Meditation for clarity of thought
Podcast transcription - 6th November
Alan Cowley: Hi. I'm your host Alan Cowley, and on this week's Invested Investor podcast, I am delighted to have Firdaus Nagree join me. Firdaus is the CEO of FCI London, alongside founding a number of businesses, he is an angel investor too.
FCI was founded over 18 years ago and has successfully grown into a multi award winning interiors and lifestyle house with offices in the UK, UAE, Nigeria, and India. So, before we hear how and why you have become a serial entrepreneur, let's just start a little bit from the beginning in the background. Do you have an entrepreneurial family? What has been the drive here?
Firdaus Nagree: Right. I grew up in India, so I was born in India in Bombay to a middle class family. My dad definitely was entrepreneurial. He had a furniture business in India. We, when I was seven, moved to New York. The education system in the Indian system... The education in India rather, at that time, was not fantastic, so he wanted to provide a Western education for me. So we moved to the States and he tried to set up a business there, which didn't work out. Moved back to India and my younger brother was born. And as soon as he was born, we then moved to the UK, again, with the idea that he wanted to offer us the best possible education, which at that time wasn't available in India.
So we grew up in a very cellular, small kind of environment compared to what you would have grown up in or I would have grown up in had I been in India with lots of family, so growing up in a very small family unit. And my parents were constantly working so they set up a business in the UK, a furniture business, and they were working all the time and so I saw it. So I saw that entrepreneurial, that hard work from day one and I lived it. And obviously, I wish that I had more time when I was younger with my parents and that they'd been around a bit more, especially on my dad, but I learned that if you want to succeed in life, hard work is a prerequisite.
Alan Cowley: Yeah.
Firdaus Nagree: Maybe because of that I've always been attracted to people who work hard. Always been attracted to people who want to move from their current position through my young friendships and my school friendships, my university friendships, with people that I enjoy being around, have always been people who do like to graft and grow.
Alan Cowley: So, your parents obviously had a furniture business, so where's the origin of FCI here, the connection?
Firdaus Nagree: Okay, so his is a long-short story. I was at Accenture and at the time I was actually working in the UK, but I was travelling and working at Accenture for a number of years doing strategy consultancy. My parents had a furniture business, which they set up in 1985 called Furniture Craft. And after doing a number of years at Accenture, I joined the family business to help the business and to help it grow and to help it evolve and I saw lots of opportunity within the business.
They were running a mom and pop shop and they were enjoying it and they put myself and my brother through school and they worked very hard. They worked seven days a week for many, many years, more years than I remember, and I joined the business to grow it. And so, that didn't work out exactly how we planned and we hoped and an opportunity presented itself for us to buy a freehold not far away from here. There was a split basically between Furniture Craft and FCI and that's when FCI was born.
And I think in hindsight, if I'm honest with myself, I handled that situation very badly. I think that I was young. I was working for my father essentially. I wasn't a partner in the business. I was working for my father and I had my own views on rapid growth, aggressive growth, going up the food chain in terms of the types of brands, and a whole bunch of other stuff that I wanted to do that I felt I couldn't do. And so, when this opportunity presented itself to buy this freehold and set up a new business, exactly the way I wanted to do it, I jumped ship and did that.
And I think the way that that was done, in hindsight, was not the correct way to do it. And I think it caused a... Well, I know it caused a lot of hurt and pain within the family because I actually set up FCI, the new showroom, with my current business partner who's my uncle, who's my mom's brother. And it was a difficult time because for a period my parents were left almost feeling like we were competing with them. And it wasn't until a couple of years later when we merged the two businesses together and allowed my parents to retire, that that hurt started to go away.
So, if I were to do things again in terms of that would be the most important thing that I would change, how I manage that whole period of my life. I don't know how I would exactly change it because I had to leave. We had to set up the separate entity. We had to do certain things. I think I would treat my parents almost as I treat my children now, with a different type of care and affection, rather than, you know when you're growing up, your parents are the ones that have to deliver everything for you? They're there to serve you basically, right? That's what my parents always did for me.
They always looked after me and always gave me everything and I expected that in a business scenario, which was immature really. So I would change that and I would treat them with a completely different care and attention, and understand a lot better from their perspective how they were feeling, rather than just running off to set up this new exciting business.
Alan Cowley: That's a hugely open comment to say and I think that's good for anyone to look back on anything, not have any regrets, but just look back and understand how you would have done it differently and learn from it.
Firdaus Nagree: Yeah, 100%. I think I'm a very different person obviously today than I was in my early twenties when all of this happened. And I'm probably actually a very different... Not probably, I am a very different person today than I was probably three or four years ago, or maybe even less. And there's a variety of things that are contributed to that, that I'm sure we'll get to in the course-
Alan Cowley: Well, let's talk about them now. What have been the changes over the last two to three years?
Firdaus Nagree: So, I read a book by Tim Ferriss, my brother gifted me a book by Tim Ferriss called Tools of Titans. I read the book and the book is about a number of Tim Ferriss interviews, a number of people who are at the top of their game from professional weightlifters to journalists, to investment bankers, actors, singers, you name it. And he interviews these hugely successful people who are at the top of their game in their field and asks them, "What's the source? What's the secret of your success? What's your morning routine? What's the thing that makes you so good?"
And each person has their own story and each person has their own formula, which they very openly share. But there was one thing that was repeated through almost every one of these people who were interviewed, which was meditation, and they all did some form of meditation daily. And I just have never thought of meditation as something that I would do. It's fine if it works for you, lefty, tree-hugging, hippie, whatever, but just not something that would really make sense for me. But so many people and people who were alphas were doing it, not just women or poets. And so I said, "Okay, let's try this thing."
And I started with an app and I was doing it diligently every day, three minutes, five minutes, three minutes, five minutes, and nothing was happening. And it was sitting on a toilet in a hotel room in China when I did my mandatory five minute part of my morning routine and something clicked and I realised that I'd been doing it for 20 minutes, and I just thought I'd just been doing it for the mandatory five minutes. And something clicked and I felt super refreshed and super calm and just happy for no particular reason. And I was like, "Ah, okay." That was a big eureka moment for me because it not only made me feel good but it made me realise that it will work for me, it does work for me.
And also, at some subconscious level—I know it now because I think about that time, that period, a lot—it also opened up the idea that things that are everything is possible and things that other people do that I think, "Oh no, that's not for me," or, "That might not work for me." Actually, all of it, if one person on the planet has done something or can do it, then I can do it and I can benefit from it. And even if they haven't, I can still do it. And it really was a turning point for me. And I just started then, from that point on, devouring stuff about personal development, about spirituality, about business techniques, about stuff that previously I said, "Well, if it's not to do with my industry or it's not something that I immediately instantly interested in, I just wasn't reading enough."
I wasn't reading the volume of books that I read now. So, the meditation is what changed and has led to many different decisions that have benefited me and my family, and the various businesses, and have have multiplied or speeded up the investment side of things, I would say, as well. So there's a lot more investment and a lot more focused investment and different type of investment.
Alan Cowley: Do you still meditate today?
Firdaus Nagree: Every day.
Alan Cowley: Every day?
Firdaus Nagree: Every day. I now have graduated from the app driven meditation to a type of meditation which is called transcendental meditation. Did a very simple course, took my wife along, took my eight-year-old son along as well. And it's something that I look forward to every day and it just keeps adding value for me. And I'm a big, big, yeah, promoter of meditation.
Alan Cowley: Yeah.
Firdaus Nagree: Definite.
Alan Cowley: It's good for entrepreneurs to hear that as well. Although entrepreneurs often say they don't have time-
Firdaus Nagree: Don't have time.
Alan Cowley: ... for this kind of thing. Founder's fatigue and mental strength and things like that play such a huge part in the startup journey, so taking three, five minutes a day is everyone's got time for that.
Firdaus Nagree: It's another thing, again, going back to earlier years. You never have time, you never have time and, for me, delegation has been a big solver of that. Knowing that when you delegate, or when I delegate something, it won't get done exactly the way I would do it, so that was the big hurdle. The initial thought was, "I know it won't get done correctly." And then, over a period of time that evolved to, "It won't get done the way I would do it," which then actually turned out to be not necessarily the best way.
So, I now I'm very happy to delegate stuff knowing that it won't get done the exact same way that I would want it, but it might get done better. And if it doesn't get done better, it gets done differently, we'd still achieve the same result. But actually, it's helping somebody else grow and evolve their journey. And in having just realigning that, now when I look at my team and I look at tasks, each task is given out and packaged in a way to not just get itself done, but to be a learning for the person doing it. So it might have to be packaged in a slightly different way than work being just given to get done.
So now it's being given to get done, but also teach someone something, or give somebody some confidence, or give somebody a different experience, or a challenge, or show somebody that they shouldn't be doing this type of task, they should be doing something else, whatever the second goal is of the task, aside from it getting done. And that helps me grow as a leader because it helps me learn the people that I'm surrounded by because I have to think, "Okay, what is good for this person?" "Within this task, beyond getting it done, what is good for this person to learn?" And that forces me to dig into and pay more attention to that person and know where the holes are, where the strengths are.
And all of that has come from meditation, and the path that that has led me down. And then from that, a better diet, a better lifestyle, a different ... I was one of these people, dragged myself, a huge insomniac for as long as I can remember, but then through meditation and through other biohacking techniques, I've slowly got a handle on that. Yeah, so meditation for me was a big turning point.
Alan Cowley: Let's continue with FCI, so give us a quick brief of what FCI is? And then can you just tell us the stresses running, I'm presuming a predominantly B2C business, what are those stresses?
Firdaus Nagree: So, the biggest stress I'd say with B2C is customer acquisition. You are constantly, especially where we are, which is high-end luxury and it is not a frequent purchase, so you buy a sofa and then we don't see you again for 10 years. So that continual, constant acquisition, and finding new methods of acquisition, and creating cost effective methods of acquisition is really a big stress. Especially when you're dealing with a highly educated, well-travelled, high-end, intelligent audience, and a niche audience, and a small audience. So that's one of the main things.
And we are, over the last four years, we're actually evolving the business and we're growing our B2B, and focusing on B2B quite a lot, and we're finding that that's becoming quite an interesting revenue stream, although the margins are different. It is a separate business actually in many respects and it involves a different approach, different team, different training, and actually different products as well. Although there is obviously an overlap in products but a different product range. We're finding that that actually is probably the direction, or it is the direction we're going to grow in, in order to scale the business further.
Alan Cowley: Okay. And so that's the reason why, for scaling? Or is it ease of customer acquisition?
Firdaus Nagree: Ease of customer acquisition. We are very good at service, so we realised some time ago that we're very, very good at service. And rather than giving an exceptionally high level of service to somebody who's not going to come back for 10 years, without much effort, with no effort because we were already doing it, we give the same level of exceptionally high customer service to somebody who actually has to come back because they're an interior designer, or they're a property developer, or they're an architect. So why waste that goodwill that we're creating, that sunshine that we put on the client? Okay, they'll tell a few people about us and they will come back if they need something extra, but really it's every 10 years.
So, when we did one of our brainstorming sessions and we were like, okay, this is what we're really, really, good at. We started off with, what are we good at? We have lovely furniture, great, so do lots of people. What else are we good at? And we drilled it down, and drilled it down, and drilled it down, and then we realised that actually, everybody says they're good at customer service, but we genuinely are very good at customer service because we own all the necessary moving parts in-house. So from the installers, the fitters the vans, the warehousing, the admin, it's all in-house, none of it is subcontracted out.
And this is not rocket science really, but in the luxury sector that's definitely, something that we have won a lot of points on, not subcontracting out that last touch with the client. When we've used subcontractors in the past, which we did used to do, which worked out to be more cost effective, we lost that control, and actually lost control of one of our brand USPs which is the customer service. So in any business you want to give exceptional customer service. In some businesses, I think you need to own that last touch experience that you have with the client.
Alan Cowley: How do you control that for your overseas offices, or are they franchised out?
Firdaus Nagree: So, Nigeria ... they're not franchised out. We're looking at franchise models at the moment, which would be a slightly different, it wouldn't be FCI the way it is now, but they're our employees. The business models are slightly different, so for example, the Nigeria showroom that we have, it's by appointment only, and it's not a retail showroom, it's only high-end projects, so we only do project work. So if you have a villa, or a house, or a building and you want the whole thing done, then we will do it. And that's a similar thing in the UAE, which is more of a design office rather than a show room, so it's project by project, and the same thing for India. So it's not quite the same as this. And we adapt, all these expansions have been opportunistic, where an opportunity has become available and it's been low risk and potential high reward. So that's how we've done it.
Alan Cowley: But how do you control the level of great customer service that you do here, overseas?
Firdaus Nagree: So, because they're projects, there's a beginning, a middle, and an end. So we will send the container from here, the container will be managed over here. The containers will go across and then we will send a team, using Nigeria as an example, we will send teams from here to oversee the installations of whatever we're installing and we'll have local people who will be managed by our UK teams.
Alan Cowley: So, alongside FCI, you've also become a serial entrepreneur with a few other ventures. So can you just tell us a bit about those and why you set them up along the way?
Firdaus Nagree: If I'm very honest, most of the previous ventures have been either opportunistic, or born out of boredom, or, well, not or, and born out of wanting to make some money, really. So I like making money, I'm not scared to say that. I think what I'm doing now, moving forward, and how I'm looking at my life, money will not be the main reason for starting a new venture, it will be to solve a problem, whatever that problem might be.
We started Cavendish Banqueting, which is one of our older ventures, opportunistically. We had a commercial space that we owned and upon researching what to do with it, we realised that it had a certain permission, a D1 planning permission, which was very difficult to get hold of in that area and it allows you to do banqueting. So we did a bit of market research, and there was a strong competitor nearby who was massively overpriced, massively oversubscribed, offering a very poor level of service. And so we thought, well, let's take a little slice of that, we don't need a lot of it. So we started a banqueting business, which has been probably the easiest business that we've set up with the least amount of headache, the least amount of input. I probably spend maybe an hour a month on it and it's just on autopilot. We have a great MD who runs it for us now. And I think it does a few million pounds of turnover, but it only has three staff. So that was quite a nice one that we got involved in.
There are a couple of digital start-ups that I got involved in because, again, there was an opportunity, I saw a potential in the market. One of them was ParcelFly, so ParcelFly is, it's based in India and it's an aggregator. So I was involved, I was part of the founding team of a business which is now bust, called Minicabster. So Minicabster came around, was born around, let's think, I don't know, maybe about 10 or 12 years ago, something like that, maybe 10 years ago. And it was a taxi cab aggregator.
So it was before Uber came into the market and you'd go onto the website, you'd punch in where you wanted to be picked up from, where you wanted to go, and then those details would be sent to a whole bunch of local mini cab operators who'd get it on their dashboard. And then they would bid for the job based on where their fleet was. So obviously if they had a cab near you they'd be cheaper because their pickup costs would be smaller. And you'd get a bunch of these bids come up on your screen and you'd pick the one that was most appropriate, either in terms of price or pick up time. And that business went quite well until Uber came into the market and completely decimated us.
But the idea of that, that code was there, the business idea was there, and I thought well, there's still something in it, maybe not for people but maybe for parcels? So we built ParcelFly from that concept, and that was opportunistic, and that was quite interesting. I've always been interested in property, I bought my first property when I was 20. Residential property buying and selling, flipping, renovating. So that's not, I guess that's more investment I would say, I guess it's more investments than anything else. A fair sized portfolio now.
The restaurant, which is a relatively new venture, obviously in partnership with Dhruv Mittal, who's our executive chef, very successful, very, very smart executive chef. That was born out of wanting to own a restaurant and have somewhere cool to entertain, and I guess a little bit of ego as well is in there. To go, "Yeah, come to my restaurant, it's in Mayfair." But also as part of a bigger, more serious business plan to have a number of different sites and to grow the business to a certain value and then exit, to sell.
So, as a high level, why do these other businesses, why get involved in these different businesses? I would say variety, I like the variety of doing different things, I like putting our own spin on things. The digital media companies that we have, again, that actually, was not for money, that was for understanding how it works. I do like technology and I loved the idea, when I first came across Google AdWords, and PPC, and the idea of how it works. And this is going back 15 years, maybe more than 15 years, when I first came across the idea of being able to pinpoint a person sat in a room effectively, like you're sat in a room looking for red shoes, and I can target you and put my ad in front of you, I just loved the idea of that.
So, I'm Google accredited and I'm quite up to date, and I keep myself up to date with a lot of the courses. Not as up to date as my team, but I've got a very good handle on it, a very good understanding of how that works and I enjoy it. And I think that's one of the things that I really enjoyed about the furniture business. It wasn't the furniture per se, it was the marketing and how to get inside people's heads and put something forward at the right time, at the right place that they would then come and buy it from you.
So, we talked, we talked briefly about ParcelFly as an online start-up and that has not become a unicorn, and that has not exploded into phenomenal growth, and I don't have VCs beating the door down trying to buy it. But I love that creativity that happens, not just in the first year, the first year is super exciting. Where just everything is flying and you've got all these ideas, and you can implement everything and try out so many different things, not implement everything actually, that's not right. But you've got so much possibility of where a business can go and so much potential of what you can do. You're super lean, your overheads are low, you're not committed to 50 people and paying their salaries. And just that stage is so exciting and I wanted to be part of that.
And I wanted to help people navigate the areas where you can really fall over, where you can spend too much, or not spend enough, or make incorrect decisions, or form incorrect partnerships. There's so much stuff in those first few years that can go wrong. And I'm by no means an expert in navigating all of these things for all types of businesses. But I've made my mistakes, I've made my fair share of mistakes and I can see shit coming around the corner that potentially you can't if you're in the business.
So that for me was really, exciting and being part of those types of journeys and then being, obviously, financially involved as well, having skin in the game, not just to make it more exciting. Because obviously it's more exciting, you can act as an advisor and a mentor, which I do, but if you've got skin in the game, it's far more exciting. And there's, if anybody tells you it's the same, it's not. And then with, obviously, if you've got skin in the game with an upside hope of, upside on the other side where you are in it with the founders. But that excitement that goes with a start-up, of being at that stage, really is the first attraction. Coupled with pretending to be a smarty pants, look, I'll tell you what to do
Know it all right? So come to me when you need advice or share things with me so that I can tell you how wise I am and bequeath my knowledge onto you. But it's nice to be working in different arenas, different environments because again, a lot of it is boredom, right? So furniture, there's something that we do and the innovation is coming from the technology side. But from the furniture side, there's not much innovation. There's not much super exciting stuff for me being a non-designer. For the design team, if you speak with them, they're constantly excited because we're constantly dealing with new designers and new products and new brands and all of that. That's fine. For me it's about having those new interactions and actually now just talking to you that I realise, those new stresses.
Stress is almost like a privilege, right? That type of stress is almost like a privilege because I've got a problem to solve. I can solve it. You don't have to take my advice, but actually, if I'm honest, the implications if you do or you don't are not massive to me financially. They're more massive to you as the founder, but I still get the opportunity to be part of the problem solving team, of a real problem. So I quite enjoy that.
Alan Cowley: It sounds like a complete mix of excitement, stress, variety and trying to help.
Firdaus Nagree: Trying to help is the most rewarding part of it, which is why I mentor. I mentor start-ups, I mentor young entrepreneurs who haven't yet even started their businesses because I have this knowledge. Without again going too lefty, tree huggy, through these last few years I've read a number of different books and I've developed my spirituality so I'm not necessarily talking about God, but I do believe that there is something out there beyond this life.
I know also from the charity stuff that I do I know I feel best when I'm helping other people. I know that. That feeling of being able to add something to somebody that can save them pain and suffering, be it financial or otherwise. So, when I'm helping start-ups and they're telling me that it's adding value or I'm mentoring people and they're thanking me and they're telling me that they're getting value from it, that's a great feeling. It's ego again, I guess.
Alan Cowley: Let's follow that on and let's just hear a little bit about Entrepreneurs Organisation and the work you do there. What is it and what attributes do you think of your business and personal life have helped you kind of help these entrepreneurs?
Firdaus Nagree: So, entrepreneur, the Entrepreneurs Organisation, EO, is a global organisation of entrepreneurs. It's a non-profit. I think we are now about 15,000 members. There is an entry criteria to get in. You have to be doing a certain revenue, annual revenue. You have to have it at a certain number of people that you employ. And it's a whole bunch of successful entrepreneurs who want to learn from each other, who want to grow with each other, who want a safe space to be honest about their failures, who want a safe space to be honest about their successes, actually. One of the core features of Entrepreneur Organisation, of EO, is a thing called Forum, which is generally a group of eight to 10 people who are members of the organisation or peers who meet once a month in a meeting room and they discuss the previous 30 days. So you know, what was the top 5% of what happened, what was the bottom 5% of what happened to them?
And they discuss their personal, themselves, they discuss their family and rather we discuss personal family and business. Through Forum, you get a chance to truly share the top five and the bottom five of what's been happening in your life in a way that, from my point of view, I haven't been able to share with my team or my business partner or even my family because either you don't want to burden them or they're just not going to get it because it can be quite a lonely place, sitting in this chair.
So through Forum you're speaking with people and you're sharing experiences with people who get it because they're doing the same thing and you're tabling challenges that you have either in your personal life or your business or your family being brutally honest and very naked in that environment.
These entrepreneurs are sharing their experiences, which time and time again are similar experiences, maybe not exactly, the same, but similar emotions coming out from their experiences. And you share these experiences and you learn from these experiences. And it's an amazing format. I personally have grown so much as a person and as a leader by being able to take off my armour and just say, "This is how it is. I've just had a really shit month because this, this, this and this went wrong."
Surprisingly for me, and interestingly as well, being able to share successes without feeling like you're boasting. There's many other parts to EO, there's a huge global community that you're tapped into. Like I said, there's like-minded entrepreneurs who you kind of visit any city in the world and you reach out to the local chapter and there'll be people who will meet you.
There are people who help you with your business ideas and if you want to enter markets, there's a whole infinite amount of learning. EO is all about personal growth, business growth. It's structured around learning events, local learning events, keynote speakers that you just wouldn't have access to. The same for global events. You know, some of the people that we've had speaking and teaching us are just world-class, phenomenal.
I was at GLC earlier on this year and we had Steve Wozniak beamed in talking about his early days at Apple and what he's done since and his relationships with jobs and some other very notable tech entrepreneurs. So some really amazing learning. And above all for me, EO has just helped me grow as a person, helped me grow my business and learning from these other entrepreneurs, their pitfalls.
We're talking about how to help entrepreneurs avoid pitfalls and to help them succeed in their businesses. You were giving me some statistics earlier on how many new businesses start every year and how many businesses perhaps fail every year. And EO is great at helping you navigate or avoid difficult things because the sharing is very honest.
Alan Cowley: Any listening entrepreneurs, it's a brilliant organisation which you should get involved in if you can. And we will definitely put in the show notes for this podcast and the recording, a link for that.
Firdaus Nagree: Absolutely. Check out the website, reach out to me if you want. No problem. I'm very happy to talk about EO all day long and yeah, check us out.
Alan Cowley: Okay. So just one final question. What excites you for the future and what do you think the future holds for you?
Firdaus Nagree: Wow. So many things. At the moment, I am very interested in many, many things. I'm very interested in optimising my personal performance. So my research into biohacking continues. I'm trying all sorts of different weird and wonderful techniques to improve my memory, my productivity, my performance, my happiness, my sleep. I'm very focused on my kids. I've got two young kids and I'm very focused on getting them into a mindset and showing them what life is and not what the traditional schooling structure or the traditional parenting structure or the traditional societal structure says life, life is endless, unbounded possibility. And I think that I just want to make sure that they get it because I've only got it recently.
I'm super excited about FCI, which is growing. The team are phenomenal. I love working with these people that I'm working with so I'm very excited about where we're going as a business. I'm very excited about the technology platform that we're building for FCI. I'm very excited about the growth on the B2B side of the business. We've just doubled our showroom.
I'm excited about seeing what the world has in store for us in terms of technology. I mention technology a lot because I do love technology. We've got so many exciting things just around the corner that I'm very, very keen to see. I think that we're going to be living to 160, 180, 200 years very, very soon. There's people who are working diligently to understand what is ageing. It's a really interesting topic. I'm very interested in this area because what the researchers are saying is essentially ageing is when the cells that you have in your body today were not alive, didn't exist, couple of years ago or a couple of years before that, a couple of years before that. So what happens is the way DNA works and the spooling and unspooling of DNA and how it works in terms of telling yourselves what they need to do, actually that spooling is what they're looking at.
If you can just maintain that spooling, then your cells will carry on doing what they've done when you were in your twenties or your thirties. So looking at that actually, there's a huge amount of research and huge amount of money going into that at the moment and it's very possible that once we crack that... The physical ageing is just because of that little bit of DNA. Your body can create cells brand new and just tell them to stay young or create cells in a different way, if we can understand that spooling. But what happens is after our forties the body kind of says, "Well, we've done the bit that we're supposed to do, which is procreate, and now let's wind down and let the next generation takeover." But of course, humans don't need to do that because we can create resources to keep ourselves going, and there is a reason to keep going beyond procreation.
So anyway, that's what I'm very, very excited about. I'm excited about jet boots, personal flight. I'm excited about all the start-ups that we're working with. We're working with some phenomenally gifted start-ups and I'm really looking forward to what they're going to do. And just generally, I'm happy. I'm feeling happy. Kind of unstoppable. And just excited about lots of things.
Alan Cowley: It's been both enjoyable, but also quite enlightening and extremely insightful to have you on the show. I'd just like to thank you very much and all the best of the future.
Firdaus Nagree: Thank you. Awesome. Thank you.
