again and add more. It becomes a reputation game, but I think you have to build your reputation from somewhere. There is a first step. You can't just skip everything and become the agency that you're wishing you would have. Go about it one step at a time. And I think that's the important part when it comes to this process. I mean, for us, it really started working out after maybe two years, one year, two years of contributing. And then we were at a point where we could actually yield off of the fruits that we planted, the seeds that we planted. Yeah, I think that's a good point, by the way. It's like it's both giving for free, I would say, but also having the guts and understanding that this is an marathon and not like a short run because the wow, how do you call it a day? The wave that comes after that towards you, like meaning that the revenue and the potential of the class, it takes time to get it, because you gradually being things and then you're starting to get it. And you say two years and you know, that's obviously that's something that someone needs to take in consideration, mainly financially, but also like you know, they're optimism and understanding that, okay, like, how days are going to come. But if I'm going to do that consistently and with my, and hyper focused, eventually I will get to that point. Yeah, I think we, sorry, sorry, but I was just going to say, I think overall entrepreneurship, because right now we've worked a lot with startups as well, people who are trying to scale all sorts of businesses, B2B software, B2C software, etc. The single, I think if I had to just put one metric as the most important metric is how much you could tolerate, how much pain, how much effort, how much hardship, how much of all this you could tolerate, like how much is how much you put a cake and like that in the best one, right? So revenue, network gaming, whatever, I don't know, fun or was that tolerance or how much I'm done. And then also patience, I would say. Yeah, I think I think it plays a massive role. Like right now my girlfriend is, she started her design agency two years ago and I was very involved in helping her grow that and we worked very closely with our agency as well. And I, the only, I guess guidance that I tried to always push to her and give her was, yes, it's been a year and it's not the same way that you expected it to be. But the game is how much pain you could tolerate. Like how, how many years can you go on without expecting it? It's a little bit counter, counter intuitive and it's not really in the, in the same direction. But if you, if you really take it as a, as a business owner, it's like how, how many years I could tolerate this before I get to success. I mean, at the end of the day, it always ends up like that. You either give up or you tolerate enough that you get successful. So there's no other choice. But I'll go, I go and call my wife. So for a short period of a set of spoohing. But yeah, luckily for her, she started working with some massive brands and now she's like, yeah, you said it. It's a way to live a little bit more. And it worked. But yeah, at the end of the day, it's, it's, it's an entrepreneurship is a very hard game. I think people who are not capable of waiting, I'm a very, I'm saying this, I'm a very impatient person. Like if I want to do something in my timeline for it is four weeks, like we're, we're raising for one of our startups and my timeline to raise the pre seat was four weeks, which in up to where it doesn't make, it's like it's pretty much impossible. And what the word it, it's sometimes this, but if it budget's a little, even a little bit from that, I'm going crazy. But simultaneously, I know that even if it goes 14 months, I'll stick to it because although my, my patience code on code isn't really that high or I'm eager to have things done quicker, I can wait for, for, for the result to come because I think if you can't really wait, you just, you just end up doing something and then switching to another thing and then doing something else. And nothing really ever ends out. But I think it's important to have consistency alongside what you want to do as well. Which I'm personally trying to work on it as time goes also. I'm trying to be more consistent with different stuff that we're doing, be a less jumpy. But a lot of times it's, it's just massive trends that you see that that I can't refuse. So it gets very interesting to me. But yeah, I think especially, I mean, it's a good thing on a agency level if you're always keeping up with the trends, etc. Because you have to. Otherwise you'll stay behind. So I think even with the, with the people who we consider as very patients like this guy has been building this for five years, I actually met a, you need to, you still need to go, like you seem to evolve yourself from and go with. Exactly. Yeah, you have to, you have to follow the trends, even though you're sticking to that original vision or or a specific direction, you have to be able to adapt. Because if you don't, you're just staying, staying behind. But yeah, I think it's, it's a very, very interesting. The agency game is a very interesting one overall because you get to work with so many people from, at least for me, it was like this. I got the chance to work with so many people from all sides of the world that I see the people who raise very quickly and spend it very quickly in their super aggressive and they get no where again, the same type of person that goes somewhere. Some guy who's been building his game for five years and now he wants to build it for five more years. So you work with all sorts of people and you see really at the end of the day, there's the, I think the important part becomes, as an entrepreneur becomes how well you could discipline yourself to position what, where you want to, where you want to get and actually shoot for it and pivot a little bit, but still go towards the direction you want to go. I mean, at the end of the day, if you can't have an end goal and vision, you're just shooting blindly. I think it's, I haven't seen that many cases that it worked out well. So I think that's, that's a little bit of a challenge, especially with, with founders like myself, even who just want to hit a specific criteria or metric or something, they usually get lost in the process. And I think that's something that more people need to focus. I overall, I think founders should focus less on the product. Oh, I'm just rambling off. Sorry, but I was saying so. I'm just saying stuff comes to my head. Yeah, another thing that just passed my mind is a lot of people focus on same with, with trends. A lot of people focus on making the perfect product, where it's never about making the perfect product. Like it is funny to me how many people, like it's, it's a good thing somebody build sticks to something for three years. But if you get stuck in a loop of making the perfect product for three years, that's a completely different thing and you're completely doing it wrong because you can never make the perfect product. It's never about the product. You have to ship first, get feedback, it's a rate, again, repeat the process. So I think that's, that's a very important aspect. But yeah, sorry, sorry, I deviated from, from the, the direction. That's not good. That's how you get the real kind of like gems from, from people. So I think that's all, that's all good. And just, just on, on your point, like two, two points there, while I, I definitely resonate with you talking about the founder that is, is eager to, to run and to win him, to, to shock some specific KPR or whatever. I just wrote a couple of weeks ago, I have posted about that, like that, like that, that dissonance between the founders who are super visionary and like 20, 20 meters above you. And on the moral of the queer, operational people, well, okay, you can't do it or you can't do it. There's need to be, there's supposed to be a plan here, there's a strategy, let's build it. Let's walk a path in order to get to where you're in using, because absolutely with that. And while I worry a heart of, from time to time, of a video, a visual or myself, the majority of my work is like, exactly taking those people down, back to earth and give them some kind of a map. Okay, walk through that. Let's do it, handing out all of that and potentially we'll get to that end point that you're a visioning. And yeah, I want to go back a little bit to kind of, to your story. I mean, up to, up to where you guys are today and what is happening, what you guys are doing. And just one question to hand earlier was you said you've been, you've been doing the development and the agency and with the community, then you said that you were doing all kind of partnerships with other communities. So maybe just a couple of words about that because that was interesting. Now, 100%. So I think overall community is, is audience on steroids. So a community is people who not only care about the same content, but also care about each other. And that's what makes a community. And I think it gives the ability as a business just quickly saying like, extracting all the metaphors and all the different stuff. A community is a very good vehicle for people to drive their products through. That's the reason we're seeing a lot of founders being able to build successful businesses off of communities because it's a very, very strong tool. I mean, that's something I personally haven't cracked into myself building a community. I think that takes a separate skill set that's, you need to, you need to master and go towards, which I mean, Tom, I'd love to pick your breath in on how we could go in that direction. But on the other end, what we could do and what I can do is making friends is, is meeting people connecting with them, networking and, and finding aligned goals, which in our case would be finding aligned goals with communities to build products with them. And I think that has been a very, very beneficial tool for us overall because it's not only products with them. It's a lot of, it's a lot of times products for their communities, value ads for their communities, value ads to us. So it's, it gives back in all directions when you're working with communities because you're able to one leverage the same goal that all that community has came together for and, and build a product around that. Provider a specific value to that community for free to gain their attention, gain their network, gain their trust, provide value to the founders of the community. So they're standing at a position where everybody in the community is coming across them and they have a lot of access. They can open a lot of doors for you. So overall working in a community and adding value in a community is a massive tool. Even like a lot of times, especially starting, starting out, I wasn't able to go to somebody from that community who was in the managing team and reach out to them to get connected with them. So what I did was I started in the community. I actually became a part of the community, started being active, started providing value. And a couple of people knew me as the guy who knows about that or as the guy who gives feedback about that. And then I got more active in calls and the management of the community started to know me and that was the point that I was like, okay, I love this community. I'm going to give you this for free. And that was my pretty much the way I got my, my standing in a specific community because otherwise, everybody thinks about it like either have to pay to be like at the top of the list in a community, which you can do in some cases, but you still don't get the, the validity that you would have otherwise. So you have to pretty much any race gets to a position of trust in the community. And I think it's, it's important to be active there. I mean, right now I'm not the person who's the most active in different communities. I have my own community that communities that I'm active in, which is now in a different direction. But even right now we have people from our team who are active in different communities, online communities in this squad and telegram and a lot of places that really are just out there to connect with people, see how they could provide value, how they could connect with each other. Even to this day, that's one of the biggest, biggest leverage points for us. And I mean, right now we have a team that is able to do that at scale, but even before has this all started by me being active in a couple of communities and then two people being given a couple of communities. So could easily scale from there and you don't need more than one community to, to be known as to make a successful, start a successful agency. And my eyes, one good community is enough to change your business because that's what happened with me. So I'm the living case study of what I'm saying for myself. There it's a very, I think people underestimate the power of a community. They're like, yeah, this community is whatever, 5,000 people, you can't do anything with 5,000 people. We're in reality, that's 5,000 people who could introduce you to another 5,000 people. You could then create an actual proper network for you. And I think that's a way. See your theory where it's like you're five canchains away from Elon Musk potentially. If you think about it. Truth? Yeah. The other day I met one of the, one of the lead investors in the SpaceX. So I think I'm like two handshakes away now. So you're also like most probably two or three handshakes from Trump, right? These days. Good point. Good points. And that's my opinion. You're four, five handshakes from what you call a North Korea leader. It can go with. Right? Anyway. And just to go back to your point about community and on creating those opportunities, the fact that you are here with us and we have some stuff behind the scenes between us as well, that's exactly how it happened, right? Eventually some person from your team eventually got connected to me over for a loss. We talked a little bit. We got to understand like what the opportunities there are there. Then they connected you and friends with us. And that's how it happened. Yeah. If not by that, we would not have met each other most probably. Yeah, exactly. And I think like the important thing is a lot of people even get to this stage, but they become very pushy. I think that's another important thing to note as well. Where you have to think of the other parties, benefits as well when you're trying to make a collaboration. Collaboration doesn't mean you selling them something. Collaboration is a proper collaboration. Space collaboration. Yeah, both parties are equally getting benefits. I even say like with my thesis, the other party gets the benefit at first because like overall, I think that's where you get the best level of trust because you're not there just to sell something. You're there to make a proper connection, make something actually happen. Do something that is positive for them. So it's very important. I think like in communities, the most under a lot of people don't even realize they've been already working through communities. They're like, yeah, I met that like Mike, ex-client in that place. And I'm like, okay, isn't that place an event which they're pretty much bringing their community to an event? So it's still a community. I think nobody just thinks about it in that direction. Yeah, but they're all excited. Solid and we're all accurate. Everything you're just going to know. Okay, like I want to have enough time right before we hit the 60 minutes, I pretty soon. And I want to hear a little bit about Gapley and what the guys are doing. And maybe if you can give a bit about like the distress between what's a venture studio and VST and maybe some tips there. But also another thing. I'm kind of interested in you living Dubai, right? Yep. So like, how is it there in terms of, you know, startup space? The startup space, I know it's really much evolving. And if you say that the USA is the startup place, right? And some other capitals all over the world, right? But I know that these days also Dubai is rising. And also it's position in times loans and everything. So I'm pretty interested to hear a little bit about that as well. Yeah, 100%. So I'm going to leave Gapley for the last, but we're going to talk a little bit about Dubai and the community as a whole. I think there's a couple of things that people don't consider when, when it's thinking geographies. Yes, there is certain benefits to being in a particular place. I don't think you could deny that. But I think the biggest impact when it comes to your location is actually about the people at Raju. What's the mentality of the people around you? Which again, one of them goes back to community. This podcast was supposed to be me telling how we got successful ages here with no sales and marketing, which in reality it's community. The reason I'm focusing very much on that part is that exact thing. I think even geographies get back in the community aspect. Who are the people around you? What are their goals? What's their vision? Are they pushing you forward? Are you seeing opportunities around you? Are you seeing people who are actually becoming successful? Which I think is a very, very interesting dynamic for me personally coming from a very small town in a very small part of the world. I personally see a massive difference when living in Dubai compared to my own hometown. But I don't necessarily contribute my success to it. But I know it's a factor that pushes me forward. The reason I'm going out and meeting people, the reason I'm getting excited sometimes. The reason I'm getting disappointed a lot of times is because of the community around me. When you see a Bugatti passing by and you don't have it, I get a little bit disappointed. The community does definitely have a geography, does definitely have a good impact. There's definitely places that provide you with more opportunities as well. I'm not going to deny it. It's getting less of a. How could you say it? It's getting less of a criteria though. Because I personally started my age as you from the small town I was born in. I didn't necessarily have the benefit of being in Silicon Valley or all these crazy places that people are at right now to have the network. I know there's benefits to it, but because we're living in the world where you can connect with pretty much anybody that you want through a series of actions, then I think it becomes just a matter of are you going to take the extra step to go to that direction and make that connection? I think a lot of the connection game and making things happen is also very. What you said, as a CEO, you know this very well, which is setting up steps one after the other to get to that stage. If I want to do X, if I want to raise for example an institutional fund, what's the process to that? I'm not just going to be able to sit here and pray and make something happen. I have to take a couple of steps to get to that direction. It's very important to do that. I think right now it doesn't necessarily matter where you're at, but there's definitely places that give you more benefits, especially in places like GCC right now, south of the Asia. The reason I'm in Bangkok is there's an event here, but before that I was in Malaysia. We're looking into setting up an office in Columport. I think there's that way geographical places that you can expand to and explore and make different stuff happen. And simultaneously it's important if you're at the start of the process, not it that matters. Really just take going, set your goals and get to work. Because I was a type of person originally where I would cry about, not literally, but why am I born in this type of environment? Why am I not in Silicon Valley? Why do I not have that person in my family? I think it didn't get me anywhere. It wouldn't get anybody anywhere. You're just diverting your focus from where you could go to just feeling sorry about yourself. Where to me? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I think specifically, sorry to cut you off, just specifically mentioning, I think there are some good opportunities in GCC right now. These during a lot of good investments, Abu Dhabi has a lot of good opportunities. Qatar has some interesting opportunities. In the Southeast Asian markets, there's a lot of interesting opportunities. Both for startups, whether it's in blockchain outside of blockchain, there's very interesting markets around the world that usually on the government level, they're providing very interesting assets and benefits, grants, all sorts of things that could boost your process. Yeah. I don't know if you call that an emerging market or emerging company, but definitely place it slowly evolved and get to that. It's a, I take a future, a futuristic digital space or whatever, just a general, you know, I don't want to say it, but more of a Western focus on like business and building the future. Yeah. I think with countries, it's about then setting up a trajectory and actually matching that trajectory because a lot of a lot of countries set specific goals, but they don't move towards that direction. Towards. But if one does set the trajectory and for example in the GCC market, it's very much about the sheer amount of money they have and they have a lot of, they could put into that direction and achieve the goals they want. So if you're seeing a country that is actually moving in a specific direction and actually having momentum, a lot of, it's like somewhat similar to like trading and these types of trends. When you hear about something, it's usually a little bit late. Like if everybody's buying bits going, you might be a little bit late, but, but if everybody's talking about the price increasing, same with Dubai. I think everybody's talking about Dubai. I think Dubai doesn't necessarily provide the best environment for startups, maybe trusting people who all care about money, but if you care about that, they're sure. But there's places that are actually on the rise. I think focusing on places that are on the rise is actually better, they're calling that sense. I agree. I agree. I heard it. You're another first person to say that and I just heard it. Okay, before we go to Gapley and kind of like I'm finalizing the story, just a side note to you when maybe it will make your day better. When you see that you get it, which you don't own, always remind yourself that most probably, the cheapest Tesla can accelerate faster. Okay. So, you get it more at your rooms, they get a Tesla these days than they be Gapley, but maybe that's where they have to count down and be anger about yourself. I think we'll get to the book. I'll probably never buy one, even if I could easily buy one. But yeah, there are other cars that I just used Bugatti as the example. But yeah, I know. Tesla is in my cup of tea, but yeah, electric cars aren't really my cup of tea, but something for drive definitely. That's fair. Yeah. But yeah, I think overall just to get a little bit on Gapley side as well. Right now we do a lot of focus on the Venture Studio model, which we pretty much took the model that we had with the agency, replicated it a couple times. So we have now three agencies that are working and doing good for themselves. And using their resources to accelerate the process on different products, because that's where we see a lot of leverage. So we're working specific products that you can add more value than either just monetary value or just providing a specific resource. We're pretty much trying to combine our resources, our access, et cetera into Ventures that we see a lot of potential in either as we see a market merging as we see it, for example, in some cases a specific community that has a lot of potential, specific partner that has a lot of potential. So we usually try to think leverage wise, what can we do the best with the resources that we have from development from access, et cetera, and then turn that into a product. And that's pretty much the end result of what we do. We do quite a bit in the AI space. We do quite a bit in the web series space. One nice thing about three is very general, saying with AI, it's all very general, but those are the buzzwords that we're using them. Basically, basically, only the technology in behind it. That's the focus. Up and on France. Yeah, I think. I think it's more as it's important to pick the rights, pick the right thing to work on. It doesn't necessarily have to leverage those technologies, but it has to solve a problem. In a lot of cases, those technologies, because of their inherent technological value, solve some problems, which we can then use to leverage on a product. So that's for the most part the reason we use those technologies, but we're not necessarily focused on the technology, but we're focused on is something that actually solves a problem or provides a specific value to users, but they're saving time, saving money, adding value, adding money. It has to be quantifiable for us. If we're going in and creating a product that does X, that X has to be a very quantifiable metric for us, we could be able to easily go ahead and say, we save you X amount of hours of doing Y, and that's the reason you should use this product. We save you X amount of money because of Y, and that's the reason you should use this product. We try to be very quantifiable, for example, with whatever our recent products are going to give you an example. Let's go all render. It does rendering for these building projects that you see, that you usually see a tricky render of them beforehand before even see the house. It's usually used to pre-sell them, market them, etc. So this specific solution, like this process is a very costly process. You use an agency to do the designs for you, etc. We just automated it because it automatically takes a big portion of cost and timing out of the equation for developers. That was one of the products it just made sense. Now, technology, it was a complex product to me. The challenge seems easy, but we've been building this for a year. Nobody else has cracked the code really to the end result that we want. But again, this is a problem that we could easily say it's cutting X costs. It's cutting Y costs. What are theses? Nice. Well, how exactly you get to develop a product? Is it like you guys have your own internal, I would say, backlog of ideas or source of ideas? Or are you partnering with someone out of a gap or you're looking for these ideas outside like how does it work? So I would say over 90% of the products that we do are joined ventures with other companies, other operators, other managers, other entrepreneurs. Because we have specific resources, but I don't think it's enough. I think there needs to be a mutual force that could push the product with us and could actually focus on the specific product to help us expand it. Otherwise, we're just deploying, building something and nobody's there to focus on it full time. We could definitely put a part of our focus on that product. I'm usually trying to be very meticulous on the products that we choose. We would put four or five products a year maximum to take it into this direction. Then that is under certain circumstances where it's scalable. But at the end of the day, we need somebody who's super focused on it. So I've been actually as a recently trying to get general managers to run some products, et cetera. That might be a route that could work out. I've heard of a couple of people who have done this successfully and we had a good experience with it. We see how it goes, but overall speaking, we try to focus on specific products every year that we know we could add a lot of value on, but we always work with partners. And that's the way we see them being scalable or successful. And that specific partner also has to have an edge. It's not just your random entrepreneur. They have to be able to add a lot of value to the table as well. I agree with that. Absolutely agree here. Cool. I think we covered. I wouldn't say all because we could take it to another hour of discussions. But I think we kind of like went through everything. Valeria, maybe if you want to wrap it up. Yes, and I think it definitely deserves another episode not just to talk about blockchain probably. There's a lot to uncover, actually all sorts of things from also talking about like venture capital capital capital studio as well. But I think that the main thing that all of us have learned from all of this is the success formula of yours. And I think that would be definitely patience, a little bit of friends. Then I would say that it's just having focus on communities and on given to people. And maybe there is something more to add to all of the people who might be listening to this, who might want to maybe step in your footsteps. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I think I mean, I wouldn't consider myself. Six and six. Six. Well, if you're not in Bulgaria yet, that does not mean that you're not successful. Your five handshakes are regular as away from Elon Musk. Like a big achievement. If you think about it, if you was back to the Tesla, by the way. Yes. Yeah, true, true. Now, on Mayan, I think even if I had like five bookies, I would still say I'm not successful, but that's another problem. On Mayan, I think the only, I guess this could easily become repetitive if you do a second episode. But the only thing that I would say is stick to it. It's very important for anybody who is trying to become successful as an entrepreneur to endure and tolerate the process because it's not an easy process. Otherwise, everybody would have done it and everybody put up in successful. There is a reason a lot of people give up. And the reason is you shouldn't. So, sorry, you can be successful and repeat the same thing that I am saying. I don't know. I say, I think I'm just that if I had to see only one thing, it's not giving up. No giving up. All right. With these words, I think we can wrap it up. We're absolutely great. Great to have you here for, well, we crossed the 60 minutes, that's for sure. And so that was definitely a good one. I think we learned a lot. All that I have to say is thank you very much for the time in sharing the story and everything around it. And it was a pleasure to host you today. Thank you. Appreciate it. It was a pleasure to be here and, yeah, hope people got something out of it. Absolutely yes. Valera, thank you very much as well. And I'll see you later guys. Thank you. Here's. Bye. [Music]