Podcasts about pan european

Welcome to Startup News Roundup: December 2024 Highlights & Key Insights, where we dive deep into the vibrant world of startups across Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. This episode delivers a comprehensive look at the latest developments, highlighting the most impactful stories, trends, and investments shaping the startup landscape. What's Inside?Top News Stories: Black Forest Lab's Billion-Dollar Valuation: Discover how this Karlsruhe-based AI innovator is revolutionizing the global tech scene. Upvest's €100 Million Investment Round: Learn why this fintech powerhouse is Germany's largest funding success story in 2024. Wefox's Resilience: Insights into the Berlin-based insurtech's survival strategy amid challenging market conditions. Emerging Trends: The rise of green tech startups with groundbreaking solutions like carbon-to-bioplastics conversion. The continued growth of AI-driven enterprises and their pivotal role in transforming Europe's economic landscape. Pan-European startup initiatives fostering cross-border innovation and regulatory harmonization. Funding and Investments: A total of €2.5 billion in new funding raised across the region this month, including major contributions from Northvolt and focused energy startups. New VC funds worth over €1 billion, setting the stage for continued innovation in 2025. Regional Spotlights: Germany: Success stories from Berlin, Munich, and Frankfurt startups paving the way for the next unicorns. Austria: Rising stars like Wood_Space securing 8-figure investments for sustainable building solutions. Switzerland: Groundbreaking biotech partnerships, including a $300 million agreement by Cimeio. Exclusive Insights:Hear from Jörn “Joe” Menninger and Christian “Chris” Fahrenbach as they analyze the biggest stories and provide expert commentary on what these developments mean for entrepreneurs, investors, and the broader startup ecosystem. Resources:Original Blog Post Work With Us Subscribe to Startuprad.io Leave Feedback Call to Action:Stay ahead of the curve by subscribing to Startup News Roundup on Spotify and your favorite podcast platforms. Don't forget to leave a review and share your thoughts on social media to join the conversation! Interested in Working with us? Have a look here: https://www.passionfroot.me/startupradio

As part of its Pan European expansion plan Integrity360 has acquired leading European PCI QSA (Payment Card Industry Qualified Security Assessor) and cyber security services company Adsigo. The terms of the transaction were not disclosed. The acquisition will enable Integrity360 to expand further into continental Europe and provides additional skilled resources to its existing substantial PCI and cyber security compliance teams. Adsigo is a highly respected and well-established consultancy founded in 2013, and serves customers in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. It operates out of Stuttgart, Hamburg and Zurich from which it provides services to a wide range of financial, industrial, and services organisations. Adsigo has a leading position in PCI compliance and operates as one of the leading Qualified Security Assessor ("QSA") organisations in Europe having completed over 1,500 assessments. Adsigo will complement Integrity360's existing substantial PCI practice which operates as the No. 1 most chosen QSA organisation by Visa and Mastercard service provider organisations across Europe. Integrity360 has also been a proud member of the PCI GEAR (Global Executive Assessor Roundtable) since 2018 helping to refine and define PCI standards for the benefit of the industry. Adsigo will also compliment Integrity360's existing regulatory and cyber framework services capability including ISO27001, cyber security strategy, and third-party risk management. Integrity360 will invest further in Adsigo to become a regional hub for the full suite of Integrity360 services during 2025 including the addition of a new SOC ("Security Operations Centre") based in Germany, which will be combined with the existing circa 130 people Integrity360 SOC resources based out of Dublin, Stockholm, Naples and Sofia. The SOC teams deliver a wide-ranging set of managed services for customers including EDR, XDR and MDR (Endpoint Detection and Response, Extended Detection and Response, and Managed Detection and Response). Integrity360's innovative range of services have been recognised on multiple occasions by Gartner, namely as a Representative Vendor in the Gartner market guide for Managed Detection and Response services. Ian Brown, Executive Chairman at Integrity360 commented: "We are delighted to be welcoming the team from Adsigo to Integrity360. We have known Ralph and Stephan for some time and both organisations share the same passion for technical excellence and customer service as we do. "The enhanced group will now significantly expand our existing activities and cyber services across the DACH region (Germany, Austria and Switzerland) as well as offering the wider range of Integrity360 services to the existing customers of Adsigo. With the addition of Adsigo, group revenues in 2024 will exceed €135m significantly up on 2023, and group resources to approx. 550 employees." Ralph Woern, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Adsigo commented: "I am really delighted that Adsigo is joining Integrity360 and continuing the journey that we started some 20 years ago. Thanks to the support of our customers and employees, Adsigo has become a leading QSA and provider of cyber services in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Adsigo is excited to continue that journey but also with Integrity360's support, allowing us to further expand our team, our services, and our market coverage. "Our skills, combined with those of Integrity360, will provide an extension of our portfolio of professional, support and managed services. This is great news for employees, customers, and partners. I look forward to working closely with Ian and the wider Integrity360 team over the coming years." See more stories here.

Welcome to a new episode of the EUVC podcast, where our good friends Dan Bowyer and Mads Jensen from SuperSeed cover recent news and movements in the European tech landscape

Dimes and Judas discuss the creation of the Canadian Future Party, Mexico wielding its own population as a bioweapon, and the recent horror film “In A Violent Nature.” After discussing an article on the concept of financial nihilism and the gamification of value, they build into a discussion of the book “Spinal Catastrophism” by Thomas Moynihan. There they explore the concepts of geotrauma, intelligence as a virus, the spine as time manifest, and how our central nervous system generates the universe. Lastly, on this edition of The Copepranos Society, Dimes speaks with Pan European on his experiences in the Church of Scientology. Timestamps: 00:27 – Grok Portrayed Dimes as a Wakandan Warrior 02:47 – Telling Muslims That the AI Revolution Being Over is “Going Away” 05:43 – The Introduction of the Canadian Future Party 12:01 – Radical Centrism as a Black Hole Singularity of Politics 15:08 – Brownstone Institute Reporting on Canadian GDP in the Gutter and James Surowiecki Denies Recession 19:19 – The Housing Market Needs a Decline of Over 250% to Correct Itself 24:36 – Top Soldier General Jenny Brings Nothing to the Table 29:19 – White-Papers on Mexico's Leaders Using Their Population as a Bioweapon 36:42 – Divine Individuals vs. Self-Identified Virus Race 38:48 – Choosing “Annihilate Everything That Exists” over “Baby Talk” 46:53 – Movie Korner: In a Violent Nature 58:01 – Discussing “Donnie Brasco” 1:00:31 – Discussing “The Shield” 1:07:43 – Lurk Burgis article on Financial Nihilism 1:21:32 – “Spinal Catastrophism” Discussion Begins 1:26:54 – The Importance of Human Posture as an Antenna to Metaphysics 1:30:50 – The Spine as a Generator of Rational Morphospace 1:34:54 – Trauma Dictates Form and the Birth of Time 1:37:18 – The Marxian Tendency to Separate Phenomenon into Devouring Organisms 1:42:51 – The Logic of Fascinating Momentum Only Exists Within Nihilism 1:45:14 – The Central Nervous System Births Reality as Explosion and Collapse 1:50:31 – Advanced Intelligence as Completely Indistinguishable From Its Environment 1:54:31 – “Organic Development is Just the Future Arriving Early” and the Langoliers 2:02:50 – The Future of Man as Floating Head and Spine 2:05:17 – The Purpose of Intelligence is to Destroy the Universe 2:10:40 – Pan European Interview Begins

Qover, a leading insurtech driven by a vision of creating a global safety net through insurance, has announced the launch of its innovative motor insurance solution in Ireland. It enables car manufacturers, mobility providers, fleets and leasing providers to provide embedded insurance programs across Europe. In line with Qover's goal of covering all European markets by the end of 2025, the insurtech has now successfully launched in 10 countries within 36 months, with an average go-live time of just 3 months per country, showcasing its capability to quickly adapt and integrate into new regions. Qover's motor insurance offering in Ireland is designed to meet market needs and deliver optimal user acquisition programs through a dedicated team of motor insurance experts. The features include: Embedded insurance orchestration through Qover's fully managed tech platform, claims and customer support, and insurance services. Seamless integration of insurance programs into omnichannel offerings and user journeys, ensuring the insurance experience serves as a brand extension to motor partners. Fast digital claims processing for effective and efficient claims resolution. Pan-European programs leveraging localised knowledge and methodologies for user acquisition, facilitated through global partnerships with insurers and local businesses. Advanced performance analytics providing transparency of insurance programs to all partners and end users. As Qover expands its footprint into the Irish market, the company envisions bringing a fresh perspective to motor insurance, challenging the industry status quo and delivering high-quality service to its partners. More about Irish Tech News Irish Tech News are Ireland's No. 1 Online Tech Publication and often Ireland's No.1 Tech Podcast too. You can find hundreds of fantastic previous episodes and subscribe using whatever platform you like via our Anchor.fm page here: https://anchor.fm/irish-tech-news If you'd like to be featured in an upcoming Podcast email us at Simon@IrishTechNews.ie now to discuss. Irish Tech News have a range of services available to help promote your business. Why not drop us a line at Info@IrishTechNews.ie now to find out more about how we can help you reach our audience. You can also find and follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat.

In the recent European elections, the far right won unprecedented gains. From the success of the AfD in Germany, to Le Pen's National Rally in France, the elections saw nationalist and eurosceptic parties sweep up nearly a quarter of the seats in the European parliament. In the UK, the next general election is just days away. Voters will be heading to the polls against a backdrop of decades of economic failure, crumbling public services and a cost of living crisis that has left more than four in 10 households unable to afford life's essentials. But you wouldn't know it from the way a lot of our political leaders are talking. Voters are being told, yet again, that times are tough, government spending power is weak, and there is no magic money tree. Oh, and of course, it really is time to crack down on migration, once and for all. So, how can we understand the promises, or lack thereof, of the people vying for our votes, within a broader context of political upheaval across Europe? In a time of such great need, why are Labour and the Conservatives offering so little? And as the dust settles on the European elections, is the UK really an anomalous country leaning the left, while our continental neighbours lurch rightward? This week, Ayeisha Thomas-Smith is joined by Yanis Varoufakis - economist, academic, formally Greece's finance minister, and author of a number of critical books, the latest of which is Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism. They discuss: how do we build a Pan-European progressive movement that can win? ....... Music: Melting Ground by Jangwa, used under Creative Commons licence: creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/. Produced by Amy Clancy, Margaret Welsh and James Rush. The New Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more about becoming a NEF supporter at: neweconomics.org/donate/build-a-better-future New Economics Foundation is a registered charity in England and Wales. Charity No. 1055254

Tune in to our inaugural episode of our new podcast series on Private Equity trends in Europe. Partners Matthew Allen and James Trevis discuss our Private Equity team's recent win at the Real Deals Private Equity Awards, highlight some recent key deals we have advised on, and what the future holds for the team.

In this week's episode, Riccardo Cosentino and guest co-host, Corail Bourrelier Fabiani, sit down with fellow alumnus Brandon de León to discuss his Oxford Saïd Business School dissertation on electric aviation.Brandon emphasizes the importance of public perception in adopting new technologies and explores the potential of electric aviation to transform urban mobility. The discussion covers technical advancements, regulatory challenges, and the necessary societal embrace for successful integration of electric aircraft into daily transportation. Brandon's insights highlight the intersection of technology, society, and the future of urban air mobility.“But what really validated my research was that social acceptance came up as an interesting issue already, before the first vehicle flies. And like I mentioned before, the next plans are also around big events, the World Expo in Osaka. Next year in 2025, this was to be flights. And in 2028 in Los Angeles for the Olympics there. Other companies from the US are also planning to fly. So yeah, social acceptance is already showing itself as a key risk.” – Brandon de León  Key Takeaways:Defining the pre-commercialization of electric aviationThe critical role of societal acceptance in the adoption of electric aviationThe potential impact of electric aviation on urban infrastructureInsights into the interplay of technological advancements and regulatory frameworksDistributed and decentralized mega projects If you enjoyed this episode, make sure and give us a five star rating and leave us a review on iTunes, Podcast Addict, Podchaser or Castbox. The conversation doesn't stop here—connect and converse with our LinkedIn community: Follow Brandon de León on LinkedInFollow Corail Bourrelier Fabiani on LinkedInFollow Riccardo Cosentino on LinkedInFollow Navigating Major Programmes on LinkedInRead Riccardo's latest at wwww.riccardocosentino.com Transcript:Riccardo Cosentino  0:05  You're listening to Navigating Major Programmes, a podcast that aims to elevate the conversations happening in the infrastructure industry and inspire you to have a more efficient approach within it. I'm your host, Riccardo Cosentino. I bring over 20 years of Major Programme Management experience. Most recently, I graduated from Oxford University Saïd Business School, which shook my belief when it comes to navigating major programmes. Now it's time to shake yours. Join me in each episode as I press the industry experts about the complexity of Major Programme Management, emerging digital trends and the critical leadership required to approach these multibillion-dollar projects. Let's see where the conversation takes us.  Riccardo Cosentino  0:54  Hello, everyone. Welcome to a new episode of Navigating Major Programmes. I'm here today with my co-host, Corail, and we have a special guest, a good old friend of ours joining us today on the podcast. I will pass the mic to Corail who's gonna co-host the podcast today and help me asking questions to this really great guest that has agreed to join us today. How are you doing, Corail? Corail  1:19  Hi, Riccardo, I'm doing really good. Thank you for having me co-hosting this great episode. And I'm excited to talk to Brandon. So maybe a little bit of background, we met doing a major programme management master in Oxford. And during that two years of our lives we met Brandon who was a superstar in our cohort because at the time, he was working for Tesla. And he was talking to us about this really exciting industry and how he's been part of the founders of Tesla. And he's been part of the team that made it a great company that we know today or the big adventure. And then he moved on to work for Rizwan and developing this into a great new enterprise that goes beyond Tesla by working on all different types of trucks and other things that I don't know enough about. But so I'm really excited to hear the story of Brandon. And I think Brandon, it would be great to start with you maybe introducing yourself telling us a little bit about how you ended up in the electric car industry and what drove you to that really expanding field. And yeah, to know a bit more about your background.   Brandon de León  2:37  Wow, what an introduction. Thank you guys so much for having me here on the podcast with you. It's been incredible to see what you guys have produced after the Master's course and hard to follow what you shared Corail. But I think, generally speaking, it's been an amazing learning experience. The Oxford Masters in Major Program Management, learned a lot from you guys, as well as the content. So happy to be here and share a little bit of what I've been working on and some of my background. It's been about 12 years since I've been in the electric car space, but maybe just a step back and give a little personal context about how I even ended up in that. I, my voice betrays me, I'm from the States originally, even though I'm coming to you from Holland today, I'm living in Rotterdam and working in Amsterdam. I grew up on the east coast of the U.S. mainly in Georgia in Florida. And then that's where I connected with Tesla. And what brought me down to Florida originally was my pursuit of International Business Studies. I wanted to study that because I had grown up hearing about how my parents met in Germany, in the army, and so early on, I was ingrained with these ideas of a world beyond the bubble that I lived in. So even though I grew up in small town, Georgia, I knew that I wanted to go and at least traveled to these places maybe even work in these places, if that were possible. And so in high school, when I discovered international business classes, I couldn't get enough. I also learned in those classes that there's a lot of ways society progresses, and probably the fastest mechanism to make that happen is commerce. So you know, regulation and government takes a long time. Nonprofits are phenomenal. But also some of them have limited impact. So it wasn't really clear what the best path was. But having parents that had done service for the country, as it were, and then pursued their careers and more local service type of roles and social worker and studying pre-med and things like that, I knew that I wanted to find a way to make the world a better place in my own little way. Right? So international business was my chosen vessel that brought me to Miami to study undergrad. And then in university there I had a chance to actually work in a company that I had admired for what I would consider a great engineering design and that was BMW their local retailer in the south Florida area. I persuaded them to let me take an entry level job that they didn't have at the time. But I was really eager to get out of the department store I was working at, and to go work in the company that I admired so much down the street and regularly saw the employees from that office. And so thanks to some persuasion and friendliness on their side, I was able to take a very administrative basic role. And I spent two years with BMW, but I realized that 18, 19, 20, there wasn't a lot of career options for someone that young, in the automotive retail space, at least not the traditional automotive, even with really innovative products like BMW. So I went on the search for career path, and I ended up in a bank and I thought, wow, this is terrific, financial district, maybe I peaked early, there's a career advancement ladder, it's all planned out, pension, etc, all the trappings of a great career, but then my interest in engineering and technology kind of clashed at a certain point, because new payment technologies came out into the market. And some people will be familiar with these dongles that you'd plug into an iPhone, which is relatively new back then. And you could swipe credit cards, and it was a revolution for small merchants and mom and pop shops, and I thought, this is wonderful, it's gonna be great for getting them better cash flow, they'll grow faster, it'll really helped a lot of small businesses out. But banking is a very conservative culture and does not run to embrace new technology. So at the time, we were working on a laptop that had an operating system that was three generations old, because the security patches were all well-developed and stuff, there was a clash there. And I figured, okay, I need to find a career path that's also aligned with my interest in technology or automotive or something along those lines. And after a lot of soul searching, and job board searching, I came across Tesla, and they were starting a store locally in South Florida. And through a lot of discussions for different roles. I ended up joining the launch team for the Model S, which was the car that really established the brand as a large volume producer of vehicles. And of course, its focus was electric cars. So that was 2012. I joined right after the vehicle launched. And it's been a wild ride since then. But at that time, because of my international orientation, I thought the wildest dream I have right now is that Tesla will do great. And then we'll get the chance to go and launch in other countries. And maybe I can be part of that. Happily, I had that chance. So although I started in California, and then after we launched the vehicle there, and I gained a lot of experience integrating, delivering the vehicles, the first vehicles and integrating it directly into the lives of people and families across California, I had the chance to bring that back to the East Coast. And then there was an opportunity to join a different department back at headquarters in California. And I jumped at that, because I knew if international opportunities emerge, there'll be people from there, they're good to go. And so that was a strategic step, it was not clear that it would work out. But happily, I was in the right place at the right time, there was an assignment to go help the team in Canada kind of get find their feet, if you will. And then after doing that a couple of times going out to Toronto, and doing what I would call international, but doesn't necessarily appear to be very international experiences going from California to Canada, I also had the chance to join a very small team of four or five that came out to Europe for a few months to do the same, essentially to help train the first model as launch teams here. And that was quite a privilege. When I came home to San Francisco, I thought oh, wow, this is it. Everything I could dream has happened. This is fantastic. What do I do now? And I didn't have to wait long for an answer because being at the headquarters in the beehive of activity, there was an opportunity that was presented to me to come over and help build critical partnership networks because we were starting to deliver vehicles but didn't really have solutions in place for if people were driving from the Netherlands or Norway down to Spain for holiday, what happens if they run out of charge or if the car breaks, and we had a very small footprint in Europe, within three weeks, I was on a one-way flight back to Europe. And I haven't looked back since. So that's a little bit about me in a very long-winded way and how I've gotten here to you. Corail  8:58  No, that was fantastic. Brandon, thank you so much for sharing your passion. It's really fascinating how you're constantly growing, reinventing yourself, but yet you seem to have such a drive. And that brings me to something a little picture that you shared of yourself recently that was you, yourself. I don't know how old you were maybe five or six. And you were in this beautiful little plane. And I think we talked about how you progressed from different career paths, but always with a certain drive and in that journey now I feel like you also have great interest into the future of electric aviation. And you decided to write your dissertation on this specific topic, and the social acceptance of electric aviation. Can you tell us a little bit more about this interest of yours and how you came to write about this in your dissertation in Oxford? Brandon de León  10:00  Yeah, sure. Thanks for reminding me of that picture. It's my haircut was terrible. But yeah, I was very young. And that was, it was a fun picture of me as a very small child in this mock-up of what must have been like a pretend F-16 for children at an Air Force stand at some air show in the U.S. So that was quite a throwback. Thanks for that. The, that picture I think really reflects my interest from the earliest of memories. And I call it transport now because it seems more appropriate. But it's really cars, planes, things that move fast. They're exciting, or have always been exciting to me. And I know that's sometimes cliche and certainly not exclusive to me. But that's where my fascinations were as a kid and that really hasn't died. But my career being mainly in automotive and electric automotive for more recent decade or so, maybe it's worth sharing, it's quick middle steps. So after about 10 years at Tesla, scaling the core product and ecosystems around it in North America and Europe, I thought, okay, what do I, the recipe is pretty much set at Tesla. So we have gigafactories opening, launched four or five different vehicle programs, how can I best use all this wonderful experience? And in 2021, I joined a company called Rivian, which essentially, is, for those who don't know, it a lot like Tesla in that it's a new company that makes cars. But their plan was to electrify totally new vehicle types, still ground vehicles, right? So trucks, which are hugely popular in North America, also SUVs, which are growing in popularity globally. Perhaps, if you look at the Tesla Model Y, the best selling car globally, right now in 2023, I think it was. And then for me sitting in Europe, perhaps most importantly, commercial vans, so they have or we have a huge order with Amazon for 100,000 delivery vans. And that was super exciting to me, because being in Europe, I know that trucks are not a big deal here. SUVs are typically on the smaller side or middle size, definitely not the large American scale. But I knew that if they produced the vans, then we would have a tremendous success on our hands. And that's gone really well. We've delivered over 16,000 vans now it's super exciting to see that happening. So essentially, why join Rivian was to extend electrification. So when looking for a dissertation topic, during our master's degree, I really wanted to take that opportunity to explore the other side of my fascination. One, because there wouldn't be any conflict of interest. So it was a lot cleaner to not do electric vehicles. And then the other side is there was a really interesting ecosystem emerging that was ripe for research. And that's electric aviation. It obviously aligns with my fascinations, but also super timely.   Brandon de León  12:32  So when I started looking into how can I use a dissertation to add some value, however minuscule to what's going on in this ecosystem that fascinated me so much, I started to reach out to people and one of the people I reached out to was someone I would consider a founding father, a modern time founding father in electric aviation. And he had spent three or four decades at NASA researching electric propulsion. And it really caught on towards the 2010s. And we'll get into that later. But essentially, I was asking people like him who are highly technical, unlike me, who's a non engineer, how can a non-engineer contribute to the conversation into the development of this space, and in our discussions that came out that acceptance is really interesting, because it is a known concern. But it's kind of a fuzzy topic, a fluffy topic, it's ambiguous, people aren't really quite sure what to make of it, how to define it, how to grapple with it. And there's not a unified message around it. That's, that seems ripe for Social Sciences dissertation. And that's what led me into it because there weren't any other spaces that weren't mostly other parts, or aspects of the ecosystem today, are highly technical, or regulation-oriented. And this was a space where someone coming from social sciences point of view could really add value. So that's what led me into it, happy to document it more. But that's the background and how I got there. Corail  13:51  I think it's so interesting that you're bringing, as you say, a non-engineer background into a field that is highly engineering-heavy. And we see in Oxford, we talk a lot about the work of Kahneman, for example, and how it mixes psychology and economy and what amazing ideas that created and I feel you coming from a different background is also generating discussion that we don't think the regular engineer doesn't necessarily think about. And I think it's quite beautiful. You talked about the social interest of your parents early on that kind of inspired you. And it's interesting that you went into social acceptance and which encompasses I think many things but also the how people receive what we're producing. Right? And I wanted to ask you a bit more about this because when I think about social acceptance of electric vehicles or electric planes, as of, I don't know, kind of French bias, (inaudible) we talk about how planes are terrible for the environment and we are always thinking about shaming each other in France for how much we travel? I know my aunt for example, is constantly telling me you shouldn't take the plane so often, etc. And so for me, I only see positive outcome, right, for electrifying planes. So why did you, how did you identify social acceptance as a risk? How is it perceived in the industry? Brandon de León  15:19  Yes, it's a great question. And actually, thanks for the chance to add more background because it's not, it wasn't something I was able to include in the dissertation itself, I had to really shrink down that context and generally referred to the study as a study into the acceptance of electric aviation without giving a lot of detail and color. So essentially, in order to understand that better, it's helpful to describe the 2010s and the emergence of the ideas around electric aviation and how it was going to look and feel what the vision was, and who was articulating it. So although there have been decades of research at NASA, in particular from the guy, Mark Moore, is the gentleman I talked to and brainstormed with around ideas, potentially, that could be useful to the ecosystem. So there was quite a lot of work done on the physics and the engineering aspect. But what was interesting is that it didn't come from a lot of technology seemed to come from the defense side, right, where you have the internet, GPS, other things that are developed for military or defense purposes, and then they become commercialized. This is a rare instance where, even though NASA had done prior work, and really help manifest the technology, or the idea around how to use it, it was actually technology, commercial minds, technology and commercial minds that were leading the development of this vision, a particular vision of electric aviation, and they called it urban air mobility, mostly. There were many different names and the names of all the increase since then, in the early 2010s, essentially, you had Google printing tons of money and so just to pick, cherry-pick a specific example, this is not the origin story for the whole ecosystem, but it's a major part of the background. So Google is just minting money, right? And Larry Page starts to make bets. And they're called Alphabet. Now, there's a play on words there. But essentially, Silicon Valley companies that make it that big start to then have to find new avenues to create growth. And these are the bets that they're making. And one of them was autonomous vehicles, right? And today, that's Waymo. And another one that was backed by Larry Page in particular was a company called Kitty Hawk. And it had different names, as in its predecessor phases, but essentially, they were making a two/four passenger air vehicle, and it was all electric. And it looked like nothing you've ever seen before. If I had to describe the inspiration, I think that in many cases, these air vehicles developed by the organization he was backing, or Google was backing. I guess it's more him than Google to be honest, on the on the electric aviation side. And other pioneers of electric aviation in the same timeframe, they kind of looked like scaled up drones, toys, essentially, they're called multicopters in that format. But essentially, the vision was that these were going to be flying taxis. And they were going to be in cities. Now I'm not old enough to remember this in person. But I've read stories about how Delta and United used to have these phenomenal helicopter services where you could catch a helicopter from the top of the Pan Am building in downtown Manhattan, or Midtown and then fly over to JFK, or whatever airport. And that was the heyday of aviation, right when it was really a VIP experience. And this wasn't just New York City, this was San Francisco, tons of other cities have this helicopter service. And it's not really the case anymore outside of a couple non-airline, independent helicopter services in, let's say, New York City for example. And enter Uber, another emerging tech company, who was really ambitious and wanting to really reinvent mobility, not just on the ground, but they also saw an opportunity to play a role in this airspace as well, if you will. And so they took what they knew about ride-hailing and the app and the data that they had seen, all the trips people were taking around urban areas like L.A. and New York and probably better than anyone they fully understood and had the data and the data orientation that a Silicon Valley company would do to understand how there's a huge amount of traffic between this origin and destination. And so airport, if we look back at this helicopter services presents an interesting option. And so they started to, they started a sub-organization or department called Uber Elevate, and they issued a white paper, I think it was 2016, maybe 2017. But the white paper basically articulated a really grand vision for all these air vehicles doing thousands of movements in urban areas a year. So it's a whole new kind of flying, not the wing and tube that we're used to going between over long distances or medium range distances.   Brandon de León  19:49  This was a whole different layer of air transport that hadn't been seen before, because presumably, existing small airplanes were, with the capacity of a ground taxi, four, five, six seats or whatever, were too noisy, not comfortable and outdated designs and they couldn't vertically take off. And that's a big difference too is that these new vehicles were supposed to take off and land like a helicopter. So that then unlocked a lot of opportunities to land in urban areas without a massive airfield and runway. And so that was the lower end division in that Uber Elevate white paper. These days, that evolution of that vision has evolved quite a lot and become a lot more mild. To give you one example, there were images circulating around the time of that white paper, where you would imagine a high-rise tower and different levels that would have open bays that the small car-sized air vehicle could fly into horizontally and land or land at a top and then the elevator would move it around. But essentially, it was beehive for these. And that's where social acceptance really became a question. Because if you have that many vehicles flying around in the airspace that's not really used today and they're potentially making a lot of noise because helicopters are super noisy. And that's the best benchmark that we have, even if they're electric and quieter, they're not going to be in silent, then how are people going to react to the noise? How are people going to react to the visual pollution or obstruction to whatever view they have, if you enjoy the city view of Manhattan, it's now going to have a lot of air vehicles in it. If you enjoy the Coastal View, perhaps you'll see a lot of vehicles above the beach, that sort of thing. Social acceptance was early on identified as a risk, something that needed to be dealt with. But how to deal with that wasn't really clear. Riccardo Cosentino  21:29  Brandon, I have a quick follow-up on that. Because it's very interesting how this was a dissertation. So was the final project for the master's degree or for a master in major program management. Can you articulate how you end up picking an industry as a major programme? I'm assuming, I'm paraphrasing a little bit because your study is not about one particular project, one particular company, it's really just societal, and how society is going to who's going to embrace this new technology or not. And so when you were discussing with your supervisor about this topic, how was it received from the academic side because we're all educated, and we're all told my major project is a project about 1 billion dollar/pounds, whatever. But I'm not a believer in that metric. To me, it's, major programmes are about complexity and I think your dissertation fits perfectly that definition, but you must have had some back and forth with your supervisor, or even with some other academics. Brandon de León  22:38  Yeah, it's a great question. And I really thought this was a risk to my dissertation to be fair open to the point of marking, I didn't know if it was going to be received well, that how to articulate this as a mega project or giga project, as I called it. But basically, I think that if we look at the way we presented this content in the course, just to give the listeners an idea, that for most of history, or let's say the last century, there has been increasing focus on these growing, the projects of growing scale and complexity, and cost getting into the billions getting into this, they totally changed traffic patterns in the city or they, if there are huge new bridge or something like that and it's just visually imposing huge civil infrastructure or digital systems that cost a ton or aerospace programs like an A380 Airbus, which is just a mega behemoth of an airplane, right? And if the complexity is clear, super tangible. But I think that's the school of thought that are when we had the great fortune of I think straddling two eras of the faculty at Oxford. And the first chair that we encountered was Bent Flyvbjerg. And he literally wrote the book on this stuff. And so far as the Oxford Handbook for Major or Mega Project Management, and in that, through that lens, or what he helped us understand, it was this more centralized type of project. And then later, we actually had another generation of leadership for the faculty come in with the new chair, Daniel Armanios, and he was very interesting in that he introduced the concept of it not necessarily having to be a centralized, that's a singular entity, the mega project could be distributed, decentralized, even. Right? And so after reading both of their research, I'd actually found that Flyvbjerg and contemporary said, coined the phrase of an array of projects. And I thought that fits this. This is actually exactly what I need to articulate how this is a large, complex project, although it's effectively being built in a decentralized manner and actually, quite extremely decentralized manner. There are over 800 different organizations that have released a concept for an electric aviation or electric air vehicle of some kind or another. There's this nonprofit that tracks the industry and most of the funding is with a handful and most ofthe technical progress is at a handful, but the reality is that there is a massive number of companies that intend to enter this space. And essentially, by building these vehicles, they're having to also engage regulators and build the regulatory envelope for this to actually happen. And then also go out and entertain cities and get them on side. They even let it fly. So ultimately, what they're all building towards is a central vision, even though it's moderated a bit since the over white paper in the beehive towers in the city, what they're actually when you step back and look at it all, what's actually being constructed, is something quite central. And that is a layer of air transportation, a new air transportation system that doesn't exist today. Because electrics, there's no charging out there. It's also and this is the part I didn't really get to yet is that a lot of the companies want to get towards autonomy. Some people might know already, there's a pilot shortage historically, pilots are now being paid very well, after having years and years of declining. That's not the case anymore. There's a vast shortage of pilots today. But also, if you're looking at technically looking at these vehicles through a technical lens, from a physics point of view, the energy density in lithium ion batteries or automotive grade, especially. But even research batteries, they're still limited compared to typical combustion fuels, hydrocarbon fuels, in so much in how much energy they can carry per kilogram. And if you're in aerospace where every gram matters, it's critical that you lighten the vehicle, because it's a trade-off for payload and revenue. And so although electric vehicles have started to scale up the production of lithium-ion batteries and automotive grade electric batteries have really gotten cheaper and better energy density so they're improving every day, in labs across the world they're still just crossing the threshold where they're useful in the air and just unlocking short-range missions. So this is a new, this is a new transport layer that is just becoming feasible in the late 2010s  and still in development. So that's where I basically come back to your point, which is it's not a central program, it's definitely super distributed and decentralized, but they're all building in essentially a common vision of electric air transport that doesn't exist today. Riccardo Cosentino  27:21  Okay, one more question that on that note, and then I'll pass it back to Corail. As an industry, I mean, where would you position it in the developmental phases of an industry? And maybe, if you could make a comparison, we always go back to the internet, right? So every time there's a new revolutionary technology, we always say, yeah, think of the internet in 1995 or finger the internet in the 2000. On that basis, so with that in mind, where would you place this industry in the developmental arch? Brandon de León  27:59  Yeah, maybe if I could go a few years before the internet just for a comparison that rings harder in my mind is mobile phones. I think we're at the place, there's a famous study from McKinsey that I'll get the number wrong slightly. But I think that they hint here McKinsey did a study for AT&T, I think it was where they predicted in the early 90s roundabout then that the maximum total addressable market for mobile phones is 900,000 Americans. I think we're at that stage with electric aviation. And I don't mean that in the, to poke fun at our friends at McKinsey, I know we all have some, anyway, consulting generally. But I think that it is impossible to anticipate the actual scale that this will be deployed at over time. And I say that because if you look at this technology, the business model for many companies is not clear yet. So I think that's, once the technology is ready, we're at the point where the technology is only just becoming certified. And even with helping hands from governments that are eager to be technology leaders in Q4, right about Q4 last year, the first electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicle certified anywhere in the world was certified in China. And just this month, the first one was transacted to a Japanese customer from another company in China for demonstration flights at the upcoming expo, World Expo in Osaka. Nothing's actually, there's no revenue yet. Unless you talk about small revenue regimes from Defense Departments and things like that to help with the testing and helping R&D funds. So we're really pre-commercialization. And that's precisely why I wanted to jump in for the dissertation into this space. And I thought it was really rich picking for that study-wise because what we hear in the program and all the things we've learned about mega project management and so on, is that when did they go wrong, if not in execution mostly in the planning phases in the earliest phases. So this was a huge opportunity to talk to people across the G7 really across OEMs, regulators, infrastructure companies and so on. Even NGOs. And to get a sense for okay, where's everyone's head at individually and collectively. What's the sense for how they're all thinking about this particular aspect? Social acceptance of a new technology? Yeah. And so that's, I think lends itself to the study, but super early is the answer to the question in a couple of words. Riccardo Cosentino  30:19  Thank you.   Corail  30:20  Brandon, that's really interesting. And to go back to your dissertation, I think you were planning to interview 10 leaders and you ended up with 29 interviews. I think it shows the real interest that it sparked amongst the leader in that industry. And do you feel like they got interested because this is a topic that they didn't necessarily so much sought about? And they wanted to discuss more with you? Or was it very much a risk that was very present in their minds? And you just found that they had already thought about a lot of solutions to raising social acceptance? Brandon de León  30:59  Yeah, it's a fair question. You're absolutely right. My ambition was 10. I accidentally overshot that by three times. I paid for that on the back end, when it came to actually giving the proper level of attention to the data analysis and cleaning the data from the interviews. Yeah, that was, it was quite a heavy fall. But it was really a pleasure to, because once I started to talk to people in the space, Dr. Mark Moore and I had engaged over LinkedIn, of course, and email and then had a call. But I think that really, I realized early on, and one of the things that I picked up on from one of the faculty members, Dr. Harvey Mahler, was that observation can actually be a part of your research. And I thought, let me, let me go to at least one event where these people gather and just see what's the level of discourse? Is this really a risk? Or is it just something that I see in their social media content or things like that, and I was really lucky, because there were three major industry events, if I can call them that, that were happening right around the time I was doing my dissertation and or the early stages of it. And so I went to London to eVTOL Insights London Conference and it was very much inside baseball, you had the top leaders from the companies that were trying to develop and certify these air vehicles. But you also had the leading regulators, globally for aerospace were there, it was really interesting to just, fascinating to hear the conversation between them. But what I picked up on was that acceptance came up, it was, in some cases a footnote. In other cases, it was a panel topic. But it was never, there was only such a limited depth that could be accomplished in that format. And having chatted with Dr. Mark Moore, having seen that in person in London, but also at Revolution Aero, which is another major event in Dublin, I realized that there, there's not a lot of exploration of this topic, if this is essentially the limit of it. And there are other podcasts in the industry too, that I've listened to where it maybe it gets explored a little bit more, but usually, it's pretty, pretty limited how much people can talk about this, because the overwhelming focus right now is to use every dollar of investment. And right now there's over $15 billion, I think it's over 18 at last count, invested in this space, mainly in the vehicle developers, that will in the future produce these electric air vehicles, essentially, the ones that are just planning to actually produce the vehicles, a lot of them aren't necessarily interested in acceptance, that's something they consider a responsibility of the operator to go out and develop acceptance wherever they plan to operate the vehicles. The operator meaning like airline, essentially. And then the other case, some vehicle developers or pureplay operators, they see the acceptance risk a lot more clearly. And in some cases, they've experienced it before with their traditional air vehicles.   Brandon de León  33:42  So I think, for me, it became clearer and clearer that this was both interesting for me, and potentially helpful for them to have a longer form conversation, the average interview was something like 45 minutes to an hour, someone as long as two hours a couple of them, when as long as two hours, I made the coding quite a long process. But it was super insightful for me. And I felt really privileged. As I was reaching out to people, the reception I was getting was quite strong. I thought 10 was going to be the high end and also a significant enough sample that would make the research worthwhile and meaningful. But then actually, I started to realize that if there's greater interest, I'm happy to expand that to a larger number, especially if it allows me to get perspectives from multiple people representing the different sides of the ecosystem. So like I mentioned, regulators, not just in Europe, but also in North America. And also OEMs, not just in Europe, but from North America as well. So a lot of the funding sits in North America right now. And depending on who you ask the technological leaders, some of them are in Germany, some of them are also in California and Silicon Valley, and so on. So I didn't want to represent just one small pocket of the ecosystem because again, it's a larger array globally. If I could do a better job of capturing those points of view from a European point of view as well as an American point of view, I wanted to do that. And so that ended up getting me to nearly 30 interviews pretty quickly. That's how it grew so fast. Corail  33:44  I think it's fantastic. And there must have been so much work to just code this amount of interview, I just cannot imagine in the limited amount of time we have to do this dissertation. It's a lot. So congratulations. Brandon de León  35:26  Thank you. Corail  35:27  So can you share with us then how so I wanted to ask you, Brandon, how did this leader define the risk? And what were the solution that they were putting forward?   Brandon de León  35:39  It's a great question. I think maybe the step back as a precursor, or the best example of what they were trying to do before was helicopter services from decades ago. And if you live in New York City, or Sao Paulo, or Hong Kong, helicopter services are not an infrequent site. So there are places in the world where it's still quite common. It's just that in the U.S. we, being American, that's sort of my bias, those services had dwindled. After there was a famous incident in New York City at the top of the Pan Am building, I think it was bad weather that affected the helicopter landing. Long story short, one helicopter did a particularly bad job landing, and crashed onto the rooftop. And when it did, a propeller went this way. Another one fell to the ground, I believe it was or some debris fell to the ground and killed the young lady. The other one might have injured someone when it flew into a nearby building. This was, I didn't read the entire history of this industry, the helicopter service industry. But what I can tell you is that if you look at the old timetables and the brochures, being a historical geek and an aviation geek have done more than my fair share that there are very clearly helicopter services advertised in most, in a lot of major metropolitan areas from these mainstream airline names we all know and love today, or despise today, depending on what you think of it. But anyways, the reality is that those services dwindling, I think, in part happened, because there were restrictions put in place, when you had an incident like that it captured the attention of the public around, probably not just that city, probably not just the U.S., perhaps major cities around the world, especially as news could spread wherever the American newspapers are read. So I think that that put a little bit of ice on helicopter services. And so today, if you look at Blade, which is an operator that works does fly from Manhattan over to JFK, for example, to do the airport shuttle type use case, I believe they take off on the perimeter of Manhattan, they're not, they're just off on those waterfront, they're not on top of some building in the middle of the city. So things have definitely changed. And so when it came to acceptance and how they view it, one was, there was this precedent for things going wrong. And if things go wrong, it can really pause an industry. So making sure perceptions are warmed up to the idea of this happening again, because what they're talking about doing is literally lending in many different places across downtown Manhattan, for example of the island of Manhattan, actually being able to pop down on different buildings, but also perhaps green spaces or whatever, wherever they can place what they call a vertiport, which looks a lot to normal person, like a heliport, small helipad with a V instead of an H. There are other things there. The industry insiders will tell you, there's a lot more to it. And there is charging equipment and storage and things like that. But all that to say what the vision was in 2016-17, when Uber was hosting these huge industry segments with 72 experts one year and hundreds the next year to try and really build steam around this vision of urban air mobility. They knew they had an uphill battle. And then on top of that helicopters are famously extremely noisy. That's part of why they have limited routes that they can fly. The other part, of course, is safety and things like that there. If you look at London, I think there's one main helicopter route through the whole of London that goes, basically follows the river, for the most part. And then I think the only operational heliport inside core London, that's not a hospital for an air ambulance is essentially on the reverse side, too. So helicopters are really limited in where they could go, partly because of the noise, but other you know, fears, safety and things like that. And so that's essentially, what captivated the interests of the industry participants most was how do we reduce noise through technical innovation, better propeller design, electric motors are inherently quiet, they're not jet engines. Even if you hear things build as for marketing purposes, and electric jet, it's quite different. It's more of a fan. So I think that they saw an opportunity with electric propulsion to be much quieter, and also more safer, ironically, because you can put many more electric motors and propellers. So if one goes down, you're not worried about that you can still safely land the vehicle and then yes, I think basically centered around noise primarily because the industry insiders knew that, fundamentally, the vehicle was safer, more resilient, more robust, more redundant, if you will, with different electric motors and propellers, a higher number, some have six, some have eight, some have 12 propellers built into the vehicle design. So if one fails, it's really not a major issue for most of the format's of these electric air vehicles. But getting people to warm up to the idea of it was a real risk the way they see it. Riccardo Cosentino  40:29  So Brandon, obviously, this is a podcast about your dissertation. And you wouldn't, you wouldn't have a dissertation without a conclusion and some findings. What were your key findings? Brandon de León  40:40  It's a good, I think that so if I, my research question largely centered around how do these executives from all over the ecosystem, all sides of it, essentially define social acceptance? Who and what do they think drives it? And then also, effectively how they plan to approach it? Right? So how do they think that they can maximize social acceptance and minimize social rejection? And the primary finding I found in the case of the first question was, there is no single definition for acceptance. People describe it differently. You'll hear things like regulatory acceptance, social acceptance, of course, public acceptance, community acceptance, market acceptance. So it depends on the mentality of the person and what they're responsible for, and what they're interested in. So if you're looking holistically, you could argue that it's social acceptance, but some of them, a lot of them necessarily focus in on the stakeholders that are closest to the activities that are proposed. And first and foremost, these vehicles have to be certified in a very rigorous process, the organization's have to, as well. So regulators are front of mind. And then market acceptance, of course, they think there has to be some demand, whatever their chosen business model, whether it's airport shuttles or other things. So they look at it through those different lenses. But when you're at a conference, those are sometimes thrown around as synonyms. And people innately understand the acceptance, that means other people being okay with this, but who they're concerned with. And the degree of embrace is something that I found varies quite broadly. And I think what's interesting is, even with that said, it's kind of there's a structure, there's always a question of who are they talking about we're concerned with, and then what's the degree of embrace, and that was a common thread, and their different phraseology, if I can call it that. And then so far as who and what drives it, if you look at a template stakeholder map, this is a lot of the literature around stakeholder management is written by Dr. Friedman. And Dr. Friedman has multiple books on the topic, he's the most cited guy in the field. And I tried to stick to these bedrock, most cited folks in these different disciplines because I felt like you said, this is quite an ambiguous space I'm diving into, I need to anchor myself to really key literature here. And so there's a beautiful map of stakeholders, and he breaks them into primary and secondary. So we call primary stakeholders, essentially, everyone who's in the value chain, plus government and community. So the people, we're directly interfacing with whatever you're doing, plus the people helping you produce it, and finance essentially. So most of the industry is focused on primary stakeholders. And I think operators are a little bit more aware of the secondary stakeholders, but through the interviews, the 29 different executives, we touched on every one of them got covered at least once. So although there was an overwhelming focus on primary stakeholders, naturally, there was an awareness of an interest in getting all stakeholders on board. And so they defined it very differently. But when you ask them who they needed to actually get to accept, it was pretty comprehensive. So no surprise, these people were executives in this industry, or in adjacent industries that made them relevant for joining these jobs for decades, right? They have, I think, on average, almost two decades of experience, many have masters and doctorates. They've done this before, or at least led businesses before and are aware of the spectrum of stakeholders that they need to talk to. What I had hoped to get into, and maybe this is because I was just coming out of academia with that hat on was the nuts and bolts of human thinking and decision making around taking this vehicle or this airport shuttle or not. We didn't quite get into that. I think that what I quickly understood was that the level of discourse didn't go that deep yet. And so I was asking you about which bias do you think plays a role in the decision to take this air shuttle or not to the airport? And after a couple of interviews, I realized, okay, let me bring it back up a level and further define, really who's involved and who's being mentioned the most, who's most important or seen as most important? And that's about as far as I could go in that space. There was a fourth question, I omitted it earlier, but essentially it was to what degree is acceptance a risk and simple to say most of them surprisingly, there was a lot of actual alignment here, social acceptance was considered a risk but also a high risk, I think partly because of the helicopter service example, in Manhattan. And also just generally helicopter services being so restricted over decades that they, everyone in this space has seen, made it really clear that they need to do a lot of work on the side. But what was interesting to me is a few of them went further and said it was existential to the industry. And again, thinking back to that Manhattan rooftop, you can imagine why they might think that because if public opinion turns against the industry, there's no writers, there's no financing. And then it's not a great day for the participants in the industry. So that one was pretty clear. And then the other one was sort of how to maximize social acceptance. And that was really fascinating for me to hear. Because again, I was talking to people on all sides, there were some people who were in marketing, communications, leadership roles. There were other people that were in, essentially engineering leadership roles. What was fascinating is that, essentially, they all largely saw the demonstration flights as a major win that were happening. There were limited demonstration flights happening by a couple of companies that were making sure that they were being seen as leaders in this space, and then also taking advantage of being first mover at certain major events. So for example, last was it, I forget the month, I think it was June, I was able to go to the Paris Air Show. And there was a company from Germany called Volocopter, who was led by a former Airbus executive. And they were flying their two seater prototype called the VoloCity. And this is the one that's supposed to appear during the Olympic Games this year and do some flights over Paris as well. On this day, it was flying over the airfield Le Bourget in north of Paris, which is in aviation history, it's a fascinating place tons of history, museums there, Charles Lindbergh landed there when he did this transatlantic flight. Anyways, long story short, to see this electric multicopter. Aircraft take off and fly over the airfield was really cool for me, because of my research. But also, it was stunning, because even though I have worked for decade-plus in electric vehicles, and I know just how quiet electric transport can be, I was shocked that I couldn't hear it, it was inaudible, from a very short distance away. Doesn't make any sense in the mind. It doesn't compute, it should be audible. It's not once it's maybe a football field away, in my personal sense. And so I think that what, what they were getting on to is what I experienced at Tesla, which is the technology, if it's really good, is convincing on its own, all you have to do is show people allow them to drive an electric car allow them to go to an air show and see this thing flying. And understand that it's, it feels silent from most places. And I think they're definitely onto something with that. Others went further to say we need to do education campaigns, I think that generally the spirit is roughly the same. But when asked to diagnose the state of acceptance building, most of them agreed that not much has been done or not enough has been done there. Some companies have gone on like 60 minutes and other major news shows for a segment to talk about flying cars, or flying taxis and these sorts of things. Because it's interesting and cool that there's some new innovative air vehicle. But other than that, and social media content, which really only gets to their followers, few had gone out of those. And more is happening now happy to talk about that in a minute. But essentially, that those were the four areas that I asked about, and was able to get concrete answers and learn what their perspectives were. Corail  48:32  That's great. Brandon, I wanted to ask you, like you said that a lot of them flagged this risk as a critical risk. And yet one of your one of your notes in your dissertation is that yeah, there is very little that is done about it. And as you're saying it's starting to increase, and we have the Olympic Games coming in Paris, and potentially, I'd love you to talk more about this and what will happen during the games. But first, why do you think so little is done if it's seen as this important risk that needs to be managed early on?   Brandon de León  49:07  Yeah, it's a fair one. And also, it was the thing that perplex me coming out of the dissertation. Obviously, in the month since doing the dissertation. I've had more time to digest it and think about it. And to factor in more of their point of view, I think. But essentially, and also last week I was able to join one last conference in my roadshow, if you will, to see what had changed since I had done the conferences about a year ago. And I think the short answer, if I were to speak for them, what they would say is that acceptance is important, valuable, meaningful and critical when we get to commercialization. But right now, the reality is that most companies don't have enough money to make it to commercialization. They're staring down their coffers and they don't see enough financial runway and funding left to potentially even get through certification. Some of them have just enough to get there. But it's very clear that almost all them if not all of them are going to have to go back and raise more funds. So when the funds are that precious, they're looking at how do we maximize every dollar, or euro or pound, right? And in those cases, essentially the critical milestone they need to get to to show that they have a viable product and business insofar as at least producing these vehicles, if not, to operate themselves to sell to someone else to operate, is to get certification, or to show meaningful certification path progress, and it's no small task. So just to give you a taste, they have to prove that they can, they're certified design organization, that they have a production method that can make exact copies over and over again, and this has to be signed off by the regulator, this is not something they can self certify, like in much of the automotive space, which is also highly regulated, it's still a fraction of the regulation level of aviation. And then even once they get the design, organization approval, and the production organization approval, and I might be getting my words a little bit wrong here. So aviation experts don't scare me. But essentially, they also have to be able to get an approval that they have processes in place that are certified for maintenance, repair, and overhaul, just to name a few. There's other things that they actually have to get certified for. But essentially, getting those things, those ducks in a row is billions of dollars. And again, if the whole industry has, let's call it 18 billion and counting, and there's over 800 players, you can imagine most of them aren't going to make that. And even the ones that have raised money, they've burned billions in many cases already. There are major, let's say, some of the companies that have raised the most funds in Europe, for example, have about 12 months of runway, but they still have more than 12 months to get to certification potentially. So I think that they're resource-constrained and focused on the core next milestone but, to your point, I think it's also because it's a fuzzy topic. It's not really clear who's responsible for it and then who should be spending money on it, and if one company alone can do it. And there's other interesting things that I uncovered into the research in the financial filings of some of the companies that have gone public through IPOs, or specs in recent years. Some of them consider developing public acceptance as a potential risk to their first mover advantage, because it'll benefit the whole industry and their competitors too, in that subset, right or in that collective. So while they see it as a good thing to do, from a social point of view. And maybe even from a business point of view, they can appreciate that it would be helpful to reduce some friction in the future. I think they're betting that it's overcomable. And they're biasing towards maintaining a first mover advantage if they can do. Our research from literature and social sciences would argue that maybe that's not the best balance, happy to talk about that more. But essentially, they're taking a pretty big bet there that they're going to launch. And then be able to build awareness, convert people to believers, and interested customers, at least as fast as they can produce vehicles and put them into servers and build capacity. So I think that's where it's a bit of a risk is that if they don't start to build awareness, early, the lag, there's a time lag between building awareness and first awareness and actually being willing to use a service. Not everyone's an innovator, early adopter. And I think they're counting on the fact that they're going to have a slow ramp. So they're not going to be over capacity. They're going to have more than enough innovators and early adopters that are willing to take their services, or use these vehicles. And they rather maintain the first mover advantage, largely not everyone, but most people seem to be acting in that way. Corail  53:40  Okay, I guess I have one final question. I'm really intrigued about what you're thinking about the opportunity that the Olympic Games are representing in Paris for this industry? Are you excited to see something in the air at that time? Please, tell me what are your thoughts on the games coming? Brandon de León  54:01  Oh, yes, sorry. I missed that point entirely. Thanks for making sure I answered. So I think, yeah, it's a fantastic point. Because, for better or for worse, you can hate or love the Olympics, right? There's a lot of debate around that. But I think that the reality is major sporting events of other types, and just major events generally, whether it's a Swiftie concert, or whatever, that is a prime opportunity to build awareness and plant those seeds if you can get your product in front of that audience. It's massive for any business, right? This is why in the U.S., you see companies paying millions and millions and millions for 30 seconds during the Super Bowl, which is our American Football Championship, right? Every year. And it's the same thing is at play here. And so, the Paris Olympics are very interesting because Paris as of late, especially, has been a city that is very intent, with the city leadership on improving quality of life, introducing better transport, a lot more biking paths and making it just easier to use, to a more livable city, let's say it that way., I'm living here in the Netherlands bicycles are a way of life. And the people who are pushing the bicycle culture and infrastructure and urban planning from the Netherlands point of view at the universities and Amsterdam and other places, Paris is one of their favorite cases to point to. I think more people this week or this month, it was reported, more people were biking than driving in Paris for the first time in known history since I guess the advent of automotive. So I think it's really exciting time in Paris, but also Paris is also known for and France, too, for being unabashed in protecting their culture and also making sure that their perspectives are respected. And so you see a lot of this in sort of the way from the space I work in. Now with SUVs, one of the things I've noticed and seen is a policy around SUVs, where I think it's a proposal or it's gone into effect now, where SUVs will pay more for parking in the city. So what happens and where this comes into play with the Olympics is that for years, people have been in the industry targeting the Paris Olympics as a launch point some other some companies that were planning on doing flights at the Paris Olympics in this summer in 2024 realize they weren't going to make it in time technically, to be ready to fly. But this particular company called Volocopter, that I've mentioned before, out of Germany, they're very keen on demonstrating again, they were the ones that flew the Paris Air Show last time, and they've since done a massive amount of flights in the U.S. going around different cities and stuff on a roadshow. So they're very eager to build awareness, which results from this researcher's point of view, of course, and they see the Olympics as an iconic moment, because they're European company. They're very much proud of that. And also, if you look at the history of Airbus, Airbus was a European project, Pan European right parts come from all over Europe to build those planes. And this is maybe a second coming of Airbus in so many ways, in this new air transport world. And so it's super symbolic to be able to fly at Paris, in front of the crowds of Olympic spectators, not just at Paris airshow where you have a lot of aviation, aware or interested or geeky type folks, or people who work in the industry. It's a home field advantage when you're flying above that crowd. But when you put it in front of the Olympic audience, that's a whole nother level of magnitude and exposure and media coverage. And so that can do wonders for the company and change its fundraising prospects, it's runway and its ability to develop future products and launch into other markets and really, potentially accelerated and develop its first mover advantage, too. So it's huge. What's interesting is in September, the Paris city council acting on complaints from citizens about this plan of that air vehicle flying there now, I would say negotiations is not very clear what conversations are happening. But it was brought into question whether they're actually going to be allowed to fly over the city, whether or not they can get certified in time to do it. And that last check, I believe the CEO was reported as saying that they might not launch in July as originally hoped if the certification doesn't come on time. But they're hoping at least to be able to do it in August for the Paralympics. So there's a nonzero chance that they don't get to fly. That could happen. And that would be for them, I think they would class that as a really big disappointment, a missed opportunity, and so on. And also an opportunity for Europe and Paris, the show itself as a showcase for innovation in the space and air transport. So I think it's really interesting when you look at these big events, because they present such an opportunity. It's clear to the commercial side that they're chasing it. But what really validated my research was that social acceptance came up as an interesting issue already, before the first vehicle flies. And like I mentioned before, the next plans are also around big events, the World Expo in Osaka. Next year in 2025, this was to be flights. And in 2028 in Los Angeles for the Olympics there. Other companies from the US are also planning to fly. So yeah, social acceptance is already showing itself as a key risk. Corail  58:58  Yeah, that's crazy. It's kind of a live case study. For your (inaudible). The images you put in your executive summary of this electric planes flying were incredible. I have to admit, I didn't even know that it was already existing. and they were already flying planes, electric flying planes. So that was great. And I will be in Paris this summer, and I crossed all my fingers, that social acceptance is not blocking this line from playing because I want to be there and look at them.   Brandon de León  59:34  Same here.   Corail  59:35  Well, thank you so much, Brandon. I think I don't know Riccardo, if you have a closing question, or, but I think... Riccardo Cosentino  59:42  No, that's no, I think no, I'll leave it with you. Close.   Corail  59:46  Yeah. I think Brandon, that was fantastic. We learned so much. Although I read your entire dissertation. It was super interesting and fascinating. And I feel that you gave us even more explanations and stories in thepodcast. So thank you so much for being generous with all your knowledge. And yeah, I wish you the best in your career, really. Brandon de León  1:00:07  Thank you guys. Thanks for having me. Riccardo Cosentino  1:00:08  Thank you, Brandon. And thank you, Corail, for co-hosting the episode today. It's always an honor having you as my co-host, and there'll be hopefully more opportunities. And Brandon it's always a pleasure chatting with you. Brandon de León  1:00:21  Likewise. Take care, guys. Riccardo Co

Jayne believes research in healthcare needs better funding and strong minds. As the Chief Operating Officer of The Noakes Foundation, she established Eat Better South Africa alongside inspiring colleagues and Prof Noakes and believes in building stronger collaboration in the nutrition and science game. After realizing the dichotomy between brand research budgets and human health research, she decided to leave the formal research world, committed to bringing her global experience in big biz research, systems, and policy change expertise into new areas to affect change to human health. Jayne is an MBA Chevening Scholar, High Dip in Marketing and International Relations graduate. In her MBA at Leeds University, she focussed on the regulation of marketing to children in the food and fast food categories, later conducting Pan European media research and strategy evaluation in this area for various global health bodies and brands. As an extension of her collaborative vision for the future of human health and better healthcare systems, she co-founded Nutrition Network and has been its Managing Director since it was founded in 2018.   ✅ Brand Ambassador for Stone and Spear tallow and soaps referral link https://www.stoneandspeartallow.com/?ref=gx0gql8b Discount Code "CHAFFEE" for 10% off ✅Join my PATREON for early releases, bonus content, and weekly Zoom meetings! https://www.patreon.com/AnthonyChaffeeMD ✅Sign up for our 30-day carnivore challenge and group here! https://www.howtocarnivore.com/ ✅Stockman Steaks, Australia Discount link for home delivered frozen grass-fed and grass finished pasture raised meat locally sourced here in Australia! Use discount code "CHAFFEE" for free gift with qualifying orders! http://www.stockmansteaks.com.au/chaffee ✅ 60-minute consultation with Dr Chaffee https://calendly.com/anthonychaffeemd/60-minute-consultation   Sponsors and Affiliates: ✅ Brand Ambassador for Stone and Spear tallow and soaps referral link https://www.stoneandspeartallow.com/?ref=gx0gql8b Discount Code "CHAFFEE" for 10% off ✅ Carnivore t-shirts from the Plant Free MD  www.plantfreetees.com ✅THE CARNIVORE BAR: Discount Code "Anthony" for 10% off all orders!   https://the-carnivore-bar.myshopify.com/?sca_ref=1743809.v3IrTuyDIi ✅Schwank Grill (Natural Gas or Propane) https://glnk.io/503n/anthonychaffeemd $150 OFF with Discount Code: ANTHONYMD ✅X3 bar system with discount code "DRCHAFFEE" https://www.kqzyfj.com/click-100676052-13511487 ✅Cerule Stem cells https://DrChaffee.cerule.com ✅CARNIVORE CRISPS: Discount Code "DRCHAFFEEMD" for 10% off all orders! www.carnivorecrisps.com ✅Shop Amazon https://www.amazon.com/shop/anthonychaffeemd?ref=ac_inf_hm_vp   And please like and subscribe to my podcast here and Apple/Google podcasts, as well as my YouTube Channel to get updates on all new content, and please consider giving a 5-star rating as it really helps!   This podcast is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute the practice of medicine, nursing or other professional health care services, including the giving of medical advice, and no doctor/patient relationship is formed. The use of information on this podcast or materials linked from this podcast is at the user's own risk. The content of this podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Users should not disregard or delay in obtaining medical advice for any medical condition they may have and should seek the assistance of their health care professionals for any such conditions.  

Nabeel Moosa, VP, Strategy & Value Creation, Group eCommerce, Nexi GroupThe payments space is crowded and competitive, so the question is: can Europe create a viable retail payments solution that operates across national borders? The European Payments Initiative and the wero brand are a step forward in the creation of a standard platform for payments and digital currencies in Europe. Will a new European wallet succeed? Robin Amlôt of IBS Intelligence speaks to Nabeel Moosa of European PayTech Nexi Group. 

In June 2024, around 400 million EU citizens go to the polls to elect the Members of the European Parliament's 10th legislature. As the only EU institution that represents EU citizens, elections to the European Parliament are a major democratic event, and the only one at EU level that resembles national democratic electoral consultation. European elections, however, differ from the national version, as they are part of a context of multi-tier government, sometimes perceived as 'second order elections'. The main difference is that the European elections are a rather fragmented exercise, since a great part of the electoral process, including the way in which the right to vote is exercised, remains subject to national rules. - Original publication on the EP Think Tank website - Subscription to our RSS feed in case your have your own RSS reader - Podcast available on Deezer, iTunes, TuneIn, Stitcher, YouTube Source: © European Union - EP

To quote John Maynard Keynes, "Successful investing is anticipating the anticipation of others”. It is rather important therefore to conduct thorough prior preparation, due diligence and research before investing. With that in mind, welcome to this insightful research focused episode of the Investing Matters series, which is with the hugely talented Edward Marten, the former Independent Financial Adviser, former Investment Banker, turned entrepreneur, Founder and CEO of QuotedData. QuotedData publishes free, reliable educational resources, research and news on carefully selected sectors and companies, some of which is sponsored. Investment companies and real estate investment trusts (REITs) are their core focus of service. QuotedData aim to offer all investors access to the same resources that a professional investor would use. In addition, they provide data, including performance charts and statistics, across the full spectrum of pan-European equities. Their team of expert analysts write objective balanced articles and research notes to provide all investors with information that would enable them to make their own investment decisions, or to understand in more detail what their Independent Financial Adviser is recommending to them. Prior to founding QuotedData in 2013, Edward spent over 10 years in investment banking with Cazenove (now JP Morgan Cazenove) and before that, Collins Stewart (now Canaccord Genuity). At Cazenove, Edward focused on Investment Trusts, working with the number-one Extel-rated team, and broadened his focus to Pan European equities, servicing a global investor base and raising over €1 billion for companies. Afterwards Edward set up an equity agency broker that was subsequently sold to SpareBank1Markets, part of the second biggest savings alliance in Norway. “Learning is an ornament in prosperity, a refuge in adversity, and a provision in old age.” Therefore, please listen now to this insightful Investing Matters interview with Edward Marten, the Founder and CEO of QuotedData. As he shares his vast knowledge and expertise from working in and across the Investment industry. The topics we discussed include: -Holistic picture of finance, wealth and investments - Sales / Equity Sales -Trading floor / Investment Banking -Entrepreneurial drive to build -An overview of QuotedData & its services -Investment companies / Real estate investment trusts -Independence -Sponsored content / Advertising / Research -Personal investing strategy -Capital markets -Quality research analysts -Code of Conduct -Investing long-term -Quality research -Listed investment funds -Diversification -Absolute funds / Multi-asset funds -Cost Review -Investment companies' discount -ESG / Cleaner energy assets / Renewables / Green washing -Oversold valuation of the UK -British ISA -Magnificent 7 / Artificial Intelligence / Generative Ai -Investment industry consolidation / Outflows / -Merger and Acquisitions / Disposals / Takeovers -Creating growth / Value for money -Financial education -Wealth creation We hope you enjoy this podcast, and we look forward to hearing your feedback. Please subscribe to this podcast on your platform of choice and follow the @InvMattPodcast on Twitter.

A conversation with Under-Secretary-General Tatiana Molcean, Executive Secretary of UNECE The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) is one of the five Regional Commissions of the United Nations. ECE was set up in 1947 to promote pan-European economic integration. Francesco Pisano met with UNECE's new Executive Secretary, Ms. Tatiana Molcean for a conversation on the role of the Commission and how it serves multilateralism. They also talk about the vision for European economic integration and the challenges currently facing the wider European region. Resources UNECE website: https://unece.org/   Where to listen to this episode  Apple podcasts:  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-next-page/id1469021154 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/10fp8ROoVdve0el88KyFLy YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R06Hz-T2C0M&t=3s Content    Guest: Tatiana Molcean, United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of UNECE Host: Francesco Pisano Producer: Amy Smith Editing and social media designs: Mengna Chen   Recorded & produced at the United Nations Library & Archives Geneva 

In 1989 the demilitarized zone between East and West was the venue for a gathering which was titled the Pan-European picnic. Matthew Longo's new book explores the Hungarian, East German and Russian politics which led to this happening and how it contributed to the ending of the cold war. He joins historians of art and food in a conversation hosted by Anne McElvoy which ranges across picnics in ancient Greece, French impressionist painting, country house opera events like Glyndebourne and celebrating the arrival of the cherry blossom season.Matthew Longo is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Leiden and author of The PicnicMonika Hinkel is an art historian based at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of LondonKirsty Sinclair Dootson is a lecturer in Film and Media at University College LondonPen Vogler is a food writer and the author of Scoff: A History of Food and Class in BritainProducer: Ruth WattsThe Picnic: An Escape to Freedom and the Collapse of the Iron Curtain by Matthew Longo is out now You can find other discussions about German and cold war history on the Free Thinking programme website and available as the Arts and Ideas podcast.

Subscribe to the new Private Debt Investor Podcast wherever you like to listen, or click here: https://www.privatedebtinvestor.com/podcast PEI Group publication Private Debt Investor recently celebrated its 10-year anniversary, and now it's launching its own podcast! To kick it off, PDI is taking a six-part look back with its Decade of Private Debt podcast miniseries, speaking with some of the industry's leading figures about the challenges, triumphs and the evolving dynamics that have defined the world of private credit over the past 10 years. In this fourth episode, cross-published here on Spotlight, Pemberton's co-founder and managing partner Symon Drake-Brockman discusses how the industry has evolved and recounts the process of shaping Pemberton into the powerhouse it is today. To get the rest of the six-part miniseries right now, and continue getting market-leading insight into the world of private credit afterwards, search and subscribe to the Private Debt Investor Podcast wherever you like to listen, or click here. And be sure to also check out our Decade of Private Debt special report at privatedebtinvestor.com.

The information contained in this podcast is intended for a European healthcare professional audience for continuing education purposes only. This podcast was supported by Jazz Pharmaceuticals, which  had input into the concept and topic, but not the content of the podcast. The views expressed in this podcast are those of the individual speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views of Jazz Pharmaceuticals. Lennox–Gastaut syndrome (LGS) is a rare, severe, and progressive childhood-onset epilepsy characterised by recurrent seizures. LGS can be challenging to diagnose due to multiple aetiologies, varying clinical presentation at onset, and a lack of specific biological markers. These challenges can be compounded in adulthood due to the evolving presentation of LGS over time, and incomplete medical histories. In this insightful podcast, experts Steve Chung, University of Arizona, Phoenix, USA; and Rhys Thomas, Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle, UK, explore the identification, diagnosis, and management of LGS in both children and adults based on their experiences in real-life clinical settings.

Pan-European funds claiming to invest on a ESG basis may need to sell all their fossil fuel holdings following a ruling by the French government. Ehsan Khoman, Head of Research – Commodities, ESG and Emerging Markets (EMEA), contextualises the update to France's ISR fund label rule that restricts fossil fuel investments and aims to address greenwashing concerns. Disclaimer: www.mufgresearch.com (PDF)

I had a fabulous conversation with Jayne Bullen, the Chief Operating Officer of the Noakes Foundation and Managing Director of Nutrition Network. Jayne is a contributor/editor to the book The Science of Therapeutic Carbohydrate Restriction in Human Health.We talked about the different chapters in the book and the benefits of medical nutrition therapy. This book is designed to answer the questions and concerns that many health care practitioners have about implementing low carbohydrates diets in patients.We both hope that you will share this episode with friends and family who may find it helpful, and if appropriate with your GP.About JayneJayne believes research in healthcare needs better funding and strong minds. As the Chief Operating Officer of The Noakes Foundation, she established Eat Better South Africa alongside inspiring colleagues and Prof Noakes and believes in building stronger collaboration in the nutrition and science game.After realizing the dichotomy between brand research budgets and human health research, she decided to leave the formal research world, committed to bringing her global experience in big biz research, systems, and policy change expertise into new areas to affect change to human health.Jayne is an MBA Chevening Scholar, High Dip in Marketing and International Relations graduate. In her MBA at Leeds University, she focussed on the regulation of marketing to children in the food and fast food categories, later conducting Pan European media research and strategy evaluation in this area for various global health bodies and brands.As an extension of her collaborative vision for the future of human health and better healthcare systems, she co-founded Nutrition Network and has been its Managing Director since it was founded in 2018.You can find Jayne and the Nutrition Network here:Facebook @Nutrition NetworkTwitter @NutritionNetwrkLinkedin  @Nutrition NetworkInstagram @nutritionnetworkglobalYouTube @nutritionnetworkIf you have any health topics you would like covered or questions answered, please email me at susan@susanbirch.co.nzYou can sign up for my newsletter to keep up-to-date with the content I am publishing, monthly blogs, and Q & A webinars with experts from around the world.https://mailchi.mp/61eb6eb3e0df/newsletter-signupYou will find my website with more information and free resources hereYou can follow me on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/thehealthdetectivenz 

THIS IS A REPLAY OF EPISODE #139 The Psych Health and Safety Podcast will be returning 16th January 2024! In this episode we chat with Susanna Harkonen, CEO and Founder of Inner Work. We discuss the implications of the recent International Labour Organization to include a safe and healthy working environment as a fundamental principle and right at work; along with the WHO-ILO Joint Policy Brief on mental health at work. She shares insights from her work as a member of the WHO's Pan-European working group on workplace mental health, identifying positive trends and areas of concern.

Picture this: Three successful Amazon sellers from each corner of the globe sat down in a quaint Italian café, their journeys colliding over a shared passion for selling on Amazon. In this episode, we're chatting with Peter and Franco, our guests who symbolize the true essence of a global Amazon seller. Born in the US, raised in Australia, and operating out of Asia, Peter's journey through the world of Amazon selling is a fascinating tale. Then we have Franco, an Italian native who transitioned from a traditional upbringing to become a leading e-commerce entrepreneur. We listen to their stories, not just the triumphs but also the trials, like the time Franco's competitor created fake test reports to tarnish his reputation. Venture with us as Franco shares his extraordinary journey as an Amazon seller. From hitting his peak year of gross sales to navigating the fiercely competitive medical device field category, his story truly is a rollercoaster ride. Then we turn to Peter, who climbed to the number one spot in the health and personal care category within a mere three weeks. His dedication to producing reliable products and setting the right price point made him a standout entrepreneur. His unwavering commitment to his product and the pursuit of excellence are lessons for every budding e-commerce entrepreneur. As we bid our Italian farewell, we delve into Franco and Peter's strategies for success, from image testing to understanding European selling regulations and leveraging social media. Get a peek into Franco's vision of reaching nine figures and perhaps even owning a football team in Italy. We draw the final curtain discussing the potential of the Italian Amazon community and the role Amazon plays in shaping the European market. Join us for this riveting conversation brimming with success stories, challenges, and unique experiences in the world of Amazon selling. We promise it's worth the listen! In episode 509 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley, Franco, and Peter discuss: 00:00 - From Italy to Amazon 01:55 - Discovering Cultural Diversity in a Podcast 04:01 - From Australia to Italy 11:21 - Launching Products in Global Markets 14:58 - Challenges and Successes on Amazon 16:29 - Medical Device Field Competition and Tactics 24:32 - Strategies for Amazon Success 27:54 - Challenges With Listing Product on Amazon  32:35 - European Market Testing and Selling Strategies 36:21 - Discussion on Translations for International Marketplaces  39:25 - Italian Farewell and Appreciation for Italy ► Instagram: instagram.com/serioussellerspodcast ► Free Amazon Seller Chrome Extension: https://h10.me/extension ► Sign Up For Helium 10: https://h10.me/signup  (Use SSP10 To Save 10% For Life) ► Learn How To Sell on Amazon: https://h10.me/ft ► Watch The Podcasts On Youtube: youtube.com/@Helium10/videos Transcript Bradley Sutton: Today we've got sellers in the show that I originally met in Italy and now they're selling millions of dollars on Amazon. We're going to hear their story, which includes a case where one of their competitors even sent fake reports to the media about their product safety in order to get them kicked off of Amazon. How crazy is that? Pretty crazy, I think. What was your gross sales yesterday, last week, last year? More importantly, what are your profits after all, your cost of selling on Amazon? Did you pay any storage charges to Amazon? How much did you spend on PPC? Find out these key metrics and more by using the Helium 10 tool Profits. For more information, go to h10.me forward slash profits. Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers podcast by Helium 10. I am your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show. That's a completely BS free, unscripted and unrehearsed, organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. And today we are doing what I think is a first we are having a three continent podcast at the same time. We're not recording this separately. I'm here in North America, we've got Peter, who, I believe, is in the Asian continent, and we've got Franco, who is in Europe. So welcome to the show. And the funny thing is, I met all of them in person, at least in Italy, which is why I'm wearing my Mona Lisa shirt, my Mona Lisa shirt, here. So anyways, welcome to the show, guys, and good afternoon and good morning to Franco, and it's good evening here. Peter: Thanks for having us. Bradley Sutton: Now I, as I said, I met these gentlemen at a conference in Milan, Italy, recently and you know, just talking to them a little bit and I was like man, all right, I don't want to know too much more because this sounds interesting and I just love to find out about the rest of you know your stories. You know, along with everybody else, the podcast. Now, that was like a couple months ago. So the cool thing is, you know, with my terrible memory, the little that they did tell me I've already forgotten. So, guys, I am going to be learning everything you know, right, right with you, with all the listeners today. So let's, first of all, you know the first thing that that that blew me away was, here's Peter, and you guys can't see him. You know he, he is, he's in Asia right now and he is of Asian descent. You know like he looks. I'm half Asian. I don't look Asian. Peter looks Asian and here he is sitting with me in this Italian restaurant and ordering in perfect Italian, like, what? Like? Do I really have jet lag? What is going on right here? Let's start with your backstory, were you? Uh, oh, yeah. And, by the way, the way he speaks English was also a little bit different, so were you. Were you born and raised in Australia, or were you born and raised? Peter: Yes, sir, I grew up in Australia, but actually I was, I was. I was born in the States. I don't know if I mentioned that in the state. Bradley Sutton: That makes it even more interesting I love it when we're about here in the States, in Minneapolis, minneapolis Okay, man, that's, that's. That's still the coldest I've ever been. Uh, not sure I want to go back there in winter, but all right. So you were in Minneapolis, and how? I mean? You know, the Minneapolis Australia connection is not very common, so how did that happen? Peter: Yeah, so if I take it back a step further, as you said, um, I'm, I'm Asian. My parents were born in China. Bradley Sutton: Okay. Peter: And they. They met in the US, so that's why I was born there, okay. And then, after um, they finished their studies, they decided they wanted to move to Australia. So when I was a baby, still be immigrated to Australia. Bradley Sutton: Okay, all right. And then now, growing up in Australia, what do you think you're going to be when you grow? Peter: Yeah, I didn't have any, you know, any special, different aspirations. I was like all the other kids. Bradley Sutton: Fine. Franco: Anything like that. Peter: Yeah. Bradley Sutton: Okay. Peter: I didn't think of being an entrepreneur or a commerce guy or anything like that. Bradley Sutton: Did you go to university in Australia? Peter: Yes, I did. I studied engineering Engineering. I had a very traditional upbringing? Bradley Sutton: Yeah, okay. And then, upon graduation, did you start working in that field? Peter: Yes, I did I um. So as I had no real exposure to my Asian roots, I wanted to do one year in Asia. So I ended up working in Hong Kong. So I worked in uh in Hong Kong for a little while with uh in the engineering field related to engineering. Bradley Sutton: Did you speak Chinese? Peter: I did not. That was one of the reasons why I wanted to go to Asia, because, growing up in Australia, yeah. At that time, I was the only Asian kid in school. Um, there was no real interaction with other families or anything, so, um, I just spoke English. Bradley Sutton: Okay, Now you know USA to Australia, to Hong Kong, how do you end up speaking Italian? Peter: So when I was in Hong Kong, um, I got headhunted for a job in Italy. So, yeah, I took the opportunity and went over there and um lived there for a few years and worked there for a few years. Bradley Sutton: Okay, that's cool that you learn the language. You know some people, uh, you know, go to other countries and you know years and they don't are not able to learn the language. That's a, that's a cool, uh cool skill there and and all right. So so that brings us to. I mean, obviously you're not in Italy anymore, so how long did you stay in Italy? Peter: Right, uh, I think it was about five years. About five years, about five years in a minute. Okay. Bradley Sutton: All right, and it was it during your your run in Italy there that you learned that you started on Amazon. Or how did you go from engineering to e-commerce? Peter: No. So, um, while I was in Italy, I also got headhunted for another job and I was moved to Shanghai. And while I was in Shanghai, I met a one of my friends who I did sport with, was very much into Amazon, and he always kept talking about it. And then, finally, uh, one day I said this sounds really interesting. Why don't you show me what you're doing? And I offered to invest in what he he was his business, because it sounded like it was really good. And he said no, why don't you just try yourself? So I did it as a um, as a hobby, for a while, and then eventually it became became a full time thing. Bradley Sutton: Okay, all right. All right. Now we're caught up to to kind of like the e-commerce list. Let's go ahead and take the journey with with Franco. Now for you it's a lot easier backstory Were you born and raised in Italy and lived there your whole life? Or or do you live in 17 million countries like, uh, peter? Franco: No, I was born and raised in Italy. I passed a couple of years in China, but it means that I was there like uh, every month of April and every month of October since 2003. So it's not was not like living permanently there. I was living in a hotel. So basically, I've been living my life in Italy. Bradley Sutton: Okay, all right. Now. What about you? Uh, what did you go to university for? Franco: I did pure maths and when I was starting at the university, I thought that I would be doing academia after that. Okay, and then it changed my mind. Bradley Sutton: Okay, what so? Upon graduation then, what did you enter into if you didn't want to go ahead and take that route that you thought you were going to take? Franco: Yeah, I did. When I graduated I didn't really know what to do because I changed my mind. I didn't want to be a university professor of math, so I was going into my other side of me, that was, being an entrepreneur. So I did an MBA and after that MBA I worked for a couple of years as a marketing assistant in a company and during that time I founded two companies, two different ones, with friends of mine. And then I resigned and from that point I always been an entrepreneur. Bradley Sutton: Okay, all right. So what year did you go full-on into e-commerce? Then what did you say? Franco: I went into e-commerce probably more than 10 years ago. Bradley Sutton: Dot com or other marketplaces, or what Now? Franco: in Europe, we're selling. Bradley Sutton: At that time, what I meant was yeah, the dot com is on Europe, but what I meant was like online sales or was it like a marketplace that you were on? Franco: No, it was our own e-commerce, our own website, and I was selling on with my company. I was selling rubber trucks that are the equivalent of tire for excavators and accessories for construction equipment, so something that probably even today you cannot sell on Amazon because like super huge and super heavy. Bradley Sutton: So you exited that company and then you said you became like a full-time entrepreneur. What was that endeavor like Full-time into? Like what was your? Was it just still online sales, or now you got into Amazon, or what happened there? Franco: Okay, so well, now most of my time is well, 100% of my time is on Amazon. But yeah, the other company, the one that's now, is doing Amazon as a long story, because it started in 1999. And we've been doing so many different stuff because we started from scratch with nothing. So we started doing multimedia content, then we went into doing CD and DVD duplication that means producing physical discs, then USB flash drives, accessories for smartphones, electronics in general, and then medical devices. When we went into medical devices, we went quite big on our e-commerce. That was not something that we were doing in this company. We're doing business to business mainly. And then from that, we went into Amazon. Not that we even had tried to do Amazon before, because we opened the Amazon account in 2014. But it was just a sort of let's see what's happening there, not really investing in that. So we were becoming big on Amazon since 2020. Bradley Sutton: All right, now we're kind of caught up in a similar timeline here. Let's go back to Peter then. Are you still selling your first product today, peter? Peter: Yes, I think I started with two or three, and all of those three products I'm still selling. How? Long has that been? Bradley Sutton: I started in 2017. Peter: Wow. Bradley Sutton: The same product. How many reviews do you have now approximately on that one? Peter: Maybe 3,000 or something like that. Reviews and ratings. Bradley Sutton: All right, so you're still selling the same stuff that you got into. How did you find that first product? Did you just take some course that a lot of people did and then just use the criteria to find the product and just struck gold in your first one? Or how in the world did you hit a home run with your very first product? Peter: So my friend had done the ASM course and so he suggested I did it as well. He told me the beginnings that I was doing the normal thing everyone was doing Just looking for a product that had an opportunity, that seemed like a good, not too competitive, good price, etc. Etc. And I was just lucky, I picked something that could last well. Bradley Sutton: Now, during this time you said you were back in China or were you in Italy? Peter: No, I was already in Shanghai at that point. Bradley Sutton: Ready in China? Okay, and then. So what marketplace did you launch this product on? Usa or Europe? Peter: Yeah, so I started in the USA. But I think within the first year I knew I wanted to be in Europe. So I immediately started in the European marketplace. I applied for VAT and everything. So yeah, pretty soon after the US Europe, I was into Europe. Bradley Sutton: Now? Was it any more easy than another person because you had lived in Italy before, or that meant nothing? Were you an American citizen, since you were born in America? Peter: Technically I have dual citizenship, but I always traveled on Australian passport. But, answering your question. So when I started Europe, I wanted to try the UK and Italy first before going into all the other countries. So, yes, there would have been a small advantage, starting with the Italian market, because I didn't have to worry too much about translations and more understanding what things were going. So small advantage, I would say, but not huge advantage. Bradley Sutton: Okay, All right Now. In the first couple of years of selling on Amazon, what was your peak of sales for like a year? Gross sales. Peter: I think it was about the second or the third year I reached seven figures. So I was going at seven figures for a while, but in the last two years I decided to focus more on profitability than revenue. So it's now in six figures, but making more profit overall. Now at what? Bradley Sutton: point did, like you said, it become your full-time job. At what level did you have to get to for it, to replace your engineering jobs that you've been doing for most of your adult? Peter: life. Yeah, I was able to replace it. I think it was maybe three or four years into the business, maybe four years. Bradley Sutton: You say you sell in multiple marketplaces. Do you aim for the same profit across the board, or is there a marketplace that's giving you better profit over another? Peter: For sure, Europe is way more profitable than the US, for products Is it? The shipping? Is it the? Bradley Sutton: PPC or what's you know, you're able to charge a higher price. What's the difference? Peter: It's the sellers in Europe. There's less of them, in my category at least, and the sellers are less sophisticated so they're not as good at branding PPC and just the basic stuff. Bradley Sutton: Okay, all right, let's go back to Franco then. So when you started on, amazon sounds like you started doing different things, but was there a point where you were only doing the medical devices, as you said, or did you start with only medical devices and that's all you've been doing this whole time? Franco: When I started in 2014,. We started with electronic, with accessories for smartphones, but I mean, we were making money with other stuff, so we were, we didn't really take it care of a lot about that and we were a little bit inexperienced. So we also did a couple of mistakes, like in the quality of the products. So we just like got a lot of bad reviews and we say, okay, we are making other stuff, we don't care about this, and we just kept the account open but we didn't use it. When, in 2020, we started doing medical devices, we went big almost immediately on Amazon. But before that, as I said, we were doing pretty well, like six or seven months before, on our e-commerce. That was the same e-commerce that was selling the electronics. That was like that website that we changed it and were you? Bradley Sutton: and were you only selling in Amazon Europe? Franco: Yes, because I'm proud to do not have the certification for selling in the US. They are very highly restricted and certified, so the regulatory stuff in US is completely different. Bradley Sutton: Now, what's been your peak year of gross sales? Approximately how much? 10 million, 10 million only in Europe in one year in medical devices. Yes, wow, is it safe to say that now Amazon is the main, as opposed to your? Franco: website. Are you still even? Bradley Sutton: doing anything on the websites or just all Amazon. Franco: We still have it. But I think it's very important because one of the reasons why we were successful on Amazon is because we know so well our customer. We know so well what they want from the product and when we launch a product we can tell to our customer. There is also this new product. You can also find this in Amazon, so it gives a lot of help. But because of the growth that we had on Amazon, we have a little bit of neglected our website. So as soon as we have more banned, we should keep making the website better and grow the website as well. Bradley Sutton: Now, as Peter was saying, europe is very profitable for him, partly in fact due to low competition. I would imagine being in the medical device field makes it even less competition. Would that be a fair assessment that it's very few competitors you have, or has it gotten a little bit more tough to? Franco: So I would say there are not so many, but the ones that are there are very aggressive, okay. Bradley Sutton: Aggressive as in they might do some black hat strategies and things like that, or what do you mean by aggressive? Franco: Yes, also Because on medical, it's very like you can get suspended for any kind of claim. So yeah, it's quite an aggressive field. Bradley Sutton: What's the craziest thing that has happened to you. I would assume that you've maybe had your account shut down or at least products suspended or what's been some crazy experiences you've had. Franco: The craziest things that happened to me was a competitor that wanted to get rid of all the big seller of the same product, so it creates some fake test report. It passed those tests to the media and from media they went on national TV and that was insane At the same time. Hold on, hold on. Bradley Sutton: So he made some fake report about like that your product is like unsafe, or something gave it to like a TV station and it got in TV. Franco: The first thing to give it to the media, to a newspaper To a newspaper and it made the biggest newspaper. From the newspaper, bump it to the national TV. Bradley Sutton: Yeah, and then and then. So what was the result? Like, did Amazon see that and then shut you down, or did you start getting bad reviews, or what? Franco: happened At the same. We were waiting experience on all the way to do stuff properly on Amazon. I mean, we didn't even have the brand registry at that time, so they were also able to hijack. At the same time, they hijacked our product and they left all our picture, the branding of our product, but we could not access our listing anymore. It's insane. I know it's insane. Bradley Sutton: Wow. Franco: Up to now I haven't heard of anyone that has an attack like that. Bradley Sutton: Yeah, it's intense. Franco: Yeah, and after like so the listing was destroyed because one month to get back the ownership of the listing and when it happened it was not possible to. I mean, it was like flu. That was probably more than a thousand of bad reviews, one thousand of, like one star reviews. Bradley Sutton: Now did the newspapers and media and stuff? Did they ever submit like retraction or correction? Franco: Oh well, yes, the newspaper, they we submitted like a press release, the newspaper, the newspaper added our press release to our today news. But customers don't really care. I mean, amazon business is a quick business, it's very quick. So we went, we look into that with, probably I think that the best lawyer we could find we usually have very good lawyers and there was no other way to have it fixed as soon as we wanted or to have like an economical compensation because of the way it was structured. Okay, the attack. Bradley Sutton: All right Now, peter, you know like it's safe to say that you've never had that level of attack, or you know? Peter: I don't think anybody has had that level of attack. So but I'm sure you have had my things on national television. Bradley Sutton: Yeah, I'm sure you've had some crazy things happen. Anything like anything that's happened to you. That would you say. You would call it. You know, your, your, your your kind of like worse experience on Amazon or craziest experience. Peter: I haven't had anything really horrible. I've had a lot of the standard like minor attacks from competitors, but probably the scariest one I had was Just I think it was three weeks before Christmas a big competitor in our space did an IP complaint against me and had my products suspended, but luckily I was able to get it back within a week. That could have easily dragged on for months, but I was very lucky. I got it back in a week. That was obviously very scary. How did you get it back? Just submitted appeals I used. I have a lawyer which I use all the time and even they said that's way faster than we normally see. You were really lucky. So I was just super lucky. Bradley Sutton: Okay, now you know let's not just scare everybody with all these bad stories. Peter, you know, sticking with you what's the best thing that's happened You're the craziest in a good way or biggest surprise, or biggest win you've had over the years on Amazon. Peter: I think the first one, which was really a happy experience for me. I've heard other guests on your podcast. I think they're similar. I had a product, one of my standard products, and in the UK suddenly I was having 10 times sales that I normally have. So and this was quite early on, so I still didn't know about being attacked, so I wasn't worried like I would be now, and in those days you could still write to the customers quite easily. So I was writing to a few of them and I got a response back that a celebrity. I've seen the products used by a celebrity on their you know, on their social media. So yeah, that was fantastic and yeah, I knew that celebrity. So it was pretty cool. Bradley Sutton: Awesome, awesome. Now you know you've sold in multiple marketplaces, but you know you're probably an expert, I would say on the Italian one. Is what you do on Amazon Italy, 100% the same strategy across the board? Like, I mean, obviously the language is different, but is your PPC strategy the same? Is your branding strategy the same? Is your keyword research strategy the same, or is there something different that you're doing in Italy? You know due to your experience there. Peter: No, I would say everything's particularly the same. As I mentioned before, it was a small advantage, and even now it's practically no advantage with the translation software that's available. So I'm just doing the same thing in all the marketplaces. Bradley Sutton: That's good to know, because you know some sellers out there. You know they start in a marketplace, whether it's Italy, whether it's Germany, whether it's USA, and they're like kind of scared sometimes to branch out because they're like oh man, I'm gonna have to learn a whole bunch of new strategies to go to this new marketplace. But no, it's across the board. I mean sure. You know every now, and you know there's VAT, you know, and then in Japan you might have to do a little something different. You know, but for the most part the strategy is the same. Now, what's going on these days with you know? You mentioned you sell in UK and Italy. What changed after the Brexit? Like, now do you have to send inventory to UK and then send inventory to Italy separately, and it's completely separated and segregated, or what was the difference after Brexit? Peter: Yeah, so you've probably heard of Pan-European and probably you'll. Listeners who have some experience know about Pan-European. Maybe I can explain that really quickly. Go ahead, please. It's like the US when you send a shipment to, it goes to one location and then Amazon will spread it out all over the US, right? Bradley Sutton: Yeah, we call that. North American remote fulfillment is what it's called over here. Peter: Right, so they have the same thing in Europe. If you're VAT, you registered in their core countries, which was UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain I think that's all of them. It was the same thing. You'd send it to one country and then they would spread it out amongst all the countries as if it was one country. So that was very convenient. When Brexit happened, the UK became its own separate country, so all the work that you do logistically, which you used to do for Europe, then you had to repeat it for the UK. So it's a bit of a hassle, time-wise. Bradley Sutton: Okay, all right. Now, switching back to Franco, you had the worst thing that somebody could possibly imagine happening. Now the same question that I gave Peter what was the best thing that's happening? I mean, other than the fact that you're not even selling the USA and you can still gross 10 million a year? I mean that by itself is pretty amazing, but what else other than that is a cool thing. That's happened to kind of like pump up people's spirits after feeling so sorry for you. Franco: Yeah, well, I think that if I put on my hand the bad thing and the other thing, the good things, the good thing outweigh the bad thing. And the best one was the velocity to which we could reach the number one in health and personal care category with our products like in three weeks. Bradley Sutton: So number one, as in BSR, one in the whole health category. Franco: Yes, yes, Wow, that's pretty impressive. Yeah, that was between 2020 and 2021,. We reached that position in like three weeks with our product. Bradley Sutton: that's why we got a time Three weeks from the time you launched yes, Wow, okay, well, okay, well, then tell me, I gotta pause you there. Then how in the world did that happen? Like, did you have some crazy campaign? Was it all organic? Franco: How would you go from zero to number one so fast? No, they were proud of the COVID. Bradley Sutton: Ah, okay, okay, that's the reason. Now, did you was this after COVID you started? Or did you just get lucky, like it was something you were starting and you had no idea COVID was happening and the timing was just right? Or how in the world did you manage that? Franco: Well, we have been manufacturing in China since, I told you, since 2003,. We have a very strong presence in China, and so when COVID hit in China in January 2020, I knew it was coming to Italy or to Europe. I was pretty sure. I also wrote article about that, and so when that happened, I was a sort of reference for many people to say, hey, can you help in something? Because you know, italy was the first country in the Western world to be hit very hard, and so we started doing those like masks, those kind of product for COVID, and at the beginning, we were just doing that for hospitals, like for what was really needed. Franco: And then after that, we went to doing this on our e-commerce and the reason was that we ran out of money because the request was so insane Because we look into that so deeply that we were 100% legit. Our problem was like, probably the safest you can buy at the right price. We didn't want to speculate. We really want to have the country, and so we had a good product at the right price and we have an insane amount of demand for all those state-owned stuff, like the police even the finance police was buying from us. And so when we ran out of money. We opened the e-commerce because we need some very short money cycles and you know, on e-commerce you get the money like right away. And so after that, six months later, and also we got a lot of. Our e-commerce was an instant success as well, because we were supplying all the hospitals and so our product with our brand was in every hand, everyone hands and so our e-commerce was an instant success. Franco: And then we asked it like in April 2020, to our product to be listed on Amazon, and Amazon didn't accept it. And you have to consider that at that time on Amazon, it was fluted with product that were not legit, like all the things you were finding on Amazon related to the kind of product was like not compliant. We submitted our product. We were rejected. We said, okay, I don't care, I have other stuff to do. And then in October, I tried to resubmit the product. It was rejected again, okay, but in November, for I don't know what I receive, like Without asking again to to be listed, the I so the listing the listing was there but was not like, not active. The list he became active. Franco: From that point, I think that because we have so much, I'd say, brand recognition, yeah. Trust from the customer. As soon as we told the customer we are on Amazon was like that. I mean, we could have been number one, probably in a week. The only problem was the, the velocity, and that we need to have the product on their warehouse. Yeah, and so it was like giving three days out of stock. One day, then three, because of the space that Amazon was giving us, because when you are number one, you have to send a truck every day, or even more and and so, yeah, that's the story, that's cool. Bradley Sutton: Now, you know, for the last part of this, you know let's just go back and forth with some, some strategies, you know, and I don't mean, oh, you know, keep your a cost down and and and have a nice logo, or you know it's just standard stuff. But you know each of you to be at the position you are, you know which is, you know Amazon is your full-time business and you've reached six, seven, even eight figures. You know you've got to have some, some unique strategies and some, some things that are that you feel are the difference of why you've been so successful. So we'll start, you know, franco, with you. What is something that you know? So you know, it could be a PPC strategy, it could be a launch strategy, could be branding strategy. Uh, what? What's your first strategy of the day? Franco: I think that's still uh, the obsession with the product is a key. So like, uh, having the best product you can have for your customers, and so listening to all the advice and Now you can use AI and do all your research. But, uh, do the extra, the extra mile. Don't only use AI, because AI is very good to finding, um, like patterns, like to put in together Something that is saying a different way, but it's not good to find out liars, and many times in the outliers there are some very good gold nuggets, so talk with as many as you can, even even call them and Understand what are they paying, what are they, what they really want. Franco: When you have the best possible product, then you need to apply all the techniques that amazon Required. Like I have the best possible page. Uh, add those pains and uh, emotion of the customer reflected in your stack image At the best possible main image ever. Like, do a lot of testing, an insane amount of testing, until you know you will be the number one choice and never Let the customer down. Whatever they have a problem, solve it, solve it. Solve it, because then you have To, you have to reach the position, then you have to stick to in the position. Yeah, it's an ever-ending story. Bradley Sutton: All right, switching back to peter. Uh, what's your um first strategy you'd like to share? Peter: Uh, I'd give a general one and then maybe an amazon specific one. Very general. Uh, I think there's a lot of listeners on your podcast that are maybe just starting out, so I would suggest just to keep things simple. I've seen some people they they try and go to advanced from the beginning and it's uh, they get in over their head. They don't understand what's happening. So I would just keep it simple, even though I've been doing it for a long time. I I also Follow the same principle. I don't have any, I don't have any full-time staff. I I just try and keep things as simple as possible. And then, specifically for amazon, as I mentioned before, I think if you're, especially if you're getting started, you really need to think about products or a product that you can brand. And if you, if you can't brand a product for example, if you're doing I don't know stationary or Cleaning accessories or something, it's very difficult to build a brand around that, to build User excitement. So that's something you probably need to consider as well. Bradley Sutton: Okay, Going back to Franco, you know like you can give us another strategy, but before you do that, I wanted to kind of like double down on what you were talking about. You know you were saying hey, you know, have the best listening, have the best images and and do a lot of testing. How are you doing this testing and how are you making sure that? You have you know the best. Franco: Well, I'm using all the Software as a service, as a this are available. So I like take my few four competitors and I test my main image against their, I mean against the main image of my competitors. Then I got all the advice from the pollers, like we choose this because of this, we don't like this because of that. We run AI on that. But we don't only run AI. Franco: I read all the response one by one and I try to see how can make it. I can make it better. And then I write like Something that, what, what need to be done. I pass this to my and I try to be very, very Pacific. Like many times, I take a piece of paper and make driving by myself, like this is how I want this to be, and then I pass to my designer and then the designer make a new Couple of variation and it test again and sometimes I go very deeply on that. Like I am not happy until, like I get that out of five possible choice of main image, my main image gets 60% of the clicks and the other four share the 40%. Bradley Sutton: So it's not just a matter of all right, hey, I won with 30%, another one has 28, another one has 26. That's even though you won. That's a failure to you until you can get to the 60%. Franco: Yeah, I won like 60% and 40% spread between the other four, then I know that I'll stand out, and this is the first step. Then I need to like the page has to be consistent. And then I need to maintain my promise to the customer. Bradley Sutton: Are you selling? You're still with Franco here. Are you selling in all European marketplaces, like including the newer ones like Poland, netherlands, or are you focused only on the bigger ones? Franco: So my sellers, I sell both on one P vendor center and three P seller central and I have all the accounts. I mean all the nine accounts in Europe, but the only one that really matters are the big five UK, Italy, Germany, Spain and France. And for the most of my product I cannot use the Pan European, as Pita does, because there are specific regulations for each. So there is on top there is the EU regulation, but then there are specific regulation on a country level. So, amazon, do not allow us to do the Pan AU. We need to stop the product on each country. Peter: Okay, that's a lot of work and increases your workload to manage your logistics in each country like that. Franco: Yeah. Bradley Sutton: All right, going back to Peter, you have any more strategies for us. But before you get to that, what about you? You mentioned UK and Italy. Are you also selling in all nine marketplaces, or are you only keeping your listings active in the big ones? Peter: Yeah, it was only UK and Italy when I first started in Europe to get an idea of how it worked. Bradley Sutton: And almost immediately. Peter: I think I only did UK and Italy for three months and then straight away I went into the Pan European. Bradley Sutton: So for the last few years. Peter: I've been, yeah, outside of the big five. Bradley Sutton: If you have to pick one of the newer ones, are they all doing equal or is there one that you feel? Hey, down the road, this could become the sixth one, that's a good question. Peter: Now I haven't really focused on any of the new ones. I think whether you're Belgium, sweden, I can't remember, but Poland's Check for public. But from what I've seen they're all very minimal. I haven't really put an effort into them. I wouldn't say there's one that particularly stands out. Bradley Sutton: And then for all of those, are you just using what Amazon does for the auto translation, or did you, did you commission official translation with a service or something? Obviously, you did the Italian one yourself, but what about for these other languages? Peter: Actually, I didn't do the Italian one myself. I used Yana's service, ylt shout out to Yana. But for the other marketplaces, no, I haven't specifically worked on those. I've just left it with Amazon doing their own translations, and then they have a similar system to NAF. So, for like for Canada and Mexico, then for the other countries that we just mentioned, they'll take the product from Germany or France or wherever, and then send it over. It's a similar system. Bradley Sutton: Okay, all right. Any more specific strategies for us that you'd like to? Peter: share. I do a lot on social media. I don't know if you've seen that's been a huge part of improving profitability in the last two years. So the PPC costs were going up incredibly Like for us. It was getting. Tacos was getting up to 30%, maybe even 40% for some products and now, with some strong, a lot of work on the social media side and managed to bring that down to less than 5%, which I think is quite rare in the industry for the TACOS Less than 5% TACOS. Wow, that's very impressive and most of the TACOS is brand defense on the product page. So, yeah, that's been huge for us to make that change. Bradley Sutton: All right. What does the future hold for you, Franco? Like you, just hey, let's just keep going. Or are you looking to exit your business and retire? You looking to start any more brands, or what's your you looking one year down the road, five years down the road? Buying a lower division Italians football team, or like what's gonna, what's gonna. Franco: Yeah, yeah, maybe, maybe Now. Well, my dream would be to. I have my figure. My company reached nine figures. That's a very, very difficult endeavor, and at that level. Bradley Sutton: I think you might be ready for Inter Milan or AC Milan. Franco: Forget the lower division, you'll be ready. Bradley Sutton: Let's buy one of those. Franco: What else. And that could be through acquisitions of other brands or through expanding our product range. We have been looking to many, many things, okay what about you, Peter? Bradley Sutton: What's the future hold for you? Peter: Yeah, I'm just happy doing what I'm doing. I don't have any new term plans to sell the business. Enjoy what I do and just gonna keep going. Bradley Sutton: All right, excellent. Now why don't we just go ahead and close this out with a one or two sentence words of farewell in Italiano here. Start with Franco. Say something for the Italian community out there. Franco: The Italian community of the Amazon vendors has to grow to a great potential. Amazon has become one of the most important markets in Europe. So, guys, we're gonna win Amazon. Bradley Sutton: All right, and, peter, where were your Italian words of wisdom? Peter: Italian. If someone in Italy hears this, I'll pass their Shanghai. So they're content with the Vedetti. Bradley Sutton: All right. Peter: I have no idea. Bradley Sutton: This host of the podcast is a crazy guy. Peter: Shoot a sexy host of this podcast is what I said. Bradley Sutton: All right, there we go. That's good, I'll believe that. All right. Well, guys, thank you so much. It was great to have you on. It was great to meet you and hang out in Italy. We found that little nice restaurant that I was not expecting much, but I was really, really delicious food. My whole time in Italy was good food, but I look forward to seeing you at a future conference, whether it be in Asia, north America or Europe. So thanks for coming on. Peter: Thank you. Franco: Thank you.

The BAE HQ welcomes Alston Zecha, Partner at Eight Roads. Alston Zecha, who is a partner at Eight Roads and was the exited co-founder of Payleven, which merged with SumUp. Alston grew up in Hong Kong,  having been exposed to all the different worlds around him, he moved to the UK where it was a bit different and had to try to make his mark. He tried to build a startup which failed in his early days because he didn't know the game.  Then after that he went back into the corporate world where he was very successful and then had another stab at it and that was Payleven.  You might recognise what they do if you ever tried to buy something via contactless at many different places. Now he is a partner at Eight Roads, which invests in Pan European at different stages. If you're listening to this and want to see the video, go to YouTube:https://youtu.be/GLeT8k_BbnQVisit our website: http://thebaehq.com

This week, hosts Jim DeRogatis and Greg Kot share some new music that's flying underneath the mainstream radar - buried treasures! They'll also hear selections from their production staff and bid farewell to The Smiths bassist Andy Rourke. Join our Facebook Group: https://bit.ly/3sivr9T Become a member on Patreon: https://bit.ly/3slWZvc Sign up for our newsletter: https://bit.ly/3eEvRnG Make a donation via PayPal: https://bit.ly/3dmt9lU Send us a Voice Memo: Desktop: bit.ly/2RyD5Ah  Mobile: sayhi.chat/soundops   Featured Songs: feeble little horse, "Tin Man," Tin Man (Single), Saddle Creek, 2023The Beatles, "I Get By (With a Little Help From My Friends)," Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Parlophone, 1967Tombstones in Their Eyes, "No One to Blame," Sea of Sorrow, Kitten Robot, 2023African Head Charge, "Microdosing," Microdosing (Single), On-U Sound, 2023Evangeline, "Mystic," Fuzzy, Fourteen One Four, 2023Juliana, "Narices Frias," Narice Frias (Single), MUN, 2023Ye Vagabonds, "Blue is the Eye," Nine Waves, River Lea, 2022Draag, "Demonbird," Dark Fire Heresy, Draag, 2023Louise Post, "Guilty," Guilty (Single), El Camino, 2023The Greeting Committee, "Can I Leave Me Too?," Dandelion, Harvest, 2021Cafuné, "Tek It," Running, Aurelians Club, Elektra, 2021Durand Jones, "Lord Have Mercy," Wait Til I Get Over, Dead Oceans, 2023Vanessa Tha Finessa, "Top Notch," CURRENT, babygirl123, 2023Gabe 'Nandez, "Pangea," Pangea, Pow, 2023Sphaèros, "Possession," POSSESSION, Pan European, 2020The Smiths, "This Charming Man," The Smiths, Rough Trade, 1984The Smiths, "Barbarism Begins At Home," Meat Is Murder, Sire, 1985Chuck Berry, "You Never Can Tell (1964 Single Version)," You Never Can Tell (Single), Chess, 1964Support The Show: https://www.patreon.com/soundopinionsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Collaborations are key in achieving scientific progress. The European Horizon COST Actions provide great opportunities to build, grant, and/or participate in pan-European collaborations in multidisciplinary topics, including liver diseases.This EASL Studio:Provides you with information about the COST Action programme.Discusses the structure of the drug-induced liver injury (DILI) and cholangiocarcinoma (CCA) working groups.Highlights the potential for collaborative work within this programme.FacultyProf. Jesús Bañales (Moderator)Prof. Raul Andrade (Faculty)Dr Chiara Braconi (Faculty)Prof. Vincenzo Cardinale (Faculty)Related episodesS4E13: EASL-EF CLIF and EU Grants: Exploring novel mechanisms and treatment of chronic liver failureS4E2: YI Choice: How to build consortia and registriesAll EASL Studio Podcasts are available on EASL Campus.

durée : 00:43:45 - Par les temps qui courent - par : Marie Richeux - Rencontre avec le chanteur et musicien Flavien Berger à l'occasion de la sortie de son nouvel album "Dans cent ans" sur le label Pan European. - invités : Flavien Berger Chanteur et musicien de musique électronrique

Max Pearson presents a collection of this week's Witness History episodes from the BBC World Service. We hear about the lengths one woman goes to to escape Eritrea, how Zumba was invented by accident and how a giant peace statue on a Japanese island, crumbled into a ghostly ruin. Plus the arguments then, and the arguments still over the Good Friday Peace Agreement for Northern Ireland, and a picnic for peace that breached the Iron Curtain. This programme contains descriptions of sexual violence. Contributors: Martin Plaut - Senior Research Fellow at University of London Semhar Ghebreslassie - Eritrean graduate Beto Perez - Choreographer and inventor of Zumba Jane Morrice - Yes campaigner in 1998 referendum on the Northern Ireland Good Friday Agreement Lee Reynolds - No campaigner in 1998 referendum on the Northern Ireland Good Friday Agreement Yusuke Natsukawa - Local resident of Awaji Island Goro Otsubo - IT worker who enjoys visiting weird sites around Japan Walburga Habsburg Douglas - an organiser of the Pan-European picnic (Photo: Zumba creator Beto Perez. Credit: Getty Images)

In 1989, a picnic was held on the border between Austria and Hungary, as a demonstration for peace and European integration. It prefigured the end of the Cold War and the Soviet Union and finished with hundreds of East Germans escaping to the West through the Iron Curtain. In 2011, Rob Walker spoke to one of the organisers, Walburga Habsburg Douglas. (Picture: A leaflet from the Pan European picnic. Credit: Getty Images)

Welcome to Protecting Your Nest with Dr. Tony Hampton. Jayne Bullen is the Chief Operating Officer of The Noakes Foundation, the Managing Director of the Nutrition Network, and, alongside Prof. Tim Noakes, the founder of Eat Better South Africa. Jayne is an MBA, High Dip in Marketing and International Relations graduate. She began her career taking products into Africa and researching local markets in the West and East African block and later moved to the UK to read for an MBA at Leeds University, later conducting Pan European media research and strategy evaluation. She is also a Movement Medicine Teacher, a Mind Body Medicine Practitioner and a mom. In this discussion, Dr. Tony and Jayne talk about: (03:16) What Jayne loves about South Africa and what Jayne would like to see change in South Africa (05:07) How Jayne became involved in the low-carb world (07:19) The purpose of the Noakes Foundation (12:50) The difficulties of helping poorer populations in South Africa eat better (18:14) The need for better funding for nutrition research and why there is so little funding for it right now (21:33) The nutritional damage done to families resulting from marketing of unhealthy foods targeted at young children (24:39) Studies sponsored by the Noakes Foundation (27:47) The World Nutrition Summit (30:56) How to spread the message of health to people of all dietary persuasions (34:36) What Jayne would change about the world right now if she could change it just by wishing for it Thank you for listening to Protecting Your Nest. For additional resources and information, please see the links below.    Links:   Jayne Bullen: Nutrition Network The Noakes Foundation Eat Better South Africa Twitter   Dr. Tony Hampton: Linktree Instagram Account LinkedIn Account Ritmos Negros Podcast Q Med Symposium for Metabolic Health Lectures

In this episode we chat with Susanna Harkonen, CEO and Founder of Inner Work. We discuss the implications of the recent International Labour Organization to include a safe and healthy working environment as a fundamental principle and right at work; along with the WHO-ILO Joint Policy Brief on mental health at work. She shares insights from her work as a member of the WHO's Pan-European working group on workplace mental health, identifying positive trends and areas of concern.

Welcome to this brand-new investing podcast from the London South East. My name is Peter Higgins, you can find me on Twitter @conkers3 and I will be your host for this series of Investing Matters podcasts. What can you expect from the Investing Matters podcasts? A great question. You will find long form interviews with noteworthy veterans and experts from the investment and fund management industry. During these interviews each interviewee will share and impart their knowledge, learning and insights on what aspects of Investing truly matters to them and what in their view should matter to investors. We hope this knowledge exchange benefits all and enables all those accessing and listening to these podcasts to achieve even greater investing success. With that in mind, welcome to episode thirty-four, hugely talented Andy Brough, the Head of the Pan-European Small and Midcap Team at Schroders as well as the Lead or co Fund Manager for several funds within that team. After his gaining Economics Degree at Manchester University, Andy started his career in accounting. Gained his qualification as a Chartered Accountant with Price Waterhouse, where he worked with numerous exceptional companies. Andy joined Schroders in June 1987 as an UK equity Fund Manager and in your own words, “started managing money in January 1989”. From November 1999 he managed the well-known Schroder UK Mid 250 Fund. With over 35 years of investment industry expertise, Andy rightfully holds an enviable and much respected reputation in the City. In this Investing Matters interview, Andy gives a brief overview of Schroders, the Pan-European Small and Midcap Team products, discusses being custodians of other people's money, the ability of spot things early, no substitute for hard work, numbers matter, property crash, avoid stocks of “hope”, the importance a rising fundamentals, always learning, triangle research process / methodology, the 3Ps, blending strategies, the Heineken index, emotionless selling strategy, buying strategy, Games Workshop, Frasers, ME Group, why culture of a firm is critical, looking for evolving businesses, his personal investing strategy, a 66 times return on investment and much more. We hope you enjoy this podcast, and we look forward to hearing your feedback. Please subscribe to this podcast on your platform of choice and follow the @InvMattPodcast on Twitter.

Top 10 du meilleur du meilleur de 2022 pour Mister B 10 ELA MINUS & DJ PYTHON Pajaros en verano (Smugglers Way)9 CAMION BAZAR L.A.L.Y. (Mamie's)8 JAMIE XX Kill dem (Young)7 AGAR AGAR The visit (Cracki)6 KOUDLAM Old feeling (Pan European)5 JUDAH WARSKY & GILBERT COHEN Comme Nicolas Ker (Versatile)4 NU GENEA Tienaté (NG)3 BOT'OX Steering (La Belle)2 LAURENT BARDAINNE & TIGRE D'EAU DOUCE Feat. BERTRAND BELIN Oiseau (Heavenly Sweetness)1 ALAN BRAXE & DJ FALCON Step by step (Smugglers Way) Mister B D'Honneur : la cover la plus inattendue de 2022SABABA 5 The bird song (Batov) Top 10 du meilleur du meilleur de 2022 pour Régis de St Amour 10 DERYA YILDIRIM & GRUP SIMSEK Gümüs (Les Disques Bongo Joe)9 DIOGO STRAUSZ Deixa a gira girar (Goutte D'Or)8 KRAAK & SMAAK Feat. FRED NEVCHE Scirocco (Boogie Angst)7 DANGER MOUSE & BLACK THOUGHT Feat. RAEKWON & KID SISTER The darkest part (BMG)6 DINA ÖGON Ficktjuven (Sing A Song Fighter)5 SAY SHE SHE Forget me not (Karma Chief)4 STUDIO ELECTROPHONIQUE Happier things (Violette)3 THE SUPERMEN LOVERS Pigeon (La Tebwa)2 ODEZENNE Mamour (Universeul)1 MR OIZO Feat. PHRA Sylvie (Ed Bangers) St Amour D'Honneur 2022 : la pochette la plus classe (signée Chris Maggio, Laur Geiger et FISK)TORO Y MOI Postman (Dead Oceans)

In this episode, we are joined by CEO of the Institute of Imagination. Martin helped launch iTunes Europe from a start-up and ran iTunes' Pan European business before heading up Disney's EMEA regional arm managing several major brands and music talent, as well as becoming an award-winning chef for kicks! Find out more about the IOI: https://ioi.london/ Get your tickets for The Uprising on 4th May 2023: uprising.edufuturists.com Sign up for our weekly newsletter: newsletter.edufuturists.com Follow us on Twitter https://www.twitter.com/edufuturists Check out all past episodes at https://www.edufuturists.com Subscribe on iTunes https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/edufuturists/id1347592880 --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/edufuturistspodcast/message

In this episode, our host Giovanni Lauricella and our guest Shamik Parekh from Octopus Ventures discuss how he discovered the true impact of capital, how he set-up an incubator for companies to help them scale, what kind of technology they invest in, what stage of the company they invest, how do they define HealthTech, what they look for in an investment, what their due diligence process looks like, his best advice for entrepreneurs on how they should reach out to investors, and so much more. Shamik Parekh LinkedIn Octopus Ventures Website Project Medtech Website Giovanni Lauricella LinkedIn Project Medtech LinkedIn

Analysis: Average households will be £1,450 worse off, says IFS | Live blog: Third ratings agency downgrades UK credit outlook | Pan-European gathering: Truss to tackle Macron over migrant crisis | Ukraine: Crimea could be recaptured as Russians flee and flounder | What next?: Ukraine's three likely routes of attack now | Rail strikes: Pressure to clamp down on unions to prevent more chaos | 5-star review: Robbie Collin's verdict on Matilda The Musical | Chelsea 3 AC Milan 0: Jason Burt's match report from Stamford Bridge | Read all these articles and stay expertly informed anywhere, anytime with a digital subscription. Start your free one-month trial today to gain unlimited website and app access. Cancel anytime. Sign up here.We'd like to ask you a few questions about the ads in this podcast. Please click here to take a quick survey.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The Cold War border between Austria and Hungary was opened for a short period of time for the Pan-European ...

With a special attention to extreme weather conditions, the X-Flex project is going to design and develop a set of tools that will enable the integration of decentralized ecosystems and flexibility systems into the existing European energy system. Lola Alacreu is an industrial engineer and the project’s coordinator. She is going to describe for us during this last episode for this season’s EU Project Zone Podcast, how the X-Flex project is going to achieve this integration in an efficient and cost-effective way, while on the same time help create a secure and sustainable smart grid for Europe. The project is developed by a consortium including members from six European countries. “We have currently pilots in three different locations” says Lola “two in Slovenia, one in Bulgaria and one in Greece” The pilots, cover different scenarios and according to Lola “this is a very good thing, as we can address different geographical, economic and social conditions”. Some of the challenges that X-FLEX is addressing focus on ensuring that the energy we are using is clean as well as cheap as it can be. “And at the same time” says Lola, “that we are improving the flexibility and stability of the supply chain on the network with a special focus on extreme weather conditions”. Listen to the full discussion and find out also how Lola believes that we can achieve flexibility in a Pan European level and which technologies best enable flexibility.

Amazon SEO made easy with Steven Pope. Write your questions as a comment to this video. Steven prioritizes member questions from his YouTube Channel. Join the channel today at https://www.youtube.com/myamazonguy00:00 How to Rank Keywords: Amazon SEO Q&A with Steven Pope09:55 Happy Friday11:10 Paying attention to the SEO bidding versus bidding on keywords 21:50 Removing one-star review that compares seller's item to another22:21 Listing shows the price in strike-through and with the new price in Red24:01 Does background music make any difference in CTR?25:47 Amazon U.S. seller sees his products on Amazon Canada27:45 Pros and cons of the Small and Light Program29:15 Brands that want to control their content but don't want to sell directly on Amazon31:06 Registering an Amazon seller name for a trademark33:10 Seller has 3 versions of his product35:20 A good way to give away a new free product with the seller's main product listing37:31 Where to get keywords to put in search terms38:27 Brand products come in pallets from China but Amazon wants to break them up40:04 A tool to either internally or externally do category pricing research41:38 Multiple search terms in the alt text field 48:09 Seller's listing has a valid GS1 UPC code but the photo on the listing does not belong to the seller45:17 CamelCamelCamel, a free price tracker software47:04 Splitting up the listing to 2 to 4 listings48:09 Amazon has been flagging a listing for safety compliance50:59 Amazon Answers' reply has a typo51:20 Editing/deleting an Amazon Answers reply on a product page52:27 Consequence of being in the wrong BSR53:26 Strike through pricing53:42 Will the GS1 barcode prevent listings or brands from being hacked?54:25 Does MAG have API experts?56:42 MAG School courses57:00 Amazon should ban the Ads click from China57:46 Helium 10 can see the seller's location now59:33 The lowest a seller can have as a sales price for an FBA item1:00:37 Favorite report to track over time for either keywords or PPC1:03:06 The best way to prepare for a one-hour session with colleagues1:03:41 Will launching a new product in the U.K. prevent a seller from launching it in the U.S.?1:04:00 Video on how to apply and enable Pan European program on Amazon U.K.1:04:58 Longest resolution on lost incoming inventory sent via Global Logistics1:05:44 Problems with product authenticity complaints1:06:29 Criteria for an internship1:07:25 Competitor has huge spikes in sales that don't seem legit1:07:59 Effect on the indexing when getting search terms in Helium 101:08:28 How long does it take to get back the status from Detail Page Removed to Back Active?1:08:52 What to do when product isn't showing on any of the keywords1:09:51 Do customers consider the Brand home page when they make their purchase?1:11:06 Changing the name after selling products under a generic brand name1:12:05 Which type of Amazon campaign is best for the competition target?Read nearly 100 testimonials about My Amazon Guy at https://myamazonguy.com/testimonials/Watch the most popular Amazon Tutorial playlists at https://myamazonguy.com/amazon-seller-fba-tutorials-guides-videos/Support the show

The European venture capital scene experienced record-breaking growth in 2021, with over €100B invested in one single year in European startups. These investments created almost 100 unicorns in the region and contributed to a strong startup pipeline going into 2022. Despite these staggering results there remain challenges on the way forward, especially when it comes to gender diversity. Progress is flat. Comparing 2021 to 2020, there has been hardly any change in the percentage of funding that is raised by all-male founding teams, all-female founding teams or mixed-gender founding teams. To address this European Women in VC commissioned IDC to analyze the female funding gap on both funders and founders level in the very first truly Pan-European report (covering EU 27 + UK) providing a survey and data-based overview of gender diversity across the European VC sector. From a funding perspective, the gender gap is ubiquitously present. The combined desk and survey research of over 400 venture firms managing each at least EUR 25m in AUM, indicates that on average 85% of VC General Partners are male, 15% female. However, moving towards a balanced gender structure at the VC/ funding level clearly indicates that the number of female GPs must increase. More importantly, though these female GPs need access to larger pools of capital, they need to manage larger funds, if they want to exert influence on the startup market and be able to follow on with portfolio companies. Analyzing actual investment power (firepower) shows that female GPs have less investment power (9%) of the total AUM versus 91% of the male GPs of the total AUM, indicating that females tend to be GPs at smaller funds. “The strong emergence of biotech and life science funds of a significant size, in certain parts of Europe, is the early sign of progress in bringing more capital to the hands of female investors and creation of diverse investment teams” – Kinga Stanislawska, Co-founder of European Women in VC. “If this segment of funds was removed from the analysis, the picture of European VC management will show significantly a lower result for female presence across general partnerships” Moreover, from the founders' perspective, according to the report, the funding gap for female founders remains largely the same as in the previous years even though capital deployed to mixed founding teams increased slightly. In 2021, female-led startups raised just 1,8% of investment in Europe. “The problem is systemic, thus we must search for holistic solutions. Capital imbalance is not only visible at the startup level, it exists across the entire value chain and must be tackled from the top of capital flows. We need more capital for female-led funds and female GPs on the fund management level! This is a solution for more venture money to reach female founders and in general to better address impact and smart investing.” – Anna Wnuk, Head of Community of European Women in VC. The report shows that female founders are driving positive impact in critical verticals across the ecosystem, such as education, sustainability, and healthcare. At the same time, female investors are more likely to back up these women-led businesses. Micha? Kramarz – Head of Google for Startups, Central Europe Although the survey results indicate that women are largely present in junior investment positions and so seem to show an increasing interest in entering the world of VC, the employment pyramid is steep, and the women drop off on the way to Partner level. The funds that women raise and lead are also on average smaller in terms of AUM. “The current situation in which we invest in a homogeneous group of entrepreneurs is problematic. We do not only leave a lot of opportunity on the table but a lot of unused potential as well. We need to create a level playing field with equal opportunity for everybody.” Corinne Vigreux, founder of TOMTOM. The report was commissioned and created by European Women in VC, the ...

Insights from Cromwell Property Group at MIPIM with Tom Duncan In this episode, Caleb Parker is joined by #WorkBold Podcast alum, Tom Duncan, Head of Research & Investment Strategy from Cromwell Property Group. Tom was a distinguished guest on Episode 7 of Season 6 of the podcast, titled “Why Office Investors Must Act with Conviction in the Current Market”, where we discussed his recent white paper diving into what he called “the age of Space-as-a-Service”. He returned for this MIPIM edition to give us an update on their strategy, including Cromwell's “wooden building” concept. They also talk about taking risks and pursuing innovation in real estate and how to balance that with the need to minimise risk when making huge investments, and Tom shares the 3 M's that drive Cromwell's thinking, and why Space-as-a-Service is such an important concept. Connect with Tom on LinkedIn Connect with Caleb on LinkedIn  If you have any questions or feedback on this episode, email podcast@workbold.co   Value Bombs: The future of the office is much more user-focused, and that requires a different type of space. - Tom Sustainability and environmental factors are going to be key to performance going forward. - Tom We are seeing three areas of opportunity - the 3 M's: Mega trends, Momentum, and Mispricing. - Tom Businesses looking at new spaces are asking, “What is your solution to flex?” - Caleb Timestamps:  [05:15] How are you finding MIPIM so far?  [05:35] What opportunities are you looking for at MIPIM? [06:30] What sort of feedback did you get back from your event at MIPIM?  [07:00] Can you elaborate on Pan-European products?  [08:10] Are you getting a lot of interest from investors?  [08:30] Why would someone want to be in a wood building versus something else? [09:50] Are you seeing investors acting with conviction? [10:50] How does Cromwell balance taking risks and making sure that they're not doing the wrong thing?  [12:10] What can you talk about in regards to your strategy when it comes to Space-as-a-Service?  [15:30] Lenders don't want to hand out finance to a company that is looking at changing some space to flexible working space because it's not wrapped in a long-term lease. What are your views on that?  Resources: Get TSK's weekly 'work made better' newsletter Shoutouts:  Benjamin Bach 22 Bishopsgate Sponsors: Headline Sponsor: TSK TSK creates inspiring workplaces for some of the world's biggest brands across the UK and Ireland, They've been working for 25 years to deliver the best employee experiences and the vision of their clients. Not only do they create great places to work, TSK share workplace content every week from the latest data to inspiring spaces they've designed and built. You can read their latest insights at www.tskgroup.co.uk or check out their LinkedIn and Instagram pages to become a follower, fan and friend. TSK publish weekly thought leadership, research and content featuring their team, clients and partners about workplace, commercial interiors, hybrid working and how others have prospered from investing in workplace. You can check their latest publications and video content in the show notes by signing up to their weekly ‘work made better' newsletter or visit tskgroup.co.uk. Fortune Favours the Bold Bold merges property management & Space-as-a-Service to help office customers grow faster and drive asset value. Bold is a real estate brand owned and operated by NewFlex (www.workbold.co)  Future Proof Your Portfolio with NewFlex NewFlex delivers and manages a range of branded solutions for every type of building, in every type of location, for every type of occupier. Including the flexibility to develop your own brand. All enabled by flexible management contracts where we are invested in making money for you. (www.newflex.com) Launch Your Own Podcast Kopus.com is the leading podcast production and strategic content company for brands, organisations, institutions, individuals, and entrepreneurs. Our team sets you up with the right strategy, equipment, training, and guidance and content to ensure you sound amazing while speaking to your niche audience and networking with your perfect clients. Get in touch jason@kopus.com (www.Kopus.com)

In Episode 15 of Series 3 of the DIAL Podcast we're discussing LGBT discrimination, harassment and violence. Our guests are Sait Bayrakdar from Kings College London and Andrew King from the University of Surrey who, as part of DIAL's CILIA project have been using a large cross national survey to look at the experiences of nearly 29,000 people living in Germany the UK and Portugal. LGBT discrimination, harassment and violence in Germany, Portugal and the UK: A quantitative comparative approach is research by Sait Bayrakdar and Andrew King and is published in the journal Current Sociology.   Transcript Christine Garrington  0:00  Welcome to DIAL a podcast where we tune in to evidence on inequality over the lifecourse. In this episode, we're discussing LGBT discrimination, harassment and violence. Our guests are Sait Bayrakdar from King's College London and Andrew King from the University of Surrey, who, as part of DIAL's CILIA project have been using a large cross-national survey to look at the experiences of nearly 29,000 people living in Germany, the UK and Portugal. I asked Andrew first to talk us through the background to the research.   Andrew King  0:30  This piece of research is part of the larger CILIA LGBTQI project, which has been exploring inequalities across the lives of LGBTQI people in four European countries - England, Scotland, Germany, and Portugal. We had a large research team from four different institutions on the project. And they brought expertise from different disciplines, as well as different methodologies. So the main aims of the CILIA project were to study LGBTQI inequalities from an intersectional and lifecourse perspective and bring some comparative dimensions to this. We started with a literature review and survey mapping exercise, which helped us document what had been done so far in the area, then we went on to analyse various sources of data, as well as collecting a large qualitative data set from LGBTQI individuals in the four countries. But this research article reports on the research, which was a part of our quantitative strand.   Christine Garrington  1:43  Okay, that's great. Thanks Andrew. I'm going to come back to you a little bit later in our discussion for your sort of reflections on what was was found. But Sait you were the lead author on this, and what was it specifically that you wanted to try to get to grips with and why in this particular paper?   Sait Bayrakdar  1:58  We were aware from our qualitative research that despite over 10 years of equality legislation, issue of discrimination, harassment, and violence we're still very significant to LGBT people, but we wanted to look at this both quantitatively and cross nationally. In a nutshell, we were mainly interested in understanding the patterns of discrimination, harassment and violence experienced by LGBT individuals in these countries. But this was quite tricky, because most survey studies still do not collect information about sexual orientation or gender identity. And it is even more difficult to find an international study that collects data from individuals across different countries. One exception to this was the LGBT survey conducted by the European Union Fundamental Rights Agency. And this data allowed us to do a comparative analysis across the countries in the CILIA project. In fact, this really was the on the Pan-European data set that spoke to these inequalities. Also, we wanted to document the diverse experiences and patterns within LGB and T communities. Partly because of data limitations, and small numbers in surveys, these different groups are often merged in a single category as LGBT. Although their experiences differ quite a lot. And our results also come from these differences. Qualitative researchers are quite ahead in this regard. And they have done amazing studies showing the diversity in experiences and outcomes. We hope this research will help us show these differences quantitatively and highlight the need for better survey data collection that allows researchers to study LGBTQI plus lives in this way.   Andrew King  3:37  So although we, there were four countries involved, actually, the dataset just puts everybody into a UK group. So we couldn't separate out England and Scotland. And the other thing is that the dataset doesn't include specific questions relevant for intersex people either. So we weren't able to include intersex people in the quantitative analysis that we did.   Christine Garrington  4:01  Okay, yeah, understood. Now, what sorts of things were people asked about in the Fundamental Rights Agency survey then Sait? It just sounds, it sounds a really useful resource for this.   Sait Bayrakdar  4:12  Yes, absolutely. So the respondents were asked about many things, including their demographic data and social identities, their experiences of discrimination or other kinds of unfair treatment, whether they report these incidents, whether they change their behaviour in public to avoid discrimination. They are also asked about their views about equality policies and their relationships with people they interact in their daily lives. It's quite a rich study, and I believe it is terribly under used by researchers. In this research, we looked at LGBT individuals experiences of discrimination, harassment and violence, and the survey was asking whether they had experienced any of these as a result of the person's sexual orientation and gender identity. We looked at how these differences differ for LGBT individuals separately, and how their social background affects their likelihood of experiencing this incidence.   Christine Garrington  5:07  Yeah and large numbers of people took part in this survey as well. So, Sait let's dig a bit deeper now and move on to you know what everybody is interested to hear about, which is what you actually found - can you talk us through that?   Sait Bayrakdar  5:20  Sure. So earlier, I said that we were interested in bringing forward the diverse experiences within and between LGBT individuals, and between different countries. And I can confidently say that we found out that there are quite striking differences across LGB, and T individuals. First of all, in all countries, trans individuals are more at risk of experiencing negative incidents of discrimination, harassment and violence. Compared to their cisgender, gay, lesbian, bisexual counterparts. This is perhaps not surprising for many, but this wasn't explored quantitatively previously in an academic study. And another interesting finding for me was that different groups were more prone to experience different kinds of negative incidents. For example, lesbians seem more at risk of discrimination and harassment, and gay men are more at risk of violence. We do not know why this is the case. But there is definitely an observable gender pattern here. And my feeling is that this might be related to the ways these identities may be seen as a threat to masculinity. And I think we should definitely need more research to look at these intersections of sexuality, gender, and maybe also other, other social identities.   Christine Garrington  6:38  Yeah, some really, really interesting and important findings emerging here. And was the story the same across all of the three countries that you, you looked at?   Sait Bayrakdar  6:47  Not quite. In the first instance, all three countries showed similar patterns in the likelihood of experiencing these incidents across different groups. In all countries, reports of discrimination and harassment were more common than reports of violence and trans individuals were more likely to experience all three forms of negative incidents but there were some interesting differences when we dug deeper. For example, the rates of violence are higher in the UK, which begs the question why the UK is less able to protect these individuals despite being a front runner in equality legislation? Perhaps another thing is that the reports of violence are particularly high for trans individuals and gay men in the UK. These two groups in the UK are more likely to experience violence than those in Germany and Portugal. And I think this suggests that contextual factors may be shaping some part of these experiences or the likelihood of experiencing these incidents. This is something that comparative data can help us understand a bit better.   Christine Garrington  7:47  Okay, Sait so was there anything else at play? Any other factors that we should take into account or that you took into account that were important or relevant?   Sait Bayrakdar  7:55  Yeah, so we included quite a few other variables relating to social identities and individual characteristics. I think the most important but perhaps not so unexpected finding was that those who have greater socioeconomic resources are less likely to experience these negative incidents. And this implies that class based social inequalities may have a role here as well. So for example, a more economically advantaged person may be able to protect themselves a bit better, whereas other less advantaged might unfortunately, be more vulnerable to such incidents. We found this effect to varying degrees in all countries. I think this is very important because it points out that intersections of class, sexuality and gender identity are creating unique experiences. Depending on one is positioned across different social demographics, the likelihood of experiencing negative incidents change. We also find that LGBT individuals with disabilities and minority ethnic or religious backgrounds are more likely to experience discrimination. It is really very important that we create more empirical evidence on these intersections looking at different life outcomes, not only discrimination, harassment and violence, but maybe also the outcomes of education, labour markets, and other domains of life.   Christine Garrington  9:15  Yeah, no, absolutely understood. Now, what would you say then say, Sait that we take away from all of this in an era where, you know, many people assume or think, believe that discrimination on the grounds of sexuality and identity as somehow a thing of the past? I mean, your your research tells us otherwise?   Sait Bayrakdar  9:32  And this is a very interesting question, which I also find difficult to answer. I think there has been an immense advancement in the equality legislation in the UK, as well as the other countries in our research. And public attitudes have also progressed significantly in recent years. And I think maybe, possibly because of these recent changes, some people may think that the struggle has now been won, and equality has been achieved. However, having legislation is one thing and putting it in effect is another. LGBT individuals still experience discrimination in their day-to-day lives, and the things heterosexual cisgender individuals take for granted are usually not available or accessible to the same extent to LGBT people. And I think that is because the norms and cultures in workplaces, social lives, families are shaped by cis-heteronormativity. So I think those with lived experiences have a better understanding of discrimination and whether or not it is a thing of past.   Christine Garrington  10:33  And on that note, do you have any thoughts on the implications of all of this for, for policy, especially around efforts to promote greater equality, and diversity, you know, wherever we're at in the world, but particularly in these countries.   Sait Bayrakdar  10:47  In this piece we provide quantitative evidence for many issues scholars have been discussing for a while. And we do this by providing further original comparative evidence, we knew that the discrimination, harassment and violence was there. But for me, the most important take home lesson is that there are country differences in the likelihood of experiencing these incidents. And we see that violence is more likely in the UK, particularly for trans individuals. We do not test the effect of potential factors, but our study does show that trans individuals are more more vulnerable to these attacks. So I think policy should really prioritise this. Trans rights have become a very heated topic for some years now. I must say, I think the way trans rights are discussed in the UK is not helping. As a policy priority the government and other policymakers should prioritise addressing trans people's very immediate needs and ensure that everyone regardless of their gender identity is protected from discrimination, harassment and violence. And another issue. Police documents don't always take account of diversity in terms of gender identity, sexual orientation, or variations in sex characteristics and intersex status. They often assume that LGBTQI plus communities are a homogeneous group, despite their characteristics and needs being quite different. I think there should be more engagement from policymakers with communities themselves, so they can see that they are working with diversity and difference. This should also take account of differences related to other social backgrounds, such as education, class, ethnicity, disability, religion, and possibly any other significant difference that people may feel or identify with.   Christine Garrington  12:30  Yeah, thank you Sait for those really interesting reflections. And Andrew, I wonder if there's anything that you'd like to add to that?   Andrew King  12:36  Yeah, an overall recommendation from the CILIA project is the need for intersectional policymaking. So policies tend to address people as single subjects and adopt a one size fits all approach, which in a way, erases differences. And as we've demonstrated in our article from an intersectional lifecourse perspective, this is really problematic. This means that we need policymaking that focuses on multiple and contextual marginalities as well as inclusions and exclusions and how privilege and oppression are created in multiple ways. So not recognising this intersectional diversity in policymaking, or perhaps only doing so in limited ways means people who embody the intersections of different and multiple marginalities get overlooked. So while some policies need to be specific, they should also recognise intersections. And we very much hope that our article and the wider CILIA project contributes to a new policy agenda in this respect.   Christine Garrington  13:46  “LGBT discrimination, harassment and violence in Germany, Portugal and the UK. A quantitative comparative approach” is research by Sait Bayrakdar and Andrew King, and is published in the journal Current Sociology. You can find out more on the DIAL website at dynamicsofinequality.org. And don't forget to subscribe to the DIAL podcast to access earlier and forthcoming episodes. Thanks for listening to this episode of the DIAL podcast which was presented and produced by me Chris Garrington of Research Podcasts.

In this interview with French political scientist Laure Neumayer, we discuss how a particular form of anti-communist memory politics were mobilized and utilized by "memory entrepreneurs" in Europe following the Cold War. A particular interpretation of the socialist past was put up against official European memory of the 20th century as the EU enlarged into Eastern Europe. A mixture of anti-communist nationalists, former dissidents and liberals wanted a pan-European identity to be rewritten in a way that criminalized communism as it had after World War II criminalized Nazism. Here's a description of Laure Neumayer's 2019 book The Criminalisation of Communism in the European Political Space After The Cold War: Memory has taken centre stage in European-level policies after the Cold War, as the Western historical narrative based on the uniqueness of the Holocaust was being challenged by calls for an equal condemnation of Communism and Nazism. This book retraces the anti-communist mobilisations carried out by Central European representatives in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and in the European Parliament since the early 1990s. Based on archive consultation, interviews and ethnographic observation, it analyses the memory entrepreneurs' requests for collective remembrance and legal accountability of Communist crimes in European institutions, Pan-European political parties and transnational advocacy networks. The book argues that these newcomers managed to strengthen their positions and impose a totalitarian interpretation of Communism in the European assemblies, which directly shaped the EU's remembrance policy. However, the rules of the European political game and recurring ideological conflicts with left-wing opponents reduced the legal and judicial implications of this anti-communist grammar at the European level.

In today's episode, listen to an interview with Uwe Horstmann, General Partner at Project A Ventures.We hope you enjoy(ed) the podcast! Please feel free to email us with any questions, suggestions, and opinions to podcast@tech.eu or tweet at us @tech_eu.

https://www.bossequity.com/about-us/mark-edwardsCEO of Boss Equity - 100 AcquisitionsIn April 1999 Mark set up Document Boss (now Boss Equity), with his then partner, David Shieldhouse. Together, they created the blueprint for a new type of specialist service provider aimed at senior executive business leaders in the software tech sector.Over the ensuing 19+ years, Mark has been personally involved in over 100 Software Tech acquisitions. His wide-ranging knowledge, contacts and experience in this sector have proved invaluable in finding ‘the right fit' for client companies and acquirers alike.Rapid Growth for Client CompaniesOver the past 5 years, Mark has developed and refined Boss Equity's “Equity Value Accelerator” (EVATM) service. This is a bespoke framework which assists software tech CEO's and business owners to grow the equity in their business.By examining 5 critical areas of a business, the EVA service uncovers its strengths. It also identifies those areas where improvement can mean a rapid increase in growth, adding to the overall equity value of the company and enhancing sale price at exit.Business transfer industryHaving worked early on in his career at W&T Avery (now GEC Avery), Mark then worked in the business transfer market alongside one of the UK's top transfer agents - John Oakes. This proved to be an excellent learning trajectory in the art of selling businesses.ECM Experience & First European MBOFrom the early 1990's Mark specialised in the Document Management sector. Head-hunted, he became the UK General Manager for DSA; a German document software vendor management and scanning company, operating across Europe. As well as managing the UK operation, Mark was also part of their pan-European management team, working alongside colleagues from France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Spain, Poland and Greece. It was during this time that Mark was involved in raising investment for several established and start-up eDM companies. He also facilitated the MBO of DSA to form the Pan European company, Novadys.Software Tech ExperienceAt the start of the 80's UK recession, Mark's next move was to enter the thriving computer industry, where he was involved in selling data-storage products - such as Exabyte tape drives and Quantum hard drives - throughout the UK. During this time, Mark introduced a sales incentive programme that was adopted in the UK, Canada and the US.Entrepreneurial BackgroundMark has successfully run several businesses, one of which was based upon a flotation belt he created, called the "Aqua Runner Belt". This was later developed by Mark and his then wife, Isabel, into a fitness class and training school for fitness professionals. The belts and classes were sold throughout Australia, Argentina, France, USA, Germany, South Africa and Brazil and were used to help athletes and individuals recovering from injury, by allowing them to exercise, suspended in deep water (Aqua-runner belt & Flotation Aerobics).A number of top athletes used Mark's flotation belt to maintain their fitness whilst recovering from injury: these included Liverpool football club, Glasgow Rangers and a number of Olympic athletes.Mark also formed Acumen, a document management file management company that bridged the gap between the paper document management world and electronic documents, using RFID's - tiny electronic transmitters that held information regarding location and content.Personal - Interests & HobbiesMark is an award-winning photographer and an Associate of The Royal Photographic Society; he is working on a portfolio of images towards becoming a Fellow. A selection of some of Mark's images can be found at flickr .He has studied with The Coaching Academy as an executive coach, which he finds very useful in his current role, mentoring clients and facilitating M&A assignments.Mark is a keen keep-fit enthusiast,

Patrick sat down with Jason Ball, Partner at Pan-European growth stage fund GR Capital. Jason make a compelling case for later stage investing in Europe and companies with an Eastern European market expansion focus in particular. At GR, he and his colleagues have backed leading scale-ups such as Glovo, Lime, Sennder, Deliveroo and Flaschenpost (recently exited to Dr. Oetker). For Glovo in particular GR was instrumental in accompanying the founders on their Eastern European expansion. Jason provides several wise lessons on his way into VC, how to identify top performing teams and elaborates on the methodology of successful later stage investing. He also shares important learnings for emerging managers on how to foster LP relationships, a crucial component for any VC. On this episode you will learn about: Jason's path breaking into VC and his tours of duty at 2 European startups during the DotCom Bubble his time at Qualcomm Ventures, London Seed Capital and finally GRThe importance of operating experience for investors The 3Ps of investing as well as the 4Ps of later stage investing Tactics for successful LP relationship and fundraisingMake sure to check out GR Capital's website and you can follow Jason Ball on LinkedIn here or on Twitter here. 

Carina Johnson is coeditor -- with David Luebke, Marjorie Elizabeth Plummer, and Jesse Spohnholz -- of Archeologies of Confession: Writing the German Reformation, 1517-2017 (Berghahn, 2019) and she is also the author of the introduction to this collected volume. Today she talks about these fifteen essays written by both German and American experts of Reformation History and how they see the towering figure of Martin Luther looming over 500 years of German history and identity. In terms of theology and confession, then later (in the nineteenth century) of nationalism, and (finally) the post-national, almost Pan-European politics of today, Martin Luther has been asked to wear many hats over time. In this discussion, Professor Johnson considers the agendas those hats have contained, while also considering the details of social history of real people who lived their lives oblivious to the political questions in the stratosphere. In the second half of this discussion, Dr. Johnson considers the changing role of ‘Great Men' in the service of public memory, including Martin Luther King (on whose holiday we recorded) and Christopher Columbus whose quincentenary preceded Luther's by 25 years and is still fresh in our minds. Carina Johnson is Professor of History at Pitzer College. She is the author of Cultural Hierarchy in Sixteenth-Century Europe: The Ottomans and Mexicans (2011). Her current research includes “cross-cultural encounters, proto-ethnography, memory, and the experience of violence in the sixteenth-century Habsburg Empire.”  Krzysztof Odyniec is a historian of the Early Modern Europe, the Spanish Empire, and the Atlantic World, specializing in sixteenth-century diplomacy and travel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Much has been made of Sweden's response to Covid-19 and the country's avoidance of stringent national lockdowns, but its private equity market remained as strong as in the previous year. Finland also performed well, in no small part due to its budding tech ecosystem, which will have been bolstered by the supercharged digitalisation trend.Unquote reporter Katharine Hidalgo welcomes Unquote's Nordic market specialist, Eliza Punshi, to discuss how the Nordic PE industry fared in 2020 and what's on the minds of market players as 2021 beckons.0:00 – Intro0:33 – Pan-European 2020 trends overview2:33 – Nordic headline figures4:38 – VC and tech remain robust6:50 – Outlook for 2021Theme music: ©2012 Kick Up The Fire

European private equity was hit hard by the coronavirus crisis, but GPs adapted swiftly by protecting their portfolios and switching their due diligence online. In DACH, however, records were broken on both ends of the market – with the most VC and growth investments in a year, and the region's largest buyout ever.Unquote reporter Katharine Hidalgo welcomes Unquote's DACH market specialist, Harriet Matthews, to discuss how the DACH industry fared in 2020 and what's on the minds of market players as 2021 beckons.0:00 – Intro0:33 – Pan-European 2020 trends overview2:33 – DACH headline figures4:28 – New players moving in6:10 – Blockbuster deals8:40 – Outlook for 2021Theme music: ©2012 Kick Up The Fire

The full picture of Covid-19's impact on private equity activity will become clearer when final numbers can be tallied up in early 2021. But the early figures highlight how a 2008-style meltdown was averted, both in terms of deal-doing and fundraising. That said, the crisis has further exacerbated a bifurcation in the market that is likely to lead to ever more competitive processes and correspondingly high average entry multiples, at a time when the full ramifications of Covid-19 for a number of businesses are still not crystal clear. Unquote editor Greg Gille welcomes Unquote's UK market specialist, Katharine Hidalgo, to discuss how the UK industry fared in 2020 and what's on the minds of market players as 2021 beckons. 0:00 – Intro0:33 – Pan-European 2020 trends overview2:38 – UK headline figures4:50 – Pent-up demand and CGT hike looming9:14 – Outlook for 2021 Theme music: ©2012 Kick Up The Fire

In a year of unprecedented events, GPs across Europe have adapted working habits and changed their outlook, but despite the shifting economic landscape, many of the same trends have only seemed more prevalent in 2020. Amid rising investment and exit volumes, GPs have witnessed and participated in a continued flight for quality, as the fundraising market continues to bifurcate. Unquote reporter Katharine Hidalgo speaks with southern-Europe-focused reporter Alessia Argentieri to discuss how these trends are playing out in the region, as well as the headline PE statistics and the outlook for 2021. 0:00 – Intro 00:33 – Pan-European 2020 trends overview 2:45 – Southern European headline figures 5:40 – Mega-deals soldiering on 8:17 – Outlook for 2021 ​Theme music: ©2012 Kick Up The Fire

With the H1 figures in, the impact of Covid-19 on European buyouts is now apparent: the private equity market stalled to a crawl, reminiscent of the post-GFC malaise. But did every region suffer the same, or were there bright spots amid the gloom? Unquote editor Greg Gille hosts the entire team to break down the data in detail, analyse the signs of early recovery in some markets, and see whether industry participants are more bullish for H2 prospects1:29 – Pan-European activity5:38 – UK 9:46 – DACH13:20 – Southern Europe18:15 – France20:55 – Nordic Theme music: ©2012 Kick Up The Fire