Educational Entrepreneurship with Dr. Oksana Malysheva, CEO and Managing Partner of Sputnik ATX

Speaker A: Welcome to the Education and Empowerment Podcast. In this show, our hosts explore success and advancement through education by interviewing today's top leaders in the fields of education, business and technology in order to provide insight into what it really takes to succeed. This show is brought to you by Forstay, a SaaS enabled online booking marketplace for student and intern housing. Forestay provides turnkey all in one cloud based accommodation software solutions for colleges, universities and organizations. Learn more at offcampus.4stay.com and landlords.forstay.com all right, let's get into the show.

Speaker B: Once part of the strategic teams of McKinsey and Motorola Sputnik, ATX managing partner and CEO Dr. Oksana, Milisheva, uh, used her skills and passions in leadership in education to shift focus to building strategies for positive social change and innovation. Malisheva is a trained PhD physicist originally from the Ukraine and found Austin to be a location with great weather and beautiful sights, along with the structure and flexibility to host a new accelerator for local business growth. Although she has an educational background in physics, Dr. Milisheva holds a Ph. L. Doctor from the University of Pennsylvania in Physics as well as a BS and Ms. In Physics from the Moscow Institute of Technology. Dr. Malisheva's professional interests are driven by her passion for leadership, mentorship, innovation and education. As a venture capitalist. Her interest in elevating the trajectory of the people she associates with to reach their fullest potential is central to her mission and her vision in all of her professional endeavors. Dr. Oksana Malishyeva. Ah, an accidental venture capitalist with a background in physics. And in this episode she will share her journey from Ukraine to becoming a venture capitalist in Austin, Texas. She will emphasize the importance of following passion and serendipity in entrepreneurship. Dr. Oksana Milisheva highlighted the need for educational institutions to adapt to change, equip students with skills for uncertainty, and foster interdisciplinary collaboration.

Speaker C: You know, your background is amazing. You studied physics. For the purpose of this audience, I was wondering if you can expand a little bit more about, you know, why physics and you know, venture capitalism? What is the connection? I always thought maybe there are numbers, maybe there's inspiration for something else. But your story is certainly amazing and it'd be good if you shared that with us.

Speaker D: My pleasure. So let me start with a confession. I am an accidental venture capitalist and if you think about a girl that grew up in a Kiev, Ukraine and I was like really fond of physics and math, I was one of those geeky kids to imagine that I will be talking to you from Austin, Texas, as a venture capitalist. No kind of visualization would have gotten me from there to here, because even capitalism when I was growing up was frankly a dirty word. Right? But let me walk you through, because I got here by following my passion and in some ways a necessity, because my first journey was I've graduated from the top physics and math school of the former Soviet Union called Moscow Institute of Physics Technology, the best school possible at the worst possible time, because perestroika had happened. And I was convinced at that point in time that my future is in science. That's all I wanted to do, that's all my friends wanted to do. Yet the economics of the country was not obliging to that because, frankly, the funding had stopped. People had trouble eating and heating the houses at the time. And we certainly were not even supplying electricity to, uh, the labs, the robust and gritty physicists. We could live without the salaries being paid to us on a timely basis. But when you cannot power your experimental setup, the science is simply not possible. And as often happens in life, when one door closes, another might be opening up. And so that's how I found myself in a PhD lab of the University of Pennsylvania. Loved every moment of that. Learned a ton. But also in that setting, got seduced by business. I have to confess, I didn't even know that you could A, do business and B, fun with it. But Ken is really renowned for their amazing interdisciplinary opportunities. It's also the land of Wharton. So as I got immersed in that culture and got to think a little bit about this and got exposed to that, that life that was previously unavailable for me to dream about became very enticing and went from curiosity to more curiosity to passion, to, oh, wow, I like what I do here, but what I really want to do is to be over here. So how would I bridge that there? My next step from my PhD was management consulting.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker D: I'm going to highlight the next step. It's McKinsey. New York at the time was recruiting people with non traditional background. And that was a blessing to me because they were throwing their consultants some of the most difficult problems that American corporations are facing. And sometimes looking at the problem in an orthogonal way seemed useful. And so at the time they started recruiting PhDs like myself, doctors and lawyers in addition to your traditional MBAs. And so my exposure to business came through McKinsey. When I left McKinsey, by complete chance, I found myself becoming a director of Marketing Strategies at Motorola at the perfect time. Talk about, I went to the best school at the worst time now like I'm also a fantastic company at the best possible time. And it was possible time because we were the band of challengers that wanted to take on Nokia was the most amazing phone called Razer and I was part of the group that made it so and learned a ton about marketing, branding, how to compete when your power is on paper way less than the power of your biggest competitor. How do you make a change in that direction? And that's like the next step. And from that I've done a little bit of consulting and found myself doing a lot of investing and turnarounds in the area of education, among other things. And that's how I got exposed to the education sector. I am still on the board of University of the Potomac in Washington D.C. and that experience gradually left me to be a venture capitalist in Austin. So now, ah, as I look back, you could hardly design a better experience for someone who gets to think about the future, figure out what are the big problems, how to talk to various stakeholders, how to create a branding strategy. I did not envision that. So back to my original thing. I'm an accidental venture capitalist. I'm proud of that because my 20 year old self, Bob, uh, would not have even been able to contemplate that. I will be here and for other young people like myself, where the world is telling yourself that you need to know exactly where you want to be and you need to dream big. Like yes, you could dream big, but you kind of need to know where you, you have to allow a bit more serendipity in your life and just following the passion in the moment.

Speaker C: That's amazing. And uh, what fascinates me is that, you know, that transition from academia to corporation to, you know, what we later heard in our graduate school about Motorola versus Nokia and you know, that whole competition out there is that yes, I mean as you can say, you know, you can dream big, but there are definitely examples of things or projects or specific fields that you can go into to apply entrepreneurial mindset. Can you give us perhaps a few examples from your, you know, rich background of how individuals or how, you know, people can use entrepreneurial tendencies to solve and create significant solutions for whatever field day in, maybe you can give examples from your past as you were sort of, you know, rediscovering yourself and going to the path of venture capitalism?

Speaker D: Yeah, uh, I think as the scientist, like, like I want to go back, okay, Defining what's, what's entrepreneurial mindset.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker D: Think this will mean different things to different People. But I think let's define this as an ability to challenge conventions, right? Let's find this ability to step into the unknown, and let's define it as an ability to create something new. And that might be for yourself, that might be for the company you work in, or, uh, that may be the new business, right? Step into a known and creating something new. Like, you know, that is not a rigorous definition of entrepreneurship, but any good entrepreneur I know always have had those characteristics. Um, and I think the best advice I want to give people is to think about, because stepping into unknown is very risky. And the first we could do for ourselves is acknowledge that, yes, it is risky. It may not feel nice all of the time, but asking yourself, like, there is. There is this framework of when you are older, let's say you already retired, you sit in a nice rocking chair by the lake. Would you regret not taking that step? Kind of looking back, thinking about very linearly what will happen to my life in the next few months, thinking about stepping out and exchanging the time horizons. Because often the biggest mistakes we make in life are not the mistakes of commission, as in, but the mistakes of omission, as in we don't do something, we don't show up and take on something. And I think it's useful to keep that in mind because that is a very, very useful framework. The two things is you could step out and say, okay, it may feel uncertain, I may not know where you're gonna go, but when I'm older, would have regretted not taking this step. And the other thing is, there are no guarantees in life. And listen, like, for me, like, you know, my life illustrates that better than anyone else's life. But there are plenty of those examples you cannot guarantee, whatever the certain path you're in, the world could choose different trajectory. And the thing that you have with you in forever are your skills, your mindset, and your contacts, your friends. And so in stepping to the unknown, ask yourself the question over the next six months, if I pursue that, will I be better skilled? Will I have stronger network and connections that will be about us. And frankly, don't forget, will I have more fun in doing that?

Speaker B: Right?

Speaker D: That would be a very useful toolkit to allow yourself to be an entrepreneur. But it will not be easy. Entrepreneurship is not meant to be easy. This is one of the biggest misnomers out there in the social media universe about people coming up with this great idea and going from one victory to another, and boom, there is a huge success and ipo. And I work with folks that creates something for a living. It almost never happens.

Speaker C: That's incredible. You know, I'm really inspired by your philosophy of approaching problems and creating, you know, solutions, not just what's comfortable, but, you know, what's actually going to matter. And that framework that you gave about, you know, the next six months or that year really impacts you to see if it's. Is it only for me or is it for the socium? Right. Is it, you know, is it going to be beneficial for, you know, my society, my community, whatever it is. And there is a lot of that discussion right now happening, especially with the incoming government. There is such a big push around, you know, different layoffs that's happening. And you know, people are talking about will people go back to, you know, education? Will people go back to reskill and upskill and to find new ways to be still useful or will people create more, you know, new companies? Is it going to be a surge of new solutions? All of a sudden people who worked for governments and all these nonprofits and for profits, what are they going to do? What's the future like? And I've been also talking to several entrepreneurs and you know, there is this challenge. But you uh, know, given your background and giving your passion and your, you know, leadership experience with University of the Potomac, how would you describe turning those challenges into opportunities in education sector specifically if you were to share your $0.02 and sort of narrow down this approach of entrepreneurship and apply it to education sector? If you were in the room with 10, 15 university presidents, which I'm sure you do on a day to day basis, what would you tell them to do?

Speaker D: That is such a great question. It has deep and profound implications. So if there are university presidents that are listening, first of all, I'm grateful that you are exploring and expanding and hearing these thoughts for me. I think if we learn, if I've learned anything from my journey, change is inevitable. Think about that. I grew up in the country called Soviet Union. That very quickly was not that I've changed countries. And if you look at the monumental changes that are happening in this world and let's like we could think geopolitical, we could think technological like AI, we could think pretty much anything else that you want to think about. The change is inevitable. We used to think that the blacks events are going to be once in several decades. And if you think back to the Black swan events, we've had significant wars, we have the pandemic of the global proportion, we have the massive technology revolution. The Black swan events, both bad black swans and good black swans, the universe seemed to be giving them to us again and again.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker D: So uh, from the perspective of the university presidents, equipping your students, operating in that uncertainty and asking really good questions would be of immense value. I've gone through all of these different career changes that seem to be almost schizophrenic. But the reason I was able to do that is precisely because of my training as a physicist and precisely because early in my life I was challenged to solve very difficult problems. And kind of you go back to what matters when I'm solving this problem, what matters in this, in this universe, what factors will be defining versus which factors will be small errors and should be neglected? And you not even need to consider that that is fundamental. And also physics fundamentally teaches you to think what's possible.

Speaker C: Right?

Speaker D: What's possible is not possible. Every training, no matter what, will have those, let, uh, me call them meta skills.

Speaker C: Okay.

Speaker D: When you step back and create space for yourself and you could think, what is it that I'm um, uniquely good at and uniquely passionate, what does my training allows you to do then that allows us to create the new future for ourselves and this retooling that used to be once in a generation thing, rightly or wrongly, for our kids the pace of growth had accelerated so much that for them it's going to be every two to three years. They may be forced to reinvent. So ah, educators, what we should be doing is putting the students into the circumstances where they're going to learn to apply that and think about various gaming techniques, professors that have lived their life like that. So I'm m a huge advocate of having not just. And that's what we do a lot at the University of the Potomac, in addition to career academics, bring in people that are ah, career professionals and active practitioners in their field to talk to students. Okay. This is how I've navigated this change because that's very meaningful. Equip redesign education, where a professor lectures at a group of students with a whiteboard or the blackboard, mm is severely limited. And I think our best universities are no longer functioning like that. So that's like number one thing, number two thing that as a venture capitalist, when I look at portfolio company, my best startup is a, let's call it a Hassler and a hacker. So someone who actually could speak human and get people to do something like that as well as someone who's a, I call a hacker, someone who's a deep expert in their field. It could be they could code something and Maybe they understand the industry deeply and etc. Etc. Etc. And so those two people coming together to form this startup is the most valuable startup because in that uh, yin and yang of different skill sets, you're going to create greatness. And universities often are quite insular where the best place to meet if you're a hacker, you're hustler, or the best place if you're a hustler, to meet your hacker, um, is actually at the university clubs, various events and I wish that universities have collided those different groups. Collide your geeks at the computer science division with your design students because guess what? We might have world class coding aligned with how the humans will actually interpret that. So to me that's a really useful uh, thing. And then the human skills, because at the end of the day, the breakthroughs, the entrepreneurships, the new elevation will be, but not just by, will be created by people. Exactly. Understanding people, understanding yourself, understanding how do you as a human perform at your best. Vibration I think is very, very important and is not traditionally taught enough. We teach people what we want them to know, but we not teach them enough of how we want them to do, to be, to create this new reality. And as uh, someone who lives in the petri dish of the companies that are creating the future, both are so very important. So going back to this change is inevitable. So make the education very nimble and playful and looking at those scenarios will help prepare your students for inevitable change. Get people on a systemic basis to meet someone who is not like them, um, at the club, at the hiking establishment, whichever way, and then think about how we are building up people as humans. Like the mental resilience, the state of the. So like going back to your question, like the massive perturbations that are now happening, our government are I'm sure very, very painful for the people who are living through that. But if you think about this, I almost certain that there will be some of those people that understand they were there for a reason, they understand how the system works and say you found yourself unemployed and you need like what's the new reality? Understanding how the system works and maybe partner with someone not like you, maybe a technologist, an AI specialist, decoder how the software operates and then go back into the system with that innovation. That might be a very interesting pathway that people could pursue and they could go to university to upskill themselves. Maybe that's an MBA program, maybe that degree in government. And that could be also an opportunity to meet someone who is not like them. And going back to the third thing, think who you are. Because people, the changes that are happening, like the government, they're not the fault of any individual human. And so you should believe in your value, think deeply and talk with the people who are close to you. What makes you special, what is your super talent? And go back and lean on that, and you might discover that however unpleasant the current circumstances, because all of us could get into that state at any point in time, anchoring what makes you uniquely you and super talented will help you rediscover and reinvent yourself. And at the end of the day, emerges a victor of this challenging situation. And universities and educational opportunities and upskilling and I mean education in the broadest possible sense, from enrolling to a degree, to enroll into a course by university, could open your horizons and have you meet someone that could help you find that next step.

Speaker C: I, you know, I'm speechless. You've packed this conversation with so much passion and wisdom that, you know, anyone, whether it's a university president or, you know, executive leader or someone who's passionate about solving problems, can learn from. And what I'm hearing from you, from this wisdom is that adaptability and resilience are sort of at the core of this whole change, right? Being able to be adaptable and meet the hacker and the hustler, being able to go, you know, unconventional way to find a solution, to create that, you know, systemic change that's required and, uh, to bring, you know, minds and systems and processes together to yield, you know, excellent results is the message you're trying to portray here. And, you know, what's more fascinating is that you've also kind of touched about, you know, the role of venture capital and education. I want to speak more about what that means. I want to understand, you know, from your lenses and from your 360, you know, worldview for someone who just started, whether they, in the United States or Canada or anywhere in the world, and if they interested in you, uh, know, being, so to speak, combined as a hustler and as a hacker, would you, would you kind of, you know, consider yourself the hustler side of it or the hacker side of it and in this journey? And can you share a little bit about the criteria you typically use when you're doing, you know, portfolio evaluations for education sector? So if, if one of our list listeners, as a prospective entrepreneur, as an education company and wants to come and, you know, grow in your accelerator, what do you look at?

Speaker D: Yeah, um, wow. Like there's a lot, a lot to unpack and I do hope there are more educational entrepreneurs out there because on the one hand we are education as I forgot I haven't looked at the numbers recently, but this is one of our biggest investments as it relates to gdp. I think it's also one of the sectors that frankly changed the least as we have progressed. And so bringing in people that will disrupt the status quo in the best possible way is I think good business and good karma. One is like, if people who are listening want to create new companies in the area of education, then I would invite them, um, to really seriously consider that. And now for any specific people that want to try to innovate, there are a few things that I would advise people that are about to start a company. First of all, do not take that decision lightly because this is one of the most difficult and challenging journeys that you might undertake. And please, please ignore all of that noise that makes glamorous. It is the most challenging, gritty,

Speaker B: you

Speaker D: fight for your life kind of journey most of the time.

Speaker B: Right?

Speaker D: Uh, and when I think about people say do I start a company or uh, do I not start a company? We just passed Valentine's Day. So let me bring in a very romantic analogy. I hope for the listeners that you've had that love of your life where the desire to be with this person is so overwhelming that nothing else matters. And so what if you are in Chicago and your love of your life is in New Zealand? You are getting on the plane, you're rearranging your job. There is no way forward but to be with that person. Think about this emotionally how that felt. Unless and until you feel that strongly about what is it you're trying to create, uh, like, like that business, I would advise people to stay hired because that is way easier journey. It's like will you have, have a lot of fun? So that's the first thing. The second thing is think about the, the value that you know, I think economists call it consumer surplus because what do you know about the world? How are you changing that? So for instance, OpenAI, let's say like you know, I'm using the paid version. I think it's about 20 bucks a month and creating so much more productivity gains for me that I would have played a paid and don't listen to this OpenAI to raise my prices here, but I would have paid more because of the amount of value that creates. As humans we are very put it, we are traditional as a lazy like we operate in this minimum. And so unless we will not take on the new solution if It's a little bit better then a lot better. And so like that is, that would be important and think about with whom you're going to take on the journey. So let me illustrate all of that on example of one of our portfolio companies that operates in education. They're called Rex K to 12. The founder, Sandy Padalla is a computer scientist and she was a pretty big shot I believe. I don't remember her resume recently but I think Harley Davidson or something like that. And she was also a mom, she's still a mom. And so she wanted a son to learn how to code and realized that the computer science options at uh, the local school that he went to were not there, not at all. And then she looked at this. Why is that? Because it's very obvious to anyone that we need to teach people, kids how to code. And then she looked at the data and she realized that we are graduating something close to 100 computer science teachers in US per year. And then you think about this for a second and say if you know how to code.

Speaker C: Mhm.

Speaker D: You're probably going to earn three times as much as your average teacher. So why would people that are like unless it's a charitable project, why would people go there? That is a systemic problem. That is you could think about this as unsolvable. Um, Guardian note. And what she thought is okay, what are teachers amazing at? Teachers are amazing at ah, motivating at getting kids to do their things. Like maybe proctor, like keeping the discipline teaching to different levels of the class. What if we equip that teacher with now we call it an AI agent. But I think it was like, you know, like she said, like AI assist which will guide the student through the actual lesson to her ability. So some people will be more advanced, some people will be less and the teacher will be there that could know how to help the kids, that could hold them accountable, that get them working together the project. So we preserve the human element, but also we dramatically enhance the ability of the students to run with technology. That is an example. It was very personal to her and she understood that it was way easier. Like she probably would have made more money when she were just like, you know, probabilistically, if you were to stay at her job. She was very well paid, right. But the problem was personal, the problem was universal and she knew how to solve that. And that's how you have someone entering on this journey of entrepreneurship to design a product. And I think that is an example of like there are many examples like that that we're Gonna redefine in our lives. And now she is achieving remarkable outcomes with actual school kids and actual school districts that are performing on a P test in computer science significantly better with this product versus without this product. So if there are educators listening, like, you know, I could connect you with Sandy. But it's also. That's an example of you could have had a status quo and she felt a little bit irritated by this problem. She probably would have stayed at her job. But the drive to solve this was so monumental that she took that risk and in the process, could change how our kids learn how to cope.

Speaker B: Wow.

Speaker C: Um, so what I'm hearing from you is it's kind of an intersection of, you know, that unique experience that happened to her and also the opportunity that was created that wasn't only unique to her child, but it was that there's an addressable market, uh, that kind of drove her to say, well, let me. She sort of canceled the fact that, you know, she could earn more in her current role versus is solving a problem. You know, and to some extent, probably there is drive and motivation for profitability. I think the question that comes to my mind, you know, from. From your perspective, of course, how do entrepreneurs, like, what advice do you have for entrepreneurs that are trying to balance profitability versus social impact? Like, and maybe they're entrepreneurs who already started their ventures. But at some point, like, especially in times of economic cris, there's always this cost cutting that happens and sort of, you know, let's fire this people and that people and do this and do that and offload this and offload that versus, well, why did we create the company? Like, we could have just, you know, not been big, so to speak, and just keep it lean and, you know, made ton of money and go do charity. So I guess the question is, what is that intersection and a balance? And what advice do you typically give to the portfolio companies that are under your management?

Speaker D: Again, like, my answer to this might be somewhat controversial. I think know the chair you are in and know, like, uh, what. What have you been hired? What have you hired yourself to solve?

Speaker C: Right?

Speaker D: Because I would say that if you're creating a business, be very clear. Are you a business or are you a nonprofit? Because when you are business, you have to first of all, be a good business. And if your business. So let's say, going back to my example with Sandy, she will create a lot more impact in the world and a lot more kids if she will find a way to build a good team, become profitable, because there is more Money to reinvest in becoming better, improving the product. So I think the reality is if you operate in a space that might have a social impact.

Speaker C: Mhm.

Speaker D: You will create the social impact. But if you're a business, be a good business. Because being a good business will allow you to reinvest, recreate, like, don't conflate the values that you hold as a business with the value of being a good business. No business, no matter how noble your goal, will create social impact. If they go out of business. That's just simply m. Um, not possible versus equally important. If you choose to be an educator, if you choose to start a nonprofit, if you choose your focus, if you choose to be someone whose main purpose in this moment in time, in this chair that you sit in, is to create goodness, then be very clear about measuring. Become good at that. Right. And that will also involve an element of basically running a good p L. Let's not stigmatize capitalism for the sake of capitalism. I think as, uh, someone who've lived through in the socialist system, I will take on anyone to say that however imperfect, this is a way better system than the socialist system. It doesn't make people who are capitalist immoral. Some people are immoral and some people are highly moral. You're not a bad human because you're profit. Quite the opposite could be true. And that allows you to be a lot more powerful in other places, or that allows you to set up a charitable foundation, or that allows you to hire people and train them up. But I think keeping clear expectations on in this role for this job, I am requiring this level of excellence because my primarily fiduciary duty is to serve my mission well and my customers well. And identifying it over here, I think is not a bad thing. But there could be a bad way to implement that. Right? So to me, again, like, it's a misnomer. There's a lot of controversy right now that touches on diversity, equity and inclusion. It's proven beyond reasonable doubt that diverse business environments are higher performing. So if you are a good capitalist, you would naturally choose that, but you would never choose this at expense of incompetence. M and so the challenge is like, if you're committed to diversity as a human being, I don't care what anyone else is saying out there, go find, go network. There is society of black women engineers and black men engineers. If you're committed on having those sort of people in your company, you could find a remarkable talent that would view the world in a dramatically different way that you could bring into your environment. If you need to hire an AI specialist and your group is consisting of mostly men, I guarantee you you're going to miss huge problems in how women think and human computer scientists exist. So it is simply good business to bring that in. But I would be an advocate of anchoring in what the business needs you're solving because then again, those need not be on the opposite sense of. But that's, that's just my perspective, right. I think I'm a huge like. So let's take Sputnik for example. We are the top performing venture funds of our sector, of our geography. Like you know, mercifully, because we are very clear on what we do and our process is 100 focused on getting the best of our investors money. And I've always been that if at the last moment in time, my last five companies that go throughout massively selective process are five young guys and black hoodies that are like in the, like, let's say mid-20s to mid-30s, that's what I'm going to get a check. Because they were the best in the moment. Never happened once. Our font crushes any diversity metric you would throw at me consistently way before that. And that to me is a secret sauce of our competitive advantage, not the other way around. I don't know, maybe like, you know, like there is a way, like for me, I personally very much believe in giving people opportunity and promoting that. But in this year, my job, my only job, that's what I've been hired to do, is to produce the best outcomes for my investor. And if you're going and everyone is hoarding this group of people and no one is hoarding this other group of people, you might pick up remarkable talent that no one else had touched and that would produce a great outcome to investors. And that is how we crush the diversity scores by keeping our eyes squarely on being the best investor. Because it's a personal value. You could bring your values in how you solve the problem. But it's very clear to me, like what is my metric is to produce the best outcomes for people, um, that trusted me to manage their money.

Speaker C: Exactly. And you know, this journey actually really sparks the whole notion of, you know, is it only in United States or is it globally? So I want to spend a few minutes unlocking global perspectives of the future of education. So this metric and the outcomes that you're, uh, referring to, you know, do you see, I know that you recently traveled, you know, as well to the Middle East. You know, do you see similar throughout you know, that part of the world as well. Like, do entrepreneur and venture capitalists invest in similar trends and support systems and, you know, metrics, so to speak, or is it different?

Speaker D: Um, let me think how I want to tackle that. First of all. Yes, I think like I know firsthand because at Sputnik, like we've made more than 70 bets and we've backed companies as far away as Australia and UAE and Jordan and Peru and Mexico. So we have seen some international entrepreneurs come and join us here in Austin, Texas. So unequivocally, talent is everywhere. The opportunity, the funding opportunity is unevenly distributed. So what we're seeing as far as the venture going global is people are coming out and realizing that there are these hops that are being created. I'm certainly a huge advocate of the fact that we will be seeing a lot more unicorns that are starting outside of the 50 mile radius of Sandhill Road. That area will continue to produce a lot of unicorns and we're going to see other geographies emerging. So it will be fantastic VCs that would be created and will be investing in the global companies in the market. So for instance, I give you an example of, um, we've had an African company applying where it made no sense for them to come to Austin because of the sort of business they were in. They were essentially doing Uber for like little gas stoves to cook dinner because I think they were from Nigeria and that's how most of the dinner was being cooked. And when you're out of gas, there is no dinner. And there was a massive hustle. So it made no sense for them. But, uh, maybe we missed a huge opportunity, but we saw, okay, it makes no sense for them to come to us and be here when the problem they're solving is acutely African. And instead they should be trying to raise money in their own market. You will see sometimes the problems are universal and you will export the solution across the geographies. But sometimes they could be a massive problem right under their people's own noses and it makes perfect sense to invest in it and cultivate it locally. The one that in us we take for granted. That I want a caveat with and why we often have foreign entrepreneurs coming to us, is we are, um, at peace with failure. When you're doing difficult things, we assume that not all of those bets will work. And for us venture capitalists, you've tried a startup and failed, it's actually better because you're more experienced. That actually is dramatically not the case in A lot of other geographies and jurisdictions. And I think that that's very challenging. I don't have a recipe for that aside from just realizing that this is necessary because you should never willy nilly with someone else's money. You should always try your hardest. But if you're working to change the world on something never done, chances are that some of this might not work does not make you a bad human. And the system that recognizes that and not stigmatize people for stepping out of the column, um, and taking a chance to create something new will do better entrepreneurially.

Speaker C: You've given so many useful pieces of advice in this conversation. And as we wrap this episode up, I was wondering if there's one thing going back to 20 years before when you were starting out in this or 30 years before when you were starting out in this journey, that you would do differently. What is the advice to younger Oksana?

Speaker D: Oh, that's such a good question. It took me a minute to build self belief.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker D: And to understand that self belief and ability to create meaningful change does not equal perfect, highly imperfect people create meaningful change in the world. And so I would ask myself to be a bit more merciful with myself and high five myself in the mirror. Whether today was a victory or a uh, disappointment. Because otherwise I think there may be a different journey for me that would have been just as exciting. But I don't want to change it. I just maybe wish to change how I journeyed it. The, the mental state of me as I went on that I um, think is uh, like having more fun, having more play. It is not like back to my earlier question. The capital, the social impact, let's not look at them like that. Work hard day in and day out and something is very passionate about. But also being playful and just not just like this, but also with joy and fun might have made for more interesting lighter journey. I think when we dare greatly it's a mistake to think that will always come at the extent of compromising our fun. That should not need to be.

Speaker C: Dr. Aksana, if there's one person more excited and more motivated, it's me. And I'm sure that our listeners will equally benefit from such a meaningful conversation. I appreciate the opportunity to learn learn from you. I appreciate the opportunity to share this wisdom in such a way that you know from miles and miles and wherever and whenever this episode is in the ears of the people who are listening, they'll benefit greatly. Once again, thank you so much for joining us on education and empowerment podcast. You definitely educated us. You definitely empowered us, and I'm sure that others who are listening will do as well.

Speaker D: Thank you so much for this opportunity. It had been my honor to be here and good luck. I'm glad that you're bringing these different perspectives to your audience. Thank you so much for thinking of me.

Speaker C: Thank you so much. Until next episode,

Speaker A: we hope you've enjoyed this episode of the Education and Empowerment Podcast. This show is brought to you by Forestay, a SaaS enabled online booking marketplace for student and intern housing Housing. Forestay provides turnkey all in one cloud based accommodation software solutions for colleges, universities and organizations. Learn more at offcampus.forestay.com and landlords.forestay.com.