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Ivan Minić:​ Današnja epizoda Pojačala je svojevrsna ekskluziva jer moj današnji gost mislim da nikada ranije nije na engleskom jeziku podelio svoju priču. Barem ne sa ovoliko detalja. U pitanju je Vytautas Paukštiz, koga verovatno ne znate, ali ste vrlo verovatno bili korisnik nekih od servisa koji su on i njegovi partneri razvijali. A danas je najpoznatiji kao osnivač i CEO kompanije Eskimi, koja je AdTech globalna platforma prisutna na više od 80 tržišta sa kancelarijama u više od 40 zemalja, koja pruža sve ono što jedno 360 stepeni AdTech rešenje treba da pruža. Dakle bukvalno desetak različitih proizvoda upravo u ovoj industriji. Njegova priča je krajnje interesantna. Počinje u Litvaniji, a on je izabrao da svoje biznise širi na vrlo neobičan način. Naime, on je kroz Afriku i Južnu Aziju došao do toga da je danas globalno prisutan. To se sve poklapa sa 20 godina razvoja tehnologije i svega sličnog. Tako da će svi oni koji se sećaju ovog vremena u tome uživati, a oni koji se možda ne sećaju kako je to sve izgledalo, dobiti malo jasniju predstavu kako je tekao taj razvoj koji nas je doveo do danas. U svakom slučaju, siguran sam da ćete uživati u epizodi.

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Ivan Minić: So, Vytautas, nice to meet you.

Vytautas Paukštys: Thanks for having me.

Ivan Minić: It’s a great pleasure and it’s a very exclusive content, if I may say, because you haven’t been really active in this format, at least not in English, and you have an amazing story to share. So I’m really glad that for some odd reason, and we are going to talk about your reasons, you decided to be more active in in Serbia and, you know, grow the team and spread the the the word and help the company grow. Uh, and that’s why I have a chance today to have you as a guest. Um, if I try to explain what you’re doing now, it’s going to take 15 minutes and I’m going to probably miss important things. Uh, we are going to come to that later in the talk, but before we start, uh, can you give like a two- sentence overview of what you’re doing now and and who are you?

Vytautas Paukštys: Definitely, yes. So, I’m I’m the founder of Eskimi. Um, and Eskimi has grown into a global AdTech platform, uh, or we call ourselves creative media technology platform. Uh, so we basically operate in more than 30, 40 markets, uh, with local teams, trying to help, uh, advertisers solve their, uh, their their their challenges in advertising. And, as you know, uh, digital has become a crowded space, um, where it’s very hard to stand out. So, we have developed frameworks and solutions that, um, that increase the attention of the brands, uh, promoting themselves online. Um, and we’re using technologies, uh, to do that. Uh, we built our tech, uh, for more than 15 years. Uh, yeah, I’ve been with this business for more than 20 years. Um, so, uh, so yeah, that’s what we do today, but it’s been a long journey up until now.

Ivan Minić: We’re going to get into that. We’re going to, uh, share most of that journey and and not in too many details because it would take a lot of time, but we’re going to share that journey, but the basic idea is we’ve been saying for the past 20 years that the key benefit of doing digital advertising instead of traditional advertising is that it can be smart. And that developed over time. In the beginning, you could track basic things. Now you can track a ton of things and it it’s becoming more and more smart or it’s becoming smarter. But what you’re doing is adding additional layer onto that and providing additional things that, um, maybe the the platforms you’re working with do not provide to the customers. And your your approach is you have 30, uh, 360 degrees, uh, AdTech solutions, different products within the ecosystem, but you provide them, um, the way client wants to. So in some cases, it will be just providing a certain thing they’re missing to complete their, um, approach or it will be a turnkey solution for them so that they can provide to their clients what what they need. Basically, mostly you have been working with with agencies. You’re focused on on agencies on on that side.

Vytautas Paukštys: Yeah, but just to comment on this, I think digital has gone through that path of innovation and that measurability or ability to measure actually, uh, you know, did digital advertising more harm than good? Um, and in some way, we are actually with our platform, we’re going back to the times of Mad Men where creative matter, where, you know, standing out, uh, engagement, all those things were were actually important because now this internet is plenty of boring, uh, advertising. And actually, we rebranded our company two years ago and we say, uh, don’t be boring and boring is expensive, um, because if you don’t think about your creative strategy, the measurement, the engagement, you end up as another 5,000 brands bombarding users every day, right? So, in a sense, uh, digital, uh, has has suffered from from this disease and that’s what we’re trying to solve, you know, uh, ensure that brands think about creative, think about the user’s engagement, think about the environment where where you run your advertising. And to achieve this, yes, you need audience planning, you need data, you need creative, you need, uh, smart bidding technologies, uh, you need local understanding, which is very important. Um, cultural, uh, and so on. So, so yeah, that’s what we are trying to kind of stitch together into one solution and, uh, which is, uh, yeah, trying trying to do a lot of things, but, but to to accomplish that one thing that when the brand goes online, it’s being remembered, it’s being engaged with, uh, and the message message stick with with with clients.

Ivan Minić: The biggest problem with advertising has been, uh, in in the past decades has been first of all getting noticed, then ideally getting noticed the right way, because you can get noticed but not in the right context that doesn’t really help too much. And I know the stats and I haven’t been updating the number, but I know the stats from like 2013 or 14 that 87% of all advertising gets completely unnoticed, like 7% gets noticed wrong way and only 4% gets noticed the right way, which if we sum it down, one in 25 ads does the work that it’s supposed to do. So the rest of the money is probably thrown away and it’s if it was like that 12 years ago, it can only be worse now.

Vytautas Paukštys: Correct. Definitely. I mean, it’s the internet has become so much more cluttered with formats, with solutions, with uh, with and then again, I would say lack of creativity, right? So, so that’s the that’s where we focus our our days and nights to to trying to fix that.

Ivan Minić: We’re going to talk about the romantic times when there was one banner on the page and it got noticed because it was one and it was different.

Vytautas Paukštys: 50% success back then.

KAD PORASTEM BIĆU

Ivan Minić: Yeah, and we’re going to talk about all that, but, um, to paint the picture properly, uh, we’re going to start like we always start in this podcast. Uh, we’re going to start with the smiley question. What did you want to do when you grow up when you were a kid?

Vytautas Paukštys: Very hard to come back to that time and I tried to reflect basically because I knew that you’re going to ask this question. Um, and I don’t have a romantic answer because I didn’t want to be a fireman or or somebody who would save the world. Um, I guess the early memory would not be from the early childhood, but when I got a bit more sane, uh, I think, uh, and it was quite a raw, uh, uh, motivation and it was very simple, which I sometimes even coach young people that it’s not they should not be afraid of it. Just make money. Um, because I think people are afraid of that notion that that making money is is bad somewhat, you have to improve the world and I think when misguided by people who already made their first billion dollars, uh, you know, with this note with this focus of like, we have to make a world a better place. I think, um, create something that creates value and make money. So I think early memories where I started my my experiments with tech and so on, it was very much focused on like, you know, do something cool, great, and make money, I would say. So this is where it started, uh, if I can remember.

Ivan Minić: And, you know, you are sitting, um, in Serbia and you’re coming from Lithuania. And we have a big rivalry in basketball. And basketball has been a religion for both countries for decades. Uh, but when we think about it, uh, and I don’t think that’s that’s unique for Serbia, I think that’s a general situation, we don’t really know much about Lithuania. I know a couple of cities and I know that there are a couple of cities because there are clubs from those cities. Uh, and I know that the culture is an interesting mix of the countries and cultures surrounding, uh, Baltic region and and and Lithuania especially, but, you know, it would be, uh, quite, uh, I believe an interesting thing if you can share, um, what was your experience growing up, what was the culture like from your perspective, from your from how you remember these things? You know, it it’s always, we always romanticize growing up because we didn’t have a single problem in our lives, even though we had it, we didn’t have a problem. Now we have problems. Now they are proper problems. But, um, how was it, how was the surrounding, what was the, uh, general situation, how who were your your friends growing up, what was what was, how was it in school, in kindergarten, what was the what was the town like?

Vytautas Paukštys: Yeah, so I grew up in a smaller town, not in the capital city. So capital city, Vilnius. I grew up in Šiauliai, but I moved pretty early to the capital city. I think it was 10 years old, uh, up until this time, I’m thankful to my parents because then I came back, I think when I was 16 and all my friends were in jail. So I think I I moved at the right time. So so there there was some criminal element associated with that, uh, with that city somehow. Um, so so yeah, I think, you know, I think I had a a happy childhood, uh, just as as you are saying. Uh, we did not have many things. Um, and that’s why probably, uh, we were hungry, willing to do things, willing to do things, uh, outside, um, uh, striving for something more and that built that culture of of the country. Um, and up until now, I think when I speak to my friends that are around my age, which is around 40, um, you know, we have that hunger still up until now and I think that, uh, generation, uh, was successful and built a lot of businesses and and and and went abroad and obviously we did a lot of this recent 20 years through tech. Um, because of that hunger that we were bringing with us from from our young days, right? Because we didn’t have abundant everything or anything. Um, yeah, I think then tech was important. I mean, we’re assembling our own laptops uh, or computers back then and and this is where that uh, curiosity was coming from that we used in building, uh, new products today, right? So I think unfortunately current generation doesn’t have that, uh, that, I mean they have probably something else, we’ll see, we’ll see, we’ll see what they’re going to create, but, um, but yeah, I think it was a, it was a a changing market, moving out of Soviet Union, uh, there was a lot of opportunities, a lot of, uh, um, you know, business-minded people that wanted to succeed, um, and and that change in tech or a couple of things, I think, you know, through my life, I’m very happy because I’ve seen the internet coming, I’ve seen mobile coming, now I see AI coming. Um, so we are blessed in this way that we were, you know, sane, mature people or even young, but we already were creating something with these strategic shifts in the world. Um, so yeah, so I think a lot of successful people from Lithuania come from that time, uh, and and and and and did well in business because of the hunger and that that uh, state of the market that we haven’t had, I mean we were very curious, we we could not travel early in our lives and then you know, we could could see the world and I think we really wanted to strive to to do better. So I think I think that hunger is very, very important and I think you know the looking from the negative side, a lot of that is being lost, uh, when, when you when you have abundance, uh, have less problems, uh, you know, everything is supplied to you. Um, so yeah, I think that culture definitely shaped me and and a lot of my surroundings.

POSLE RASPADA SOVJETSKOG SAVEZA

Ivan Minić: And And the allergies. And you know, at about the same time we had, uh, on on one side, on the big stage, um, Soviet Union collapsing and on on our local small stage, we had the civil war around here. So, um, for us it was in during the 90s, especially the first five, six years of the 90s, it was tragic in many ways, war, many casualties, shit show. And of course I was, you know, growing up, I didn’t understand all the all of the things, but if you if you stay long enough with the problem, you start understanding even though you were a small kid. But from from, uh, what I’ve seen and and I talked to a couple of people, uh, from other parts of of former Soviet Union, uh, this collapse wasn’t violent in that way, but it was, uh, life-changing for for many people because you were part of something huge, uh, but you I I think that you you never felt as a proper part of that. Uh, and then you were separate, free and so on, but you were small and I wouldn’t say insignificant, but you know what I mean. It’s one when you have a back backing of, you know, 100 plus million people and all the technology and everything and Soviet Union has been, uh, one of the cradles of technology and innovation and creativity. And in some ways far more interesting and advanced than other parts of the world because people were so creative, people were uh uh uh experimenting, people were improvising more than in a let’s say ideal conditions and we had a ton of amazing tech coming. I mean even the toys, we we we used to have a lot of toys from Soviet Union. These they were not always the the you know, uh, the most ideally packaged or whatever, but they were so interesting. They were different in that manner. So what was this, uh, you know, what was your remembering of that culture surrounding you in in that time and what changed when it was dissolved?

Vytautas Paukštys: I don’t have that romantic memory as you put it, I think. I think, you know, again, I was young. I don’t remember everything properly. I remember it as time of suppression, I remember it as time of of of of, you know, definitely uh going to other side of not innovation. So so I think what changed is when we when we as a country got freedom, I think then is where when the that um, that unleashed uh, all that creativity, willingness, uh, you know, going outside of the norms. Um, I think only then it became possible, which is in Lithuania time it was 1991. So, um, so I was 10 years old only, so it was for for me, I mean I I didn’t grasp the the the the significance back then, but but when I look at at it now and I think about it, you know, how much can we travel, how much we could we could we do stuff outside, how much could we learn. I mean definitely that was a big big shift. So so but but I think you know I I cannot comment mostly on on those things. I think it’s I can only focus and comment on the economic factor of it, right? Because I think when when people have when people got the freedom to create, uh, build businesses, it is not a, uh, communism anymore. I think this is where where where and then they come from this where you you could not do anything based on what I understand. Uh, this is where it unleashed that creativity and and willingness to explore and then and and do something great. Uh, I think that’s that’s how I remember and then um, you know, now that I mentioned we went through three big generational technological changes, uh, but I remember myself being 18 or 19 and reading all newspapers when they were selling real estate for for for like I don’t know 5% of the price when when it was like I was like oh I missed this, I missed that business opportunity. It was so cool like you know in this transition because you can buy things cheaper, the value was not clear and so on. Um, and then obviously I think you know we went into technology and we’ve seen all these progress happened. So so I think we are lucky in in that sense, but um, but yeah, I think I I remember this as a as a as an unlock um, and and you can now see what freedom can do and I think that’s where where we’re very lucky in Lithuania. Um, and I think the the country has has done so well, uh, because of that and um, and we the the the businesses that are being formed by the by that generation, I think they have enormous value. A lot of tech companies did extremely well, uh, in in in the global scene as well and we have you know, a lot of unicorns being born, uh, you know, from from that uh generation of business building.

Ivan Minić: Was I think uh Skype was from Estonia or Lithuania?

Vytautas Paukštys: Estonia, yeah. No, but we have companies like Vinted who, you know, like close to 10 billion valuation. We have companies like NordVPN and Tessian groups. I mean these guys are doing extremely well in the global scene building out of Lithuania and most of the teams are actually still in Lithuania. So so we have stories that uh that that these these these teams actually succeeded really well.

Ivan Minić: Uh, now explain it to me because that that that happened after the collapse of Soviet Union, uh, what was what were the key things the in you know gross national product of of Lithuania and also uh how did it influence the educational landscape, the academy landscape and so on?

Vytautas Paukštys: I think, yeah, I’m not, I mean I I know probably more about uh our markets where we do business than than about Lithuania. I mean I think it’s we were and then still we are an agricultural country, um, and some some some of the industrial, uh, complex is quite big as well. Um, services are big, uh, but I think you know only when we do like started doing this export with IT, this started to shift. Um, we have strong tech, uh, education, universities that uh, that, I would say, you know, developed that initial talents, uh, in couple of cities in Lithuania. So that that helped to build that foundation of talent and if you mix that with the hunger and willingness to succeed, that’s where I think this potent mix appeared in in Lithuania, uh, tech scene because there’s like early on, there were a lot of tech companies coming to to hire engineering teams in um in Lithuania. Uh, because 20 years ago, it was cheap, uh, and we had really good people. Um, now we have even better people, but it’s not cheap anymore. So I think you know and then companies realized that uh, obviously high value products can still be created because we have really smart smart talents in Lithuania, competition has increased so it’s not as easy to just come and hire 100 engineers. Uh, but for high value products, it is still a place. Um, and I think you can attribute this to to you know the culture of the country and then you know some of the educational background. I cannot say that it was the super most modern, you know, uh, tech and engineering, uh, school system. That’s where that culture and people actually had to learn a lot themselves and practice. Um, but, uh, but yeah, I would say that’s the those are the two things that mix together.

PRVI KOMPJUTER I OTKRIVANJE INTERNETA

Ivan Minić: When was the moment when the first computer entered your life?

Vytautas Paukštys: I think I was probably 14 or 15 and yeah, my father actually probably if I remember correctly, my father brought a a laptop from from his work and laptop was, I mean this is crazy. It’s it’s a it’s uh, usually we’re using these big uh, 386 processor computers. um

Ivan Minić: Big yellow boxes.

Vytautas Paukštys: Yeah, yeah, the yellow boxes first. Um, yeah, I did some coding, I think, in in school. Um, but I think where it really hit me is obviously through gaming because we were playing Warcraft and spending all the all the time, you know, uh, jamming the the phone lines with dial-up uh, connection playing with my friends. But then there was a curiosity to hack those games to you know, get some points or whatever. Then you had to assemble your own computer, insert the CD ROMs and all those enhance RAM and all those things. So

Ivan Minić: And clean it up every every now and then.

Vytautas Paukštys: Yeah, yeah. So so a lot of, yeah, a lot of that curiosity came from building things, uh, first for gaming purpose, just for fun. And then, and then, and some in some, probably when I was 15 or or 14, uh, my father gave me a a the most gift, the biggest gift in in his life. He got me a an unlimited dial-up, uh, you know, subscription basically, which was crazy expensive back then. Um, but I was spending a lot of time with my friends, uh, drinking beer outside. So that was his move to, you know, it was a a very smart move to to keep me at home and it worked, uh, because, yeah, I think I cut my time on the bench with my friends with beer by by, you know, many times back then. So, so yeah, I think this is where I got it, I got this unlimited subscription and then I started experimenting, started coding my first websites went out. Uh, I, uh, you know, it was just, yeah, spending 16 hours a day basically. Um, and yeah, back then it doesn’t seem like a serious thing, but but yeah, it turned into something because this is where I basically learned what code is and how how how to do it and now working with engineering teams that background definitely helps me.

OD FAKULTETA DO PRVOG POSLA

Ivan Minić: And uh, you know, being 15, 16, 17, that’s the moment you basically should decide what you’re you’re what you’re going to focus on in your career, in your professional life. Not always is that choice the one that ends up being your career, but you know it’s it’s a first situation where you actually have to make a grownup choice, so to say. Uh, what was your thinking at that moment? What was your idea to how to proceed?

Vytautas Paukštys: I did not have, I remember clearly that somehow this willing this to do something only formed around 17 where like okay I need to get a some kind of job, I need money. Um, and then only then I started uh experimenting again with a bit more professional websites design and coding and and so on. Then you know when I was 18, we started our first business and then like in website creation. But I think 15, 16 it was just pure fun experimentation. um, which built that foundation in knowledge and understanding how how tech works and how hardware works. But I had no clue at all. So this, I still remember, I was I I was not very good at school. So, you know, I still remember it’s like, ah, this school I I don’t need this because I’ll just work in some random simple job, I don’t know, you know, nothing thinking about my future at all. So I remember clearly it was just fun playing games, uh, and not thinking about the future because that’s where that rebel, uh, rebel, um, you know, child in me was was was kind of leading the way. Uh, only like 17, I think it flipped quite quite strong, uh, strongly because at 18 we already had the initial businesses and so on. So um, so it was quite a fast, uh, switch from like oh I just want to drink with my friends and and spend a good time to like okay this is cool like let’s do something and then you know experiment with business.

Ivan Minić: And when when it was time to go to university?

Vytautas Paukštys: Yeah, so I think I stumbled my way through last, uh, school years. I think, last year maybe I realized that, okay, maybe I need to finish that school. So, you know, I think I focused a bit. um, got some minimum grades that that that needed to finish school. Uh, randomly went into university and yeah, I got accepted into this communication faculty to do communication. It was most most, uh, free and and and, you know, um, I would say almost vague, uh, topic because you could there was no not a lot of sciences, it was more languages. So it was quite of a a very kind of humanitarian focused. Um, some communication topics. I just remember one very good saying out of the book that was called communication that, uh, the the the the responsibility of the communication, whether it reaches the purpose or not is the is on the side of the communicator. So, I always remember this very well, so probably they taught me something. So um, so yeah, I spent I spent four years, uh, and then plus two years and I I got my master’s degree somehow, I don’t know, but but it’s, uh, it was a bit more fun, maybe I was a bit more engaged with school there. Um, but I started working in one of these, um, uh, university kind of a programs where where they develop some tech as well. So it was was quite lucky to to to to work there from my 18, uh, years old for maybe one and a half years, which got me into contact with all the teachers and stuff. So it was easier to to go through through university life. So um, so so yeah, it was it was in the field of communication.

Ivan Minić: And I think it’s it’s a, uh, really match made in heaven because that’s usually what people with strict, high-profile engineering background lack. They understand each other if they are talking with other engineers, which basically sounds like robots are talking to each other. Uh, but, you know, usually there is a big gap between general population, general users, um, business audience and so on, and the the the tech guys. And I think you you mentioned that, uh, the beginning of, uh, let’s say tech renaissance for for Lithuania was, uh, you know, outsourcing basically. People came, hired engineers, they did the work and so on. We are still in that phase. Most of the big tech companies here are still basic outsourcing body leasing model, which is the problem, which is the problem because you are not creating a proper value. You are you are making money, okay, but you’re not creating a proper value and you are the first thing people cut off in their expense sheet. And not enough companies, even though there are there are some positive movements and so on, not enough companies are focusing on the product. Why? Because they have engineering people, they don’t have product people and product people, they need to have an understanding of engineering, but they don’t have to be the ones coding the damn thing. Um, your you said that during your, um, high school period, prior to university, you were not necessarily the best student. Um,

Vytautas Paukštys: The worst.

Ivan Minić: Was it mostly because it wasn’t interesting and you didn’t care? Because if I understand well, when you enter the university, it became more interesting and then you became more engaged. Not everything was interesting, it’s it’s never it never is, but you know it became more interesting.

Vytautas Paukštys: I think the environment was more engaging. The studies were not interesting as well. Um, because I was spending 100 hours per week building business already and then I had a corporate career for a while. So you know it was just, you know, impossible to dedicate time to to to studying, but the environment was a bit more stimulating, the network was better. um, I hated my school time. I mean I was coming from a small smaller city, I got bullied, you know, I I just hated that time. So so it’s the shifting to university, people were nicer, I would say. So it’s it’s uh, it it changed, uh, the the the engagement I would say and spending time with these people, it was quite quite fun. Um, so but yeah, studies never or theoretical studies never interested me. I mean I had to back then and even now, like people have this rule that you have to finish university and school. Um, a couple of my colleagues early on they asked, okay, like I maybe I want to go to university, what should I do? I mean unfortunately my recommendation response is always don’t spend your time like this. If you want to learn something, you’ll learn by focused action and immediately practice rather than spending, I don’t know what, 40 hours a week, uh, learning theoretical topics that will become obsolete in in two years and even now probably in in in six months. So, um, I mean my kids are, if they are listening, and this is a different message that I give to them. I think you have to develop that grit and focus, uh, as a muscle. um, and studies give you that. Um, but if something else can train this, obviously choose that practical practical topic. So yeah, I I never was good at uh, learning, I learn experiential, uh, and that is the most exciting thing, uh, I do in my life. Learn something while doing, solving problems, um, and then, you know, uh, that’s that’s has been, uh, the method of learning I would say for.

Ivan Minić: And what were you working on? You were working at the university at first and how did it develop from there?

Vytautas Paukštys: Yeah, so I worked for maybe one and a half years there. Uh, we were building, uh, tech solutions. So we were building tech solutions internally for the university, but we were allowed to go and sell, uh, them outside. Um, that was amazing because we got a an official title almost like a company and then we can go outside and we sold a couple of projects and we stumbled on the radio station group, like one of the largest radio station groups back then, um, where we presented our solution back then, they had no online presence at all. We said look you know we have the we’ll develop the first portals and new sites and everything. And uh, and we presented and we showed them and the owner said okay thank you guys just we’ll just come come all of you and then they he basically bought all of us and then we we started working at that uh at that uh radio station group where where it was a my first corporate job I would say because university was like you know a lot of freedom and a small team. Um, so yeah, there I experienced a bit of of of of of that different style of working. I mean I even wore a suit at at at work, which was crazy now to to think about it. Uh, so I spent a couple of years there and then moved into we developed some mobile applications there and then this from from there one of the mobile operators invited me to join and I spent I think four years there. So that was kind of my corporate career was like one and a half plus two plus four years. um, and then in in on weekends I was always developing different businesses and we went into we had a restaurant chain, we had a we had a real estate business, we had a telemarketing company, we had a website development, marketing, a lot of different things in very different fields throughout those years. But then when I left um, the the the telecom, I then decided to focus on my own business and then decided that okay, you know, only specific field interests me and then I need to dedicate my time there and this is where we started to build Eskimi in 2006, I think. um, uh, prior to this couple of business ventures, yeah, this this kind of corporate life a bit of that. Um, where I learned a lot of things. It was really useful to work in a company with structure and understand especially the the telco which was a newly built um, Scandinavian management model. We had managers from uh Sweden and and Denmark, uh, which was extremely helpful to develop the the learning how to manage people in a in an open, you know, way, not like old school type of so. so yeah, so that’s the that’s the journey I would say up until 2006.

LEKCIJE IZ PRVIH BIZNISA

Ivan Minić: And I just I I really wanted to to ask you and I and I will ask you more in detail, but what you mentioned, I mean, from my opinion as well, you know, depending on what you choose to do in life, university has a different role. If you want to be a doctor, then yeah it it it’s necessary to read the things that are boring to you because sometimes it’s going to save someone’s life if you know that. But, you know, in many other cases, especially in in in in uh lines of work that are far more practical and and and uh more quickly developing, it’s it’s just a nuisance, but I do think that it it is important to teach you a couple of things. First of all, that you sometimes need to do things you don’t want to do because there is a reason behind that and it will make a difference, it will give you the structure, it will give you the base for something. And the other thing is working in these, uh, systems you’ve been part of, one is academia, the other one is a, let’s say it’s it’s a it’s a corporate job, but it’s a privately held smaller company and then you were worked in a privately held bigger company. Yeah. Each of these things uh give you a lot of practical learnings along the way and it’s in many cases much better if you become an entrepreneur after five years of experience, especially different experience, then if you are straight out of high school or college and you start something. Sure, it can it can work. Sure, you can get from zero to one. Sure, you can get if everything is well and you have been focusing on, you can get from one to five. But once you get to 10 or 15 or 20, you will have no idea because from that moment on chaos doesn’t work and you need that structure, you need that knowledge and what you mentioned, you know, it’s always on the side of the communicator. So you learn that it’s not enough if you told them something. It’s enough only when they understand it. Yeah. And these things are not necessarily always in line. Uh, so before we focus on on what what’s happened from 2006 to today, what would you say were the the most important things you you did learn in these previous experiences?

Vytautas Paukštys: So, I think the decision to focus came then when we were doing very different things. Um, I think, yeah, that was um, good because, yeah, from real estate to to again, we I was doing this with partners and in some cases I was not involved into details so I didn’t need to know how pizzeria works. Um, but it was still uh, a big de-focus, uh, back then. Um, and we, yeah, so I think that that is a first learning. I learned, I learned then that, you know, I like freedom, uh, and I want to do it myself rather than having a a big list of partners because I think we started like five people and then eventually continued with one partner, um, and parted ways because our risk profile just completely didn’t match. I was going all in all the time and, you know, burned a lot of stuff on the way, but but that worked eventually. Um, so I learned my own style through that period in terms of what I want to do, how I want to do it. uh, um, and yeah, so this gave me an understanding as well that what kind of people you meet, uh, in certain businesses, right? So technology, advertising is my type of crowd. um, real estate, telemarketing, uh, catering was not my type of crowd. Um, and I think this is where I started to first in my life ask those questions, why am I doing what I’m doing and what is my personal why? Then it led to kind of a lot of thinking about the values and so on which then I kind of focused on later in some of those hard moments of my business life. But I think this is where those first thoughts were starting to to to to come out and uh, and then just, you know, just learning stuff about yourself. It was early on, I was 25, so it was it was super fun life and and and yeah, no kids yet, so you know it’s uh all business and and and and work and and and fun. So I would say that was um, the good part of the journey.

OSNIVANJE ESKIMI.COM
Ivan Minić: If we take a look and and and go a little bit back, basically you’ve been at that moment for six, seven years, you have been working on developing websites, working on creating some digital thing, whether it was a website presentation or whatever, it it depends, but you already had quite the mileage in in that particular world. When you decided to start your own focused business, which was Eskimi and still is Eskimi, but it it evolved in many ways and many times. You had the, let’s say, basically you had the tech knowledge, but the idea was to create an interesting and successful product. And I think it’s it’s very important that we explain that we are talking about 2006, which means most of the people still don’t have, in our case, still don’t have broadband internet. YouTube has been around for one year. Facebook has been around, but no one knows about it until 2007 or 8. So it’s in terms of normal people, not the geeks, it’s before the internet. Even though it’s been around for like 13, 14 years back then, but it’s before it became the thing, it’s before it became cool. It’s before we had proper smartphones because I loved Symbian, I adored Symbian, it was amazing, but it’s not comparable to, you know, the first moment I I was able to zoom the image on an iPhone. So, uh, you had all this technology, you had some knowledge and and experience from the Telco world. How did it start and what was your your vision, what was your idea?

Vytautas Paukštys: So, yeah, I definitely picked it up from the Telco experience because the the market of content was starting to boom. We had these small screen devices that were black and white first, Nokia 3310 or whatever. And

Ivan Minić: The amazing unbeatable phone.

Vytautas Paukštys: So I think this is where, um, I saw the market, um, and then I I thought that yeah, this this mobile content is something that we want to develop. Um, and and this is where a lot of this experience started to connect, um, because, yeah, the Telco experience, the IT experience, ability to build products, um, engineering knowledge, design knowledge and all of those things. um, so so yeah, we’ve we’ve then went out and I had a so I left, I left uh, uh, left the corporate, uh, career and then and it and it still was very scary. Um, I had a couple of successful businesses already running, um, and other people were running it, but I was the that that kind of strategist I would say and I was very confident with myself because anything that I touched were successful. um, very dangerous place to be in actually. So uh, so so yeah, I think, I think this is where it uh where all those things started to connect and then when I went out and started to myself, I failed completely the first year because, you know, the skill sets of of doing something through other people was and doing it myself as a CEO of the company was very different. So so, so, so yeah, so I would say some elements of my experience helped me to start, but but I was still lacking a lot of a lot of them to run a completely independent business myself, um, which I had to learn again, I would say, yeah.

Ivan Minić: At that moment, the the first uh, the the first iteration of Eskimi was content distribution for mobile phones. So to to help people remember the the old enough ones and the rest, you can’t even imagine, but there was this, uh, way of basically and it was on all over the place, it was on television, it was everywhere, especially on music channels. You were able to to uh, purchase a ringtone for your phone and it was in many cases monophonic ringtone. It was

Vytautas Paukštys: Polyphonic ringtone later.

Ivan Minić: Later it was polyphonic, it was amazing, but, you know, first you were just getting the rhythm basically of the whole thing. But you were able to to purchase that through sending an SMS and then you would receive the wallpaper or the ringtone or something of all these things. And the interesting moment was it was prior to to smartphones or with the first generation of smartphones, but there were actually many more, uh, uh, manufacturers, many more different screens, many more standards. It was horror.

Vytautas Paukštys: Developing products back then is is crazy. I mean we literally had to have hundreds of phones in our office to test something out because you would change something in this WML code and then it would crash for almost all devices and it it has to work and people paid money for it. So so yeah, it has to work. So it’s uh, this is this is the most painful development ever basically, just working with bits and and then developing multiple versions for different device. Yeah, that was that was horrible. Ivan Minić: And that wasn’t around for a very long time. In just a few years, the the smartphones with proper screens being able to, you know, display simplified but still HTML pages. I know back in the days I was I was part of I was quite active in in Norway for some crazy reason and I was part of the the testing initial testing team that did Opera Mini, which was wow because it helped you display something and for the first time, and now it’s it’s it’s basic, but that was the first time someone figured out, okay, we can take the page to our server, we can we can crunch it down, we can simplify it and display this to you. It doesn’t have to be done on the device because if you it has to be done on the device, the device is going to break. Yeah. But we can do it on server side.

Vytautas Paukštys: Yeah.

Ivan Minić: And it was an amazing product for for many years and it brought, but what was, it brought internet to so many places because not everyone had the latest flagship model.

Vytautas Paukštys: Yeah. Definitely.

Ivan Minić: So that was that time and very soon the things were very different. How did it evolve from the marketplace?

Vytautas Paukštys: It was one of the toughest years I would say because I think we developed this business, the first year I messed it up. Uh, I lost all mine and and and my partner’s money. Um, but then we figured this out and then I think the second year we we exploded and then the revenue was was was great and then the the it was a small team so we were running on profits basically. It was amazing. But it lasted as you said, probably two years. Uh, the market shifted, change rules changed, uh, operators started to be strict on billing and all of this stuff because we and and a lot of other players went pretty aggressive with our marketing techniques or whatever because it was just seemed to be a working method. Um, and then when when this and and obviously then market changes, smartphones started to appear, content was available for everyone to download. Um, we have developed probably like 10 products in this in the period of two years, which was probably the most excruciating time from maybe I was I don’t know, 27 to 29 or 30 because we just do something, it started to work and then it stopped working and we then do something else, it started to and we burn through all the profits that we’ve earned throughout these years. Um,

Ivan Minić: And and what was the general idea with these products? What were they trying to do?

Vytautas Paukštys: We did, uh, you know, we did, we did like the first website creator where we thought that it’s a good idea to do it on mobile phones and then create like give people something like there’s a lot of them right now. It was a very expensive and complicated product. Um, we launched this one. Then we and then we experimented with just different content types. Uh, we went into the TV and built the whole video streaming, uh, platforms where TVs would TVs with TV stations would were giving away, uh, their nighttime, uh, where it’s kind of not a lot of people were watching. Um, and then we were doing a rev share with them so that you know they would earn some money and then we were doing SMS chats, whatever, any kind of content. I remember my my my back then colleague was drilling a hole in the TV station because we were lucky to to to get a small room above the TV station and then we actually putting the wire and had a two-hour live TV every day, which was crazy for us like amateurs not knowing what we do and. Um, so so we we did these products. um, so we experimented with different content types, um, and then yeah, like different marketing techniques. We at at like it started working like for one year and then for half a year and then again because the market was changing so fast. So you develop something and then it’s amazing and then the TV stations buy and then promote it like hell and then it stops working and the conversion rate drop and then you again have no business, right? So um, so this is when we we said okay we have developed, I don’t know, 10, 15 different content products. um, we needed something to join them together. um, and this is where the first chat site was born, which we called back then Eskimi, um, and then we launched it and it it it first of all, we launched it as an SMS chat. uh, and again we had TV promotion on it. It was it was quite well received, but small market didn’t really fly, uh, although the metrics were good. Um, and then we developed this Eskimi.com, the first chat site and after half a year of iteration, then it blew up. um, and it blew up not in Europe, um, although we had some success in markets like UK and Romania and our local local market. um, and Lithuania, uh, but then it blew up in in the mobile first world, which is Africa and Southeast Asia. So so out of this iteration and trying to find how like we were solving a different problem. Uh, we were trying to improve retention of our products because when people, you know, started to download some content, they would then not know the brand and then they they needed to come back somewhere, you know, SMS transport was expensive, so you know, you that was our key to retention increase for all the products that we built. And then yeah, we built something else.

ESKIMI OSVAJA AFRIKU

Ivan Minić: And, uh, again, when we put that on the proper timeline, it’s before these most popular instant messaging platforms that have been present on on mobile phones for the past 15 years, 10 years. It’s before WhatsApp, it’s before Viber, you know there were instant messages back then. I still remember my ICQ

Vytautas Paukštys: ICQ, yes.

Ivan Minić: number, of course, 83773127. Um, and it was it was amazing and they took it down last June, but it was amazing back in the days and yes, it was it was popular on computers. Then we had MSN, which was kind of a special, uh, I would say a special cousin with all the gifts and and and and stuff that pissed everyone off, but it also became popular, but it was all focused on desktops. Yeah. We had, uh, Internet Relay Chat for years, but also focused on this. You had clients, I had a client on my first Symbian phone. I used to go on Earth and and and chat with people, but it wasn’t convenient. Yeah. What became convenient was for example Google Talk. It was Jabber, but it was something that mostly geeks were using and knew that that it existed. So it was people needed instant messaging. People needed social media, but also social media was still focused on desktop because people were on on the desktop. Yeah. If you had mobile versions, they were crap. And there was this vacuum which you guys used and and and became popular, especially in countries where you don’t have the latest iPhone or or or Android phone. Yeah. Um, what was it was like a primitive mobile social network. What were the features, what was the how how did it work?

Vytautas Paukštys: Yeah, so we it was we had like the the initial forms of social media was forums, uh, all those async communication elements, obviously chat, one-on-one chat, group chats, um, different chats that are related to specific topics. um, and then then yeah, I think we had the first versions of virtual goods. So you could buy, uh, a rose, a gift, uh, a thank you or whatever to your friend. um, and it was still balancing between dating and social networking because social network as we understand it is real social graphs so people you know in real life. Dating is more just you go and try to meet new people. Um, so we started as as a social network, uh, and it just happened that, um, I mean the the the ingredients of success were obviously we went into those markets, but we had developed through all this pain of developing these mobile content products, we developed the product online that worked on the WML, on all the old phones, on color, non-color and everywhere. And it was optimized and obviously Opera Mini was back then quite popular. We had partnerships with them as well. And just yeah, it just exploded because of that. Facebook was already there. I remember doing the first survey, 90% of our users did not know what Facebook is. Um, and that’s where we fill that vacuum and yeah, it exploded and couple of years we were number one site in multiple African markets, uh on Opera Mini uh, you know, reports because they, these these are the guys who knew everything where the internet goes and they were sending all those reports and we were waiting every quarter to to to see where we are and then we were multiple uh, periods actually we were number one and then all those Alexa rankings and everything was quite cool to see. Um, so yeah, we were we exploded in those African markets and then Southeast Asia and then we had to decide what to do because it was almost 50-50 and we’re a small team and like okay, we are burning through servers and and zero revenue, um advertising was there but not there. I mean AdMob was having a bit of a first mobile network. Um, but yeah, we could not sustain ourselves so so then it was a big decision to make whether we want to go to Africa or we want to go to Southeast Asia. Um, and we decided to do Africa because time zone and and language, uh we said okay, let’s do it, although it was much much more scary than doing it in in in in in Indonesia, Southeast Asia was so like cool and romantic and everything and Africa was was big and scary and multiple cultures and so on. So we decided to do it in Africa and I think this was the right choice uh, back then. 

POSLOVANJE U AFRICI

Ivan Minić: And we are go, we are gonna go into more details but, uh up until that moment when when you made that decision to focus on that, you you were just popular on these markets, you were not present in any way as a company.

Vytautas Paukštys: No, no, no. We were communicating with users through our own product. Uh, I have traveled to Africa before for personal reasons but uh, in 2005 I think, um, so I knew the continent but but yeah, um for business we have not yet. I think we like we had we started to have really good numbers 2010 to 13 or or 12, uh and then I first traveled only in 2012. I started traveling actively to markets like Nigeria, Kenya, Ivory Coast, South Africa and so on.

Ivan Minić: I remember back at about that time, I think it was 2010 uh, where I first started um exploring and going into, you know, details and insights about that that market and um Africa was uh, quite interesting because even though uh mobile shopping was still uh, thing of the future that you only see in movies, it was quite popular there and it worked in a way that we couldn’t imagine. It all worked through short codes, through SMS, you would get with your bill or whatever, there there was money transfers, there was ton of interesting infra, I would say internet infrastructure things that were working in a way that I don’t think anyone planned.

Vytautas Paukštys: Yeah.

Ivan Minić: But it was it was amazing and I remember back then and I mean I I still feel bad to this moment, I was showcasing somewhere these these um graphs and analytics and everything and then someone saw and this I think it was someone from the Ministry of Economy or something like that and and they said like next day at that conference they said we want to grow like Africa, we want to have mobile shopping and everything. And I’m like, they have it because they don’t have any other infrastructure, they don’t have proper infrastructure so they worked out a solution. We don’t want that, we want to have proper structure, we want optics.

Vytautas Paukštys: Yeah, so I think Africa and Kenya, the first market was to to to actually build this product called M-Pesa. It was built by the telecom, uh which then was later acquired by Voda- Vodafone. Um, so they used USSD and SMS for payments which by this day a big part of economy runs um and a lot of other African markets actually tried to learn from it, has been so successful. Um but yeah, this I think everybody talks about Africa is lagging but in some of the ways that was actually uh, first because it jumped through all the things. Now we have Apple Pay, we didn’t have that Apple Pay before so you know, they were the first to invent the mobile payments uh, even the workflows and everything uh, were were were kind of easy because anyone from a village could use it to send money from, you know, a small village back to the city or vice versa. Um so I think yeah and then, you know, broadband and optics we spent a lot of money developing optics and now they have mobile internet right, with 4G and 5G they don’t need it. So in some ways that infrastructure jump that they had uh, is something to learn from uh, because yeah, necessity is the mother of invention so it’s uh…

Ivan Minić: Yeah and and especially in many cases, I mean it it’s not all flat, but most of it is flat which means that mobile signals spreads easily and can cover large pieces of land. It’s much easier than when you have a country that’s all messed up. Uh, so they they did manage to do a lot of interesting things. I remember there was this uh, case study again at at somewhere around 2010 um, when there was a local radio station uh, the local the radio station from from some country, I know that later that that also became standard in in India, that back then because you couldn’t get the signal properly, you had a free phone number so you would call the radio and you could call and listen to and people were calling and listening for hours. Of course that’s not how it’s supposed to be working but they made it work. They used solar panels to power those phones and they had radios in remote villages. Makes a lot of difference, you know, they they figured out a a solution. Uh, and I’ve been to Africa past couple of years a few times and first of all, it’s a beautiful land. And the beautiful countries I’ve been to. Um, second of all you can see that it’s an emerging market in a proper way, I mean we say that we are here emerging market. Yes, we are Central Europe. We shouldn’t be emerging market, we should be a proper country but you know, you know, but you can actually see the progress. You can see houses built 10 years ago, five years ago, three years ago and one year ago, you can see the linear progress that that’s happening. They are getting more, they are getting more money, they they are getting more education. A friend of mine who was who was also a guest here is teaching in in Rwanda. Um, he goes once a year for a couple of weeks and and finishes the the his uh, his uh, class which is focused on wireless mobile signals and so on. He used to work in in Ericsson and amazing guy and he says when I ask, how are the students and are they any good? He says they are amazing and these kids are gonna be making the difference in a couple of years if they are not making the difference already. But of course, it’s very different from what we all know and how we work. I used to do, it was also I think 2010, I did a project for some odd reason, back then it was Sony Ericsson.

Vytautas Paukštys: Mm.

Ivan Minić: And they made this new really cute small phone, Android with small screen. It was amazing, really cute, completely useless because of the too small screen but and they wanted to do a presentation. We got the test samples here and for some odd reason they when they were dividing world into sections, they divided by I think market share and not geography so Serbia, Hungary, I don’t know, Turkmenistan and Kenya have been one,

Vytautas Paukštys: One, one..

Ivan Minić: one one group, one section, yes. And we did for it was a an event for journalists and they were supposed to have get a URL to visit and when when they were told to visit and do a quiz and who has the most correct answers in the shortest time will get the big prize. And we did the original the original was in English, so everyone tested it, it worked perfectly and so on. And now we were supposed to do the localization so we prepared back then a CVS file with words and and sentences to translate, sent to Hungarians, got it back the same day. Sent to Turkmenistan, got it back tomorrow. Sent to Kenya, yes we received. Okay, so event is in like 15 days. Okay, 10 days pass, no response. 12 days pass, no response, 13 days pass. and I’m like uh, are you going to send it back? Don’t worry man, TIA. And I’m like…

Vytautas Paukštys: what the fuck TIA means?

Ivan Minić: this is Africa.

Vytautas Paukštys: Yeah.

Ivan Minić: So we got it the last day and we tested it like half an hour before the big event. But it went well. And it it it went on, it it it completed it, it it went it was good. But it was unusual. How was it from your side of experience?

Vytautas Paukštys: Yeah, the my team is using this uh, this term quite often to to, you know, as an excuse but um I mean I have very, like yeah a lot of perspectives. I think um when I started traveling there obviously imagine that oh it’ll be so different, the cultures will be so different. But in the business world I learned you have to respect the cultures obviously but in a business world business language uh, you know, wins so if I provide value um it’s it’s easy to work there. Um so obviously when you start establishing companies, hiring teams, it is hard. We we had to learn a lot of things um but it is in business world is it it’s not so different. Um Kenyan team is one of the best performing teams in Eskimi now so they’re doing really well uh, and they’re not late uh, I think West Africa maybe has so some of those traits uh, but…

Ivan Minić: It’s not late, it’s just in time.

Vytautas Paukštys: Yeah, just in time, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so I think we we there are amazing, I have this um there was a company who was doing uh, with hiring people, training them and then trying to to to to put them into different companies globally. I think they had a very good saying, talent is equal, opportunity is not. So um Africa or or Asia or India, Bangladesh, you know, Vietnam, everywhere we worked, there’s amazing people and I think you know, they still have that hunger which we had uh, 25 years ago and that willingness to learn so I would say the the the joining joining cultural trait that I would see from Africa, Asia and all those markets is willingness to work and willingness to succeed um, and willingness to learn, uh they value education very very differently because that’s the path to success for them um…

Ivan Minić: And it wasn’t available for them.

Vytautas Paukštys: Yeah, not as not and then yeah, now they they they have much more choice and availability so I would say only positive things to say about the people. Um but of course the countries have a lot of inefficiencies, political backgrounds and so on which makes it very hard for them to succeed. And the ones that do uh, it’s just, you know, you can see how much hard work they had to put in in there right. So I think yeah, so we we launched our first office in Nigeria then entered in Kenya then built South Africa, Francophone, um the Middle Eastern part like Morocco and so on. Everyone is different um but you know, the the joy that I see seeing them work together from very very different cultures, you know, I wake up in the morning I’ll probably have a call with someone from Europe, midday Africa, you know, or Asia and then in the evening I talk to US teams. So, you know, I have the an amazing day, each day would consist of I don’t know, 15 nationalities of 15 different cultures. Um but when you have, when you join them uh into one mission and then one direction you always have these different cultural cultural differences but what we say is like when you step into Eskimi, you’re a part of Eskimi culture. So, you know, you be on time whatever your cultural norm is and then you’re you’re polite, you give feedback whatever your cultural norm is because for example for some of the Asian teams it’s very hard to give direct feedback uh, even especially to their bosses and so on. Um but we really strive to create one one single culture. Um so so yeah we learned a lot um but it’s but it’s not so in the business world I would say it’s not as different and and it doesn’t shock you when you go and meet a a people or clients in Serbia, Lithuania, US uh, you know, Indonesia or or somewhere else.

MONETIZACIJA NA NEOČEKIVANIM TRŽIŠTIMA

Ivan Minić: And tell me um so when you entered these markets the brand was already known because it was used by so many people. Yeah. Um that’s a different entering point than for someone who who is not known on the market. But still you had a big problem, you had a brand that’s known, you had a ton of users and you had zero revenue and you were trying to make revenue in countries that are not top tier countries when it comes to ad spend, when it comes to, you know, gross domestic product and so on. For many people especially, you know, whatever we say it’s fine but you know, we come from poor countries. In our surrounding it’s poor countries in comparison to to countries surrounding us. So it’s logical that you focus on rich countries and try to get some space there. And for some odd reason you decided to go the odd way and go to places that have huge potential, that have huge population but are not necessarily considered the most attractive places to make a buck. Yeah. So how did that work?

Vytautas Paukštys: So first of all this comes from my personal values and what I want to do and it was never exciting to go and do stuff that other people are doing or that, you know, oh let’s go to neighboring countries, let’s, you know, go to other markets that are similar to ours and so on. It was super exciting to go and scary but super exciting to go and build a business in Africa back then when we decided that Africa will be the the continent. Um and I only articulated it later on but you know, my main value is adventure so it connects everything that I do in my life. I hate routine, so I travel to to 200, 250 days a year. Um and that was that initial spark which uh, which really drove me to to do business there and and you know, we could say that we got lucky to explode our product there. Yes but, you know, I did not articulate that we’re gonna do business there initially right, but then step-by-step we tried and then we we tested stuff and then it it exploded after we kind of focused our energy there. So so I’d say that was the the first big reason why we ended up there and then we expanded from these markets and then it’s like oh we are in Africa, it would be so cool to do it in Dubai, then in Southeast Asia and then in some other markets and then you know, we we succeeded in a lot of them. So I think that’s the that’s the spark. Um you know, obviously business-wise we had to make it work so um but I think you know, we had users, I think I I traveled first when we had probably like 5 million users uh, and most of them were in West Africa, so Nigeria, Ghana, all those markets. Um nobody would agree to pay for uh, an impression. Nobody understood what an impression is. We had to figure out totally different business models and very interestingly we actually uh got our success out of couple models. We basically said we will sell you outcomes. Um so we got profitable immediately after my first trip. Uh, I prepared well, I called a lot of people, I was selling myself. Uh I met probably like 30, I did probably 30 meetings a week even in Africa, if somebody tells you that there’s traffic, I mean the the it’s still possible. Um and then we sell out like mobile money companies were starting to appear uh, and we said oh we have a user base, they all have phone numbers so it’s just one step sign up for them um, so we were selling this to mobile money companies to say, you know, a dollar for a sign-up uh and we were quite successful. We sold a solution for a yellow pages company who had a challenge to sign up businesses into their yellow pages online yellow pages platform. We did a crowdsourced uh solution where our Eskimi users were getting those virtual points where they can buy some other stuff.

Ivan Minić: Like basic gamification.

Vytautas Paukštys: Yeah, you you get like 100 points if you find a local business, take a picture, add the name, category and so on and obviously these guys were verifying it but then we were getting a couple of dollars for that verified business. And and our users were were crowdsourcing and then, you know, we were building other businesses with our user base. So we then, you know, Coca-Cola was the first client we were giving points if the people would, you know, add their name on the can that when the first when the first campaign was born and then share it. Um so, you know, we devised those things that were getting us into these large advertisers when we solved real problems um and then eventually market grew and then we started working on traditional methods of selling impressions and advertising to the to the to the to the brands uh but by then we’ve built um that that profitability engine and we could hire more people, expand to other markets and so on.

PIVOT U ADTECH

Ivan Minić: If we talk about Central Europe for example, uh right about 2008, 2009 uh there were in a couple of countries and I can remember Hungary, uh Czech Republic, Poland and also Slovakia. There were big uh, undisputed, undefeated local social networks. Yeah. They were extremely popular, they were extremely relevant, they were hyper-localized, they did a ton of interesting things. I remember that 2008 in in Hungary, Iwiw used to have Budapest mayor share uh, every day news and and announcements and stuff like that first there and then in traditional media. It’s 2008, we are very old. It was all amazing. But then they and I remember at that time all of these players that some of them did, you know, they they some of them had just social media, the others had as well classified ads, they had job sites, they had search engines, they had something. And all of these guys lost within three years. They became completely obsolete. I know some of the founders, it was fun times back then. Um few of them were smart enough to sell the business. At that time they they got a couple of million euros for it and usually they sold it to telco. And in three to four years they were obsolete. And the biggest difference that happened at that point from from my perspective going from from the side was not that the Facebook was there. It was already there. It’s not that the Facebook was on mobile because it already was on mobile. It was the moment Facebook introduced games and other content you could interact with that other people were making. So you have now, I mean now you have for the past 20 years Zynga as one of the biggest gaming companies in the world that got where it got through, you know, piggy-backing on Facebook and none of these networks had that. The only network that had something comparable to that in in these all these, let’s say wider range of countries was in Russia, VKontakte, which is still leading because Russia. But, you know, other than that all these smaller players on the market they they lost all relevance within three years and I’m pretty sure that now, you know, kids that were born after 2000, they have no idea they existed even.

Vytautas Paukštys: Yeah.

Ivan Minić: How was that for you?

Vytautas Paukštys: Yeah, so we started to see numbers, obviously social network business is is is metrics business so we had dashboards with 40 different metrics about, you know, retention and this and that, you know, all the all the all the different angles. And we started to see probably 2014-15 that yeah, numbers are struggling, new users are still joining but the retention is a bit smaller and then um we still tried to change, you know that this this this scene in Matrix when when you know, the guy just just avoids bullets and so on. So that’s our two years of of of of like…

Ivan Minić: But after a while you’re too old and your back hurts.

Vytautas Paukštys: Yeah. Yeah, we we still had a lot of energy to innovate and we still changed, I mean back now when I look at it, yes it was a very obvious that we’re not gonna win that that fight um but we still tried to fight um introducing new features and then doing a lot of different applications and entering into areas where maybe Facebook was not working but then WhatsApp showed up and then so on. So like, you know, you we got killed um but um we worked, we experimented back then back then with couple of things and trying to buy advertising for ourselves because you know, the initially we grew organically but then when the numbers started to struggle okay, let’s pour some advertising money. And this is where accidentally we built a programmatic platform because we started to buy uh, inventory for ourselves and it was cheap to connect to some of those networks. We didn’t realize that we built the first, you know, bidding network and so on. And then, you know, a big thing back then was BBM, like Blackberry Messenger. Um and we started to buy BBM ads for our own uh Eskimi and the clients call, “Hey I want to buy this slot.” And I’m like, how did we end up there? And then after some research we found out oh we actually built a an ad network um. So it was yeah, when people ask me like how did you build this? I mean we didn’t even know that we were building a DSP back then. So it was a fun a fun uh project um and and I think this is where we saw that one business is struggling, we saw some future in the in the next business. Um those transitions and we have made a lot of them, when you transition from one business to another are very hard because, you know, the team, some of them catch up and move on and and then they learn very fast but some of the roles become obsolete because you don’t need, you know, content checking team that was actually checking uh the content on on on like to to remove all the di*k picks, you know, of of people who are adding them, a crazy amount of people actually did that which is interesting in itself but uh, but yeah so this this um we we this transition is very hard. I mean and this was probably like a second or third near death experience as we call them in our company when I’m looking at the numbers I know that we have cash for the next three or four weeks and and and it’s very hard because you cannot, you know, go and share it with the team. The team is young, small so I you just will break everyone’s morale to try hard and push. Um but then we succeeded and those transitions were like one business is going down and then you you build another one um with the same team. Uh those are very very interesting challenges but very tough because you know, you kind of manage two businesses because one is still getting generating revenue and so on. And we are not uh VC funded, so we are all we’ve been profitable for all the 20 years. Every year is profitable for us as a group so we always try to be this way. Um so whenever these transitions happen you basically, you know, eat some fat from the past um and if you make it you make it so so it’s um so yeah so we were I would say, you know, lucky to stumble on this idea and there there was no luck and pure execution actually to migrate this business but but yeah we saw the numbers dropping, it was really a painful year to figure out what to do um and then eventually we still had this business for quite a long time we and we shut it down only and when we shut it down it still had 8 million uh you know, unique users visiting the site uh but we had to shut it down because we made a stupid mistake of not rebranding our programmatic uh business into another name. So Eskimi was Eskimi, two two businesses were called the same name. Um and then we decided that oh, you know, this this and then GDPR came and so on we said okay, it’s too much risk probably to manage this business if we are not focusing on it actively and we just, you know, have some revenue out of it and so on. So uh so yeah eventually we shifted to the new business line uh you know, through some trial and error.

GLOBALNA EKSPANZIJA 

Ivan Minić: And um in this process uh of of transformation from one predominant model into the other, um you were expanding to to other markets outside, you mentioned outside of Africa. And it’s interesting, it’s different. You know, um my first couple of uh travels were around Europe and even though we like to say that it’s all so different, it’s the same. Once you get outside of Europe you figure out it’s all the same. It’s it’s not but it is. Uh when you go to US, within US it’s more different than within whole of Europe. But the moment you you step outside of this continent and US, the moment you enter Asia, the moment you enter Africa, it’s a different planet in more ways than one. So I I I don’t think you you guys have that but maybe you maybe you did because of the whole connection with with Soviet Union but we have both Cyrillic and Latin, we learn that in school which means that basically in a lot of places I can read the street signs. Yeah. You know, maybe I can’t read all the letters but I’m gonna figure it out if if I can’t read one letter what it means, unless you go to Greece. Um but you you land in in Asia, you land in Japan or China or whatever and you have absolutely no fucking idea where you are. You are on the street corner and people ask you where you are and you say I don’t know a single glowing logo I am looking at and I can’t see a single sign that is familiar to me. And it’s very different in in in many ways. For me the first uh, first thing I did, I think in uh 2005 I got through my international company back then I got an inquiry from uh Georgia to do a website. I didn’t know they have a very special Yeah. uh way of writing letters. And of course it doesn’t work with any other than a couple of standard fonts but it was an interesting thing. Then I did one project maybe a year later in uh Saudi Arabia and then I designed thing and then they said yes yes that’s fine but it’s the other way around. And I’m like okay, the CMS is not made to do that. But it’s still fairly close. In all of these people I had contact with, speak perfect English. And probably not everyone at these locations but you know, and then you go to Asia. How was it for you?

Vytautas Paukštys: I mean we figured it out, it’s uh, I mean the personal logistics of all these travels early on is just excruciating because now you land anywhere, you have an Uber. Imagine getting a driver, basically, you know, I I don’t stress at all when I land into a new place and you know, the first transport that I take it scams me because that will always happen in most of those countries. Even back in Lithuania I think, you know, taxi outside.

Ivan Minić: In Serbia definitely.

Vytautas Paukštys: Yeah, so so it was annoying at first and I think yeah, just finding a way around and going to meetings without that team. Um now we have and I’m blessed because you know, I go to any market, usually I have a team and these amazing local people help you with everything. Early on it was just nothing, you land in Vietnam like how do you do this? I mean where do you go? So I think we have gone a long way now with all the infrastructure that we have. Um it’s super uh easy now to get around. It was very hard to do it back then. Um but yeah we had to do it. Again, you know, we, I think what you said is like your guests are are are the ones that have a special uh, special talent to complicate their lives so whenever we were successful in any market uh, I always was like okay, let’s do something else and let’s enter a new market. People would even for for forbid me to use a word growth in in local in local teams so, so yeah that that was we were pushing, I was pushing ourselves to to constantly go into new markets and and then and and and analyze them and try to work with them. And I usually was the first to go there, experience it, understand it, you know, Serbia was my first visit was 2019, the similar similar purpose was just to understand the market and then after this we kind of started to hire people and so on. So that initial feeling and understanding and meeting the the the local uh partners is what gives me that that that that good hunch if like whether we want to do it here or not. Um but yeah that was that was definitely personal logistics of of of all that and planning and doing it with a phone uh was terrible.

Ivan Minić: I remember the the a few years ago I I I watched this um a small documentary piece on why uh and I mean it’s a it’s a really simple app when you look at it. Why is Uber app so huge? Why it’s like 500 megabytes? Because 450 megabytes are the implementations of different payment structures. And they explain that for example just in India as a country they have over 400 different payment methods for different locations and different terms and so on. And of course now now they have different implementations in in many countries. Somewhere you have Uber cars, in other countries it’s taxis but you can order them through this app. The thing is I don’t really care, I care about the convenience. But the interesting thing is and I don’t know if you experienced that and I I I don’t know how was your uh in in how did you spread in in in Southeast Asia but the the weirdest moment for me was coming from Europe and knowing US that in many countries, especially three biggest countries, South Korea, Japan and and China, they have super apps which are basically ecosystems outside of which nothing works and inside of which everything happens. And of course they are only available in local language.

Vytautas Paukštys: Yes. Yes. Even today, I mean I think I was in China last year I had to figure out what to press to order, yeah.

Ivan Minić: Did you go to these markets, did you you worked with with these, you know, companies building those ecosystems?

Vytautas Paukštys: Uh, no we we yeah, we decided not to go to China for obvious reasons, it’s just a lot of investment to be compliant there and prepare for those markets but yeah, the rest of Southeast Asia we we are working there or were working there and then yeah Japan, uh Indonesia, Thailand, all those places are definitely active and and I think yeah, um like less of a less of a language barrier but you know, different ecosystems exist everywhere, you know, UAE has so like Mina has different things and then Africa has different things in terms of these uh, local players and so on.

Ivan Minić: When you are coming uh as one Google or Amazon or Meta or any of the big players, you usually don’t have to do any adaptation. Yeah. The country adapts to you. In some cases country is big enough so that you have to do some adaptation but in many cases if you have to do any meaningful adaptation you decide not to enter the market. Yeah. It’s easier not to complicate, to have one code base, to make it as simple as possible. I I did the research again, I I do these things because I’m a weirdo. Um I did the research how many different versions of Facebook app is there and there is like 170 something with different icons in the bar on different markets and different configurations and so on. But usually they don’t do much. They appear on the market, maybe they, you know, um do an acquisition of a local player if it’s relevant for them or they squash the local player if it’s if it’s too small to to matter. But what you did if I understand correctly was to customize, to adapt, to make it work, to make it happen. That’s hard.

Vytautas Paukštys: Yeah.

Ivan Minić: Why did you choose that path?

Vytautas Paukštys: So in those markets have a lot of challenges to do business already right and then if you go the the first that we do usually, in Europe we don’t need to but in all those markets we have to have a local entity. Uh, and we have many of them so you know, in any any market that we go into where there’s either a currency problem or or uh, an uh, an uh, like uh fluctuation of of interest rates and all of those things we have to have a or like a dollar availability. These basic things that we don’t think about them uh, in a lot of markets but but yeah you have to have local entities there. So this is where we start um and this is complicated enough because you obviously have to know the local laws, we have to our our our holding structure is super complicated because you have to have all those countries. Um then yeah, payments, currencies, uh we operate probably in 30, 40, 50 currencies, I don’t even know. I mean because clients want to be built, want to be measured in local currencies and so on. Um and then in most of the cases we have local teams because that is the the differentiator. Um you know, yes Google would not give you local currency payments uh or or or or ability to pay in the local country or entity or whatever. We do um and that’s that’s why agencies work because we just make their life easier. Getting dollars in Nigeria almost impossible uh, and and a lot of similar markets are there, you know, currency fluctuation is happening in Indonesia, that’s why agencies do not want to to kind of uh, pay in in dollars as well. So, you know, that’s the first layer of of of of and and it cuts across the business model of it but also it cuts across the product of it. You mean you have to build, you have to showcase, you have to convert a lot of things internally and so on but we chose to do this specifically because we are then much closer to the clients and we differentiate this way. We, as I mentioned, we are creative and media tech platforms. We try to innovate in creatives, build standing out uh, award-winning creatives together with our agency partners. Without a local team it’s impossible to understand the local nuance and so on. So even we have hub teams across the world to help do the technical work, the local teams actually give us that feedback of what needs to be built. So we adapt in all ways possible but obviously the biggest hack to this is the local team so you know, that’s why we have 38 I think countries now with local teams um, just like Serbia uh, which help us understand the local environment, uh work with local not only um buyers but also suppliers because you have to work with publishers, digital out-of-home providers, you know, screen owners, uh you know, many different uh, uh ecosystem players have to be supportive for us to actually be successful right, so if you have an enemy with publishers you cannot do stuff. 

Ivan Minić: Um what’s been happening uh in the past, you know, 10 plus years uh has been this what we mentioned in the beginning, uh ad platforms getting smarter and smarter, offering more and more options but I think that um basically the results have been worse year after year because people have been overwhelmed with all of these things. Uh, usually when you have a high-paying market you can maybe do something that’s more meaningful but when you have a low-paying market then you flood everything with a ton of ads. It’s tough and I think it’s it’s quite hard to, you know, focus and decide on what you’re gonna do and what you’re not gonna do, which features are you gonna make possible, which features would be nice but are maybe too expensive for this particular market. How do you make these decisions?

Vytautas Paukštys: Again, when we like US companies have this problem. They would go and create products on the US cost base and then obviously running something in, you know, market like Serbia or Thailand or everywhere I say, no you you enter with the price point that covers your costs. We have uh, we are much more flexible with that because you know, obviously if we have a a creative team in Singapore it will be too expensive to cater for a market in India or Bangladesh. Um but if you have uh a team in Bangladesh and you have a good talent then they can become your hub for all the region. Um you know, that’s why we started to have these hubs for different things and our engineering is pretty distributed, our service teams, creative teams are distributed. So um and I would say now more and more uh, we’re really pushing hard this AI um usage. We built products with it, we built a lot of efficiency tools internally. I think we’re really got good at it um and then uh, this increases the efficiency and then kind of, you know, that whether this is investment that was worth making um is no longer an element of discussion and I think increasingly will not be. So so yeah I think that’s what we do, we try to have local cost for local revenue. Um and I think early on and still in some cases we do have, you know, as we call it uh, revenue from, you know, some of the African markets with the UK cost and we still have people there right, so it’s very important to balance this out because otherwise the business doesn’t work.

ESKIMI DANAS

Ivan Minić: If we take a look now at what you have been um focusing on recently. Um you mentioned that it’s a like a platform with many different products that’s all mostly ad tech related but not just ad tech related. You mentioned like 44 different products developed in the past 20 years. I saw somewhere and uh 83 countries or something like that. Um it’s it’s been a crazy journey and we haven’t gone into every detail along it but 20 years later what’s your focused on right now, what are the key products, what are the key markets you you are focused on and what’s your wish, what’s your plan on how to how to continue?

Vytautas Paukštys: Yeah. So we started as a AdTech platform, I don’t want to use abbreviations because it’s confusing but like, you know, demand-side platform is where the agencies and brands come and then you know, buy advertising and then our algorithms are the ones that make this buying smarter. Um so we started from from this technology to be able to log into one platform and buy ads in, you know, all markets in the world, any screen from mobile phone to desktop to digital out of home uh, street in Vietnam to or you know, New York uh, to uh, CTV or connected TV and so on so…

Ivan Minić: One stop shop.

Vytautas Paukštys: Yeah, so it’s an omni-channel. Um so we built this uh, and that has the the that was the core business that we’ve been developing for I think from basically 2015-16. Uh, so around 10 years um and then throughout that period we saw some of the areas of the ecosystem that we decided to also solve or fix for our clients. So, you know, um we we’re a demand-side platform, but we were buying inventories or traffic from publishers but through other intermediaries. Um so we decided and invested to develop our own ad exchange or own supply side system where basically we work with publishers directly. So this definitely cuts costs and makes it cheaper for our advertisers to buy and then we have local relationships, it helps to develop the ecosystem better and so on. So this we did first, so this is a separate business model, a separate business, a separate team running it. Um then obviously, you know, now less but but still is important in terms of what audiences do you target. Um so we build an audience business where for example a telecom in Serbia could say I want to target people who are using uh my competition uh and they use a lot of data or I want to target users who have been using me but left to a competition right, so all those audience segments to specific industries become quite valuable for advertisers trying to solve that problem. So we build that that business uh, as well as a separate team, a separate business running uh on it. Um we primarily solve, in Eskimi we primarily solve issues for brands when it comes to branding, creative so upper funnel of marketing but obviously 50% of the money is being spent on performance so we created another company called Roigen which works only on performance. So, you know, we have iGaming clients, we have app installs, we have different cater for different businesses that solve those issues. Um so so so that’s I would say up until last year um and this year uh we have decided to use our understanding in bidding algorithms, efficiencies and also apply it to Walled Gardens um because obviously we operate up until now in the market which is called open internet so, you know, anything that is apps, uh mobile web and so on um we work in this field and that’s about 30% of the total market. But the rest of the 70% is with the, you know, Metas, Googles of the world, TikTok as well. Um and there are business model that that we started to create to make uh those buys uh convenient, better, I don’t know, adding contextual layer on YouTube for example. So we started to venture as well in the Walled Gardens because we have couple of thousand agencies as our partners globally, they trust us, uh they work with us for many years. It just made sense to start to offer them because the other part of their wallet is being spent on Walled Gardens so that’s why we started to focus on this and and this week I’m I’m in Serbia launching some of those products uh, with the local partners and and agencies where where they they they’re quite excited to see something done or innovation brought as well to the Walled Gardens space. Um so yeah hopefully this this new venture will also succeed. Um but I think the thinking before over the last those 10 years was like if there’s an ecosystem how can we solve for all of those problems uh that you know, if the agency has a creative problem, we have a creative builder and a team. If the agency needs a contextual and AI analytic solution, we have that business catering for that particular uh, you know, subset of agencies and so on so we created this group of companies solving for different issues um um and then sometimes they they very closely work together, sometimes they can just go and sell separately and and and you know, I I I kind of started to build this management team that runs those business independently that helps to me to not go mad and and you know, focus on less things but uh, but yeah that’s that’s what we do today.

Ivan Minić: Uh, of course you don’t have to uh say more about that but it it’s very interesting for me. Um to be able to do these things with those big mega companies uh, that are basically controlling three quarters of world internet, you have to have special contract, special relations with them and so on. Uh, are they open to these kind of negotiations, are they open to partnering or it’s hard?

Vytautas Paukštys: I mean it depends. I think, I think in general they are if you’re not going against them. So it’s a it’s a frenemy relationship in most cases because we buy from Google and we compete with Google in some of those markets right. We sell to Google because we have supply business so it’s it’s those those relationships are are, you know, complicated but I would say very professional and and um if you’re if you’re and again when we are developing those tools we’re not competing with them uh and it’s very important because otherwise, you know, like you’re stepping into their into their backyard. Of course you’re gonna be shot if you’re against them right, so we we we provide that local relevance where they don’t want to go right, so for example if I take this YouTube example, we create multilingual contextual solution where the biggest strength of that tool is also our local team that helps solve for local language, cultural nuances and so on. And and this is an add-on so this helps advertisers spend more money there or concentrate to specific uh you know… So you definitely have to be partners in this case otherwise that API access will disappear tomorrow. So um so yeah I think we we we always have to bring extra value. Um the agencies would, I mean it starts from not even from the platforms, it starts from agencies. Nobody would buy our solution if we don’t bring extra value. Um and the if you’re moving fast and innovating fast you will always find these pockets of of of uh value that you can create. Eventually, you know, these platforms will offer some of those solutions and outcompete you. But if you’re, you know, their product development cycle is a year and yours is two months then you’re gonna win.

Ivan Minić: You’re gonna have a good 10 months.

Vytautas Paukštys: Yeah, yes.

Ivan Minić: Uh, I always say there are a couple of really interesting startup stories from Serbia that have been successful globally and they are in most cases uh, they target a sweet spot which is big enough to have 200 people having great salaries and great standard of living and amazing company and so on, but small enough so that a global player will not Yeah. will not do the customization needed to fulfill that particular need as well. We have a common um, common thing, it it the company is called Fishing Booker and and they are friends and the founder was in the podcast as well. They do fishing tours globally and they are called Fishing Booker so booking.com is a very native place for something like that. But it’s a too small market for such a huge player to focus on. You have to really know the specifics. These guys as it usually is with niches, these guys are crazy. They want to know everything about everything. And you can’t do that kind of specialization if you are a huge player, if you are a whale you can’t move uh and that sweet spot thing depending on markets and depending is usually the opportunity for for us hunting from from, you know, smaller countries and so on. You did something amazing, you did something huge, you did something very weird. You you you did it going against the stream, going against the what would be considered easy way to to do things so really great congratulations and and congratulations on, you know, growing the the the local team in Serbia. I’m really proud that we are part of this and that um for some reason you as a founder decided to go here and spread the word and come to uh my podcast as well. Um it’s uh, I think it’s something many people should learn from because if you are not willing to stand in front of your people and be the champion of your product then there is probably something wrong with your product.

Vytautas Paukštys: Correct.

Ivan Minić: Um 20 years. If you could tell something to your yourself from 20 years ago what would it be?

Vytautas Paukštys: I think I learned the hard way when I was young and experienced some successes very early on that things that success comes very fast and you should expect to do this. I think I struggled emotionally quite early on because when you get the first hits in the face and then you have to work hard two years, three years, sometimes without any reward. Um I think those moments are the toughest where, you know, knowing that consistency wins uh and I think that’s the advice that I would give to myself. I I I I’m happy that I persevered but it it there were moments where it was extremely hard so I would say, you know, if you continue uh for long enough uh that success comes or you create it um, you know, that luck is created. Uh, so I would say that’s the those are the moments where where I go back and say okay if I if I, either you don’t experience that success immediately and you kind of know that this is fine. I mean five years of struggle is is okay. Um but yeah learn to love that struggle because eventually the results will come um but not after a period of of suffering so, so I would say you know, this is okay if things do not work out the first year or two.

Ivan Minić: I think it’s it’s really important to, you know, especially for for young people who have been listening to romantic stories of success and reading books and watching movies and so on that, you know, there are some cases where it was all like a dream but that in most cases that that’s not like it but that that the thing that maybe it’s counter-intuitive for me it’s not but maybe for them it’s counter-intuitive uh, if you get the reward without really earning it you will never respect the reward properly. Sure it it’s gonna be fun because buying sports cars is fun but you will never appreciate it enough if you haven’t earned it along the way. If you haven’t felt the the pain and the struggle and the downsides and everything then the upsides are not gonna be nearly as appreciated as as they should be.

Vytautas Paukštys: Yeah. Yeah, I like the saying somebody said uh, is that when you when you work hard nights and and days people ask you why are you doing this and then when you succeed uh, then people say oh you got so lucky. So I think that struggle is invisible usually right but but any anyone who did something great uh has that dark uh period of their times um and I think it’s it’s important to to know that this is normal. Uh we have to normalize struggles and failures and and it’s not all uh comes easy right, so so it’s it’s very important to share this because otherwise people just expect things to happen and unfortunately it doesn’t. The market is too competitive and fast to fast paced to actually allow easy rewards right, so I think that’s something to be, or they are not uh sustained for a long time. You know, we had a good crypto wave where a lot of people got got rich but then they burned everything. So uh you know, things like that unfortunately, you know, teach a lesson as well.

Ivan Minić: Yeah and you know, in in some cases when you when you try to explain to these kids that that that got their first success and they got it early, you got lucky. No no no this was hard work, no no no you got lucky and that’s fine. Enjoy it, celebrate it, just don’t bet on it because you got lucky the first time. Maybe you will do it the second time as well. Maybe next 10 times you won’t be lucky. Just, you know, keep in mind, take a look and go into details regarding how things are really developing for people because in many cases romantic stories have a much darker and tougher background. You just see the moment it it it got through the, you know, pushed through the glass roof. Under the glass roof it’s really it’s really tough. Thank you so much. Good luck with Eskimi and all the other projects and good luck with the um challenging the Serbian market and hopefully improving it in the next couple of years. We will stay in touch. Thank you so much for listening to us. I hope this was interesting. Um if you have any comments please leave it on on YouTube and we will see each other next Sunday.