WATCH THIS if you're an entrepreneur.

I think we can officially get started for the ones out there for the attendees thank you for so much for connecting well welcome to another creative zone webinar today we have the amazing Lucy with us Lucy is a real pleasure to be with you you see them big big wire from South Africa all of you that are connected I'm sure you know who he is I mean that's why you're connected here with us but Lucy again thank you so much for connecting and being here with us it's an absolute pleasure to be with you thank

you well thank you for having me so for all of you just a small introduction Lucy as you know he's one of Africa's most renowned venture capitalists he's an investor a businessman an entrepreneur he has become one of the most renowned speakers around the world I mean I can remember in the last few months how your videos kept on coming up on my screen you talk about entrepreneurship about startups honestly personally it's a pleasure to see you here Lucy because I've been following you I'm looking at what you've been doing the contact that you put

out and it's it's a it's a pleasure so maybe just to get start the boost yeah you've grown from from Township of what wheel to what I was reading to one of the most successful venture capitalists in Africa a very renowned speaker your last book is called business and life lessons from a black dragon maybe if we can get started what would be in a natural these lessons that you've learned in the last few years of your career so you know thanks Lorenzo just for context when when when I did my last book the publisher

wanted me to write a book about my life and I said to the publisher I said but I'm not dead yet so I don't I don't know how do you write a book like how do you write a book and and the end chapter is the middle of your life story I was like yeah I mean at the time you know we worked in the book probably about three years ago so the time was like 31 32 and I was like well dead what we'll do is we'll summarize lessons I've learned over my life and

will tell my life story and embed it in the life story will be the lessons and it won't be chronological it'll be based on a lesson per chapter but you know it's simple things that I talk about in the book stuff like the importance of your word that if you give it it you have to stand by it and sometimes if you give your word you have to stand by it even if it costs you money I could write a book about how much money I've lost because I made a commitment and now I have

to stand behind that commitment but over time I've learned that that reputation and credibility is actually you can't you can't put them an amount of money on that in the bank accounts that that's it'll open more doors for you than you can imagine and it'll create more opportunities for you than you can imagine also stuff like humility that you don't you don't let your success become you because and there's that beautiful comb by poem by Rudyard Kipling called if and there's a line in the poem Rudi at Kipling says if you can meet victory and

defeat and treat both Impostors just the same then you'll be a man well he says that is you know to make the point that if you can if you can meet victory and defeat and not be defined by either of those things because in life victory will happen but defeat is going to happen to you know since I you know for me very simple basic lessons and no matter where I've gone in my life those lessons have stood me in great stead that's amazing and I thank you to the attendees were starting to get some

questions we totally encourage you to send the questions we have 170 people connected send your questions over I'll try to read a few I'm sure we're gonna receive that many of them hello from South Africa we have somebody from m4 where is this I'm guessing a place in South Africa you know he's saying fridge which means my brother okay okay thanks my brother that's good okay I can see in your speeches you you use a lot of your sort of slang and the way you guys speaking South Africa correct and your speeches absolutely it's important

you know it's important to allow yourself to so I've gotta tell you an interesting thing about me Lorenzo so I see Alex grounders in the conversation Maddox and I know each other well but for a lot of people who don't know me there is the persona of what they see which is as is the case with everything it's like twenty percent of who you are right because it's not as if you show every part of your life and so I was on Dragon's Den in South Africa and there is a part of me that is

a part of me which is when I do business I bring business we'll see to the conversation you know it's not it's a business conversation and so you know for about ten years I carried this persona of how people perceive me as this really you know uptight stuck-up guy who couldn't really take a joke and and and so yeah I just decided one day I was like I'm actually gonna start talking to people the way I talk to people every day but I want to talk to them like that on social media so I'll start

referring to people to things like him Solana which is a another great little local colliculus right when you what we hold each other when we're believers but basically what it means is like what family right and as I've used that speech and that language I've found that people are a lot more you know just just a lot more human and I think that's a part of where we are today it's really important to just be human that's all right well so also forgotten beasts for you to understand a little bit who we are we are

created sown and the CEO of creative zone it's a company that was established ten years ago in Dubai by two partners we help people set up businesses in Dubai and the UAE and we have a lot of the people connected today our own clients and we have I'm sure a lot of people connected from different parts of the world so anybody that needs a hand and information in becoming and setting up in Dubai and learning more about setting up a business we're here to help so who see let's get started and let's go down to

it I was reading you tweet it 20 minutes ago it says there is a time for every season in your life lament not the season show up I'm gonna be I'm gonna be completely honest with you first I'll tell you my own personal kind of journey that I'm at at the moment then I'll just think I'll transfer it to kind of way we all are if you are a human being living on a little rock called planet Earth today and you're not willing to admit to yourself that your life is a little bit in chaos

you're either in denial or you're so sheltered from everyday reality that you're not seeing what's happening around you I think that's the case for all of us so at a personal level Lorenzo we've got a business that we've built you know in my VC firm over the past eight years and our core product has been cannibalized by a state-sponsored that I can't compete with in a price basis so every time I go to the market now the state has got a program out in the market that gives better points to my customers and cannibalizes me

rent prices so I can't compete on that and then we've got a market adjacent we've been trying to grow into and it's been really really slow and lethargic and that's now gonna be our new reality and while order this is happening I've still got a team a group of people that I'm employing full-time we're sitting on my P&L I've got very beautiful expensive offices in the richest square mile in the continent so my fixed costs are very very high and yet I'm not gaining the traction in the marketplace so I've spent much of lockdown thinking

about my organization 3.0 I had an organisation 1.0 had an organisation 2.0 and 3.0 for us is very very difficult because what I'm doing is I'm digitizing a whole host of the things that I'm doing in the business we've taken on a program now a brand right sizing the business so they have some rules that won't fit in terms of where we're going there's some rules were completely stripping out and then we might be able to add new roles as we're doing this literally a week ago today I was sitting in my office where somebody

was gonna be taken over from me and her and I were having this conversation I said I'm firing myself I want to get out of here you've got to take over this whole thing on Monday I was sitting in my office with somebody who's taken over our entire sales so so this is them it's the season there's nothing you can do and and while all of this is happening I've had to take very deep personal cuts and pains around earnings around salary around a whole host of things because you can't as an entrepreneur keep drawing

this big amount of money from your business when you're trying to make sure that it's got the lifeblood in circulation to keep it going right so that's what I mix this is that it's the season and you can't denied you know I feel like if you go through a winter you can't wish the winter away it's winter and every single year we know that winter is going to come so if you are in this process of building an enterprise building a business building a career building anything you've got to understand is gonna be cycles there's

gonna be booms and busts and you can't when you get to the bust go all woe is me and life is so unfair who else must the bust happen - who else must the difficult time happened - if not you you're just as human as everybody else so you need to experience those things just like everybody else so so that's what I meant and I think today all of us as entrepreneurs we're going through a season if you are an entrepreneur a real entrepreneur and you do not really have to think about cost-cutting measures not

to have to think about some level of retrenchments or furlough I mean you know then you just you're either in a great institutional business which means you're shielded from the reality of the rest of us or you're not paying attention and I pity the guys in the institutional businesses too because at the end of this what will happen is the economy is going to go through a massive restructure and as the economy goes through a massive restructure there a lot of the institutional mandates will end and when they end they would not have geared themselves

for what the new reality would have been because they've been protected from it was the shift and change was happening so that's the moment it's the season don't lament it take it take charge of it own it and make the tough decisions we were talking about this earlier we were talking about this rebuilding your engine I understand that there's a lot of things that you do a mean adapting and cutting costs and stuff but how do you reactivate your productive side of the country how do you gain your business how do you go out and

make money nowadays man if I can tell you so I'm going to literally this morning this is the conversation I was having with myself and it's the conversation I was having with myself because the conversation I was having with the guy who's gonna be taking over sales and marketing for us so if you look at a great soccer team what makes a great soccer team is not that they've got phenomenal goalscorers is it they've got great defenders it's actually that they've got a great team and usually how the team is built is at the center

of the team so if you think about the most prolific soccer players that we celebrate they tend to either be midfielder midfields or attacking force but that tells you is that the great composition of a team isn't at defense right it's at organization and at offense that's what we celebrate like I said you know Pele Ronaldinho Ronaldo Ronaldo the other Ronaldo you know doctor komondor I could go on and on and on and on George where literally I could go on and on you'll usually find their other play in the midfield or they play in

their Tekken platform there is there's even a reason I'm telling you this so when you go through a time like this usually what happens is our senses kick in and we begin to panic because we go I'm in survival mode now I need to survive so what we start doing is we start making some five little decisions and we forget that you still have to build a business that means you're still gonna have a sense of offense so so survival is about defense means we're being attacked on our end we need it great we need

a great defensive strategy we need the defensive players to work together we need midfield to support them and we need a goalkeeper to have his eyes every single place right that's what it happened but what's the point of having a great defensive strategy but by the time we catch the ball and we hit it forward there's nobody at offense Wyck were constantly gonna be a defense so if you're an entrepreneur today you have to learn how to build offense and defense the offense is how do I protect current revenues current class customers current call that's

that's defense how do I protect business as is offenses right three months six months how do we make sure that we have made a problem for somebody else and you can't wait for three months to implement the defense strategy you've got to implement it now and so that's why for me even though I'm in defense mode I'm bringing people are gonna help me with the offense because I understand you and I having a conversation about how do I base myself and why because I recognize it that's a part of offense if I don't get offense

right when the market is in recession then I'm not gonna be able to pick up on economic opportunities when the market picks up again right and I think that's the mistake a lot of people make they wait for the market to pick up before they react it's too late they're you know the market is now an upcycled somebody's taking charge of that swing what you need to do is to get ahead of the offense by planning now a lot of a lot of the clients that we work with here in Dubai our startups are intrapreneurs

that come they have a solo entrepreneur tech company one two three employees some of them three to five they're smaller companies how do they go in that in that offensive mode in saying how do I grow from being a three people employed company to a thirty employed company so that's a great question and I think there's a couple of points to make there first not every industry is geared for a number of employee growth so that's and that's a phenomenal question Lorraine's that you and I were having the conversation the other day be clear on

what you need to measure what's you measure of success because if I run a three-man operation that does three million dollars a year and I grow it from that to a three minute three-man operation that does ten million dollars a year then maybe that number of million dollars we make is the measure of success not the number of employees we have and this is a developing mind mindset developing mind mindset developing economies mindsets go we need to throw it the more people I have in my factory the most successful my factory you know but when

what step was bought for a billion dollars there were less than 50 people in that building was one step not a successful business then so you've got to be clear on what is your measure of success the measure of success has to be impact you can't be all the other things that are attached to ego and it's even you know I always say to entrepreneurs are OE is return and equity not return on ego and a lot of us think are always return on ego so it's you know where is my office how beautiful is

my I've made this mistake myself where's my office beautiful is my face how much is my rent you know I have a car and a driver and I get chauffeured to place it yeah that's all return on ego little talk bottom line numbers what are you actually doing in your business so for me when you want to think about scaling or growing your business the question is what is the right way to scale your business and how do you make sure that you measure the right stuff you've got to measure customer satisfaction measure market market

penetration measure customer share of wallet another thing we don't do is cause as entrepreneurs we don't measure customer share of wallet here's what that means if a customer buys so if I have a customer right I'm your customer lorenz and you're on a restaurant and I only come to your restaurant in the mornings for breakfast does that mean I don't need lunch does that mean I don't need dinner hmm so how do I build a strong restaurant cuz I know my restaurant is gonna be open in the morning from eight o'clock probably to the evening

at eight o'clock which means I've probably got a lunch platform a lunch service and I've got a dinner service so if I position my restaurant as a breakfast only service then I'm only going to I'm competing in a breakfast-only market and I'm gonna have good market share in the breakfast-only space so the great thing to begin to do is how do you think about how do you expand your customer share of wallet that's one with visuals so I've said to the guys we're gonna go offense we're gonna get new customers but defense let's go to

our current customers and let's expand our share of wallet we know that we're not think we're not getting every single ran from our customers so let's do that first and that for me is a far more important measure at the moment than how many people are my employer how many places do I have offices at you if you measure the wrong stuff you're gonna do the wrong stuff so you gotta you gotta get the measure right and the measure then gives you the right actions now this leads me to this really good question and I

think it's posted by somebody here what is the difference between a professional an entrepreneur and a business owner well how do we define each of them and what are their differences so great question so the difference between a professional an entrepreneur self-employed person right um let me I'm gonna answer it first at the extreme then I'll come back down an entrepreneur can disappear for 90 days and the business will still make its numbers and the customers will still be happy that's an entrepreneur so if you can't disappear from your business for 90 days you're not

really an entrepreneur you're self-employed and a lot of people make this mistake so I'm a designer right say I write code or I do applications or I do graphic design and I work for a large company then I decide one day I really want to work for myself and I leave the large company with the comfort of a guaranteed salary medical insurance car allowance bonus at the end of the year share options and all the rest of it now go I'm gonna go work for myself because I was on this on this webinar with Lucy

and Lorenzo and I feel pumped and kovat is about to end and oh man I'm gonna go do my own thing great so I thought to do my own thing I built a beautiful little website of WordPress or Wix or something I start getting some customers coming through and as the customer comes through and asked me to do the work I do the work cuz I'm the designer right it's my eye that's got to do the design at that stage I'm not an entrepreneur what I've done is I've employed myself I'm just self-employed mmm that

is to say if I'm not there doing the work the words not gonna happen but then I grow it so I get a couple of customers coming in and they really love my work and they really satisfied and I hire four more people to start doing the design and I'm the guy that manages the people that do the work mmm what I know for sure is if I'm not there to manage the people they're gonna slack the works gonna go wrong I'm gonna start getting customer complaints so by the time I get to four man

five men operation I'm a business owner I'm still not an entrepreneur because if I'm not they're running the restaurant opening the door making sure that you know the stove at the back is getting is getting warmed up and customers are coming in and everybody's happy if I'm not there literally physically looking things are going to go wrong at that stage I'm a business owner mmm that's usually the place where many entrepreneurs get to Lorenza I can tell you how many times I've seen this where the guys go from self-employed and they have this massive exponential

raise rise and they get to like business owner and then they just start to plateau in plateau and plateau and plateau because they have this what I call the Naidoo syndrome mmm my due syndrome is nobody does it better than I do so they want to overlook and oversee everything now I'm going to be honest here if you want to grow from business owner to entrepreneur take it from me because it has cost me Millions you will make mistakes it's a risk you're gonna hire the wrong people you're gonna get things wrong so if you

want to get everything right then you shouldn't make the transition well what are some of those biggest mistakes that you've done that we can share with the audience that they kind of avoid they can look into you know so-so you know what let me answer this then I'll answer your question about the bilious mistake so the entrepreneur is the guy who does he builds the systems and the processes in the business so that the business runs and the systems and the processes manage how people work that is guys let me tell you there are MBA

he sees written longer stuff it is the single hardest thing to I'm convinced it's harder than Elon Musk going to space I'm convinced of it building systems and processes to run a business is the hardest thing to do right because the system is garbage in garbage out so building it is the hardest thing to do what are the some of those mistakes the first is you don't build a right system in process and by the way there is a difference between a system and a process a process usually is flow let it goes from one

point to another and one point feeds the other so it's what we call a process flow a system is an intelligent way of managing that process flow and so people don't understand so a process might be I write down so okay so here's I'll give you our process our process is a customer goes in sees our website wants to book for sale right we've got this whole process written down you want to put will see they send us an email through our website we get the information my sales team contacts them we start getting into

a price negotiation we get gates yada yada yada and then at the end of it we agree on a time a date that I thought I and then this event happens after this you're gonna get a link from my team you give us some feedback and every single Monday we have feedback conversations what a custom is saying did I deliver did I not deliver was then issue with my presentation how do we improve yada yada yada that's the process the system is all of this is happening on my CRM and on asana so even if

I wasn't at the office for 90 days I can go into my CRM on on Zoho or go into my project management system on asana and it's gonna give me the information of the details so the first thing is if you want to scale the biggest mistake entrepreneurs make is they don't understand that what you literally have to do listen to this because when I learned this my life changed you have to make the business your second brain that means you have to take your brain the way your brain works and rebuild it in this

organism called a business every way the way you think the way you move the business has to do that yeah so that's the first mistake I think guys make lorentz are the second biggest mistake is we get the people element wrong we hire wrong we hire because I like you so let me hire you you know we hire because you know you came really highly recommended you know so I'm gonna pay you four times what I had initially budgeted because I really want you to do this job and then I realize that actually you came

from a large corporate you know when you work in a large corporate it's funny right I could work in a large corporate in marketing and be a rockstar do you know why because when I work in a large corporate in marketing all I do is logos and marketing that's all I do the minute I come to a small start-up my job now expands to marketing customer service a little bit of read customer retention a little bit of sales I have to do a little bit of HR now my job just gets so far spread and

a lot of us entrepreneurs we love getting people to come from these big companies with big titles and pay them big salaries but they're not able to transpose into a small business environment because they're not ready mentally to work in a small business environment so we get the highest rock if there is one lesson I can give to any person watching this and it's because I have made that mistake more times than I care to remember you have to get the people element right you get the people the thing that I've seen most of us

the challenge that we face is how do you scale up knowing that you are not there you're not the face you're not the one in charge I mean this happened to me I had a media company and I felt that I couldn't grow it because I felt that if he wasn't me in the meetings if he wasn't me closing the deals if he wasn't me doing the cost word and I couldn't let go and I think this is something happens to everybody so even in your case how do you scale if you're not there if

you're not the one in there in the screen today if you how do you grow your business and I think this happens to 80 90 percent of our people here right exactly and so by the way this my speaking business it does have a limitation on how I can scale it right it does have a limitation how I can scale it because I've got to be in this conversation what so we're busy with some stuff behind the scenes and I'll share it with you we're busy developing a tech platform right now where you will be

able to access Lucey content and there's gonna be some content that we serve freemium and there's gonna be some content that it's going to be premium so I'm going well and so when we run the analytics we've got a digital agency kitchen that helps us when we run the analytics the amount of views likes images shares that I get from all over the world I mean there's parts of the world where my stuff goes where my stuff is gone viral in Punjab India I've never been to Punjab nobody's ever invited me you know but my

video will go complete and then Mike my digital team can track it right because they got these little like Google BOTS they and they track the stuff and they go dude your stuff will shed 180,000 times in this particular place in India or in Kuala Lumpur right you got a massive market here so what we started so what I'm realizing now is that actually I'm in a great position where people are now tapping into me beyond my personality and beyond my brand for my content well if that's the case let's build a platform where we

can make the content available we'll continue to serve some content for free but for the really growth content we're gonna create a premium about that digital experience and stuff I wanted to take you to another place you just mentioned Elon Musk yeah what goes to your mind when you hear people like Elon Musk's Jeff Bezos Steve Jobs what these people have that we don't have um oh what do they have that we don't have simple it's a little thing with four letters on it it's called grit grit is what I call the pitbull factor if

you ever seen a pitbull in a fight it ain't pretty a pitbull in a fight is not worried about who likes it and who doesn't like it and what does the PR look like and all I've got to be such a nice guy it's a pitbull it's in a fight so what a pitbull does is it grabs it locks its jaws and it doesn't let go you could pour boiling water if then letting go that's why it's the most dangerous ferocious dog in the I mean you know back in the day when they used to

make dogs to fight it which was illegal and unethical anymore oh so I'm not condoning it but back everybody knew that if you brought a pitbull to the fight there was no other dog no other breed that could match a pitbull why because the mini-grants a hold of the target it ain't letting go and it's gonna do this with its neck until it rips to shred it's got it what is the crocodile do a crow burnout grabs and it spins and spins and spins and spins and spins until eventually it tears you apart what a

lot of us do is we grab and then life happens then we let go I grab and I lose my people I lose a customer I get a bad review on Google reviews or we don't deliver a project on time well my customer doesn't renew a contract or you know I go through a divorce or something happens on a liquor mmm Steve Jobs he I mean there's a video I'd love to show it to you that I've got a veal on mask Elon Musk is sitting there talking to a 60 second the 60 what did

they call it a 60 60 minute life in 60 minutes that whole interview the guy's interviewing I mean he says how do you feel when you hear people like Neil Armstrong tell you that your quest to go to space is ridiculous and Elon Musk starts crying it's the only time I've ever seen Elon Musk emotional he literally goes to the brink of tears and he says that broke my heart because those guys are heroes of mine yeah then he says regardless I'm going to the moon I have to remember I remember a time when Elon

Musk had just taken all of his money that he made from PayPal and XCOM planted it into test than anybody thought what are you doing are you mad you crazy must be stupid people forget that when SpaceX was you know space second at a liquidity event he couldn't raise more capital this is less than five years ago and he moved out of his home he sold his house he went and moved into an apartment and he took the money that he made from that and he put it into SpaceX that's because he had a really

expanded and used all of his money that he made from that and the PayPal transaction to build Tesla now there many of us I'm telling you for free if I made the billions of dollars he made from PayPal the last thing I'd be doing is writing code and trying to go to the moon I'd be in Monaco somewhere waiting for the corona virus to end so I can get back on earth on get back on land and watch the f1 but what these guys are driven by is grit they grab and they don't let go

I want to say one last thing sir Lorenzo if you're in this conversation and you think your life is tough right I want you to recognize that one of the most recognized entrepreneurs in the world today Richard Branson is literally on the prank on the on the brink of bankruptcy now you got to think about what that means for somebody like brands with his name his brand and his reputation and he's still going through this stuff so the point about it is this nobody is immune from the world and what we're going through right now

yeah what the winners have that the losers don't have is grit is that beautiful line by Jay Z he said the most genius thing we ever did was we didn't give up and I think I think for me that's probably the it factor and that shows you how what opportunity means for anybody out there I mean Richard Branson has for the last 20 years being the icon of entrepreneurship around the world and then suddenly you see Richard Branson kind of shade him away from that position and you see him that you're saying at that verge

of bankruptcy and then you have you know mass going off and sending rockets to the moon and so on this says a lot right it says a lot but remember you asked me earlier about my my tweet when I said show up for the season so Richard Branson is not going well I'm Richard Branson he has digital up so for the people here who are not aware you know follow it on Bloomberg The Wall Street Journal but Richard Branson has been going to the United Kingdom government literally kept in hand begging them to help him

keep the Virgin Enterprise alive begging write Virgin of virgins Australia I think is almost folded Virgin Money in Australia is the only one and the only reason Virgin Money in Australia is still going is because he only owns eight percent of it but it looks like what's gonna happen is they need to recapitalize Virgin Money in Australia he doesn't have the capital to follow on his rights so he might get diluted completely out of Virgin Money in Australia this is Richard Branson at the same time this has happened in your right you know musk is

going to the moon Jeff Bezos has become the wealthiest man in the world you know and so nobody is immune nobody is immune yeah I'll tell you a funny little anecdotal story so I was a little boy I was probably about probably eight or nine and we my mom my dad and I had gone to fetch my mom at work and we pulled up on like this traffic light and there was a guy next to us in a beautiful little gate was a beautiful BMW 323 to 8i and it was like this beautiful peach purpley

color and man I looked at that guy in that car and I said to my dad I was like dude don't you want that guy's car like don't you want that guy's life guy like that he must have his life all figured out and my dad said he said the universe works in equal measure he said that guy's problems are the size of his car I wouldn't take that car if you paid me and I think there are people even in this conversation to go so inserts got it figured out let me tell you I

know so-and-so their problems are in equal measure to their blessings that's the way the universe works that you've given the strength of your gift and the gift is gonna come with its equal burden you have to carry both of those regardless yeah hundred percent let me bring the conversation a little bit in to Dubai we have a lot of entrepreneurs connected from from our clients people that want to grow their business they need him vestment they need seed funding we know that you have a very successful PC company are you running what is it that

you like investing in how can we help some of our entrepreneurs that need money what tips can you give them what is it that you like investing in right now we have a question here that says why has Russia never invested in crypto so what do you like to invest in me what can you tell our guys here and by our creative soul clients we have a lot of people that are made investment you tell them so whoo that's a big one let me limit can we come around there so my let me let me

first admit where I am my shortcoming I don't like investing in things I don't understand it's it's a paranoia so it's a consequence of it I tend to limit the things I can invest it because it means I first have to learn what I'm inputting my money and then I put my money in it right so that's that's that's a part of it really you know I mean I by the way I do have a crypto investment I do I just don't publicize it and the reason I don't publicize it is because on social media

there are a lot of scammers who build these crypto things and go loose he just put in 300 million into this crypto thing put your money in here and so the same reason as I I do have money sitting in for X but I don't publicize it because there are a lot of people who scam people using Forex and they will use your name if you Gordan public now and say I do forex investing someone tomorrow will be on Facebook creating a Forex page go and give me your money I'm go see if you give

me your money I'll invest it for you then people's money will disappear so so in the public I turn I tend to have this really conservative investor approach the question you answer was very pointed you said what do investors look for I think the first thing to understand is this if you don't have to raise external funding for your business don't write and we we come from we in this culture today Lorenzo where we celebrate how much money is raised and of growth in valuation rather than how much wealth is created like I'm like I'm

crazy let's green wealth let's talk about growth in revenues talk about growth in Biba dollars talk about growth in you know no plants let's talk about that stuff why we're talking about the growth in the enterprise value and how much money you're raising it's Series A Series B etc etc so if you don't have to raise money guys don't because then you're going to be beholden to somebody who by the way if I give you my money it's not gonna be conditioned free it's gonna come with me telling you how to run your business that's

a part of what the money comes with in my own VC firm please don't share this there's 218 people in this conversation so I'll share it with you guys all of us in this little room that we're here in on Zoo I'm only raising external capital now for the first time the past eight years has been my money you want to know why because when I did put down five and a half six million rand that's about a million less about half a million dollars in a business it take business in Cape Town and we

lost it the only person I had to explain it to was me and my wife now could you imagine if I'd lost that amounts of money and I used other people's money right so always if you don't have to raise external capital don't if you can build the business and scale it and and in it it can generate enough free cash flow that it can self-fund absolutely you got to do that there's the only three reasons why you raise external capital the first is you need the external capital to pay for a development of the

platform so that you can sell did the platform so you need to build the app the thing so that you can access the market then you Dre some external capital the second reason you raised some external capital is because you've built the MVP that owed that to what we call the tan in VC the total addressable market is so big that even if you grew at five hundred percent a year you wouldn't capture 1% of the market right so what you do is you raise external funding so you can accelerate your rate of growth that's

when you raise external funding and the third reason you raise external funding is you've reached a level of maturity and growth in your business that at that level of maturity and growth you're plateauing using your own internal resources and you don't need to unlock more what we call long-term patient capital and here usually you're gonna get money from banks you're gonna get money from investment banks right so you're just gonna be clear on why are you raising and once you clear underwater you're raising then what happens is they're who to raise from becomes very clear

another thing entrepreneurs do please don't go to every single VC and ask them to invest in your money do your homework we are we are a fund now is very focused on tech with industrial and commercial applications so I don't do consume a tick so if you just built an app that's gonna help people you know paint their toenails a different color I wouldn't that's not what I would do but if you have an industrial application that's gonna help factories run more efficiently we're gonna help in a Nullification that might help hospitals allocate beds better

for people that's literally what I'm looking at now we've got one that's sitting on our table right now these guys had built this phenomenal application that you can plug into any of the eight with an API can run into any of the backend systems they'd run many of the hospital groups and those Hospital groups can understand the amount of capacity they have to deal with the covert virus how many beds sitting in ICU how many in pre ICU and trauma at a point at a click of a button at any second it'll be able to

give you that data now if you're running one Hospital you don't need the application but if you're running a big Hospital group at one hundred hospitals you need to know exact you need to know that if you've got a hospital in goona there's ninety nine beds in it available today and that's what you can send people that we would look at it's a technology application with commercial and industrial at beds there you go there you go there was another one who I was looking at literally on Monday called Kovac corona fighter we're not going to

do the deal but it's an interesting little business these guys have built this thing called corona fighter it literally is a bot that runs on whatsapp and so every morning when you wake up at Ostia series of questions how are you feeling I feel soon so have you got a mild fever are you showing symptoms yada-yada yada-yada the clever thing is that built the bots on whatsapp but did not connect to the bots through an API to the HR systems of many of the large companies so you don't have to show up to work to

report that you're showing coronavirus symptoms you complete the document in the bot it keeps a track record using Google Google warehouse and Google database it sends the information through the HR function of the large company and without you showing up it says to the HR company which is not coming in today because he's showing these symptoms and by the way we've escalated the team we've escalated the case and we've asked Lucy to report to this Medical Center so that he can get treated or he can get tested hmm why am I not we're not getting

it for several reasons it's kind of cluttered now there's like 50 other apps doing the same thing we also believe that the market opportunity is very short because we think that immediately the minute they find the vaccine that that market opportunity is going to diminish but that's the kind of stuff we would look into so if you're approaching an investor make sure that you understand what does the investor look for and you're gonna get much money you draw the talk to three investors who are looking at your business your industry and your game and talk

to a hundred investors and you're gonna waste your time with 50 of them because they're looking for deals let me tell you guys another thing that you don't know sorry Lorenza can I just add this investors have to invest so when you bother them for for to look at you your your pitch deck you're not bothering the guys his job he has to find deals that's literally his job so you know a lot of entrepreneurs get excited when they get called in by an investor to say yeah I'm interested let me come in here no

he's only interested because he's trying to see can he retrofit you into his little spot he said I looked at the terms of conditions 10 years too late we get in week we go because the money 10 years later is when the terms of conditions have become relevant I'm going to tell you an even scarier story here's a guy follow he's on me and he's a great entrepreneur and he came out literally about two months ago now I I met him because I was speaking at conference in Austin Texas and he wrote this piece and

I phoned him after I said dude is this true he said every single bit of it you know what happened so we all know him we said if I'm not gonna share his neck we'll know him celebrate him he's done exceptionally well he sold his business for 180 million US dollars he got nothing not a cent so Sid explained to me how the hell that happened and he said to me he helped he held odds not prefs and nobody had told it how to structure a decent corporate finance deal and what happens when a lot

of these deals get done is a lot of preference literally goes to the preference shareholders and even then there's different types of preference shareholders you get super preference shareholders and so his business was sold for 180 million but the evie that he had raised his last capital round on lost 220 million so even though he's sold 480 million for a lot of the ordinary shareholders their additional 40 million where they wealth was sitting wasn't realized so I said but then why did you sell he said because the the VCS I was in were closing their

funds they were end of they were end of fun term by the way another thing guys feces have a fun cycle they would end a fun term they had to exit and they just had to sell the business so they took to you guys the story was the story on TechCrunch was hey business Falls 180 million dollars he says what you're not aware is we had donek deal you know six months prior to that we had just raised all for 220 million dollar valuation so actually we went backwards and the reason they sold founder eighty

million dollars was because the preference shareholders just one of their money art because that's what the VC money was sitting on how do you build a business for ten years exit it and not get a set happens so read the T's and C's this is a you know read the t's Aziz and make sure that you understand exactly what you're getting at you Lucy I know that you are about scale in South African entrepreneurs South African companies how can we bring them to Dubai and to the UAE how can Brij put a set up a

bridge between African entrepreneurs Middle East there is demand here there is cab there's capital here there is affluent people they might need a lot of goods and services that are sold from Africa how can we bring them here so I think the first thing so the first thing you're not gonna do lorenzo said to you immediately after this conversation is we're gonna create a little creative zone VT product and we're definitely gonna go to the market here and we're gonna enable people to understand what the opportunities are I'm like very keen on just letting people

know what the options are but so that's the first thing is I'd love for us to work together on a long-term project to see you know a simple thing like how do we rationalize what the potential is we put together a simple a full document that go if you want to be based here partner with us and these are the things that we're gonna help you do right that's the first thing the second thing is if you're an entrepreneur and you are anywhere right now watching this conversation unless your business is about building a store

and selling shoes you can be based anywhere and offer the service and product to a customer in any place right so the thing you've got to figure out is how do I make the globe my customer rather than the cut the person I can see my customer and the how to do it now if you try to do this yourself you're gonna spend three years you're going to get it wrong you're going to lose a lot of money so the thing to do is to find a partner that you can work with who's gonna help

you you know because they they they what you are going to learn in five years they learned 10 years ago so in my I tell you right now would be I told you we're busy doing our cap raise so I walk into the guy who's helping us with our cap raise a guy called Colin a phenomenal phenomenal guy and I'm sitting in any system me but we'll see you Lucy why are you in my office I said I said this to him you guys are gonna love this I said Colin the reason I think I've

succeeded is because I love being a white belt what does that mean I said I don't ever want to be a black belt means the minute I reach mastery I move to the next level where I'm a novice again so I'm here sitting in front of you even though that eight years track record in this game because Colin you have run and he has run you've run a three billion dollar VC fund hmm I'd like to learn from you how to do that so I'm gonna be a white belt you're gonna teach me how to

go from here to here and what he can teach me in the next six months would take me 20 years to learn so the question you asked was the how I think the simple thing to say is if you're in this conversation you think about going global you know definitely give you guys a ring and I want to see if you guys can and I can put something together that we can go to market with you know yeah guys here's an opportunity how about this I make sure that you are a white belt don't be

the master make sure that you understand exactly what you're getting into and make sure that you partner with people that can help you yeah has become so attractive from a from a tax point of view from an Operations point of view banking so we have a lot of clients from South Africa from Africa they're setting up here and operating globally I mean you can have your ecommerce company selling in Uganda but it's based in Dubai and Bank banking is in Dubai so anyhow definitely a lot of potential that we can explore on that you see

we have another eight seven minutes left with you today there is a lot of questions coming in people are asking about how do you see Africa how do you see the future of South Africa maybe I want to connect it I tell you commenting about what happened with George Floyd in the last week ten days and what's happening in the US I mean for me to see what's happening in the US now it's totally mind-boggling in the sense of I never saw a us being people breaking shops and this is this is something totally unseen

how do you see these shifting power economies what's happening around the world what are we seeing I and yes uh my connection seems to be unstable app this is a developing economy problem so my I think you on the money right so the thing to and it looks like it's still unstable here so I'm going to try and sir Laredo can you hear me we hear you sometimes freeze for a couple of seconds but then comes back okay so I'll speak and if I freeze um you guys will hear the audio yeah I think the

big change happening at the moment in the world at the moment is a very simple one people want to be see and they want to be recognized for who they are not for who they've had to become this is why you've had the LGBTI movement because people are saying I don't want to be who society tells me to be anymore I want to be me and this is why you have african-americans in the u.s. going if the system is unequal and when we talk to you peacefully you're not going to do something about it we're

going to become violent right and I'm not condoning violence but there's also been no proof linking people who are protesting in fact has been proof linking anti-fur to the violence let me tell you I think the same thing is coming to Africa I think many of these sub-saharan African countries over the next 10 to 20 years are going to see South Africa today went into this coronavirus with a 29 percent unemployment by the narrow definition it's projected we're going to come out of it with a 42 percent unemployment by the narrow definition for those of

people to understand what that means in the United States during the Great Depression unemployment was a 24 percent it's called the Great Depression for a reason we've been living it minute in a above 27% unemployment Society for the past 10-15 years what's that tell you there's something bubbling and sooner or later people are going to go I want my fair share of the pie too it's enough now so my expectation is that you're going to see a lot more political turmoil particularly in sub-saharan Africa so if you can diversify your business diversify your income and

give yourself options don't wait for the discontent to start before you start doing that do it now because it's not an if question it's a win question and you know black lives matter in the u.s. is about police brutality in South Africa it was about how the army treated people who live in poor townships during the lockdown similarly in Kenya was about how the army treated journalists right it's not going to go away it's a global movement of people saying I want to be recognized and I want a part of the dream I don't want

to live in the peripheries of society anymore if you're an entrepreneur and you're watching this conversation and you're wondering what does that mean for you it means you start new to start hedging you desperately need to start hedging you start looking for opportunities treating the world as your cloak take the heavy weight off make yourself faster nimbler more agile and to develop new opportunities that's really what it means is the entrepreneurs who's doing the fixing government government you know I have as much faith in government's as I do I don't know man in you know

the Hadid are that messes up my garden every single morning I really I don't you know I think the I think politicians have the fortitude of a centipede I don't I don't rate them particularly highly because they play to the agenda leaders set the agenda politicians play to the agenda now if you're playing to the agenda you're not setting the theme and the question you asked was who's going to fix it leaders are gonna fix it Lina's can be in any field it can be an entrepreneurship they can be in venture capital they can be

in society that can be in civil service they can be the elderly the young but the leaders will emerge and no matter where the leaders are it will tend to gravitate toward each other and find each other and work together for a common solution that's who's going to fix it I don't have particularly a lot a lot of and the mistake we've made very quickly is we've mistaken politicians for leaders because we come from an era where some politicians world leaders so because Nelson Mandela was the leader and a politician we now think that every

single person that holds the presidency must therefore be a leader they not they just a politician you know because Barack Obama was a leader and president it's not presumed it's not it's not necessarily the case I think leaders are gonna merge everywhere and I think the emerging already as it is you're seeing them on social media they speaking and people are finding their voice and people are assigning with them sharing their opinions what you can't do wherever you are is don't stay silent do not be silent because it affects you too you know it affects

you too sooner or later sooner or later it comes down to you sow sow sow become part of a Just Cause make sure that your voice is clear don't spread hate but by no means stay quiet Lucy we have a last question for you what does the future hold for Lucy what are your ambitions where would you like to be in five years from now when we when we talk to you again um sure man that's a tough question I want to be I want to be lighter I want to be less heavy unless ego

definitely less possessions definitely I want to be I want to be a lot more agile a lot more nimble a lot more connected I don't want my personal happiness tied to my personal wealth and I want phenomenal relationships with my family with my kids I want to matter I want to make a difference I want to be in the rooms where the future is being discussed and become part of that future and and by God's grace masha'allah you know if it comes with money I'll take it but I think the word is just lighter I

think the world life is very heavy at the moment it's everything is heavy on your shoulders heavy responsibility is heavy I'm it's tiring I just want to be much lighter much more free Lucy the first flight from Johannesburg to Dubai that opens up by Emirates you're requested to be on it please on us at creative zone you have five-star hotel everything booked we need you here for two three days we need to chew your brains we need you over here we're going to talk business we're going to see how in breach Africa and the Middle

East with entrepreneurs this is the movement you know and African entrepreneurs need this they need to get out they need to explore how to market so we truly look forward to this conversation with you wanna do you want better I would love to do it let's definitely do it but I think even between now and then let's start putting some of our thoughts down I'm happy to pop you an email with a couple of my thoughts and then let's go how do we action some of the things so there by the time we meet we've

made some progress but yeah I mean let's do it to all the attendees 250 people that connected there today thank you so much again we are at creative zone we can help you set up your businesses you need advice you need to see what kind of activities banking solutions we're here to help you I it's creative zone dot a II and we're happy to help Boosie we cannot thank you enough for this incredible session was one of the highlights of my life one hour with Lucy I thank you so much and we really look forward

to keep on working with you Lucy I can't wait my friend let's do it thank you ma'am thank you David for connecting and have a lovely day and weekend ahead Santa sana thank you thank you you